“The weed?”

“Like, love.” Dylan laughed. He always laughed when he talked about his own feelings, as if it were some embarrassing insult of nature that he had any at all. But then he said it again, a tremor in his hands. “Love.”

Jamal suspected that Dylan wasn’t talking about Bethany. He should have pressed his friend, should have asked why he was seeing somebody if it made him so miserable, and yet all Jamal had done was mind his own business, take a drag on their blunt, say, “It’ll chill eventually, right? You have to do what makes you happy.”

That was Jamal, ever the backbencher. Cheerleading in the places the girls couldn’t reach.

Just what, he wondered, had he cheered Dylan into doing?

Jamal hadn’t called his mother yet. As he and Irons crossed the line into Burleson County, Jamal saw that Kimbra Lott hadn’t answered the messages he’d sent her since his escape. The face that the girl had worn when she’d left the interview room this morning—stubborn, brash, curious—had haunted him all day.

“Don’t let those guys fuck you up,” he’d told her, because when Kimbra asked him about the Bright Lands, Jamal had remembered plenty of rumors about that place: weird gossip the backbenchers were smart enough to only whisper about when certain players came close. Stories about a party in the Flats where boys swore a blood oath of secrecy, made pacts that followed them all their lives. It had always sounded so ridiculous, like the cheap seriousness of a fraternity in a movie. But now he wondered.

Kimbra’s silence over the last hour had spooked him. She was never away from her phone.

Jamal called her. It went to voice mail.

KT sounded stoned when he picked up Jamal’s call a minute later.

“Yo,” Jamal said, dialing down the end of the game on the car radio. “Where’s Kimbra?”

A long pause. “She’s supposed to be meeting me here.”

“After the game?”

“This afternoon.”

“Then where is she?” Jamal stared at the empty road. Mr. Irons gave him a curious look. “Bro, she was asking questions today about that place you and Dylan used to go.” Jamal paused. Why did the words frighten him so badly when they were poised on his lips? “The Bright Lands.”

After a long silence, KT said, “That was dumb of her.”

“She’s in trouble, ain’t she?” Jamal said.

Silence.

“Where are you now?”

“At home.”

“Stay there.”

Jamal lowered the phone. He choked on the smell of cinnamon cologne. Irons’s knuckles were almost white on the wheel. “Change of plans.”

“No,” the lawyer said.

“Please. My friend’s in trouble.”

“And you’re not?”

“Nobody will even know I’m in town. With the game—”

“You’re not that stupid, son. Don’t play me like I am, either.”

“Turn around.” Jamal swallowed, almost couldn’t believe what he was about to say. He felt, suddenly, that he had no choice. “Turn around or I’ll confess.”

“It wouldn’t stand up after we get the security footage.”