Danny sniffed and tried not to look guilty.

  “You’re young and life is short. That’s why I’m tolerant of things in this school. The secret societies, the rule violations … But there are limits and limits are very important, don’t you think?”

  “Yes.”

  “The history of Western civilization has been a struggle between liberalism and conservatism. Neither is right, of course. Sometimes we need more liberty, other times we need to pull back on the reins. Do you see what I’m saying? It’s a balance.”

  “I think so,” Danny said.

  Mr. Lebkuchen smiled. The interview was terminated, but Danny saw a little opening: “Sir, that Japanese poet who wrote about the snow, you wouldn’t have a copy of him, would you?”

  Mr. Lebkuchen’s smile widened. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

  Silence. Silence in the corridor. Silence in the classes. Silence so deep they could hear Canada geese honking in Bear Creek Park. Silence, Danny realized, had many layers and textures. Not all of them were unpleasant. If you grew up in Vegas you lived in a world that was 24/7, 365. If you wanted to go to the movies or go bowling at three in the morning, you could.

  Here you were limited.

  And as Principal Lebkuchen had tried to explain, sometimes it was good to have limits. Complete freedom was no freedom at all.

  Danny thought about this over lunch.

  He sat by himself.

  He didn’t want another dressing-down from Tom about another lost pager.

  He ate and enjoyed the food and listened to the layers of nothingness.

  To his own breath.

  He closed his eyes and breathed.

  The silence of a roomful of people was very different from the silence of a wood or a bedroom.

  It was—

  A sneeze was coming on.

  He reached into his blazer pocket for a tissue.

  There was something in the pocket. A note.

  He sneezed and looked at the note. It had been printed in Times New Roman in italic on a flat piece of card. It said:

  He looked around the canteen. Indrid Cold was obviously a pseudonym, but Danny guessed the person might be watching him right now. He nodded.

  I assume you’ll arrange for the physics classroom door to be unlocked, Mr. Cold? he thought to himself on his way over.

  The door was unlocked. Danny turned the handle and went inside.

  “Hello?” Danny said.

  No answer.

  “Hello?” he tried again.

  Again no answer.

  Danny sat in one of the chairs. The physics classroom was a large room with a hardwood floor, gas taps for Bunsen burners, wide windows, and a gigantic machine at the back of the room, covered in a gray tarpaulin sheet with interesting-looking wires protruding from the bottom. This, Danny assumed, was the famous Tesla coil.

  He was keen to get a look at it, but this was probably not the best time.

  “Hello?” Danny tried again.

  He sat back in his chair.

  He liked this room better than any other class in the school. It was not only bigger and airier but it had more light, an interesting smell, and a tremendous view of Pikes Peak and the whole of the Front Range.

  Danny drummed his fingers on the desk and let five minutes go by.

  He walked to the back of the classroom and looked under the tarp at the Tesla coil.

  He froze when he heard footsteps outside, but it was just someone walking by.

  He went to the window and watched the poor suckers stuck outside on this freezing January day.

  “Hello? Is there anybody here?” he tried again.

  He sat back down in one of the desk-chairs.

  He yawned.

  He watched the clouds advance north from New Mexico over the high desert.

  He put his hands on the desk and rested his chin on them.

  He yawned again.

  He closed his eyes.

  He thought about his mom. She worked hard. Too hard. He thought about Walt. Walt would be OK if he wasn’t such a jerk about everything. Why couldn’t he just leave things alone? He thought about Jeffrey. What a cat. The cat of cats. The king of the Tropicana Wash. Cats were good pets, he thought. You could bend the will of a dog, but a cat chose to be with you of its volition.

  His thoughts became less focused.

  He was drifting.

  Falling.

  Falling for a long time.

  Into blackness.

  Into the pit.

  He landed with a thud.

  He couldn’t breathe.

  The air was thick.

  He was afraid.

  First there was nothing and then the wolves came with yellow eyes and skinny legs and long tongues. Their ribs shimmering in the light, their bodies mincing and trailing after the feet of the alpha dog. They trotted and sniffed the air.

