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decade later, Arlen was finally back in Virginia, but Will had the sense that he didn’t consider himself to be
home
.
    When they were kids, living in the backcountry, they’d liked to head down to the old flat brook, fishing rods balanced on their shoulders like muskets, coolers of pilfered beer in their free hands. The cicadas would wheeze in the treetops, the creek would comealive with water bugs, and they would sit feeling alone and safe until the sun went down.
    Their home lives weren’t bad, exactly, but in a town with more people than jobs, more bars than churches, they didn’t have what outsiders called “advantages.” Arlen’s mom had been a widow; his dad had died from emphysema after fifty years of working the mines in the summer and the fields in the fall. His mother managed to pay the mortgage, but not much else, by holding an illegal day care in her living room.
    Will’s situation had its challenges too. His dad was gone as well; he was a trucker whose only reason for coming home seemed to be to get Will’s mom pregnant. She’d just had her sixth baby when his father took to the road and didn’t come home again. Will’s mom did her best. The government helped. It was almost enough to get by.
    Will found refuge in his friendship with Arlen. In the halls of their high school, they were joined at the hip. Neither had nice clothes. Neither was popular with girls. But together, they talked about everything, sitting on the boulders beside the creek. Both of them had wanted something better, and mostly what they wanted was money. They swatted at mosquitoes and dreamed that they would start some business together and get out of town.
    But these days, even when Will was beside him, Arlen seemed to consider himself alone.
    “All right,” Will said. “Long as you don’t need anything. You got a key.”
    Arlen turned back to the window. “So long.”
    Will walked down the stairs to the first floor, the old boards creaking heavily under his weight. Twice today Arlen had scared him: First when the strength and force of his anger at Lauren Matthews had made Will’s skin crawl. And second when Will realized that Arlen couldn’t go outside.
    Will wanted to
know
his old friend again. But how could he when Arlen wouldn’t let him? For one week Arlen had been out of prison. Will had searched for signs of his old friend in this new guy’s face, but Arlen remained a stranger.
    He shoved his hand into the pocket of his cargo shorts, where Lauren Matthews’s note had been folded into a square. And he thought about her, much more than he meant to, as he let the Virginia roads take him out of Richmond proper, take him home.

Lesson Three: Learning to pay attention to personal appearance is a vital first step to truly seeing people. How we dress or don’t dress, how we style our hair or don’t style it, the ways that we alter our bodies (weight loss, plastic surgery, tattoos, piercings)—each element of our personal style is a choice—an elective trait—and each choice is a proclamation to the world that says,
This is who I am
.
    But don’t think that because a woman wears no jewelry, she’s poor (she may be allergic to certain metals, or not like the feel of it on her skin). And don’t think that because a man is well dressed, he must be rich (men who wear the best suits may go home to rooms full of old furniture and curtainless windows). The image a person projects is only the beginning of your search for clues.

C HAPTER 3

    On the evening of Arlen Fieldstone’s conviction, Lauren and her colleagues treated themselves to a night of celebrating. Lauren had taken on the Fieldstone trial after a freak accident—when both the district attorney and his assistant had been injured together in the same car crash as they went out together for their lunch break. Lauren—with all the exuberant courage of a young woman who meant to get a foot in the door come hell or high water—was called to stand in until one or