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you do then? Do you wait until you disappear yourself, so you can find out what happened to your friends? Do you try to investigate? Do you run away? ”
    â€œIt’s just my friends who are disappearing?” Pip said. “The streets are still full of people my age who aren’t my friends?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHonestly, I think I’d go see a psychiatrist if this happened to me.”
    â€œBut the psychiatrist talks to the police herself and finds out that everything you said is true.”
    â€œWell, then, at least I’d have one friend—the psychiatrist.”
    â€œBut then the psychiatrist herself disappears.”
    â€œThis is a totally paranoid scenario. That is like something out of Dreyfuss’s head.”
    â€œYou wait, investigate, or run away?”
    â€œOr kill myself. How about kill myself?”
    â€œThere are no wrong answers.”
    â€œI’d probably go live with my mom. I wouldn’t let her out of my sight. And if she somehow disappeared anyway, I’d probably kill myself, since by then it would be obvious that having any connection to me wasn’t good for a person’s health.”
    Annagret smiled again. “Excellent.”
    â€œ What? ”
    â€œYou’re doing very, very well, Pip.” She reached across the table and put her hands, her hot hands, on Pip’s cheeks.
    â€œSaying I’d kill myself is the right answer?”
    Annagret took her hands away. “There are no wrong answers.”
    â€œThat sort of makes it harder to feel good about doing well.”
    â€œ Which of the following have you ever done without permission: break into someone’s email account, read things on someone’s smartphone, search someone’s computer, read someone’s diary, go through someone’s private papers, listen to a private conversation when someone’s phone accidentally dials you, obtain information about someone on false pretenses, put your ear to a wall or door to listen to a conversation, and the like. ”
    Pip frowned. “Am I allowed to skip a question?”
    â€œYou can trust me.” Annagret touched her hand yet again. “It’s better that you answer.”
    Pip hesitated and then confessed: “I’ve been through every scrap of paper my mother owns. If she had a diary, I would have read it, but she doesn’t. If she had an email account, I would have broken into it. I’ve gone online and searched every database I can think of. I don’t feel good about it, but she won’t tell me who my father is, she won’t tell me where I was born, she won’t even tell me what her real name is. She says she’s doing it for my protection, but I think the danger is only in her head.”
    â€œThese are things you need to know,” Annagret said gravely.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou have a right to know them.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œDo you understand that these are things the Sunlight Project can help you find out?”
    Pip’s heart began to race, in part because this had not, in fact, occurred to her before, and the prospect was frightening, but mainly because she sensed that a real seduction was kicking into gear now, a seduction to which all of Annagret’s touchings had merely been a prelude. She took her hand away and hugged herself nervously.
    â€œI thought the Project was about corporate and national security secrets.”
    â€œYes, of course. But the Project has many resources.”
    â€œSo I could just, like, write to them and ask for the information?”
    Annagret shook her head. “It isn’t a private detection agency.”
    â€œBut if I actually went and did an internship.”
    â€œYes, of course.”
    â€œWell, that’s interesting.”
    â€œSomething to think about, ja?”
    â€œJa-ah,” Pip said.
    â€œ You’re traveling in a foreign country ,” Annagret read, “ and one night