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But it turned out to be worse than that: Tip wasn’t just gone. Nobody was looking for him.

I spent a day and a half trying to confirm what Jordan had told me. Jordan didn’t know where Tip had gone, of course. All he had was a message from Tip saying, I can’t do this anymore. When we went back to the apartment, a few things were missing from Tip’s room. We waited until Rory got back from his hookup—he’d gone out after I hadn’t shown up—but Rory didn’t know anything about Tip’s disappearance either.

It took me all the next day to track down Brother Gary and Red Alvin. They’d long since stopped answering my calls, and they weren’t in their usual spot, fingering each other at their desks. I finally caught them at the end of their shift; I’d been parked outside the sheriff’s station for almost an hour, waiting for the two jerkoffs to show. By the time they did, the air was so hot it shimmered above the asphalt, and all I could smell was exhaust. I reached them as they were getting out of their car.

Brother Gary stared at me like he had no idea who I was talking about, and about five seconds later, Red Alvin said, “Oh, the kid with the face?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Remember him?”

“Fuck off,” Red Alvin said. “We’ve got a lot going on.”

I looked at the Sonic bag in his hand. “I can tell. Getting that chili dog was a high priority.”

“What’s the matter with that poor young man?” Brother Gary asked.

“He’s gone. He disappeared. Nobody knows where he is. How the fuck do I have to say it? Do I need to write it in curly fries?”

“So he left.” Red Alvin drew a pack of smokes out of his pocket and then didn’t seem to know what to do because he was still holding the Sonic bag in his other hand. He finally used his teeth to grab one of the cigarettes. He spoke around it as he returned the pack to his pocket. “Kids do that, you know. He was having a rough time. It’s summer. He’s not working. He needed a change.”

“Time,” Brother Gary said like a human fucking fortune cookie, “heals all wounds, God willing.”

I stared at him until he closed his mouth. Little pinpricks of sweat showed under the band of his cowboy hat, and I thought I detected some dampness under the arms of his Matlock suit.

“What if something happened to him?” I asked. “What if he hurt himself?”

The jerkoffs traded a look.

“You need to find him, you pair of cumstains!”

“Fuck off,” Red said, on autopilot more than anything. “Look, we’ll call the parents, talk to his friends. What’s the big deal?”

For a moment, my throat was so tight I couldn’t speak. I remembered how it had been those first few weeks. The shock wearing off. Reality setting in. Starting to get my first glimpse of the fact that this was going to be the rest of my life.

“He’s a legal adult,” Brother Gary said. He raised a hand like he wanted to pat my shoulder. “And he told his friends he was leaving—”

“With a goddamn text message?”

“—and if he wants to be left alone, to have some privacy, well, that’s his right.”

“What if this has something to do with how he got hurt?”

Brother Gary wiped sweat from his face and said, “What’s that? Oh, right. Well, yeah, of course. The investigation.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

Red Alvin fished out a lighter, rolled a spark, and lit up. He got the cig going and said on a cloud of smoke, “He’ll come back.” He drew hard again, and the cherry flared. “You gotta stop taking this shit so personally.”

I made my way back to my car and watched them go inside.

And then I screamed and punched the roof of the car until the headliner tore.

That night, while Darnell iced my hand, I tried to think.

Brother Gary and Red Alvin were right, to a point. That was the complex reality of missing persons investigations. People—especially adults—had a right to disappear. So, law enforcement needed a reason to believe something bad had happened. And, more to the point, law enforcement had to give a rat’s ass. Usually, they gave a rat’s ass because somebody was putting pressure on them. Because somebody wanted the missing person to be found. Jordan was an angry, bitter wreck. Rory was too busy finding his next fuck.

But where were Tip’s parents?

I decided I wanted to find out.