Then the camera levels, showing rows and rows of cars. And then a building.

  I straighten. It’s the parking lot behind the school. At night. There are lots of cars. Streamers and balloons cover the entrance to the gym, lifting and bobbing in the wind.

  Homecoming. The night of the accident. The night Chloe disappeared.

  My spine is rigid. My hand grips the phone so tight, my knuckles hurt.

  The shot lingers on the gym doors for a few long seconds. The counter on the bottom continues to turn. Is this it? Is anything else going to happen?

  But then the doors are thrown open and it’s Chloe who emerges.

  Forty

  Her dress is light blue. Sleeveless.

  Exactly as I remember it.

  Her hair is pulled back. Two intentionally loose strands frame her face. The blue corsage is still on her wrist. It’s there when she brushes her hair out of her eyes. She walks briskly away from the door and stops after fifteen feet.

  She crosses her arms. She looks unhappy. Beautiful, but unhappy.

  The door flies open again, and there I am. Wearing a white shirt, a yellow tie that Dad helped me knot, navy pants, and brown shoes. I walk up to Chloe and spread my arms wide as if asking her what’s the matter?

  She looks at me for a long moment, but then she starts walking away.

  There’s no sound. We move across the little screen like actors in a silent movie.

  Then Chloe stops. She turns and looks back at me. She’s upset. She’s pointing at me as she says something. Or is she pointing at the gym? At something inside?

  My arms go up again, and Chloe spins and starts to walk away. She’s moving fast. Almost running.

  I follow her, my arms still wide. Pleading. We go between the parked cars, the bottom halves of our bodies disappearing. But I can still see my arms. My mouth moving as I say something to Chloe. We don’t look angry. We look…confused? Unhappy? She looks like she’s trying to convince me to leave.

  The camera pans and follows us. Whoever is filming—Daniel, I presume—moves so quickly. The camera shakes with his steps.

  Eventually we stop on the driver’s side of the car. Her face is a mask of hurt. It’s so rare, I can’t tell if she’s crying.

  I repeatedly point back at the school—like I want to go there.

  Finally, Chloe throws up her hands and dashes around the back of the car. She opens the passenger door, her head disappearing from view as she gets in.

  I get in behind the steering wheel.

  A few long moments tick by.

  Is that it? Are we just going to sit in the car?

  But I know all too well what’s to come. I know how the story has to end.

  The car springs to life. We back out. Furiously. The brake lights are an angry red in the darkness. Then we shoot forward, barreling toward the exit and our collision course with that tree.

  The car fades into the distance.

  And the movie cuts, like the camera was turned off.

  I figure that’s the end. And I’m ready to put it aside.

  I exhale. It’s over.

  Suddenly the movie starts again. The camera is back on, recording. It makes a quick pan to the right, picking up something else.

  Another car zips across the parking lot, flying right up behind, like it’s chasing us.

  Forty-One

  I rewind the video and watch the ending again. Again, and again, and again.

  I study every part of the screen. But it’s impossible to see any detail. It’s a car. A dark car on a dark night. There’s no way to see the driver, to even tell the make or model. Forget about getting the license plate number.

  But maybe someone else can see more. Maybe the cops.

  I spring off the bed and throw open my door. Dad’s heading toward my room, as if he’s read my mind.

  But he looks surprised to see me.

  “Dad? This…” I hold the phone between us. “This video. The one Daniel made. It shows Chloe and me on the night of the dance.”

  “What video Daniel made? What are you talking about?”

  “The movie,” I say. “Daniel’s movie.”

  “I don’t—never mind. You have to come downstairs.”

  “Dad, we have to tell the police. We have to make sure they’re see this. They can enhance it or whatever. Let’s call them.”

  “There’s no need, Hunter,” he says.

  “What are you talking about? This is evidence. This shows what happened the night of the dance. Of course we have to call them.”

  Dad’s shaking his head. “Something’s going on, and they want to talk to you again. They’re on their way right now. And I’ve got a call in to the lawyer.”

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “I have no idea.”

  I can show them the video. If they can figure out who followed us that night, they might be able to figure out who ran us off the road. And whoever ran us off the road must be the person who took Chloe.

  Instead, I feel deflated. If the cops are coming over, that means they have more questions. What could they possibly ask me that they haven’t already?

  Dad starts back down the stairs, but he hesitates when he sees I’m not following.

  “What is it?” he asks.

  I slump against the wall, the phone still in my hand. “I don’t know.”

  He comes toward me. “What don’t you know?”

  “I don’t know if I can do this anymore. I don’t know if I can handle the cops asking me a bunch of questions that I don’t know the answers to. Just thinking about it makes me feel worn out.”

  Dad nods his head. “I understand. You know, you don’t have to answer any questions if you don’t want.”

  “And then what?”

  “You run the risk that it makes you look guilty.”

  “That’s not how it’s supposed to work,” I say. “We just studied this in civics.”

