“Kyle, do you know a girl named Penelope Gray?” his mother asked.

“Penelope?” He said the name like he had never heard it before. Who the hell named their kid Penelope? He didn’t know anyone named Penelope.

“Gray,” Sam Kovac said, coming farther into the room. “Her friends call her Gray.”

“Gray?” None of this was making any sense. Maybe he was still asleep and dreaming a dream within a dream.

“She goes to your school,” his mother said. “Dark hair—half-shaved, lots of piercings.”

“Gray,” he said. “Yeah. I know her. Why? Why would you wake me up to ask me that? What’s going on?”

Sam pulled the chair away from the desk and sat down.

“Kyle,” Kovac said. “Gray is missing.”

“Missing?” He felt stupid parroting everything back at them like he was some kind of retard. But none of this made any sense to him. They were questioning him like he was a suspect or something.

“No one has seen her since the night before New Year’s Eve,” his mom said.

“I haven’t seen her.”

“Have you heard from her?” Kovac asked. “A phone call? A text? Anything?”

“No.”

“What were you doing at the Rock and Bowl?” his mother asked in her cop voice. Kyle drew a breath to answer and she held up a finger in warning. “Don’t even think about lying to me. I saw you on the security video. This is a serious situation, Kyle. I don’t recall you asking my permission to go there. I would remember that. You know why? Because there is no way in hell I would have said yes.”

“I didn’t ask,” Kyle said defensively. “Because you weren’t here. You’re never here.”

His mother jumped to her feet looking like he had slapped her and knocked her off the bed.

“You have a cell phone,” she said, her voice trembling a little. “You know to call me before you go somewhere. I expect you to be responsible, Kyle. How did you get there?”

“What difference does it make?” he asked belligerently. He was busted and now he had to listen to his mother berate him like he was a little kid. He was almost sixteen. He wanted to be treated with some adult respect, but at the same time he knew breaking the rules didn’t earn him that respect.

“I asked you a question.”

“I got a ride with a friend.”

“What friend?”

“What does it matter?!” he shouted.

“You told me you were going to a movie that night.”

“So we changed plans. So what?”

“What’s going on?” R.J. asked, wandering into the room in his pajamas. His hair stuck up all around his head like he’d stuck his finger in a light socket.

“Nothing,” Mom said, steering him by the shoulders back into the hall.

“Then why is everybody yelling?”

Kovac leaned forward in the desk chair, resting his forearms on his thighs. “Kyle,” he said quietly. “Your mom’s upset because she worries about you. She’s seen a lot of shit go down. She knows the kind of bad things that happen off of one bad decision.

“We’re investigating a homicide right now, and I can guarantee you that victim didn’t start her evening out thinking that she would end up murdered. You know what I’m saying? Nobody thinks that’s gonna happen to them, but it does. We see it all the time. So don’t be too hard on your mom, okay?”

Kyle looked down and scratched at the leg of his sweatpants just to avoid Kovac’s eyes. Now he felt guilty. He loved his mom. He knew she had it tough, working and trying to raise him and R.J. more or less on her own. Most of the time he tried not to make her life harder.

“So,” Kovac said, moving on. “I don’t give a shit how you came to be at the Rock and Bowl. I need to know, did you see Gray there? Did you speak to her?”

“Yeah, I saw her.”

“Did you notice if anyone was bothering her, following her?”

“No.”

“The friend she was staying with said Gray got pissed off and left. Do you know anything about that?”

Kyle shrugged. “She doesn’t get along with a lot of people.”

“Why is that?”

“’Cause she’s not into phony bullshit jerks.”

His mother came back into the room, closing the door behind her. “What kind of girl is she?”

“I don’t know. She’s . . . different.”

What was he supposed to say? That she was wild? That she was a slut? He didn’t think either one of those things was true. He didn’t believe in putting labels on people, except dickheads like Aaron Fogelman.

“Is she into drugs?” Kovac asked.

“No,” Kyle said, frustration rising inside him. “I don’t know! Maybe she smokes a little. Why do you guys always think kids are into drugs? Not everybody is into drugs!”

“Did she have an argument with somebody that night?” Kovac asked calmly.

“I guess.”

“With who? What about?”

“Christina Warner,” he said. “They got into it.”

“Over what?” Kovac asked.

“Gray writes poetry. Christina was making fun of one of her poems, making fun of Gray. People were laughing. Gray got pissed off and she left.”

“Did you follow her outside?” Kovac asked.

“Yeah, but she was already driving out.”

“You didn’t speak to her.”

“No.”

“Did you see which way she went?”

“Toward the gas station.”

“Did anybody follow her?”

“Not that I saw,” Kyle said.

He watched them exchange a look, speaking without speaking. Kovac had said they were investigating a homicide. The victim was a female. Gray was missing.

“You don’t think she’s dead, do you?” he asked. “Gray gets pissed off, she goes and stays with one of her weird friends. She does that all the time.”

“Do you know any of those friends?” his mom asked.

Kyle shook his head. “They’re like musicians and poets and coffeehouse people. I don’t know them. They’re older. Gray’s not dead, is she?”

“We don’t know,” his mom said. “Right now, we don’t know.”

“You think she is,” Kyle said. He felt the bottom drop out of his stomach like he’d just gone over a big hill on his bike. He’d never known anyone who was killed. That just seemed crazy, impossible. Kids his age didn’t get killed except in car crashes and stuff like that, or kids who were in gangs. He didn’t know anybody like that.

“Kyle, are you friends with Gray on Facebook?” Kovac asked.

“Yeah.”

“Can we go on the computer and have a look?”

They went downstairs to the family room and Kyle sat down at the desk and brought the computer to life. He logged on to his Facebook page. He felt self-conscious having his mom and Kovac looking at it. His profile picture was a photograph of the door to his bedroom, the Samurai warrior he had painted. What came up in his news feed were posts from pages he followed, pages about mixed martial arts and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, tattoos and comic books. He clicked on the search line and typed in GrayMatter.

Gray’s page came up. Her profile picture was a drawing Kyle had done for her: herself as a comic book character. He had drawn her as angry and sharp featured with bold, dark lines and large, snapping black eyes. She had only seventeen friends. She liked twenty-two pages. Her last post was four days past—the last day Kyle had seen her. It was a poem.

“Liar”

Two-faced liar

Pants on fire

You fool everyone

But not me.

I know what you are

You’re nobody’s star

I’m gonna rat you out

Wait and see.

Fine and upstanding

You’re very demanding

Your standard is high

I know.

But wait ’til they see you

The liar, the real you

You’re gonna fall down

So low.

I’m gonna take you down

You know.

24

Three hours of sleep. A shower. A shave. A cup of bad coffee from 7-Eleven. Days like this, cases like this, a voice in the back of his head grumbled, You’re getting too goddamn old for this.