  They smelled him.

  “Ahhh, we caught one,” the alpha bitch snarled, and they all advanced.

  “No!” Danny screamed.

  He breathed cold clear air.

  He filled his lungs with it.

  He opened his eyes.

  An oxygen mask. Two firemen standing over him. The classroom filled with people.

  “He’ll be all right, mild gas asphyxiation. It could have been serious,” one firefighter said.

  “We’ll take him to the hospital anyway,” the other replied.

  “No, no hospitals, just take me home,” Danny protested.

  Mr. Lebkuchen and Cooper Reid rode with him in the ambulance. Mr. Lebkuchen held Danny’s hand. Danny was fully conscious and utterly embarrassed.

  He heard Mr. Lebkuchen explain the situation to the ER nurse.

  “We were meeting in a different class after lunch. Danny’s new, so he must have gone there early to find it. Unfortunately someone had left the door open and Danny went inside. He must have knocked against one of the gas taps for the Bunsen burner. Young Cooper Reid found him slumped on the floor. He ran to get the rest of the class and they tried to revive him before I called 911.”

  They kept him for observation overnight.

  His mother cried.

  Even Walt looked upset.

  At midnight he begged his mom to let him go home.

  He got out of the hospital nightgown and changed back into his school clothes.

  Just as he’d been expecting, the note in his blazer pocket was no longer there.

  “What an unlucky accident,” his mom said in the front seat. “But it could have been so much worse.”

  An accident.

  Was it an accident? Had there been a note at all?

  Danny didn’t know. He was confused, embarrassed, and he resolved to say nothing more about it until he had everything clearer in his head.

  Danny fired up Internet Explorer and clicked on Google.

  “Tesla built his own camera obscura, and he had one of the first working concepts for a television but he got no credit for it, just as he got no credit for any of his other inventions,” Cooper was saying.

  “Pull the lens cover off. No, not that way! You’ll break it! Gently,” Tom said.

  The conversation continued, but Danny wasn’t listening.

  He still didn’t have his computer or Internet at home so he was using one of Tom’s many laptops while Tom and Cooper fiddled with Tom’s camera obscura.

  In a lot of ways these kids are OK dudes, Danny thought. Tom had not kicked up a fuss about the second missing pager in light of Danny’s near asphyxiation. And Cooper had not lorded it over him for maybe saving his life.

  And Danny knew that it was better to have friends who were geeks than not to have friends at all.

  He Googled the words “Indrid Cold.”

  There were over two hundred thousand results, including a couple of rock bands, a bank robber, a painter, and a performance artist. Indrid Cold was also the pseudonym of various hoaxers and imposters from the nineteenth century onward.

  “What are you reading over there?” Tom asked.

  “Uh, nothing really,” Danny said.

  “Put that away; we’re nearly ready.”

  Danny sighed. A hoaxer and an imposter. That figured. He closed the laptop.

  “So what is this camera thing anyway?” he asked.

  “Ta-da!” Tom said.

  The mountain wind blowing through oak trees. The mountain wind blowing through wide boulevards in a shadow world. People going about their business, unobserved, unaware that they were characters in a silent film. Not self-conscious but real, better than actors could ever be. The camera projecting the whole of the visible world in a rich shade of January blue on Tom’s faded mahogany table. Danny had seen projected films before, but this was more compelling. This wasn’t like a movie, for these were actual people living out their actual lives. Everyone was moving, going somewhere else. Undergraduates riding bicycles to the Colorado College campus. Kids walking home from school. A group of soldier recruits from Fort Carson quick-marching in tight formation and a band of Olympians from the US Olympic Training Center on Willamette Avenue running a circuit of Colorado Springs at a ridiculously fast pace.

  Danny watched, entranced as they entered one side of the camera obscura’s viewfinder and exited through the other. He still didn’t quite understand how the device operated, but according to Tom this entire attic room was the camera box and the oak table was the screen, but if that were true it meant they were in the camera right now. Which was really weird.

