I did five miles, barely noticing—I never felt like stopping. I crossed Main near the roundabout and had to sprint to avoid a car. At the other side I fell into a rhythm, a phrase repeating in my head. Danielle is dead Danielle is dead Danielle is dead. I couldn’t understand the transformation from beautiful Danielle to that bloody mess in the motel room. Somebody did that to her, and now he was out driving around, eating sandwiches or whatever. She must have met someone there at the motel. A john. Or maybe Anthony or one of those porn guys, models or whatever they called themselves. She’d walked into that room, thinking she was safe. Maybe it was random—wrong place, wrong time.

Danielle and I used to play mermaids in the pool, a game she’d made up as a kid, long before I knew her. You had to swim with your legs together as though you had a tail, and try to be sexy. Not much of a game, really, just something silly to do if we were bored. She used to surprise me like that. One minute working out a plan to score drugs, or talking shit about some poor kid at school, and a minute later she’d say, “Let’s play mermaids!” Excited and sincere as an eight-year-old girl.

Light poured through the leaves over the shady path surrounding Rice University, yellowing and weakening the green. I passed a few people on the trail. Usually I smiled at the other joggers, acknowledging the folly of running in ninety-degree weather. Now I couldn’t meet their eyes. I picked up speed until I didn’t have the breath to cry. I got off the path and turned into the street, where people would be safely in their air-conditioned cars and houses. I ran, pure speed and rhythm: Danielle-is-dead-Danielle-is-dead.

I fantasized about a sip of water, and I wanted it so bad it blocked out all my other thoughts. I headed home, in a state of consuming thirst, aware of an ache in my left heel. At home I didn’t drink at first because I feared when the thirst disappeared that I would, too. I lay on the floor to let my body cool down, listening to my heartbeat.

I drank some water and tidied each room, scrubbed and dried the kitchen floor. I sorted my dirty laundry by color and pulled out the clothes that needed to be hand-washed. I cleaned the sink and filled it with Woolite and water, let the pieces soak. I relaxed seeing my clean apartment draped in drying lingerie, sweaters, and skirts. I showered and dressed, put on makeup—I had a way of doing it where I didn’t have to see my whole face—one eye, then the other, cheekbones, lips. I looked like my mother and I couldn’t deal with that today.

I had this impulse to be around the people who knew Danielle. They were the only ones who could understand what this was like. I called Audrey but she didn’t pick up, so I looked up the address of Houston Mediasource, where Brandon worked. Its offices were in a big old house on a cul-de-sac under the downtown spur of 59. I realized I’d passed by it a million times and never realized what it was. I drove there and parked in the lot, a yard that had been asphalted over. Dandelions and grasses struggled through its many cracks. Dirt blossomed over the white stucco, and dusky blue paint peeled from the window frames. I stepped into a tiny room containing a large desk and shelves with a mess of coiled wires. The place showed its dust and age. A girl sat behind the desk, untangling some cables. I told her I was there to see Brandon Young.