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INTRODUCTION

By Kelley Armstrong

Adolescence is a time of firsts. First kiss. First love. First loss. First job. The first taste of adult responsibilities, and the first look at an independent life away from both the restrictions and the security of home.

The joy and pain of firsts has always been one of the major appeals of young adult fiction. For teen readers, it reflects the turmoil in their daily lives. For adult readers, it takes them back to the rawness of those emotions and the confusion of struggling to cope with new experiences.

Teens may also encounter death for the first time as relatives age. While they likely experienced a death in the family when they were younger, it feels different in adolescence. Teens are often stereotyped as acting invincible, yet they are intellectually aware they are indeed mortal, and when they experience death, it becomes real in a way that might have escaped them at an earlier age. It is the first death that may bring them face-to-face with their own mortality.

For this collection, the authors have taken another approach to the concept of death and adolescent firsts. Here, they’ve explored the first time teens are faced with death, not as natural or accidental, but as intentional: the first time they encounter murder.

While mystery is at the heart of these stories, many also deal with the intellectual and emotional impact of encountering murder. For each of these protagonists, it’s the first time they’ve been faced with the reality of homicide: Not only do we all die, but sometimes, we die at the hands of another human being. Each character reacts to this in their own way, giving the anthology a uniquely teen perspective on murder.

In some of these stories, the teen is an unwitting witness to murder who feels called upon to solve the crime. In one, the teen is the victim herself, forced to cope with her own death and the cold fact that someone she loved murdered her. In others, they are caught up in the events that transpire, where keeping themselves alive is more important than solving a crime. In still others, they are the killer—driven by revenge or self-defense or something deeper and darker that makes them deem life disposable.

While the subject may be murder, the tone of the stories varies. We do get the somber reflections on homicide that we might expect. We also get dark and twisted journeys into the minds of killers … and lighter fare, too, leavened with gallows wit and humor. The heart of any examination of death is emotion—the sheer breadth of emotions we can experience when faced with mortality. They all appear here—from grief to horror to confusion to the grim satisfaction of knowing that a criminal has been caught … but that does not undo the crime. The dead remain dead, leaving those around them to carry on.

Ultimately, that is the core of this collection: carrying on. For the teens left behind, murder marks a turning point in their lives. They have experienced something horrific and—whether they are witness, killer, or victim—they are irrevocably changed. Some piece of childhood innocence is lost within these pages, and while we can grieve for that, we realize, too, that it is part of the inevitable process of growing up.

Parents do not solve the crimes in these stories. As with any good young-adult narrative, it is the teen’s responsibility to act. They take a step away from the family home, marking yet another move toward independence, whether they are solving a crime or committing it. These teens are experiencing a trauma that may scar them, but they will move forward from it, forever changed by the experience of having encountered their first murder.

FLOATER

By Kelley Armstrong

They’ve pulled a girl from the lake. She’s dead. There’s no doubt about that; her body’s so bloated I wince every time the diver touches her skin. A floater—that’s what my mom calls corpses like this. She’s investigated cases of people pulled from the lake, and when she comes home after the autopsies, she spends an hour in the shower.

In seventh grade, I found out exactly what happens to a body submerged in water. A mouse body, that is. It was my idea of a cool science fair project. I should probably say that, at sixteen, the memory of that experiment horrifies me. It’d be a lie. I inherited my physician dad’s love of medicine and my detective mom’s love of problem-solving, along with their complete lack of squeamishness. Put those things in a blender, and you get Kylie Matheson, future coroner extraordinaire.

Okay, maybe don’t put that in a blender. Even I’ll admit that’s kind of gross. Like the time Dad told us about emergency surgery on a guy who reached into a jammed food processor … And that’s enough of that. I learned long ago that most people don’t share my sense of fascination with the mysteries of the human body.

From my seventh-grade experiment, I know what happens to a long-submerged body. Decomposition, of course, but it’s different underwater; and fresh water, full of bacteria, kicks things up a notch. You rot, and you bloat as your corpse gives off hydrogen sulfide, methane, and carbon dioxide, and eventually, that brings it to the surface, where you become … a floater.

That’s what I’m looking down at from my spot on the cliff. The recovery team works right below me, but no one glances up. The dead girl lies on her stomach, and they’re discussing whether they should flip her over. I’m ready to jog down and tell them no, please don’t move her, or you’ll risk popping her skin. But the diver says exactly that, so I stay where I am.

The body wears jeans and a T-shirt. One sneaker, too, the other gone. Those jeans and that shoe tell me she hadn’t been out for a swim.

She has brown hair, the color darker than it would be when dry, and I’m trying to see how long it is. Long-ish? It’s impossible to tell with the way it’s sticking to her. It’s not short. I know that.

Did I know her? That’s what I’m wondering, of course. West Mayfield isn’t exactly the big city. I almost certainly knew her.

When I think of that, my heart hammers, reminding me this isn’t a science experiment, a dead mouse I found in a trap, fodder for my study. This is a person. A girl. A woman. Someone I probably—

Deep breaths.

A distant car door slams. Footsteps pound the path to the beach. I glance over to see Mom coming. I smile and rise from my crouch.

That’s weird. She isn’t dressed for work, and Dad’s with her. She must have been called in while she was home for the day.

I descend the hill, half-scampering, half-sliding. No one looks my way. They’re all watching my mother. One of the team says something urgent, and another pulls a tarp over the body. If they thought a floater would freak out Detective Matheson, they clearly don’t know my mother.

I’m at the bottom of the hill. She’s running full out now, Dad doing the same behind her.

“Mom?” I say.

She doesn’t look my way. She’s racing toward the body on the beach.

“Detective Matheson,” the diver says. “You really should—”

“Is it her?”

“The body is too—”

“Is it her?” My mother’s voice rings out, loud and sharp.

“Mom?” I say.

She races right past me and drops to her knees beside the body. When Mom reaches for the tarp, the diver takes her hands, firmly.

“I want to see her,” Mom says through her teeth.

The diver lifts the tarp just enough to show the body’s shirt and arm. Mom touches the gold watch on the corpse’s wrist. I see the watch, and I stare at it. Then I lift my own wrist, and gold glints in the late-day.

“Kylie!” Mom screams and falls onto the body.

I am the body on the beach. I am the floater.

I am dead.

Which is impossible because I’m right here, breathing and walking and talking. Except no one hears me. My feet leave no marks in the sand as I run to my mother. I crouch beside her, and Dad drops right on me—through me—as he reaches for her.

I am dead.

No, I’m dreaming that I’m dead. I must be. I haven’t been to the lake since …

A memory snags, only to fall away, and I shake my head. It’s been weeks since I’ve been here.

The last thing I remember is coming home from school with my boyfriend, Landon. I was in his car, and he was talking about …

I can’t quite remember what he’d been talking about. He was driving me home and …

The rest is gone.

So how did I end up walking on the cliff? I’m here. Very clearly here, and yet as hard as I search my memory, I don’t remember coming to the lake, which means I must be dreaming. I’ve fallen asleep in Landon’s car and—

I’m in a hallway. I blink and look around. How did I get—?

“No,” says a voice.

I turn to see my fourteen-year-old brother sitting beside me. We’re sitting on black steel chairs, like the kind you find in a waiting room.

I know this hall …

I know these chairs …

A murmured voice, then Will again, snapping, “I said no.”

Dad sighs. He reaches a hand toward Will’s shoulder. Will throws it off with a violent shrug and scowls, his attention never leaving his cell phone.

Dad crouches beside Will. Red rims his eyes. Splotches of dried water streak his glasses.

Now I’m the one sighing, a perfect replica of my father. “Your glasses are dirty again, Dad.” I reach out. “Let me clean—”

“Will?” Dad says. “I know—” His voice catches. “I know what you’re feeling.”

“No, you don’t,” Will snaps again, still not looking up. “I’m fine.”

“I do know,” Dad murmurs under his breath. “And you’re not.”

He rumples Will’s hair before my brother can duck. Then Dad walks down the hall and opens a door.

I know that door …

I shake it off and turn to my brother. He’s still staring at his phone.

I lean over to see the screen. It’s a text from me.

Attached is a ticket, and under it, another text from me:

He taps the movie ticket. It pops open. His finger hovers over the DELETE button. Then he clenches the phone tight, his head dropping. A sound rumbles from his throat—a horrible, strangled sound.

“Hey,” I say, reaching for him. “What’s—”

The door at the end of the hall slaps open. Someone shouts, “You can’t go in there!” but the thunder of running feet drowns her out. It’s Landon, with my two best friends—Mia and Elijah—right behind him.

“Will?” Landon says. “Is it true? They found…”

He trails off as Will pulls his heels up onto the chair and his head falls onto his knees. The other door opens. Dad steps out, Mom behind him.

“Kylie?” Mia whispers.

“She’s—” Dad’s voice catches again. “She’s gone.”

Mia lets out a wail and starts to fall. Mom catches her, and they cling together, Mom comforting Mia, stroking her hair.

“No,” Landon says. “It must be a mistake.” He pauses. “Are they sure it’s her? It’s been almost a week, and they said the body was in the water, and I remember Kylie saying that … that…” His face fills with horror, and he shakes it off. “They can’t be sure it’s her.”

“They are,” Dad says.

Behind him, the door opens into an office, and when I see that, I know where I am. Of course I know. I’ve spent countless hours working here. On that door is a plaque. Dr. Basra, Coroner. Through that office, another door. One that leads to the autopsy room, where the floater will lie on a steel table, a Y incision slicing her from shoulder to shoulder to navel.

Cutting her? Cutting me. That body in there is mine. Lying on that cold table, my chest cut open.

A dream. I’m dreaming. That’s why I’m not worried. Because I know, in my gut, that this is a nightmare. What else could it be?

“Wh-what happened?” That’s Elijah, moving forward, his face as pale as his white T-shirt.

“They found her in the lake,” Dad says.

“Did she drown?” Elijah says. “She knows better than to swim alone. She can barely do a dog paddle.”

Dad opens his mouth, but Landon cuts in with, “Did she…” He swallows hard. “Did she jump?”

“What?” Elijah wheels on him. “Are you asking if Kylie killed herself?”

“No, I—”

“Is there some reason why she might?” Elijah bears down on him. “Something she was upset about, asshole?”

“Guys!” Mia lunges between them. “Kylie is gone, and you two are doing this? She’s gone. Do you get that?” Her voice cracks. “She’s gone.”

“She did drown,” my mother says, her own voice oddly monotone. “Dr. Basra just confirmed cause of death. Kylie drowned after a blow to the back of the head. Someone knocked her out and then left her in the lake to die.”

Voices rise. So many voices. So many questions. I look toward Dr. Basra’s office.

“Would you like to leave now, Kylie?” asks a voice at my shoulder.

I turn sharply. A woman in a lab coat stands there.

“Would you like to leave?” she says. “You’ve seen enough. More than you should have, really.”

“I’d like to wake up, yes.”

Her brown eyes soften. “This isn’t a dream. You know that.”

I turn to my family and friends. Grief and anger and confusion whip through the air like a cyclone, yet I stand apart from it. I can see it. I cannot feel it.

“That’s for the best,” the woman says, as if in answer to an unspoken question. “There’s so much to feel, and sometimes, it’s easier not to.”

“What happened to me?”

“You died.”

I spin on her. “I was murdered. Who did it?”

Her gaze slides past me to the others.

“What?” I say. “If you’re seriously implying one of them murdered me—”

“They didn’t mean to. That is, they didn’t set out to. They just failed to save you. Which is, I suppose, the same thing. It’s still murder.”

Someone knocked her out and then left her in the lake to die.

“Would you like to leave now?” the woman says.

“You just told me that someone I love murdered me, and now you’re asking if I want to leave? Walk away without knowing who did it?”

“I’ll take you back to the lake. Back to the shore before your mother arrived. I’ll come for you there, and you’ll forget all this.”

“I don’t want to forget. I want to know who did it.”

Her gaze meets mine. “Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

I straighten and look her in the eye. “Yes.”

She nods, and the hall goes dark.

I’m walking to the car with Landon. There’s a spring in my step, as there always is, even after nearly four months together. I met him this past summer, a few days after he moved to West Mayfield. I’d been working at the hospital, and Landon somehow ended up in the basement, cradling a broken wrist. I found him, wandering.

“Doesn’t look fatal,” I said as I walked over.

He gave a start and turned. I pointed at the coroner sign on Dr. Basra’s door. “You’re in the morgue. Unless you’re expecting that break to kill you…”

He gave a soft, embarrassed laugh. “No, I just have a lousy sense of direction. I thought the guy said the emergency ward was down the stairs and left.”

“Up the stairs and right. Come on. I’ll take you.”

I escorted Landon to the ER and whisked him through triage. When my shift ended, I found him waiting out front to offer me a soda at the diner. By the end of summer, we were a couple, and four months later I still marveled at that. He isn’t the kind of guy I expected to end up with, certainly not for my first boyfriend. I’m a science geek, and he’s a jock. I want to be a coroner; he wants to take over his dad’s auto body business. He’s quiet and shy; I … am not. It shouldn’t work, but it does.

That day, he’s even quieter than usual as we walk to his old Mustang. He restored it himself—he understands motors the way I understand the human heart. I’m chattering away, and I’m sure it looks as if he isn’t listening, but I know he is. In the beginning, I used to constantly stop myself, presuming his lack of response meant he wasn’t interested, but he always noticed and prodded me to continue.

I’m talking about a symposium Dr. Basra is taking me to next month. It’s on forensic anthropology, and I’m as excited as if she were taking me to Disney World.

I’m in the car with Landon, talking and then …

It’s like the scene fast forwards, and suddenly, we’re in my driveway, and I’m slamming his car door as hard as I can before I stomp across the asphalt.

“Kylie!” Landon calls, putting down his window. “Come back. Let’s talk.”

“There’s nothing to say.” I stride past the front of his car. “You’ve made yourself perfectly clear.”

He opens his door and gets out. “No, I haven’t. I screwed up, as usual. I just … I want to talk. I care about you. I’d never do anything to hurt you.”

I snort and hurry up the front steps. He says something else, but I don’t listen, just slam the front door shut and jam the bolt into place.

I’m in the kitchen, fixing a plate of hummus and crackers as I Snapchat with Elijah while he works on a History project with Mia. Elijah and I have known each other since we were toddlers. He used to live next door until his parents split and his mom got a townhouse a few blocks away.

I don’t tell Elijah what happened with Landon. I want to forget it. Brush it under the carpet and hope it goes away. It might. Landon gets his moods. Something brings him down, and it spills over into our relationship. We’ve broken up twice because of it—he gets into a funk where he decides we aren’t working out, and I deserve better, and he’s going to set me free … I roll my eyes just thinking about it.

The front door opens. Footsteps slap the mat. Shoes hit the wall, kicked off, possibly even landing close to the mat. Socks whisper over the hardwood. A stair creaks.

“Will?” I call.

He grunts in response. My brother acts like he’s been assigned the role of stereotypical fourteen-year-old and is determined to win an Oscar for his performance. When he’s home, he’s holed up in his bedroom playing video games. If forced to interact with the family, he makes Landon look positively cheerful. When he was little, I called him Will the Pill because he was so annoying, always on my heels, always bugging me to play. Now, I’m lucky if I get a full sentence out of him.

“So how was school?” I call. Then I continue as if he’s answered. “Really? That’s great. Got any homework tonight?” Another pause. “Okay. It’s been good talking to you.”

I expect to hear him thump upstairs as he usually does. Instead, he says, “Got your text.”

I carry my snack plate into the hall. “Excellent. So we’re on for Star Wars. You and me—”

“Can’t. Going with Justin and a few of the guys.”

I stop walking. “I bought—”

“So did Justin’s mom.”

“But it’s tradition. We always go.”

“Twice, Kylie. We did it twice. That’s not tradition. Take Landon.”

“He hates Star Wars.”

He grumbles under his breath. Like Elijah, my brother is not a Landon fan. Unlike Elijah, he doesn’t seem to have anything against Landon—he just doesn’t think we make a good couple. We don’t “fit.”

“Then take Eli,” Will says. “Or Mia. Just not me.”

He continues up the stairs without even looking my way.

“I’m cooking dinner for Mom and Dad,” I call after him. “Can I get you to make a salad?”

He keeps walking.

“Set the table?”

He disappears into the upstairs hall.

“Show up and smile? Join the conversation? Crazy talk, I know but—”

His bedroom door shuts, and I sigh as I carry my snack into the living room.

We eat dinner early. Mom has to return to the station. She’s deep in a case, which is always tough because you know something’s bugging her, and you can’t ask what it is. She eats with her gaze fixed straight ahead, her fork tapping against the plate when it misses the food.

Dad and I exchange a look and continue our conversation about his day—as much as he can share without breaching patient confidentiality. Yep, having a doctor and a cop for parents means a lot of weirdly fractured dinner conversations, which might be why we end up with some equally weird—and apparently inappropriate—dinner discussions.

As a kid, I’d get annoyed with my parents for refusing to discuss the “cool stuff” when I had friends over. They said that what passed for Matheson dinner conversation could bother others. I thought they were full of crap, so the next time I had Mia over, I started talking about an article I’d read on flesh-eating bacteria and … and it was a long time before I could convince her to have dinner with us again.

Tonight, Dad’s telling me how they saved the foot of a diabetic patient with gangrene. Will sits in front of an empty plate, his earbuds in, music loud enough for me to hear the thump-thump of the bass. He’d rather scarf down his food and race back to his room, but Mom and Dad make him stay until we’ve finished eating. They’ve allowed this one concession to their “screen-free” table rule—he can listen to music. It also saves us from his grumbling and sighing and muttering about the injustice of life for the entire fifteen minutes he’s forced to sit with us.

Dad’s midway through explaining the procedure when Mom cuts him off with, “Kylie?” obviously not realizing Dad was talking.

“Yes?” I say.

“Have any of the girls at school had problems lately with stalker strangers?”

Coming from a detective mom, this question is as normal as “What’d you do at school today?” I don’t ask what she means by “stalker stranger” either. Stalkers can be the rando lurking in the bushes … or they can be the guy you broke up with last week.

“Not that I know of,” I say. “Do you want me to ask around?”

She shakes her head. “Just let me know if you hear anything.” A pause. “And it’s nothing to worry about. Just a theory for … a case.”

Dad starts clearing the table. “Are we still on for tonight’s excursion, Kylie?”

“Definitely.” I need to catch frogs for an experiment—a behavioral study, nothing invasive.

“Will,” Dad says as my brother rises.

Will freezes, hands gripping the table edge, poised like a cat burglar hearing the homeowners return and wondering whether he still has time to escape. He reluctantly pulls out one earbud.

“Why don’t you come to the lake with us?” Dad asks.

“I have homework.”

“And you’re actually going to do it? Awesome. However, it’s six o’clock Friday night, and you have all weekend.”

“I…”

“I think you can go to the lake, Will,” Mom says.

That’s not a suggestion, and my brother knows it. Still, he tries with, “I have a lot of homework.”

“Take it and do it at the lake,” Mom says. “Your dad would be happy to help. He might even take you for ice cream after.”

Will gives his “How old do you think I am?” eye roll, which turns into full-blown muttering when I say, “Ooh, yes. Milkshakes! I’m in.” And yeah, I kinda do that to annoy him, but that’s what big sisters are for. He shoots me a death glare and stalks off to his room.

“Will?” Mom calls.

“Text me when you’re ready to go,” he says. “And no ice cream. I have an online match at eight.”

I’m back in the hospital basement with my family and friends, as if I never left, the memories relived in a blink.

So I had gone to the lake.

Had Dad or Will…?

