It had to be here somewhere. She didn't know how Kenya might have done it, but she was sure: Kenya took her Handbook, just as Kenya was keeping gunpowder away from her. Kenya had only the best intentions, no doubt, but in her zeal to protect Joanie she was in fact doing the one thing that would hurt Joanie the most. Kenya had shut off both of her avenues of access to Anthony. Only Anthony had the answers Joanie needed, but he now hovered just out of reach, cold and silent.

Joanie rifled through Kenya's underwear drawer, feeling for the hard corners of her Handbook among the soft cotton, lycra and lace. Her fingers hit something solid, but it was just a small wooden box, containing a few pieces of jewelry and a gold medal, about the size of a half-dollar, with a golfer embossed on it.

She put back the box and tried the other two drawers. Nothing but clothes, mostly tank tops and track pants and gym shorts and purple Reebok-branded Lady Ambassador gear. The same shit that made up most of Joanie's wardrobe too: functional clothes for the bodies the University paid good money for. They lived in them because it was easy, but when you wear workout clothes all the time you start to feel like you should be working out all the time. The machine fed itself.

The Handbook wasn't in the dresser. But Kenya wasn't stupid. She wouldn't hide it somewhere where Joanie could find it with basic snooping like a kid looking for Christmas presents. Kenya's dad was a spy or something. She'd employ some kind of tradecraft.

Joanie pulled the underwear drawer out completely, then reached into the cavity and felt along the underside of top of the dresser. Nothing there. She upended the drawer and felt for a false bottom. Nothing taped to the back of the drawer either. She pulled out the second drawer, dumped it out, then the third. She found the little flashlight on her keychain and scanned the inside of the dresser. Empty.

The closet was next. More clothes hanging from the rod: Lady Ambassador jerseys, jeans, a few dresses, a baby blue suit that Joanie had never seen Kenya wear but figured she must look amazing in. She checked the pockets of the coat. She dug through the pile of dirty laundry on the floor of the closet. A t-shirt at the bottom of the pile was still damp with sweat from a morning run. Joanie got an impulse. She buried her nose in the shirt and inhaled, as if she could absorb Kenya's essence and knowledge.

She pulled the boxes and bins down from the shelf in the closet and opened each one, then stood on the sturdiest to examine the shelf itself, and the interior wall of the closet above the door. She saw nothing, but felt the surfaces just the same. The eye can be fooled. The hand finds the truth.

Then Kenya's bed. She pulled the mattress off, ripped off the sheet and felt all around it for holes in the ticking, then the box spring. She stood in the space between the slats in the now-empty bed frame and felt along all the edges and behind the headboard. She opened the flat plastic bin of sweaters stowed under the bed and stuck her hand between the fuzzy folds of each one.

Joanie hauled the box spring and mattress back onto the bed and flopped down on it, winded. The room was a disaster now, Kenya's clothes and possessions strewn about the floor. Joanie looked at the stuffed purple elephant on top of the mini-fridge next to Kenya's bed. He was watching her, accusing her. He had no right to judge. He used to hold the gunpowder. He betrayed her, just like Kenya did.

She opened the fridge. A few Gatorades, some cans of Diet Coke, a half-gallon of skim milk on the verge of spoiling. She opened the door of the little freezer. It was barely big enough for the ice cube tray inside. She pulled out the tray and checked the frosty interior, just in case. Nothing. But as she put back the tray she noticed something odd with one of the cubes. There was a small metallic object suspended in the ice. She cracked the tray and lifted out the cube to examine it more closely. She held it up to the lamp on top of the fridge. It was a key – a small one, like a padlock key. Maybe her Handbook was hidden inside whatever this key unlocked. Joanie dropped the ice cube into an empty cup and placed it beneath the lamp to melt.

Kenya's desk was the last place to look. Joanie checked the big drawer first. If there was a locked box, it would be in there. She pulled out the papers and books inside, opening each one to see if it was hollowed out. That was the kind of thing a spy's daughter would do. When she got to the bottom she pulled the entire drawer out, examined it all around. Then she pulled out the long shallow drawer, dumped out the pens and scissors and note cards and junk inside. Then the books lined up neatly on the hutch atop the desk. No boxes, no false bottoms to the drawers, no carved-out receptacles in the books. Kenya was even more clever than Joanie thought. She had gone to great lengths to hide the Handbook. Joanie would just have to be even more clever.

