Their faces stare back at me. Hector. Cameron. Natasha. All looking, mouths open. Concerned. A little freaked.

  And a couple of people at the table behind us have turned around to gawk as well.

  I lower my voice.

  “How can anyone know what goes on between two people? It’s none of their fucking business.”

  My friends’ faces are full of pity. No one wants pity. Not at all. And I don’t feel any better after my little rant. I feel worse.

  At that exact moment, Chad comes walking up with Hannah. As usual, he looks happy and carefree. And for no good reason I’m mad at him, probably because he wasn’t there when this whole conversation started. So as soon as he reaches the table, I say, “Where the fuck have you been? I thought you had something important to tell me.”

  Chad keeps his cool. Only Hannah’s face shows any surprise. Her mouth opens, and she looks at me and then at Chad, her blond hair pulled back off her rosy cheeks. But she doesn’t say anything. And no one else does, either.

  It’s Chad who finally speaks. “Okay then. Why don’t you and me take a little walk?”

  Nine

  We walk out of the cafeteria side by side, both of us as quiet as monks.

  I’m quiet because I owe Chad an apology. He’s quiet because he knows me well enough to know he just has to give me a little space sometimes. He’s one of the few people who gets that. Olivia does, too.

  And so does Chloe.

  Outside it’s sunny enough to make me squint. There’s an area of picnic tables and benches where we’re allowed to hang out when the weather’s nice. That’s pretty much where Chloe and I started dating. We’d known each other through Ex Libris and had even been talking and texting for weeks. But I saw her out there one day, sitting alone, reading Macbeth for class, and I walked up and said, “Spoiler alert, it’s not a happy ending.” And, thankfully, she laughed. We went to Blue Door Coffee after school the next day, supposedly to discuss our Ex Libris submissions, but we talked about everything else. Our families, our dreams, what it would be like to do something other people couldn’t forget. That was pretty much that. I didn’t want to be with anyone else.

  In the distance, a group of guys is tossing a football around. It doesn’t really feel like fall yet. No cool weather. No frost. Chad and I walk in the direction of the football players, sticking near the trees that border campus. A couple holding hands passes us. A kid staring at his phone almost walks into us. Three girls talk animatedly but grow silent when they see us. Three sets of eyes trail toward Chad, and the bravest one says hello to him.

  “Hey,” Chad says, before the kid and her friends walk past us, laughing and whispering.

  I break the ice. It has to be me. I’m the one who fucked up.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t want to be a dick.”

  “It’s cool. It’s a tough time.”

  “Well, still. I shouldn’t…”

  “It’s okay. I saw that note on your locker. I heard the announcement about the vigil. It’s a lot.”

  “Yeah. Well, I’m still sorry.”

  “We’re cool.”

  My thanks stick in my throat. The branches and leaves on my right swing in the breeze. Someone lets out a triumphant yell on the football field, and one of the guys jumps around like he’s just won the Super Bowl.

  “But I do want to tell you something,” Chad says. “About Chloe. About homecoming.”

  Another word sticks in my throat. But I force it out. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” He points to a weathered bench. I know what he means—we should sit. That’s how it is with Chad—he points or says one word, and everyone knows what he means. And they follow.

  So we sit on the rickety bench and hope it doesn’t collapse under our weight. No one is around. The football game continues in the distance, but the jumping and yelling have stopped. We have about twenty minutes until classes resume.

  Chad takes his time before speaking. Those few bites of peanut butter and jelly have settled in my gut like bricks. My mind goes in two directions. On one hand, I want to know what he has to tell me. On the other…

  “This is why I came by your house when you were out of commission,” Chad says. “To tell you what happened on the night of the dance. Hannah saw Chloe crying in the bathroom. She was really upset about something. Hannah talked to her for a while and got her calmed down. Did you know that?”

  I did but only because when the cops talked to me in the hospital, it was one of the things they asked me about over and over—did you know Chloe was crying in the bathroom on the night of homecoming? And I told them I didn’t know. Over and over.

  Chloe almost never cried. Not at movies. Not at sappy songs. Not when we disagreed or fought. Pretty much never.

  Then the cops came by the house two more times, asking me more questions. The same things, like a song on repeat: Do you remember anything else? How were things between you and Chloe? Would Chloe ever run away? Did you break up? Did you have a fight? Did you ever hit her? Were you cheating on her? Was she cheating on you?

  And then the big things they asked: Were you having sex? Is it possible Chloe was pregnant?

  Super fun stuff to talk about with your dad in the room. And your little sister eavesdropping from upstairs.

  They got the truth. Chloe and I had sex for the first time—and I mean the first time for both of us—one month before she disappeared. It happened to be our six-month anniversary. Everyone—including Chad—said the first time wasn’t going to be great. And they were right. It wasn’t.

  But my first time was with Chloe. That mattered to me more than anything else.

  Chad goes on. “I figured you knew about her being upset. Even if you didn’t remember it all. Hannah told the cops about that.”

  I only knew because the cops told me.