  “I know.” He stands with his hands in his pockets. For a moment, I think the awkwardness will descend over us. But when Dad speaks, his voice is clear and determined, and I imagine this is what he’s like in class when he really gets going on some subject he feels passionately about. “When your mom was sick, we just kept going to all these different doctors. You probably remember some of it. And every time we went, I thought one of them was going to tell us something we hadn’t heard before. I thought one of them was going to give us some piece of good news that was going to make her better. After a long time of only hearing bad news, I dreaded each trip. I just didn’t want to hear any more bad news from people who were supposed to be helping us.”

  “But you kept going. Mom fought until the end.”

  “She did. She wanted to. She wanted to be here for you and Livvy. She really did.” Because she wanted to try as hard as she could. Because I loved her. And I wanted her to stay with us as well.” He looks at the floor and scuffs his foot over some minuscule piece of dust. “I guess we keep on going when we love somebody. As long as there’s a chance…”

  He starts back down the hall and says over his shoulder, “Just tell the truth, Hunter. And I’ll be right there with you. And show them the video. You never know…”

  Forty-Two

  Dad offers Detective Haley something to drink when he comes in, and Haley declines.

  He’s wearing dark pants and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. No jacket or tie this time. There’s some redness in the whites of his eyes, but his jaw is set firm like he means business. He holds a manila folder—the kind of thing people carry around in offices on old TV shows.

  He speaks to Dad. “You understand Hunter can have his lawyer present. Those rights I read him the last time still apply.”

  “Our lawyer let me know she’s in court,” Dad says. “If I don’t like your line of questioning, I’ll stop it.”

  Haley lets out a sigh. “That’s your right as well.”

  “I know.”

  The bickering and arguing tires me out. “Just ask your questions,” I say. “And when you’re done, I have something I want to show you.”

  “You do?” Haley asks.

  “Yes.”

  Suddenly Haley looks curious, and his posture becomes straighter. “Okay, then. First things first. We’ve already discussed the fact that you and Chloe were sexually intimate.”

  My face burns. Dad is right there, and without even meaning to, my eyes cut to him. His face shows nothing, but he nods at me, indicating that I should answer the question.

  “Once.”

  “One time about a month before the homecoming dance.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you said you used protection, right? A condom?”

  “He’s been over all of this with you,” Dad says. “Chapter and verse.”

  Maybe Dad has my back. Or maybe he doesn’t want to watch his teenage son squirm through another examination of his sex life. Either way, I’m glad he’s here.

  “I just need to make sure we agree on basic facts, Hunter,” Haley says, an edge creeping into his voice.

  “Yes, that’s right,” I say.

  “And you said that, as far as you know, Chloe wasn’t sexually involved with anyone else?”

  I get a stinging pain in my chest. “Why are you asking me this? Of course not.”

  But do I know? Do I know anything for sure?

  Why was Chloe acting distant? Why was she so upset the night of the dance?

  Why was she afraid at the dance?

  Was it Basher?

  “But you don’t know for sure,” Haley says.

  “I trusted her. Trust her. Completely. We’re committed.”

  Haley reaches for the manila folder. He flips it open in a way that seems practiced. Something about it feels like a performance, like Sherlock Holmes lighting his pipe.

  “It’s taken us a while to go through Chloe’s computer and phone records. It’s a slow process, and a hardworking teenager uses her computer a lot. And makes a lot of calls. And sends a lot of texts. And we’re kind of understaffed. The state has been helping us, of course, but we don’t have an unlimited supply of computer technicians.”

  He picks up a stack of papers from the folder and tilts his head back as he refers to them.

  “About two weeks after what you say is your first and only intimate encounter with Chloe, she did a number of Google searches about pregnancy. Specifically, she was looking into the likelihood of getting pregnant if a condom broke during sexual intercourse. Did the condom break when the two of you had sex, Hunter?”

  Dad’s staring at me. His cheeks are flushed. Mine are, too. I did not expect our conversation to head down this road.

  Not at all.

  “You need to answer me, Hunter,” Haley says. “Or we can go back to the station and call the lawyers. You could be there for a lot longer this time. Days, maybe.”

  “No. I mean... I don’t think it did. I guess I’m not sure.”

  “Chloe also placed a phone call to a pregnancy help line. A nonprofit geared toward young people who might find themselves in psychological trouble or have questions about their bodies. We found a call to that number on her phone. Twice. Around the same time as the Google searches.”

  “What did she say to this hotline?” I ask, my voice low, although I wasn’t trying to be quiet.

  “That’s just it,” Haley says. “These types of places are meant to be anonymous. You don’t give your name. They don’t record the calls. And they get thousands of calls every month, so to ask a volunteer to remember one specific call is impossible.”

  “What are you saying?” I ask. Although I know. I obviously know.

  “Hunter.” Haley scoots forward. His face is a mask of seriousness. “You’re running out of chances to be honest with us. But I’m here giving you an opportunity to come clean. So, tell me. Was Chloe pregnant? Were you the father? Is that why you fought at the dance? And did that put so much pressure on you that you felt you had to do something about it?”