No. The woman said that my killer had let me die, let me drown. I will not believe it was either of them.

Mom had asked me about a stalker. Had someone been stalking teen girls? Is that what happened to me?

The woman had seemed to say my killer was one of my family or friends, yet she hadn’t been clear on that. She’d just waved down the hall, which could mean my killer was somewhere in the hospital. Someone on staff or even a new patient, injured when I fought back.

I did fight back, didn’t I?

I take a deep breath. Going to the lake. Focus on that. I’d gone to the lake and …

I’m crouched by a creek, looking for frogs. I don’t know where my brother is. He stomped off with his pail an hour ago. I called after him, saying he didn’t need to help. He pretended not to hear me.

Dad’s gone, too. We’d barely arrived before he got a text from work. He had to run back and handle something. He promised Will he’d get us home in time for that eight P.M. match, ’cause those things are important. He also promised me a milkshake.

I only have one frog so far. I’m so much better at collecting dead things. I already found a skeletonized critter that I identified as a possum … which may have something to do with the fact that I only have one frog so far.

I’m walking along the creek when I spot something that makes me smile. It’s a raft, tied to a tree stump. Every kid in West Mayfield knows it’s here, along with the oars tucked under a dead tree.

One summer, Mia and Elijah and I took it out onto the lake almost every day. We’d been twelve, too old for day camp and too young for summer jobs. So we rode our bikes to the lake and paddled the raft out and lay on it, staring up at the clouds as we talked.

That ended when Mom found me at the lake and insisted if I ever went on the raft again, I had to wear a life jacket. That was too embarrassing to contemplate. Years of swim lessons had left me able to dog-paddle across the deep end of a pool and nothing more.

Today, I crouch by the raft, running my hands over the worn wood and smiling with the memories. Then mud squelches. A shadow falls over me, and I twist so fast I nearly lose my balance and tumble into the creek. Will plunks his pail down beside me.

“Good?” he grunts.

I look in to see a half dozen frogs of various sizes and types. Exactly what I told Dad I was looking for. I rise and throw open my arms, and he falls back as if I’m going to do something crazy, like hug him.

“Best brother evah!” I say.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m done. I’ll be over at the beach.”

As he turns to go, I catch a flash of movement in the trees.

“Hello?” I call.

The spot has gone dark, the figure having vanished into lengthening shadows. Will mutters, thinking I’m addressing him. He keeps walking. I grab his arm. He goes to shove me off and then sees my face.

He mouths, “What?”

“I thought I saw someone.”

He squints in the direction I’m looking. Then he marches that way. When I scramble after him, I slip on the wet ground.

“Will!” I stage-whisper.

He waves me away and keeps walking. Then he stops and peers into the forest.

Someone taps my shoulder. I spin, shrieking. Dad’s laugh turns to wide-eyed horror when he sees my expression. He pulls me into a hug.

“Sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to startle you. Well, yes, I did, but not that way. I was just goofing around.”

“Smooth move, Dad,” Will says as he tramps back. “Mom mentions a stalker, and you decide this is a good time to sneak up on your kids.”

Dad winces. “I forgot about that. Sorry. Again.”

Will grabs the bucket from me and heads toward the parking lot.

“Hey,” I call. “How’d you know what Mom said when you had your earbuds in? Does this mean you were actually listening to our conversation?”

He shakes his head and keeps walking.

I get my milkshake. Will breaks down and accepts a sundae, but only because if we must stop, he might as well get something. It’s not just a sundae, either. It’s the banana split for two, which he eats all by himself. Boys.

We’re on the road again when Mia texts. She’s stuck home alone and looking for company. She also has something to show me. Ur gonna love it, she says with a string of emojis and exclamation marks. That makes me smile. She probably found another dead fox in the field behind their place. Mia knows me well.

We’ll be driving right by her subdivision, so I ask Dad to drop me off. Will squawks about his match—it’s a quarter to eight already. I tell Dad to let me out on her corner. The sun is falling, but her street is well lit and it’s a warm night, plenty of people still outside.

I text Mia to say I’ll be there in five minutes. She tells me to come around back and to be quiet so I don’t spoil the surprise. Is it a live animal? As fond as I am of dissection, I’d enjoy watching a live fox more than picking apart a dead one.

I jog down the sidewalk. As expected, her driveway is empty, her parents gone. When I slip around back, I hear voices. Mia is talking. A guy answers. I grin on hearing a male voice. Mia hasn’t dated yet—she says she hasn’t found the right person. This must be my surprise. Look, Kylie! I’m talking to a real, live teenage boy!

His voice is too low to make out words until I’m halfway around the house. Then I still can’t hear what he’s saying, but I recognize the voice. Landon.

I stop and grimace. I hadn’t told Mia about our fight yet. Did Landon reach out to her? I know they talk. Did she invite us over so we can hash it out? That would explain why she told me to come around the house quietly. Don’t let Landon know I’m there. Don’t give him a chance to bolt.

I consider leaving this intervention, but I know she means well. Mia always has my back. Elijah and I might have grown up together, but my best friend is Mia. We met on the first day of kindergarten. Two girls weren’t letting her play with the blocks, so we played together, and then I showed her a dead roach I’d found in the corner, and she didn’t say, “Eww” and run away. Best friends forever.

I continue around the house. Their voices come clearer now. They’re talking about me. Great …

“Kylie just … She’s not listening. I tried talking to her, and she stomped off.”

“I know,” Mia said.

“I don’t want to hurt her. She deserves better. She deserves the best.”

“She does.” Mia’s voice is barely above a whisper, and there’s a note in it that sounds like sadness.

They say something I don’t catch, a brief exchange drowned out by the scuff of my shoes on the walkway. I reach the back of the house, and I can see them by the pool, sitting together on a lounge chair.

Landon puts his arm around her shoulders, and she falls against him, and he gives her a one-armed hug. Then he twists. He reaches for her chin, pulls her face up to his and kisses her.

My heart stops. I swear it just stops.

I start to charge in and ask what the hell he’s doing. Mia is upset—clearly upset—and he’s taking advantage of it? Elijah’s right. Landon really is a jerk. A complete and total—

Then I realize Mia isn’t pushing him away. He kisses her, and she doesn’t shove him off in shock and horror. She’s kissing him back.

My boyfriend is kissing my best friend. And she’s kissing him back.

I stare. It’s all I can do for at least ten seconds. Then I turn, and I run as fast as I can.

I’m in the hospital again. My heart pounds now, so hard I can barely breathe. I hear Mia’s voice, and I spin toward it with a surge of hate and rage.

You and Landon?

You were my best friend. My best friend. The person I trusted more than anyone else.

Did you do this? Did you kill me?

I remember her swimming pool. I’ve read cases where someone drowns in a pool or tub and gets dumped in a lake, so it’ll seem they’ve drowned there. It never works. The water in their lungs will be different. I know that. Mia wouldn’t. Neither would Landon.

Had I gone back to confront Mia? Had we fought, and had I fallen in and hit my head? Did they watch me drown and then take my body to the lake?

I squeeze my eyes shut and focus on that moment in my memory, as I fled from Mia’s house, running until …

My phone buzzes with a message. I’m racing down Mia’s street, and I ignore it until I reach the end. Then I yank it out, certain it’s her. Certain she knows I saw them—she wanted me to see them. She sent that text asking me to come over and see something I was going to love.

The thought hits me so hard bile rises, and I have to choke it back.

The Snapchat message is from Elijah. He has the truck, and he just dropped his sister off around the corner from my place. Do I mind if he stops by? Hangs out?

My hands grip the phone as tears splash onto the screen.

I send back:

Elijah:

No, everything is not okay, and it might never be okay again. I lost Landon, and sure, that hurts, but it’s nothing compared to losing Mia. Over this. Over a guy.

I send a simple yes, and then I run again. I’m a block from my place when I see a familiar pickup. It’s Elijah, heading home.

There’s no place to run. No chance to duck and hide. He spots me, and he slows. He’s out of the truck in a flash, running to the sidewalk, where he catches me up in a hug. He doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t ask what’s wrong. He sees, and he hugs me, and I collapse against him.

Elijah is here for me. He has always been here for me. And I’ve been … I’ve been a bitch. There’s no easier way to put it. We grew older, and we grew apart, and that was on me.

When he finally asks what’s happened, I shake my head and look up into his green eyes and say, “Not here. Let’s … let’s go somewhere.”

“Sure. Just tell me where.”

The idea comes in a heartbeat. I tell him.

I lie on my stomach, watching ripples in the lake, the wood of the raft smooth under my fingers. The moon’s reflection floats along on the current. Behind me, Elijah pushes the raft with the oar, launching it from the creek into the lake.

I’ve told him what happened. He didn’t say, “I told you so.” He had every right to. He warned me against Landon from the beginning. I think the part about Mia has shocked him to silence. Now he pushes us along, and I watch the night sky shimmer on the lake as my tears slide into the water.

They’re tears of grief and hurt and humiliation, but also wistful longing. I’m here, where I’d been so many times with Elijah and Mia, back in simpler times. Maybe that sounds silly—a sixteen-year-old talking about “simpler times,” but that’s what they felt like. Just the three of us, friends, no complications, no angst. I wish I could go back there right now. Be a kid again, floating on the current with my two best friends.

“I’m sorry,” Elijah says.

I nod and don’t look up. My head is over the edge, my fingers trailing in the water. He sets the oar down and kneels beside me. A pause, as if he’s going to say something. Then he stretches out beside me, and I stiffen at that because …

The tears prickle with yet another reminder of those times past. So much simpler. Everything’s gotten complicated, and the reason I stiffen is one of those, and then I’m ashamed of the impulse because Elijah is only offering comfort and support. Exactly what I need.

I look over at him, my mouth opening to say something. His face is right there, and then his lips are on mine, and damn it, no.

I pull back. “Eli…”

His jaw clenches, and he looks away. Anger pulses from him. This is why I tensed, why things are complicated, why I’ve withdrawn over the last few years.

The first time Elijah kissed me, we were twelve. I told him I wasn’t interested, and he cut it out, and I thought everything was fine. Then he tried again, two years later. After that, he kept trying.

“Eli…,” I say, my voice softening. “No, okay?”

He looks back at me, his eyes hard emeralds. “Why not? He’s messing around on you.”

“So I’m going to mess around with you? One, I don’t want revenge. Two, I’d never do that, because it’d be unfair to you. I’d be leading you on with a promise I don’t intend to keep.”

“It’s not a promise,” he says. “It’s giving me a chance, Kylie. That’s all I want. All I ever wanted.”

I sit up. “A chance for what? To get to know you better? I’ve known you since we were three, Eli. I love you, and you are an awesome friend, but I’m just not interested in you that way.”

“Why?”

I throw up my hands. “Who knows?”

“I do,” he says as he rises. “It’s because I’m a nice guy.”

“Don’t pull that—”

“You want a bad boy. Like Landon.”

I sputter a laugh. “Landon is not a bad boy. At all.”

“He’s messing around on you. With your best friend. He’s an asshole, and you know it.”

“No, he’s…” Pain stabs me. It isn’t the pain of remembering Landon’s betrayal. It’s something else. The exchange between Landon and Mia by her pool that I told myself I didn’t catch. I did, though. I heard it just fine.

“She’s my best friend,” Mia had said. Then, “I won’t lose her, Landon. If I have to choose between you and her, it’s her.”

“I know, and I don’t want that. I wish … I wish I could do this without hurting her, but I keep trying to talk to her, and she won’t listen.”

I flash back to the ride home from school. To the part I skipped in my memory. Landon wanting to talk about us, telling me how much he cared about me, how much he didn’t want to lose my friendship. I cut him off because I knew what was coming. We’d been there twice before. He ended it, and I told myself he was just being moody. He wasn’t. He had tried to break it off gently, and I hadn’t let him.

Landon had fallen for Mia, so he had to end it with me, and I wouldn’t let him.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s been vibrating for a while, and I’ve been ignoring it, but now I take it out to keep Elijah from saying anything more.

It’s a text from a number I don’t recognize. I pop it open.

I send back:

A long pause. Then she texts:

I reread her message, and it slowly hits me. She just said she misplaced her phone. The phone that sent me the Snapchat message to come to her house.

She didn’t send the message.

As soon as I realize that, a piece clicks into place. A piece that wouldn’t fit before. I’ve known Mia more than half my life, and she has never done anything remotely cruel. Luring me to see her with Landon wasn’t just “slightly out of character.” The only explanation for it would be demonic possession. I’d realized that. I’d just been too hurt to think about it.

So who sent the message? I consider Landon only for a moment. He’s not underhanded, not devious. It wouldn’t occur to him.

How would someone get Mia’s…?

I look up at Elijah.

“You were doing a project with Mia after school,” I say.

“Yeah.”

“You know she’s always misplacing her phone. You took it. You’re the one who sent that message. You wanted me to see them together.”

I brace for him to deny it. Instead, he squares his shoulders and says, “Yes, I did. She got a message from him while we were doing our assignment. I saw it. He needed to talk to her. I swiped her phone and saw that they’d arranged to meet at her place after her parents left.”

“You lured me there, and then you drove around waiting for me to run home so you could … so you could…”

“So I could be there for you.” He straightens. “You had to know, Kylie. He’s an asshole, and Mia isn’t any better. She’s no friend of yours, and he’s sure as hell no boyfriend.”

Elijah is wrong. What I saw tonight wasn’t Mia and Landon sneaking out together. It was them falling for each other and trying to figure out what to do about it. How to handle it with me. Handle it respectfully. Yes, he kissed her, but I had a feeling it was their first, and if I knew either of them, they regretted it now.

“I’m your friend,” Elijah says, leaning toward me. “And I should be your boyfriend.”

“No, Eli, I’m not—”

His mouth comes to mine. I push, but this time his arms are around me, and when I fight, he doesn’t let go, just keeps kissing me. Panic ignites. I shove at him so hard that when he does let go, I topple backward, right off the raft, into the lake.

The shock of that hits me hard, my mouth opening, water rushing in. I flail, coughing and sputtering. The panic subsides, though. I’ve gotten away from Elijah, and I’m fine. I just need to catch my breath and get back on the raft.

As I dog-paddle, my heart rate slows. I swipe wet hair from my eyes and look around. Seeing the raft, I start toward it. Elijah paddles away.

“Hey!” I say, treading water. “Don’t be a jerk.”

“Don’t be a bitch.”

“What?” My voice rises. “You—”

“I’ll let you back on if you promise to give me a chance.”

“You call me a bitch and then expect me to go out with you?” I shake my head and squint around. “Forget it. I can swim to shore.”

“It’s a long way.”

“And it’s a calm lake. I’ll be fine.”

I start out. It is a long way, and I’m not sure I can swim that far. I don’t intend to, though. I just need Elijah to think I can. I take a few strokes, and he’s keeping pace alongside, just out of reach. He’s talking to me. I’m paying no attention.

I swim until he relaxes. Then I swerve for the raft. My fingers brush it. He jerks back in surprise. Then he swings the oar. I see it out of the corner of my eye, but I’m focused on holding the side of the raft, ready to heave myself onto it. It’s not as if he’ll hit—

The oar strikes the side of my head. Hits so hard that the moon explodes, lights flashing. Then everything goes dark.

I’m in the morgue hallway. My heart pounds, breath coming fast. My head throbs, and my mouth tastes of lake water.

I turn slowly. Elijah stands against the wall now, his arms crossed.

“You hit me with that oar,” I say as I walk toward him. “You didn’t mean to hurt me. You just didn’t want me getting on the raft until I agreed to your conditions. But the blow knocked me out, and when I went under, you left me there. I’m sure you thought I was fine, and I’d swim to shore, but you never looked back. You were too busy being hurt and angry to even think of me. You left me to die.”

He has his chin down, his gaze on the floor. I stand right in front of him. His head jerks up, as if he senses something. I see his eyes. I see grief, and I see remorse, and I don’t care.

“You killed me,” I whisper, and he shivers, arms tightening around himself.

The woman appears down the hall, waiting. I walk toward her.

“You have your answer,” she says.

“I do,” I say as that numbing sense of calm falls again. “Now what?”

“Now you can take me up on my offer. Go back to the lake, to before your mother arrived. Forget all this. Forget what happened to you. Forget how it happened.”

I look at Elijah again, and my gut clenches.

“I loved you,” I say to him. “As a friend, yes, but I loved you, and now I never can again. Everything you were to me is ruined. All those memories…”

I inhale.

“Yes, then?” she says. “Go back? Forget this?”

I turn to Landon and Mia, and the pain stabs harder.

Go back. Rewind to when I climbed into Landon’s car. To that girl, bouncing along with her boyfriend. The girl whose boyfriend wanted her. The girl whose boyfriend did not want her best friend.

Go back to the girl who never doubted her best friend. I know this wasn’t Mia’s fault, but it still hurts. It’s still a smudge on our friendship. Not the indelible black stroke of Elijah’s betrayal, but a smudge nonetheless.

Going back would be easier, wouldn’t it? So much easier.

Then I look at Elijah again.

“He doesn’t deserve that,” I whisper.

“Hmm?” the woman says.

I don’t answer. What I mean is that Elijah doesn’t deserve that clean slate in my memory. He doesn’t deserve to go back to being the friend I still cared for, still remembered fondly.

I have no idea whether he’ll be caught. I hear my mother talking about a Peeping Tom—that must have been the case she’d been investigating. She’ll wonder, of course, whether that was my killer. Whether he graduated from peeping on girls to killing one. Maybe the police will get stuck there, searching for a stranger.

They’ll be looking for a big answer to my death. Some terrible and violent explanation, a dark force that stole me from them. Instead, the answer is small. So small and so personal. A fight. A shove. A blow. The end. My life snuffed out in what should have been no more than a night of hard but ordinary truths, one rough bump in the life of a sixteen-year-old girl.

Whether or not they catch Elijah, he knows what he did. And I want to remember what he did. That will be his punishment. That I will remember, wherever I go from here.

As for Landon, as much as that hurts, I want to remember my mistakes there, too. I liked him as a friend, and I liked having him as a boyfriend. No, I liked having a boyfriend, and part of that had been about erecting a wall between me and Elijah. See, I have a boyfriend now, so we can’t be more than friends. Landon deserves better. He deserves Mia, and she deserves him, and I don’t know if they’ll work out after this, but I wish them the best, and I will never forget them.

I walk over to the group, past my friends, to my family.

This is what I want to remember most. That I was loved. If I rewind those final hours, I erase my last memories of my family, and those are all good. I would forget Mom, laughing with me as we washed dishes, her insisting on helping before she went back to work. I’d forget Dad, buying me a milkshake and talking to me and just being Dad. And I’d forget Will bringing me frogs. My little brother—who wanted nothing to do with me these days—finding me exactly the frogs I wanted.

“I love you,” I say to them, one by one, finishing with Will, leaning over to kiss the top of his head.

He looks up, startled.

“You’re still a pill,” I say. “But you’ll outgrow that. I just wish I could be there to see it.”

One last look at them all, and then I walk to the woman waiting patiently down the hall.

“Where do I go next?” I say.

“Back to the lake?” she asks.

I shake my head. “Forward. I want to keep going forward.”

She puts an arm around my shoulders, and we walk down the hall as the voices fade behind us.

THE DAY I KILLED COACH DUFFY

By R .L. Stine

Tyler’s new girlfriend, Cathy, was on the sidelines watching our soccer practice the afternoon Coach Duffy went berserk on him. Cathy is Tyler’s first serious girlfriend, I think, and I could see how embarrassed he was, and how hot he was becoming.

