“You’ve got a bad feeling,” she says. “I can tell by the look on your face.”

Greg gets up and collects our trash. Mom puts her hand on my arm. “This has nothing to do with Ms. Sullivan, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Maybe they found her.” Skylar says it like it’s bad news. Not good—like she’s alive and well.

I try to keep my mind from going there, but of course she’s right. Bad news is exactly what I’m thinking. The worst, the very worst. My heart speeds up. I feel dizzy.

Greg comes back from the trash can and jingles his keys. The mood at DQ has changed. People are heading for their cars. The baby starts to cry again.

We get into the truck. “Can Skylar sleep over?” I ask.

“If it’s okay with her mother,” Mom says.

When we get home, Skylar runs to her house and comes back with pajamas and a toothbrush. We go to my room and close the door.

“It’s sure to be on News at Eleven,” Skylar says.

I look at my iPad. “It’s only a little after ten now.”

We put on our pajamas and brush our teeth. That takes less than five minutes.

Skylar goes to my window. “It’s so odd to look at my house from your house. I can see Pot Head watching TV. It’s like he’s a doll in a doll’s house.”

The front door opens below us. Mom tells Greg good night. He gives her a hug and a kiss and says not to forget that they have a dinner date Friday. “At my place.”

Mom stands on the front steps and watches Greg drive away. When the taillights are out of sight, she comes inside.

“Why don’t they get married?” Skylar asks.

“It’s not Greg—he wants to marry her, he talks about it all the time in a joking way, but she pretends not to hear him. Sometimes I think she’s scared he’ll turn out like my father and walk out on her.”

“Greg? No way. He’s crazy about her. My mother would give anything to find a guy like him.”

Somewhere in the night we hear sirens again, faint now, far away, just a little louder than the cicadas. Everything we haven’t talked about comes rushing back. Ms. Sullivan, the fire engines, ambulances, and police cars we saw on Route 203.