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Yale, Princeton, Brown, Stanford, Cornell, and Dartmouth. They formed a wide collegiate circle around a spreadsheet and a printout of the common application.
    The spreadsheet listed colleges and had three columns for corresponding deadlines, submission dates, and response dates. The deadline column was filled with numbers written in Mom's neat handwriting; the others were empty. The application was blank except for Mom's notes and response suggestions. My eyes quickly fixed on the center page: the personal essay. A green Post-it was attached to the top, on which Mom had suggested Justine write about the person she was and the person she wanted to become.
    Justine's response was brief.
    I'm sorry, I don't know .
    But neither do you .
    I stared at the words. It might've taken me longer than it should've to find them, but I knew instantly what they meant:
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    Justine wouldn't have gone to Dartmouth in the fall. She wouldn't have gone to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Stanford, or Cornell either. Because before you attended your future alma mater, you had to apply. And apparently Justine hadn't applied anywhere.
    Downstairs people were gathered to celebrate Justine's life, to reflect on her lost potential and all the things she would never do, the places she would never go. I was right about one thing: not one of the unfamiliar guests pigging out on pastries had any idea who she really was. But I was alarmingly wrong about another.
    Neither did I.
    A door slammed down the hallway, jolting me back to the present. I took the essay off the board and the photo of Justine and me in the rowboat from the desk, rehung the other photos, and hurried across the room.
    I was about to bolt into the hallway when my hands flew toward my face, covering my nose and mouth.
    Salt water. I'd grown used to the smell while in the room, but it was stronger by the door--overpowering, like a tidal wave had already swallowed the rest of the house and waited outside Justine's door for an invitation to come inside. It was so strong, I looked down to keep my head from spinning.
    "Oh, no." I lowered my hands from my face. "Oh, Justine ..."
    A crumpled beach towel was pushed up against the closet door. It was thick, and white ... with a grinning cartoon lobster covered in bits of green and black seaweed.
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    Caleb's beach towel--the one he'd wrapped Justine in before pulling her to him on top of the cliffs last week. It was here, dry and stiff with salt, in Boston.
    I sank to my knees and picked up the towel. She'd been home. Sometime between storming out during dinner on the lake-house deck and late the following morning, when her body was found, Justine had returned to Boston.
    It's okay , I told myself, trying not to imagine the white terry cloth draped across Justine's shoulders. Everything's okay .
    Except that it wasn't. It was so far from it, I couldn't even pretend that the beach towel was anything other than what it was: more evidence that, as well as I had thought I knew my sister, someone else had known her better. And that, for whatever reason, she'd wanted it that way.
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    CHAPTER 3
    "ARE YOU INSANE?"
    I lifted my duffel bag from the sidewalk and shoved it in the trunk of Dad's Volvo. "Are you sure you're not going to need it?" I asked, as though Mom hadn't just called down from the front stoop where she stood, in bare feet and a cashmere robe, watching us disapprovingly.
    "I mean, really," she tried again. "Have you both lost your minds?"
    Dad rested his bowl of Cheerios on the rusty roof of the car and helped cram in my bag. "Haven't needed it in months. I'll be fine for another few weeks."
    "Few weeks?" Mom's voice shot up an octave.
    I placed my hands next to Dad's on top of the trunk and pulled down. When the compartment clanged shut, I rounded the car and stood at the bottom of the steps leading to the front door.
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    "I'm not sure how long I'll be gone," I said. "It could be a few days, a week, or longer."
    "I just don't understand why