The door opens behind me. And then Daniel’s voice.

  “Hey! Hey! Hunter!”

  I stop in the middle of the yard and turn to face him.

  He walks up to me, and in the dark, the whites of his eyes are the only prominent thing about him.

  “Hunter, that’s a shitty thing to say to me. About being your friend. You’re the one who stopped hanging out with me. You’re the one who found your new soccer friends. Guys who look at me the way they did tonight.”

  “We were kids, Daniel. Lots of people get new friends. It’s not some big personal thing.”

  Daniel stares at me, his lips parted. “Not personal? What else could it be? We were best friends. We did everything together. And then…I thought the movie…we used to make those movies together, so I thought you’d appreciate it. I thought maybe we could, you know, reconnect over something.”

  “Over a movie that says I’m guilty of killing Chloe?”

  “Okay, fine. Go back to your new soccer friends. But I’m going to finish that movie.” He points back to the house, which looks dark and small under the stars. “That’s my thing. I haven’t stopped making movies. And I never will. I thought I could interview you, get your side of the story. But if this is the way you want it, fine.”

  He turns and storms across the yard, his shoes brushing across the dewy grass.

  His name forms on my lips.

  But I don’t say it.

  He goes into the house and slams the door. There’s nothing left to do but turn around and go home.

  Twenty-Three

  I can’t sleep.

  Again.

  The argument with Daniel loops through my mind. Was I right to lose my cool? Should I have said those shitty things?

  Three times I reach for my phone and start to text him, apologizing. And every time I don’t. Would he believe me? Do we have any friendship left worth saving?

  And do I even owe him an apology? He’s the one shooting a documentary that makes me look guilty. Don’t I have the right to be pissed? It’s my life. And Chloe’s life. Do I need an amateur filmmaker using a bad voice-over and clichéd music to turn everything upside down?

  The last time I pick up my phone, just before midnight, it chimes. A text from Daniel. No words, just an embedded video. It’s the movie. It’s the last thing I want to watch. The anger surges all over again, so I ignore the message.

  I fall asleep and manage to stay under more deeply than I have in a while. When I come to and look at my phone, it’s 4:17. My eyes are so tired, they burn. The house is quiet. Dad and Olivia sleep without trouble. If Mom were here, would she sit up with me? When I was a kid and got sick, she’d sit by my bedside all night checking my fever and bringing me water or a cold compress for my forehead.

  But she’s gone. And I love Dad and Livvy more than anything, and I know they love me, but I also kind of feel like I’m on my own in a way I never have been before.

  At some point, I fall back asleep. Deep sleep. No dreams, no surreal or scary images in the night. My body and mind must be so wrung out they can’t summon anything from my subconscious.

  Thumps wake me up. And more thumps. Hammering. My head. Is Dad having something fixed? I roll over and gently put the pillow over my head, muffling the sound. What could have broken so early in the morning?

  Or is someone throwing eggs at the house?

  The thumping continues. And it seems close. So close it feels like it’s in my room.

  Then someone calls my name.

  “Hunter? Hunter, open up.”

  Dad?

  I pull the pillow away. The room feels chilly. My bladder is full, my mouth dry. I feel a little nauseated. I’m frustrated that the concussion symptoms are still around. Dad says my name again. He even turns the knob a few times. As usual, I had locked it before I went to sleep.

  “What?” I ask as I’m walking across the room. I really need to pee, and the floor is cold against my bare feet. The temperature must have dropped to something more fall-like.

  Why am I thinking about the weather when my dad is pounding on my door at…

  6:11. The alarm doesn’t go off until 6:30. What’s his problem?

  I undo the lock and open the door. “What?”

  Dad isn’t dressed, either. He’s wearing a robe and slippers. Livvy opens her bedroom door and sticks her head out. Her hair looks like a purple bird’s nest.

  “What?” I ask again, my voice lower.

  “Get dressed,” Dad says. “The police are here. They want to talk to you.”

  “What?”

  It seems to be the only word I can say. The only word that makes sense.

  “The police are here,” Dad says again, speaking slowly like I might not understand English. He glances back at Livvy, who is wide-eyed and looking even younger than her fifteen years. More like a kid than I’ve seen in a long time. Dad looks at me, up and down. I’m wearing boxers and an old soccer T-shirt. “Put some clothes on before you come down.”

  “I will,” I say. “I have to pee, too.”

  “Then do that.” He backs away. “Livvy, get ready for school.”

  I expect her to argue because she argues about everything, but she just nods and goes back into her room, closing the door.

  “What do they want, Dad?” I ask. “Why are they here?”

  Dad shrugs. “Chloe, I guess,” he says. “Just tell the truth, and you’ll be all right.”

  Before he goes, he reaches out and squeezes my shoulder, and then gives me a little nod.

  But the gesture feels forced, and as he goes back down the stairs, I feel more nervous than if he hadn’t touched me at all.

  Twenty-Four

  I empty my bladder in the bathroom. Sweet relief for a moment.

  But the cops are waiting downstairs.

  In a daze, I go back to my room and pull on jeans and a sweatshirt. My body shakes more.

