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will HAPPEN.
    But, so far, in nearly eighteen years, nothing has.
    He finished wrapping the bandage and looked up at me to see what I thought. I nodded. Actually, it didn’t hurt at all.
    “You could be really good at something and not even realize it,” he said. “I think about that kind of thing sometimes, like what if the world’s greatest baseball player lived in a place where they didn’t have the game? Maybe he’d never know how great he was. He’d become a goat herder or something and never realize his potential.”
    I laughed, but I liked the idea of it, that I might still be special somehow and just not realize it, that the best part of my life wasn’t already over.
    “How about you?” I said. “Where are you from?”
    “Me, I’m from nowhere. Or everywhere. My family moved around a lot. I’m twenty, and I’ve lived in at least twenty towns, almost as many states.”
    “And now?”
    “I’ve been living in New York City for a while, trying to make it playing guitar and singing, but it’s hard. I wait tables, street perform for tips, but there are about a million other guys doing that there. I heard they were looking for an act at the Red Fox Inn in Gatskill, so I tried for it.”
    Gatskill is the next town over. My friends sometimes go to the Red Fox Inn for dinner, but I never have. “So you work there? You’re a professional singer?”
    He grinned. “I guess you could say that.”
    I noticed a guitar case in his backseat. “Will you play for me?”
    “Next time, I will. Right now, I think I need to take you to Mrs. McNeill’s before I turn into a pumpkin. I double as a waiter at the Red Fox, and they open at five.”
    I glanced at my watch. It was three thirty. He’d said next time.
    “You want to see me again?” I asked.
    “Danielle, I want to see you as much as possible.”
    I smiled inside at the thought of it even as I shuddered to imagine Mom’s reaction. He stood and walked to the other side of the car. He took me to Mrs. McNeill’s. When the old lady looked through her cataracty eyes and asked who my young man was, he didn’t correct her, didn’t say he wasn’t mine. Even though my ankle had stopped hurting, I held on to him anyway. I liked how it felt to be beside someone.
    When he drove me home, I told him to stop at the bottom of the driveway.
    “You’ll be okay?” he asked. When I nodded, he said, “When can I see you again?”
    “I’ll walk my dog this way again day after tomorrow, same time. Or I’ll try to.”
    “I’ll be here.”
    And then, he took my hand and pulled me toward him. He kissed me. I knew he was going to do it only a second before his lips touched mine, and when they did, I felt the same electrical impulses, like a wire leading from my stomach to my mouth had become electrified, and I was exploding.
    I told Mom I’d fallen near the McNeills’ and Mrs. McNeill had given me the crutches and driven me home. She didn’t question me, so I mentioned how much Ginger had enjoyed the walk, how I thought she was getting fat and needed to exercise, so I planned to do it every day.
    I do. For once, something is happening to me.

Wyatt
    Mrs. Greenwood was knocking at the door. “Wyatt, the man is here to install the computer thing.”
    “Okay.” Quickly, I stuffed the notebook into its prior spot and opened the door.
    It was weird, reading a missing girl’s diary. Danielle had been hanging with a guitar player named Zach before she disappeared. Did Mrs. Greenwood know? Did anyone? Probably not, since Danielle had been so secretive. Maybe the guitar player was the reason behind her disappearance. Maybe she’d run away to the city with him. Or maybe he’d murdered her.
    Should I ask Mrs. Greenwood if she knew? I, more than anyone, knew the importance of not keeping secrets. Some people were big on them, but I knew that secrets could kill like handguns and knives.
    Still, this secret was almost twenty years old. Mrs. Greenwood probably didn’t need to