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her mother meant when she said that things were going to happen to her?
Things you can’teven imagine
. The words fluttered in Gretchen’s mind like a sheet on a clothesline, twisting and turning in the wind.
    The funeral was packed; everyone from the Oculus Society was there—along with Gretchen’s friends and teachers from school, business associates of her father, and random friends her mom had picked up along the course of her life. Gretchen appreciated them all coming to show their respect. But the only person she wanted to see was her best friend. Jessica’s parents had both died in a horrible car accident when she was six. She was the only other person Gretchen knew who had lost her mother. She was the only person in the world who could possibly understand what Gretchen was feeling. She’d already proven it: Jessica had been by the house every night, sitting with Gretchen for hours at a stretch, talking about nothing in particular, just trying to keep her mind from drifting back to what she’d seen in her parents’ bedroom.
    Gretchen spotted her in the crowd of people, standing almost directly across from the white folding chairs that had been set up graveside for the family. The chairs reminded her of graduation, and her chest tightened. How was it possible that it was just four days ago when it felt like four years ago? She remembered her mother standing on stage in her white suit with her beige pumps and the amber in her anklet glowing in the sunlight.
    That was another nagging question: what had happened to her mother’s anklet? After the police had left that first night, and after her father had taken a sleeping pill and passed out in the guest room, Gretchen had gone to her mother’s closet and opened the drawer where she kept all of her jewelry. But the anklet wasn’t there. The next morning, as soon as there was enough sunlight to see the ground, she’d scoured the floor of the tent and the grass around the pool. She’d even dug up anold metal detector from the garage. When she was younger she’d gone through a period of wanting to be an archeologist (to impress her ancient-Greece-obsessed mother, she could now admit), and Tina had given her the metal detector as a birthday present. It was old and kind of crappy, but it still worked. Maybe the anklet had come unclasped and fallen off at some point during the night. But Gretchen never found it. It bothered her that it was missing, almost as much as it bothered her that nobody else had seen Ariel Miller at the party.
    The women from the Oculus Society stood together in a semicircle next to the grave, all in black suits and dresses. To Gretchen, they looked like a coven of beautiful witches. Not evil.
Special
, powerful, removed from the rest of the crowd, and bound to her mother by a secret bond. She tried to keep her eyes focused on them and away from the mound of dirt and the casket that held her mother’s body. As the priest began to speak, Gretchen noticed that some of them—Michelle, Tina Holt, her mother’s friend Joan—were whispering fiercely to one another. She fought to decipher the conversation but was jolted back to the ceremony by the priest, who, in keeping with Greek Orthodox tradition, had begun to loudly sing the Trisagion.
    “
Agios o Theos, Agios ischyros, Agios athanatos, eleison imas
.”
    He sprinkled dirt on the coffin in the shape of a cross, then invited everyone to place a flower on the casket. Gretchen watched as the guests formed a line. It seemed endless. There were her cousins and her aunts and uncles. There were some of her friends from school. There was Jessica’s uncle Rob, and there was Nick Ford, who made a somber face at her as he passed by her chair. Then came the members of the Oculus Society. Tina went first, then Joan. Gretchen expected someof the older, more senior members to be next. To her surprise, Tina ushered Jessica to the front.
    That’s strange
, Gretchen thought.
    And then it was all over, and