Page 6 of What Boys Learn

I couldn’t focus on the parking lot ahead. I didn’t want him following me or knowing where I lived. He’d have easy access to my old address, but not the new one we’d just moved to, a week ago.

When a slow-moving police cruiser came toward me from the direction of the parking lot’s main entrance, I jammed on the brake and waved my hand. The officer stopped and rolled down his window.

“There’s a man,” I said breathlessly once I had my window down, too focused on the rearview mirror to make eye contact. “He was threatening me.”

“Abby?”

I turned. “Robert?”

“You don’t sound thrilled to see me.” He half grunted, half laughed, the way he used to when he was feeling shy. “Someone bothering you?”

I gestured back toward the parking lot. “Jack Mayfield. Sidney’s father. Big guy next to a black—what do you call it?—maybe a BMW.”

“Oh,” Robert said. As usual, he sounded relaxed. “I know Jack. And that’s a Bentley.”

We both watched as Jack Mayfield brought a phone up to his ear. I wondered who he was calling. Board president. Chief of police. Maybe one of his famously well-connected siblings. The Mayfields co-owned a major baseball team and a trendy bar popular among Chicago aldermen.

“We’ll let him finish,” Robert said. As he’d told me more than once, a lot of good policing was just giving people time to come to their senses.

That aura of strong calm was the first thing that attracted me to Robert. It was the opposite of what I’d grown up with after my mother died and my father remarried. A house filled with bickering and cruelty.

“Your day going all right?” I asked him, trying not to sound as jittery as I felt.

“Only started. I’m on until nine.”

Without taking his eyes off Jack, he asked, “Where’s Benjamin, anyway?”

“He only had two exams today. I signed a slip to let him leave early.”

“I’m just asking because I wouldn’t want him wandering the parking lot while this guy is having a temper tantrum. He might want to take it out on the counselor’s kid.”

“You’re right,” I said, taking a deep breath, reminding myself that Robert wasn’t being nosy, just cautious. “Benjamin took his bike. He should be at the pool by now.”

“Public pool’s open already? I thought they opened Memorial Day weekend.”

“No, private. The Dartmoor.” Fancy names. There are no moors in our part of Illinois. No summits either. “It opened three weeks ago. He goes there as a guest. And yes, the Mayfields belong.”Everyone belongs, I resisted adding, except people like Robert, Benjamin, and me. “But I’m not worried about Benj while he’s there.”

“And how’s he taking all of this?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t find him at lunch. But I don’t think he knew Sidney very well.”

“Summit’s small. Two hundred students, tops?”

“Hundred sixty.”

“Probably only twenty girls in Benjamin’s grade, then.”

“Sidney was a year above Benjamin. But thanks for the math lesson.”

“You’re welcome.”

Both of us kept watching Jack Mayfield.

A pressure had been building in my head all day, and now I heard the first telltale ringing in my ears. My childhood had infected me with a dizzying distaste for crime scenes—the yellow tape and spinning lights, the endless questions. That volatile past felt closer at times like this. My finances were a mess. My employment was in jeopardy. And yet, who could think about money? We’d just lost a student. An incredible girl.

Smart, pretty, popular Sidney Mayfield, who thought she might become a psych major at her future college, either Vassar or Brown, hopefully.Which would you pick?

Sidney, who wanted to know more about helping people, the marginalized and misunderstood ones most of all—and of course, friends, too. Izzy Scarlatti, for starters. And some person Izzy was dating. The additional problem being: Izzy was dating more than one person.