Mateo hesitated and looked down at Lily. She looked right back at him, with that same vacant expression. Sometimes Lily creeped him out.

“I’m just going to check.” He left before Lily’s eyes could bore into him any deeper.

The cop was sitting in the chair just outside the glass-walled administration office. Ross was inside on the phone. Mateo sat in the empty seat next to the cop and tried to remember how his father always said to deal with police officers. The trick was to be extremely polite and say as few words as possible. They were less likely to notice your accent that way.

“Thanks for helping our friend, sir,” Mateo said.

The cop didn’t look up from his clipboard. “Sure thing.”

“So, uh . . .” Mateo didn’t know what to ask. He just wanted to know something more than the few words Ross had told them. “Are you guys, like, looking for clues and stuff?”

The cop looked up then. “Clues?”

“Yeah. You know. Fingerprints. Crushed blades of grass. DNA evidence. In case of, like, foul play.” As Mateo spoke, though, he thought about Peter and Daniel and the crew outside, cleaning up the lawn.

The cop wiped his upper lip with his sleeve. “Well, I’m not really at liberty to say.”

“Oh. Okay.” Mateo felt like an idiot, just like he had with the paramedic. At least this time he had clothes on.

“But I’ll tell you, kid,” the cop went on, turning back toward his clipboard, “this stuff, it isn’t like it is on TV. Usually, in real life, when a girl does LSD and jumps out a window, that’s the only clue you need.”

“Oh.”

The cop stood up. “Hey, listen. I’m sorry about your friend.”

“Thanks,” Mateo said.

The cop brushed off his pants and went into the office to talk to Ross.

Lightning struck outside the window behind him. It was so bright and loud Mateo held up a hand to shield his eyes.

This was pointless. He didn’t need to be here. Delilah wasn’t coming back tonight. He should be with Brandon.

Mateo started up the stairs.

Brandon had been desperate to get out of that waiting room. Mateo and Maria and his roommate, Jamie, and everyone else were still down there, but Brandon couldn’t take it any longer.

He hated seeing his friends that way. He hated everything about this.

He wasn’t quite sure what “this” was, exactly. He only knew he could’ve done something to stop what had happened, and he hadn’t.