Joel swallowed.

“I can’t have the cops asking my dad for the security footage from the gate’s cameras that night.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. His eyes had started to ache, though whether from grief or exhaustion he wasn’t sure. After five nights without rest, he was beginning to forget what real sleep felt like.

For a long time neither of them spoke. Stars appeared.

“Don’t get the wrong idea—I’m not the sort of girl who’s about saving it until marriage, okay?” Bethany spoke sternly, as if to correct some snide comment Joel hadn’t made. “Dylan got that shit out of me when we were kids. It’s why I broke up with Luke Evers, you know. He was a real church boy back then.”

Joel thought of Luke’s photo buried in his brother’s desk, the argument he’d witnessed between the two boys on Friday night at the game. “How did Luke feel about your decision to leave him?”

“He never liked Dylan after that. Who would? But before you ask, no, I don’t think Luke could have killed Dylan. His mom’s almost as bad as my dad. Everyone knows Luke has to go straight home after games.”

“And where’s KT Staler gone to?”

“Somewhere there’s drugs. He’s trash. His trouble started with his mom and worked its way down. I always told Dylan hanging around that boy would get him in trouble and here we are. I’m a very prescient person, you know.” She pronounced it present.

“You’re saying Dylan died because he was wrapped up in drugs?” Joel thought again of the two thousand dollars his brother had been caught counting in his room, of the gold watch and silver bracelet, of the unmarked bottle of painkillers.

“Dylan? No—KT was the drug addict. Families like his are a menace to society.” Bethany lit another cigarette, the flame shaking in her hands. “My dad will kill me if this gets out, you know, really he will. He’d kill Jamal and me and fuck, maybe kill you, just for knowing.”

Joel would like to see him try. “Where did KT and Dylan go last Friday night?”

“They left like always.”

“And went where?”

“Dylan went to the coast,” Bethany said, sounding just a little too certain.

“But why did Dylan have to leave so often? Bethany, from where I’m sitting he looks like a guy leaving town to scratch an itch. Like a guy with a habit. You have to see that.”

“I had total trust in Dylan. We were very honest with each other.” Joel heard a rustling sound as Bethany adjusted her hair in the dark. There was something nervous in the sound. The girl added vaguely, “We were made for each other. Mostly.”

Joel took a cigarette from the baggie. Lighting it, he felt a sudden lightness in his chest. Somewhere, somehow, they had just moved in a strange new direction.

Bethany was saying, “Of course all I could think about when I was with Jamal was how I’d rather have just been with Dylan, like we were in the old days. Which is of course exactly what he told me not to do. We would sneak into the house sometimes, Dylan and I, even when Dad was there, and—”