Dustin wanted to go to Arizona with his father and help bring back Nicholas, but his father said no. There was no way Dustin could miss school without his mother finding out about Nicholas’s disappearance, which they had managed to keep secret from her. “But if we split the driving, we could drive all night and make it back in two days,” Dustin said. “It’s my senior year. I could easily make up the work.”

“I’m not driving the car back. I’m flying home with him,” Jason said even though he had no idea if he could convince his eldest son to return home at all. “I can ship the car back.”

Dustin didn’t argue his point any longer, because it was obvious his father’s mind was made up. He had called and texted Nicholas numerous times but never got a response. This worried him, but he hoped that his brother’s radio silence meant he had caught up with the girl, Natalia, as opposed to his other love, heroin.

Dustin was also relieved not to leave Steven in the lurch with his schoolwork. These days Dustin was tutoring him every day because midterms were fast approaching. Lolly often joined them, but she never mentioned Kimmie’s name, probably because Steven had told her not to. He still thought about her, even though he wished he didn’t. The pain of her rejection stung less with the passage of time, but when she popped into his head, he still felt a hollowness inside him, as if all the rabbits of his infatuation had burrowed through him and fled, leaving behind an abandoned warren where his heart once thumped for her. (He briefly tried journaling and writing poetry to get her out of his head, but so far it wasn’t working.)

He let out a big sigh over the sound of pencils scribbling and pages flipping, but neither Steven nor Lolly seemed to notice. Dustin was doing his own homework, and he had just read the same paragraph of Wuthering Heights three times. Why was it when he worried about his brother that Kimmie always appeared in his head?

“Lolly, can I ask you something?” Dustin’s voice sounded strange to him in the grand dining room of Steven’s apartment. “Never mind, forget it.”

Lolly put down her pencil and pulled the band out of her hair, retying her ponytail again. She had arrived twenty minutes ago from a SoulCycle class, and her cheeks were only now losing their pinkness. “Just ask me, Dustin.”

He shook his head, already regretting the can of worms that he had meant to keep closed.

“What’s your sister been up to?” he asked, unable to speak her name. “Last I heard she was sick. Is she feeling better?”