“Ok,” Shaw said slowly, his eyes rising to North’s. “How about outside? Grab a breath of fresh air.”

  Abigail gave a jerky nod and began shoving her belongings in her backpack. When she was ready, she rose, and they walked through the gates and toward the doors.

  “Have a nice—” the librarian began. When she saw North, though, she said, “Who are you? How did you—”

  “My consultant,” Shaw said without slowing. “He’s a crucial research component for my book I’m writing.”

  “You really can’t—”

  But apparently they could, because they had, and a moment later, the spring air met North, with a hint of chill and the dew that would settle overnight. North’s next breath brought the perfume from a line of black cherries planted on the verge; in the thickening darkness, their white blossoms were luminescent. Like bone, North thought, and he didn’t know where the thought had come from, and he didn’t like it.

  “I’m not eighteen,” Abigail said, arms wrapped around herself as she stared at the ground. “You can’t talk to me without—”

  “The police can’t talk to you without an adult,” North said. “We’re not police, and we’re not trying to cause you any trouble. Flip’s parents hired us to find him. We’ve just got a few questions.”

  Abigail shook her head. “Maybe I shouldn’t—”

  “The only reason you wouldn’t want to talk to us is if you didn’t want to help Flip. Is that what’s going on?”

  “What? No, but—”

  “No? Because you broke up with him, right? Why would you still care what happened to him?”

  Head coming up, Abigail shot each of them a look of compressed teenage disgust. “I didn’t break up with him. It was mutual. We weren’t working out. Nothing was working out. I love Flip; I don’t want anything bad to happen to him.”

  North waited; in the distance, at the edge of hearing, boys were screaming with excitement. Something about a frisbee.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, “did something bad happen to him?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Shaw said. “That’s why we need your help. Do you have any idea what might have happened?”

  Abigail shook her head.

  “Flip never talked about running away?”

  She shook her head again, but this time, with a slight hesitation.

  “What does that mean?” North said.

  “He never talked about running away.”

  “But?” Shaw prompted.

  “He…he wanted to be away from here. He talked about it a lot. Graduating. In the fall, he talked about graduating early, but his parents told him absolutely not.”

  “He didn’t like it here?”

  “No, that wasn’t it. I think he was happy. As happy as Flip ever is, I mean.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. He’s just—he’s got a lot going on. I guess we all do. He’s sweet, and he’s funny, and he’s kind.”

  Shaw’s question came out of nowhere, but North understood it at once, and he kicked himself for not thinking of it when the topic of running away first came up: “What was Flip’s home life like?”

  “Have you met his parents?”

  Both men nodded.

  “They’re nice to me. I went out there a few times for dinner. They were all right.”

  “How did they treat Flip?”

  “Fine, I guess.”

  “He’s asking you,” North said, “if you think Flip was being abused?”

  “What? Oh my God. No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely. I mean, they were fine. And Flip never said anything like that.”

  “Sometimes kids hide things like that,” North said, “but the signs are there. There are behaviors, avoidance mechanisms, things they can’t explain—”

  “I’m telling you no. They’re fine. He just wanted to be done with school and start his own life. I mean, I know something bad happened with his sister, but he wouldn’t ever talk about it.”

  “You don’t have any idea what happened to her?”

  Abigail shook her head.

  North shared a frustrated look with Shaw, and Shaw asked, “Do you think he ran away?”

  Another hesitation, longer this time, and then Abigail shook her head again.

  “What do you think happened?” North asked.

  “I don’t know!” The outburst was half despair, half protest.

  “But you’ve got an idea,” Shaw said. He was watching her closely, hazel eyes intense.

  “I think—” Abigail drew a deep breath. “Headers, I mean, Dr. Latese, she told us in assembly a couple of weeks ago that those guys weren’t going to come around anymore, and we weren’t supposed to worry. But they did come around. And we all saw them. And I think maybe they had something to do with Flip.” She started to cry, turning her face away, her thin shoulders shaking.