His neck turned bright red. Just his neck. His face went white as flour, but his neck darkened to a deep red, almost purple. I’ve seen it before. Tyler has a temper. Luckily, he never turned it on me. We’ve been good buddies since the end of middle school, and I know how to stay on his good side.

As the coach let him have it, the two of them standing so close, Duffy actually spit in Tyler’s face as he shouted at him. Tyler kept glancing over at Cathy, and each time I could see his neck darken a little more and see that pulse he has on his throat throbbing away.

Truth is, Tyler and I were playing like goofballs. We were never really serious about soccer, and the team is a joke anyway. We’ve only got one good player, LeMarr Oates, and he was sitting out practice with a sprained ankle. Or so he said. Maybe he just got tired of having to play with so many losers.

So Duffy was right about us today. Tyler and I had a secret contest to see how many balls we could let go through our legs. It was actually a riot, because we were really good at it.

I don’t know if the coach had even noticed our little joke, until Tyler and I started to laugh like hyenas and fall on the grass on our stomachs, pounding the ground with our fists.

That’s when Duffy called the two of us over to talk, and I knew it wasn’t going to be a pep session. Go, team.

He turned to me first. I sucked in a deep breath, kept my eyes to the ground, and prepared to get slaughtered.

But he just shook his head, like he was sad, and said, “That’s about what I expect from you, Doug.”

Then he turned to Tyler and went crazy on him. He shouted and spit and said Tyler used to be a real athlete till he got mixed up with me. Then he called Tyler a waste of his time and said he was going to send him to the girls’ team because he played like a little girlie.

That’s what Duffy said. No lie. He said Tyler played like a little girlie. Everyone knows you’re not supposed to say things like that anymore. Didn’t Duffy have any sensitivity training at all?

Well, Tyler’s neck was red and his bottom lip was trembling. He kept curling and uncurling his fists down at his sides. And the way he stuck out his chest and stood his ground, only inches in front of Duffy, made my stomach tighten in dread. And I silently prayed that he wouldn’t punch out the coach, because I knew that could be the end of Tyler at Johnson Falls High.

I glanced over at the sidelines and saw Cathy covering her face with both hands. Was she embarrassed for Tyler? Or was it that she just couldn’t stand the coach abusing him like that?

I couldn’t tell. But suddenly, she lowered her hands, and I saw her unhappy expression. And I watched her turn and run away, her blond hair flying behind her like a kite’s tail. She ran hard, taking long strides across the grass and not looking back once.

When I turned back, Duffy was saying something about Tyler’s whole family being worthless, especially his older brother, Donny, who’s had a lot of troubles since he dropped out of school.

I knew that was going too far. And I almost cried out as Tyler moved forward, his whole face blazing now, on fire, his eyes wide, eyebrows arched, features tight with anger.

Please hold back. Please don’t hit Duffy.

Tyler gave a sudden lurch—and he and the coach bumped chests. Like some kind of manly thing. They bumped chests. And Tyler didn’t back up. He stood his ground, challenging the coach.

Duffy was the one to back up. “That’s it, Tyler. You’re out of here. You’re gone.” He kept motioning with both hands for Tyler to shoo. “Don’t come back. If you do, I’ll forget I’m a teacher and I’ll grind you into hamburger.”

He really said that. Said he’d grind Tyler to hamburger.

I knew Duffy could lose his job for saying stuff like that. But I didn’t want to be the one to report him, and I knew it wasn’t Tyler’s style, either.

The rest of the guys had backed off to the sidelines and had their heads down, like they were pretending they weren’t there and hadn’t heard any of it. Wimps, but that’s no shock.

Tyler didn’t hesitate. He spun around and started to lope away, trotting across the grass as if he were happy and carefree, not showing anything on his face.

I stood there, my stomach in a knot, cold sweat on the back of my neck. I didn’t know what to do. Should I follow after Tyler? Should I stay for the rest of the practice?

Duffy settled the problem for me. He shouted that practice was over and we should all get out of his sight. He was trying to act tough, like the fight with Tyler didn’t affect him at all. Like it only made him angry.

But I could see his lips twitching, and he was breathing hard, his chest pumping up and down. So I knew Tyler had given back a little of what Duffy had given him.

Too bad. It had all just started as a joke between Tyler and me. But Duffy didn’t seem to have any sense of humor.

I texted Tyler as soon as I got home, but no reply.

I kept thinking about Cathy. Was she embarrassed for Tyler? Or was she just embarrassed?

I mean, they had only been together a few weeks, so I didn’t know her well at all and had no idea of how she’d react. She probably had no idea about Tyler’s hot temper and how he never could back away from a fight.

I guessed she learned that today.

And then after dinner, my phone buzzed and it was Tyler. He sounded weird. “Doug, get over here, okay? Can you come right away? I need you here.”

“Huh? What’s up, Tyler? What’s your problem?” I said.

“I just killed Coach Duffy,” he replied in a harsh whisper.

I kind of froze. A hot electric current ran down my back. My brain stopped thinking for a moment.

“Did you hear me? I just killed Duffy,” Tyler repeated. “Get over here. I need help. I don’t know what to do. Can you hurry?”

Of course, I had a whole bunch of questions I wanted to ask him. But I choked them back and said I’d be right over. I told my parents I had a soccer meeting at school—what a joke!—jumped into the car and drove to Tyler’s house.

My brain was spinning all the way there. My thoughts didn’t make any sense at all. I don’t even think they were thoughts. Just little bursts of fright and disbelief.

I stopped halfway up Tyler’s driveway. My headlights poured into the garage like spotlights. The garage door was all the way up, and I saw Tyler standing there at the side, and I saw shoes on the concrete floor. Shoes and legs. And I knew it was true without even getting out of the car. Tyler had killed Coach Duffy.

I ran up to Tyler, my heart suddenly in my throat. Tyler stood stiffly, not loose like usual, as if all his muscles had tightened. “What happened?”

“I killed him,” Tyler said in a choked whisper. He motioned to the body sprawled on its back.

Yes. Coach Duffy. Graying hair falling over his forehead. Head tilted to one side. Mouth open in an expression of surprise. One hand was trapped under his body. His legs were spread as if he were sleeping.

“How? Why?” My voice cracked. “I … I don’t believe it, Tyler. Tell me—”

Tyler let out a long whoosh of air. He shook his head. “I think he came to apologize. He just came walking up the driveway all unexpected.”

“Where were you? In the garage?”

He nodded. “Yeah. My parents asked me to dig holes for some tomato plants in the back. I’d just finished, and there he was.”

“And he started to apologize?” I asked.

“I didn’t give him a chance,” Tyler said, gazing down at the body. “I’d just gotten off the phone with Cathy. She broke up with me.”

“She what?”

“Broke up with me. She said she didn’t know I was such a jerk, and it just wasn’t going to work out with the two of us.”

“Oh, wow,” I muttered.

“I tried to discuss it with her, but she said to stop whining, and she hung up on me.” Tyler took a deep breath. It was a cool evening, but his forehead was drenched in sweat. “I’d just gotten off the phone, feeling really bad. You know. It sucks. I still had the garden shovel in my hand, and there was Duffy walking into the garage.”

“What did he say?” I asked.

“Nothing. I wrapped my hands around the handle and slammed the shovel into the back of his head as hard as I could. He made this unnnnh sound and his eyes rolled up in his head. And he went down. Dead. I dropped the shovel and bent down beside him and saw he was dead.”

“And then you called me?” I said.

He turned to me and his eyes were watery and kind of pleading. “I don’t know what to do, Doug. So I need your help. Maybe—”

“Where are your parents?” I said. “Do they know you’re in the garage?”

“They’re not home,” he said. “They’re in Cleveland. My cousin is sick there. I’m all alone here.”

I swallowed. My mouth was suddenly as dry as cotton. My heart was pounding too hard for me to think straight.

“What can we do?” Tyler asked in a high, shrill voice. “Think, Doug. We’ve got to do something. My life … My whole life could be over.”

“First thing,” I said, “we’ve got to close the garage door. Anyone who passes by can see the body.”

Tyler shook his head. “No. Not a good idea. The batteries are weak. If we close the door, it may not open again. We could be trapped in here. We—”

“We’ll get out,” I said. “Close the door.”

Shaking his head, he crossed to the wall and pushed the garage door control. We both stared as the door slid down with a loud hum. A hard thud as it slammed shut.

“Now what?” Tyler demanded. “I can’t think, Doug. How can you think when you’re totally messed up?”

I put a hand on his shoulder. It was trembling. “We’ll think together,” I said. I gazed at the body. The open mouth, the wide-open eyes.

“Do you think anyone knew Duffy was coming here?” I asked.

Tyler shrugged. “Beats me. You know, his wife died last year. So he didn’t have her to tell.”

“Maybe no one knows he was here,” I said, my mind spinning. “So we could move him.”

“Move him?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Stuff him into the back of my car. Take him someplace. Maybe the old rock quarry in the canal basin.”

“No one has to know he was here,” Tyler repeated.

“Yeah. And look. There’s no blood. We take him away. No trace of him. No one will have a clue how he got there. How he got hit in the head.”

“Maybe you’re right, Doug,” Tyler said. He started to look a little more like himself. “Maybe you’re a genius. We take him away, and there’s no trace of him here. Yes. We can do it. I know we can do it.”

He raised a fist and we bumped knuckles. “You’re a real friend, Doug. Seriously.”

That’s when Coach Duffy sat up.

Tyler and I both screamed. I staggered back against the garden tools shelf.

Duffy uttered a long groan and rubbed the back of his head. He shut his eyes and twisted his head as if seeing if it could swivel on his neck.

Tyler took a step back, his eyes bulging, mouth hanging open.

“Nooooo,” I moaned. “Noooo.”

With another groan, Duffy pulled himself to his feet. He grabbed onto the wall with one hand, catching his balance. He rubbed the back of his head again and winced in pain.

Then he turned his attention to Tyler and me.

“I’ve been listening,” he said. His voice was clogged. He coughed and cleared his throat loudly. “Listening to you both talk about me.”

I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.

“Coach Duffy—” Tyler started. But no words followed.

“You wanted to carry me away,” Duffy said, talking to both of us. “Hide me at the quarry. Was that your plan?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. His eyes burned into mine. “I believe that was your plan, right, Doug?”

“I … uh…” I guess I was in total shock. I couldn’t put two words together.

“So you thought you killed me, Tyler?” Duffy said, no expression on his face, his eyes dull, his mouth set, hardly moving as he talked. “You were about as good at killing as you are in soccer.”

“I’m sorry,” Tyler choked out. “I … I can’t explain it. I just lost it and—”

“You don’t have to explain it,” Duffy said, twisting his head on his neck again. “You’re worthless. A worthless person.”

“I realize—” Tyler started. But he stopped as Duffy bent and picked up the big shovel. Duffy lowered the blade to the garage floor and leaned on the handle.

“I took a hard blow to the head,” Duffy said softly, so softly I could barely hear him. “So I may not be in my right mind. But—”

“We can take you to the hospital,” I said, finally finding my voice. “Let me drive you—”

“I may not be in my right mind,” Duffy repeated. “But I think in order to settle this and make it even … one of you has to die now.”

I gasped.

Tyler uttered a sharp cry. “No—!”

The coach raised the heavy steel shovel in front of him. “We want to settle this right,” he said calmly, his voice thin, still just above a whisper. “Even if I’m not in my right mind. I took a blow. Now one of you has to take one. It’s only right.”

I froze. My knees felt about to fold. I glimpsed Tyler. I saw where his eyes were. On the garage door control against the wall.

I nodded, signaling Tyler to go for it. I knew we had to get out of there. I took a step toward the coach to distract him. “Let’s talk about this,” I said.

Tyler dove for the door control and pushed the button hard.

The door made a squeaking sound. And didn’t budge.

Tyler pushed it again.

Silence.

“I knew it,” Tyler said. “The batteries.”

Duffy had a strange grin on his face, sort of lopsided, as if he were drunk. “Looks like it’s just the three of us in here,” he said. “Now, I’m probably a little crazy from the blow I took. But which one of you should die?”

Tyler and I exchanged a terrified glance. Neither of us spoke.

Duffy raised the shovel. “It doesn’t seem fair that you both should die,” he said. “Just one death will settle the score.” He waved the shovel in front of him. “Which one? Which one should die? Come on. Let’s have an answer. I’m dizzy and I’m in pain. I don’t have all night.”

“Please, let’s stop this,” I said. “No one has to die. Let’s get out of here. We can get you to the hospital.”

“So, it’s you who should die, Doug?” he said, ignoring my words.

“No!” I cried. “Please—no.” I pointed to Tyler. “He’s the one who hit you. I wasn’t even here. Why should it be me?”

“It was Doug’s idea to take you to the quarry,” Tyler said. “It wasn’t my idea.”

The strange smile lingered on Duffy’s face. “So I guess you think Doug should die? Is that right, Tyler?”

“I … I…” Tyler couldn’t answer.

“Well, guess what, Tyler?” Duffy said. “I choose you.”

“No, wait—” Tyler tried to back away but there was only wall behind him.

“I choose you to die,” Duffy repeated. “And that will settle it between us, won’t it.”

“Coach, you’re not right,” I said. “Don’t do this. Please. You’re not thinking right.”

“I think I am,” Duffy said. “Am I the only one here who believes in justice?”

He handed the shovel to me. “Go ahead, Doug. Get a good grip. And swing it at the back of Tyler’s head. Give it a hard swing.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You want me to do it?”

Duffy nodded. “It’s only fair. If you don’t do it, I’ll have to kill you both. That’s the way it has to be.”

Without speaking, Tyler and I both made a run for the garage door. Maybe we could pull it open by hand. But Duffy got there first. He stuck out both arms, blocking our way.

Now Tyler had his back turned to me and I held the shovel.

“Go ahead,” Duffy urged me. “Stop wasting time. Raise the shovel, Doug. I don’t want to kill you both, but I will. Kill Tyler, Doug. Now. Or else you both go.”

How could I do this? My whole body was shuddering. My hands were cold and wet and trembling so hard, I could barely hold the shovel handle.

“Hurry!” Duffy screamed. “Hurry. Swing now. Kill him, Doug. Then you and I will walk away from here, everything even.”

Walk away? Walk away from killing Tyler?

“We’ll take him to the quarry,” Duffy said. “No one will ever know.”

He took a step toward me, raising both hands. I shuddered again. Was he going to strangle me if I didn’t kill Tyler?

I raised the shovel. It suddenly weighed a thousand pounds.

“Turn around!” I shouted at Tyler. “Turn around—now!”

“You’re not doing this,” Tyler said.

“I have no choice!” I cried.

Tyler started to turn away from me.

I gripped the long handle tightly. I raised the blade and pulled the shovel back.

And I swung it as hard as I could—into Coach Duffy’s face.

I heard bone break. I saw bright red blood come gushing up like a fountain.

Duffy didn’t utter a sound. His knees bent and he went down hard, cracking his head on the concrete floor. He didn’t move.

Tyler dropped to his knees beside Duffy. He held a hand over the coach’s chest. Then he put a finger under Duffy’s nose.

“You killed him,” Tyler said. “You killed Coach Duffy.”

“I had to,” I said. “He didn’t give me a choice, did he?”

“You killed Coach Duffy,” Tyler repeated. He raised his phone. “I got it on video.”

“Huh?”

“Didn’t you see my phone? I got the whole thing on video,” Tyler said. He climbed to his feet, raised the phone, and began punching numbers.

“Wh-what are you doing?” I stammered, struggling to catch my breath.

“Phoning 911,” Tyler said. “I have to report it.”

“What?” I cried. “What are you doing?”

“I have to call the police,” Tyler said. “You killed Coach Duffy. I can’t let this ruin my whole life. It isn’t right. I have it on video. I’m innocent. You killed him, Doug.”

“But—but, listen—” I struggled to speak.

“Hello, 911?” Tyler said into the phone. “I need to report a murder.”

IN PLAIN SIGHT

By Y. S. Lee

Kingston Penitentiary
Portsmouth Village, near Kingston
Ontario, Canada
January 1884

It’s the screaming that wears you down. Not in daylight: That’s for silent labor, droning sermons, the bump and clank of the laundry press. It happens at night, once we’re locked into our cells. Goderre does battle in her sleep, grunting and hurling French curses. Rochon sobs as much as she shrieks. Only the new girl, to my left, is silent. And I? I once woke myself with my own cries, but even then I couldn’t remember the dream.

In the morning, nobody makes eye contact. Ice round the edges of the chamber pot, wind whining through the windowpanes, pinch of shoes that are too small (but I’ve had my pair for the year, and Matron Palmer says, You’d think her feet were big enough already). At breakfast, the inevitable bowls of rough gray porridge. We bow our heads to say grace, and everyone’s eyes slide toward the new girl. Corrigan. Her name ripples up and down the bench in whispers.

She’s maybe twenty. Big-eyed, pale-skinned, dark hair shingled like a man’s. They do it to all the new inmates. For hygiene, they say. I think it’s so we don’t recognize ourselves, but the joke’s on them—Corrigan is beautiful anyway. I can’t look at her for long; it’s like staring at the sun. She must feel our gazes, but she keeps her eyes lowered. She’s a statue: Woman Seated.

Washington passes me the milk jug and I hand it on quick to Corrigan, who lets it bounce off her palms and smash to the ground. Thirty pairs of eyes on me. Bluey-white fluid bleeds into the crevices between the flagstones.

Matron’s pale eyes narrow. “Pierce,” she says. “I hope that wasn’t on purpose.”

“N-no, Matron,” I reply.

“You’ll scrub the flags to make up for the damage.”

“Yes, Matron.” I make my voice as bland as skimmed milk.

“Now.”

I glance at Corrigan, still examining the contents of her bowl. Unhearing. Unseeing. This is her fault, too. She should offer to help. Ought to acknowledge, at least, that I’m cleaning up her mess. She doesn’t. I won’t look at her again.

After a few seconds, breakfast resumes: clink of spoons against tin bowls, Matron’s voice droning a psalm. I collect fragments of glazed clay in my apron. Corrigan hunches over her porridge, spoon moving steadily from bowl to mouth.

“Hard luck,” mutters Washington, as I pick a large sliver from beneath her feet. I clench my jaw. I’ve never known what to do with sympathy.

I sweep up the splinters, scour the floor. By the time I’m finished, the meal is over. While Matron’s looking the other way, I gulp my coffee anyway and then, like a good girl, tip my congealed porridge into the swill bucket and follow the others to the laundry.

There’s a bright line of red on my palm from a particularly long shard of clay. I curl my hand tight, into a fist.

Here’s what my prison record says: Sarah Jane Pierce, number 9207, born Ontario, religion Church of England. Eyes gray, hair brown, complexion sallow, height four feet two inches. That last bit’s a laugh; I wasn’t yet ten when I got seven years for larceny, but it’s in the big book, in the curly slanting letters it hurts my eyes to read. I’m sixteen now, and tall with it. I’d change the rest, too, if I could—eyes, hair, skin, name. I’d ink out that line of the register, blacker than black, and leave them scrambling for facts forever blotted out.

For now, I make my face a blank. My hands sew and launder and sweep. My feet walk but never run. I am a wax figure of a girl, an automaton in a museum. I have just over a year of my sentence left to serve. One day, not so very long from now, I will disappear entirely.

It’s Monday, washday. Ten hours of brushing and soaking, boiling and blueing, starching and ironing, that leave us drenched with sweat and bleeding from the cracks in our lye-parched hands. By the time I get there, the better jobs are spoken for. Washington and Rochon sort the items (aprons and towels need a longer boil than dresses and petticoats). Goderre comes in with an armload of firewood and feeds it to the cast-iron stove, stoking the copper cauldron to boiling point. We leave Gendreau be in the corner; her cough will soon tear her in two. I end up across from Corrigan, checking garments for stains and scrubbing them out. We work without speaking, gazes fixed on the washtub.

