Queen Bebe’s was in the Lyndale neighborhood, a ten-minute drive from Gavin’s home in Kenwood, but a world away on the socioeconomic map. The shop squatted in the middle of an old strip mall and housed two stylists, Bebe Kavenaugh and Sadie Vauk. It stayed open until six in the evening, and had no bank or convenience store nearby, which cut down on the possibility of surveillance cameras.

A plan began to form.

Sadie’s social media presence extended to Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram, but it was a collection of videos on YouTube that Gavin found most helpful. They were promotional shots taken inside the salon, showing the layout. How stupid to put her life on the internet like that—as if she wanted someone like Gavin to come along.

Gavin searched old news articles and found one about Sadie’s high school swim team taking top honors at the state championship. A more recent article announced that Queen Bebe’s was now offering body piercing. It had a picture of Sadie giving a customer a nose ring. Gavin hated nose piercings, although he had once dated a girl with a nose stud.

Well, to call it a date was a stretch. He had taken her to the homecoming dance his freshman year, a mistake that ultimately led to Gavin getting shipped off to a private school in Indiana.

Her name was Eleanora Abrams, and he’d only asked her to the dance because his mother had pressured him for weeks to find a date. Eleanora had sat next to him in chemistry and talked to him on a few occasions when she didn’t understand her assignments. It had been the closest he had ever come to connecting with a girl, so he decided that if he were going to ask anyone to the dance, it would be her.

He found her alone in the school library one afternoon, and, summoning all the courage he could muster, said, “Eleanora, would you go to the dance with me?” But because of his speech impediment, the word dance came out as dansche. Gavin’s cheeks turned hot when she didn’t answer right away.

Then she said, “What?”

He hadn’t prepared to say it twice—he doubted he could—but he pushed forward anyway. The second attempt came out even worse because he tried to ask without repeating the word dance. He instead muttered, “Homecoming,” pointing at her and then back to himself. Was it confusion on her face, or panic? He’d wanted to run—instead, he begged. “Please?” But what she heard was “Pleasche?”

Backed into a corner, she looked around for help. No friends nearby. No lifeline. “Um…” She bit her lip. “Uh…I guess so.” He could feel her regret almost immediately.

Gavin’s mother drove them to the dance in her Jag, squawking the entire time about what a cute couple they made, and how lucky they were to be young. Gavin and Eleanora sat on opposite ends of the backseat, neither saying a word.

At the dance, Eleanora joined a cluster of her friends, and the group sat so tightly together that Gavin couldn’t get close. He understood what they were doing, and why, and he wanted to be invisible.