  “What guys?” North said. “Tell us about these guys.”

  “They were just here. A first-year saw them, and nobody believed her, and then Liam, he’s a third-year, he saw them with Katie and Pranav, and then Dr. Latese made that announcement, and then Ward and Rich saw them the next weekend.”

  “What did they look like?”

  Another dose of withering teen contempt as she dashed tears away. “I don’t know.”

  “Somebody had to say something.”

  “They just said they were sketch. Shady. Katie said they were gangsters, but she loves to exaggerate.”

  “Except now you think she might have been right,” Shaw said. “You think they had something to do with Flip.”

  Again that hesitation, the wall between the pack loyalty of adolescents and the foreign tribe of adults. “Flip used. Sometimes.”

  “He got arrested for possession,” North said, “but his mother swears it wasn’t his.”

  Abigail snorted, the sound surprisingly mature. “It wasn’t just weed, and it wasn’t just that time. He really liked to party. And when the police came and talked to me the first time, I didn’t put it together, but then I thought about all the times Flip didn’t have money, and how that never stopped him from partying, and I wondered if maybe he owed them money, you know?”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “No. He might come back, right? He might just be getting away for a few days. I don’t want him to get in trouble.”

  “You need to call the police and tell them,” Shaw said. “If you’re right, the worst that will happen is that he gets in trouble. If you’re wrong, though, the police need to follow up on that information as soon as possible.”

  Abigail was crying again, silently now, wiping under her eyes in quick, repetitive movements.

  “Who did he party with?” North said. “Where did he get the drugs?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Abigail.”

  “I don’t! I mean, Hiwet is…she’s like this international party girl. She’s been to all these different schools and keeps getting kicked out. And Flip liked to hang out with her. So maybe Hiwet.”

  “Last name?”

  “Zerai.”

  “And where is she?”

  “She’s in Ross—no, wait, let me check.” Abigail pulled out a phone in a furry pink case and tapped the screen. “Hiwet’s always posting on Instagram.” Turning her phone to display it, she added, “See?”

  The photograph was of the sunset over what looked like tennis courts. The caption was just a series of hashtags about teenagers and photography. The timestamp said it had been posted four minutes ago.

  “Where are the tennis courts?”

  “The jungle.”

  “The phys-ed buildings,” Shaw clarified.

  “Call the police,” North told Abigail. Then he nodded to Shaw, and they set off across campus.

  Chapter 13

  ONCE, WHEN NORTH had been eighteen, he had watched the sunset from scaffolding on the job site. Shaw liked to tease him about having worked construction; that was fine. But it had been part of North’s life once, and he remembered that evening in particular, the darkness of Illinois, the purple bleeding across the river. He had learned in school that purple was the color of kings, and he had empty air beneath his legs and the wind in his hair and the whole world had belonged to him. So he could understand why a girl named Hiwet had chosen this spot to watch the sun go down.

  They found her on a swell of ground that overlooked the tennis courts. Darkness was rolling in. The evening air carried a hint of fresh mulch. Below them, lights were popping on, illuminating the blue-and-white acrylic of the courts and outlining a steel-and-glass monstrosity of a building. The words ABELMAN HEALTH CENTER glinted on the windows.

  She was thin, almost to the point of malnutrition. Sticks-and-bones arms and legs. A neck that barely looked capable of holding up her head. A heart-shaped face; she had dark brown skin, and it looked flawless. Her hair hung in tight, oiled coils. She was not alone. The boy next to her was on the verge of manhood, his body filling out, the rangy leanness of adolescence almost gone. His blond hair was shaggy, and his eyes were hard. Neither had noticed North and Shaw yet.

  “Hiwet?” North said.

  The girl turned her head. Her hand went instinctively to a backpack, but she didn’t run. Not yet.

  “Who are you?” the boy demanded.