  My body must be ahead of my mind, because I don’t know why I’m shaking. Then the thought crystallizes. Why would the police be here at this hour?

  They found her. They found Chloe.

  It can’t be good news. If it was good news, the phone would be ringing. A million texts and calls. A celebration.

  At least ten times a day, I’ve thought about what I’ll do when I see Chloe again. Would just hugging her and kissing her be enough? Would I ever let her out of my sight? Would we be able to talk about everything she’d been through?

  But it’s the cops who are here. Early. Earlier than most people are awake. My body slumps onto the bed, letting the mattress take my weight.

  I struggle to put on my shoes and socks. So I just sit here, barefoot, shivering and getting colder. Is this how things end? On a random cold morning?

  Mom died in the afternoon. But we knew she was going to die. For weeks, we’d been prepared as much as we could be. Still the moment seemed so random. We were in the hospital, and I looked out the window. A school bus went by. Kids were on their way home. To their families. Screaming and laughing. Happy.

  Then my mother took her last breath. After it was over, Grandpa Phil, Mom’s dad, said something about how he had a craving for steak and insisted we all go to a chain restaurant where we watched him put away a giant ribeye. Odd. Random. The weird shit we remember. Is that what I’ll remember about Chloe—that the day they came to tell me she was dead, I had to pee? And then shook so much I couldn’t put on my socks?

  Someone knocks on the bedroom door. Loud. Like thunder.

  That’s the way Olivia knocks, like a drill instructor waking fresh recruits.

  She comes in. She isn’t dressed, and her hair looks like something out of a Tim Burton movie. Dark and wild and tangled.

  She sits next to me on the bed. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m scared,” I say. “If I go down there, I’m going to find out something. And it might all be over.”

  She rubs my back. “I’ll come down with you.”

  “It’s okay. Dad told you to get ready. I’m okay.”

  My hands still shake, but I force myself to put on my shoes and socks. When I’m finished, I stand up and take a deep breath.

  Livvy stands, too.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’m ready to go down.”

  “If you need me, just call me and I’ll come down.”

  “I know you have my back,” I say. “Thanks, brat.”

  She looks genuinely moved. “Aww. You haven’t called me that in years. Hunter, seriously. Call me if you need anything.”

  At the top of the stairs, I hear voices. One is unfamiliar and the other is Dad’s.

  The voices get clearer as I descend. “You’d better believe I’m going to stay right here the whole time you talk to my son,” Dad says. His voice sounds louder and sharper than I’ve heard in a long time. “And if I have to call our lawyer, I’ll do it. In fact, I might just make that call right now.”

  “That’s your right, sir,” the voice says. “Actually, it’s your son’s right.”

  “You haven’t even told me what this is about,” Dad says. “I don’t like this cloak-and-dagger stuff. And at this hour. You’re disturbing my family.”

  The detective I’d talked to a few times last week about Chloe is in the kitchen. Detective Haley. He’s younger than Dad, maybe early thirties, with close-cropped hair. He wears tight shirts that accentuate his thick muscles. In the hospital and even after I came home, he spoke to me in a low-key way about the events of the night of the dance. And about Chloe. He never said he thought I was guilty, but he never gave me any reason to believe he thought I was innocent. I couldn’t tell what he thought of me, and that made me more nervous than anything else.

  I’d watched enough true crime documentaries—the kind Daniel was making—to know that the police are always working some angle, that they have ways to make people trust them in order to get more information.

  I reminded myself of that every time I talked to him.

  But it’s been a few days, and even though everyone else in town seems to think I’m the prime suspect, maybe Haley doesn’t. He seemed to be on to other things, investigating other people. He’d probed every part of my life, so maybe he’s ruled me out. A lot of theories are swirling online, and not all of them involve me. Some say Chloe ran away. Some say she’s the victim of a serial killer. Some say a gang of boys from our school—or maybe from another school—kidnapped her or worse. Some say members of a Satanic cult use the woods where we crashed to sacrifice animals. Maybe, people theorized, they’d started sacrificing humans.

  “Hunter,” Detective Haley says, “why don’t we take a seat and talk?” He reaches for a chair at the kitchen table. He’s wearing a tan suit and a white shirt with no tie. When he moves, I see the black pistol and holster attached to his belt. “I have some questions for you, and your father is welcome to stay.”

  Dad nods his approval, and we all sit down. Dad’s face looks like it’s been chiseled out of granite. He sits with his arms crossed.

  Haley gets out a little notebook and flips it open. He studies what’s inside for a moment as though he’s alone. An obvious stall meant to unnerve us…and it works.

  I’m ready to jump out of my own skin. “What’s going on?” I ask. “Is there news about Chloe? Will you just tell me what happened?”

  Haley looks up from the notebook. He seems to be moving in slow motion.

  I want to pound the table and demand more. But that’s exactly what he wants to do—put me on edge.

  He clears his throat. “Hunter, do you think something happened to Chloe?” he asks. “Do you have something you want to share?”

  “No. I just want to know why you’re here. I’ve told you everything three or four times. Did something else happen?”

