the school’s buzzer sounded for curfew. On a program he once watched on the Public Broadcasting System, it said after twenty-four hours, the odds of a missing person ever being found dropped from 75 percent to 10 percent. It said that 78 percent of missing persons who are killed are killed within the first twenty-four hours. Emma had been missing for twenty-six.
He pulled the skin of his eyelid off his eye and released it. It had been over thirty-six hours since he’d slept, but his eyes wouldn’t stay closed. Even if they could, it wouldn’t shut down the system. The second he left his brain to its own unconscious devices, he’d be flooded with images of her. Wandering scared across the campus. Locked in a closet. Despondent in the armchair in his living room. Lost in the forest. Alone on a hospital bed.
The school had given him medication for his arm, a separated shoulder, Dr. Simon said, and the edges of his vision were losing focus, blurring his real and imagined worlds.
He rolled over and felt a biting pain in his shoulder. He would be in a cast for eight to nine weeks. When he landed, there she was, staring outward from the middle of the wall. It was a photo she probably didn’t even know existed, an outtake from a school photographer who had been covering the talent show on May fourteenth. She was biting her lip, nervously approaching the microphone. The photographer stepped in front of her, drawing her attention just long enough to freeze the moment forever. He stared back at her. She was still out there. She still needed his help.
He slid out of bed and pulled his spinning chair to the middle of the floor, moving with the details as he examined the wall.
He returned to the absolute basics. Emma had a predetermined pattern, an obvious rhythm to her life. She had lived in it with minimal interruption for almost three months. He’d built the board around this pattern. Thursdays were Compassion Lab, lunch, Groupthink lecture, assessment, dinner, evening mass, prayer, Aiden, sleep. For twelve Thursdays, she’d checked every box.
Then, two weeks ago, things started to change. The pattern had lost its consistency. She’d started sleeping, all the time. She doubled up on her assessments and skipped her meals. Less time with Aiden, more time with strangers. Still, she checked the boxes. She moved in rhythm.
Finally, last night, the pattern fully snapped. Instead of dinner, she made a phone call to a sex hotline. She dropped in on Zaza’s dorm, and rushed from school to the church. She brushed off Aiden. She disappeared.
Someone knocked on his door.
He held his breath. Post-curfew, no one was supposed to be in the halls. He waited for them to go away but they knocked again.
He rolled out of bed and flew wall to wall, pinning up the posters. He shoved his clothes under his bed and Emma’s journal with them, taking one deep breath before opening the door.
In the hallway, Neesha Shah was smiling.
“Hi,” she said. “You’re Evan, right?”
Every piece of information in his brain chased in a different direction, a thousand patterns trying to solve the S3 riddle. Why was Emma’s roommate at his door?
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“I had a question I wanted to ask you. Do you mind if I come in?”
“What question?”
“It’s going to take a second, is it alright if I . . .” She nudged the door forward.
“Whoa, what happened?” she asked, and pointed to his cast.
“I fell.”
“That’s it, you fell? Come on, dude, give me details.”
Evan shook his head. “That’s all.”
She surveyed the room. “You’ve got a lot of Jazz posters in here. I doubt John Stockton’s mom has this many. Here’s a harmless question: Do you feel pressure to surround yourself with traditional examples of masculinity, or do you really love the Utah Jazz that much?”
“I like the Jazz. What’s your question?” He stepped between her and the most fragile poster as she reached out to touch it.
“Right,” she said, leaning against his desk. “My friend Zaza, he was telling me that you were going around trying to find Emma.”
He didn’t answer.
“And I just wanted to know, how that’s going?”
“Good,” he said. “Why?”
“Just curious,” she said. “She was my roommate, you know?”
“Is your roommate.”
“Right. Yeah, is my roommate. Which is why I was kind of curious if you needed help?”
Evan stood taller. “Why?”
“Well, I figured she just ran away, and they were going to find her in a day or