“So I hear,” I say. I’ve been told that most of my life. Liam really was the golden child, both in actions and looks. We were like opposite sides of the same coin: his hair was a dark blond to my fully brown; his eyes blue to my brown; his face perfectly symmetrical, whereas my nose still bent slightly to the left after getting too close to a swing in Little League. I bet I’m as tall as him now, though. The thought hurts my stomach.
She stops moving then, looks up from the work around her. “That wasn’t a slight. I was just picturing someone more like you.” Her eyes flick away and she turns her face to the side, her hair falling over her features so I can’t read her expression.
She goes back to multitasking, or whatever it is she’s doing. She called me, but it’s like she’s expecting me to lead the conversation here. “Uh,” I say, “what are you up to?”
“Well, there’s definitely no signal coming through anymore. So I’m looking through all of Elliot’s things, seeing if I can figure anything out. See where it came from. Trace it back.”
“Any luck?”
“Not really. I wish I could get back there, though. I want to try rebooting the electricity. It seems that’s what knocked it out the first time. You?” She pauses, tipping her head over, twisting her dark hair up into a haphazard ponytail on the top of her head, as if she needs it out of her way to think clearly.
“Well?” she asks, still upside down.
When I forget to answer, she flips her hair back and looks at me head-on.
“Sorry, was just waiting for you to finish.”
She gives me a look like I’m ridiculous. “Can you not do your hair and speak at the same time?”
“I don’t really think about my hair all that often.”
She smirks, then flips her hair back and forth, like a joke. But now it’s all I can think about. Dark hair, cascading over my vision. I clear my throat.
“Sorry, nothing here, either. I told my parents about the photo of Hunter Long, but he was reported missing this past winter. Still, can I give them your name?”
“Sure, though I don’t think I’ll be much help. I saw him in the fall.”
“Sorry, Kennedy, about last night. I hope I didn’t get you in even more trouble.”
She winces. “I’m in trouble, but it’s not your fault. My idea, my plan. Sorry you got caught up in it.” She smiles then. “Could be worse. At least I still have my phone.”
She goes back to the papers, but I don’t want her to hang up. “Can Lydia find out what’s in the signal?” I ask.
“Eh. She’s, like, a computer expert. Heard she got suspended in middle school for hacking into the school email and sending out a snow day closure alert. So yeah, she’s crazy talented, but I don’t think she has the right equipment.”
“And Elliot won’t talk to you. Do you think he would talk to someone else?”
“No, I don’t. His trial is coming up, and the lawyers are focused on helping him remember….” She sighs, her thoughts drifting. But then she sits straighter, leaning closer to the screen so her brown eyes look twice their normal size. “There are people at the college who can do this, though. My mom worked there. They know me.” She looks quickly over her shoulder and lowers her voice. “But I have to talk to Joe first.”
Her head twists to the side, and she leans even closer so all I see is the side of her cheek, half her mouth, as she whispers, “I have to go.”
And then the screen goes black.
* * *
—
Long after everyone should typically be asleep, I hear my parents across the hall. My mom’s voice, high and fast. My father, trying to calm her. The tension fills the house, until it reaches my shoulders and I need to act.
They don’t hear me walking by their room, past the closed door. They don’t hear me on the stairs, or heading out the back door. If they notice the engine starting, they don’t come out to stop me.
* * *
—
There’s no one at Kennedy’s old house right now. All the lights are off, and the front door is locked. I go around back, let myself in the way Kennedy taught me yesterday, keeping a flashlight low and away from the windows.
Tell me what to do, I think, closing my eyes. “Liam,” I whisper into the emptiness. Nothing comes. I thought my brother wanted me here. I thought he was sending me a message, to come.
Nothing answers. Not even a flicker of a sign. The air conditioner kicking on, or a gust of wind rattling something in the vents. It’s just an empty house, in an empty field, under an empty sky.
I pull out my phone instead of my equipment and make a call. Kennedy’s face appears, barely decipherable in the grainy dark surrounding her. She sits upright. “Nolan?”
“I’m here,” I say. “Tell me what to do.”
