“Things have gone crazy,” I murmur.

“Did I help any?” Mia asks.

“What?”

“About Shad Johnson. Did I help Dr. Elliott by seeing Shad with the judge and the sheriff?”

I reach down and squeeze her shoulder. “You helped a lot. I really appreciate it.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

“I wish I could, but-”

“You don’t trust me.”

“It’s not that. It’s just…”

She looks up, her eyes hurt. “If you really trusted me, you’d tell me.”

I sit beside her on the steps. “Drew’s situation is about more than a crime, okay? It’s political. The D.A. wants to convict Drew to prove that a rich white man won’t be treated any better than a poor black one in this town.”

“That sounds like a good thing.”

“If that were the real reason he was doing it, it would be. But it’s not. Shad wants to be elected mayor. And if what he really wanted was to bring this city back to life, I’d support him. But that’s not what he wants. He wants a stepping-stone to bigger things. He wants personal power. And he’s willing to railroad Drew to get it.”

Mia turns to me and smiles through her tears. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“No.”

She raises a forefinger and pretends to zip her lips. “It’s in the vault.”

“ Seinfeld?”

She laughs. Then she begins to cry again.

“Did you know Chris well?” I ask.

“Since nursery school.”

This doesn’t surprise me. I started at St. Stephen’s when I was four years old. Fourteen years later, most of the people I graduated with were children I’d played with in nursery school. I knew them as well as I knew my own family, and many of them I still do. That’s one of the things that makes this shrinking town worth saving. Some of the best parts of American life that have vanished elsewhere still thrive here.

“I still want to help,” Mia says. “I mean it. Even if you think it’s dangerous. School’s boring me to death. I’m just counting the days until graduation. I want to do something that matters. Especially now.”

I stand and pull her to her feet, then look hard into her eyes. “Who brought the LSD to the party?”

She goes still, her eyes locked on mine.

“Was it Marko?”

“I don’t know. Not for sure.”

“Would you tell me if you knew?”

“I don’t know.”

“What would keep you from it? Loyalty to your friends? To Marko? Or is it fear of Marko?”

She closes her eyes, then opens them again. “I’ll think about that, okay? I’m not sure myself.”

“Fair enough.”

“I’d better go now.”

I try to give her a smile of encouragement, but it fails.

“Will you hug me once more?” she asks in a small voice.

I start to, but something stops me.

“Never mind,” she says, her mercurial eyes quick to recognize my hesitation. She walks down the steps and to her car, not once looking back.

“Be careful, Mia.”

“Don’t worry. I can take care of myself.” She slams her door and pulls away, leaving me feeling like a complete asshole.

Closeted in my downstairs bedroom with Kate’s shoe box, I remove her journal again and prop myself up in bed. I already tried without success to view the contents of the three Lexar flash drives from the box. Each flash drive is protected by a security program that requires a password even to view file names and types. I’ll have to ask Drew tomorrow if he knows any of Kate’s passwords. If Kate stored intimate photos on the drives, maybe he was privy to that information, so that he could borrow the drives sometimes and view them. If not, I’ll have to hire a professional hacker to open the files.

After adjusting my reading light, I reread the opening passage of Kate’s journal, then wade into the body of the work. Her voice seems mature for her age, which I would expect from a senior bound for Harvard. But there’s something else here, an unguarded honesty I didn’t expect. I’ve been sent many manuscripts by published and unpublished writers over the years, and one thing I’ve learned is that people who write unflinchingly from the heart have the capacity to move us, where more polished craftsmen often fall short.

Kate’s journal begins in the early summer of last year. As I read the early entries, my hunger to know more about her more recent months causes me to skip ahead. What quickly emerges from the pages is a picture of a girl maturing very fast, changing from a bored overachiever concerned with the social politics of high school to a fully engaged young woman ready to ditch the standard plan in order to be with the man she loved. By the time I’ve skimmed to the halfway point, I find myself mourning Kate Townsend more deeply than I would have thought possible.

Realizing that I might have missed important information in my haste, I go back and start again, this time folding down the corners of pages that seem representative of the arc of her final year, and also of those that hold information that might be helpful in defending Drew.

There’s the early stuff, where Kate was still a part of the high school as most adults imagine it. Drew was recuperating from a knee injury, and thus home all day with Kate and Timmy.

6/3

Mia got voted head cheerleader today. Makes me wish I never even tried out. Well, she deserves it. She actually seems to give a damn about the stupid games, or at least about cheering. I’m not sure why I tried out except that it’s what you’re supposed to do. I’m such a retard. It’s too late to quit now though. Damn, damn, damn.

6/18

Steve and I went to the lake today. He was really moody. He keeps asking me what I’ll do if I get into Harvard or Princeton. As if I would turn one of them down! It’s so obvious that we’re going to split up when that time comes. I don’t know how I can keep playing this role until then. I already can’t remember what made me date him in the first place. I mean the physical element is still there, but aside from that, it’s hell. He can’t carry on a conversation that’s not about baseball or deer hunting or what so-and-so looks like. And he’s so VAIN. I don’t think he’s ever passed a mirror without looking into it. He’s always fixing his hair and asking me how it looks. He’s such agirl . Nobody would believe it, but he is. God, I want a guy I can talk to. I hope like hell the guys at college are different. The ones at colleges around here sure aren’t, though; they’re the Steves that left high school two or three years ago. Please let me get in early decision.

6/29

Played tennis with Ellen Elliott after work today (6-2, 6-1). She was so pissed. I wonder if they still make love. I really doubt it. Mom told me she heard that Ellen cheated on him a couple of years ago. Why would she do that? She’s got a guy most women would give their left ovary for and she’s cheating with some stupid tennis pro? Is there something I don’t know about Drew? Is he terrible in bed? Brilliant and interesting but incompetent between the sheets? No way. That can’t be it. They sleep in different rooms now. He says it’s because of his knee, but I’ll bet that dates back to the tennis pro. I bet I know why she did it, too. I’ve seen the insecurity in her, that need for constant reassurance. Like the breast implants.Way too big. Don’t ever let me be that pathetic.

7/1

Drew talks to me like an equal. None of the condescending crap I get from most adults around here. That drives me bat-shit . Most of them haven’t read a book in twenty years other than John Grisham or Nora fucking Roberts. The other day I made an allusion to John Updike and Mrs. Andersen thought I was talking about an actor. Hello?!!! Sometimes when his knee is really hurting, Drew asks me to read to him. I love it! He lies there on the sofa just looking at the ceiling. He lets me pick what I want to read, too. I read him a play by Paddy Chayefsky, one of Kesey’s books. Part of Goat. An essay by Ayn Rand. He asks me where I come up with this stuff. Nabokov would be too obvious, but once I tried to embarrass him by reading an incestuous sex scene from Anaïs Nin. He kept a straight face for about five minutes, then closed his eyes. When I got to the really explicit part, he started to snore. I really thought he’d fallen asleep! Bastard!