“Who have you been hanging out with?” I asked.

Another shrug. “I’ve been over at Finn’s a lot.”

“You and your lost causes,” I told her.

That was the wrong thing to say. Her eyes flashed at me with annoyance. Even so, I was right. Laura had a weakness for people who were damaged. She always believed she could find a way to lift them up. It was one of her best qualities, but Laura was too naive, too trusting. I must have gotten the cynical genes, because I don’t think people ever really change.

Finn was a good example. He lived across the bridge in Superior with his older sister, Rikke Mathisen, who was Laura’s favorite teacher at our high school. I knew Finn only because Laura brought him around now and then. He was an addict. Always into drugs. Creepy eyes staring at you when he thought you weren’t looking. Miss Mathisen knew Laura was a soft touch, and she thought Laura could help Finn battle his demons. So Laura spent hours over there. I thought it was a mistake, but you couldn’t tell her anything.

I opened my mouth to push Laura again about what was wrong, but she cut me off with a question of her own. Out of the blue.

“So have you slept with Jon yet?” she asked.

I made sure her bedroom door was closed, so my father couldn’t hear. “No.”

“But you’re gonna, right?”

“Yeah, over the summer, I think. He knows I want to. But I told him I didn’t want to have sex until we were so close it felt like we were having sex already.”

“I like that.”

“Plus, I have to start taking the pill.”

“You could use condoms,” she said.

It was the strangest conversation she and I had ever had, because it was such a normal sister-sister kind of thing. We just didn’t talk like that. But I knew what she was doing. She had changed the subject from her to me.

“I don’t want to,” I said. “If I’m going to have sex, I want to really feel it, you know?”

Laura laughed. “No, I don’t know.”

“Are you on the pill?”

“Don’t need it.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say next. “I’ve got a job for the summer.”

“Yeah? Doing what?”

“Waitressing at that new place by the bridge. Grandma’s.”

“Good for you.”

“They need people. I can get you in there if you’re thinking of sticking around.”

That was as close as I had come to asking flat out if Laura was planning to leave home after she graduated next month. For months she had told Dad she was going away as soon as school was out. Travel. Work. See the world. Now I wasn’t so sure. No ring.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do yet,” Laura said.

I got out of the beanbag. “I’m going for a run,” I said.

“Have fun.”

I decided to stick my nose a little further into her business. “Listen, I really think you should tell someone about that note. Whoever this creep is, he sounds dangerous.”