D y e

We’re back from the parade, and I’m fresh out of the shower. Chatham reaches for something on the floor. It’s a permanent marker, which she uncaps. “Come here.”

I lean to her, shirt still not buttoned. My hair is still damp from the shower.

She presses her lips to mine and shoves my sleeve up my left arm. The marker meets the scar on my inner arm. “It’s like when you’re little, at school. Or when you go to summer camp. You put your name on all your belongings.”

I watch as she writes her name onto my flesh with the fine-tipped marker. But she isn’t signing her name as much as she is drawing it, as if her name is the stuff of galleries and museums. The scroll in her C, the upstroke on the M . . . “So I belong to you now? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She giggles and glances up at me. “I never went to summer camp.”

When I laugh, and to be honest, even when I don’t, my cheek hurts a little, high on the bone, where Damien socked me. I’m bruised, and it all-out looks like I’ve been in a battle, but there’s no way we’re staying in tonight.

Chatham’s dress is this sleek little number, and it looks like it was custom-made for her, even though it’s probably fifteen years older than she is. It’s longer than I expected it to be—the hem hits just below her knees—but there’s a slit on the left side that climbs high on her thigh. The material is like velvet, and it looks purplish from some angles and dark red from others. She looks too damn good to keep behind this door.

I finger a curl. Fuck, I’m a lucky guy.

We head into the hallway. I lock the door and pocket the key because she doesn’t have a purse to put it in, and this isn’t exactly a backpack sort of event. That said, I’ve got the backpack hanging on my shoulder so I can hide it in the car during the dance. No way in hell I’m leaving it at the Churchill with Damien one wall away.

Then, we’re out the doors and heading to my SUV. Me, looking like I’ve gotten the sense knocked out of me, and Chatham, looking all classy.

A strange thought comes to me: if Rachel Bachton hadn’t been kidnapped all those years ago, would she ever have found herself slumming with a Sugar Creek guy? Going to a dance like this?

I imagine, if she were here, she’d be just like the other Northgate girls: untouchable and sort of bitchy. Not too good for us, but too high on themselves to know we’re all the same underneath it all, and that they should be nicer. It’s not their fault. They’ve been told they were special since before they could talk.

Some of the more affluent schools in the area rent banquet halls for their dances, but Sugar Creek’s events are held mostly in our gym, or in our commons. This one is in the latter, and we have to walk past the art hall to get there.

Chatham tugs on my hand and leads me to a glass showcase cabinet. In it are vases and clay pots, but it’s what’s spanning the back wall of it that she wants me to see: sixteen separate squares of clay relief, arranged together in four rows of four tiles in a four-by-four square.

“You finished it!” I pull her in closer, and although I have no idea what I’m looking at, what it means, or what it represents—I see streaks of red in the browns and whites, an amalgamation of different clays and varying glazes—I know it’s awesome because she created it.

“Look closer.”

Some portions of the squares are raised up, and others dip down. On some squares, there are shiny rivulets of blues and greens, almost like melted glass. Others are glazed off-white. It looks like the bird’s-eye view of some mysterious city. In the bottom right corner of each of the squares, is one letter of her name. I gauge each and every one of them: CHATHAM CLAIBORNE.

And then I see it: the ribbon dangling from the upper left corner of the upper left tile. Best in show.

I didn’t even know there was a show. I think she might’ve said something about it, but I’ve been so preoccupied with my own bullshit . . . I pick her up and twirl her around—the girl who says she loves me—because she’s the best in the whole school. She didn’t need to get a ribbon to tell me that.

This is what it feels like to be a normal guy . . . sans the bruise on my left cheekbone and how it got there, that is.

“Let me get a picture of you with your work.”

“No pictures.”

“Are you kidding? You look amazing tonight.”

“You look amazing.”

“We look amazing.”

“You come in the picture, too.”

So I do. I stand next to her and extend my arm for a selfie.

“Smile,” she whispers.

She likes my dimples.

She likes the flowers I picked for her.

I click the picture just as she’s up on her tiptoes to kiss me.

She’s not much into dancing, which I suppose I learned at the rave, but that’s okay, because I’m not either. It’s enough just to be there together. We grab a table near the back, where the rest of the wallflowers are gathered, and watch my teammates take over the dance floor. Novak cuts a rug, like he just caught the winning pass in the end zone.

“You coming over later?” Aiden pulls up a seat. Kai sits right on his lap, despite the fact she’s obviously pissed at him about something.

She crosses her arms over her hardly-contained chest and sticks her bottom lip out in a pout that could rival my sisters’. “He smells like weed and chocolate.”

