I think back to the day Amy came over, saw Nia, and freaked.

“Are you sure you don’t know Amy Pearce?” I ask.

My stepsister shakes her head, but her eyes tell a different story.

“What’s Amy got to do with this?” she asks.

“She lived here before us. This was her brother’s room.” Nia walks over to my bed and sits. This is already the longest she’s stayed in my room, and it doesn’t look like she’s leaving any time soon.

“We used to be friends,” she says. “But I haven’t spoken to Amy since we were eleven.”

“Why did you say you didn’t know her?”

Nia shrugs. “Because I don’t. I knew her…years ago. I don’t know her now. That’s how school works. People change. People disappear. Not everyone is best friends with the first kid they met in seventh grade.”

She means like me and Zak, although she smiles when she says it, and I know she’s not being mean. She likes him, and, for now, at least, it feels as though she likes me too.

“What was Amy like?” I ask.

“She changed, but so did everyone. We used to laugh all the time. It pissed the teachers off. But then she went serious and just sort of…faded away.”

“She went to the same parties,” I say, remembering the photos on Evie’s Instagram.

“She never looked like she was having fun, though. I made new friends after Amy, but…I’m not sure if she did.”

“And now we’re living in her old house.”

Nia looks around my room, then back at the wardrobe. “Do you think she carved those?”

“No,” I reply. “It was her brother.”

I don’t explain how I know, and Nia doesn’t ask. She just nods as if that makes sense and says, “Will. She talked about him all the time.”

“Did you ever meet him?”

“A few times. When her mum picked her up from school. But he was just a baby. I don’t know if he grew into the kind of kid that would write ‘help me’ all over his walls.”

I do…because this wasn’t Amy’s room. It was her brother’s. He’s the answer to the riddle. I just need to figure out the question.

56

Evie Wells goes to the University of Chester, now. I know because her Instagram is full of pictures from freshmen week and all the weeks that followed.

She has a lot of friends but the same smile for everyone. It’s different from the one at the old parties with Nia and Amy in the background.

I draft my message for hours and delete a few false starts before finally clicking send.

Hi. My name is Tom Cavanagh. I know a friend of yours, Amy Pearce. Could I ask you a few questions?

She replies almost instantly.