  But I also remember that Chloe wasn’t herself in the weeks leading up to the dance. She’d been distant. Short-tempered. Not as warm. Not all the time. Not every day. But more than usual. And when I asked what was going on, she claimed she was stressed out by school. An AP Chemistry test she needed to ace. Her work on student council. College applications. Her parents were totally obsessed with her college applications. They acted like the fate of the free world hinged on her getting into a good private college, preferably Ivy League. They always applied a lot of pressure. About her grades. About her future. But the college applications brought their intensity to a new level.

  And we didn’t try to have sex again. There was no second time. Chloe didn’t seem interested in anything physical, and I chalked it up to all the weirdness in her life. We’d figure it out sometime in the future, when life was quiet again. Actually, I was secretly hoping we’d finally try again on the night of homecoming.

  The cops seemed to listen when we talked, but there was one thing I struggled about telling them. I went back and forth about it in my mind but finally brought it up.

  I told them Chloe kept a journal. Handwritten in a leather notebook.

  Why the struggle over whether to tell them?

  Mainly because it had taken Chloe so long to tell me. She’d only mentioned it at the beginning of the school year, after we’d been dating for close to five months. She brought it up in passing in the creative writing club one day. When we were alone later and I asked her about it, she said it was no big deal. It was just something she’d started doing the previous spring because our teacher, Mr. Hartman, recommended it.

  But she never offered to show it to me.

  She said she kept it hidden in her room in an out-of-the-way place. Her parents knew she kept it, and she worried they—especially her mom—might snoop.

  Since the police went all through their house, and removed computers, phones, hair samples, fibers, and everything else, they must have found the journal. Right?

  “Before the cops told me, I didn’t know she was crying on the night of the dance,” I say to Chad. “Or if I did know, I don’t remember now. A lot of that night, ninety percent of it, is just a blind spot. I remember going to her house. I remember all of us going to Hannah’s for dinner. I kind of remember walking into the gym. The music was terrible…”

  “It was.”

  “And that’s about it. The rest is just…nothing.”

  “Remember I got that concussion against Morgantown last year? When I collided with that big dude? I didn’t know my own name when I came off the field The trainer asked me the date, and I said it was 1972. So it might come back, right? It did for me.”

  “The doctor says it could. There’s no way to predict. But the more time passes…” I wonder if this is what my grandpa felt like as dementia passed over him like a dark cloud. Did more and more of his life just disappear? It scares the shit out of me to even think about, losing that night forever. “But you didn’t just want to tell me that, did you?” I ask. “What’s really on your mind?”

  Chad nods. In profile, he looks like a guy everyone would want to vote for if he ran for class president. But outside of soccer he’s barely involved at school. He’s definitely a person who charts his own path and doesn’t care what anyone else thinks.

  He turns to me. “Hannah saw Chloe a little later that night. They were out in the hallway by the big trophy case. Chloe had calmed down. She wasn’t crying. But she told Hannah she had a bigger problem to deal with, more than whatever had been making her cry earlier.”

  My knees wobble. “What was it?”

  We face each other. A small gnat floats between us, dips and dives in the bright sun.

  “Chloe told Hannah you were very angry that night. At the dance. That you were madder than she had ever seen you before. And she told Hannah she wanted to leave the dance before you did anything stupid.”

  Ten

  It’s almost time for class, and Chad tells me he can’t be late because he has a test in AP Spanish. As I follow him toward the building, I consider what he just told me—that I was angry the night of the dance, angry enough that Chloe wanted to leave before I did something rash.

  Was it the possibility of me wanting to have sex again that put Chloe on edge?

  Did that upset her?

  A cloud slides in front of the sun, casting a shadow across the school grounds. Everyone files back inside, including the sweaty football players who jostle each other, their carefree fun irritating me way more than it should.

  Is it possible Chloe and I fought, and I just don’t remember? Is it possible the fight was so bad—and I was so angry—that she felt scared?

  What’s the alternative? That Chad is lying, feeding me a story to take advantage of my wrecked memory?

  “Hey,” Chad says as we approach the glass door. “We’ll figure this all out, Hunter. Really, we will.”

  “Do you think Basher could have done something to Chloe?” I ask. “First, he gave me a friendly look in calc this morning, but when the vigil was announced, he looked really blank. His look was cold, like he hated me. And hated everything.”

  “Basher? The world’s worst quarterback?” Chad laughs. “The guy can’t even read a defense. Do you think he could hatch a plot like this?”

  “He could be jealous. Want her back. I told you he still hangs out at her house with Chloe’s dad.”

  “Forget him.”

  “Hold on,” I say.

  He waits, arms crossed, face expectant. “Now what?”

  I choose my words carefully, fully aware that I might piss off one of the few friends standing by me. “Okay, Hannah told you all this, right? I can’t remember any of it... Did anyone else see it?”

  “They were alone. The girls’ bathroom. The trophy hallway.”

  “I know. It’s just…Hannah.”

  Chad rolls his eyes. “You’re going to go there? Seriously?”

  “This is important, Chad.”

  Here’s the thing—it’s flat-out weird sometimes with Hannah and Chad. Weird because Hannah and I dated for a few months sophomore year. It felt more serious than it was because it was the first time either one of us had a real boyfriend or a girlfriend. When I see Hannah now, I know she’s pretty, but her looks are nothing compared to Chloe’s natural beauty.