The answer was obvious, really. She had to read Kenya's Handbook. She would wait until Kenya got back from wherever she was – wherever she went that she didn't tell Joanie about or invite Joanie to – and then wait until she went to sleep, and take her Handbook from her purse or the pocket of the track jacket she was surely wearing. She would read it, greedily, like a child stealing snacks in the glow of a refrigerator in a late-night kitchen, but she would feel no guilt, no shame. Kenya had brought this on herself.

The ice cube in the cup was almost melted. Joanie swirled it until the key broke loose from the ice and rattled around the cup. She retrieved it and dried it on the hem of her shirt. The key was cold and heavy in her hand – even colder than she expected. She held it up to the light from the lamp and turned it over in her fingers. Light glinted off the teeth. It had no identifying marks. Right now it could open any door, and what waited on the other side was both living and dead.

Another key turned in a lock behind Joanie. Kenya was back. Joanie stuffed the key in her pocket and sat on her bed, grabbing In Our Time to fake like she'd been studying.

Kenya pushed open the door and stopped when she saw the state of the room: clothes everywhere, drawers pulled out of the dresser and desk, boxes opened and their contents scattered, books lying opened like grounded birds. "Jesus Christ," she said. "What the hell happened here?"

Joanie looked up from her book and surveyed the room. She thought about feigning ignorance, but she didn't want to insult Kenya's intelligence that much. "I was looking for my Handbook," she said.

"What happened to your Handbook?"

"You tell me."

Kenya had the nerve to roll her eyes. "That's right. I took your Handbook. I snuck it out of your bag while you weren't looking, and I hid it away where you'll never find it. It's all part of my diabolical plan to... to do what, exactly?"

This was trickery. Kenya was trying to confuse her, to make her question her own judgment. Calling attention to the ludicrousness of her own plan – this was amateur psychological warfare at best. Espionage 101. Some of the best plans were ludicrous. You think the Greeks were a hundred percent on board when Odysseus first said the words "big horse?"

"You won't let me have gunpowder. You're watching me all the time. Now you take my Handbook. You don't want me to talk to Anthony."

"Come on, Joanie." Kenya picked her way through the debris on the floor and sat on her bed. She dropped her purse next to the fridge. That's where her Handbook would be. "No one's trying to keep you from talking to Anthony."

Joanie dropped her book and swung around to face Kenya. Their knees were just inches apart. "You think I can't control myself. You think I overdosed on gunpowder and now you need to protect me like I'm some suicidal little girl who got into Mom's valium stash."

"We don't know what happened to you that night."

"I know! And you won't let me find out." Joanie didn't know how to make Kenya see this. Gunpowder wasn't the problem. It was the solution.

"You're right. I have been trying to protect you. You shouldn't be taking gunpowder right now because no one should be taking gunpowder. The system has been compromised."

"What does that mean?"

"What you took wasn't gunpowder. It was something else. A synthetic substitute."

A single word flashed red behind Joanie's eyes: POISON. You've been poisoned. It all made sense now. Something had infiltrated her bloodstream and her brain. An interloper. A fox in the henhouse. You're not supposed to be in here.

"How is that possible?"

"I don't know. That's what I'm trying to figure out." Kenya reached out and took Joanie's hands. "That's why I need to know what you saw."

Kenya's hands were soft and powerful, and Joanie felt safe with those long fingers wrapped around hers. But this was false security. If Joanie had been poisoned, then nothing was safe. Everything was compromised. Everybody was compromised. Joanie extricated her hands from Kenya's grip. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"We only just found out. Lark had to analyze your blood."

"You could have said something. You could have told me... You waited a week to tell me that I was poisoned? By... who? Who did this?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know. How do I know it wasn't you?"

Kenya felt that. Joanie could see her neck stiffen, her jaw clench as she fought to maintain composure. Joanie felt bad, but only a little. Why not spread the poison around. Let everybody have a taste.

