13
Jem woke to the sound of a key in the lock.
In that first, disoriented moment: panic.
What are you doing out here?
Why aren’t you in bed?
If you keep this up, you’re not staying here, I can tell you that.
But then the sunlight was in his eyes, and Scipio was pressed up alongside him, the Lab huffing, partly annoyed, partly trying to work himself up to a bark, and this was home. This was his safe, nice, beautiful home. His.
Jem managed to sit up before Tean stepped inside. But when he started to say, “Hey—” he broke off in a yawn he couldn’t swallow.
Tean’s face was unreadable, but all he said was “I woke you up.”
“We were just closing our eyes for a minute.” Scipio was halfway off the couch, stretching his tail wagging because Tean was back now. “Don’t let him fool you. He was zonked out.”
With a small smile, Tean scruffed Scipio’s ears. He got a few welcome kisses in return. As Tean crossed the room, he paused to give Jem a welcome kiss of his own, and then he was moving toward the back of the house.
“I thought you were at work today?” Jem said.
Tean said something, but by then, he was down the hall, and the words didn’t carry.
Jem got to his feet. He stretched. He wasn’t wearing socks, and that seemed like a bad sign. He padded down the hall, found a pair of socks in the bedroom, and pulled them on. Then he went into the bedroom they used as an office.
Tean was already at the computer.
“What’s going on with your dad?” Jem asked. “Did something happen?”
“He decided we needed to clean out my grandfather’s apartment. Today. All of it. Which meant going through every box, right now, and having a beautiful stroll down memory lane.”
That tone—annoyance right on the edge of anger—wasn’t Tean. And Jem was smart enough, sometimes, to keep his mouth shut.
Not for long, though, because for some reason a moment later he was saying, “What’s the rush? That’s a big project.”
“That’s what I said.”
“And they said you had to leave work right then to help?”
“No, Amos told me everyone was over there, which means I’m a bad member of my family if I’m not there too.”
“He said that?”
“Of course not. And then Seth was somewhere and Amos was somewhere and Miriam and Sara never have to do anything because they’re always watching their kids—never mind that Miriam’s kids are all in school and she spends half her day buying stuff online and then returning it—and Tim and Corom didn’t have to come because they have to work to provide for their families. ”
To punctuate this flow of words, Tean hammered the Enter key on the keyboard.
The screen changed to a new site: the Uintah High School’s online collection of yearbooks.
Jem rubbed Tean’s shoulder. The muscles were tight.
“Never mind that I have a family too,” Tean said.
“I have a job. I have a career I’ve worked really hard for, actually, and I’m proud of it, and I can’t rush out of work in the middle of the day because there’s some sort of family emergency, only it turns out it’s not an emergency, it’s my dad’s combination of nostalgia and hero-worship, and the real stuff that needs to get done—like finding a funeral home—still hasn’t happened.
” He shook himself, like he was trying to throw off the bad mood, and although he was clearly trying to lighten his tone, his voice was still stiff when he said, “How’s it going with the vows? ”
“Great. I finished today.”
The words just popped out of Jem.
“You did?” Tean twisted around to look at him. “That’s wonderful.”
Smile. Tell the truth. Say it was a bad joke, and you’re still working on them. Hell, even that’s a lie. Say you promise you’ll get them written tonight.
But he only nodded at the screen and asked, “What’s this?”
Settling into the chair again, Tean said, “This is the digitized archive of the Uintah High yearbook. Which, I hope, might help us figure out who S is.”
“That’s a lot of yearbooks.”
“We don’t have to look at all of them. We only have to look at the years that Kai was a student, and each graduating class is somewhere between two hundred and three hundred kids. That means twelve hundred names. And we’re only looking for the ones that start with S.”
“God, that sounds so boring.” When Tean twisted around in the seat, Jem said, “Uh, I mean, send me the link and tell me where you want me to start.”
They split up the years, and Jem retreated to the couch and the iPad.
He started with Kai’s junior year and began scrolling through the other members of the junior class.
After about five minutes, he had a headache from zooming in to read the tiny names.
And even though Tean had been optimistic about it, it felt like it was taking forever.
He jotted down all the S names that he saw: Shelly, Sara, Sandy, Scott, even one runty guy named Simon.
When he finished, he found Kai’s senior class yearbook and repeated the process.
The same kids with S-names—minus Simon, plus a Sara and a Sariah—showed up again.
And when Jem had finished, he really did have a headache, and he had a list of names that didn’t help him at all.
“Any luck?” Tean asked as he came into the living room.
“I mean, I found some names. I don’t know if that counts as luck.”
Tean perched on the edge of the couch. He compared his lists with Jem’s. Aside from a handful of students who must have moved away or transferred in, the lists remained relatively consistent across the four years. Tean borrowed the iPad and went back to look at each face. Then he said, “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“I don’t know. We have some names. I guess we try to find them and call them.”
Jem didn’t say anything.
“You think that’s a bad idea?” Tean asked.
“No.”
“You look unhappy.”
“No,” Jem said again. “I don’t know. We can call them. Ask them if they knew Kai, or if they gave him that poster, or whatever. But it feels like—I mean, look at this kid. He’s a total beefcake.”
“Excuse me?”
“He wasn’t friends with Kai, I guarantee it. This girl is way too pretty. And this one—God, Tean, look at her teeth. She could chew through buckboard.”
“What is buckboard?”
“I don’t know. I heard it once.” He shook his head. “It’s not any of them. We can call and talk to them, but they’re not the right ones.”
“Okay.” Tean paused. “You’re an excellent judge of character, Jem.”
