“Well, you know him better than I do, so to quote the infallible boys in the world’s greatest pop group, ‘You’re the One,’” which was this super-cheesy song I was way too old to love, but loved nonetheless.

“I want to disagree with you, but that is such a great song.”

“You’re. The. One. ‘You’re the one that I choose. The one I’ll never lose. You’re my forever. My stars. My sky. My air. It’s you.’”

We laughed, and I changed the radio station and thought it was over, but then Daisy started reading me an Indianapolis Star story from her phone. “‘Russell Pickett, the controversial CEO and founder of Pickett Engineering, wasn’t home when a search warrant was served by the Indianapolis police Friday morning, and he hasn’t been home since. Pickett’s lawyer, Simon Morris, says he has no information about Pickett’s whereabouts, and in a press conference today, Detective Dwight Allen said that no activity on Pickett’s credit cards or bank accounts has been noted since the evening before the raid.’ Blah-blah-blah . . . ‘Allen also asserted that aside from a camera at the front gate, there were no surveillance cameras on the property. A copy of a police report obtained by the Star says that Pickett was last seen Thursday evening by his sons, Davis and Noah.’ Blah-blah-blah . . . ‘estate just north of Thirty-Eighth Street, lots of lawsuits, supports the zoo,’ blah-blah-blah . . . ‘call the police if you know anything,’ blah-blah-blah. Wait, how are there no security cameras? What kind of billionaire doesn’t have security cameras?”

“The kind who doesn’t want his shady business recorded,” I said. As we drove, I kept turning the story over in my head. I knew some edge of it was jagged, but I couldn’t figure out which one, until I snagged a memory of eerie green coyotes with white eyes. “Wait, there was a camera. Not a security one, but Davis and his brother had a motion-capture camera in the woods by the river. It had, like, night vision, and it would snap a picture whenever something walked past—deer or coyotes or whatever.”

“Holmesy,” she said. “We have a lead.”

“And because of the camera at the front gate, he couldn’t have just driven off,” I said. “So either he climbs over his own wall, or else he walks through the woods down to the river and leaves from there, right?”

“Yes . . .”

“So he could’ve tripped that camera. I mean, it’s been a few years since I was there; maybe it’s gone.”

“And maybe it’s not!” Daisy said.

“Yeah. Maybe it’s not.”

“Exit here,” she said suddenly, and I did. I knew it was the wrong exit, but I took it anyway, and without Daisy even telling me to, I got in the right lane to drive back into the city, toward my house. Toward Davis’s house.

Daisy took out her phone and raised it to her ear. “Hey, Eric. It’s Daisy. Listen, I’m really sorry, but I’ve got the stomach flu. Could be norovirus.”

“. . .”

“Yeah, no problem. Sorry again.” She hung up, put her phone in her bag, and said, “If you even imply diarrhea, they tell you to stay home because they’re so scared of outbreaks. Right, okay, we’re doing this. You still got that canoe?”

THREE

YEARS BEFORE, Mom and I had sometimes paddled down the White River, past Davis’s house to the park behind the art museum. We’d beach the canoe and walk around for a bit, then paddle back home against the lazy current. But I hadn’t been down to the water in years. The White River is beautiful in the abstract—blue herons and geese and deer and all that stuff—but the actual water itself smells like human sewage. Actually, it doesn’t smell like human sewage; it smells of human sewage, because whenever it rains, the sewers overflow and the collective waste of Central Indiana dumps directly into the river.

We pulled into my driveway. I got out, walked to the garage door, squatted down, wriggled my fingers under the door, and then lifted it up. I got back into the car and parked, while Daisy kept telling me we were going to be rich.

The garage door exertion had gotten me sweating a bit, so when I got inside I headed straight for my room and turned on the window AC unit, sat cross-legged on my bed, and let the cold air blow against my back. My room was a cluttered mess, with dirty clothes everywhere and a spill of papers—worksheets, old tests, college pamphlets Mom brought home—that covered my desk and also sort of spread out along the floor. Daisy stood in the doorway. “You got any clothes around here that would fit me?” she asked. “I feel like you shouldn’t meet a billionaire in a Chuck E. Cheese uniform, or in a shirt stained pink by your hair, which are my only outfits at the moment.”

Daisy was about my mom’s size, so we decided to raid her closet, and as we tried to find the least Momish top and jeans combo available, Daisy talked. She talked a lot. “I’ve got a theory about uniforms. I think they design them so that you become, like, a nonperson, so that you’re not Daisy Ramirez, a Human Being, but instead a thing that brings people pizza and exchanges their tickets for plastic dinosaurs. It’s like the uniform is designed to hide me.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Fucking systemic oppression,” Daisy mumbled, and then pulled a hideous purple blouse out of the closet. “Your mom dresses like a ninth-grade math teacher.”

“Well, she is a ninth-grade math teacher.”

“That’s no excuse.”

“Maybe a dress?” I held up a calf-length black dress with pink paisleys. Just awful.

“I think I’m gonna roll with the uniform,” she said.

“Yeah.”

I heard Mom drive up, and even though she wouldn’t mind us borrowing clothes, I felt a jolt of nervousness. Daisy saw it and took me by the wrist. We snuck out to the backyard before Mom made it inside, and then picked our way through a little bramble of honeysuckle bushes at the edge of the yard.

It turned out we did still have that canoe, overturned and full of dead spiders. Daisy flipped it over, then wrenched the paddles and two once-orange life jackets from the ivy that had grown over them. She swept out the canoe by hand, tossed the paddles and the life jackets into it, and dragged the canoe toward the riverbank. Daisy was short and didn’t look fit, but she was super strong.

“The White River is so dirty,” I said.

“Holmesy, you’re being irrational. Help me with this thing.”

I grabbed the back part of the canoe. “It’s like fifty percent urine. And that’s the good half.”

“You’re the one,” she said again, then heaved the canoe over the riverbank into the water. She jumped down the bank onto a little peninsula of mud, wrapped a too-small life vest around her neck, and climbed into the front of the canoe.

I followed her, settled into the rear seat, and then used the paddle to push us out into the river. It had been a long time since I’d steered a canoe, but the water was low, and the river was so wide I didn’t have to do much. Daisy looked back at me and smiled with her mouth closed. Being on the river made me feel little again.

As kids, Daisy and I had played all up and down the riverbank when the water was low like this. We played a game called “river kids,” imagining we lived alone on the river, scavenging for our livelihood and hiding from the adults who wanted to put us in an orphanage. I remembered Daisy throwing daddy longlegs at me because she knew I hated them, and I’d scream and run away, flailing my arms but not actually scared, because back then all emotions felt like play, like I was experimenting with feeling rather than stuck with it. True terror isn’t being scared; it’s not having a choice in the matter.