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Mom’s. “Maybe Jess was in a hurry. Maybe there was a lot to do and not much time to do it. I’m not saying she was malicious. Maybe she was just careless.”
    At the word careless Mom’s head jerked back to look at me. My legs started to shake again. I sat down quickly.
    “Did you do that?” Mom asked me. “Because that sounds like you.” She turned back to Detective Bowen. “I keep finding soup tins in the garbage can. The recycling box is right there, but she won’t take two seconds to rinse the can out and drop it in. Won’t take two seconds to help the environment. Casey—”
    I saw Dad put his hand on Mom’s wrist to shut her up. I was grateful. She was about to talk about Casey getting the Mayor’s Environmental Award for a campaign she led to turn a trash heap over by the old underwear factory into a nature park. I didn’t need to hear about it again.
    “Is that what happened?” Detective Bowen asked me. “And I want you to think before you answer. If Casey gets convicted because of that shirt in her bag, and she is innocent, it means that Stephanie’s real killer is still out there, maybe getting ready to kill someone else. My job is to track down a murderer based on the evidence. And so far, all the evidence is pointing to Casey. If I’m wrong, I want to know. I also want you to think carefully, because there is such a thing as obstructing police in the commission of an investigation. It’s a criminal charge, and lying to the police could be seen as obstruction.”
    “That’s enough,” my father said. “There’s no need for that. If Jessica says she didn’t do it, then she didn’t do it.”
    “I haven’t heard her say she didn’t.”
    That was my cue. All eyes turned toward me.
    “I didn’t do it,” I heard myself say. “I didn’t do it.”
    August 22
    Day 1
    It’s opening day of the last camp of the summer. Swarms of girls are crowded into the mess hall with their parents, handing over doctors’ notes and getting assigned to cabins. I recognize some girls from previous years. The repeaters are easy to spot. They are laughing, greeting their friends, squirming away from their parents. The newbies are also easy to spot. They stand close to Mummy and Daddy, looking scared and lost. Some are crying.
    When I first spot Stephanie Glass I don’t give her a second look.
    I sort of know her from church. I’ve seen her singing in the junior choir and I’ve seen the back of her head as she goes down the aisle to the front of the church for the children’s story and then on to Sunday school. I know her father is dead. Heart attack? Cancer? Whatever. She and her mother sit on the opposite side of the church from my parents, and our families are not friends.
    Her being at camp is no surprise. Lots of local kids go. So I ignore her. I am on the lookout for the eight-year-olds I think will be in our cabin. Stephanie looks older than eight.
    Casey is standing behind the registration table, ready to immediately greet any kid assigned to Cabin Three. I sit on a bench along the side of the hall, watching and waiting for the kids to come to me. I figure I’ll see more than enough of them over the next ten days.
    I’m glad this is the last camp of the summer. I like Ten Willows best when it is just Casey and me. But all summer we’ve been junior counselors assigned to someone else’s cabin. For this camp, one of the senior counselors dropped out at the last minute, and we are finally together.
    “If I let the two of you lead a cabin on your own,” said Mrs. Keefer, the camp director, “do you think you can manage to keep the campers alive?”
    “Alive and happy,” Casey said. “Really, we can do this.”
    Of course we can do this, I think, as I watch the camper chaos sort itself out. We’ve been coming to Ten Willows since we were children—camp in the summer, youth weekends in the winter, leadership training, endless volunteer hours cleaning and painting when camp is out.
    After