Page 12 of What Boys Learn

That didn’t answer the question.

Chandra added, “Izzy was too—you know. Confident.” She dragged a dusty forearm across her forehead, leaving a spot of flour above one eyebrow. “I’m saying this all wrong—”

“It’s okay.”

“No, what I meant to say—well, I didn’t reallymeanto say it, but . . .”

I nodded and smiled.Take your time.

“Izzy wasn’t being bullied,” she said. “She was the bully. I mean, sometimes. She could be mean. To some boys, especially.”

Chandra looked at me expectantly, as if we were playing a game of charades and it was my turn to guess. But I had nothing to guess. Nothing to say.

The pizzeria door opened. A middle-aged woman in an apron called Chandra’s name. Our conversation was over.

Back in the car, I replayed Chandra’s cryptic comments, but I could make nothing of them.Izzy. Andsome boys. I could ask Benjamin, but he’d already been mute about Izzy. They weren’t even in the same grade. He’d never mentioned her—or any other junior or senior girl, for that matter. Summit was small enough for every student to recognize every other student on sight, but individual cliques inhabited separate universes.

Parked with the windows down, I googled for any news about the girls. Nothing. Our local newspaper covered charity balls and missing pets. No hard news. If a big-city paper like theChicago Tribunepicked up the story then we’d all know much more. But our town fathers wouldn’t want that, and I wasn’t sure I wanted it either, not if the girls’ deaths were sensationalized.

I was still staring at the phone when I realized it was Monday, 7P.M., the time every week that I called Willa, my late mother’s closest friend. We sometimes called her “Aunt Willa” because she was a surrogate aunt, for lack of a better term. I was her surrogate, too, because she had no one else. Her only daughter died at the age of thirty-eight from breast cancer. As Willa got older, she seemed more regretful about the past—not visiting me often enough during my foster care years, for example. But I didn’t blame her for that. It was enough that she’d tell me spontaneously, especially if she’d already had a drink or two, how much my mother had loved me. As for Ewan, she never mentioned him. I tried asking once,How old was he, when he started getting into real trouble?She said she didn’t remember. I didn’t believe it, but I didn’t push, either.

It was too hot to make the call while parked outside Giuliano’s. I needed to run the car and get the air-conditioning going, even if it meant wasting gas. With another half hour or more to wait until the pizza would be ready, I headed north on Green Bay Road, counting on the dense green trees of yet posher neighborhoods to bring the temperature down by at least ten degrees.

When I could finally put my window up, with the AC fully kicking in, I speed-dialed Willa’s number.

“Happy Monday,” I said, when she picked up. “Go for a walk today?”

“Are you kidding? In this heat?”

“Good point. I hope you’re drinking a lot of water.”

The weekly call was always quick, just enough time to establish that Willa wasn’t broiling to death in her Winthrop Harbor mobile home, or freezing if it was wintertime, or sinking into depression. I didn’t mind. I was grateful she let me feel useful. It’s what I would have done for my own parents, if I still had any, or even for my brother, if things had worked out differently.

“Work okay?” she asked.

“Oh, you know.”

“Pays the bills, right?”

“Some of them,” I said, not even managing a fake half laugh.

“But it’s almost summer, so that’s good. What do you have—a few more days? You deserve a break. Or were you doing a summer school thing for them?”

“Probably not.”

I couldn’t bring myself to mention the student deaths, never mind my abrupt dismissal. She’d find out soon enough, and by then, there would be less irresponsible conjecture. Instead we talked about a book she was reading and a TV series she was rewatching.

“It was boring then and it’s boring now,” she said.

“Then why do you keep watching it?”

“The actor.Whatshisname.” I waited as she cleared her throaty smoker’s cough and complained about how her memory was going. The AC was working but I lowered my window again just to take in the air: green, fresh. It smelled like garden parties and expensive brunches with fancy alcoholic drinks that didn’t count as unhealthy because they were light and fizzy and full of fruit. Like boutiques where women shopped for blood-red Italian leather boots and expensive sweaters that couldn’t go in the dryer. It smelled like not worrying about anything. The cost of private counseling for your child, if he seemed unable to make friends or process grief. The cost of a good lawyer.

When I reached the northern limit of Lake Forest, I turned in to the train station and made a U-turn, wishing I didn’t have to go back.

“That’s the worst thing about this.”

“About what, Willa?”