After a while, Corrigan exhales a long sigh, and I can’t help but glance up. Her expression’s the same fixed blank. Matron’s at the other end of the room, fussing with the frizzy curls that poke out from her bonnet, so I chance it. “Pierce,” I murmur. “Larceny.”

She doesn’t blink, doesn’t reply. Sod her. Laundering’s awkward with the cut on my palm, but I manage. When I was young, I cried when the soap burned my knuckles raw, but it’s been years since I let myself feel that much.

Midmorning, a youngish man comes in with a small cudgel in his hand and a dirty smirk on his face. “MacDonald, ma’am,” he says to Matron Palmer. “The new rat-catcher.”

Matron blinks. “R-r … vermin?” He’s wearing an inmate’s uniform and cap: black on one side, white on the other. “We have never had a rat-catcher before,” she complains. “Who sent you?”

“Warden Creighton, ma’am. Rats’ve been a problem in the rest of the penitentiary for a while but they’re spreading into the Female Department. This room backs onto your kitchens. Prime spot for vermin.”

She hesitates. Presses her lips together. “Make it quick, MacDonald.”

He doesn’t. He sidles along the wall, eyeing up each of us in a leisurely fashion. I’m sure if Matron weren’t here, he’d be doing more than that.

When he nears me, he stops, pivots. My shoulders tighten. This is nothing new. I’m not pretty, but I’m the youngest female inmate by a few years, and that’s enough for swine like this.

And then, suddenly, Corrigan shifts. Not a lot, but I catch it from the corner of my eye: shoulders stiff, chin raised. She’s glaring at the rat-catcher with a look that ought to bayonet him, but instead, the bastard looks pleased.

“MacDonald.” Matron Palmer’s voice is frosty.

He checks the room in a desultory fashion, stroking the cudgel as he prowls. “No luck last night, ma’am,” he says, and even his voice is oily. “Might have to lay out poison tomorrow.”

There’s a collective sigh of relief when the door closes behind him. Work resumes. Corrigan reverts to her statue posture, eyes down. But I caught her moment of—what, exactly? Hatred? Fear? Disgust? Any which way, it’s the first evidence I’ve seen that she’s a real person.

A few minutes later, Miller starts humming in her lilting voice and glances at Matron for a reaction. We’re meant to work in silence, but some matrons don’t mind singing so long as it’s hymns. I don’t often like Miller’s voice: She’s hungry for admiration, so she adds too many frills and swoops, can’t resist showing off. But when Miller begins, a few others—Johns, Washington, and Goderre, usually—join in. That’s what happens today. Within a few breaths, through some unspoken accord, they shift into “Awake, My Soul,” and suddenly my shoulders soften. With just their voices, they’re clearing the tainted air.

I allow my hands to go still only for a few moments. This is mostly a place for suffering, for scoldings, for harsh silence at best. So it’s all the stranger that, at times like this, a reluctant kind of harmony rises between the women when they sing. It’s not just their voices swelling and merging, but a temporary softness between the people themselves.

They’re an unlikely choir by any standard: Miller, with her simpering airs and her grand delusions for when she’s released. Johns, hunched and sour-faced, except when she sings. Washington, who scratches her arms until deep red grooves stripe her skin. Goderre, who speaks English only under duress, unless it’s in song.

So many accents, complexions, races: It’s a surprise when you first arrive. Washington is the only Black inmate in the Female Department now, but there are plenty of French and Indigenous and mixed-race women here. Far more than you see on the streets outside, as they’re the first to be suspected and accused, the likeliest to be arrested and jailed. They array themselves into clubs, whispering in their own languages. The Irish keep to themselves, while the rest of us sort ourselves by crime, the sisterhood of prostitutes distinguishing themselves from thieves like me. But there’s a brittle sort of alliance, too. There are only so many of us, living and working in close quarters. We can’t afford to go to war.

There are others. Wabuck ought to be in an asylum; she shreds her bedding and eats soap. Bollard screams and bites if anybody comes near her, smashing her head against the steel bars of her cell until it bleeds. It takes a special narrowing of the vision to survive here. To avoid thinking about the world outside, the future, the past. To expand the present until it’s all you know.

I glance at Corrigan across the stagnant pond of the washtub. Even with her gaze cast down, I can see tension in the line of her jaw, the claws of her fingers. And I think perhaps I understand.

Each time the women sing, I tell myself this is the last time. So far, I’ve been wrong. Sometimes, like today, I’m glad to be mistaken. But mostly, the sweetness of the music makes me queasy and furious. Tenderness, and memory, and yearning: Those soft feelings aren’t for the likes of me. All they do is make my daily life—lye soap, chilblains, constant scrutiny—more punitive. It’s all I can bear, as it is. I don’t know how long I can keep going.

I only know that I don’t have a choice.

Tuesday’s the second washday, when we launder the guards’ uniforms. It’s miserable work: The clothes are heavier and dirtier, our hands still raw from yesterday. The filthiest items—collars, cuffs, shit-streaked drawers—have been soaking since last night, but they’re still nasty enough to persuade you that we’re guarded by pigs standing on their hind legs.

The choir is somber and silent today, no hymns to help us along. Logs hiss in the fire.

When the rat-catcher reappears, there’s a collective bristling. Matron Palmer watches his progress through the room with a flinty expression, and none of us turn our backs. Still, he’s undiscouraged. He saunters for a good while before, quite suddenly, lunging at the corner with a roar. A moment later, he turns and flourishes a limp rat as if to say, What a clever boy am I! Matron, looking pale, rushes from the room.

The rat-catcher preens and makes another circuit of the laundry, and this time he walks close by all the women, near enough to brush against our skirts. As he approaches, I move to the far side of the washtub, putting the gray, lye-smelling liquid between us. He smirks as though I’ve confessed a secret, then fastens his greedy eyes on Corrigan. She holds his gaze, body unmoving. He draws nearer, nearer, and we’re all watching them now. My eyes dart toward the door: Where the devil is Matron?

MacDonald stops and leers openly. “Fancy meeting up again. Did you miss me?” So that’s what Corrigan was thinking about yesterday.

Her expression doesn’t waver as she spits directly into his face. The gob of saliva lands on his cheek, trickles down. There’s a long moment of silence. My whole body tightens, ready to scream, to fight, to run for help.

MacDonald slowly wipes his cheek with his left hand. Then, holding Corrigan’s gaze, he licks his fingers with a grin. “Always a pleasure.”

The door creaks open and Matron Palmer returns, pale eyes bloodshot, curled bangs in disarray. There’s a general exhalation, air pressure dropping. MacDonald steps back, leaves at a saunter.

Corrigan’s face is as blank as ever.

Wednesday morning.

“Sewing,” says Matron Palmer, as though she is letting us in on a precious secret, “is your path to a better life, Corrigan.” Washington and Goderre, who are outside Matron’s sight line, roll their eyes. “Here, in this place, you are privileged to be taught dressmaking, tailoring, and knitting to a very high standard. After you leave this place”—it’s always this place to Matron; never prison or jail—“you will be able to earn your bread like an honest woman. You need never lower yourself to crime again!” She beams and looks around, as though expecting applause. I steel myself for what’s coming next.

“Take Pierce, here, for example,” says Matron. “She came to us six years ago, an untrained girl. Would you believe that she made the gown on her back?” She gestures to my blue-and-white-striped cotton uniform. “The apron that protects her dress?” She plucks at the garment as she names it, a utilitarian black-and-white-checked affair. “Even the stockings she wears?” I half-expect her to reach down and seize my leg for display.

“Show us the menstrual cloth you’re wearing, Piercey,” simpers Rochon.

“I’m sure it’s exquisite,” trills Washington, and she captures Matron’s lilt so perfectly that I’m forced to turn a snort into a cough.

Matron ignores the byplay, she’s so enthused. “When Pierce arrived at this place, she couldn’t even thread a needle.” She always glosses over the fact that I was a child of nine, with no one to teach me. “But within a few years, she was sewing flannel petticoats, children’s rompers, and even the Warden’s fine lawn nightshirts and nightcaps.” She beams straight at me, and her approval is so warm it makes me blink with surprise. Matron Palmer really does believe what she’s saying.

We might, too, if we were permitted to own such things as fine lawn nightgowns. Or, better yet, warm woolen dresses, such as Matron wears. For now, Goderre mimes vomiting.

We settle in to work. Corrigan does know how to thread a needle, and she receives a pile of coarse washcloths to hem. Matron gives me permission, and the dressmaking shears, to cut out a new winter cloak for one of the Warden’s daughters. Then she leaves to instruct the other inmates, who are divided into knitting and tailoring workshops in the rooms down the hall.

It’s dreamy stuff, this emerald melton wool. I drape it over the cutting table, petting it like a cat as I smooth out every fold and crease. The finished cloak will be lined with satin and trimmed with fur. What would it feel like to be so insulated from the cold, to drape myself in vivid color, to snuggle my chin into rabbit fur? And what might it be like to take such luxury for granted? It’s a fantasy that entices even as it enrages. I should stop myself from thinking it.

I can’t.

The door clicks open, and I jump with guilt. But instead of Matron Palmer, it’s that damned rat-catcher again. You’d think the entire rat population of Ontario would be extinct by now. He oozes into the room, far too pleased with himself, his usual cudgel and a burlap sack slung over his shoulder. The women draw into a tighter circle, and while none of us look straight at him, we know better than to take our eyes off the man. He leers, as though we’ve paid him a compliment.

A series of piercing shrieks startles us all. They come from the corridor, alien and hysterical, raising gooseflesh on my arms. If we were in our cells, I’d know the noise was from Bollard, but she’s locked in upstairs, as always, and the din is closer than that.

Another long moment of paralysis, and then I sprint for the door, close behind Goderre, the others treading on my heels. Despite the confusion, a fierce kind of glee spears me as I move. I haven’t run since I was nine. I never expected to run again. It’s bizarre, ungainly; it hurts my knees and ankles. I adore it.

We follow the screams down the dim hall and into the tailoring room, where we nearly collide with a swarm of bodies in blue and white stripes. Gendreau topples in last, jackknifes into another coughing fit.

It’s a curious thing: Now that we’re here, I don’t see alarm in their faces. If anything, there’s a bit of a holiday atmosphere in the room, with women chatting or even laughing, and their attention is mostly focused on a common point, like an audience at a play. Johns turns and acknowledges us with a wink.

“What the hell’s going on?” demands Washington. She’s breathless, her face near-unrecognizable. I can’t read the emotions on it, only that there are plenty.

Ahern tilts her chin toward the far end of the room, where a stranger dressed in brown staggers and gibbers. Is she drunk? Mad? She’s no prisoner, that’s certain—none of us could get our hands on a wool gown like that. How on earth did she come to be here? And then, quite suddenly, my heart lurches. It’s not a madwoman, not an inmate at all. It’s Matron Palmer, transformed.

Bonnet askew, face scarlet, she opens her mouth again and screams and points at the floor, and when I follow her accusing finger, there’s a smear of red on the stone flags, overlaid by a vivid kind of writhing.

I push into the crowd, right to its heart. All around me, women whisper, giggle. Washington crosses her arms, settles in to watch. Rochon does an impression of Matron, a good one; I might enjoy it if I knew what the hell was wrong. Is she having an apoplectic fit?

Finally, I’m at the front of the scrum. The high, barred windows admit a white glare that obscures details on the floor below. Even so, I make out a twitching, low to the ground. A squeak of terror that I only now realize isn’t human at all. A flash of brown fur, a knot of muscle. A small black eye, bright with panic. It’s been maimed in some way, and with each thrashing movement, it smears more blood across the stone flags.

Still, it’s not the rat that turns my stomach; it’s Matron’s response. Her screams echo off the limestone walls, making my ears buzz. You’d think she’d never seen a rat before. And I know that can’t be true. She likely had a better start in life than the rest of us—after all, she doesn’t sleep in a cell—but it’s stupid of her to carry on like a fine lady, as if she’s one of the Warden’s circle. Standing there in a throng of women, I feel an acidic spurt of anger.

Matron is still screaming for somebody to help her, to do something. Once again, she really does believe what she’s saying. She thinks she can’t deal with a dying rat, when all any of us needs is a stick and half a minute’s nerve. What else does she think lives in the walls? Where does she imagine she belongs?

Her eye catches mine for a moment, and her mouth goes slack with surprise. Out of habit, I drop my gaze. Be invisible, 9207. I turn and push my way through the crowd and out the door.

The corridor is quiet on my return to the sewing room, which means that the guards haven’t heard yet. I wonder how long it will take them to notice the hubbub. Not that it matters to me.

I expect the workshop to be empty, but Corrigan is standing there. Alone. Or so it seems at first. She’s heaving deep breaths, clenching and unclenching her fists. It’s such a change from her usual icy immobility that, for a long moment, I can only stare at her.

After a bit, I realize there’s something large crumpled at her feet: black-and-white uniform, prison-made shoes, a sizeable pool of blood. I wonder who it is and how he got in here, and then I notice the empty burlap sack, the cudgel under the table. Ah.

I stare at Corrigan again, and this time she meets my gaze. There’s a dark smear on her cheek, but she looks—well, satisfied is not too strong a word. The gleam in her eyes locks up my joints, freezes my muscles.

“Sorry about your scissors,” she says with a Northern Irish lilt, and nobody could sound less penitent.

Her voice compels me. I walk into the room, my feet once more taking me where I have no business. When I reach the rat-catcher’s body, I finally understand. The dressmaking shears—a pair of oiled steel blades, nine inches long—are sheathed deep in his left eye. His upper lip is curled back, exposing yellowed incisors.

This isn’t my first corpse. As a tot, I saw my granny laid out on the kitchen table. When I was six or eight, I found a drunk frozen to death in the street on an early January morning. But this—this is different. The rat-catcher was a repulsive, predatory prick, to be sure, but he was breathing and talking and leering not ten minutes ago. It’s contrast that makes me recoil.

By what accident or oversight are any of us still alive?

I should turn around and go. Return to the tailoring workshop, wait with the others until the guards find us. Matron Palmer will come back to her senses. The guards will confine us to our cells while they sort out what happened. We’ll all be on bread and water for weeks, as it is. I needn’t—mustn’t—know anything about this additional mess. Corrigan will have to face the consequences of this desperate thing she’s done. I don’t doubt for a minute why she did it.

We stare at the body. Corrigan rubs at a splash of blood on her right cuff. “Don’t,” I say automatically. “You’ll only grind it in.”

She grins, humorless. “Think I can launder away the proof?” There’s a tiny gap between her front teeth.

Suddenly, I’m shaking with … I don’t know. Energy. Fear. Panic. It’s too much, I can’t swim against this fast-rising tide of emotion, can’t beat it back or drain it or freeze it or any of the things I’ve taught myself to do over the past six years, in order to survive. Tears burn the backs of my eyes. “They’ll hang you.”

She makes a puffing noise that I realize is a gasp of laughter. “They’ll have to find me first.”

Is she mad? Not obviously, in the way that Bollard and Wabuck are. But she doesn’t seem to understand how confined we are. We have no privacy, no rights. Only the thoughts in our heads are ours alone. “What are you talking about?”

She takes a long step toward me. I recoil. She smiles again, all sharp, crowded teeth, and while she’s still beautiful, she doesn’t look quite human. More like an archangel. More like a wild animal. “You know how this place works,” she says. “Six years, the matron said?”

I nod.

“What’s the best way out?”

I gape at her. “Out of … the penitentiary?”

She snorts, and it’s reassuringly earthy and normal. “Aye. And the hell away from it.”

“You won’t make it.”

“I’d rather die trying.”

It’s the kind of thing people say from time to time, trying to sound dramatic or fierce. But one look at Corrigan’s face and I absolutely believe her. Still … “Why do you trust me? Why shouldn’t I betray you?”

“I saw you when the matron was talking.” She pauses. “You act like her little lapdog, but you’re just biding your time, too.”

It’s like crashing through ice into frigid waters. The shock is comprehensive, prolonged. As I thrash, fighting toward the surface, my heart seizes. How does she know? How can she read that so easily on my face, when nobody else ever does? How dare she strip me of my secrets?

“We do what we must,” says Corrigan. “I did.” She gestures toward the rat-catcher’s body, but her gaze remains fixed on me, keen and alien.

The injustice—of the situation, of the world—ignites something within me. “Matron and the guards, they have everything,” I say, my voice shaking. “They have jobs and educations and they think they’re above us, they think we’re sinful and stupid and weak and lazy, but they’ve no idea what we do just to stay alive. I got seven years for stealing some beef and a pound of raisins. My sister and my mother lift their skirts for soldiers against alley walls, and my father drinks everything they earn.” When did I acquire strong feelings? When did I learn ideals? I can’t afford any of these things.

I can’t afford to let them go.

She nods. “My story’s not so different.”

I glance around the workshop. My mind is like a squirrel in a cage, scrabbling, fighting, twitching. I sink my fingertips into my scalp and force myself to think. She needs three things: to exit the Female Department into the larger penitentiary; then to leave the penitentiary itself; and finally to travel far enough that she can disappear, maybe across the border. The first two things must be accomplished in the next quarter hour, at most. The last must happen with as little sensation and public knowledge as possible. Put like that, the task is impossible.

“There aren’t many things that come in and out of the Female Department,” I say. “Milk and meat, but they were delivered this morning. Potatoes and cabbage are already in the cellar.”

“What about the laundry?”

“The guards’ clean laundry goes out tonight.”

“In a basket?” She’s obviously thinking of curling herself inside.

I shake my head. “They call individually to collect their uniforms.” Dead end, I think, then wince at the pun and glance at the rat-catcher’s body.

Then I look again. His black-and-white cap lies near the pool of blood, but it appears unstained. Could she use that somehow? Stupid, I tell myself. Anybody who steps outside the gates in a convict’s uniform will be arrested within minutes.

“What about going upstairs?” she demands. “Stealing a change of clothes?”

“From Matron?” None of us are issued cloaks or hats; they are considered an incentive to escape. “She lives on the same floor as our cells, but her quarters are probably locked. And the cells aren’t empty—Wabuck and Bollard would see you up there. They scream at unfamiliar faces.”

“When does the chaplain visit?”

“Tuesdays and Fridays. But even if he were here right now, he’s hardly going to escort you out on his arm.”

She sighs, slumps.

My gaze falls on the green melton wool I’d laid out so carefully on the cutting table. It’s blood-spattered and torn, although not more so than Corrigan would have been, had she not defended herself. Still, even if it were somehow whole and undamaged, it’s far too dazzling a color. Wearing it, she’d be visible for miles against the ice and snow.

So … that’s it, then? A life for a life. The rat-catcher will receive “justice.” And in a few months’ time, Corrigan will be so thoroughly forgotten she might never have existed. That’s always been my aim: to be invisible, silent, a shadow. But Corrigan …

“Tell them you acted in self-defense,” I say. “I’ll back you up.”

“Like they care.”

“Wasn’t it?”

Her mouth twists. “Of course. But he’s still dead.” She shrugs. “I’ll never be sorry for that.”

“So this is it?”

She looks annoyed. “Unless you’ve a key I don’t know about…”

I blink at her. Something clicks in my brain. It’s as though she’s opened a gate in my mind’s eye, and I suddenly see one narrow path winding into the distance.

“I know who does,” I say. “Come on.”