She rubs her eyes, runs a hand down her face, then tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. I’ve woken her. She’s still in bed. “At my house?”
I nod.
“Okay,” she says, keeping her voice low. “Reboot the house. Let’s see if we can restart things to pick up the signal again. It’s the only thing I can think to do. There has to be something more. Something more than just pi, if that’s even what it is.”
She leads me with the sound of her voice to the garage, even though I’ve been here before. Still, I give myself over, letting her lead the way. When she instructs me to shut down the fuse box and flip it back on again, I listen. She sends me to the shed next, to make sure the computer is back online. “It should—running—and then…”
“Kennedy?” I shake the phone in the dark, as if I can jar her back into focus. “Hold on, you’re breaking up.”
The feed continues to cut in and out as I walk in the dark. But even as she disappears, I think I hear her voice.
I need to find a way back to my house this afternoon. Nolan rebooted the electricity and sent me a text to let me know it was done.
I haven’t slept since. I’m already sitting at the kitchen table when Joe emerges from his room.
He does a double take when he sees me. “Morning,” he says, sticking his head into the fridge. “I’ll get milk on the way home.”
“Okay.” I’m eating my cereal dry, crunching the Cheerios between my back molars.
“After school, the Albertsons invited you over. Until I’m back.”
I drop my spoon. “What?”
Something in my voice must resonate, because he shuts the fridge door, turning slowly. “To and from school, that’s it.” As if he could sense that I was already planning for Nolan to pick me up from school, drive me by our house, where I could pull the data and be back at Joe’s before he realized it—hopefully even before the school bus.
“Is this a joke?”
“No, Kennedy, this isn’t a joke.”
“Joe, okay, tomorrow I’ll do that. I’ll go to the Albertsons’ and stare blankly at these kids I don’t know. Totally fine. Just not today.”
He narrows his eyes. “What’s so important about today, Kennedy?”
I grasp for anything frantically. “You know I have finals. How am I supposed to study with a bunch of people I don’t know around?”
“How are you supposed to study when you spend all hours of the night running around with some guy?”
“Nolan,” I repeat, for the tenth time.
“Right. Nolan who is not your boyfriend, but who drove you to the house in the middle of the night so you could get these boxes. Nolan, who I literally never heard of a week ago, but who has been to our house to see you at least two times that I know of. Was it this Nolan who took you to see Elliot, too?”
I don’t answer right away. “Joe, haven’t you ever done something nice for a friend because they needed your help?”
He shakes his head. “Not like this, Kennedy. This is not a list of normal things you do for a friend. Especially not one you just met. Trust me on this.”
I glance at my phone, trying to sidestep him, but he puts a hand out. “And the second you leave this house, you’re going to be on the phone with him, am I right?”
I stop midstride and look up at him.
“Like I said, Kennedy. Not a friend.”
“I feel sorry for you, Joe. That every relationship you’ve ever had is only surface-deep.”
As soon as I leave the house, I’m on the phone to Nolan, just like Joe accused. Only this time, when he picks up, I can’t get Joe’s words out of my head. It’s true, Nolan is the first person I thought of this morning, the part of the day I was looking forward to the most. He asks me for my email so he can send me something, and it’s immediately something else to look forward to.
Is it normal to talk to someone first thing each morning and last thing each evening? To hold their hand in the dark in the house where your worst nightmare happened? To hide out in the room of their missing brother?
Is it normal to drive a girl you just met to a jail? To skip school because she asked?
Maybe not. But I wasn’t about to tell Joe the reason: It’s not that he’s into me, Joe. It’s that we’ve both simultaneously stumbled upon proof that the world is more than it seems.
* * *
—
A text arrives at lunch: Check your email.
Nolan came through. My email is full of scanned images. It’s the information on Hunter Long. His address in North Carolina, his pictures, the brief overview of the case, and his parents’ contact information.
I write back: Thanks. What are you doing? Are you at school?
I’m scanning through the documents in the school library, eating lunch in the corner, when my phone vibrates under the table with a new text: Sort of. What are you doing?