Claudia’s room was different. From the doorway he spotted a series of old-fashioned Polaroids hung by clothespins and strung across the ceiling, dangling like flags. There were probably fifty of them, each with a handwritten date or phrase or symbol penned on it: July 18; Derby; ♥♥. In one marked Spring Break, Claudia and a girl who looked like her—the sister, maybe?—lay in bikinis on the stark white deck of a boat. Both girls had an arm resting over their eyes. Were they asleep? Were they posing? Looking at her body like that, nearly naked, glistening in the sun, he couldn’t help where the blood flowed. It had been more than two weeks since he first saw her in those shorts at the elevators in the dorm, and he hadn’t once been able to fall asleep without succumbing to the fantasies about her that swarmed his mind. It felt biologically necessary but morally wrong. And it made him angry; he’d used part of that anger in the Mews. Anger that was confusion. Anger that was disgust. At night, alone in bed, he imagined that even after all she’d been through she could still want him to grab her and kiss her. Girls are funny like that, his brother used to tell him, before prison. Sometimes they want a gentleman, but sometimes they want a predator. You gotta learn to play the game, his brother said. Hold the door and pay for dinner, but back in the bedroom rip off her panties and push her against the wall. Mike told Trevor that the first time he made his high school girlfriend come he had his hands around her throat. Not too hard, he said; just hard enough. Trevor hadn’t had the nerve to try it until Whitney and it’d worked. No wonder she hated him.

He adjusted himself and looked around at the rest of the room. An ornate mirror with an iron frame took up much of one wall. Necklaces and scarves and ID badges hung from its corners. Claudia had been backstage at Taylor Swift; she’d been to Coachella and the VMAs multiple times; she’d been to Cannes.

Trevor left Claudia’s room and went to a window at the end of the hall, which looked out toward the ocean. The house was still. She wasn’t here. No one was. He walked back down the stairs and out the back door to the sofa where he’d slept. He closed his eyes and lifted his head to the sun. Then he called his brother. When Mike didn’t pick up, Trevor texted.

it’s me—lost my phone and had to get a new number. can you talk??

A moment later, the phone rang.

“Trev?” His brother sounded groggy. “You okay? What time is it there?”

“Sorry.” Shit. It was predawn in Ohio.

“What’s up?”

Trevor spilled. The video, the Mews, the empty house on the Vineyard.