“June to September, that’s four months,” he adds. “So maybe he’s successful for a while or thinks he’s kicked it. But then Cameron Curtis appears. Why her and not someone else? What do she and Shannan have in common?”

“They look a little alike,” I try. “Both girls have long dark hair parted in the middle and brown eyes. Both are more than pretty, too. They’re stunning. They’d stop you on the street.”

“I can see that. But he definitely didn’t run into Cameron at a bar. By then something had shifted. He sought her out.”

“He’d have to.” I sit forward in my chair, feel the hard plastic pressing into the back of my legs. “She’s not out in the world all that much, just school and home and sometimes to Gray Benson’s.” My temples have begun to throb dully. “It’s a crazy idea, but what if Cameron sought him out instead? Remember that poem from Cameron’s locker? The one that goes, I want to unfold. I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie?”

“Shit, you’ve memorized it.”

“Oh, stop. Just hear me out a minute. Cameron’s not just any fifteen-year-old. Her life has been a pressure cooker these last few months. The silence and lies at home, between her parents. And that’s only going to get worse, right? A baby’s coming, maybe her parents are divorcing—or, worse, not divorcing but just going on this way. She’d be desperate for a way out.”

“How about the free-clinic thing?” Will sounds as if he hasn’t quite caught up. To be fair, the theories have been flying pretty fast. “Where does that fit in?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the appointment was about independence, or started out that way at least. Maybe Cameron was just trying to carve out a life of her own. Having Emily for a mom can’t have been easy. It wasn’t all that long ago when she stopped taking film and TV roles. And even then, she stayed recognizable. Once she was even voted one of the fifty most beautiful people alive, right?”

“I’ve thought about that. I mean, we think those magazines are stupid, but Cameron probably wouldn’t. Most girls would never feel special enough with that to measure up against.”

“If Cameron wanted to break out somehow and make her own mark, how would she try and do that? What does that kind of unfolding look like, and how would that put her on a path to meet the kind of guy we’re looking at, a forest ranger or a military guy? With something to offer her, an escape route out of that glass box?”

“I don’t see it,” Will says.