“Oh, shit.”

“—but I’d already gotten this”—he held up the mini iPad—“and this.” He pulled out the BB-8 flash drive I’d given him.

“What’s on those?” I asked.

“Answers.”

I took that in. This was major.

“But wait,” I said, “they shot at you?”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “They missed.”

I thought we could go inside the house, but Jordan didn’t want to be there in case the police or military or whoever came knocking. Instead, I popped inside to fetch the laptop, and we walked to a tiny wooden garden shed at the back of our yard. As we approached it, I noticed some new little cuts and a scabby gash on his arms.

“What happened there?” I asked, nodding at the wounds.

“No biggie,” he said, not breaking stride. “Got into another fight.”

“Another fight? Jordan, what’s going on with you?”

He stopped and turned toward me. “Not that I’ve picked any of these fights, but just so you know, this one was with a boar.”

“I don’t care how boring someone is, Jordan. You’ve got to stop with the fights! Did this bore have a sword arm, too?”

Jordan took each of my hands into his, looked into my eyes, and said softly, “Maggie. It didn’t have a sword arm. It had a snout. Because it was a boar—the animal kind.”

“Oh, a b—”

“Yeah, and it charged me, so I punched it out.”

He showed me his knuckles, which were red and cracked.

“Well, I guess that’s one way to handle it,” I said. “I mean, if you’re super strong and all.”

“Seriously, we should go back and pick it up because I tenderized the hell out of that meat,” he said. “I could make a deeply flavored ragout.”

He opened the shed door. We had to move a few hoes and shovels onto the lawn just to squeeze inside, and the hot, damp, old wood made it feel and smell like a sauna.

“Really, if you wanted to get in close quarters with me, there are easier ways,” I said.

He gave me a long look as we sat hip to hip, our knees bent. Would this be our moment? He smiled and gave his head a vigorous shake.

“If I tried to kiss you now, a meteorite would come crashing down, and then we’d be trying to get to the hospital while still not knowing about Ishango.”

“Beats projectile vomiting.”

“That’s a point.”

“And who said I’d let you, anyway?”

He pulled his head back as if taking me in anew. “Well, okay, then.”

Jordan handed me the flash drive, and I plugged it into the laptop. Up popped a folder listing files, many with indecipherable names, and the ones we opened contained technical information that we couldn’t fathom.

“Wait,” Jordan said. “That.”

“‘Lowdown’?” I asked, reading the file name at which he was pointing.

“Dad told me that when he was a kid, he kept a journal called the Lowdown, and every time something significant happened, he’d say, ‘Gotta add this to the Lowdown.’”