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down.”
    Anger flashed in his eyes, and that scared me. Nick did stupid things when he got angry.
    â€œThen what?” Beej prompted.
    â€œMr. Schuster’s granddaughter said that it would be wrong to do anything to Orion without telling him. In the end, Elliot told me to put Orion in the basement.” He looked disgusted. “Anyway, they must have talked to Mr. Schuster at the hospital the next day, because when I went to the house to check on Orion, Elliot hired me to look after him, walk him every day. But they insisted on keeping him in the basement.”
    â€œThen?”
    â€œThen nothing.”
    â€œC’mon, Nick.” Beej was working hard to get the story out of him, but he wasn’t making it easy. “Something happened . . .”
    â€œYeah,” Nick said. “Three days later, Elliot fired me.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œYou know why.”
    Beej sighed again. “Okay, then what
happened
?”
    Nick stared at the lens.
    â€œWhat do you think?” he said.
    â€œYou got mad, right? Nick?”
    His eyes shifted to the floor. “Maybe I did a few things I shouldn’t have.”
    â€œAnd then?”
    â€œA few days later, the cops busted me for breaking and entering and theft. Okay? Satisfied?” His temper flared again, and he stalked out of the frame. Beej switched her camera off. The end.
    I stared at the blank screen. Breaking and entering? Theft?
    I popped the DVD out of the player—and almost dropped it when I turned and saw my father standing behind me in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, his hair mussed from sleeping. I wasn’t sure how much of Beej’s film he had seen, but I was sure he’d seen at least some of it. He didn’t look terribly surprised.
    I thought about Beej peering through the window of La Folie . . .as if she’d had a pretty good idea she’d find me there.
    I thought about my dad in the kitchen earlier that morning, hanging up the phone and giving me that peculiar look.
    â€œShe called here, didn’t she?” I said.
    He didn’t ask who I meant.
    â€œWhat did she say, Dad?”
    â€œShe wanted to know where she could find you.”
    â€œWhy didn’t she just ask for me?”
    â€œShe said she wanted to give you something, but she was afraid you’d hang up on her.”
    â€œSo you told her I was going to be at La Folie?”
    He nodded. I glanced at the TV.
    â€œDid you see the whole thing while you were standing there?” I said.
    â€œI caught the end of it.”
    â€œWhat should I do?”
    â€œIs there anything you
can
do?” my dad asked. “If you want, I could ask around, see how serious it is.”
    I set the DVD on top of the player and headed for my room—well, the room that my dad calls mine when he’s not calling it the guest room. As I opened the door, I heard Nick’s voice again in the living room: “What’s the point?”

    â€œDo you think we could go inside before I freeze my butt off?” Morgan said. She stamped her feet and hugged herself with mittened hands.
    â€œYou go ahead,” I said. “I’ll be up in a while.”
    Morgan eyed me suspiciously. She had surprised me by showing up at the library ten minutes early instead of her usual ten minutes late. Beej, on the other hand, was nearly half an hour late, which left me unsympathetic to Morgan’s complaints. I had been freezing my butt off for at least three times longer than she had.
    â€œWhat’s going on?” she said. “Who are you waiting for?”
    â€œWho says I’m waiting for anyone?” I said. The DVD case Beej had given me had her number inside. I had called the number and left a message telling her where and when to meet me. So far, she was a no-show.
    â€œYou’re meeting that girl, aren’t you?” Morgan said.
    â€œWhat girl?”
    â€œ
That
girl,” she said, pointing. Beej was swinging