go to Brooklyn, to visit Anna in person, but the center’s visitation policy is inflexible. Only immediate family, and further, only adults. Martina is neither, boxed out. Not that Mami would have let her go anyway. She doesn’t approve of the podcast, would certainly never approve of her daughter visiting a criminal in a detention center. But Martina would have gone anyway, if Pathways had let her. Martina is seventeen, newly a senior at Jefferson. She’ll be applying to colleges soon, moving away, hopefully to the city to double major in journalism and sociology at NYU. She’s almost an adult. What Mami doesn’t know won’t kill her.
Martina cringes inwardly and thanks her lucky stars she didn’t say that out loud, in hearing distance of the neighbors. It has been a full month now since Anna’s arrest. The revelation that Zoe is really dead has barely settled in for Martina, for anyone. Even though her body, or what was left of it, has been found. Even though her family confirmed her identity and the dental records sealed the deal. The family can’t have a funeral yet, not if they want a body to bury. The autopsy results still haven’t come in. It’s not like on TV, postmortems moving lightning fast, cases being closed by the end of the sixty-minute episode.
It still seems impossible to believe they found her in Catherine Hunt’s missing motorboat—albeit at the bottom of nearby Parrish Lake, not submerged in the Atlantic Ocean. Martina was wrong about the boat. But not about the most important thing: Zoe wasn’t trying to run away. Someone put Zoe’s body in that boat. Someone sank it to the bottom of the lake. Someone who might be Anna.
Martina knows that she confessed, understands that things don’t look great for the girl she’d only just gotten to know this past summer. But just like with the police’s bogus theories about Zoe the Runaway, there are lots of things that don’t add up for Martina about Anna’s confession. Officially, the details won’t be made public until the case goes to trial, but everyone seems to know what Anna told police. Secrets don’t stay secret for long in Herron Mills, and Anna’s friend Kaylee spread this one like wildfire. She told anyone who would listen exactly how wrong Anna’s story is, but hearing Kaylee say it just made everyone believe: How Anna got Zoe drunk before she fell from the Windermere balcony that night. How Anna drove her body to the lake, hid it in the boat. Martina pops another piece of plantain in her mouth.
“Martina Jenkins?”
She swallows quickly. “Yes, speaking.”
“You have ten minutes with Ms. Cicconi. Understood?”
Martina hears a soft scuffling sound on the other end of the line. Then Anna’s voice breaks through.
“Martina?”
“Hey. Okay if I record this?”
There’s a momentary pause. “Sure. Everything’s recorded on this end anyway.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner. I was … angry, at first. And really sad. And then there was like a three-step approval process, just to get a phone call.”
“Yeah. They love their approval processes around here.” Anna makes a sound that’s almost a laugh, but not quite.
“I wanted you to know I’m working on another episode of the podcast.”
“Oh. What for?”
Martina takes in a deep breath, gets ready to say the words she’s been rehearsing since school let out. “I think there are still a lot of unanswered questions about that night. I think … I’m not sure you could have done what you said you did. Or maybe I’m just not understanding, and I want to understand. I’d like to speak with you, Anna. Again.”
“Like an interview?”
“Exactly. I’d schedule it through Pathways, just like this. Would you be open to that?”
Martina is very aware of the formality of her words. All the ease she’d begun to feel with Anna over the summer, the beginning of what felt like a real friendship, is buried beneath the weight of what happened to Zoe, the place where Anna is locked up, the circumstances surrounding this phone call.
“I think I would,” Anna says finally. “I think I’m starting to have some questions too. About that night.”
“We both want the same thing,” Martina says carefully. “Just to know what happened. To get some real answers for Aster and her parents.”
Most of all, even more than she wants to uncover something important, something that will get her into NYU in spite of her miserable track record with standardized tests—and she wants NYU a lot—Martina wants answers for her best friend. The