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“Try what out?” Deeley asked, and Eli spun with a gasp.

“Jesus fuck. Where’d you come from?”

“I’ve literally been here this whole time. Also, don’t you have students to meet?”

Eli checked his watch. “Shit.” Tucking the letter into his pocket, he ran.

Nolan didn’t expect to find his smoking gun as to Freddie’s and Annie’s identities in the storage room next to Dad’s office, though he did hope for a clue. He had found the messenger bag with the letters in here, after all. It wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility that something else of Freddie’s had gotten stashed here.

But no dice. Just more of the same swag, old equipment, and the broken skate-sharpening machine. One of the light panels still flickered annoyingly.

He didn’t know what he’d expected. A notebook with Freddie’s full name listed on the inside cover? Freddie’s wallet? A Polaroid of a cute couple labeled Freddie and Annie’s first date?

“Nolan.”

He turned to find his dad in the doorway.

“I thought you left after practice.”

“I was looking for something.” Nolan flicked off the lights and stepped into the hallway, shutting the door behind himself.

“Something for Roman?” Dad asked.

“Sure,” Nolan said, because it was simpler than telling his dad he was looking for a ghost. “Hey, what are you doing tonight? Want to see a movie?”

Dad quirked an eyebrow. “There’s no movie theater here.”

“Really?”

“No commercial theater, I should say,” Dad amended. “It closed a while back. There is Partizanfilm. It’s sort of a combination movie theater and café-bookstore. The auditoriums are tiny, but they sometimes show new releases.”

“Okay, so . . . want to go?”

“Can’t,” Dad said. “The team owner’s in town, and we’ve got a working dinner scheduled. Sorry, kiddo. I did nab you a couple of tickets to tomorrow’s game, though. I’ll be behind the bench, so I won’t actually get to see you, but you’ll have a good time.”

“A couple?” Nolan chuckled. “Who do you think I’m going to bring? The only people I know here will be in the game.”

Dad’s phone rang, and he held up a finger as he checked the caller ID. “Sorry, I’ve got to take this.”

“No problem. I’ll see you later.”

Before Nolan could head for the exit, a familiar laugh came from his left. Eli? His stomach bounced pleasantly in the direction of Eli’s voice, and he followed the sound to a massive kitchen heavily branded in Trailblazers green, white, and red. There was a lounge area with leather couches, a coffee table, and a television, and beyond the lounge was an island with barstools on one side. The counters and fridge gleamed as though they’d recently been polished, and half a wall held a glass-fronted refrigeration unit with enough water bottles and sports drinks to water the Sahara.

“That’s so awesome,” Eli was saying. He stood at the island with a teenager, sharing a bowl of grapes between them. “Congrats, man. My project won third place in my category at the ISEF too when I was in high school.”

The teenager, tall and short-haired and pimple-faced, gaped at him. “Shut the fuck up. What was your project?”

“Uh . . .” Cocking his head, Eli closed his eyes. “It’s been almost a decade, hang on. Crap, I forget the title, but it was a modeling project that combined mathematical modeling and physics to better understand motion and energy at varying scales.”

“Did you model cascade dynamics?”

Eli shook his head. “The analysis was restricted to collision-generated fluctuations in quiescent fluids.”

Nolan stared at them and felt decidedly out of his depth, which was a rare feeling. What the actual fuck were they talking about? Were they even speaking English? And what was the ISEF? He was about to look it up on his phone when Eli spotted him.

An emotion crossed his face that Nolan couldn’t place. Eli’s smile was slow to form, and when it did, there was a knowing tilt to it. Like he knew all of Nolan’s secrets.

He’d read Nolan’s letter, then. Nolan hadn’t been sure Eli would see it before his activity with the students. He met Eli’s gaze and held it for a long second as Eli’s smile widened further, holding a hint of what was to come.