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as they left, her arm slipping around my shoulders. "I hate it that you have to go through all this."
    "Don't be sorry for me. Be sorry for Ethan." The words came from deep within me.
    “I'm sorry for all of you. Aisha. Lacey. You.... And of course, Ethan.”
     “Mom, don’t be a hypocrite. You don’t care about Ethan. You don’t trust him either. That’s why you’ve insisted I don’t go anywhere with him since this all happened.”
    “Cassie, c’mon. There’ve been threats against Ethan’s life. It hasn't been safe for you to be with him.”
    “Admit that you don’t trust him.”
    She chewed her lip, staring at me in that intense way she did when she wanted me to think about whatever we were discussing. The same look that had pulled confessions from me when I was a little kid.
    “Mom, I trust him with my life. And so should you.”
    “He’s had a hard time growing up, I know that.”
    “Maybe he did. But that doesn't mean he's bad or anything.”
    “You’re a good friend to him. I’m sure he needs friends right now.”
     “Mom, I know you’re trying out your psycho-babble on me. Trying to sound like you’re on my side. Well you’re not on my side. You’re on everyone else’s side.”
    “I know things have been on edge between us lately. Cassie, I miss our talks. I miss
us
.”
    I crossed my arms. “Well what would you like to talk about? How you moved us here to the end of the world? How you ran after a man who tricked you? All your psycho training couldn’t tell you Lance Bailey was a scummy cheater, could it now?”
    Her expression tightened.
    But I didn’t care. She'd brought us out here because she’d thought the suntanned Australian man was the love of her life. A love that had lasted all of two months after we moved here—before Lance had decided to go back to his ex-wife. He was the circus act who’d turned our lives upside-down.
    “Cass, that’s unfair.”
    “It’s true.”
    “I thought moving here could be good for us. A change. You were worrying me with the crowd you were hanging with in Miami. And I guess love blinded me where Lance is concerned. I made a big fat mistake. I’m sorry.”
    “You made a big fat mistake with dad then too. Because he didn’t even stick around as long as my first birthday.”
    “If you want to discuss this stuff in a reasonable way, I’m open to it.”
    “No I don’t. Just get off my back about Ethan. He’s better than any other male who’s been in my life.”
    I stormed to my room and dropped onto the unmade bed.
    People were so false. She refused to admit how she really felt about Ethan. Half the town suspected him of hurting Aisha, and the other half just probably didn’t care enough about a missing teenage girl to have any opinion.
    My mother leaned herself against the door frame. “You want to go back to Miami?”
    I eyed her face, looking for some kind of trick. But I kept my mouth firmly shut.
    “Because I’ll arrange it,” she said. “I thought you’d settled here, but I don’t want you unhappy.”
    “Would you really?”
    “Yeah.” She nodded with determination.
    It would be summer in Miami right now. Pool parties, non-stop life, hustle, bustle and heat. Girls on South Beach with perfect bodies and perfect smiles in perfect bikinis. Shirtless boys on skateboards. The odd celebrity brunching at a Lincoln Street cafe. I missed my home. I missed the vibe, the bad Hawaiian shirts, the loud Spanish spoken on every street corner—even the smell of greasy fries and flesh baking under the hot sun. I missed riding my bike along Ocean Drive, tasting the salty ocean and watching the waves dip and roll.
    I remembered all the reasons mom had wanted to move me away. I didn't have close friends there, but I went to parties every weekend, and sometimes we did dumb kid stuff. Last year during spring break, I'd escaped through my bedroom window—meeting up with friends to party with the college students crowding the streets and