  “Who are you?” North asked back.

  “Let’s go,” the boy said in a low voice.

  Hiwet was still watching them.

  “My name’s Shaw, and this is North. We’re private investigators.” Shaw smiled and tilted his head toward her bag; a can of tennis balls was stowed in the mesh pouch designed to carry a water bottle. “Do you play?”

  “No,” Hiwet said, her voice musical and with a faux-English accent that reeked of boarding schools. “What are you wearing?”

  North blinked. Sometimes he got so used to it. Today, Shaw’s ensemble consisted of a raglan tee, one sleeve pink, the other sleeve camo; skinny jeans cuffed to mid-calf; and a pair of silver chukkas—sockless, of course.

  “Do you like it?” Shaw said, plucking at the pink sleeve. “I had to make it myself because I saw it in a trance and then I couldn’t find it online anywhere, not even Amazon.”

  “Oh no,” Hiwet said.

  The boy flashed a mocking smile.

  “I know. So then I had to buy a sewing machine, only North wouldn’t let me—”

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t let you. I said you didn’t have space for an industrial sewing machine and it seemed like a lot of money to make one shirt you’d seen in a fug of weed.”

  “—so instead, I asked Pari’s mom to help me, her name’s Bud, well, that’s probably not really her name, but that’s what she goes by, and Pari is our secretary, only sometimes she wants us to call her an administrative assistant, but then she brought in a coffee mug one time that said ‘world’s best secretary’ on it and she screamed for forty-five minutes because she said we should have bought it for her ourselves and she always has to buy herself things and then she threw it in the fireplace to break it—on purpose—”

  “She didn’t,” Hiwet said.

  “She did! And I said if you’re going to act like a spoiled child, you ought to be treated like a spoiled child, and she said—wait, what was I telling you?”

  “The clothes,” North muttered.

  “Oh, right. And the jeans I got at the Gap, only North calls it Lady Gap—”

  “Because you were shopping in the women’s section.”

  “—and I had to spray-paint the chukkas myself because, um, weed vision. I mean trance.”

  “Oh my God,” Hiwet breathed, a nasty little giggle lurking in her eyes. The boy next to her was smirking. “It’s so cute.” She dragged out the word so.

  “Thank you.”

  “Very homo-forward,” the boy said.

  “Oh, that’s an interesting term. I’ve never heard it before.”

  “He’s making fun of you,” North said.

  “I don’t think so. I am a homo, and forward is always good, so homo-forward sounds really good. Oh, except forward isn’t always good, like that one time you tried to joyride in one of those motorized shopping carts but you got stuck in that tampon display and I told you to back up but you just kept going forward and you got buried in tampons and all those tampon ladies had to help you because I was laughing so hard.”

  “There’s no such thing as a tampon lady,” North snapped. “They were just ladies who were shopping there. And you told me the wrong way to back up and—” He forced himself to take a breath and looked at the boy. “Name.”

  “Who the fuck are you two?” the boy asked.

  “They’re ancient is what they are,” Hiwet said.

  “I’m the club tennis pro,” Shaw said.

  “I’m a caddy,” North said.

  “Oh, like on Caddyshack.”

  “They don’t know Caddyshack.”

  “Or on Happy Gilmore.”

  “They don’t know Happy Gilmore.”

  Shaw directed a worried look at the teenagers. “Really? Because they’re great movies, and they’re at a very good school, so I’m sure their education is comprehensive.”

  “What the fuck are you two talking about?” the boy asked, rising. “Who the fuck are you, and what do you want?”

  “Happy Gilmore is a movie about why it’s ok to abuse the elderly—”

  “We told you our names,” North said. “And we told you we’re private investigators. We’re looking into what happened to Flip, and we want to talk to Hiwet.”

  “No. Go away.”

  “Kid, either shut up or get your ass lost.”

  “You going to make me? A couple of fags like you?”

