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The sky has darkened as I jog for my car, sleeting rain spitting on the back of my head. By the time I start my engine, it’s pounding down on the roof. Not sure how to start, I drive down a few blocks to the scrappy student apartments where Elliott and Jonah live.
When I arrive, it’s raining in earnest, making it impossible to identify anything in the blurry stream of raincoats and umbrellas hurrying past. After driving around the block three times with no luck, I parallel park and watch water cascade down my windscreen.
I need to contact someone in authority—if not the police, then Avery or the school administration. But when I take out my phone, I open my text history with Jonah instead. Just three messages. I never sent him his photo, the one where he’s beaming in the afternoon sun with an arm around each of his friends. I tap his number and sit back in my seat, counting the rings over the roar of the rain.
At fifteen, I move to hang up.
“Hello?”
I close my eyes, every muscle in my body unwinding. When I open my mouth to scold him, all that comes out is, “Jonah.”
“Why are you calling me?” He’s so quiet it’s hard to hear him.
“Elliott came to me in an absolute panic. Do you realize you were about to have police looking for you?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Where are you?” Nothing, no matter how long I wait. “It’s raining.”
“I noticed.” The slightest hint of humor.
“And it’s getting dark. If you tell me where you are, I’ll give you food and a warm place to sleep.”
“No, thank you.” He sounds exhausted.
“How about a deal? I won’t ask you any questions you don’t wish to answer and I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re too bossy for that.”
“Try me.”
Silence again, and I can hear rain pelting down on his end of the call, a shiver in his breathing.
“What’s your plan now, Jonah? I don’t think you have one.” He doesn’t answer, but I can outwait anyone.
Finally, he sighs. “I’m at a park. I don’t know where it is, but there’s a fountain shaped like a dog. I’ve been looking at it for a long time, so I named him Cooper, after my old dog, even though Cooper was a Westie and this one looks like a golden retriever.”
My hand tightens on the phone. There he is. He’s not gone. “Thank you. The one dog-shaped fountain in the entire city of New York. Got it.”
I hear him sneeze. “Fine, I’ll go look for a street sign.”
It’s barely a park at all—a quarter of a city block stuffed with a few trees, a picnic shelter, and Cooper the fountain, currently overflowing with the rain. A lonely figure sits on one of the picnic tables. I flash my lights and he jogs over, huddled in a drenched hoodie and shorts like they can provide any warmth at all.
He pulls open the passenger door. “I can’t get in. I’ll ruin your upholstery.” Leaning over, he studies the interior with the same expression I imagine a lover of architecture might have at the inside of a cathedral.
I reach into the back and find my long wool coat. “Put that over your clothes.”
When I finally get him safe in my car with the doors shut, he carefully hovers his dirty shoes off the floor, teeth chattering as he looks at everything except me. Struggling to keep my big mouth shut, I turn on the heat and pull away from the curb.
I fail pretty quickly. “Why the hell were you sitting outdoors in the rain? You couldn’t find a single building?”
Sinking deeper into my coat, he shrugs. “The library closed, so I left.”
“Where did you sleep the last three nights?”
He studies the window silently, the flicker of passing lights in the dusk.
The rain muffles and then silences as I pull into my building's underground parking and cut the engine. He stands on the opposite side of the elevator from me on the way up, dwarfed in my jacket, dripping sullenly.
