They’d met at Vicki Lang’s grad party when Greg tapped her back by mistake. “Oh, you’re not Jamie,” he said.

“Even better,” she said. “Julie.” He smiled profanely and stuck out his hand: Greg Hayes, English major at Whitfield U. Cropped hair, a mole poking through scruff on his chin, black glasses pinching his nose. They had little in common but drank until who they were didn’t matter. Leaning against the above-ground pool they kissed till their lips plumped into painful balloons.

Julie pulled away. “You got a car?” she asked. She’d never had sex with a stranger, and her question — her proposition — stunned and thrilled her.

“A Benz,” he said. They drove to someplace secluded. He did not have a condom. Neither did she. He would have to be careful. If anything happened he’d take care of everything. In the backseat he pressed her face to the door and shed her jeans. His fingernails scraped her thighs and calves. Her nose poked the window control, zuzzing it down, zuzzing it up, down, down, up, down, up, down, down, as he sloppied himself on her crotch. He saved his number into her phone. She deleted it when she got home, relieved to be done with him.

Julie hunched over a wobbly café table perusing the Whitfield student directory. No Hayes. No Hays. No Haze. No Heis. Six Hughes: Amelia, Angela, Destiny, Jaqueline, Lashonda, and Tammy. She studied the students cascading out of the English building. No Greg. She bugged the registrar. “My brother,” Julie said. “Gregory Hayes. He’s gone missing.”

“Oh dear,” the clerk said. “May I see your student I.D.?”

She hadn’t seen Greg since the night of Vicki Lang’s party. None of the guests remembered him. Cropped hair? Glasses? Vicki had never met a Greg in her life. Julie’s parents were even less helpful. If he couldn’t be found why bend over backwards? they reasoned. She despised them for saying she’d gotten off