SEVEN

MONDAY MORNING, I drove Mom to school because her car was in the shop. I could feel the burning in my middle finger from the hand sanitizer I’d applied just before leaving, and so I was pressing the Band-Aid into my middle finger, simultaneously worsening and relieving the pain. I hadn’t texted Davis over the weekend. I kept thinking about it, but the night at Applebee’s passed, and then I’d started to feel nervous about it, like maybe it had been too long, and Daisy wasn’t around to bully me into it because she was working all weekend.

Mom must’ve noticed the Band-Aid pressing, because she said, “You have an appointment with Dr. Singh tomorrow, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“What are your thoughts on the med situation?”

“It’s okay, I guess,” which wasn’t quite the whole truth. For one thing, I wasn’t convinced the circular white pill was doing anything when I did take it, and for another, I was not taking it quite as often as I was technically supposed to. Partly, I kept forgetting, but also there was something else I couldn’t quite identify, some way-down fear that taking a pill to become myself was wrong.

“You there?” Mom asked.

“Yeah,” I said. Enough of me—but only just enough—was still located inside Harold to hear her voice, to follow the well-worn path to school.

“Just be honest with Dr. Singh, okay? There’s no need to suffer.” Which I’d argue is just a fundamental misunderstanding of the human predicament, but okay.

—

I parked in the student parking lot, parted ways with Mom, and then lined up to walk through the metal detectors. Once declared weapon-free, I joined the flow of bodies filling the hallways like blood cells in a vein.

I made it to my locker a few minutes early and took a second to look up the reporter Daisy had phished, Adam Bitterley. He’d shared a link that morning to a new story he’d written about a school board voting to ban some book, so I guessed he hadn’t been fired. Daisy was right—nothing happened.

I was about to head toward class when Mychal jogged up to my locker and pulled me over to a bench. “How’s it going, Aza?”

“Good,” I said. I was thinking about how part of your self can be in a place while at the same time the most important parts are in a different place, a place that can’t be accessed via your senses. Like, how I’d driven all the way to school without really being inside the car. I was trying to look at Mychal, trying to hear the clamor of the hallway, but I wasn’t there, not really, not deep down.

“Um,” he said. “So, listen, I don’t want to mess up our friend group, because it’s really great, but, this is awkward, but do you think, and seriously you can say no . . .” He trailed off, but I could see where he was going.

“I don’t really think I can date anyone right now,” I said. “I’m, like—”

He cut in. “Well, now it’s super awkward. I was gonna ask if you think Daisy would go out with me, or if that’s crazy. I mean, you’re great, Aza . . .”

I knew Mychal well enough not to actually die of mortification, but only just. “Yes,” I said. “Yes. That is a great idea. But you should just talk to her about it, not me. But yes. By all means, ask her out. I am embarrassed. This has been an embarrassment. You should ask out Daisy. I am going to stand up and exit the conversation now with whatever self-respect I still have.”

“I’m really sorry,” he said as I stood up and backed away. “I mean, you’re beautiful, Aza. It’s not that.”

“No,” I said. “No. Say nothing more. It’s definitely my bad. I’m just . . . I’m gonna go now. Do ask out Daisy.” Mercifully, a beep rang out from above, allowing me to scamper off to biology class. Our teacher was late, so everyone was talking. I hunched down in my seat and immediately texted Daisy.

Me: I thought Mychal was asking me out so I tried to let him down easy but he was not asking me out. He was asking me if I would ask you out FOR HIM. Humiliation level—all-time high. But you should say yes. He’s cute.

Her: Oh God. Panic. He looks like a giant baby.

Me: What?

Her: He looks like a giant baby. Molly Krauss said that once and I’ve never been able to unsee it. I can’t hook up with a giant baby.

Me: Because of the shaved head?

Her: Because of the everything Holmesy. Because he looks exactly like a giant baby.

Me: He really doesn’t.

Her: Next time you see him look at him and tell me he does not look like a giant baby. He looks exactly like if Drake and Beyoncé had a giant baby.

Me: That would be a hot giant baby.

Her: I’m saving that text in case I ever need to blackmail you. btw HAVE YOU LOOKED AT THE POLICE REPORT?

Me: Not really, have you?

Her: Yes, even though I had to close yesterday AND Saturday AND I had this calc stuff that is like reading Sanskrit AND I had to wear the Chuckie costume like twelve separate times. I didn’t find any clues, but I did read the whole thing. Even though it’s super boring. I really am the unsung hero of this investigation.

