Nolan stands in my doorway, looking terrified. There’s no other way to describe it. His eyes have gone hollow, and his skin is pale, and his hands are trembling. There’s this desperate yearning in his eyes, and I think it struck Joe as well, because he doesn’t object. This is clearly an emergency.
“Are you okay?” That’s my first thought, over anything else, but then I feel ridiculous because he’s obviously not okay.
Nolan, now in the house, seems to calm slightly. “They took my phone. I would’ve called first but they took it. They took everything.”
Joe gives me this look over Nolan’s head like he’s worried about his behavior, or what he might do, so I sit him at the table. “You’re not making any sense, Nolan. Who took everything?”
He shudders, then finally seems to realize where he is, and who is listening. “The email with the picture came from the library,” he says, lowering his voice. “The library they think I work at. They think I sent it from there.” His words are fine as razors. His eyes wide and pleading. “They took all my electronics, to check.”
“Oh.” I open the fridge to get Nolan a drink, then look at Joe, still standing in the foyer, watching us, and give him this eye signal like, he needs to leave us.
Are you sure? he mouths, and I nod. We need to trust each other, and he is. He’s trying.
“I’ll just be in my room, if you need me,” he says loudly, like he’s speaking to make sure Nolan hears.
I wait until Joe disappears down the hall, but he leaves his bedroom door wide open.
“Tell me what happened,” I say.
“They think it was me,” he whispers, and my hand shakes as I pour the can of soda into a glass in front of him. I tighten my grip so he doesn’t notice. Nolan’s on edge, coming apart. Marco’s words briefly echo in my head: Be careful. I remember him telling me about Nolan and his brother’s girlfriend. A motive. A quick zing of unease passes through me, but I shake it off.
Marco doesn’t know him. None of them do.
“They think I sent it. That I know where Liam is. What happened to him. But I don’t.”
I nod. “I know.”
He looks up, his eyes meeting mine, our faces inches apart. “Do you believe me?” he asks, and it’s so open and pleading that I think I could ruin him with one word.
“Yes,” I say, without hesitation. It isn’t about evidence, or proof, or a balance of pros and cons. It’s simpler than that. It’s Nolan, and I believe him.
Most people see something, some evidence, and then they believe. But I think maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe you believe first, and then it changes you, so you can see what else is possible.
Nolan stays until midnight, talking at my kitchen table. He claims he’s rarely even been to the library. I used to go plenty, meeting up with study groups in the fall. Marco and Lydia used to head there after school sometimes, and I’d join them. College kids, home for the weekend, earbuds in to block out our noise. I don’t recall ever seeing Nolan there. The library is built into a slope and set up for privacy—books with reading areas on the main level, cubbies with computers, all arranged at angles around the downstairs.
It could’ve been anyone. They’re focusing on him because they were looking at him to begin with. But I also get a chill, realizing that someone nearby sent that picture. If not Nolan, then still someone.
I haven’t realized how much time has passed until Joe comes out of his room and says, “I think it’s time to go. As long as everything’s okay.” He looks at Nolan then. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” Nolan says, pushing back from the table. “Sorry. I’m sorry for intruding.”
“It’s all right. Get home safe.”
I walk him to the door and we linger in the doorway, like neither of us is sure what to do now, to break the moment. And also, Joe’s watching. So I just go with my gut and weave my arms around Nolan’s shoulders, pulling him close. I can feel the sigh that escapes when his arms circle me back.
“I can email you, when I get to school tomorrow,” he says.
“Okay.”
I watch him walk all the way to his car, and I watch until the car drives down to the end of the street, just to be sure of him.
When I close the door, I turn around, and Joe’s there, arms crossed over his chest.
“It was an emergency,” I say.
“I know, I could tell. But, Kennedy, I heard what he said—weren’t you both just at the library together?”
I look away, remembering the lie, and his face darkens.
“I need to know, Kennedy, how you know him. I need to know what’s going on. The trust has to work both ways here.”