Of course he does. It’s Aiden.

“Small gathering,” he continues. “Just the four of us.”

“Okay,” I say.

He grins. “And about twenty other people.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.” My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and look at the caller ID. Rosie. I decline the call.

“I’m so tired.” Chatham lies across the center console of the Explorer and pulls my right arm over her.

It’s an awkward angle, but the discomfort is well worth it because I’m still holding her. “If you’d rather skip Aiden’s, we can.”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

God, is she kidding? Houseful of people smoking chronic? Or tight quarters with Chatham? I stop at a red light and glance down at her.

She isn’t looking up at me, and I suspect her eyes might be closing fast. She worked early at the diner today, and it’s after ten now.

I brush her hair from her forehead, amazed at the fact that she dropped to the sand at our beach blanket last month, a complete stranger, and now, she’s all I think about.

A contented sigh escapes her. I could listen to sounds like that forever.

She can’t see me, but I’m smiling. I’m just so happy. And I’m draping a curl behind her ear, so I can see her pretty profile, and—

Wait.

There’s a patch of light hair there. At her temple.

The reflection of the red light casts it in an almost-pink glow, but I’m pretty sure . . . there’s something there . . . I flip through the events of today:

The letter from the U.

Damien at the Tiny Elvis.

Damien at the Churchill.

The brawl in the bathroom.

The hair color kit in the bathroom trash.

“My God. You’re blonde.”

“What?” She jolts up.

I’m looking at her, imagining what she must look like as an all-over blonde. “Wow, I just never—”

“What do you mean, I’m—”

“I saw the hair color kit in the bathroom, but I didn’t—”

“So?”

“I’m just surprised.”

But it’s more than a surprise. It’s another question mark. Alone, the dyed hair doesn’t mean much, but add to it everything else . . . 

Chatham has Savannah’s journal, her backpack, her money.

Savannah ran away, and even though Chatham said she came here looking for her sister, it’s apparent Chatham is hiding out, too.

Chatham needed an ID. Who leaves home without an ID?

I can’t find any information about Chatham Claiborne online. No profiles on any social media.

I can’t find a Chatham Stevenson, or even a Chatham Goudy, online either.

And she called the hotline . . . This is Chatham Claiborne. No one came to get her. No one followed up.

Is Chatham even her name? Could it be that Chatham Claiborne is a figment of her imagination? An alias I helped her perpetuate when I provided her with a driver’s license?

And the hair . . . If she’d left her hair light blonde, she might be harder to miss in a crowd. Would Chatham dye her hair to remain inconspicuous? Would she assume another name to keep herself hidden?

And then there’s Savannah and the girl at the rave. They kissed. Would Chatham pretend not to know her sister so even I wouldn’t know the truth of what they’d run away from?

I take a deep breath. “You’re blonde,” I say again. “I just never noticed.” I try to regroup, to pull it together. “I just never pegged you for—”

“For what?” She cranes back, crosses her legs away from me, and the way she’s looking at me . . . “Why does it matter what color my hair is?”

“It doesn’t.” My phone starts buzzing again. I don’t bother to check it before silencing it.

The light turns green.

She shifts in the seat, faces front. “Maybe you should just drop me off at home and go to Aiden’s, all right?”

“No. Not all right. I don’t see what the big deal is. So you colored your hair.”

“I like it dark.”

“So do I.”

“Just take me home, okay?”

I ease off the brake and inch ahead. I have three miles to make this right. “I don’t want to drop you off.”

“Of course, you want to come in.”

“Of course I do, but Chatham, I . . .” I think of the condom I stashed in my back pocket just in case and suddenly feel like a pompous ass for doing such a thing. “I don’t expect anything, all right?”

“This was a mistake. I don’t even know how long I’m going to be here, and . . . I don’t know what we were thinking, getting attached like this.”

I feel like I can’t even draw a full breath. “Chatham. What did I do?”

“Nothing, Josh.”

Josh. Great. She’s never called me what my mother calls me.

She won’t look at me now. “Let’s just forget it, okay?”

My phone buzzes again.

In my peripheral vision, I see it’s my mother. “I want to talk about this.”

“Your mother’s calling. Again.”

“So, she can leave a message. Again. Chatham, I want—”

She grabs the phone. “Hello.”

My heart sinks. She really wants this night to be over if she’s willing to answer my mother’s call.

“No, honey, it’s Chatham.” She looks at me and puts the call on speaker. “It’s Margaret. Something’s wrong.”