‘When I was eleven. She was seventeen and she disappeared off the face of the planet and they never found her. She loved Roxy. Her music. I thought in, yeah, maybe a fucked-up kind of way, this could bring me closer to her.’

Ellis offers a vague expression of surprise, his eyebrows leaping and falling, and then the rest of him falls, too, and he says sorry even though there is nothing at all to apologize for.

‘It’s OK. But what I’m saying is that she at least got a proper search, and Roxy didn’t. I wanna give it to her.’

And then – I can’t believe it – Ellis is crying. Unmistakably, the moonlight bouncing off the tracks on his face. I don’t remember the last time I cried in front of someone. Anyone, let alone an outsider to my existence, let alone about something that didn’t concern me, let alone out here, like this, utterly exposed. I don’t remember the last time I cried. And here he is, flaying himself in front of a near stranger for no good reason, as if it doesn’t come across as weakness.

‘What was her name?’ Ellis asks.

‘Celeste.’

He nods. Something about her name has settled him. ‘OK. Yeah. I’m in,’ he says, and apologizes again.

‘It’s all right.’

‘But how? Where do we even start?’ he asks.

‘Hopefully I can be a useful outsider; maybe you’re too close and there’s something you missed. We’re gonna have to talk to people. Interviews. And if people don’t want to talk, then we have to dig up dirt until they do. That’s how these things work.’

‘I don’t know anything about how these things work.’

‘You don’t have to. I’ll help. I’ll tell you what to do. And at this point,’ I say, ‘you don’t have anything to lose. Right? You’re leaving any day now.’

Ellis scoffs. ‘Mom’s temper is what there is to lose.’

‘Isn’t the truth more important?’

‘I guess I’m scared of getting in trouble. And I’m scared of making her m-m-mad at me when all I want to do is help.’

‘A boy who’s really scared of getting in trouble wouldn’t have followed me into the police station.’

There’s a glimmer in his eyes then; for a moment I think it’s biological, bioluminescence, but it’s actually only the reflection from the quivering sea; we’ve reached the isthmus. A smile. ‘I guess.’

‘Let me help you,’ I say again, lower and terse.

Ellis shuffles his feet. ‘Well, do we need to make a bl-blood pact, or something?’

I smirk, spit into my taut palm and offer it to him.

‘Ugh, gross,’ he says, giggling, but returns the favour and we slap our hands together and hold, and then we’re one. ‘What do we do first?’