My train of thought screeches to a halt. I’d come to campus assuming that Ron knew something about what was going on with Chloe. He said he’d stood outside on the night of homecoming. He’d mentored Daniel and was there while Daniel filmed, even though he initially claimed not to know Daniel. And Daniel, for some reason, pointed his camera at Ron’s empty parking spot. Daniel sent a message with his movie—he let us know Ron drove off when he said he was—and was supposed to be at—the dance.

Ron and Daniel must have known Chloe’s secret, and Daniel was going to put it in the movie. And it was going to be that Chloe was pregnant. Cheating on me…

But Ron is talking about something else. Something I really don’t want to hear. Something I couldn’t have imagined.

“What are trying to tell me?” I ask. “You’re saying that you and Chloe…”

“We connected,” he says. “Didn’t you hear me? Are you too naive to understand what I’m saying?”

“Stop it. Just stop it.”

The air in the car starts to feel stifling. I smell the odor of coffee and cigarettes coming off Ron, and there’s a trickle of sweat on his forehead. He’s never looked older to me. Much older than my dad.

“You’re the one who followed us and ran us off the road,” I say, no longer trying to control my voice. It nearly cracks like I’m back in junior high going through puberty. “Chloe was upset that night at the dance. She’d been distant from me…emotionally. Physically. She thought she was pregnant. Were you…”

Ron’s eyes widen, the most unplanned gesture he’s made since I got into his car.

“Did you touch her?” I ask, my voice ringing in my ears louder than a bomb in the enclosed space. “Are you the father of her baby?”

“Don’t be absurd, Hunter. I didn’t lay a hand on the girl. And I’m not the father of anyone’s baby.”

“It’s going to come out one way or the other. The whole town is going to know. You can’t keep these things secret forever.”

Ron lifts his hands, but this time he’s not lecturing. His shoulders slump, and his hands look like they’re surrendering more than anything else.

“I’m so tired of this,” he says. “Everywhere I go, this narrow, conventional morality derails things. No one understands.”

“What happened?”

He runs his hand through his hair. “Why is it that people don’t understand what I’ve been trying to explain to you? They don’t understand it at universities or in high schools. I may have to go back to Europe again when all of this is over.”

“You said you were going to Ohio. Is that a lie, too?”