  “You don’t trust Hannah. She lies, right?” He’s shaking his head. “Look, I know you’re freaked out and everything, but you can’t just start lashing out and doubting your friends. We’re on your side.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  There’s the way it ended with Hannah and me.

  Hannah went to Destin, Florida, on vacation with her family and made out with another guy. Not just once—they had some kind of vacation fling. Hannah told another friend, who told me. The betrayal felt like someone had cut out my heart.

  Hannah always tends to stretch facts. A lot. She’d exaggerate how high of a grade she earned on a test. How much money she made babysitting. How much land her parents own at the lake.

  “Look,” Chad says, “it’s the truth. And Hannah can tell you herself if that’s what you want. But don’t lose your faith in everything and everyone who cares about you.”

  I’m not sure I won’t, so I remain silent.

  And I’m really not convinced Hannah is my friend. I’m not sure of anything about her.

  Chad claps me on the back and takes off for his test. I think about heading to the nurse’s office and telling her I’m too sick to stay at school. I can claim a relapse of my concussion symptoms—headache, sensitivity to light. Blank memory. I have a ready-made excuse.

  But then I remember why I wanted to come back to school. Routine. Being normal. But I also thought being here would help me learn something about what happened to Chloe. I wasn’t accomplishing anything sitting at home feeling sorry for myself. Do I want to go back to that shit?

  No, and Chloe wouldn’t, either. Whatever went down that night, she’d want me to be out, engaging with the world. She wouldn’t want me to quit, so I resolve to stay.

  That’s when I see the kid filming me again. He stands in the hallway just inside the glass door, tracking only me and none of the other students streaming by like minnows. It’s the same kid as this morning, the one who had his phone out documenting my reaction to the skeleton and the note. Because of the phone in front of his face, I can’t tell who he is or if I know him. He wears a Western Kentucky University cap, red with white stitching, and a gray hoodie. He’s short. A freshman maybe?

  “Hey!”

  The lines of students part as I dash for him. What must I look like, going after him like this? Lately it seems like I’m doing a lot of things I don’t normally do.

  But this kid doesn’t flinch. He keeps filming even as I push his phone down, resisting the urge to smack it across the floor, slam it to the ground, and stomp on it.

  Like the stupid skeleton.

  “Oh, hey, Hunter.”

  He’s no freshman. He’s a senior with familiar features: the nose with a tip like a bulb, the freckles, the big round eyes that look almost childlike.

  “What are you doing, Daniel?” I ask. “Why are you filming me?”

  “Oh, that.” He looks down at the phone in his hand like it just materialized out of thin air. “Well, it’s an interesting story if you want to hear it.”

  “I do want to hear it.”

  The bell rings. We all have four minutes to get to our next class. European history for me.

  “It’s going to take more than four minutes,” Daniel says. He smiles like we’re in on the same joke, like we’ll both find this exchange amusing. “But I think you’ll want to know what I have to say.”

  I doubt it. I’ve known Daniel since kindergarten. From grades four through eight, we were the very best of friends. We did everything together. We watched movies, traded comics. We rode our bikes all summer and went sledding on Hospital Hill on those rare days when it snowed here in southern Kentucky.

  Even though we weren’t close anymore, he came to Mom’s funeral and told me to let him know if I needed anything.

  And, yes, we made stupid little videos together. The kind you make when you’re twelve featuring army men and dinosaurs and Matchbox cars.

  But we drifted apart once high school started. My group of soccer friends—Chad, Hector, Cameron—came along. Daniel went another way. Chess Club. Dungeons and Dragons. When we were best friends, I couldn’t imagine not seeing or talking to Daniel every day. But standing there in the hallway, I can’t remember the last time we really talked. We just didn’t know each other anymore. It’s as though I’m staring at a big chunk of my childhood that’s drifted away. What could he possibly have to tell me?

  “Well, please stop filming me, okay? It’s…creepy.”

  “I’m not a creep,” he says.

  And the way he says it tells me people have called him that before. He’s the kind of guy who lives on the edges of our world, a moon orbiting far away from the center of high school gravity.

  “I didn’t say you were. Look, just don’t film me, okay? I’ve got enough troubles right now. And I’m going to be late for class.”

  “I saw your video this morning. It looked like you were kind of laying everything out there.”

  “That video…big mistake.”

  “No,” Daniel says. “It was real. Authentic. Maybe people don’t understand that, but I do.”

  “Yeah, okay. Thanks.” And I know what he means. He means—I know who you really are. Better than most people. And maybe he’s right. Maybe we haven’t drifted as far apart as I think.

  “Are you going to the vigil?” he asks.

  “I guess so. Maybe. Yes.”

  “Can we talk there?”

  “I don’t know. There are going to be a lot of people.”

  “I’ll find you,” he says.

  He doesn’t say those words by accident. We used to say that to each other—I’ll find you. When we were younger, we’d make plans to meet and before we’d hang up the phone one of us would say it to the other. It was our way of saying we understood each other so well, we were so in tune with each other’s thoughts, that we’d always manage to track down each other.