“I didn’t know him that well,” she murmurs. “He wouldn’t have told me anything like that.” Her eyes are going glassy again, and she’s returning to some internal place, fingers fidgeting with her blanket.

“It’s okay,” I say quickly, trying to draw her back. “We know about the girlfriend-sharing thing. If you’re worried about the other brothers finding out—”

“What girlfriend-sharing thing?” Her voice is dull, but her eyes flicker to me and then the hallway. Behind her head, the glass shudders against the fall wind.

“Miss Trudy,” I call without looking away from Katie’s face. “Would you mind giving us a moment alone?”

Katie flinches, and Trudy mumbles something about a man in a girl’s room, but I hear her footsteps recede toward the stairs. I have a prickly feeling, one that tells me she’s marching off to make phone calls, so I stand and shove the curtains away, glance at the street below, and then turn to get a good look at Katie and to figure out what we’re dealing with.

“No,” Katie murmurs. “Migraine.”

Backlit by the midday light, she’s pale. Her lips are purplish and chapped, and I think maybe she’s telling the truth. Maybe not a migraine, but she’s so upset she’s made herself ill.

Teddy steps closer.

“We just need you to answer a few questions,” he says softly. “And then we’ll let you go back to sleep.”

A faint smile. “Sleep,” she repeats. Her eyelids begin to flutter.

I want to tell her that sleep’s only a Band-Aid. That eventually, she’ll have to open her eyes and deal with the fact that Jay’s gone. No matter how far her dreams take her, she’ll always have to return—to this room, to this campus, to a world without Jay.

“Katie.” I lean in. “How well do you know the other brothers at Kap-O?”

She shrugs.

“Do you know Tripp Holmes?”

A small, confused nod.

“Were he and Jay friends?”

She squeezes her eyes tight. “I think so.” A small, hoarse whisper.

“What about Michael Williams?”

If I hadn’t been scrutinizing her face, I would have missed it. But she flinches.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you have any reason to think that maybe someone was mad at Jay? That anyone might want to hurt him?”

My back’s to Teddy, but I can feel him moving around—unobtrusively flipping through pages of the book on her desk, staring at the posters on her wall, like he’s bored and wants to get this over with. Finding a love note from Jay would be helpful, but too obvious. He must know this but is looking anyway.

Her eyes fix on the book in his hands.

“The Life of Calvin Coolidge,” she says.

“What?” I ask, annoyed at Teddy for the distraction.