“James?” I asked as I walked around the back to the passenger side. I hadn’t noticed a name tag, but maybe Frank had, or maybe they’d just bonded while doing the word search.

“Yeah,” Frank said, nodding toward the guy inside the store, who waved at us. “Nice guy. I think he’s going to give Sudoku a try.”

We got into the truck, and Frank started the engine and dropped a piece of paper into the cupholder with the origami frog—which was when I noticed that what had been my receipt was now folded into a crane. I wanted to ask him about it, but instead, I just put on my seat belt and looked out the window. If Sloane had been there, sitting next to me, I could have gotten her to ask with one look. She would have done it, too. She had never, in the two years I’d known her, backed down from any kind of challenge.

We were halfway back to the Orchard before I broke the silence and spoke up. Our interaction was coming to an end; I could almost see it shimmering in the distance like the finish line at the end of one of my long cross-country races. “Thank you again,” I finally said after silently trying out a few different versions of this. “I really appreciate it. I swear, I’ve never run out of gas before.”

“And I bet you won’t again,” Frank said. He nodded toward his dashboard, which was lit up like a spaceship, bathing his whole side of the car in a cool blue light. “Mine starts flashing and beeping at me if I get below a quarter of a tank, so I’ll usually fill up immediately just to get it to stop.”

“The gauge on my car is broken,” I explained. Normally I wouldn’t have shared this, but I didn’t want Frank Porter to think I was some kind of airhead, in addition to being the sister of a preadolescent adrenaline junkie. “So I just try and be aware of how much I’ve driven.”

Frank glanced over at me, eyebrows raised. “I’m surprised you haven’t run out before now.”

“No, I’m usually really careful,” I said. “But this week . . .” My voice trailed off when I realized I wasn’t about to tell Frank these kinds of details about my life: Sloane vanishing, me driving all over town looking for her, the list. “It’s just been a little crazy,” I finally supplied.

He nodded as he made the turn back into the Orchard. It looked like, while we’d been gone, the evening had started to wind down—there were only a handful of cars still parked there. Frank pulled up next to my car, and even though I’d just been expecting he would drop me off, he helped me lift the container down and then held it steady while I filled up. I dropped the empty container off in the trunk, and when I walked back to the driver’s side, I saw that Frank was reading the bumper stickers that covered the left side. He looked at me, and I could see the question in his eyes, but I looked away as I got behind the wheel and crossed my fingers. I turned the key, and after a moment of sputtering, the car came to life again.

“Working?” Frank asked, leaning in my window a little.

“Working,” I said. I tapped on the gauge. “But don’t look at this. It’s always stuck on half empty.”

Frank leaned closer, contemplating it. “I would say it’s half full.” He smiled at me, and a moment later, I got the joke. But rather than laughing, or saying something in return, I just gave him a tight smile and stared ahead at the steering wheel. Frank turned to head back to his truck, and I suddenly wondered if this had been incredibly rude.

“But seriously,” I said, leaning out the window a little, “thank you. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to pay you back.”

He nodded and held up a hand in a wave as he turned his truck around to leave. But then he stopped and leaned across his truck to look down at me. “Actually,” he said through the open window. “There is something. Can you teach me to run?”

This was so not even close to anything I’d expected him to say that I wasn’t sure how to react at first. This might have been apparent in my expression, because Frank went on quickly. “I mean, I know how to run. I just want to get better at it, maybe train for a 10K or something. You’re on the cross-country team, right?”

I nodded at that, trying to disguise my shock that Frank had any idea what I’d been involved in at school—or, honestly, that he knew anything about me at all. And after I’d started missing practices and meets regularly this past spring, I wasn’t sure that I would still be on the team come fall. But I didn’t think that he needed to know any of that. “Sure,” I said, easily. I was pretty certain that this wouldn’t come to anything, that he would forget he’d asked me, and the next time I saw Frank Porter, it would be at the first day of school in September, when he would be welcoming us all as the senior class president. He had probably only asked so that I wouldn’t feel like I owed him anything. “Anytime.”

“Great,” Frank said. He gave me a smile, then pulled forward, signaling as he turned to leave, even though there was no reason for it. I watched his brake lights until they faded from view, then I turned on my iPod, connected to the ancient stereo via a line in, put my car in gear, and headed for home, ready to put this entire night behind me.

I opened the door slowly, so the hinges wouldn’t squeak, and stepped over the threshold. It was almost one thirty, and I held my breath as I waited for lights to turn on and my parents to thunder down the stairs, furious and demanding explanations. But there was only silence, punctuated by the loud ticking of the grandfather clock that had been in the house when we moved in and had proven too heavy to lift. I let out a breath just as I felt something brush against my legs.

I froze. Heart hammering, I looked down and saw that it was only the cat. “Move,” I whispered to him as he sat down on the threshold and started washing his paws, like he didn’t know that he was sitting right in the path of the door. We’d been in Stanwich a year before he showed up, mewling at our door one night. I was thrilled to be finally getting a pet, which had never been possible before. But even though we put a collar on him and filled his food and water dishes, it quickly became clear that he was not going to be a typical housecat. He came and went as he pleased, mostly living outside in the garage, only spending large amounts of time in the house once it got cold out. But just when you had given up on him ever turning up again, there he would be in the kitchen in the morning, waiting impatiently by his dish, like he’d never been gone. My dad had named him Godot, and over the years, we’d all gotten used to his I’ll be there if I feel like it presence.