Which was true in all realities. Throwing people off balance was my forte. My own balance was questionable—or at least it was on wheels.

“We’re looking for someone,” I told him. “Actually two someones. Two skaters.”

“Okay—what do they look like?”

“Each other,” I told him. “They’re twins.”

“What do you need them for? They owe you money?”

I glanced over to him. He probably thought this had to do with my little side business. It bothered me that he would think that. “Not money,” I told him. “They owe me an explanation.”

The skate park is down by the community center, the only part of the center that’s open until midnight. The idea was that if you could keep the town’s sketchy kids congregated in a single well-lit place, there’d be less sketchy activity in the unlit places. What they didn’t realize is that the town’s sketchiest kids could find darkness anywhere.

I asked kids I knew, and ones I didn’t know. No one had seen twin skaters. No one knew them. If they lived here, and they skated, someone had to know them, right? And here’s the weirdest thing. Every time someone asked me to describe them, I couldn’t. What color was their hair? Was it short or long? Did they have acne? Braces? Any distinguishing marks? I didn’t know. I couldn’t even be sure of their ethnicity.

There’s this thing I heard about. Prosopagnosia. It’s an inability to recognize faces. Your own mother could walk into a room, and you wouldn’t know it was her until you heard her voice. That’s how I felt with the twins. Their faces left no memory.

“Well, if you can’t describe them, I can’t help you,” the skate park manager told me, and walked away.

Hunter, who had been working the far side of the skate park, came back. No surprise that he had no luck either.

“Maybe these guys aren’t from here,” Hunter said.

I pulled out my phone, hoping that Katie had responded, but she hadn’t. More than anything, I wanted to tell her about this. But I wouldn’t text her again.

“Why are they so important?” Hunter asked. “And why don’t you know what they look like?”

Those were the million-dollar questions, weren’t they?

“Forget it,” I told him. “It’s not important.”

I turned to go, but he grabbed me hard enough to make me turn back to him. “But it is important, isn’t it?” he said. “I don’t know why . . . but it feels like this is really important. Because . . . because . . .”

Whatever he was trying to say, he was having a hard time with it. I could see his Adam’s apple bouncing, fighting to keep the words from coming out. “. . . because something’s . . . wrong . . . isn’t it?”

So Hunter felt it. This was another development.