The narrative shifts to the past. It is April. Joanne approaches Julia with Orla, Gemma, and Alison in tow and furiously tells Julia to keep Selena away from Chris. Julia is both amused and confused by Joanne, but she enjoys the other girl’s anger and verbally spars with her for a bit. Julia adamantly denies that Selena and Chris are involved, but Gemma explains that she saw them together. Her tone of voice strikes Julia as truthful, and it plants a seed of doubt in Julia’s mind. 

Later, Julia meets Finn. They have each taken a photo of themselves out on the grounds at midnight. She asks how he managed to sneak out, and he explains that he rewired his school’s door to disable the timed lock. She asks if Chris knew that he’d done that, and Finn confirms this. Julia’s heart sinks and then sinks further when Finn gets angry. Finn thinks that she is interested in Chris and has just been using her friendship with him as a way to get to Chris. Julia’s mind is whirring too quickly to smooth things over with Finn, and he stalks off. She is suddenly too worried about Selena to think about herself; she knows that Chris is the absolute worst of the Colm’s boys, and she feels suddenly protective of her friend.

Back in the present, Antoinette and Stephen retrieve the phone and agree to question Holly again, but this time, her father will need to be present. If Holly got rid of a phone that might have been evidence in a murder investigation, she has become a suspect. They can question underage individuals alone if those individuals are potential witnesses, but not if they are suspects. They call her father, detective Frank Mackey, to be present during the interview. When he arrives, they show Holly the phone and ask her if she recognizes it. She tells them that the phone was Alison’s, but when they contradict her, she replies that if it isn’t Alison’s, then she doesn’t know whose it is. Abruptly, she “remembers” finding a phone on the ground and putting it in the lost and found. 

The detectives change their line of questioning, asking her about Chris and Selena. Stephen tells her that they have proof that the two were dating; he urges Holly to stop denying it. Holly sighs and explains that Selena had been acting strangely enough that Holly was worried about her. One night, Holly saw Selena texting on a strange phone, so she went through its messages and was not pleased to see that Selena was secretly dating Chris. They ask if she felt compelled to do anything about it, and Holly explains that there was nothing she could do, as Selena made her own choices. Stephen accuses Holly of lying about the phone and of throwing away the evidence linking Selena to Chris after Chris was murdered. Holly denies this, explaining that Selena isn’t capable of murder, so there would have been no need to cover for her. Stephen doesn’t believe her, and Holly sighs again and admits that she did throw away Selena’s phone. She says that she knew Selena didn’t kill Chris, but she realized that Selena would be a suspect. 

The narrative shifts to the past. Julia cannot decide how to address the problem of Selena and Chris. She cannot let one of her closest friends get involved with the worst boy at Colm’s, but she does not know how to break up their relationship. On the bus back to school, she runs into Gemma. Gemma’s father usually drives her back in his Porsche after the weekend, so it’s unusual to see her taking public transport. 

Gemma sits by Julia and explains that Joanne used to date Chris; he manipulated her into thinking that they were soulmates and then dumped her because she wouldn’t have sex with him. Joanne was crushed and spent an entire week in her room crying. Gemma points out that Chris has never treated any girl well and that Selena is not as tough as Joanne. She advises Julia to break the two up. Julia considers this and asks, hypothetically, what might make Chris lose interest in Selena. Gemma says that if Selena were to tell him that she would never have sex with him, he might lose interest. 

Julia then asks why Gemma is doing Joanne’s “dirty work” and learns that Gemma’s motivation is not to protect Selena but to hurt Chris. Gemma admits that Joanne is controlling and can be cruel, but she tells Julia that the two are still close. She believes that Chris deserves to be punished because he hurt Joanne.

In the present, Antoinette is still interrogating Holly. She explains the detectives’ awareness that one of the eight girls knows who killed Chris. Holly points out that because she brought the postcard to Stephen, it doesn’t make sense that she would know anything about the crime. However, Stephen is not so sure. He speculates that she might have brought the card in specifically to deflect suspicion away from herself. Holly becomes increasingly agitated, especially when the detectives suggest that she killed Chris herself. They accuse her of tossing the phone because either she or one of her friends had been secretly using it to text Chris and set up meetings. She denies the accusation, adamantly insisting that she only got rid of the phone to protect Selena from police harassment. 

Antoinette, Stephen, and Frank decide to take a break. Antoinette and Frank go outside so that Frank can smoke. When they return, Frank pulls Stephen aside and warns him that Antoinette is unpopular. He advises Stephen to avoid her for the sake of his own career. Suddenly, Antoinette dismisses Stephen from “her” case, and he suspects that something must have passed between her and Frank outside. (Stephen is sure that Frank is responsible for sabotaging his involvement in the case in order to protect Holly.)

The narrative shifts to the past. It is Tuesday, April 23. Julia fakes an illness in order to be sent to the nurse. Once the nurse has ordered her to bed, Julia finds Selena’s secret phone and types out a message. Pretending to be Selena, she asks Chris to meet. Over the next few days, she checks the phone periodically. When he responds, she sets up a time, but she has to be careful because she and the girls still sneak out together when they can, so she cannot meet Chris on a night when she will be out with Holly, Selena, and Becca. 

The girls are in the midst of studying for year-end exams, and everyone is nervous. Selena seems especially aloof, and Julia feels a constant pit in her stomach, knowing that Chris is manipulating her. On the appointed night, Julia meets Chris in the glade, dressing in a skimpy top and feigning interest in Chris. Although she worries that he can sense something amiss, she is sure that he will be unable to turn down her offer of sex. She is right. He promises that if Julia begins sleeping with him, he’ll stay away from Selena for good. Hearing this, Julia believes that Selena is now “safe.”