Me: I think you are fairly sung. I’ll read it today I gotta go Ms. Park is looking at me weird.

—

Throughout bio, each time Ms. Park turned to the blackboard, I read the missing persons report from my phone.

The report went on only for a few pages, and over the course of the school day, I was able to read all of it. The mp (missing person) was fifty-three, male, gray haired, blue eyed, with a tattoo reading Nolite te bastardes carborundorum (“Don’t let the bastards get you down,” apparently) on his left shoulder blade, three small surgical scars in his abdomen from a gallbladder removal, six feet in height, approximately 220 pounds, last seen wearing his standard sleeping attire: a horizontally striped navy-and-white nightshirt and light-blue boxer shorts. He was discovered missing at 5:35 A.M. when the police raided his house in connection with a corruption investigation.

The report was mostly “witness statements” from witnesses who had not witnessed anything. Nobody was there that night except Noah and Davis. The camera at the front entrance had captured two groundskeepers driving away at 5:40 P.M. Malik the Zoologist left that day at 5:52. Lyle left at 6:02, and Rosa at 6:04. So what Lyle told us about Pickett not having nighttime staff seemed true.

One page was devoted to Davis’s witness summary:

Rosa left pizza for us. Noah and I ate while playing a video game together. Dad came down for a few minutes and sat with us while he ate pizza, and then went back upstairs. There was nothing unusual. Most nights I only see Dad for a few minutes, or not at all. He didn’t seem anxious. It was just a regular day. After Noah and I finished dinner, we put our dishes in the sink. I helped him with some homework and then read on the couch for school while he played a video game. I went upstairs around 10, did some homework in my room, and looked at a couple stars with my telescope—Vega and Epsilon Lyrae. I went to bed around 11:00 P.M. Even looking back, there was nothing weird about that day.

[Witness also stated that he did not observe anything unusual via the telescope, adding, “My kind of telescope isn’t for looking at the ground. You’d be seeing everything upside down and backward.”]

Noah’s statement came next:

I played Battlefront for a while with Davis. We had pizza for dinner. Dad was with us for a bit, talked about how the Cubs are doing. He told Davis he needed to do a better job of watching out for me, and then Davis was, like, I’m not his father. He and Dad were always sniping like that, though. Dad put a hand on my shoulder when he got up to leave, which felt a little weird. I could really feel him holding on to my shoulder. It almost hurt. Then he let go and headed upstairs. Davis helped me with my algebra homework and then I played Battlefront for another couple hours. I went upstairs around midnight and fell asleep. I didn’t see Dad after he said good night.

There were also pictures—almost a hundred of them—of every room in the house.

Nothing appeared disrupted. In Pickett’s office, I saw stacks of papers that seemed to have been left for an evening, not for a lifetime. A cell phone could be seen on his bedside table. The carpets were so clean I could see a single set of footprints leading to Pickett’s desk, and a single set leading away from them. The closets were full of suits, dozens of them perfectly aligned from lightest gray to darkest black. A photograph of the kitchen sink showed three dirty dishes, each with little smudges of pizza grease and tomato sauce. To judge from the pictures, Pickett didn’t seem to be missing so much as he seemed to have been raptured.

The report did not, however, contain any mention of the night-vision photograph, meaning we had something the cops didn’t: a timeline.

—

After school, I got into Harold and screamed when Daisy suddenly appeared in the backseat. “Shit, you scared me.”

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve been hiding, because Mychal and I are in the same history class, and I don’t want to deal with it yet, and also I’ve got a bunch of comments to reply to. It’s a hard life for a minor fan-fiction author. Did you notice anything in the police report?”

I was still catching my breath, but eventually said, “They seem to know slightly less than we do.”

“Yeah,” Daisy said. “Wait. Holmesy, that’s it. That’s it! They know slightly less than we do!”

“Um, so?”

“The reward is for ‘information leading to the whereabouts of Russell Davis Pickett.’ We may not know where he is, but we have information they don’t that will help them find his whereabouts.”

“Or not,” I said.

“We should call. We should call and be, like, hypothetically, if we knew where Pickett was the night he disappeared, how much would that be worth? Maybe not the full hundred thousand, but something.”

“Let me talk to Davis about it,” I said. I worried about betraying him, even though I barely knew him.