After a long moment, Kenya spoke. "Because it's me."

Kenya reached into her purse and pulled out a fuzzy purple object. She set it on top of the mini-fridge, next to the elephant: a small plush moose. Unlike the scolding, judgmental pachyderm, the moose seemed to have an insouciant grin. She promised a good time. She was a real friend.

Joanie's eyes never left the moose as Kenya, with the air of someone patiently demonstrating a simple task for a small child, picked up the toy and turned it over to reveal the zipper on its backside. She unzipped it, so slowly that Joanie could feel each tooth separating from its partner. Kenya reached into the moose's innards and pulled out a plastic baggie rolled into a tight cylinder. She held up the baggie and let it unfurl, revealing the black powder collected in the bottom right corner. Not much, but enough for a couple of communing excursions.

Joanie automatically reached for the baggie, but Kenya pulled it away. "This is the last of the previous batch. It's all that Charlie had left. As far as we know, it hasn't been compromised."

Joanie realized her hand was still extended, palm up, waiting to receive her alms.

"You can have it," said Kenya, "after you tell me what you saw."

"I need it to remember what I saw." The need stretched from her gut to her forehead out to the tips of her fingers. Just put it in my hand.

"That's not an acceptable risk. There's still a chance this gunpowder is compromised. But I may know another way to help you remember."

The baggie of gunpowder swung slightly back and forth in Kenya's hand like a hypnotist's watch. Joanie watched every minute movement. She would do whatever Kenya wanted.

******

Kenya took her to the laundry room in the basement of Wintertree, a can of tennis balls in hand. She kept the gunpowder in the zipped chest pocket of her track jacket. Joanie could feel its magnetic pull, drawing her toward Kenya's heart.

The laundry room was deserted, with not even some homesick, friendless freshman retreating into its solitude on a lonely Friday night. Kenya tossed a tennis ball each into three side-by-side dryers, and slammed two quarters into each one's coin slot. She pointed at the middle one. "Climb up on there."

"Kenya," Joanie said. "I don't see how masturbating is going to help anything."

"Don't be gross. Just get up on the dryer." Joanie obeyed. She could hear Kenya's heartbeat, amplified by the gunpowder. I'll rub one out right here if that's what it takes.

"I told you my dad was in military intelligence, right? He never told me much about it. But I've done a lot of research over the last year. Found out some things. I remember when I was like four or five, there were a few months where he wasn't around. When he came back, he was different. Not worse, really. Just different. Like he'd seen something. He didn't tell me anything, obviously. But sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night, and I'd see him sitting in the living room with the TV on. No channel, just static. And he'd have headphones on. You could go stand right next to him, and he wouldn't even know you were there. Not in front of him – if you blocked the TV, he'd wake up. But as long as he could see that static, it's like he wasn't there."

Joanie was only half paying attention. The need for the gunpowder had settled in her base. Right where the gunpowder itself sat in the stuffed elephant and moose, in their cute little human-mimicking poses. There was a dull ache low in her abdomen, a hunger that wasn't hunger. Maybe masturbating was what she needed. Crank the machine up to Heavy Dry and let nature take its course.

"I stayed home from school one day and snooped around, found what he was listening to. It was a tape, with the name of some institute in Virginia. Mostly white noise and, like, synthesizer pulses. I mostly forgot about it after that, but last year I looked up the name of that institute. Found some messageboards where people were saying they were running military experiments there. Astral projection, out-of-body experiences, time travel. X-Files kind of stuff. It was all about vibrations. Getting your brainwaves to vibrate at the right frequency."

Kenya traced a long looping sine wave in the air. A peak, then a valley, then back again.

"Like if this is your brainwave, at the very top and the very bottom it approaches a state of infinite energy. They call it the Absolute. But just before the wave reaches the Absolute, your consciousness passes out of the physical world and into another one. A different state of conscious energy. Just for like a nanosecond. Not even that long. It's so fast you can't perceive it. But if you can make your brainwaves fast enough, then you can reach a point where your consciousness is in that other world continuously."

Kenya moved her finger up and down as fast as she could. A dull ache settled in Joanie's brain as well. "Kenya, come on. This is gibberish."

