Page 25 of What Boys Learn

“I don’t know,” came a voice from the other side of the car. “Seems like a lot of money.”

They’d been talking about the car for the last hour.

“Well, you gotta make up your mind.”

She whispered, “I’ve got to pee.”

There was no outhouse in this parking lot but she didn’t need one. Just darkness.

“Tell you what.”

She heard the dull thunk of the released hood, the squeak and rusty scrape of the rod propped to keep it open.

“Too dark to get a good look.”

“Should have thought of that before, when we were at the gas station. Anyway, you already looked, last weekend. You already drove it. What’s holding you back?”

“Cost, like I told you.”

She winced, hand on her lower belly, bladder full.Blue book, battery, hoses.

“I’m already giving you a discount, long as . . .”

Long as what? She didn’t ask.

“You know I’m good for it.”

Laughter. “I don’t care if you’re good for it. I care ifshe’sgood for it.”

Louder, she said, “I really can’t hold it. Be back in a sec.”

10

My deepest wish had been to return to Summit, but the next morning, I was glad for the first time that I didn’t have to. My mind felt shattered. I’d find myself standing in the middle of the living room, forgetting why I’d headed there in the first place. I put two eggs into a pot of water and set the pot to boil, and only remembered an hour later, when I smelled something burning. The water had evaporated.

Benjamin would be home from school by noon. I should have been wondering how his exam went, and whether this would be the first semester in his life when he got all As and Bs instead of mostly Cs. Instead, I was only wondering about his relationship with Izzy, if it was a relationship at all, and not some insignificant exchanges of flirting and teasing.

Around ten o’clock, needing to clear my head before I tackled my most important mental chore of the day, I tried going for a jog around our new neighborhood, but the heat and humidity were stifling. I felt like every person peeking out a window or pulling out of their driveway was looking at me as if to say,Do you belong here?Even a working woman in overalls, sliding open the side door of her panel van—GREEN THUMB PLANT THERAPY—turned to stare.

Other neighborhood women ran or speed-walked in the same kind of tank top and shorts I was wearing, but something about me must have given it away—I didn’t have perfect caramel highlights adding pizzazz to my dull brown hair, or my eyebrows lacked definition, or a crease was forming in my brow even though I was only thirty-seven years old. Unless I was just being paranoid, the way my own mother was when she claimed some of the local roads were confusing on purpose, to keep newcomers out. Mom wouldn’t have guessed I’d end up on this part of the North Shore, within a few blocks of Sheridan Road, the lakeside drive on which she frequently got turned around, attempting to drive the prettier route from Waukegan to Chicago.

In places, Sheridan Road just disappears. You have to look for signs, and where there are none, you have to trust that if you keep going in a generally north-south direction, with Lake Michigan nearby, you’ll stumble onto Sheridan again. I needed to feel the same modest confidence that we’d all understand soon what had happened to Sidney and Izzy. There were no dead ends except the ones of my own making.

None of my fellow teachers had texted with questions about my suspension or intel about any investigations, though I kept checking my phone. When it came to Izzy, Dean Duplass had provided a rough location, and she’d mentioned a note, and some sort of drug. I tried to think what something “more complicated” than suicide would be, and the only thing that came to mind were those cases of kids being pressured into injuring themselves by sadistic online groups. Maybe it wasn’t a group, only a person. But what kind of person would have so much influence on a girl as confident as Izzy? And how was it connected with whatever happened to Sidney, who’d simply overdosed? No, notsimply, I reminded myself. None of this was simple.

When I got home, I traded out my sweat-soaked tank top for a looser T-shirt and dug through the box I’d brought home from Summit. At the bottom I found a legal pad where I’d recorded what I’d remembered from the only conversation I ever had with Izzy, on the bench outside school. These weren’t privileged client notes, per se; she wasn’t yet a client. In my mind’s eye, I’d jotted only a few words. Once I had the legal pad on my knees, I saw there were more than a few words. I’d filled up a whole page. It was proof that she’d gotten under my skin. Proof that I thought she might be in trouble. Proof that I hoped she’d come to my office for a formal session, even if I feared that she wouldn’t.

The first word I saw, now, at the top of Izzy’s page wasManny.

That was Izzy’s jock boyfriend. I’d forgotten his name. Izzy said he was jealous. She admitted she did things at times tomakehim jealous, and when I’d asked her why, she didn’t avoid the question.

“Because I’m pretty sure we’re breaking up soon? Because I’ve . . . I don’t know . . . I’ve outgrown him? And when we fight then we make up, and that part is the only time I really feel close to him?”

The cops definitely needed to know about Manny.

But there, in the middle of my page of notes, was the more interesting confession. Izzy had also mentioned an “older man.”

I remembered asking, “Is your boyfriend jealous of this other relationship?”