“So who are you really?”

I turned to the voice. It was Blond Mop. He wore only a towel around his waist. The blond mop was wet and pasted to his forehead. I assumed that he had just gotten out of the shower.

He was waiting for my reply.

“My name is Mickey Bolitar. I’m looking for Jared. I don’t mean him any harm.”

“So why are you looking for him?”

“It’s kind of a long story.”

He just stood there dripping in his towel and waited.

“You saw my friend,” I said.

“The goth girl?”

“Right. She’s a friend of his. Online friend anyway. He suddenly stopped communicating. She was worried about him.”

He frowned. “You came all this way for that?”

It did sound pretty lame, but I said, “Yes.”

“And you came with her because . . . ?”

“She’s my friend. I’m trying to help her.”

He stood there in his towel, no shirt, water dripping off the mop of hair. “Is she some kind of a cyberstalker or something?”

“No. Look, I just need to see him and make sure he’s okay.”

“Just because he stopped texting her back or whatever?”

“There’s more to it than that. But all I need to do is make sure he’s okay.”

“That’s weird,” the kid said. “You get that, right?”

“I do,” I said.

He took a deep breath. This was surreal, talking to this preppy boy just standing there in his towel. “Do you play basketball?” he asked me.

You get this question a lot when you’re six-four. “Yes.”

“Me too. My name is Tristan Wanatick. I’m the point guard on the team here. Jared and I are co-captains. Seniors. It’s our last year. We were supposed to have a great season.”

I felt a small chill. “Supposed to?”

“We still will,” Tristan said, trying to sound defiant but not quite getting there. “I mean, he said he’ll be back.”

“Jared?”

“Yeah.”

“So he’s not at school?”

Blond Mop shook his head.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Something happened.”

Another chill, bigger this time. “What?”

“I don’t know. Some kind of family emergency. He left school a few days ago. Right in the middle of the semester. More than that—right at the start of basketball season.”

“Where did he go?”

“Home.”

“And you don’t know why?”

“All I know is it was something sudden,” he said. “But if Jared is missing basketball, it has to be something really, really bad.”

CHAPTER 24

I promised Tristan I would let him know if I learned anything.

There was nothing more for us to do here. Ema and I caught the next bus back. I headed straight to school for basketball practice. It felt great, of course, to disappear in the sweat and strain and beauty. I sometimes wondered what my life would be without having the court as a place to escape.