The laundry area has a sharp, sweet smell—lye soap, clean fabric, clear starch. Beneath that, there’s the ever-present whiff of sweat, unwashed hair, and dung that pervades the prison. In the unlit room, the guards’ newly laundered uniforms dangle from pegs like a row of ghosts: wool jackets and trousers sponged and brushed, shirts ironed.

I make straight for one of the smaller sets. As Corrigan shucks her apron and dress, I select a collar and a pair of cuffs and attach them to the shirt. My fingers tremble and it takes me long moments of fumbling to manage the tiny fasteners.

A minute later, footfalls thunder down the hall. Corrigan and I flatten ourselves against the wall, concealed—we hope—by the laundered uniforms. It’s dim, but not dark, in here. The door flies open, bangs the opposite wall. My stomach clenches.

“Clear,” says a male voice.

The door swings shut. Footsteps pound away. Corrigan and I exchange a look. A minute later, there’s a cry of alarm, hoarse shouting of orders. They’ve found the rat-catcher’s body. Time has nearly run out.

She pulls on a pair of woolen trousers. “Once you’re through the main gate,” I say, “the lake’s immediately south. This time of year, it’s frozen. You can walk all the way to Wolfe Island, and then over to New York State.”

She buttons the shirt with fingers that are nearly steady, straightens for inspection. “All right?”

I look at her critically. “Not bad.” The shingled hair is a distinct advantage. Once the woolen jacket with epaulets is buttoned up, she makes a surprisingly convincing man.

We hear them enter the tailoring room, and, in a short while, Matron’s melodramatic shrieks are replaced by a male voice bawling for order, for all guards on duty to report to the Female Department, for the great bell to be rung. My gut tightens. I hadn’t thought of that.

“What?” Corrigan is watching my expression.

“They’re going to ring the main bell, the one over the front gates. It’s a signal for all off-duty guards to turn out. Emergency measures. The whole place will be swarming in about ten minutes.”

Her face tightens. “Too late?”

I try to think clearly. “The main gates will be open. Dozens of men rushing in. Lots of them not in uniform. I think it’s your best chance.”

She draws a deep breath. “Show me the way.”

We edge toward the door, listen to a lone set of boots pound down the hall, on their way out of the Female Department. I catch only a quick glimpse of the guard but, from his immense bulk, it looks like Aldridge. Intimidating to look at, but he’s actually a bit slow on the uptake. Perfect.

“Follow him,” I say. “When you get out of this wing, go straight for the gates. Tell the guard you’re going to fetch a surgeon.”

She pauses for a second. “Going for a surgeon, sir.” Her voice is suddenly husky, gruff. Almost masculine.

“Good. That was really good.”

She grins at me suddenly, a smile so bright it’s blinding. “What’s your name?”

I frown. “Pierce.” She ought to know; she’s heard it enough times.

She shakes her head. “I’m Mary. Mary Margaret Corrigan.”

Oh. Oh. “S-Sarah Jane Pierce.” My given name feels strange in my mouth, like a treasure I’ve hidden for so long that I scarcely recognize it. I say it again, just to affirm its truth. “Sarah Jane.”

She pulls me into an embrace: strong arms locked around my shoulders, hot cheek pressed against my ear. I stumble against her, overbalanced and helpless, and dangle there for a long moment, feeling clumsy and embarrassed and … can it be … happy, oh god, something very close to happy. I fold my arms around her, rest my tingling hands on her warm back. Her shorn hair prickles my eyelid. “Sarah Jane,” she says. “Thank you.”

It takes a long time to find my voice. “Mary. Good luck.”

She releases me and nods once, that gleam in her eyes again. We both know she’ll need plenty of luck just to survive until nightfall. This isn’t about escape so much as resisting to the very end.

We walk together to the doorway. The corridor is clear, although not for much longer. We nod to each other, once. She turns right, moving at a swift march. I watch her stride down the hall, listen for trouble. Nothing. Aldridge must have left the door to the Female Department unlocked for his return.

Outside, high above the prison walls, the great bell begins its clamor. I picture Mary striding beneath it, out of the main gates, turning left, then left again, over the vast frozen expanse of Lake Ontario.

I’m tempted to follow her lead. It’s a yearning beneath my skin, stronger and more vivid than almost anything I remember in my life. There are uniforms in my size. I could try my luck. I’m young, strong, healthy. We’d each have a better chance of making it if the police and the public had to search for two escaped convicts at once. I finger the thick wool of a guard’s jacket. Do I still have time?

I untie my apron. Then, quite suddenly, reality bites deep, into my bones. I’ve been at the penitentiary for six years. All the guards know my face. How could I ever hope to walk out the main gate and not be recognized? Even if the guards are distracted, how could they fail to notice my braided hair? Most frighteningly of all, could I hide from the police for the rest of my short life? I couldn’t ever see my mother; her house would be the first place they searched.

I’m panting. I’ve never felt so trapped. This is Mary’s doing. If not for her, I’d be just another caged animal that doesn’t notice when the door is left open. But because of that wild light in her eyes, I’ve glimpsed the larger world.

Do I have a choice? I suppose I still do. I could take an outrageous risk and perhaps die free. Or I could keep on as I am, hiding in plain sight. Re-bury Sarah Jane for another year. Maintain the façade of Pierce, 9207. Matron’s lapdog, dressmaker, reformed thief.

To my right, I hear running footsteps, gruff commands. I picture the wide-open gates, the empty fields of snow and ice that lie beyond, the sensation of moving forward of my own free will. I want it all. I want it so much.

I take a deep breath.

I retie my apron.

I turn left.

HISTORICAL NOTE

Sarah Jane Pierce, inmate 9207, was the youngest female inmate ever incarcerated at Kingston Penitentiary. She disappears from historical view after completing her prison sentence in 1885, but most of the details I give in the story are drawn from official records. The names of Sarah Jane’s fellow inmates—with the exception of Mary Margaret Corrigan—are borrowed from the penitentiary register of 1883–84.

When describing the inmates’ racial backgrounds, I’ve chosen to use current terminology. Words are powerful. My thanks to Heidi Heilig and Jessica Plummer for their perspectives on this subject.

Cameron Willis and David St. Onge, of Canada’s Penitentiary Museum, very generously shared their research and steered me toward the most salient sources. They are historians; I am not. The liberties I’ve taken with historical gray areas are, of course, entirely my responsibility.

DADDY’S GIRL

By Melissa Marr

The body isn’t hidden. It’s on one of the loungers that lines the edges of the badly aging pool. Khaki shorts. A towel thrown over him like a blanket. Against the night, it’s hard to tell the color. Dark, but not specific on the actual color.

Standing next to him, I can see that the towel is dark because it’s soaked in red.

In some ways, the body seems almost like part of the landscape. Everything at Riverview Resort looks like it’s leaning toward death, the body just got there sooner than its surroundings. The cement around and in the pool is cracked—and obviously has been for a while—and the diving board is rusted to the point that each dive seems likely to snap the bolts. For the past week, I’ve watched people get up on it. I couldn’t look away. I wore dark sunglasses, of course, but I had to watch. Just in case.

Before coming here, I’d never been up close to a recently dead person—but I’d imagined it. I watch a lot of crime shows, and I imagine being in the story. It’s important to experience new things. My father used to say that, so I try new things every chance I get. Like coming to the resort with the Women in Robotics club. Like joining the club in the first place. Or like standing next to a dead guy.

Dead guy. Lame resort. Surprisingly interesting club. It has really been a good month for new experiences.

Still, the resort is awfully worn out. The robotics group didn’t really do their research on where we could stay, but they mostly seem not to mind. I mind. The lounger where the dead guy is resting is as decrepit as the rest of the resort. Hot sun, minimal shade, and too many years of fat asses has resulted in sagging, torn chairs. Only one chair is occupied at 3 A.M., though. That’s the problem. That one chair. That one dead guy. I mean, the new experience part is important. I’m studying him, taking mental notes. The consequences part is a little less exciting. I know I need to go before there are consequences, but I’m fascinated.

He’s the first dead man I’ve seen up close and fresh. I can’t seem to move away. Hell, I can’t even look away.

He was a few years older than me. I don’t remember his name right now. James? Jason? Jackass? His name is immaterial. What matters is that there is a dead body next to me, and I’m staring at it. It smells bad. No one really talks about that in the crime shows. Death stinks.

I’m still standing here, though.

I touch him. Maybe that’s weird, but I want to know how a dead man feels. I need to know. They don’t tell you that in the show, either. He feels … different, I guess, than what I expected. Harder, but still fleshy. It isn’t like the bodies at a funeral home. Those bodies always feel weirdly like I imagine wax figures would feel. I’ve been to a lot of viewings over the years, trying to figure out what death feels like. The bodies in coffins don’t ever feel like they used to be humans. Maybe it’s the embalming, or maybe it’s because they were already dead for a while. I’m not sure. They feel different, though, than the dead guy on the lounger. That part I know for sure.

Now.

I am poking his cheek one last time—really, just one last time—when someone asks, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” I pull my hand away from the dead man’s face. I’m not done, but touching a dead man makes me look guiltier than I’d prefer. Guilty people end up in cages. Hospitals. Jails. Boxes in the ground. My dad taught me that, too. Never look guilty. Never let people know if you are. He screwed up that last part—and now it’s just me and my mother. She’s nervous a lot, and as much as I want to take care of her, I sometimes wish she’d stop jumping at every noise.

I’m much calmer than she is.

I look at the speaker, the boy who wants to know why I’m next to a dead man, and put my hand back in my pocket, trying to look casual and calm. I’m not sure that casual and calm is easy to feign when I’ve been prodding and patting the cheek of a dead man. I’m smart though. Like my father. That helps.

The boy stays back in the shadows between the buildings. He’s not hiding, but he’s in the dark, protected from wandering eyes by the shelter of worn and stained buildings. It’s smart, too. I like him a little for it.

Despite the shadows, I know who he is. I don’t need light to recognize him. During the past three days at the so-called resort, I’ve seen him around. Heard him, too. The pipes on his motorcycle make his arrivals and departures noticeable. It’s loud and fast, but the motorcycle looks like it was pieced together, crudely assembled like Frankenstein’s monster. The boy is low budget, and has a ride to match.

Sadly, he’s not as dangerous as the rest of them think—and I prefer danger. My therapist, Elaine, says that there’s a way to learn to overcome that urge, but when I date someone … I just … need the kick of adrenaline. Elaine thinks that something in my “formative years” has created an unhealthy craving for violence. She’s not wrong, but we don’t discuss what in my life made me feel that way.

Standing there, though, staring at the boy with the obviously pieced-together motorcycle, I feel that spark. Smart, dangerous. He reminds me of my father.

“You, Barbie, what are you doing?” His voice isn’t loud, not whispering exactly but it’s pitched low enough for me to realize he wants privacy.

I match his volume. “My name isn’t Barbie.”

My theory before this moment was that he was boring, not worth my time. A toy if I got restless, but nothing more. Now that I’m standing in the dark with a stranger and a corpse, I’m reevaluating his potential.

“What are you doing here?” I take a step closer, but he doesn’t react. “My name isn’t Barbie, by the way.”

He shrugs. Honestly, now that I look at him, I realize that he’s the most attractive part of Riverview Resort. They ought to put him in the photos in their brochure. Modern day, full-on, Riverview Resort is seriously low budget. Nothing to do but hike or fish or sit around the aged-out, broken pool. The dead guy is the most exciting part of the trip so far—but looking at the boy in front of me, I think there could be something more to him.

“Did you kill him?” I ask, gesturing at the dead guy as I walk closer.

Motorcycle guy flinches at the accusation. “No.”

I bite back a smile. He’s watched all of us like we were fish in a barrel, and he’s been a bored grizzly. One by one, my friends were all but throwing their bikini tops at him at any hint that he’d be receptive. So far, three of them had tried—and failed. Now? He’s watching me like I might be the grizzly. I like feeling this powerful.

“Well, I didn’t kill him,” I say.

“Not my business if you did.”

“I found him here,” I add.

Motorcycle guy shrugs. “Don’t care.”

“Seriously, I just came to get some chips.” I motion toward the little shack—currently closed—where chips, bad coffee, and soda are sold during the day. It’s the middle of the night, and I suppose I might look daft enough to think there would be anything open here at this hour. Maybe. Not likely. It’s better than the truth, though. Sometimes the truth is awfully inconvenient. Elaine says it’s okay to avoid conflict, and that’s what I’m doing.

The guy stares at the corpse for a moment and then looks back at me. I remind myself to be patient, to avoid panicking, to let him take his time to figure out what he’s going to do. Be calm. That’s the hardest part, training myself to resist those flickering feelings.

“I’m Marie,” I say. It’s not my real name, but when I meet boys, it’s the one I use. I study him as he watches me. “What’s your name?”

“Ed.” He meets my eyes, and I suspect he’s lying as much as I am. I think I might like him a bit more in that moment. Dangerous Ed. A killer, perhaps. I think maybe that’s what it would look like if someone walked up to us.

Of course, he doesn’t look guilty. There’s no blood on him. He has no scratches on him, no signs of a struggle. Still, he looks a lot guiltier than I do. If someone saw us here, they’d want to believe me, trust in my innocence. Ed makes a good choice for a monster, especially next to me. I’m simply not the sort of girl people think of as “trouble.” Brown hair. Brown eyes. Pretty enough to get a smile but be forgettable. My Aunt Tammy regularly reminds me that I’m “not remarkable.” No one remembers me. No one thinks, “Oh, she is just so fascinating! She’s so interesting! I wish I could talk to her more!”

That will all change if I’m found with a corpse. Being found with a dead man is remarkable. I’ll be in the paper. I imagine the article, the headline, the picture.

Hand still in my pocket, I tap the screen of my phone to start a voice memo. Better to be prepared. I sit around thinking about “what if” plans constantly. If anyone knew how often I thought about disasters and ways to escape them, they’d send me to therapy. Again. Someone worse than Elaine. Someone like the therapists at the expensive hospital where I had to go when I was a kid and the cats all died. How was I to know that they’d blame me? The hospital was like a pretty prison, and I didn’t want to ever go somewhere like that again.

“Maybe we should call the police,” I suggest.

For the first time, Ed’s falsely bored expression vanishes completely. “There’s no ‘we’ here. What you do is your business, Marie. I wasn’t here.”

“Really?” I make a show of looking around the open pool area. The lights aren’t working, and there aren’t any security cameras. I already knew that. I planned for it. There is no evidence, no proof as to how the dead guy died or who did it—or even who was here when he died. If I do call the police, it’s going to be my word against Ed’s. If he calls, I look guilty. If I call, he looks guilty. I’d prefer that Ed looks guilty.

“Really.” Ed steps forward.

I wish I could take his picture. A video would be even better. Still, Ed’s foolish. I have that going for me. Dumb and dangerous. Honestly, he’s my favorite sort of boy.

“You’re really going to try to pretend you weren’t even here?” I ask, trying to remember to make my voice quaver and keep it extra soft. Scared people sound like that. I researched it.

I shiver a bit. Imagine being there with a real killer. Someone deadly. Someone willing to kill a man for looking at his girlfriend. “You’re here. I see you.” I ease a little closer. It’s foolish, but I want to touch him.

“Not if you’re smart.” He’s stayed mostly in the shadows. Black jacket. Dark blue jeans. Black boots. “I know exactly which room you’re in, Marie.”

“Are you threatening me?” I struggle to sound afraid instead of excited. It must be working because he smiles in a way that I suspect is meant to look intimidating. So few boys could pull it off. He almost does. Honestly, it’s the sexiest thing he’s done since I arrived here.

“Was it jealousy, Ed?” I hold his gaze. “Did you see the way he looked at me? Is that why you killed him?”

He stares at me like he’s finally at a loss.

“You know, I’ve seen you watching me. I thought it was you looking in my window. After swimming. It was, wasn’t it?” I pause, gasp a little, like I’m trying not to cry. “You could’ve said something. You didn’t need to … do that.”

“Do what?”

I step in, put my hand on his chest. “Kill him. He was just asking for directions.”

I tilt my head up. Maybe I can get a kiss before he backs away. Either way, I have a recording—one in which poor, dumb, sexy Ed doesn’t deny murder or jealousy. Hell, he doesn’t deny peeping, either.

I shut off the recording.

“I saw you watching me,” I whisper. “He was watching, too, but I was trying to get your attention, not his.”

Ed swallows. “You’re crazy.”

“Sometimes,” I admit. It feels good to say it to someone other than my therapist, to whisper the truth to this stranger. Like telling Elaine, I’m careful. I have evidence that would cover me, the recording. With my therapist, I talk about urges. That’s all. Just urges.

“I drugged him,” I confess. “Then I cut”—my fingers trace Ed’s throat—“right here. He couldn’t fight back. Roofies in his beer. Then a little slice.”

A flashlight beam draws my attention. Ed starts to back away, out of my reach. I didn’t even get a kiss, and he’s backing away.

“Everything okay here?” The security guard, a woman in her midforties, isn’t a surprise. I’ve seen guards pass by at night. Sadly, she’s not one of those middle-aged men with a belly. The woman in front of us is short, but she has visible definition in her arms. No beer belly here. No easily manipulated man.

“I … don’t think so.” I cross my arms like I’m hugging myself and step away from Ed before motioning at the dead guy in the chair. “He’s not answering or anything. I’m … I don’t want to get too close in case he’s dangerous, but what if he needs help?”

I try to concentrate on my voice being extra shaky. Shaky says I’m harmless. Shaky says I’m not the guilty person. I add a look of fear toward Ed. Then look at the guard. Then I glance at Ed and down at the ground. I hope she’s bright enough to catch what I’m implying. It’s not like I’m subtle.

She walks toward the body. “Sir?”

When she reaches down, I think she expects that he’s drunk, passed out. I see the exact moment that she realizes she just touched a dead man.

I fold my arms as if I’m nervous. I’ve practiced for this moment for years, trying to look innocent.

I want to ask her questions. I have so very many questions. Is she afraid? Does she think Ed did it?

She’s scanning the area now, looking for someone to blame. Her gaze slides right past me and my quivering lower lip. Ed, however, holds her attention a little longer.

“I’m so scared,” I whisper loud enough for Ed to hear.

The security guard pulls out her phone. I know what she’s doing, and part of me wants that. I want the police to come, to tell them Ed did it, to see how far I can go, but I remember my father. The urge to gamble is why he’s gone. He knew it. He taught me. The reason killers lose the game is that they get too cocky.

Ed’s the variable, and I need to sort that out.

The guard keeps her attention on us, but she steps back so we can’t hear her call. Of course, that also means she can’t hear me if I’m careful.

I can’t have her call the police, so I take control of the situation. I pull out my phone and tell Ed, “If she calls the cops, you’ll go to jail.”

“Wh—?”

“Voice memo, you threatening me.” I wiggle my phone at him. “Stop her.”

He pauses for just a moment before charging at the security guard. He shoves her, and her head makes a noise like when a pumpkin hits the sidewalk. Thick. Sudden. There’s blood, and I step closer.

The guard is still breathing.

“Roll her into the water.” I don’t look away from her. She’s alive, but not for long. There’s something beautiful about it. It’s not as exciting as when the dead guy stopped breathing, but Ed did this.

For me.

Ed stares at me, and then glances at the dead body in the lounger. He looks at the injured guard. “If you want her dead, too, you kill her. I’m not—”

I start to replay the voice memo of our conversation as we stand next to the dying guard. Over the recording of my wavering voice, I urge him, “Do it.”

He walks away. I hear his footsteps, and I think about what could happen next. He could go to the police. He could pretend it didn’t happen. He could come after me because I have the recording. I get it. I understand the things my father taught me for the first time. Truly feel close to him in a way I haven’t since I stood next to a hole in the woods with him.

