We walked some more.

“Luther never forgave, did he?”

“He pretended he did. But that was just to get placed. As soon as he was out, he ran away. I don’t know where he’s been. He blamed all of us, but your father most of all. He swore that he would get revenge.”

“What did he do to my father?”

“I don’t know.”

“I saw him there. Eight months ago. He was dressed as a paramedic. He took my father away.”

He nodded. “I know.”

“Bat Lady thinks my father’s alive.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

Dylan looked at me and I saw the answer before he said it. “No.”

I swallowed. “You think . . . ?”

“That Luther killed your father. Yes. I saw him, Mickey. I saw his rage. So, no, I don’t think he spared him. I think he took him away and killed him.”

“Is that why he burned down the house? For revenge?”

“I assume so.”

“And he’s still out there.”

“Yes.”

“So you’re still not safe.”

“None of us are, Mickey. None of us are safe.”

Chapter 34

I came home exhausted.

I figured that I would text Ema and start filling her in on my encounter with Dylan Shaykes, but as soon as my head hit the pillow, I started drifting off. It could wait, I thought. In fact, it would probably be better to go over this with her face-to-face.

I fell into a deep sleep.

When I walked to school Monday, I took a slightly different route to avoid the Bat Lady’s house. I was not sure why I did that. Or maybe I knew but I didn’t want to think about it.

In the past I had thought about all the children who were rescued in that house. Now, for the first time, I started thinking about one specific boy who ended up dying trapped in a room. I hated Luther. I hated what he did to me and my family. One day, I hoped to meet up with him and exact justice.

But part of me now understood. Part of me wondered what it must have been like to be locked in a room, watching the only person you love die—and there is nothing you can do about it.

Bat Lady had explained it to me right at the beginning. The good guys don’t always win. We rescue as many as we can. There is an old Arab expression that when one person dies, an entire universe dies. The opposite is true too. If you save a life, even one, you save a universe.

But you can’t save them all.

I was about three blocks from the school when I heard the car. It was a red sports car. Troy was driving. He pulled up alongside me and said, “Want a ride?”

“Sure.”

I slid low into the passenger seat. The car sat way down. It felt like my butt was practically on the road. Troy shifted into gear and we shot away. “I thought a lot about what we talked about,” Troy said. “About Buck.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “And?”

“I’m trying to think how to say this.” He put his hand through his thick mane of hair, keeping his eyes focused on the road. “Part of the reason I gave you a hard time when you first showed up has to do with your uncle. Myron and my old man don’t get along.”

“So I gathered. Do you know why?”

Troy shook his head. “It dates back to high school. My dad was the senior captain on the basketball team when Myron was a sophomore.”

Neither one of us had to say just like us because we were both thinking it.

“So what happened?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

“No idea,” I said.

“Yet they still hate each other all these years later,” Troy said.

“Yeah.”

“Mickey?”

“What?”

“I don’t want that to be our fate,” Troy said.

I wanted to say something like me neither or it won’t be, but it all sounded so stupid in my head. I let it pass. I watched Troy driving. He had been looking troubled a lot lately but not like this.

“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked.

His jaw clenched as though he was willing himself not to say anything.

“Troy, if you want me to help you . . .”

He turned the wheel sharply to the left and then slowed to a stop. We were still a block away from school. “Buck has been my best friend since we were six—since we had Mr. Ronkowitz in first grade.” He stopped the car and turned to me. “Do you have any friends like that, Mickey?”

I felt a deep pang in my chest. “No,” I said. “No one.”

“You and Ema. You’re tight, right?”

“Right.”

“Imagine if you’d been that way since you were six. I mean, I’m not saying friends have to know each other a long time. But since we were six. You get what I’m saying?”

“I think so,” I said.

Troy closed his eyes and let out a deep breath. “Buck was taking steroids.”

For a moment we just sat there, two guys in a car parked on a side street, not saying a word. We let the revelation hang between us. Finally I asked, “When did he start?”

“I don’t know. Last spring.”

“He just admitted it?”

“Not at first. I asked him about it, though. I could see he was getting bigger. He said I should do them too. I said I didn’t need to. Then after you showed up, he started pushing me a little harder. He started saying that I’d always been the leading scorer, but if I didn’t get a lot better, you’d take over. Stuff like that. He started getting angrier too. Roid rage, I think they call it, right?”

Roid rage, I knew, was one of the many side effects of steroids. You start losing your temper easily. You grow dark and violent and even suicidal.

Troy shook his head again. “I should have stopped him. I mean, I saw the changes but I didn’t do anything, you know? And then . . . then I saw the changes in how Buck was with me.”

“What do you mean?”

“My dad once told me that relationships are never fifty-fifty. He said the key was to understand that. Sometimes it’s ninety-ten, sometimes ten-ninety. But if you’re thinking it’s always fifty-fifty, you’re going to get yourself in trouble.”

“Okay.”

“With Buck and me, look, I was the leader, he was the follower. That’s just the way it was. I didn’t think anything of it. But the last few weeks, it was, like, suddenly that bugged him.”

“That you were the leader?”