“Staying home,” he answers, quick and suspicious. “I’m not feeling great, to be honest, and I thought maybe you would want to go home in case it hits you too.”
What’s he hiding? It can’t have anything to do with Jake or the text, can it?
“Good talk, bro. We gotta go.” Kolt picks up my phone and thumb-stabs the screen to end the call.
Two seconds later, it rings again, and I grab it away before Kolt can turn this into another group conversation. “I’m not coming home,” I say. “I’m going to find Jake.”
There’s a few seconds of silence before Dad answers, his tone tight and tense. “Absolutely not.”
“That’s not your call to make,” I say.
“Absolutely not,” he says again, as if repeating the words will make me obey. I’m used to him trying to protect me, but he’s never sounded this afraid.
“I’ll be safe,” I promise. “But I’m not coming home, and if you call again, I’m not answering.” Then I hang up and turn my phone on silent. I’ve had enough of men trying to tell me what to do or not do tonight.
I’m looking for a place to stash my phone when a small white triangle catches my eye. Something’s stuck in the space above the ashtray.
I tug at the corner of the paper and unfold it to find some indecipherable scrawl on the back of a McDonald’s receipt. Jake hates McDonald’s. Plus, the handwriting isn’t his, and it’s pretty much impossible to read.
“Do you know what this is?”
Luke shakes his head, and Kolt says, “Looks like a receipt, genius,” but I pocket it, anyway. Maybe if I tell the police I have new evidence, they’ll actually talk to me.
When we pull into the gym parking lot, Kolt swings his door open before he’s even in park. “Okay, so, retracing his steps. We all went in the locker room for a minute to deliver the trophy. I can get us in.”
Luke and I watch as he shimmies through a high window, and thirty seconds later, the door groans open.
“How long have you been doing that?” I ask.
“Since sophomore year. Caruso showed us.”
“The creepy custodian showed you how to break into the school?”
I shiver, but Kolt only shrugs. “He’s not creepy. Just socially awkward or something. And be nice. He might still be here.”
Luke and I follow Kolt through the maze of stalls and showers and lockers. From the tile to the smell to the buzz of the lights, it’s both different from and the same as our locker room across the gym. Familiar, yet somewhere I’ve never been.
We search Jake’s basketball locker for any hint or sign or anything significant, then make our way to his regular locker and do the same thing. Between Kolt and me, we can patch together Jake’s full schedule, and even though the classrooms are locked, it feels significant to walk the halls as he would have walked them.
But, of course, that doesn’t mean actual evidence, and pretty soon we’ve walked the whole school.
“Now what?” Kolt asks. “We go back to the arena where we played the championship game? I mean, we know he made it back to Ashland, but I guess that makes sense….”
“Not yet,” Luke says. “I felt closer to him in the gym. Let’s go back there.”
The gym is eerie in the glow of the one emergency light in the corner. Without another word, we sit in a circle at center court: Kolt splayed out and leaning back on his hands, me with my knees tucked to my chest, and Luke chewing on his bottom lip so quickly I know he’s working through something in his mind. Is he discouraged that his idea didn’t work? Wondering what was behind all the locked doors we passed? When he finally speaks, his words are soft but clear.
“ ‘In a dark place we find ourselves, and a little more knowledge lights our way.’ ”
“What?” Kolt asks. “Wait, are you quoting Yoda again? You know this isn’t Star Wars, right? We’re not your princess and your Wookiee or something.”
“Of course,” Luke says. “But I’m still a Luke trying to save somebody I care about. And Yoda helps me think.”
“It helps me too,” I say. “And we are a little bit of a Rebel Alliance. But we still need a plan.”
“Not a plan,” Luke corrects. “A little more knowledge.”
“To light our way.” Kolt doesn’t sound totally convinced, but he shrugs and decides to go with it. “It actually is easier to think in here. Maybe because we don’t have Seth distracting us with his drama.”
Kolt’s right, but his words catch inside me. My boyfriend—if that’s still what he is—is not drama. Something is up, and the timing of his call so soon after Jake’s text makes me wonder if they’re related. Does Seth know where Jake is? Has something happened and he doesn’t want me to see? Doesn’t want me to worry?
Everything is upside down; somehow Seth has become the ghost I can’t stop thinking of when all I want to do is focus on Jake.
“Seth is trying to do what’s right, same as you,” I say.
“You really believe that, don’t you?” Kolt asks. “Even after that crap he pulled with the police.”
I feel my eyes narrow. “I’m still not sure who to believe on that one.”
“Me! You should believe me. Seth told them I picked up Jake at midnight that night. I don’t know if he grabbed the wrong cup at the party or made up a story or what, but that’s straight-up not true. I never saw Jake after the locker room.”
I hadn’t thought about it before, but Kolt’s right. I’ve trusted Seth so completely that I had assumed Kolt was the one bending the truth to keep himself out of trouble. But what if Seth felt so bad about not checking in on Jake like he’d promised me he would that he made it all up? And then he couldn’t back down and had to repeat the lie to
