“What are you doing with those, Imogen?” I ask, and she shrugs nonchalantly.

“Figured they had to be good for something,” she says. “They didn’t do shit for Mom. But maybe they could help me.”

“How many did you take?” I ask.

“None yet,” she says, but I’m not sure I believe it. I move cautiously toward her, lean down and snatch the pills from the ground. I open the cap and look inside. There are pills still there. But how many there were to begin with, I don’t know.

It’s thirty degrees out at best. The wind blows through me. I raise my hood up over my head, plunge my hands into my pockets.

“You’ll catch your death out here, Imogen,” I say, a poor word choice given the circumstance.

Imogen doesn’t wear a coat. She doesn’t wear a hat or gloves. Her nose is a brilliant red. Snot drips from the tip of it, running down to her upper lip, where, as I watch, she licks it away with a tongue, reminding me that she is a child. Her cheeks are frosty patches of pink.

“I couldn’t be so lucky,” she says.

“You don’t mean that,” I say, but she does. She believes she would be better off dead.

“The school called,” I tell her. “They said you’re truant again.”

She rolls her eyes. “No shit.”

“What are you doing here, Imogen?” I ask, though the answer is mostly clear. “You’re supposed to be at school.”

She shrugs, says, “I didn’t feel like going. Besides. You’re not my mom. You can’t tell me what to do.” She wipes at her eyes with a shirtsleeve. Her jeans are black and torn, her shirt a red-and-black button-up, unbuttoned, over a black T-shirt.

She says to me, “You told Will about the picture. You shouldn’t have told him.” She presses up from the ground and rises to her feet. It strikes me again just how tall Imogen is, tall enough to look down on me.

“Why not?” I ask, and she tells me, “He’s not my fucking father. Besides, that was for your eyes only.”

“I didn’t know it was a secret,” I say. I take a step backward, regaining my personal space. “You didn’t ask me not to tell him. If you had, I wouldn’t have mentioned it,” I lie. She rolls her eyes. She knows I’m lying.

There’s a moment of silence. Imogen is quiet, brooding. I wonder what exactly she’s brought me here to do. I keep my defenses up. I don’t trust her.

“Did you ever know your father?” I ask. I take another step back, bumping into the trunk of a tree. She glares at me. “I was just thinking how tall you are. Your mother wasn’t very tall, was she? Will isn’t particularly tall. Your height must come from your father’s side.”

I’m babbling now. I can hear it as well as she.

She claims not to know him. And yet she admits to knowing his name, the name of his wife, that he has three kids. She’s seen his house. She describes it for me. She knows that he has an optometry practice. That he wears glasses. That his oldest, Elizabeth, who’s fifteen, is just seven months younger than she is. Imogen is smart enough to know what this means.

“He told my mom he wasn’t ready to be a dad.” But clearly he was. He just didn’t want to be Imogen’s dad.

I see it in her expression: the dismissal still stings.

“Thing is,” she says, “if my mom wasn’t so fucking lonely all the time, she might’ve wanted to live. If he’d have loved her back, maybe she would have stuck around a while longer. She was so tired of putting on a happy face all the fucking time. Miserable on the inside, but happy out. Nobody believed she was in pain. Even her doctors. They didn’t believe her. There was no way for her to prove that she hurt. Nothing to make her feel better. All those fucking naysayers. They’re the ones who killed her.”

“Fibromyalgia,” I tell her. “It’s a terribly frustrating thing. I wish I would have known your mother. I might’ve been able to help.”

“Bullshit,” she says. “Nobody could help.”

“I would have tried. I would have done anything I could to help.”

Her laugh is a cackle. “You’re not as smart as you want everyone to think. You and me have a little something in common,” she says, changing tack.

“Oh yeah?” I ask, disbelieving. “What’s that?”

I can’t think of one thing Imogen and I would ever have in common.

She comes closer. “You and me,” she says, pointing between us, “we’re both fucked up.”

I swallow against a lump in my throat. She takes a step closer, points her finger at me, stabs me in the chest with it. The bark of the tree presses against my back and I can’t move. Her voice is loud now, losing control.

“You think you can come in here and take her place. Sleep in her bed. Wear her fucking clothes. You are not her. You will never be her!” she screams.

“Imogen,” I whisper. “I never...” I start to say as her head drops into her hands. Imogen begins to sob, her entire body surging like ocean waves. “I would never try to take your mother’s place,” I say in a muted tone.

The air around us is bitter and bleak. I brace myself as a gust of wind comes rushing past and through me. I watch as Imogen’s dyed black hair swirls around her, her skin raw and red instead of its usual pale white.

I go to reach a hand out to her, to pat her arm, to console her. She draws swiftly away from the touch.

She drops her arms. She raises her eyes. She screams at me then, the suddenness of her statement, the emptiness of her eyes startling me. I pull back.

“She couldn’t do it. She wanted to. But she just couldn’t get herself to do it. She froze up. She looked at me. She was crying. She begged me. Help me, Imogen,” she seethes, saliva coming from her mouth, building in the corners of her lips. She leaves it there.