  Forty-Three

  It’s like a dream where I want to scream but can’t.

  There’s a big clock with a white face and black numbers above the stove, something Mom picked out a year before she died. It ticks and ticks while all of us sit there saying nothing. Words finally come. “Chloe wouldn’t keep that from me. We didn’t keep things like that from each other.”

  The words sound juvenile. Like something spoken by a fool.

  Clearly Chloe was keeping things from me. She never mentioned her fears about being pregnant. About the condom breaking. She never told me what was bothering her in the weeks leading up to the dance.

  She’d kept me in the dark about a lot.

  Haley’s face remains blank, even as a muscle twitches in his jaw. “So you’re telling me, Hunter, that you don’t know anything about this?”

  My head shakes. Mind blown.

  “Can I ask a question?” Dad says.

  Haley ignores him, so Dad just goes on. “Hunter, I can remember when I was young, before Mom and I got married, and I was always worried about getting one of my girlfriends pregnant.”

  I sit as still as a statue. Dad has never spoken so casually about sex, never implied he had a sex life before Mom. My first instinct is to say, Please, don’t go there, but Dad is talking to me like I’m an adult. We’ve crossed some invisible barrier, and it’s good.

  “What I mean is sometimes I talked about it with my partners,” he says. “And, sometimes, we’d talk about what would happen if she became pregnant. What I’m asking is if you and Chloe ever had that kind of talk?”

  It fits Dad that he wouldn’t jump into sex without examining every possible consequence beforehand. He’s not the most impulsive guy in the world.

  Chloe and I talked about everything over hundreds and hundreds of conversations. And, yes, leading up to our first—and only—time, we did talk about pregnancy. Chloe was pretty clear. She told me she was not going to get pregnant. And if she did, she wasn’t going to let it derail her life. She told me about her cousin in Virginia who was at the top of her class, but then got pregnant senior year. She finished high school and had the baby but never went to college. Chloe swore she would never let that happen to her.

  “She has two kids now,” Chloe said about her cousin. “And no degree. That won’t be me.”

  I relay all this to Haley and Dad. Haley nods, still showing nothing.

  “So it sounds like Chloe felt pretty strongly,” Haley says. “If she found out she was pregnant, she intended to do something about it.”

  “Are you saying that’s what she ran off to do after the accident?” I ask. “In her dress? And with no money? Or phone? Does that make sense?”

  Haley looks thoughtful. He taps his chin with his index finger and studies me through his intense brown eyes. “If Chloe was pregnant, then it would be in both your best interests to keep that from everyone. Parents. Teachers. If Chloe thought a pregnancy would ruin her life, then she might be willing to do anything. Run away for a while. Stage an accident.” He leans forward. “Hunter, maybe the two of you got in over your heads. You wanted to make this problem go away, but you got in too deep. And you’re looking for a way out.”

  “That’s not what happened,” I say.

  “Maybe Chloe pressured you,” he says. “I bet she was a persuasive girl. Maybe she turned up the heat on you to help her. Maybe you got scared someone would find out. Maybe the two of you disagreed about what to do. Hunter, did you want to have the baby? Is that the problem?”

  “I can prove that didn’t happen,” I say. “I can prove how nuts all of that is.”

  I pull out my phone, load the video—Daniel’s video—and slide it across the table toward Haley, who pushes his manila folder aside.

  “What’s this?” he asks. “Oh. Yes, I’ve seen it.”

  “You have?” I hit play anyway.

  He frowns. “Daniel’s mother gave us access to his cloud storage. The rough cut of the movie was there.”

  “You watched the whole thing?” I ask. “You actually saw the other car following us?”

  Haley nods but without much enthusiasm. “Of course. The video is at the state crime lab being analyzed. Unfortunately, the initial results have been inconclusive. They can’t identify the make or model of the car yet. And they haven’t come close to the plate number. These things take time, but we’re doing our best.”

  “But that’s a big lead,” I say. “Find that car, and you’ve got the person who ran us off the road.”

  Haley shakes his head. “We don’t even know if that vehicle was at the scene of the accident.”

  He looks so certain. Almost smug.

  That quick glimpse of the accident jumps back into my mind.

  The headlights. The tree.

  “Let me tell you what I remembered,” I say.

  Forty-Four

  “I went out there this morning. To the scene of the accident,” I say. “I hadn’t been out there since that night.”

  “Why did you go to the crime scene?” Haley asks.

  “To see it. I wanted to try to jar something loose in my mind. And it worked.”

  “Is this what you were telling me when you came home?” Dad asks.

  “Yes.”

  Haley’s brow is wrinkled. “How did you feel when you went there? Was it…exciting to you in some way? Did you get an adrenaline rush?”

  “Detective,” Dad says, “I don’t think you—”

  “Just hold it,” I say to Haley. “Please. Just hold on and listen for once.”

  I detail the slow drive to the scene, the deer that scattered. Then parking and approaching the tree, that brief piece of memory that raced back into my brain like a flash flood.