Mendez snatched the book from my fingers.

“Hey look, Jordan, there’s cartoons in here!”

He pointed at a drawing of a sulking girl standing behind a large, smiling image of herself. “I hurt inside,” read the caption, “but I won’t show it!”

“This you, nancy-boy? You just got so many precious emotions all bottled up inside? Does the little nancy-boy want to talk about it?” The man was speaking in baby talk. Maybe if I ignored him he would go away.

I kicked off my shoes and wriggled painfully into bed. I punctuated my message by switching off the nightstand lamp.

Mendez turned on the ceiling light at the wall switch.

“Chapter seven,” he read, “Guidelines to Developing Intimacy…”

“I’m trying to take a nap, Mendez. Would you kindly let yourself out?”

“Whatever, man,” he mumbled and tossed the book on the table before leaving.

Suddenly I remembered the note Jodi had left me when she invited me to the creek. That handwriting! The “present” wasn’t from her, or Tom for that matter. What was going on here?