“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I ask as we watch the protest disappear around a bend in the road.

“That we should keep looking for him?”

I nod. “Which way is his office?”

When we arrive at Francisco Gómez’s office door, it’s still closed. Locked. We slump against the wall and slide to the floor. “We’ll wait,” I say.

“Where is he?” Mercedes whines. “This is so annoying.”

“Can I help you?” The woman in the blue dress that we saw earlier is glaring down at us. She doesn’t look like she wants to see us much less to help us.

I scramble to my feet. “We’re looking for Francisco Gómez. Someone said he was here.”

She checks her watch. “Well, it’s quarter to four. He must be teaching his last class.” She pulls her green fleece jacket closer around her.

“We missed him again?” Mercedes isn’t talking to the woman, she’s looking at me.

“Do you know where his class is?” I ask politely.

“You can’t just show up at a college class, you know, girls.”

“We know. We just need to tell him something. Our, um, teacher has a message for him. Super important.”

I don’t know where these stories are coming from, but they seem to be working. The woman looks at me and then at Mercedes like she doesn’t trust us. I don’t blame her. My stomach clenches from all the lies.

Finally, she says, “The Morgan Lecture Hall in the biology building.”

CHAPTER 32 Mercedes

My legs burn as we race from the Humanities building. Toward our father. We can’t lose any more time; we can’t get distracted. Mattie’s right behind me as I run down the sloping sidewalk. It feels so good to just move, to pump my legs, to feel the burn in my chest.

Following the directions the woman gave us, we head past the athletic complex again, and neither of us even glances at the pool. We go through the grove of eucalyptus. We pass the perfect black oval of the track, where five or six people in shorts and tanks are even faster than we are. As I run up the grassy hill as instructed; I slow down so Mattie can catch up. Ahead of us is the building, just like the woman said it would be—two stories of brick and stone.

With a sign out front that says HEALTH SCIENCES.

“Where’s the biology building?” Mattie asks. As if I know. “Isn’t this where she told us to go? ‘Follow the sidewalk past the pool, past the track, through the trees, and up the hill’?”

Those were the exact instructions. You can’t miss it, the woman with the hopeless fashion sense said. So why wasn’t this the biology building? We pull out the campus map, but there are no buildings labeled biology.