  And then Haley does something he’s never done before, not in all the times he and I have talked.

  He starts to read me my rights.

  Twenty-Five

  Dad’s up so fast he knocks over his chair. He waves his arms like an umpire signaling safe.

  “No, no, no, no,” he’s saying. Over and over. No, no, no, no.

  But Haley keeps reading me my rights while my heart races like a runaway boulder. This means there’s been a crime. This means something happened to Chloe, right?

  What Haley said just moments before comes back to me: Do you have something you want to share?

  No, I don’t. I really, truly don’t. But I’d desperately like to know what he knows.

  “I’m ending this now,” Dad says, slamming his hand on the table. “And I’m calling our lawyer.”

  Haley keeps on going like Dad’s not making a racket, like he’s an actor in a play who has to keep saying his lines even if there’s some guy in the front row talking on his cell phone. When Haley finishes reading me my rights, Dad pulls out his phone and scrolls through, looking for the lawyer’s number.

  Haley has turned in his chair and is looking up at Dad. His face is still patient, his skin as smooth as glass. He looks completely untroubled.

  “Mr. Gifford?” he says to Dad. “If you heard the rights I just enumerated to your son, then you know you are allowed to have an attorney. I have no problem with that.”

  “You shouldn’t. I have to protect my son from the police.”

  Haley smiles without much warmth. “I’m a Black man, Mr. Gifford. I understand better than you about sons being protected from the police.”

  Dad doesn’t say anything, but he keeps a watchful eye on us both.

  Haley goes on. “I just want to ask Hunter something. If he answers that one simple question, there may be no need for this conversation to continue.”

  Dad looks like he has the number and is ready to call.

  “What’s the question?” Dad asks, his finger poised above the screen.

  “You’re okay with me asking your son a question?”

  “Ask the question, and I’ll decide.”

  “Dad,” I say.

  They both turn to me.

  “I want to know what the hell’s going on.” I turn to Haley. “Is Chloe okay? Do you know something about where she is? Can’t you just tell me that?”

  One corner of Haley’s mouth twitches a little, almost the start of a smile. But he puts it off, not wanting to reveal too much. He places his hands flat on the table and looks at me, his face smooth as glass again. “Okay, Hunter. Can you tell me where you were last night?”

  Dad says, “He was home. We went to that clown show of a vigil, and then we came home. He was here, in his room doing homework all night.”

  Haley doesn’t even glance at Dad. He keeps his eyes boring in on me. Dad turns from Haley and looks at me, too, because I haven’t spoken. Everything is quiet. The only sound is the water running upstairs where Olivia is taking a shower.

  “No, Dad, that’s not right. Remember? I went to Daniel’s house. He wanted to show me something, and you told me to drive instead of walk.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  But Haley jumps right in. “So you were at Daniel’s house last night? This is Daniel Nevin, right?”

  “Right.”

  “What time were you there?” Haley asks.

  “I don’t know. About nine or so, I guess.”

  “And what time did you leave?” he asks.

  “Around ten.”

  “And what happened while you were at his house?” Haley asks.

  Why is Haley asking me about Daniel? Doesn’t he want to talk about Chloe? Isn’t that why he’s here?

  Is there some weird connection between Daniel and Chloe?

  But how could there be? Did they know each other outside of talking in trig?

  “He showed me something, a stupid movie he’s working on. And then I left.”

  “You just left?” Haley asks. “Just said goodbye and left?”

  “Hold on a second—” Dad says.

  I cut him off. “We had a fight.”

  “A fight? With fists?”

  “No, an argument,” I say. “About his movie. He’s making a movie about Chloe. It made me look guilty, so we argued about it. And then I left.”

  “You didn’t like that the movie made you look guilty?” Haley asks.

  “No, of course not. Would you like to be under a cloud of suspicion?”

  “I know the feeling,” Haley says. “When I drive into certain neighborhoods in Bentley.”

  “Hunter,” Dad says with an edge in his voice, “stop talking.”

  “And you got mad at Daniel because of that?” Haley asks.

  “Yes.”

  “You hit him?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Hunter,” Dad says, his voice louder. He’s moving toward me, his hand out. “Stop. Talking.”

  “Why?” I ask. “Why can’t I defend myself?”

  “Were you defending yourself with Daniel?” Haley asks. “Did he try to hit you and you hit him back?”

  “I didn’t—”

  He’s not asking about Chloe. He’s asking about Daniel. He’s asking if I hit him. “Why are you asking me about Daniel?”

  Haley’s eyes narrow. He watches me like a cat. Then he seems to decide something. He looks at Dad and then back at me. “Daniel Nevin was murdered last night.”

  Twenty-Six

  My eyes zoom in on the wood grain of the table. It’s way more detailed than I had ever realized, even though I’ve been sitting at this table several times a day my entire life. There’s even a knot that’s shaped like Kentucky. How have I never noticed that before?

  All of a sudden, there’s a rushing sound in my ears like a train going through my head.

  The table is covered with spots. And I blink over and over trying to clear them away.

  It’s the concussion again. Pounding. Taking over my brain…