He said, “Come inside and keep your voice down.”

“Tell me who it is, Jameer. Who’s the new boyfriend that didn’t wait around for you to deliver like my dumbass did?”

“There is no boyfriend.” He looked at my shoes instead of my face. “Not yet. Come on.”

Inside a linoleum-floored mudroom, he stomped his feet on a woolen mat, shaking loose a few blades of grass. Then we were in a kitchen where every wall was covered by stainless steel appliances, or darkly rich cabinetry. Every horizontal surface was some kind of exotic rock with the edges left rough on purpose, a chosen imperfection in the flawless room. Even their cereal was in foggy, perfectly aligned glass canisters so the cornflakes and raisins seemed frozen in a glacier.

“Your people here?” I asked. There was a slight echo.

“No.”

He took me through a museum-quality dining room with unused place settings and fancy paintings of gangly, exaggerated black folks playing piano and trombones on the wall. A front foyer. Up wooden stairs with a thick carpet runner on the risers so it felt like climbing mattresses. We ended up in a bedroom. At a glance, I wasn’t sure it was his. It was so plain. Something was off here, and I was too mad to see it right away.

The walls were bare, except for textured wallpaper lining the room in vertical pastel patterns that looked like bars. There was a desk, and a bed with a comforter that matched the wall. A dresser with a porcelain dove perched near the edge. That was about it. No computer. No TV. No games. Maybe a guest room?

A Bible I recognized sat in the windowsill. The one he lent me that first night of Purity Pledge. On the floor under that window, the satchel that bounced on his hip when he walked the halls at school. The closet door was cracked, and I spotted some familiar plaid shirts on hangers. This was his weird-ass room.

He walked me to his window, shoved binoculars into my chest before I had time to ponder. “Look! But don’t stand too close.”

Like a sniper. I was thinking in Call of Duty terms. My mind prepped for war games. Or, maybe just war.

Standing where Jameer directed, I raised the lenses, then adjusted the focus until I had line of sight on cars parked in front of Kiera’s house. Two crammed the driveway. A Cadillac and a Chevy SUV that often served as Sunday vehicles for the Westings. Along the curb was a Ford truck that did not belong to the Westings. Stenciled on its door: Handy Lawn Care Company. Hitched to it, a long trailer with the ramp lowered, presumably for the riding lawn mower doing the last few passes. Its driver was an older man in a straw hat, and at first I fooled myself into thinking this was the threat that had Jameer call me over. Then I panned the binoculars right.