Quickly, I roll the guard into the pool, make sure there’s nothing I’ve left behind, and head to my room to wait. The possibilities are almost too much to let me sleep, but the excitement, the thrill of the first time, the fact that there’s someone out there who knows me … it’s exactly what my father used to tell me about in my bedtime stories.

I know who I am.

“Daddy’s girl,” I whisper the answer to the question he used to ask every night. He’d tell me stories about the things he did, like lullabies but where the wolf wins. My father used to win. He’d tell me about every Little Red Riding Hood who lost. When I got older, he showed me, too. Every time, he asked me who I was. There was only one right answer: “I’m Daddy’s girl.”

And for a moment, I can almost hear his answer: “You’re just like your father, Iris. You’re going to be just like me.”

SUMMER JOB

By Amanda Witt

The fire had taken the house right down to the slab, leaving behind a mountain of debris. Fallen beams, blackened furniture. The broken back of the roof. The charred shell of the refrigerator, the half-melted hull of the stove. Everything sooty, covered in ash, eaten by flames, or drowned by fire hoses. And above the remains, stark against the vast West Texas sky, rose the tombstone.

Okay, not really a tombstone, but Pete thought of it that way. It was a redbrick chimney, the only bit of actual house still standing. It towered over everything else in sight—the blackened debris, the leaning tractor shed. The surrounding fields and pastures, scraggly mesquite trees, cactus, yucca, juniper.

And Pete. Indoors, your average-sized seventeen-year-old guy. Out there, a tiny insignificant creature toiling alone between the cracked red earth and the blazing blue sky, shadowed by a tombstone chimney.

Someone had started the fire by splashing gas along the walls, the arson investigators said. Pete pictured uniform-clad people poking around in the still-smoking ruins, studying the position of the blackened body, measuring, discussing, writing things down on clipboards, while fire engines crowded the narrow country road, lights flashing red and white, sirens silent. Silent, because the emergency was over. At least for Mrs. Dean.

Pete knew what fire could do to a human body; he’d looked it up on the internet. He wished he hadn’t.

Pulling on his work gloves, he grabbed a crowbar and got busy. It was hard work—sweaty, dirty, lonely—but better than wearing a hairnet and flipping burgers at DQ. And Jerry Dean had pretty much begged.

“I can’t have some front loader coming in, scraping everything away without sorting through it,” Jerry had said. “This is my mother’s home we’re talking about. Anything worth saving, I want to save.” Raising the stump of his right arm, he’d waved it around so his sleeve flapped loose. “But I can’t do it myself.”

And whose fault is that? Pete had thought. Jerry Dean, drunk as usual one midnight, had staggered into the path of a Ford F-150. He’d been lucky to lose only an arm.

But it was true—Jerry couldn’t clear the debris.

For three weeks Pete had been working, clearing from the edges of the foundation inward, making his way toward the towering chimney. Hot work, hard work. He thought he could finish today. Which was good, because his truck was running on fumes, and he was flat broke. Plus it wore on him, spending all day in the heat, imagining the fiery furnace in which Mrs. Dean had died. Sometimes his arm brushed against a nail heated red-hot by the sun, and alongside the flare of pain flashed an image of Mrs. Dean screaming.

Pete wanted it to be over.

Wedging the head of his crowbar under a half-charred beam, he pulled. When the beam tipped toward him, he braced it on his shoulder and began fighting it free from the carcass of the half-burned couch.

Meanwhile Trigger, Pete’s terrier, darted excitedly around, smelling the trails of possums, raccoons, feral hogs—whatever critters trespassed in Mrs. Dean’s living room at night, rooting through her leavings, licking at the spot where her poor, murdered body had lain. Pete didn’t know exactly where that spot was, but the night animals no doubt knew. And so did Trigger.

The beam was stubborn; the muscles in Pete’s arms and back burned with effort. A trickle of sweat ran between his shoulder blades and evaporated in the dry wind. Gray-black bits of wood broke loose as Pete pulled, and ashes rose from the ground. He could taste them, feel them coating the back of his throat and nose with their acrid scent. Odors were particulate—as in, actual particles. Tiny pieces of Mrs. Dean’s house were filling Pete’s sinuses, his lungs.

Tiny pieces of Mrs. Dean.

Stripping off his work gloves, Pete pulled a blue bandana from his back pocket and tied it bandit-style over his nose and mouth.

But it was so hot—ninety-eight in the shade, of which there was none. And even if no one else would see or know, Pete would know he was wimping out, being squeamish. Pete, and God, and maybe Mrs. Dean.

He jammed the bandana back into his pocket.

Mrs. Dean would have hated seeing her house like this. She would have hated even more becoming a thing of horror to Pete. For years, she’d driven into town to babysit him while his mother worked, and his mother was always working. First she’d waited tables at Hooters—the breastaurant—and then, when she got too old for that, started a business selling custom-fitted “foundation garments.”

The euphemism was pointless, given that his mom had a big pink decal of a bra on her minivan, signed her name deBRA, and went around asking strangers if their girls needed extra support.

“This is how you make a living,” his mother liked to say. “Find a job that nobody else wants to do, but that you can do well.”

Pete breathed in his dead babysitter and dragged crumbling beams to the trailer hitched behind his truck.

After Trigger finished examining the foundation, he followed some especially interesting scent out into the yard behind the house, then farther on into the pasture. That was no surprise. He spent a lot of time out there. The surprise was the howl.

It was unnerving, the sort of sound that made people instinctively step closer together. The sort of sound that could make you believe in ghosts.

Pete froze, the hairs on his arms standing up. Then adrenaline filled his veins as he turned, scanning three-sixty, crowbar gripped tightly in his palm.

Road, field, concrete slab, yard. Listing tractor shed, untouched by fire, soon to be flattened by wind. Wheelbarrow pocked with rust. Stunted peach tree in desperate need of pruning, the ground beneath its low-hanging branches churned deep by feral hogs. A long section of shingled roof lying flat on the overgrown grass. The dark shadow of the chimney.

Pete was alone. No attackers. No ghosts.

“Trigger?” The call came out thin. Weak. Maybe it was the clutch of unease in his chest, or maybe the hot wind blew the word back down his throat.

Pete breathed deep, tried again. “Trigger!”

This time the word came out loud and clear, a man-sized bellow, but Trigger made no reply. There was only the sound of the wind; even the ever-sawing cicadas had fallen silent.

Pete squared his shoulders. Gripping the crowbar, he stepped down off the concrete slab and started across the yard. Around him lay the circle of the earth; above him stretched the wide blue sky. Dry grass crumbled beneath his feet and rose around his ankles, stirred by the wind into a semblance of life.

Pete felt like the last man standing.

Halfway across the yard he hesitated, courage failing. He hefted the crowbar, wishing it were a shotgun, and glanced back at his truck—not exactly contemplating escape, just confirming it was possible.

His truck stood solid and reassuring, right where he’d left it, windows down to keep from trapping the heat. For a while the engine had been ticking quietly as it cooled. Now it was silent, like its heart had stopped beating.

Pete wished he hadn’t noticed that.

Then he wished his cell phone got coverage way out there.

Then he wished a car would happen past.

It was rare, but two or three times a day a car did pass by. Late every afternoon Pete could count on seeing the yellow VW Bug driven by Katie Allen, the new girl, who lived even farther out than Mrs. Dean. Katie had a summer job in town, and on her way home she always stopped to say hi. She didn’t know many people yet; she was nervous about school starting.

Pete didn’t figure she had anything to worry about. Katie was pretty, and classier than the local girls. Her hair was long and glossy, not bleached dry by chemicals, pool chlorine, or sun; and her voice ran smooth and sure, like water flowing in a mountain stream. Or so Pete imagined; he’d never actually heard a mountain stream. Katie probably had. She’d moved around a lot, traveled. Seen things, done things. Pete thought he might ask her out, eventually. If she still spoke to him once she met all the other guys. He wasn’t lacking in confidence, just realistic. Middle of the pack, that was Pete, and Katie was a front-runner.

Thinking about Katie helped Pete man up almost as much as her actual presence would have. The horizon felt a little smaller, more manageable. The cicadas started buzzing again, too.

“Trigger?” Pete had reached the pasture, rocky and vast, dotted with prickly pear cactus. “Where are you, boy?”

Trigger answered with a low growl. The growl was interrupted by a hiss.

Not a rattler. The hiss was louder than any snake’s, and ragged. The sort of sound someone might make if he’d just taken a blow to the throat.

Pete’s heart kicked into overdrive.

Then his brain caught up and he smiled, shaking his head at himself. Trigger wasn’t hurt; he’d just met a batch of buzzards, that was all.

Sure enough, three of them came flapping awkwardly into view from behind a clump of cactus, Trigger skittering along behind. He saw Pete and barked once in relief—there you are!—and a second time—watch this!—and then nipped and herded, darting first at one bird, then another.

The buzzards hissed and grumbled, lurching around. Their talons dug into the dry earth and gouged deep scratches. They didn’t attack Pete’s dog, but they scolded him, flapping their enormous wings, sending clouds of dust coiling into the air. They were turkey vultures, Pete saw, not the minimally less revolting black vultures. Their wings started out black and faded to gray at the feather tips; their heads were scaly and a raw-looking red.

They outnumbered Trigger. As soon as the dog turned from one vanquished bird to deal with another, the first headed back toward the kill. Not their kill. Buzzards didn’t kill, just did cleanup. That was their job in life, and they felt strongly about it. They were determined.

But Trigger was determined, too, and finally—after much barking, nipping, and lunging—he managed to make all three birds take to the air simultaneously.

“Good dog,” Pete said.

Trigger threw an ecstatic glance at Pete, yipped happily, then turned tail and vanished behind the prickly pear.

Pete was curious about Trigger’s find, but not curious enough to walk another forty yards. If you’ve seen one dead animal, you’ve seen them all. And it was hot, and he had too much left to do.

Back to work.

He hoped Trigger wouldn’t roll in whatever it was.

Pete worked all day, stopping periodically for water and once to eat. For a long time the buzzards circled, staying low, wobbling slightly as the wind hit their six-foot span of wings, looking like drunks driving home from a party. Maybe Pete imagined it, but he felt a fleeting drop in temperature each time their shadows passed over his face.

Trigger came to visit Pete every now and then, yapping invitingly. Each time, the buzzards saw their chance and descended, vanishing from view behind the prickly pear.

“I don’t want to see it,” Pete would say, and Trigger would give Pete a look of deep disappointment before darting back to shoo the vultures.

Finally even Trigger’s enthusiasm waned, and he abandoned his find and fell asleep in the black rectangle of shade beneath the pickup.

And on Pete worked, dragging large debris to the trailer, lifting medium debris into the truck bed, scraping small debris into black garbage bags. Sometimes, when he moved a blackened board, he caught a whiff of petroleum, or imagined it.

Soot blackened his arms, his face. Ash rose, insinuating itself into his clothes, gluing itself to his sweaty skin. By the time Katie showed up, Pete would smell thoroughly of smoke and look like a man in a black-and-white movie, grayscale except for his bright blue eyes.

Every so often Pete climbed up into the truck bed, boots ringing on the sun-soaked metal, and shifted things around. It felt like standing in an open oven, and afterward he had to take a break, sitting in the shade of the pickup, drinking water straight from the big camping thermos, eyeing the ruts in the yard left by emergency vehicles.

The emergency was over for Mrs. Dean.

Pete took some comfort in that.

Apparently Jerry Dean didn’t. He looked worse every day, his face growing saggier, his eyes sadder, more bloodshot, more haunted. Like he wasn’t sleeping. Like he was drinking too much. Like he kept seeing his mother’s last moments. Probably—like Pete—he kept wondering who’d want to murder a harmless old woman.

The police had no leads. Mrs. Dean had been a sweet, churchgoing, law-abiding lady.

How she’d raised a two-bit loser like Jerry, Pete didn’t know. A small-time crook, a con artist. That’s why Mrs. Dean had always driven into town to watch Pete back when he was small, rather than taking him out to her place. Jerry lived with her off and on, and Jerry would deal with a crying toddler by offering him a joint.

That also was why Pete had set a non-negotiable condition for this job: Jerry had to let Reverend Whitfield hold the cash until Pete finished. No way would he trust Jerry to pay him, otherwise.

A big grasshopper landed on Pete’s arm, eyes bulging. It looked a little like Jerry Dean. As Pete shook it free, an engine purred in the distance. Pete knew it was too early for Katie, but all the same he turned expectantly toward the road. Just in case.

A dark Camry loomed into sight, trailing a cloud of dust, and blew past without slowing. The driver didn’t even raise an index finger in greeting.

“Yankee,” Pete muttered, by which he meant rude, arrogant city-boy ignoring local courtesies. You slowed down on a dirt road if you were passing someone, so you wouldn’t choke him with dust. And you waved, or at least raised a friendly finger. Acknowledging another person’s existence. Saying, Hey, you aren’t alone under the sun; we’re all in this life together.

Pete shook his head, wiped grit from his eyes. Raised an unfriendly finger at the receding car. Went back to work.

The large rubble was hard to maneuver, but Pete preferred it to the little pieces. A cracked plate bearing a child’s painted handprint. A large magnet. A blackened mousetrap, metal bar still in place, waiting to spring. A leather-bound Bible, damaged but still readable, which had been protected by the carcass of the couch.

Big things on top, impersonal. Little things on the ground, heartbreaking. Broken, blackened, lost.

It was sort of like archeology, Pete told himself, searching for a mental category that might ease the ache in his chest. He was a scientist excavating Mrs. Dean’s family history.

“I want it all,” Jerry had said, blinking rapidly. Trying not to cry, Pete supposed, though he looked more frightened than sad. Pete got that. Grief felt a lot like fear, in his experience. Fear of the unknown, fear of being left alone, fear of how big the world was and how small and powerless you were.

“Everything personal,” Jerry said. “Every little thing, no matter if it’s burned or broken. I want it all.”

Weirdly, though, Jerry never more than half-glanced at the items Pete dutifully carried to him. Then, “You can take that on to the dump.”

That, Pete didn’t get.

“He can’t face it,” Pete’s mother said. She was unpacking a box of bras, looping one shoulder strap from each over her forearm so they dangled in a row, all different sizes and colors. “He thought he wanted mementos, but having the pain stirred up again…”

That’s what Pete was doing. Reaching down with gloved hands, stirring up broken bits of pain. Bagging it, watching for sharp edges. Pulling down the tatters of yellow crime-scene tape, shoveling up mounds of cinders. Heaving everything into the trailer so he could drive it to the dump and watch it slide down the slope, joining other people’s painful pasts.

There were worse jobs, he supposed, than hauling away unwanted memories.

And orders were orders, so every day Pete salvaged keepsakes, laying them on the seat of the pickup like corpses at a funeral parlor. Jerry wouldn’t do them justice, so when Katie stopped by, Pete would show her, item by item, the remnants of Mrs. Dean’s life. A porcelain shepherdess, lightly scorched. A blackened fork. Mrs. Dean’s extra pair of eyeglasses, one lens broken.

“That’s so sad,” Katie would say, eyes welling up, and somehow her tears unloosed the knot in Pete’s chest. Like the universe required a certain amount of pity for these small abandoned objects, and if Katie did the pitying, then Pete didn’t have to.

“Jerry isn’t the only one who lost Mrs. Dean,” Pete’s mom said, when he told her about his private little memorial services. “We lost her, too. Especially you.”

She was trying on a new style of bra, fastening it on top of her clothes. Pete was probably going to develop some weird boob aversion, thanks to his mom’s deBRA business. He’d have to go to therapy.

“How did it start?” she said.

“Huh?” Hot pink bra, tight over her white T-shirt. Like Superman with his underwear over his clothes. WonderBra Woman.

She smiled at him. “I said, how did you happen to start showing Mrs. Dean’s things to Katie?”

Pete had a sudden image of Katie meeting deBRA for the first time, and the back of his neck went hot.

“Uh, I don’t know,” he said. “Just for something to say, I guess. She kept stopping by, acting lonely. She doesn’t know many people yet.” He sounded defensive, and he wasn’t sure why.

“Just curious.” His mother turned sideways to the mirror, casting a critical eye at her bosom’s profile before raising her gaze to meet Pete’s eyes in the mirror. “Obviously she’s interested in you, not some dead woman she never even met. You get that, right?”

Pete looked away. “She’s just lonely,” he said again. “Can you take that thing off? Rob and Jared are coming over.”

Pete thought about that conversation as he sifted through the last layer of charred remains. How had it started, his daily memorial with Katie? He remembered being exhausted, the first time she’d stopped by. He’d been working under the blazing sun and had looked up—sweaty, filthy, dehydrated—to see a pretty girl standing in the driveway.

“It’s such a shame,” she said. “A whole life, gone. All the things she treasured.” Then she’d given a little shake of her head. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m Katie. Someone said you go to Hamlin High? I start there this fall.”

That was the beginning. Their first conversation, and before even telling him her name, Katie had gone straight to the heart of things. If they ever started dating, he’d tell her that.

Today’s finds weren’t impressive. A mousetrap, a magnet. The shattered remains of a glass jar, insides coated with a yellowy-brown crust. Mustard, maybe.

Nothing interesting.

Pete was seeing the debris now, he realized, through Katie’s eyes instead of Mrs. Dean’s. Thinking of it as show-and-tell, as a way to hold Katie’s attention, a way to spin out a few more minutes with her. Was that wrong? Or did it only mean he was getting used to the fact of Mrs. Dean’s death?

Mrs. Dean wouldn’t expect him to get all weepy over a broken jar. She wouldn’t expect or even want any weepiness from him at all. Boys were boys, she used to say.

Still, he felt a little guilty.

He turned a piece of crusted glass over in his hand. Maybe it had been a candle, most of the wax now melted away. That was more likely than mustard in the living room. Though perhaps Mrs. Dean had been sitting in her armchair having a snack—she loved summer sausage with brown mustard—when someone walked in, whacked her on the head, sloshed gasoline, lit a match.

It could have happened that way. The investigators knew Mrs. Dean had suffered a blow to the head, and they knew she’d breathed smoke, which meant she’d still been alive when the fire started. They didn’t know if she’d been conscious. They didn’t know if she’d been afraid, or if she’d felt the fire licking at her arms, her legs, her face.

Gently, Pete swept the broken glass and the mousetrap into a trash bag, along with an armful of unidentifiable small charred things.

Then he was done. Except for a thin layer of gray ash, the concrete slab lay bare. He still needed to collect the strip of roof out back, but that was all.

Pete could hardly believe it; he’d finally finished laying Mrs. Dean and her house to rest.

Reaching out, he touched the redbrick chimney. His finish line.

Pete would go away and live his life, but that chimney would stand for decades, marking Mrs. Dean’s death.

Something caught his eye. Inside the fireplace, toward the back of the grate meant for wood, sat a small steel box, dented, blackened with smoke.

Weird.

Pete picked it up, shook it, heard something inside rattle. He pried it open and a photograph fell out onto the hearth. A Polaroid snapshot.

A pornographic Polaroid snapshot.

Pete felt his face go hot.

There was a woman, and there was a man. Despite what they were doing together, they didn’t look like they belonged together. The woman was young; the man was not. He was looking straight at the camera, bright-eyed and grinning, as if his favorite football team had won the playoffs. His face was vaguely familiar; it reminded Pete of television ads. Maybe the guy was a businessman, or somebody running for office, or the president of the local college. Whoever he was, Pete would lay odds that the woman in the photo was not his wife.

Pete tucked the photo carefully back into the box and closed the lid. Then he turned the box over in his gloved hands. A magnetic strip ran down the back, twin to the one Pete had found on the floor.