“Break hearts, not promises, Holmesy.”

“Just . . . I mean, who knows if they’d even give us money for that, you know? It’s just a picture. You need a ride to work?”

“As it happens, I do.”

—

While eating dinner with Mom in front of the TV that night, I kept thinking about the case. What if they did give us a reward? It was valuable information the police didn’t have. Maybe Davis would hate me, if he ever found out, but why should I care what some kid from Sad Camp thought of me?

After a while, I begged homework and escaped to my room. I thought maybe I’d missed something from the police report, so I went through it again and was still reading when Daisy called me. She started talking before I’d finished saying “Hi.”

“I had a highly hypothetical conversation with the tip line, and they said that the reward is coming from the company, not the police, so it’s up to the company to decide what is relevant, and that the reward would only be given out after they found Pickett. Our info is definitely relevant, but it’s not like they’ll find Pickett just with the night-vision picture, so we might have to split the reward with other people. Or if they never find him, we might not get it. Still, better than nothing.”

“Or exactly equal to nothing, if they don’t find him.”

“Yeah, but it’s evidence. We should at least get part of the reward.”

“If they find him.”

“Crook gets caught. We get paid. I don’t see why you’re waffling here, Holmesy.”

Just then, my phone buzzed. “I have to go,” I said, and hung up.

I’d gotten a text from Davis: I used to think you should never be friends with anyone who just wants to be near your money or your access or whatever.

I started typing a response, but then another text came in. Like, never make a friend who doesn’t like YOU.

I started to type again, but saw the . . . that meant he was still typing, so I stopped and waited. But maybe the money is just part of me. Maybe that’s who I am.

A moment later, he added: What’s the difference between who you are and what you have? Maybe nothing.

At this point I don’t care why someone likes me. I’m just so goddamned lonely. I know that’s pathetic. But yeah.

I’m lying in a sand trap of my dad’s golf course looking at the sky. I had kind of a shitty day. Sorry for all these texts.

I got under the covers and wrote him back. Hi.

Him: I told you I was bad at chitchat. Right. That’s how you start a conversation. Hi.

Me: You’re not your money.

Him: Then what am I? What is anyone?

Me: I is the hardest word to define.

Him: Maybe you are what you can’t not be.

Me: Maybe. How’s the sky?

Him: Great. Huge. Amazing.

Me: I like being outside at night. It gives me this weird feeling, like I’m homesick but not for home. It’s kind of a good feeling, though.

Him: I am drenched in that feeling at the moment. Are you outside?

Me: I’m in bed.

Him: Light pollution makes naked eye stargazing suck here, but I can see all eight stars in the Big Dipper right now, if you include Alcor.

Me: What was shitty about your day?

I watched the . . . and waited. He wrote for a long time, and I imagined him typing and deleting, typing and deleting.

Him: I’m all alone out here, I guess.

Me: What about Noah?

Him: He’s all alone, too. That’s the worst part. I don’t know how to talk to him. I don’t know how to make it stop hurting. He’s not doing any homework. I can’t even get him to take a shower regularly. Like, he’s not a little kid. I can’t MAKE him do stuff.

Me: If I knew something...like, something about your dad? And I told, would that make it better or worse?

He was typing for a long time. Much worse, came the reply at last.

Me: Why?

Him: Two reasons: If Noah can be eighteen or sixteen or even fourteen when he has to watch his father go to jail, that will be better than it happening when he’s thirteen. Also, if Dad gets caught because he tries to contact us, that will be okay. But if he gets caught despite NOT reaching out to us, Noah will be completely crushed. He still thinks our dad loves us and all that.

For a moment, and only for a moment, I entertained the notion that Davis might’ve helped his father disappear. But I couldn’t see Davis as his father’s accomplice.

Me: I’m sorry. I won’t say anything. Don’t worry.

Him: Today is our mom’s birthday, but Noah barely knew her. It’s all just so different for him.

Me: Sorry.

Him: And the thing is, when you lose someone, you realize you’ll eventually lose everyone.

Me: True. And once you know that, you can never forget it.

Him: Clouds are blowing in. I should go to bed. Good night, Aza.

Me: Good night.

I put the phone on my bedside table and pulled my blanket up over me, thinking about the big sky over Davis and the weight of the covers on me, thinking about his father and mine. Davis was right: Everybody disappears eventually.