I fidget with the braid running down my back. This isn’t how I was planning to explain this to him. But the panic is tightening something in my chest. Something’s happening, and we’re running out of time, and if I can’t trust Joe, then who do I really have left?
“We met because of something we both found,” I say.
“I’m not following.”
“There was a signal,” I say. “On Elliot’s satellite dish.”
Joe blinks slowly, trying to process. “What are you talking about?”
“The dish, pointing out at space. Here, wait.” I race to my room and fish through my backpack for the flash drive. It’s in my hand, extended toward Joe, as I walk toward him. He hasn’t moved from his spot in the hall. “Here. It’s all here. Last weekend, I pulled a signal. Only it’s coming through where no signal should be. I’ve been trying to see if I can replicate it.”
He stares at the flash drive in my hand but doesn’t take it. “Back up a second. You’ve been by the house?”
I push the flash drive at his chest again. “Joe, you’re not listening. There’s a signal. And Nolan’s been receiving it, too.”
He doesn’t answer. I wonder if he’s debating something. If he believes me. I hold the flash drive in my open palm, begging him to see.
“I know who he is, Kennedy.”
“What? Who?” My arm drops to my side.
“Nolan. Nolan Chandler. I know who he is, what happened to his family.”
“This has nothing to do with—”
“This has everything to do with this. Listen to yourself. Two people receiving a signal. Two people who—”
He stops talking, turning to face the window.
Quietly, I ask, “Two people who what, Joe?”
He fixes his eyes on me then, his jaw moving softly side to side. “Two people who have suffered a terrible loss, Kennedy. Two people who have endured something horrible, much younger than is fair. Two people who both want something desperately.”
My hand tightens on the flash drive, gripped in my closed fist. “What is it, exactly, that you think I want?”
He opens his mouth, then closes it again. “Well, for starters, you don’t want me to sell that house.”
I shake my head. “You think I’m lying? To keep you from selling the house?”
He runs his hand through his hair and winces. “I don’t know. I’m just saying. You don’t want to sell the house, and now there’s apparently a…” He searches for the word. “A signal? From space?” He says it like it’s impossible. Incredulous. And coming from him, it suddenly sounds that way. Like everything we’ve been doing is for nothing.
“What happened to trust, Joe?” Was it just a word, an empty promise, to keep me in line?
“It has to be earned. Look, Kennedy, I believe that you believe this, I do. But—”
“Elliot could tell us what this all means. That’s why I went to see him.”
“Kennedy!” he yells. I’ve pushed him to yelling.
“Please, Joe. Please, I know you can bring this to the college. I know there are people who can read it, who can figure out if there’s something there.”
“Kennedy, you don’t know what it’s like there, at the school right now….”
I frown, confused. “What’s it like?”
“They’re reeling from…” From the loss of my mother, and Will, both professors there. From the fallout of my brother. From a student who turned a weapon against his teacher, and his mother. And where must that leave Joe? I’ve never even thought about it. What this must be like for him now.
I nod, feeling like everything is slipping from my grasp.
Fingers shaking, I leave the flash drive on the laminate tabletop, an offering. I go to my room, to bed, but I don’t sleep. I think of Nolan, and everything he’s feeling, and how cut off from the world he must be, over there right now, alone.
“I know,” I whisper to the dark night.
The next morning, Joe has uncharacteristically beaten me to breakfast. He has the flash drive in his hand, twirling it between his fingers. “I will take it to a guy I know, Kennedy.”
I suck in a gasp, reaching for his arm. “Thank you, Joe. Thank you.”
He stares at my fingers on his sleeve, and he nods. His throat moves as he swallows, but he slides the flash drive into his pocket. “I will do this one thing for you. And then, after, you will do something for me.”
I step back, already leery. “What?”
“You will let the house go.”
I open my mouth, but he puts up one hand.
“Kennedy, you have to let it go.”
I tip my head in the faintest nod. If it can even be perceived as that. But once he sees the signal, he’ll believe me. Once we do the first part, he won’t demand the second. He’ll understand.
The house is important. This is important.