One of the cops looks in our direction. I grab Rose’s arm and pull her toward the parking lot. I need to tell someone what’s happening. If anyone can make me feel less freaked by all of this, it’s Rose. That’s when I spot a gray-haired woman in a black hoodie standing across the street. She’s next to the shrub where I saw the man arrested two days ago. The man who had a piece of paper.

My steps slow as Rose asks, “Meri, where are we going?”

The older woman meets my eyes with dark ones of her own and nods.

And I know I’m not imagining it. She isn’t standing there by coincidence. The way she meets my eyes tells me the woman is waiting for me.

Five

The woman in the black sweatshirt lifts her right arm. Then she turns. I see the flutter of a paper in her hand as she walks toward the corner of the tan stone apartment building and disappears out of view.

“Meri, what is going on? Are you feeling okay? You look really pale.”

I pull my eyes from the spot where I last saw the woman. Rose says my name again and tugs her arm out of my grasp.

“Sorry,” I say. Rose is looking at me as if I have lost my mind, and maybe I have. I glance back across the street. The woman has not reappeared. I shake my head, take a deep breath, and say, “Something happened today during last period. I think I might be in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

The policewoman starts in our direction. She isn’t looking at us, but . . .

“Can we talk somewhere that isn’t here?”

Rose glances back. A bright red car pulls up behind the police cruisers. “Sure,” she says, falling in step beside me.

“How did your finals go?” I ask as we cross the asphalt of the student parking lot, which by now is mostly empty of vehicles. I look for Isaac’s car. It’s not there.

Rose sighs. “My finals went fine, I guess. You know about geometry already. I think my essay for Comp was really good. There were two questions on the history final that I wasn’t positive about, but there’s no point in worrying about it now, right? How about you?”

“My essays were good, thanks to you, and gym was mostly painless.” I glance behind me as we turn down the block. The police cars are still parked in front of the school. No one is close enough to hear us talking. So I swallow hard and admit, “Things got strange after I turned in my art final. I got a pass for the nurse even though I wasn’t really feeling sick. . . .”

Rose says nothing as I tell her the story of going to the Technology and Research Center and doing a search for the string of letters. I leave out the part about where I got the paper. It all sounds weird enough without admitting to taking something from a stranger I encountered on an artistic scavenger hunt that my dead mother left behind.