Experimentally, he raised the box into the chimney, pressed it flat against the inside wall. The magnet grabbed, attaching itself to the metal chimney liner, and held briefly before sliding slowly down, juddering, to land crookedly on the grate.

The heat had loosened the glue holding the magnets to the box, Pete figured. Other than that, it was a darn fine hiding place.

Pete grimaced. It was this photo—not mementos of Mrs. Dean—that Jerry had wanted found.

Adultery. Pornography. Mrs. Dean would have been horrified.

Gingerly Pete picked up the box, the same way he’d pick up a dead rat, and carried it to his truck. He set it on the floorboard, slid it under the passenger seat as far away as it would go.

Then he clicked his tongue, rousing Trigger from his nap.

“I’m going to pull the truck around,” he told the dog. “Got to get that piece of roof, and then we’re done.”

Done with the house, anyway. Not with Jerry Dean.

What did Jerry expect? That Pete would find that photo, hand it over to Jerry? No way.

Pete would take the photo to the police. Sign a statement. Testify in court, if need be. Because Pete could just picture it—Jerry, somehow obtaining an incriminating photograph. Blackmailing the man. The man arguing, cajoling, threatening. Following Jerry. Figuring out—somehow—that the photo was somewhere in this house.

Burning the house down, and Mrs. Dean with it.

No wonder Jerry looked awful. He knew who’d killed his mother. And he knew it was his fault.

Pete drove around behind the disintegrating tractor shed, as close as possible to the fallen section of roof. He grabbed it, dragged it, wedged it into the trailer. The wind rattled the shed’s corrugated siding, threatening to blow the whole thing down on top of Pete’s truck. The sun blazed cheerily down; Trigger whined hopefully, head cocked.

But why did Jerry want the photo? Not for more blackmail; he’d be too frightened now for that. Maybe Jerry planned to give the photo to the man in it. Make nice.

Tough. No way would Pete let him hand that photo over, not after Mrs. Dean had died because of it. Jerry should have known that.

Maybe Jerry did.

Maybe Jerry expected Pete to take the photo to the police. Pete would like to think Jerry had that much decency left. For Mrs. Dean’s sake.

Trigger ran toward the clump of cactus, came back. Made pleading noises.

“All right,” Pete said to the dog. “If it means that much to you.”

He almost felt compelled to go. The vultures had seemed, all day, a bad omen.

Pete followed the dog into the pasture, catching the scent of death as he drew near the clump of prickly pear. It was more potent than he’d expected. Usually things didn’t stink for long, thanks to the hot dry wind. Maybe it wasn’t a raccoon or possum, but something bigger. A bobcat or coyote. A deer.

Pete rounded the stand of cactus, careful not to brush against its sharp needles.

He spun away, staggered a few yards. Threw up.

Jerry Dean. At least Pete thought so, based on the missing arm, but he couldn’t be sure. The scavengers had been busy.

Trigger wagged his tail, gazing up at Pete hopefully.

“Awesome, Trigger,” Pete croaked. “Good dog.”

Trigger did a happy dance, spinning around Pete’s ankles. It was so wrong, so inappropriate, but the dog didn’t know that.

Pete looked again at the corpse, squinting, as if a slantwise glance might mute the horror. It had been buried, judging from the hole beside it. Buried, then dug up and dragged out of its shallow grave by feral hogs. Four-legged buzzards, folks called them. Somebody hadn’t known to bury the body deep.

Killed. Buried. Dug up. Eaten by feral hogs. Eaten by buzzards.

Pete gagged again and turned away.

He needed the police.

“Let’s go,” he said to Trigger, starting for the truck.

He was thinking about how far he’d have to go before he’d get a phone signal, thinking about being low on gas, thinking it was good he’d get paid even though Jerry was dead. He felt a little mercenary, thinking about money right then. But feeling mercenary beat feeling sick, and disgusted, and frightened.

Halfway to his truck, Pete realized Trigger wasn’t following. Instead, he’d sat down by the body. Guarding it. Wanting to show off, now that Pete had finally noticed it and praised him.

“Trigger!” Pete said.

Trigger settled himself more firmly.

In the distance, an engine whined. Katie, finally?

Pete’s truck was out of sight of the road, hidden by the tractor shed; she wouldn’t know he was there. For a moment he considered staying put, letting her drive on past.

But he’d sure like to see someone alive. Someone normal. Someone clean.

He didn’t have to tell her about the body or even the photo; he could protect her from that. Just see her before he went to give his statement to the police and got pulled into the investigation, the trial, the whole sordid business. Just five minutes with Katie before it all descended.

Breaking into a jog, he rounded the peach tree just as the dark Camry from earlier turned into the driveway.

Pete dropped flat, out of sight behind the low line of the foundation. He felt foolish, but he also felt afraid. The Camry might have nothing to do with anything, but then again …

He couldn’t get to his truck without being seen, but he might make it to the chimney.

A soft creak told him the Camry’s door was opening. “Didn’t think that blasted kid would ever finish,” a man’s voice said.

Pete crawled forward on his elbows across the dirt and dead grass, not daring to glance up. When he reached the fireplace, he pressed hard against it, the chimney rising high above him. He hoped Trigger was inclined to stay put and stay quiet.

Another creak. Another voice. “That kid did all the heavy lifting. You ought to be thanking him, not complaining. Look at this—you won’t even get your hands dirty.”

Two doors slammed.

Footsteps on concrete.

Pete tensed. The chimney and fireplace weren’t especially wide ones. He’d be hidden from sight as long as the men walked straight toward him, but if they veered off to another part of the slab—the kitchen or the bedrooms—he’d be plainly visible.

If that happened, he’d run like crazy for his truck. As long as they didn’t have a gun, he’d make it. Even if they had a gun, it didn’t mean they’d shoot at him. Even if they shot at him, it didn’t mean they’d hit him. Most people were lousy shots.

He couldn’t believe he was hiding behind his dead babysitter’s chimney calculating the odds of getting shot.

A metallic screech sounded, mere inches from Pete’s head, and he flinched. It was the damper in the fireplace, opening or closing.

“There’s nothing here,” the first man said. His voice sounded hollow, echoing. He had his head stuck up inside of the chimney, twelve inches or so from where Pete’s face pressed against the hot rough brick.

“That’s fine,” said the second voice. The calmer one. “We just needed to be sure.”

“But what if the kid found it?”

Pete closed his eyes, held his breath.

“He didn’t. If he had, we’d have heard.” There was something familiar about the calmer man’s voice, but Pete couldn’t quite put a finger on what it was.

“You’re sure?” said the other man. The anxious one.

“I’m sure. I told you, I have a backup system in place.”

“So the fire got it.”

The far got it. This guy was local, or at least West Texan. The calm man wasn’t. The calm man had one of those neutral accents.

“The fire,” the calm man said. “Or else it got thrown away in a heap of rubble. In any case, your career can proceed unimpeded.”

“I wish I’d seen it destroyed with my own eyes. I don’t like loose ends.”

“Which is why Jerry is gone, and the old woman is gone, and the house is gone.”

“But not the kid.”

“The kid can be gone, too, if that’s what you really want. But it won’t come cheap, and it carries its own risks. And I’m telling you, there’s nothing to worry about. I’ve kept a close eye on him every step of the way. You brought me in to fix matters, and I fixed them. Trust me on this.”

Their voices faded. Their footsteps receded. Car doors opened, closed. An engine started.

Pete breathed again.

After the rumble of the Camry faded, after his heart stopped pounding in his ears, he got to his feet.

“Trigger!” he called sharply, and this time the dog came. They got in Pete’s truck. They pulled out from behind the tractor shed and circled around toward the road, trailer bumping along behind.

Pete could almost picture the Camry’s license plate. Curvy letters, no sharp ones. Then a string of twos. Then something pointy, maybe a seven.

A cheery yellow Bug appeared, turning into the driveway. A visitor from another world, from a place where nice old ladies didn’t get murdered thanks to their blackmailing loser sons. Where Pete didn’t stumble over bodies and sleazy photos. Where strangers didn’t threaten to vanish him.

Katie got out of her car. Her dark hair shone in the sun; her legs were tan, her fingernails and toenails pink-painted.

She walked toward him. Pete didn’t turn off his engine, and he didn’t get out of the truck. He felt filthy, inside and out. He couldn’t look Katie in the eye.

“Hey there!” Katie said, coming to stand beside Pete’s open window. She smelled like flowers. “Looks like I almost missed you!”

Why couldn’t he remember the license plate?

Beside him, Trigger whined. Feeling Pete’s tension.

“You look exhausted,” Katie said. Her teeth were white against pink lipstick that matched her nails. “Long day?”

Pete couldn’t find any words; he just wanted to listen to Katie’s pretty voice, to her smooth, civilized cadences, until he could remember the license plate number of the men who had burned Mrs. Dean.

Maybe the police could hypnotize him.

Maybe the police had a list of Jerry Dean’s associates.

Maybe they’d recognize the man in the photo.

Maybe they’d recognize the woman.

Katie rested one elbow on the open window and studied Pete curiously. “Find any new treasures?” she said. “Or did the fire get everything else?”

The fire.

Voices. The fire … the far.

Pete suddenly wanted nothing more than to see his mom.

“My mother’s name is Debra,” he said. Said it right, not deBRA. “What’s your mother called?”

“Judith.” Katie seemed faintly puzzled, but willing to go along.

“And your dad?”

“Rick Allen. Short for Richard Allen.” Katie drew the name out, making it sound pompous. Trying to tease Pete out of his grim mood.

“Bet you can’t guess what my mom does for a living,” Pete said. Being awkward, talking through the open window with the truck running. Like some socially inept hick. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. His mouth felt dry.

Katie’s eyes were clear and untroubled. “Sounds mysterious,” she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “What does she do?”

Pete forced a smile. “Sells bras—from a van. Not making this up.”

“Could be worse.”

“You think?” He raised an eyebrow. “What do your parents do?”

“My mom’s a computer geek. My dad’s some sort of consultant. Super boring.”

For a long moment Pete studied her. Shiny hair, long legs, sun-kissed cheeks. Smooth voice. New in town.

“I’ve gotta go,” he said abruptly, reaching for the stick shift, stepping on the clutch.

The truck lurched into gear, knocking Katie’s elbow from the window. “I can’t believe you were going to leave before I got here,” she said, smiling brightly. Not stepping back. “I thought we were partners.”

“Katie.” Pete looked her straight in the eye. “The job’s over.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the bare slab, then back at Pete. “Hey, congrats. So … do you want to go to Sonic or something? We could celebrate.” She was trying to act natural, Pete could tell, but she wasn’t dumb, and she wasn’t that good an actress.

“Not my job,” he said. “Yours.”

Her eyes met his, and he saw the swift flash of understanding before she covered it with a mask of pretty bewilderment.

“She didn’t deserve this,” Pete said. “Mrs. Dean. She was a good woman. She deserved better.”

And he eased off the clutch, stepped on the gas, and pulled away. Toward cell phone range. Toward the police.

Beneath his seat, a smutty photo.

In his head, a license plate number.

In his mouth, a killer’s name.

In his rearview mirror, the killer’s daughter and accomplice. A backup system. Keeping her eye on the small-town hick, monitoring his finds, ready to destroy evidence should the need arise.

Katie Allen. Too good to be true.

Pete should have known.

He let himself glance back, again and again, as she shrank small in the distance.

Then she was gone, and all that remained was a redbrick chimney, stark against the wide West Texas sky.

THE BOY IN THE RED VANS

By Rachel Vincent

My cell phone shakes in my hand. I take a deep breath, and the screen steadies enough for me to tap Michael’s name. Except I miss, and the phone begins to call my mother.

Crap!

End call! End call! I jab at the red circle, and the ringing stops. But then my phone begins to vibrate in my hand again.

It’s him. Thank god. I poke the green circle and hold my phone up to my ear.

“Hey, Ellie, I—”

“I was just trying to call you.” I sink onto the chair in the corner and lean forward with my forehead cradled in my free hand.

“Yeah, I just wanted to apologize for what I said. I hope you know I didn’t mean it.”

“Forget about it. I … um … I’m glad you called. I need some help, and I don’t have anyone else. Can you … Can you come over?”

The silence echoing from the other end of the line terrifies me.

“Michael. Please.”

He exhales. “Of course. If you need me, I’m there. That much hasn’t changed.”

“Thank you.” I hang up, then I clutch the phone to my chest. God, I love him.

I shove my phone into my pocket on my way across my room, stepping carefully over the mess. Without looking. In the bathroom down the hall, I wash my hands, then I splash water on my face and dry off with the fancy purple hand towel hanging from the loop on the wall. I’m not supposed to use that one. I’m supposed to use the plain white one folded on the counter. The one that’s easy to bleach, in case of stains. The one my mom throws into the hamper when we’re expecting company.

But the white towel is gone. I must have already thrown it in the laundry.

In my room again, I run a brush through my hair and pull it into a ponytail. I should really change clothes. But Michael told me he liked this shirt the last time I wore it, and it is flattering …

The doorbell rings before I can make up my mind. He’s here. I didn’t even hear the car pull up. I race down the hall and across the living room, where I pull open the front door and throw myself at him.

Michael catches me, like he always does, and his arms wrap around me. He’s so warm, though the night is frigid. There’s no better feeling in the world.

“That was fast,” I say into his shirt. Then I look over his shoulder at the street. “Where’s your car?”

“I walked.” Which means he was already close. “Ellie. Let’s take this inside,” he finally says, and when I refuse to let him go, he lifts me and walks me over the threshold, into the house. He kicks the front door closed and glances at the Christmas tree in front of the window. “Hey, the tree looks great!” I watch the blaze from the fireplace reflected in his bright blue eyes. “Your mom still at work?”

“Yeah. She has the night shift again.”

“Okay, so what’s—” Michael sets me down, then stares in horror at the front of his own shirt. “Ellie, what the hell? Is this blood?”

“Yeah. Sorry. I … I didn’t know what to do. But I shouldn’t have called you. That was over the line.”

“I called you. What happened? Is this yours? Are you hurt?”

I’m definitely in pain, but … “I’m not hurt. I … Just come see. Please.” I take his hand and tug him down the hall, toward my room, but this time his grip feels different. Slack. Like he’s only tolerating my touch.

This is not going the way I’d hoped.

“Oh my god,” Michael breathes from the bedroom doorway. “What happened?”

My vision blurs, and I swipe tears from my eyes with the back of one hand. “I didn’t mean to. He just … He wouldn’t listen.”

Michael crosses the room and kneels next to the body, careful to stay clear of the blood. “Oh, Ellie…”

“I know. It was an accident. I mean, it wasn’t technically an accident, but I didn’t plan it. It just happened. I would do anything to be able to take it back, but…” I can only shrug. “My mom’s going to kill me.”

“Your mother is the least of your worries, Elodie.” It’s never good when he uses my actual name.

“Not if you help me. I mean, what’s done is done, and I’m so sorry, but … I have to defend myself, right?”

He stands, one brow arched in that skeptical look I hate. “This was self-defense?”

“Well, no, that was just a really bad night.” I gesture at the body, but I can’t make myself look at it. “But this part is self-defense. I have to protect myself from the police. From my mom. You have to help me clean this up. Please, Michael. What am I supposed to do?”

“I’ve never even seen a corpse.” He runs one hand through his hair, and it stands up on top, making him look younger. Like when we were kids. “How am I supposed to know how to … dispose of one?”

“We don’t have to dispose of it. We just have to get it out of here. No one knew he was coming over, so—”

“I knew.”

“Okay, but no one else knew, and you’re not going to tell anyone. Right? Michael?” But he’s just staring at me again, and that sick feeling makes my guts twist again, like earlier tonight.

“I won’t say anything,” he says at last. “But corpses talk. The police can analyze carpet fibers, and fingerprints, and all kinds of other evidence.”

“My prints aren’t on file, and my floor is hardwood.”

“But your living room is carpeted. So unless he floated in here…”

“Okay, but if the body isn’t found here, the police will have no way to link it to me. No reason to search my house or test my carpet fibers. Right?”

Michael shrugs. “I guess. So, what do you need from me?”

“I don’t know where to take the body. And I don’t have a car. Or a license.” I’m old enough now, but taking the test didn’t seem worth the trouble, when I have nothing to drive.

“I was really hoping you were going to ask for something more along the lines of moral support, and less like a felony.”

“Please, Michael. Please, please, please.” I don’t have anything to offer him, except my undying love, and he’s already turned that down.

“Fine.” He digs in his pocket and pulls out his keys, then tosses them to me. I catch them in both hands, and he turns to study the body. I still can’t look. “I’m parked two blocks over, to the north. Drive my car here and back it into your garage. I’ll get started on … this.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“Ellie,” he calls as I race down the hall, and I go back, my heart beating an oddly staccato rhythm. “Does your mom still have that roll of plastic in the garage? From when we helped her repaint the living room?”

“I think so. On the bottom shelf, in an empty bucket.”

“Okay. Be careful.”

I’m already halfway down the block before I realize I should have changed my shirt. If anyone sees me walking down the street with blood on my clothes …

But it’s dark, and there aren’t many streetlights in my neighborhood. And if anyone sees me out in the middle of the night, I’ll look suspicious even if they can’t see the blood.

It takes me a few minutes to find Michael’s car. It’s in a lot in front of the neighborhood playground. As if I’m supposed to believe he was hanging out on the swing set when I called him.

I mean, when he called me.

Ginger Evans lives half a block from the playground. Her parents don’t like Michael, so he can’t park in her driveway. Or ring her bell. She doesn’t love him enough to stand up for him. To tell her parents to go to hell.

I would do anything for Michael.

His car is unlocked. I slide into the driver’s seat and start the engine, but I have trouble getting the gear shift into reverse. I’ve been in his car a hundred times, but I’ve never driven it. It handles like crap, but I can’t really complain, considering that I don’t have one. And that he’s letting me use it to clean up a very big mess.

The hard part comes when I have to back into the garage. I haven’t had enough practice to be able to reverse into such a tight space, and I accidentally skim the edge of the shelf. Maybe Michael won’t notice.

I push a button on his key fob to pop his trunk open, then I punch the button on the wall, on my way into the house, and the garage door rumbles as it closes.

Inside, Michael has rolled out a layer of black plastic next to the body, but I can’t tell that he’s actually touched it.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Why’d you stop?”

“Because this is your mess. I’m not going to incriminate myself by touching the body.”

“But you already touched the plastic. That’s incriminating.”

“Fine. I’m creeped out by the thought of handling a corpse. I can’t do it, Ellie.”

I know exactly how he feels. I can’t touch it either. I can’t even look at it.

I would give anything in the world to be able to take this night back. To just … start over. But if I don’t clean up my mess, I’m going to wind up paying for it not just with my sanity and my guilty conscience, but with the rest of my life. For however long that turns out to be.

Is this a death penalty state?

I kneel next to the body and lift his ankles. He’s wearing red Vans. I hadn’t noticed that before, and that detail feels way too real. It was one thing to know what I did. To know what I have to do next. Until this moment, I’ve been able to think about that in the abstract, but now …

Now …

“Come on, Ellie. We don’t have all night.” On the edge of my vision, Michael squats near the head, but I don’t look at him, because if I do, I might see the corpse’s face.

The shoes are real enough. I can’t deal with the face.

“Pick him up,” Michael whispers.

I stand and lift the corpse’s legs, my eyes closed, and with a grunt of effort, I swing his lower body onto the plastic. I can’t look, so I only know I’ve hit the target when I hear the plastic crinkle.