  “This is awesome,” Danny said.

  “Yes it is, isn’t it?” Tom said proudly. “I got the idea from this old movie called A Matter of Life and Death. The old doc looks at the whole world through his camera obscura.”

  “We still have to get down to business,” Cooper said.

  “What business?” Danny muttered.

  “Come on, drink up your chocolate and we shall begin,” Tom insisted.

  It was a meeting of the Watchers in Tom’s room. Cooper, Olivia, and Tom were there, but not Tony. It was disappointing because Danny thought that Tony was going to come and finally he’d get a chance to talk to her.

  It had been a frustrating day.

  His first day back after “the accident.”

  Tony had smiled at him politely, but she hadn’t spoken to him, hadn’t texted him, and that morning she’d gotten a ride to school.

  To add insult to injury, he’d seen her, through the science classroom window, walking home with Hector.

  He’d wanted to talk to her. To tell her what had really happened in the science classroom (something he had told no one) and to run by her an idea he had for maybe catching the cat killer. But she, apparently, was still miffed at him.

  Olivia cleared her throat and Danny looked at her.

  She really was very pretty. No comparison between her and Tony. A 10 versus an 8. “We don’t know how they knew about Miss Benson’s dismissal; it is possible that Mr. Lebkuchen attends or even runs the meetings of the SSU, in which case he is in breach of Colorado law and could be reported,” Olivia was saying with her most serious face. How could you not like that face? There was an elfin Taylor Swift quality to it.

  And yet …

  She bored him.

  They all bored him.

  “Nice bit of blackmail,” Cooper was saying.

  Tom was rolling a twenty-sided die and making notes.

  “We don’t really know anything,” Olivia replied dismissively. “Guesses ain’t facts.”

  “The SSU thinks it runs the school, but we have to show them that we can’t be pushed around,” Tom said, tapping the table in one of his less annoying fidgets.

  “We really should put someone inside the SSU as a mole; it’s the only way to know for sure,” Olivia said, and put her binder back in her backpack.

  Tom was nodding sagely and making notes. “Yup, you might be right about that. We should know what they’re doing. Let’s discuss it next time. It’s a good plan. One we have to move on quickly. In case everyone’s forgotten, it’s the ninth-grade parents’ night tonight. And I’ve got a big part.”

  Everyone groaned. No one had forgotten that at seven P.M. they’d have to put their uniforms back on and return to school. Near the start of each term Mr. Lebkuchen invited the parents to watch how a typical class worked and ask questions about Direct Instruction. Tonight was 9B’s turn.

  “What’s your part?” Cooper asked.

  “I’ve been picked as usher by Mr. Lebkuchen, but it’s not because I asked for the job or anything,” Tom said.

  What was it Hector had said?

  “Wait, aren’t you class prefect, too?” Danny asked a little suspiciously.

  “God, who told you that?” Tom muttered. “Yeah, I am. I’m supposed to represent the class at ceremonies and intermural events. It’s a total scam. I probably only got it because of my dad—Lebkuchen’s very transparent like that. Still, it’s going to be good on my résumé. We’re not all destined to go to Colorado State.”

  Danny was surprised to hear Tom say this. He never boasted that his dad had been lieutenant governor of Colorado, never really mentioned his dad at all.

  “When’s your dad coming back from Afghanistan?” Danny asked.

  “March,” Tom said without much excitement. “OK. We gotta move along, people. Let me see. The SSU. The camera obscura, we did that. OK, item three, the cat killings. Any ideas, anyone? Danny said he thought there might be someone creeping around outside his house.”

  Tom looked at Danny and Danny knew Tom wanted him to elaborate, but he said nothing.

  “I’ve got something,” Olivia said.

  “You do?” Tom responded, a little surprised.

  “I’ve made a map of Cobalt, showing where the cats have gone missing and where the dead cats have been found.” She spread the map on the oak table.

  “This is great. Good work, Olivia,” Tom said.

