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start," London
admitted. He sounded young and tired and sad. I rolled my chair a
little closer so I could lay my hand on his knee. He managed the
barest hint of a smile.
    "Maybe at the beginning?" Brian
suggested.
    "It doesn't matter where you start, London,"
I disagreed, trying to keep the impatience out of my voice. "My
best friend is missing. I'm sitting here with my hands tied,
waiting for you guys to clue me in to what the hell is going on.
Just start talking and see what comes out."
    He came a little closer to a real smile this
time, but it still didn't touch his eyes. He took a deep breath,
and then he said, "I haven't told very many people what I'm about
to tell you. My family knows, of course. Brian knows. And Kent and
Adrian," he said, naming two of the three other members of their
band.
    “Not what’s his name?” I asked, trying to
remember the other band member.
    “Jimmy,” London said. “And no. He’s kind of a
new addition to the band. I haven’t known him nearly as long as the
other guys, and...I guess I just haven’t felt right telling
him."
    Now that he’d mentioned it, I remembered
Dylan telling me that Jimmy had only been with the band the past
couple of years. He was kind of their jack-of-all-trades: taking
over rhythm guitar to leave Adrian free to work the crowd, chiming
in on keys or percussion when needed, that sort of thing. Dylan had
also told me that he was quite a bit younger than the rest of the
boys in the band. Given how young London looked, I figured Jimmy
had just graduated from Huggies. I figured his youth didn’t do much
to inspire London’s confidence in whatever secrets he had.
    “Whatever it is, it's okay," I assured him.
And somehow, I believed it.
    London covered my hand, his fingers curled
lightly around mine. I moved so that we were really holding hands,
and he gave a little squeeze as if to say 'thank you'.
    "My mom says I used to say and do some pretty
strange stuff when I was a little kid. I'd talk to people who
weren't there, or talk about things I shouldn't have had a clue
about. My parents thought I was just imaginative and observant," he
said, making air quotes with his free hand. "The older I got, the
weirder I got. I stopped talking to invisible people, but sometimes
I would just...know things. Like, one night I woke up crying,
because I knew my granddad had died. Mom didn't get the call from
Grandma until a couple of hours later. Heart attack, out of the
blue. But I'd known about it before Mom did."
    I squeezed his hand. I'd heard enough stories
about this sort of thing that it didn't shock or surprise me. Hell,
I'd had a couple of similar experiences myself.
    "When I was fourteen, Jerry disappeared."
    "His brother," Brian explained.
    "He was 18, and the police thought he had
just run away. But my parents are awesome. I mean, we fought with
them, yeah, but...run away? From what?" London shook his head. "We
were all pretty freaked out. No one had heard anything from him -
his friends, his girlfriend," he closed his eyes, remembering.
    "His girlfriend came over, just needing to
hang out with the family, you know? And she showed me the ring he'd
bought her. A promise ring, because he couldn't afford an
engagement ring yet. She showed me that ring, and I had one of my
feelings. I asked her to hand me the ring, and the second she laid
it in the palm of my hand, I knew Jerry was more or less okay. I
didn't know where he was, but I knew he was alive."
    London swallowed a couple of times, and Brian
got up without being asked to grab a bottle of water from the
minifridge. He uncapped it and handed it to London, who gave a
little nod of thanks before sucking down a couple of gulps of
water.
    "The police found Jerry the next day. He'd
been in an accident a couple of towns over, and he hadn't woken up
yet." He gave me a little smile. "The story has a happy ending. I'm
telling you because you look nervous."
    I laughed. I couldn't help it. In the middle
of retelling a