“Of course you can talk to them. You can say ‘good morning.’ You can say ‘I love you.’ But you can’t discuss college or these allegations or anything that happened. What you knew or did not know. Nothing. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Also, don’t talk to your mom’s lawyers or the FBI. They might want to interview you.”

“The FBI?” I can’t keep the panic out of my voice. I think of their guns, long and precise, and I think about Law & Order again, which I like to watch late at night, when I can’t sleep. I imagine sitting at a table in a small room, trying not to get manipulated into a game of good-cop/bad-cop.

I am in so over my head.

“Chloe, listen, you are central to this case. You do not talk to anyone, do you hear me, anyone, without my say-so. If the FBI asks to speak to you, you say, ‘I need my lawyer, Kenneth Lowe,’ and then they’ll have to call me.”

“Right. Got it.” I want to ask Can I talk to Shola? but then I remember that apparently she’s not talking to me. If she were, she would have texted or called. She would have returned my dozens of voice mails. She would have found a way to say I’m here, Chlo.

I think about the word separate, how it conjures up that movie about the guy who becomes untethered from the International Space Station and is left floating alone in the infinite universe talking to himself.

“Not a word to anyone, understand?” Kenneth asks again.

“Sure,” I say, and mime zipping my lips. And then I feel like a moron all over again, a dumbass p.o.s., because we’re on the phone.

He can’t see me.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Then

“Will you be one of my backups?” Cesar asks. I can tell he’s nervous because he doesn’t look at me. I’m used to his brain zipping around so fast I can’t always keep up, so at first I have no idea what he’s talking about. Sometimes I’ll think he’s telling a story about the playground at school, and then all of a sudden, a talking porcupine starts shooting bullets from their wrists, and I’ll realize he’s transitioned to some show he recently watched or a dream he had.