  “Oh,” Shaw said, “you really shouldn’t use that word.”

  “You going to—”

  “Ugh, Jos, cut it out.” Hiwet stood; barefoot, she was as tall as the boy she had called Jos, and he wasn’t much shorter than North. “Why do you want to talk to me?”

  “Someone said you like to party. Someone said Flip liked to party with you.”

  She shrugged one birdlike shoulder.

  “Is that true?” Shaw asked.

  “Americans are so uptight. I miss Amsterdam.”

  “Is that where you’re from?”

  Jos laughed. It was a mean sound.

  Shaking her head, Hiwet said, “Eritrea. But I’ve lived all over.”

  “Because you get kicked out of school for drugs?” North asked.

  “Sometimes. For lots of reasons. My parents are overprotective.” She frowned. “Who told you those things about me?”

  “You still haven’t answered his question,” North said. “Is that true about Flip and the partying?”

  “It doesn’t matter if you tell me. I’ll find out eventually; I find out everything. All these little secrets. This one makes herself throw up in the toilet after lunch. This one’s parents have lost all their money. This one had to pay someone else to take the SAT for them. This one likes to suck cock.” The crudeness of the words sounded even worse coming from that smooth, innocent face, delivered in that faux-English accent.

  “I haven’t spent a lot of time at this place yet,” North said, “but I’m a pretty fast learner. I had to be, because my parents didn’t have shit when I was growing up, so I had to be smart, and I had to work hard. And do you know what I’ve figured out about this place?”

  Jos rolled his eyes. Hiwet’s smirk was almost invisible, just a slash to her mouth.

  “Half the problems in this place would go away if somebody would just beat your asses with a belt once in a while.”

  Color flooding his face, Jos took a step forward before Hiwet caught his arm.

  “Does Flip go to your parties?”

  “Everyone comes to my parties,” Hiwet said. “Everyone I invite, that is.”

  “Does he do drugs?”

  Hiwet shrugged. “He likes cocaine. It is very expensive. He was angry when his parents took away his allowance.”

  North looked at Jos. For some reason, the boy seemed to take it as a challenge, and he tried to step forward again. When Hiwet held him back, he sneered and said, “I saw him do a rail off a girl’s ass. That’s Flip: the golden boy snorting coke off some dumb gutter bitch’s ass.”

  “So Flip isn’t the golden boy? Because we’ve heard from a couple people that he’s pretty much perfect.”

  Jos’s scowl was starting to look like a permanent fixture, but it was Hiwet who answered. “Nobody’s perfect. Flip is close. He works hard in school. He’s friendly. He’s good at soccer. He treats Abigail right. So he likes to come to my parties and let loose. Is that bad? Is he a bad person, when the rest of the time he tries so hard to be good?”

  When North glanced at Jos, the boy looked away and mumbled, “He’s all right.”

  “Do you think Flip might have gotten in over his head?” Shaw asked. “We heard about men on campus, and we thought maybe—”

  Hiwet’s laugh was bright and sudden and genuinely amused. “No, that’s not—that has nothing to do with Flip.”

  “Really? How do you know that?”

  Hiwet’s smile just got bigger.

  “Why were they here?”

  “That’s not your secret.”

  “Whose secret is it?”

  Still smiling, lips sealed, she shook her head.

  “Do you have any idea where Flip might be?”

  Jos shook his head first. Hiwet hesitated and then signaled no as well.

  “Did he talk about running away?”

  “Jesus, this is so stupid,” Jos said.

  “No,” Hiwet said. “He wanted to graduate, but he didn’t want to run away.”

  “Do you think someone took him?”

  Jos nodded. Hiwet shook her head.

  “Why do you say yes?” Shaw asked.

  “The door. I saw the door; somebody kicked it in.” He set his jaw, his expression challenging. “I live in Washington too. When the police left, I went up and looked at his room. I didn’t touch anything.”

  “Why do you say no?” North asked.