  “I helped!” Cooper protested.

  “If you look at where the cats were found, it gives us no information. They were just dumped, abandoned perhaps, but where they were taken is interesting,” Olivia continued. Danny looked at her and admired the dimpled hollows of her cheeks. Definitely attractive. He liked the red lips and green eyes.

  “Where they were taken?” Danny found himself saying. “There’s a clue in the map?”

  Before Olivia could answer, Tom’s mother yelled that the second batch of hot chocolate was ready.

  “Your mom makes great hot chocolate,” Danny said.

  “My mom?! It’s my recipe. I melt real Guatemalan chocolate with full cream, a hint of brown sugar, and a secret ingredient.”

  When everyone had gotten their hot chocolate from downstairs, Tom said, “So, there’s a clue in the map?”

  “Yes,” Olivia replied.

  Danny looked at the map of Cobalt more carefully. It was a small town. Just a dozen streets, a school, the small strip mall—all of it like an island of civilization in the primeval forest.

  “You see,” Olivia began, “the first three cats were taken from these houses. Now, if you look on the map, these houses form the cardinal points of a pentangle.”

  “What’s a pentangle?” Tom asked.

  “Exactly the same thing as a pentagram. It’s a mystical symbol, looks like this,” Olivia replied, drawing a dotted line between the points of a five-pointed star.

  “Oh yeah, one of those. I knew that,” Tom said. “But couldn’t you basically form any shape at all using those three points?”

  “Yes, but I think it’s a pentangle,” Olivia said.

  “Those are the cats we know about; there could be others that didn’t get reported or whose owners don’t know they’re missing,” Tom suggested.

  “In a small place like Cobalt, that’s pretty unlikely,” Olivia insisted. “Anyway, it’s what’s at the center of the pentangle that’s exciting.”

  “What is at the center?” Danny asked.

  “Look! Open your eyes!” Olivia said.

  “Our school!” Danny said.

  Tom nodded. “Hmm, yes, I see that. You might have something here. Maybe we should take this to your friend Bob. What do you think, Danny?”

  “Maybe,” Danny said.

  Tom pressed forward. “OK, now what about the chronology? Danny’s expert witness told us to be aware of the chronology. Anyone working on that?”

  Nobody was.

  “Coop, what about you? Something in my bones tells me that things are coming to a head. That last incident with the tree, I think that represents a significant raising of the stakes. Danny and I will do some snooping on the ground. We’ll try the Sheriff’s Department, and if we finally get a day that isn’t absolutely freezing, we can check out the scene of the crime. Or, rather, scenes of the crimes,” Tom said.

  Danny nodded vaguely.

  “OK, then. Food for thought. I know a lot of us have things to do, me especially,” Tom muttered, which meant that he was closing the meeting.

  On the way out, Danny went to the bathroom.

  He peed in the toilet and was dabbing water on his face when he noticed that the sliding door of the little mirrored cupboard above the sink was open. He slid it open a little more and discovered an amazing pharmacopoeia of pills that Tom’s mother kept there. Ambien, Valium, uppers, downers, mellowers, antihistamines, potpourris, assorted herbs, St. John’s wort, gingerroot, codeine—the poor woman must be going out of her mind worrying about her husband. If things ever got really really stressful, this would be a good place to come and steal some meds …

  “Bye,” Danny muttered and tried to catch Olivia’s eye to see if she wanted him to walk her home, but she was looking elsewhere.

  On his skateboard ride back to Cobalt, Danny thought about one thing Tom had said: “Things are coming to a head.” He too felt that things were moving faster now. The dismissal of the teachers, the cat hanging from the tree. Perhaps it was all linked.

  The cold wind on Colorado Avenue blew the cobwebs from Danny’s head and the molasses from his limbs. That room of Tom’s … He’d felt like a sleepwalker in there, watching the shadow world unfold before his eyes. But out here on Sunflower, he was cold, alive, feeling every bump on the ground, every gradient on the blacktop.