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dad?”
    “My dad?” More tears rolled down my cheeks. He was dead, and the last time Mom had been in a hospital was back in Princeton, New Jersey, when it happened. She’d received a phone call then, too, telling her he’d “passed away” . . . as if vague words would lessen the pain. It had been almost six years, and the wound was still fresh in my heart. Maybe it would never heal.
    “Hannah?” the officer asked again. “Can we call your dad?”
    I shook my head. “He’s dead.”
    The officer fixed his eyes on me. “And your mother works at four in the morning?”
    “Four?” Out of habit, I reached for my cell to check the time, but it wasn’t with me. Nothing in this room belonged to me. My phone most likely lay in a million bits on the side of the road. My heart hammered inside my chest. Four in the morning. Mom had to be worried out of her mind. I’d never missed a curfew before. She probably left work and sped home to search for me when I didn’t answer my cell or the house phone. She’d think something had happened to me. Which it had.
    “Hannah?” Officer Stephens asked again. “Does your mother usually work overnight?”
    “Sometimes. She’s the general manager of the Main Street Hotel.”
    “The large one here in downtown Boise?”
    “Yes.”
    “What’s the number?” he asked.
    “Excuse me,” Audrey said, “but maybe Mrs. O’Leary would react better if she heard Hannah’s voice first. To know she’s okay.”
    She read my mind.
    The officer agreed, and Audrey passed me a phone. I dialed Mom’s cell number, and she answered immediately.
    “Hello?” she said.
    I wanted to sound calm, but my breath caught in my throat.
    “Hello?” Mom said again. “Hannah?”
    “I’m okay,” I said, but my voice trembled.
    “I’ve been looking for you,” Mom said. “Where are you? You’re supposed to be here at home. What’s happened?”
    “I’m sorry—”
    I gasped and covered my mouth and sobbed. I was sorry. For everything. For losing control of the car. For hurting my friends. For scaring Mom.
    Her voice softened. “Oh, honey—”
    The phone slipped from my grasp, and the officer recovered it.
    “This is Police Officer Stephens,” he said to my mom. “There was an accident. Yes, she’s at Gracen Hospital, but she’s fine. Yes, we’ll give you more details once you arrive. Yes.” He ended the call and returned the phone to the nurse. He jotted something in his notepad, and then he stared at me.
    “Hannah, did you have anything to drink last night before you got behind the wheel?”
    “No.”
    “Drugs?”
    “No.”
    “What caused the accident?” he asked.
    “There was this awful smell, and there were these ants . . .” As soon as I uttered the words, I knew I sounded foolish, but I needed to explain what happened. I replayed the events in my mind and tried again.
    “There were these beady eyes . . .”
    Audrey’s jaw dropped, but Officer Stephens kept his disciplined composure.
    “Are you saying there was an animal in the road?” he asked.
    “I don’t know what it was, but we hit something.”
    He took notes and said, “Hannah, there’s no evidence the vehicle hit anything.”
    “But it flipped.”
    “And we’re investigating that,” he said. “What were you doing out so late?”
    “We were at the fair.”
    “Did anything unusual happen?”
    “No.”
    The officer stopped writing.
    “We ate, played games, rode the coasters, and went to the hypnotist show.”
    “Were you hypnotized?” he asked.
    “I took part in the show, but I wasn’t actually hypnotized.”
    There was a knock at the door.
    “Am I interrupting?” Mrs. Santos—Manny’s mom—didn’t wait for an answer. She swooped in and wrapped her large, soft arms around me. “Oh, child, are you all right?”
    I bawled into her shoulder.
    “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
    Mrs. Santos leaned back slightly. Her red lipstick trailed into the tiny wrinkles around her full lips. She squeezed my