“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.