“Mr. Michaels wanted me to give you this,” she says.

Then she thrusts out her hand, a folded piece of yellow legal paper inside her palm. HANNAH is written on the front in Owen’s writing.

I take the folded note, hold her eyes. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m missing something. Are you a friend of Bailey’s?”

“Who’s Bailey?”

I didn’t expect the answer to be yes. There is an ocean between twelve and sixteen. But I can’t piece this together. Why hasn’t Owen just called me? Why is he involving this girl? My first guess would be that something has happened to Bailey, and Owen couldn’t break away. But Bailey is at home, avoiding me as she usually does, her blasting music (today’s selection: Beautiful: The Carole King Musical) pulsing all the way down the stairs, its own looping reminder that I’m not welcome in her room.

“I’m sorry. I’m a little confused… where did you see him?”

“He ran past me in the hall,” she says.

For a minute I think she means our hall, the space right behind us. But that doesn’t make sense. We live in a floating home on the bay, a houseboat as they are commonly called, except here in Sausalito, where there’s a community of them. Four hundred of them. Here they are floating homes—all glass and views. Our sidewalk is a dock, our hallway is a living room.

“So you saw Mr. Michaels at school?”

“That’s what I just said.” She gives me a look, like where else? “Me and my friend Claire were on our way to practice. And he asked us to drop this off. I said I couldn’t come until after practice and he said, fine. He gave us your address.”

She holds up a second piece of paper, like proof.

“He also gave us twenty bucks,” she adds.

The money she doesn’t hold up. Maybe she thinks I’ll take it back.

“His phone was broken or something and he couldn’t reach you. I don’t know. He barely slowed down.”

“So… he said his phone was broken?”

“How else would I know?” she says.

Then her phone rings—or I think it’s a phone until she picks it off her waist and it looks more like a high-tech beeper. Are beepers back?

Carole King show tunes. High-tech beepers. Another reason Bailey probably doesn’t have patience for me. There’s a world of teen things I know absolutely nothing about.

The girl taps away on her device, already putting Owen and her twenty-dollar mission behind her. I’m reluctant to let her go, still unsure about what is going on. Maybe this is some kind of weird joke. Maybe Owen thinks this is funny. I don’t think it’s funny. Not yet, anyway.

“See you,” she says.