“Maybe give it a few more hours and then check in?” Ted said.

She thanked him and hung up, then punched the security code into Cyrus’s phone again. The six darkened circles on the screen emptied and shook. She tried it once more. Damn. Had he changed it? Why would he change it? If she tried again too many times, the phone would permanently lock.

Where could Cyrus have gone without telling her? What had happened between the dream of last night and this strange morning that could have made him leave? Or torn him from her? What if he had gotten into some kind of accident? Harmed himself? But he’d never do that.

She realized how few people she could go to. Cyrus hardly spoke to his parents, and Joe was incarcerated at Calipatria Prison. Izzy almost never saw her mom and dad. Seth and Nephy and Ted were Izzy and Cyrus’s only friends. They hadn’t needed anyone else; they had each other. Maybe that was part of the problem, she thought now.

◆◆◆

Izzy had first met Cyrus in the house where Seth grew up with his dad, Rick; Seth’s mom was never in the picture. The house was still painted that mica-glittered pink, with surfboards and the wreck of a sailboat moored in the sand out front—reminders of the Salton Sea’s pleasure days. With its TV, stocked refrigerator, and empty backyard pool for skating, the Whites’ had been the hangout for years, a kind of derelict palace for skaters and punks who mostly lived in mobile homes or shacks. When Izzy, Seth, and Nephy were kids, before Cyrus moved to town, a photographer had come to take portraits of the residents. Izzy’s dad, Larry, said it was bullshit exploitation, but Izzy wanted to pose with Seth and Nephy in the helm of that boat. After Cyrus came, things like that mattered less. They discovered another ruined boat down by the shore and took pictures of each other standing in it, pretending it could sail them far away.

Nine years ago, Izzy sat huddled against the fence by the empty pool in the backyard, wearing a hoodie and jeans, in spite of the desert sun—at least her skin wouldn’t burn, though the sweat had turned on every pore like a faucet—feeling the cement vibrating under her ass. Though the previous day’s dust storm had subsided, her lungs still struggled as they had when she was a young child, plagued by asthma that had sent her to the emergency room more than once.

The skaters rode the pavement waves up and down, back and forth in the metallic-scented air. Seth’s hair stuck out from under his helmet, the strands not unlike pale rodents’ tails. He grinned at Izzy as he dropped in to the bowl and popped an ollie along the bank.

Then she had looked up, and Cyrus appeared.

He stood at the sidelines, leaning on the wall, his hands in his pockets, watching the older, shorter, barrel-chested boy he’d come with shred the bowl. Izzy held her hand over her eyes; even with her sunglasses on, Cyrus burned too bright for her to be able to comprehend his presence at first. It was as if she’d conjured him.