Liam’s phone vibrated and he pulled it out of his back pocket. It was a selfie from Ryan, who was in London now, being a model. He was at a pub, a full pint glass of beer pressed against his grinning, expensively moisturized cheek.

#nodrinkingage the text read.

Sublime had gotten in huge trouble for their offensive mock protest and using the anti-gun movement to sell merchandise. They’d had to take down all their posters and every social media post from “the drop.” But Ryan had already been scouted and picked up by a modeling agency by then. No sixteen-year-old had worn a dying tiger on his chest so well. He’d put school on hold until the new year and was actually using the name Black Ryan professionally. He kept sending Liam annoying texts with pictures of himself wearing cool clothes, sauntering down some famous London or Paris street: Fish and Chips and Chanel on Carnaby Street! Je t’aime trés bien asshole! He’d already done a photo shoot on a yacht in the Mediterranean for Vilebrequin swim trunks and driven a McLaren in Monte Carlo. Get out here, bruh! he urged. Milan is next! But no one at any modeling agency had invited Liam to London or Paris or Milan.

Liam kicked the legs of his bed and the back of his desk chair. He sat down on his bed and then bounced back up again.

“Fuck,” he muttered to himself. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

His cell phone vibrated again and he leapt at it.

It was Shy, finally.

I fucking won a fucking table tennis match you cunt!

She sounded happy. Liam didn’t answer. He didn’t want to be a buzzkill. Luckily his dad had introduced him to the Smiths, whose music was moody and morose. He stuck in his earbuds and put his phone on Do Not Disturb.

“I almost died today,” Wendy announced when she finally returned home to Strong Place with the U-Haul.

Roy was exactly where she’d left him six hours ago—in the library, furiously typing on his laptop.

“I’ll need your help, and Shy’s too, unloading the U-Haul van. I have to return it by nine p.m.” She poured herself a glass of white wine and drank the entire glass standing up. “I’d like to do it soon so I can take a shower.”

Roy did not look up. He was completely engrossed in his writing, which was nice to see, but also infuriating. She really had almost died.

“I believe the person who dismembered that woman whose body parts they’ve been finding in the water is alive and well and living on the far side of Staten Island.”