I let myself in, careful not to make too much noise in case my parents were working. But when I passed the dining room, it was only my dad sitting at the table. His laptop was open, but he was leaning back in his ergonomic wheelie chair, reading a thick book, highlighting occasionally, so focused on his task, I was pretty sure he didn’t even sense me in the doorway.

I found my mom in the kitchen, washing off a peach. She turned when she heard me, giving me a tired smile, and I had the feeling they’d been working all morning. “Hey, Em,” she said. She looked down at the shirts under my arm. “Did you go shopping?”

“I got a job,” I said, shaking out one of the shirts and holding it up so she could see it. “Paradise Ice Cream.”

“Oh,” my mother said, raising her eyebrows. “Well, that’s . . . good. And I’m sure it’ll be nice and cool in there, right?” Without waiting for a response, she went on. “Did you eat?” She looked around, then held out the fruit in her hand to me. “Peach?”

“No, thanks,” I said, crossing to the fridge, grabbing a bottle of water from the door and taking a long drink.

“I meant to ask you,” my mother said as she patted her peach dry, “is everything okay with you and Sloane? It feels like we haven’t seen her around in a while.”

“Oh,” I said. I looked down at the scuffed wood of the kitchen floor, debating what to tell her. Only yesterday, I’d wanted nothing more than to tell my parents, to get their help to find her. But that was before the list. And the list made me feel like Sloane had a plan, and me running to my parents for help wasn’t part of it. “She’s out of town for the summer,” I said, looking back at my mom, rationalizing that, technically, this wasn’t even really a lie.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” my mom said, her brow furrowing. My mother felt everything quickly, and deeply, and cried at the drop of a hat. It was the reason none of us ever wanted to sit next to her when we saw sad movies. “That’s going to be hard for you, Em.”

My mother took a bite of her peach, but I could tell that there were more things she was about to ask; I could practically feel them, questions like where and why and for how long, questions I couldn’t begin to answer. So before she could ask, I said quickly, “So Beckett seems pretty excited about this camping trip.” I was almost positive that he was away at day camp, but I looked up to check the doorway, just in case.

“Yeah,” my mother said with a smile. “Your dad, too.” I nodded, figuring that this meant the trip was still on, and I hadn’t done the wrong thing by basically telling my brother as much. “Though I don’t know why,” my mother said as she shook her head, rotating the peach, looking for a perfect bite. “Sleeping outdoors when you’ve got a perfectly good bed has never—”

“Andrea, listen to this,” my dad said, bursting into the kitchen. He was holding a thick book in his hands, and talking fast and excited. “Tesla and Edison were friends when he first came from Paris. Edison called him a genius.”

“Scott,” my mother said. “I was in the middle of talking to Em.” But I could tell that she was only partially in the kitchen with me now. It was like I could practically feel her wanting to get back to the play, and I was pretty sure she’d already forgotten about Beckett and camping.

“It’s really fine,” I said quickly, backing out of the kitchen. “You guys go write.”

My mother bit her lip and looked at me, and I gave her a bright, Everything’s okay here smile and headed upstairs, but not before I heard them start to talk, their voices excited and overlapping, saying words like laboratory and patent and alternating current.

I took the stairs up to my room slowly, feeling the temperature seem to rise with every step. I flopped down on my bed and looked up at the ceiling, where I could still see the tape marks left over from the rotating pantheon of teen heartthrob posters I’d put up during my middle school years. I reached for my phone, which was, of course, free from any texts or missed calls. And even though I knew it would probably just go to her voice mail, I found myself pressing the button to call Sloane. Sure enough, her voice mail recording started, the one I knew by heart. I waited until the beep, then took a breath and started.

“Hey, it’s me. I got the job, the one at Paradise. So thanks for setting that up for us.” I said the word automatically, but a second later, reality hit me like a punch to the gut. There would be no us at Paradise. Just me, working in a T-shirt with a rainbow on it. “I’ll have to tell you what happened. It was really funny, this girl thought I was crazy.” I listened to the silence, the empty space where Sloane’s voice should have been, already laughing, asking me questions, reacting in just the right ways. “Anyway. I’ll talk to you soon.”

I hung up and, after a moment, pushed myself off the bed. I dropped my new T-shirts into my drawer and pulled out Sloane’s list. I didn’t think I was going to be able to get anything else done today—I knew I’d have to do some brainstorming before tackling the others. I carefully crossed off number seven, then returned the list to its envelope and the envelope to the drawer. Then I looked around, at a bit of a loss.

I didn’t want to stay in my room—I actually didn’t think it would be healthy to, if I wanted to avoid heatstroke—but I didn’t want to tiptoe around my parents downstairs. And I didn’t want to go over to campus, or go downtown by myself. I was starting to get a jumpy, claustrophobic feeling. I needed to get out, but I’d technically just come back. And where was I supposed to go? I kicked off my flip-flops and tossed them into my closet, where they landed on my sneakers and gave me my answer.

Without thinking twice, I pulled the sneakers out of the closet, then reached for the drawer that held my workout clothes. I wasn’t sure it was going to make anything better, but it was the only thing I wanted to do at that moment. I was going for a run.

JUNE

Two years earlier

I shook out my arms and tried to pick up my pace, trying to ignore how my breath was coming shallowly. I hadn’t run since school had ended two weeks before, and I was feeling it with every step. I’d made the cross-country team as a freshman, but had lagged behind the rest of the team and wanted to get my times up over the summer so that I would have a chance of making it again in the fall, when I knew the competition would be more intense.