of God, so that you will be able to sit firm against the devil. —Matthew 7:20.
“Emma does this everywhere, I don’t get it.”
When she looked up, Evan was locked onto her with an off-balance stare. “It’s wrong,” he said. “It’s not in Matthew.”
“Do you seriously have the Bible memorized?”
“No. But it’s not a story about Jesus,” he said. His voice was quiet and excited.
“Why would that matter?”
“Read it out loud.”
“Matthew. Matthew, seven twenty. Seven twenty . . .” She readjusted on her chair, her eyebrows taking the slow dive from confused to concerned. “P.m. Seven twenty p.m. Matthew. Seven twenty p.m. Ma . . . Monday.”
Evan nodded and her heart leapt.
“Seven twenty p.m. Monday. But where would she . . .” She squinted at the image. There was a tiny drawing, the lines of a basketball sketched into the o’s. “A basketball? The basketball court?”
Evan pointed to the end of the sentence. “I looked up the verse. She got one of the words wrong. God doesn’t sit firm against the devil. He stands.”
The words hit Neesha in the gut.
“The stands, at the outdoor court,” Zaza said. “It’s a meeting place.”
Neesha held up the clip. “She did this everywhere. I’ve seen these—she was leaving clues. She must have assumed that someone was going to find this, and . . .” She stopped herself. “And we missed it. I missed the meeting place. This was three days ago.”
But Evan was already shaking his head. “Except you said it yourself. Emma draws those everywhere.” He took another Holy Life from his bag. “I was thinking last night about the phone calls. It didn’t make sense with her pattern. Why would she call sex people? And why would she go out of her way to use that phone booth? It didn’t make sense. Unless there was another reason.”
Neesha thought for a moment. “Like leaving behind a message.”
He opened to a page near the back, where Emma had scribbled: On the rock, I will build my home; and the Gates of Hades will not overcome it. —Thessalonians 9:30.
Neesha looked at him. “I’m assuming that’s not from Thessalonians?”
Zaza looked over her shoulder. “Thursday at nine thirty? The night she went missing?”
Evan shifted in his seat. “That’s the last part I couldn’t understand. When I called the sex people, Yanis kept asking me how many times I did it, even though I only called once. Which means someone else was still calling the number.”
“Someone like Emma,” Neesha said. “She wrote a message on my door, too. Which means—” She held up the magazine. “This is for tonight, right after mass.” She felt a lump form in her throat. “We’re gonna meet Emma tonight.”
“Maybe,” Evan said.
“Maybe?”
Evan was quiet.
“Or we’re going to meet whoever Emma was supposed to be meeting,” Zaza said, still staring at the magazine clipping.
Neesha returned to studying the message: On the rock, I will build my home. There were small, upside-down arches over the word home, with a line jutting directly from their center. “What are those things, like, a wave . . . on a stick? The pool?”
Evan shook his head, smiling for the first time. “It’s not a wave. It’s a cross. And Peter doesn’t build a house. He builds a church.”
Aiden.
“I DON’T GET IT.”
Katie, the girl with the wire-rimmed glasses, sighed. It was dark in the back of the B-School Library, and Aiden had to squint to see her. With evening mass starting in twenty minutes, they had to cower out of the light to avoid drawing any attention. “The fact that these professors control the means of production, and students don’t own the products of their own labor, makes us an exploited class.”
“But we chose to come to school here.”
“Forced autonomy is not autonomy. The idea is, a system is corrupted when—”
“We don’t have time for Marx, Katie,” Peter said. “Let’s just say, what the school is doing to us is bad.”
Katie shrugged. “Sure. ‘Bad.’ Breakdown of social order. Same thing.”
“I’ve got something.” One of the debaters, Lauren, piped up from behind them. She held a flimsy square of newspaper. “Black Rock Gazette, 1960. ‘The Black Rock fire department was dispatched after signs of smoke were reported at the Griou Research Center in Wah Wah Springs . . . before the department could locate the facility, the fire was dealt with . . .’” She read ahead. “Shit. It’s nothing.”
“No, that’s good,” Peter said. “That’s a record that it actually existed. Save it for background.” Peter crouched over a plastic bin.