“Oh, hi, Bob,” Mattie says haltingly. “Is my mom there?” She looks at me and mouths, My stepdad answered my mom’s phone. I would be so mad if I were her. But Mattie just says, “Okay. Can you ask her if I can sleep over at my friend Mercedes’s house? You know, like I did last week?” She’s quiet, listening to whatever Bob is saying. “No, she doesn’t need to pick me up. I’m going home with her right after school. No, she can loan me some pajamas. Yes, I’ll tell them.” She listens again. “Uh, okay.”

She hands me back my phone. It’s warm from the call. She looks stunned. “I snuck out of school and stole a book and got in trouble with a security guard and lied to my mom and my new stepdad.”

“It’s not a lie,” I reassure her. “It’s a… story.”

She glares at me as if it were my fault. “I’ve never done any of those things before. And I never wanted to,” she adds.

“Think about this. If we didn’t lie, your mom would worry. And Cristina could lose her job. And the teachers would get in trouble. We’re just keeping everyone safe—keeping them happy—by telling a not-so-true story.”

“I suppose.”

She looks resigned but not pleased. I check my phone. It’s two forty-five. We need to find him before he goes home. Grown-ups usually work until five or six. Mom works until eight or nine at night, but she’s a workaholic. I don’t know if Frank Gómez is, but if it means we’ll be able to find him, I won’t mind.

“Ready?” I ask.

“I think I need a minute after all that lying.”

Mattie leans on the chain-link fence and stares down at the pool below. The entire pool area is deserted, the bleachers empty, the gates padlocked. I pull out my phone again and snap a selfie. My hair is backlit by the sun glittering on the pool water.

Mattie watches me and then says, “We need a picture of us together.”

“We do?”

“Here we are, on the search for our dad. Telling lies. It’s momentous.”

Momentous failure, I think. But I hold out my phone at arm’s length. “Get in,” I command, leaning toward her.