At the name, Jaron’s face lights up with full interest. “What sort of problem?”

“He came after me. Except he didn’t come direct. I think he went after Nehemiah to send a message to me.”

“What did he want with you?” Jaron asks.

“I don’t know.”

Jaron arches an eyebrow with skepticism and distrust. His eyes harden about the edges. His walls prepare to rise again.

“I have a theory, though.” I scramble to keep Jaron open to hearing me out and talking. “I think it had something to do with Marcel.”

“It always does.” Jaron wipes his palms along his pant legs.

“I’m not even sure what I did to rub her raw.” I chance a step closer to him.

“You get in her business?”

“Not really. Just let her know that I knew.”

Jaron laughs, a dry, bitter cough. “You might as well have threatened to make a run at her. She’s paranoid. And ruthless.”

“That how you got on her radar?” I ask.

Jaron starts telling his story, which might as well have begun “once upon a time. . . .” I picture his story in my mind as he speaks, a scene opening with how . . .

. . . the sun beamed down on them from a clear sky. School had been in session only a few weeks, but the way the warm days kept coming, summer threatened to never end. The playground was a roiling sea of red or navy blue polo shirts and khaki shorts. The sixth-grade teachers struggled to wrangle their students, still not used to the discipline of the school routine. The middle schoolers poured out of the double doors, erupting onto the courts with yelps and furious intent. Ms. Erickson had recess duty. She swung a set of jump ropes with a sixth grader as Brionna traded off with some of the girls doing double Dutch. A substitute teacher wandered the periphery of the basketball court, making time to chat up Mr. Blackmon. He hovered about, not daring to take his eyes from his charges who walked the line.

Three teachers covered the playground, but the playground can be a large place, full of shadows. For those who knew how to stalk, there was plenty of room for predators to hunt.

A group of girls stood in a semicircle. The twins held court at the double doors as if they couldn’t wait for recess to be over. An alcove over by the kindergarten wing of the building hid another set of double doors. Like the main double doors, no one could enter without a key card, but Marcel haunted its shadows, keeping a careful eye on the recess activities. From her vantage point, she couldn’t see the domain of the gossip girls: the swings or the picnic-bench area where clusters of girls congregated to gossip. However, she could see the basketball court and, more important, the games that went on behind the mammoth playground equipment.

The massive fort divided the yard: wide ramps, steel decks, a maze of tubes, an enclosed double slide, a bridge that led to a tower, and a rock wall. All recycled plastics surrounded by a mat of wood chips and cut-up bits of tires. Safety first. Behind it was a whole other world as kids could play as rough as they wanted out of the sight of the teachers. Only the screams of raised ruckus drew any notice.