Ryan grabs my wrist as I climb out of his car. “Lia.” He holds on as if to emphasize his point and looks at me like we’ve known each other forever. “Don’t trust anyone.”

“But I should trust you, right?”

Something flashes behind his eyes. Amusement? Deception? Irritation?

He lets go of my wrist and turns away. “You don’t trust me, so it doesn’t matter.”

“You don’t look like a Ryan.”

Ryan is a safe name, a wholesome name, a name for a guy who plays soccer and wears crew neck sweaters. Ryan is not the name of a murderer or stalker or a guy with eyes the color of metal who expresses no emotion when he talks.

Before he can respond, I slam the door and tuck my hat and my scarf into my bag. I creep along a series of wrought iron gates guarding each home. At least eight vans with satellites that reach toward the sky idle in the street, waiting to broadcast my latest secrets to the greater Chicago area. My lawn, which is big for a city lawn, is littered with reporters and camera crews. They light up my house like a sacred architectural dig site. Some of them are busy reporting. Others are waiting. For what? Has my train meltdown already become a viral sensation?

All of them ignore the sleek black town car parked outside my house. I imagine whoever was inside the car is now inside my house.

When my dad was alive, we had visitors all the time. Any of them might have been the type to take a town car to our house. But since his death, no one visits, which means whoever came in that car is here because of what happened Saturday.

At two blocks away, I zigzag—right down a side street and left past the corner house and into the alley behind our home. Even though I try to keep my steps light, gravel crunches beneath my feet.

I slink against my neighbors’ detached garages. Motion sensor lights flip on two of them, their giant spotlights exposing me. As I reach for the latch on our wooden gate, Charlie starts barking like a maniac—the angry, foaming-at-the-mouth kind. Any other night I’d yell at him to shut up. Tonight, I’m more worried his bark will out me. Reporters will catch on, start herding toward me with their trivial questions. I unhitch the door, slip past my garage, and hurry onto the back deck, where I take the stairs two at a time up to our first floor. Charlie barks the entire time, but no one comes—a sign of the media’s idiocy.

The curtains on our French doors block my preview to what’s waiting inside. I lean over the wooden porch rail, propping myself on my stomach to peek in through our kitchen window.