“No, I’m not. I’m the worst. And I’m being a baby because I don’t like reading tiny words, and now my head hurts, and why is there a Sara and a Sarai and a Sariah, and Sairuh with an H.”
“I think most of them have H’s.”
Jem got his best frown ready.
With a laugh, Tean said, “I’ll call them just to be sure. Do you want some Tylenol?”
Jem shook his head. “I want a McFlurry. I want you to put the machine right here and open all the, uh, valves, and just let it go straight into my mouth.”
“I’m going to get you some Tylenol.”
The Tylenol helped. And it helped not to be trying to unscramble all those little letters.
But now that Jem didn’t have anything else to think about, he had to think about the vows. And about what the fuck he was going to do. And about why he’d opened his mouth. Why he’d lied. Why he hadn’t just done what Tean asked and called around, and why he couldn’t seem to stop fucking up.
He grabbed the tablet again, because he’d rather look at those tiny letters again than spend more time inside his own head.
Maybe he should look at the clubs. What kind of clubs would Kai have been in?
Drama, obviously. But what else? Going by that poster, Kai had a thing for cowboys.
Was there a cowboy club? 4H? Or maybe they were barking up the wrong tree.
Maybe Kai hadn’t met S at school. Maybe they’d met at a rodeo, or they were neighbors—
Well, shit.
He grabbed his phone. Then he texted Tinajas.
Can you find out who’s neighbors with this house?
And then he sent her the address for Kai’s childhood home.
A moment later, Tinajas’s reply came through: I’m not fucking Ask Jeeves.
Jem wrote back, But you’ll do it because you love me.
I’m at work.
Even better, Jem replied. You’ve got all the records and stuff.
Dumbass, I work for the DMV, not the county recorder.
Please, Jem wrote.
And then, Please.
And then again, Please.
It had always worked when they’d been in care together.
He sent about seven more of those before she texted back, Make your boyfriend do it.
Jem sent an emoji with a halo. And then the one that might be praying, or begging, or saying thank you.
You are useless, Tinajas wrote back. I want tickets to the Jazz this weekend.
You’re an angel in size nine lady boots.
Tinajas didn’t reply right away, which meant either he’d pushed it too far, or she’d given up and was doing the search. Sure enough, a few minutes later, the phone buzzed with a name: Robert Taylor.
Who’s that? Jem asked.
That’s the only person who owns land next to that address. Everything else is owned by an ag corp.
And then another message came through: Jazz tickets. Good ones.
And then: Now leave me the fuck alone.
He did leave her alone. But first he sent her a lot of heart emojis.
On the tablet, Jem went back through Kai’s senior yearbook more slowly this time.
He wasn’t looking at their first names this time; he was looking for any Taylors.
Nobody in Kai’s class, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.
He checked the grade below, and then the one below that, and then the one below that.
Nothing.
It was boring. It was so fucking boring. And his head was hurting again. And this was the kind of thing Tean was good at. But Jem was on to something; he could tell. And in a weird way, this felt like a way of making it up to Tean. For lying about his vows. And he would write them. Tomorrow.
After he gave up on Kai’s senior yearbook, Jem went back a year. He repeated the process, starting with Kai’s class, looking for anyone with the last name Taylor. Nothing. He checked the grade ahead of Kai, and then the two grades below. Still nothing.
Then, in Kai’s sophomore yearbook, he struck gold.
Scott Taylor.
He was a floppy-haired boy who held his head at an angle in the black-and-white photo. Thin, with big eyes and an uncertain smile, he gave off a definite fem vibe—although Tean would probably say that was only Jem’s imagination.
Jem hurried into the office.
“—yes, thank you,” Tean was saying. “I appreciate your time.” He disconnected. “Nobody was friends with Kai. Or they won’t admit to it, anyway. Not now that he’s wanted for the police in connection with a murder.”
“I found him,” Jem said. “Scott Taylor.” He planted the iPad on the desk and pointed to the photo. “Scott with an S.”
“What other kind of Scott is there?” Tean asked. But he bent over the iPad. He tapped the screen and scrolled and said, “He’s a senior. And Kai was a sophomore this year. They’re two years apart.”
“But people aren’t only friends with people their own age. And some guys have a thing for older men.”
Tean closed his eyes.
“Like me, for example,” Jem pointed out.
“Yes. I understood.”
“I’m totally into it.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you know what I’m going to do when you turn into a silver fox? I’m going to chain you to the bed. You’re not going anywhere, mister.”
With what looked like an effort, Tean opened his eyes. “So, why Scott—”
“And it’s not just going to be sex stuff. We’re going to do a lot of that—you banging me, me banging you, maybe get one of those toys so we’re getting banged at the same time—”
“Jeremiah,” Tean whispered with what sounded like desperation.
“—but we’re also going to binge all of Buffy because you’ll finally have time and you can’t say you’ve got to go to work or you want to read your book or isn’t it Scipio’s bedtime—”
“Oh my gosh, Jem, please.”
“Look at him,” Jem said. “That hair. The way he’s holding his head. That’s a boy who loves climbing up Schlong Mountain.”
Tean must have been fighting the urge to close his eyes again because the lids fluttered.
Jem felt like he might not be making his strongest case, so he added, “Plus, his dad owns the property next to Kai’s mom. They were neighbors.”
For a moment, Tean didn’t say anything. He scrolled back to Scott’s photo and studied it some more. Then he turned to his laptop and typed briefly.
“What’s that?” Jem asked.
“A specialized search engine. They’ve got a phone number for him.”
“Call him.”
Tean set the phone on the desk, set it to speaker, and placed the call.
It rang twice. And then a man said, “This is Scott Taylor.”