"I know. I don't really understand it either. There's a lot more to it – holograms and spirals and all kinds of shit. But there were a couple of people on the messageboards who said they were involved in the experiment. They figured out how to replicate it at home. Apparently once you can access these other worlds, you don't want to stop. Sound familiar?"

"So what, this dryer is going to vibrate me into another dimension?"

"Not just the dryer." Kenya climbed up on the dryer next to Joanie's. On tip-toes, she could just reach the fluorescent tubes in the fixture directly overhead. She twisted one of the tubes until it started flickering. "Physical stimulation, from the dryer. Visual stimulation, from the light." Kenya climbed off the dryer and pulled a bright yellow Sport Walkman out of her jacket pocket. "And the most important part." She handed the Walkman to Joanie.

"This is your dad's tape?"

"No, I made this one. Remember that WGUN DJ I dated last year? This was the main reason why. It's kind of crude, but it works."

Joanie could already feel the fluorescent light doing something to her head. But she could just picture someone walking into the laundry room and seeing her surfing the dryer, jamming out to white noise and staring at the ceiling. How foolish she would look. Her body had betrayed her enough in her short lifetime that she feared looking foolish more than anything. Everybody said that fear would go away once she started college, but it didn't. An outside observer could say that she had not been mocked for over a year; that the outsize dimensions of her body had become an asset, not a liability. But the fear didn't go away if the object of fear never materialized. Without a release, it only grew, waiting to explode.

Have no fear, the gunpowder said, backed by the slow, deliberate rhythm of Kenya's pulse. I am here for you.

"Are you ready?" Kenya asked. Joanie nodded. "It's going to be weird. It won't be exactly like communing. But I'm here. I'll guide you through it. We'll find what we need, and then it's over."

Joanie could see the outline of the baggie through the fabric of Kenya's jacket. And then you're mine.

Kenya stationed herself at the start button of the dryer to Joanie's right. "Can you reach the start buttons on those two?" Joanie positioned her index fingers over the start buttons on the dryer she was sitting on and the one to her right. "On three. One. Two. Three." They pushed the buttons. All three dryers rumbled to life simultaneously. The tennis balls inside bounced around in protest. Joanie felt each ricochet as a jolt of pleasure.

"Put on the headphones and lie back." Joanie swung her legs up and stretched her body across all three dryers. She looked up directly at the flickering fluorescent tube. "When you're ready, press Play."

Joanie switched on the Walkman. After a few seconds of tape hiss, two different sounds played, one in each ear. They caught a fold of her brain and worried at it. She recognized the sounds. Then she realized: it was "White Rain." In her right ear, the first few bars of the opening guitar arpeggio played on a loop, rising and falling, like the sine wave Kenya traced in the air. In her left ear, a snippet of Stephen Brick's wordless emoting from the chorus repeated over and over, a humming mantra. The vibrations in her eyes, her ears and her body fought each other, a tangle of crashing waves. Her brain felt like it was splitting in two.

Then it all clicked together. She found one wave and rode it.

Joanie found herself in a tunnel.

At first glance the walls appeared solid, but they were textureless and featureless, just flat planes of color – a deep, faintly glowing purple. She was afraid if she touched them her hand would pass right through, and she didn't want that to happen. If her hand could pass through the walls, then her body could pass through the floor. The tunnel looked like something from a video game, but she had no choice but to accept its reality.

She could only see a few yards ahead, thanks to the glow from the walls. She walked forward, and a light began to emerge in the distance. As she moved closer, the light resolved itself into a human figure.

The boy in the tunnel.

Joanie wanted to run, but something wouldn't let her move backwards. She stepped closer and closer to the figure. It was gold and faceless and shining, as if it was reflecting light from a million different sources at once. This wasn't the boy in the tunnel at all.

"Where do you want to go?" the golden man said, in a voice that Joanie recognized as Kenya's, but also his own, masculine and warm. A part of her still in the laundry room felt the vibrations deep in her core, agitating everything hard and tight inside until it collapsed into a warm fluid. She wanted to do something about it. The hand finds the truth.