“Halfway there,” Michael says, and I open my eyes to see him circling the plastic toward me. “Go finish it.”

I keep my gaze on him as I back toward the other end of the body. As long as I keep looking at Michael, I won’t truly see anything else. That’s been true since the day I met him, when I was nine years old. Back when we lived in the same apartment complex, across the landing from each other.

“Do you remember when we were kids?” he says as I squat to slide my hands beneath the corpse’s shoulders, and I realize he’s thinking about the same thing I am. The past. Back when everything made sense. “My mom used to watch you when your mom worked the night shift?”

Of course I remember. His mom would make up the couch for me to sleep on, but most nights, after she’d gone to bed, I’d sneak into Michael’s room and curl up in his bed. Some nights, we’d talk for hours. “We stayed up way too late. You’d talk about anything, as long as it was video games.”

“Yeah. Pick him up, Ellie. But keep looking at me. Keep talking to me.”

I plant my heels and stand, lifting the body. “I thought you were the coolest guy in the world, with all your posters, and your games, and the stash of old Halloween candy under your bed.” I’d thought I must be cool, too, if Michael Simms liked me. “Why were you so nice to me?” I sidestep to the left, twice, staring right into Michael’s pale blue eyes. Then I squat again and lay the body on the plastic.

“Because you needed a friend.”

A friend. By the time I was old enough to realize I wanted more from him than friendship, my mother had moved us out of that apartment. Into this house. It was supposed to be a step up. A nicer, safer place for me to grow up in. And I guess it was. But I lost Michael.

He still said hi to me in the halls at school, of course. And if I looked sad, he’d show up at my locker with a grape soda or a candy bar. But things between us were different. He’d grown up. Moved on. He’s a senior this year, and no one would have expected him to hang out with a mousy sophomore with stringy hair and crooked teeth. I certainly didn’t.

But deep down, I’d hoped he still thought about those nights, back when we were kids. That someday he’d see that I had grown up, too.

“Cover him,” Michael says, and I blink, dragged back into the present by his instruction. “Ellie. Flip the plastic over.”

I grab one edge of the sheet of plastic and fold it over the body. “We need something to hold it closed.”

“Bungee cords,” Michael suggests. “From when we picked up your tree last week. I saw them in the garage on the second shelf.”

“Yes!” I race past him into the garage, and as I pick up the cords, I’m hit with the memory of him using them to secure our sad little tree to the roof of his car. My mom had had to pick up a double shift that night, and I’d wanted to surprise her by having the house all decorated when she came home. But maybe I’d also wanted an excuse to call Michael. To ask for a favor that would put us in his car together. In my house together. An excuse for us to pour some of the rum from the cabinet over the fridge into a couple of glasses of eggnog and …

Afterward, he’d apologized. He’d said kissing me—touching me—was a mistake. He had a girlfriend, and she deserved better than what he’d done.

He said I deserved better, too. But I didn’t want better.

I wanted Michael.

My jaw clenches as I carry the bungee cords into my bedroom. Michael is staring out my window, one arm propped on the frame. I kneel and work the first cord beneath the corpse’s shoulders, then tie it tightly to hold the plastic closed. I have to wrap the second cord around his ankles four times to get it tight enough.

“Ellie?” Michael’s footsteps approach me from behind. “You okay?”

“Of course I’m not okay. I’m trying to sneak a body out of my room and avoid the death penalty. What part of that would make you think I’m okay?”

“You need to calm down, or you’ll make a mistake.”

I stand and turn on him, my arms thrown out at my sides. “I’ve already made the mistake! If he’d just … If he’d just listened.”

Michael stays several feet away. “What makes you think he wasn’t listening?”

“He didn’t…” I can’t remember, without replaying the whole thing, and I can’t stand to do that.

“Because he didn’t say what you wanted to hear? Doesn’t that mean you weren’t listening?”

For a moment, I can only blink at him. “Whose side are you on, anyway?” He stares at me without answering. I turn back to the body, and this time I don’t wait for his help. I just heave the heavy end of the black plastic burrito up and start hauling it backward out of the room.

Michael follows me down the hall into the garage, through the door I’ve left open. Rather than helping me lift my burden into his trunk, he offers me a single piece of advice. “Lift with your legs, Ellie.”

I drop the body on the concrete floor and flip him off over one shoulder.

It turns out I’m not strong enough to lift a hundred and eighty pounds of dead weight into the trunk by myself, and he’s not gentleman enough to help, if that means incriminating himself. And I can’t really blame him. So I drag over the car ramps my mom’s last boyfriend left in our garage and position them in front of the trunk. Then I lift the heavy end of the body again and haul it backward up the ramps, until I can roll most of it—the heaviest half, anyway—into the trunk.

“Clever,” Michael says. “See, you didn’t really need my help anyway.”

“I definitely needed your car,” I snap as I shove the body the rest of the way into his trunk, then slam the lid closed.

“So where are we taking him?” Michael slides into the passenger seat, and I glare at him through the window.

“Really? You’re going to make me drive? I don’t even have a license.”

“You didn’t have a license when you brought the car here. And anyway, if we get pulled over, your lack of a license is the least of our worries.”

I can’t really argue with that. I round the car, punch the button on the wall to open the garage door, and get in behind the steering wheel.

“What about the park?” I ask as I carefully pull out of the driveway.

“Sure.” Michael nods. “I mean, if your goal is to scar the poor little kid who finds him for life.”

“Crap.”

“What about a dumpster? They only empty the one behind Slice of Life”—the pizza place where Michael’s worked since the day he turned sixteen—“once a week. It could be days before anyone finds him.”

I turn left, heading for the strip mall where he works. “You going to help me get him in there?”

“Still not touching a corpse. So, what about behind the dumpster. The point is to keep him from being found in your house, right? So it doesn’t really matter when he’s found.”

“I guess not.”

We drive the rest of the way in an uncomfortable silence, and I park behind the dumpster at the back of Slice of Life. While I pull the body from the trunk, Michael stares over the roof of his car at the back door of the restaurant where he works. “I wonder who’ll find him?” He doesn’t seem to want an answer, so I don’t even make a guess.

When I’ve positioned the body as close to the dumpster as I can, hiding it in thick shadows I hope will still be at least partially shaded in the daylight, I get back into the car. But Michael keeps staring at the building. He seems sad.

I start the car and roll down the passenger’s side window. “Michael.”

Finally he gets in. “It won’t be the same between us after this. You know that, right?”

I shift into gear and pull out of the parking lot the back way. “It hasn’t been the same in a long time.” We park his car at the neighborhood playground again and walk in silence back to my house.

In my room, Michael sits on my bed and watches while I soak up the blood with paper towels. Then scrub the floor with bleach and more paper towels.

“Michael … what’s wrong with me?” I ask as I gather the bloody paper towels into a pile. I can’t stop staring at them. I couldn’t look at the body, but I can’t seem to stop looking at the blood.

“Well, if I had to guess, based on the evidence, I’d say you have a lot of pent-up rage and a hair trigger. And some severe psychological issues.”

“I’m not talking about this.” I grab the wad of trash in both hands and push myself to my feet using my elbow. He follows me into the living room. “I mean … why am I good enough for you when you’re drinking, but not when you’re sober?”

Michael studies me with a sad look on his face. “You’re never going to forgive me for that, are you?”

Instead of answering, I sink onto my knees in front of the fireplace and toss a handful of the bloody paper towels in. The flames hiss as they devour the moisture.

“It was just a few kisses, Ellie. But it was wrong. So I stopped. You can’t get mad at me for trying to do the right thing.”

But it wasn’t just a few kisses. He’d touched my hair. He’d looked right into my eyes and told me I was pretty. That should have meant something.

That had to mean something.

“Ellie, you need to talk to someone.” Michael sinks onto the edge of the couch, and his voice is very soft. “It’s time for you to get some help.”

“That’s why I called you.” Only I didn’t call him, did I? He called me.

“You need someone other than me. This isn’t normal, Ellie. This isn’t healthy.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” I throw the rest of the towels into the fire and turn on him. “Is this why you like her better than me? Ginger?”

“Do you really think we should have this conversation again? Don’t you remember what happened last time?”

No, I don’t remember. All I know is that I can’t let him go. “What if I get help? What if I find someone to talk to?” I take off my bloody shirt and throw it into the fire. “My mom mentioned this therapist she knows from work. If I go see him, will you … Will you give me a chance?”

Michael shakes his head slowly. “It’s too late for that, Ellie. You know it’s too late.”

“Then why are you here?” I need to calm down. He’s right. It’s not healthy for me to be this angry. “Why did you call me? What is this about, Michael?”

He gives me another sad look. “Elodie, if you want to boil it down to one thing, I’d have to say that this is all about a pair of shoes…” He looks down at his feet.

No.

I break into a sweat as I follow his focus down to the floor. Where a pair of red Vans peek from beneath the ends of his jeans.

No …

“What’s wrong, Ellie?” Michael says as he steps into my living room, out of the cold. “Ginger’s waiting, so I only have a minute.”

“You need to talk to someone. Your mom’s friend. Or the counselor at school.” His voice is kind, but his words hurt. Why do his words always hurt?

“I can’t do this with you anymore.” Michael backs away. Headed for my bedroom door. “You know I love you. I always will. But not like that. You’re like my sister, Ellie.”

“And you should probably just go ahead and tell them what happened, because Ginger knows I was coming over here tonight. And you left paint from my car on your garage shelf. Eventually, the police will come to your door, and it’ll be better for you if you just tell them what happened.”

“What happened, Michael? I don’t understand. I don’t remember…”

“Yes, you do.”

“Please don’t go,” I beg him. “Please. You love me. You told me you’ve loved me ever since we were kids.”

“That’s not … That’s not how I meant it. I’m sorry. I have to go. And I don’t think I should come over anymore.”

“No!” My pain bleeds into a white-hot anger. If he walks out that door, I will have lost him.

There’s a knife on my desk, sitting on the empty plate from the dinner I ate alone in my room.

“You can’t go…”

“Ellie. I have to go now,” Michael says as firelight dances across his features.

“I know.” But I also know I don’t have to let him go. Not this time. What I don’t know is when I picked up the knife again. “I know you have to go. But this time I’m coming with you.”

THE COMPANY I KEEP

By Jeff Somers

1.

The first thing I noticed about my freshman-year dorm roommate, Doug Pembriss, was his small, virginal hands. They were hands made soft and pillowy by the constant application of lotions in the shower during masturbatory expeditions. He thought no one suspected. It may be part of the reason I did not in any way find Doug attractive even though he was, technically, a suave older man.

Doug looked normal. Average height, brown hair, green eyes. A round, unlined face that hinted at a childhood of action figures and a banana-seat bicycle and so little trauma that he was technically younger than his years.

Me, I’d skipped two grades; my father used to call me the Boy Genius, so I started college when I’d just turned seventeen. I’d been living with my Aunt Sheila and Uncle Jimmy, and was unreasonably eager to get out of their awful house and on my own. But college wasn’t quite what I expected—and neither was Doug. I had expected some sophisticated older dude. Doug was one of those guys who showed up at college completely unprepared, and before he could finish baking, he ran into Samantha Glees. Which directly led to me seeing my first dead body.

Doug found himself sitting next to Samantha in class. Doug simply glanced her way, smiled, and said hi. She smiled back and asked him if he had an extra pen. From that moment on, Doug began taking four showers a day.

Samantha was certain of her own importance, but in all fairness this had already been proved to her by her parents on numerous occasions. The Gleeses had sacrificed everything for their children, and Samantha above her two younger brothers. They were the sort of grim, joyless parents you met from time to time who got thinner and less alive every year, turning into husks while their bright, attractive children grew brighter and more attractive.

How do I know this? I know everything. I’m Reggie Reloux, Boy Genius. Also: Doug’s passwords were easy to guess, and he was very chatty with his old high school friends online.

I took an interest because he was my roommate, and he seemed like the sort of kid who got lured into cargo vans with the promise of candy and never seen again. Their friendship was, upon investigation, real enough: Samantha liked Doug, enjoyed his company, and occasionally allowed him to imply she was or might someday be his girlfriend. It was symbiotic.

Samantha and Doug, for there was no Samantha without Doug. They were the best of friends for three long months.

And then Samantha met Jake Wismau.

Stay with me. It all comes together.

That Doug would have set himself on fire at the request of Samantha Glees was obvious. And as always with one-sidedly platonic friendships, they acted like a married couple. Which is to say they dated without actually dating.

They went out, ate takeout dinners in front of the TV, took long walks. They told each other secrets. They called each other at odd hours and talked until the battery on someone’s phone died, whispering into the dim morning moments. They bought each other gifts and left each other notes. They cried together, emerging from Doug’s room with red, shining eyes and exchanging a lingering embrace at the door, like lovers.

During this period, their main topic of conversation, as far as I could tell from furtive eavesdropping, was the rogues’ gallery of uncaring, awful boys who were created by the universe solely to wound her, and then, like as not, burst into their composite atoms the moment she had fled the room, their purpose achieved.

When the Current Boy became the Ex-Boy, their conversation tended toward the maudlin belief that Sam herself was not worthy of true love, which of course devolved into Doug implying as heavily as he could without actually saying it (because saying it under such circumstances would be terribly rude) that she was lovable because he was proof because of course he loved her.

Truly. Madly. Deeply. Very, very boringly. Very heterosexually.

So when Doug almost destroyed it, I was delighted.

When Doug decided the time had come to pledge his troth, he opted for the classic disaster move: He wrote her a letter. What may, in fact, have been the worst love letter ever written.

As with every single surprise love letter delivered by hand throughout history, Samantha read it with exponentially increasing alarm, and then proceeded to cut Doug out of her life with a cruelty and immediacy that was shocking, if not terribly surprising. I was unsurprised because I was already well experienced with the ruthless nature of teenage girls, because of my sister, Regina, Destroyer of Worlds.

2.

When we moved in, after Our Mother killed herself, Uncle Jimmy pulled me aside and asked me what he needed to know. Which was reasonable, because Our Mother had murdered our brother and our father.

I told him, “Never make soup for dinner.”

Regina said, Raymond did a bad thing.

This with the calm certainty of a twelve-year-old, in her blue sneakers and hair in a severe ponytail. She was grinning, mischievous, enjoying Raymond’s misery. I’d already heard the story. Raymond was now the Famous Pervert of our street, and I had heard little else over the last few hours.

Raymond I’d never much cared for. Raymond had always been a burden, fat and socially graceless. Regina, on the other hand, was me, just shorter, a few years younger, slightly prettier. I looked at Regina and saw myself, and the barest flicker of affection was sustained.

Jenna’s dad wants to murder him, she said delightedly.

I shrugged. I asked her where Raymond was hiding out.

Mom’s got him, she said, and my stomach dropped, the bitter taste flooding my mouth.

I first got wind of it in Geometry, when Carl Miner greeted me with Hey, Reginald, heard your brother got caught wanking it with his pants down spying on Jenna Moonan. Loud. Loud enough for everyone to hear, and his cronies giggled.

That night, Raymond was sent a special dinner in his room.

Raymond got sicker, and Dad’s temper got quicker. Mom made Raymond soup, which we all named Punishment Broth. Raymond ate soup and got worse every day. Once I went into his room and sat with him a little while. He looked like a doll, a rumor of my brother. And I knew Raymond was dying. I stared at the bowl of chowder sitting on the little table next to the bed, cold and jellied. I reached out and picked up the spoon, and after a moment’s hesitation, I licked it.

The taste was familiar. We’d all been punished by Our Mother at one time or another. Confined to our rooms, fed soup and nothing else until we were puking. Two, three days of the Reloux Fever, and then Our Mother would appear with a sandwich and a damp towel and coo over her poor babies.

We learned our lesson. And worked to get that taste out of our mouths.

After Our Mother’s suicide, Regina and I became intimately aware of just how mediocre a mental health professional you have to be to work for the Department of Family Services. Our parade through their cluttered offices taught me the words borderline personality disorder and that bursting into tears was a fine way to avoid talking about borderline personality disorder and how you fail on a regular basis to see other people as real, as having agency and interiority.

We also became intimately aware of just how mediocre a relation Uncle Jimmy was, or at least I did when he asked me for advice dealing with Regina. He didn’t have any experience with teenage girls. I had no answers for him. Any story I might have told about Regina in recent years would no doubt terrify him. For example: When she was fifteen, Regina drove Malík Kysely to attempt suicide.

This was the first sign of The Change. To be fair, I was in accelerated courses at the time, so I was naturally enamored of myself, and not entirely aware of Regina’s status or The Change. The Change was an unmarked cardboard box that sweet wobbly Regina crawled into at the age of fourteen and emerged some unknown time later as the Destroyer of Worlds, beautiful and emotionless, glistening from her recent metamorphosis. Of course, the version of Regina that was mostly human had existed when our parents were still alive; before my father was poisoned by Our Mother, before our little brother Raymond was poisoned by Our Mother, before everyone in the universe was poisoned by that old bat Our Mother, who poisoned us regularly when we disappointed her or embarrassed her. I can still taste the bitter flavor of it, that aftertaste that meant you were going to spend the next three days home sick from school, barfing.

Raymond didn’t break her, but Dad did. She punted and killed herself with her own brew.

I knew Regina had started a relationship of sorts with Kysely, and it was one of those sweet, innocent things. He was never going to be a match for Regina; all soft and slump-shouldered, with an artist’s soul, and you could tell by the way he stole glances at my sister that he regarded her as far too beautiful to be real. For her part, Regina at fifteen hadn’t yet realized she was beautiful, a nearly ideal combination of our parents’ DNA.

How do I know this? Regina kept an old-school diary, and mistakes were made.

So their relationship was kind of tentative and innocent, all secret texts and secret posts and secret phone calls after Aunt Sheila and Uncle Jimmy had gone to bed, whispering into the glow of her phone. The key word here, in case you’re not paying attention, being secret.

And then The Change, and Regina, Destroyer of Worlds, emerged from her cocoon and forgot to tell Kysely that she’d crossed over into something not precisely human, something greater and lesser at the same time, a demigoddess ruling over a shadowy underworld. So the poor bastard thought he still had a girlfriend, and he was eager to let the world know.

Regina began a gaslighting campaign that should be recorded and analyzed and written down in some sort of dark grimoire. I mean, even I felt bad for Kysely, and I rarely feel bad for anyone aside from myself.

In public, Regina acted like Malík smelled bad. She walked by him without acknowledging his existence, she smirked when he talked to her, she made comments about him to her increasingly mean-spirited acolytes—she treated him like shit.

At night, at home, she whispered that she loved him and told him she was messed up, she was confused, she just needed him to be strong for her. She sent auto-delete texts that told him she loved him. That she needed him to wait for her. That he was the only reason she was still alive.

The kid took it for six months, and then he ran a hot bath, sliced open his wrists in the messiest, most incompetent way possible, and didn’t even come close to dying because he missed the arteries, though he lost the ability to use chopsticks due to some ligament damage. His parents tried to blame Regina, but she’d very publicly treated him like shit, and there was no evidence they’d ever had a relationship, so nothing ever came of it, and the Kyselys moved away, and I deleted Malík from my memory banks.

And started to seriously fear my sister.

3.

Over the course of a few weeks, Doug made up with Sam. She refused to see him at first, and a haze of gloom hung over our room. But you couldn’t underestimate Doug. He crawled. He groveled. He swore he was okay with just being friends, and that he understood, and that it had not been nearly as passionate and deeply felt and permanent as he might have made it seem. Listening to his half of the conversations, it appeared that Doug had experienced a bout of temporary insanity, and that some second personality, a trickster, had temporarily forced his body to say things he now found hilarious. Things like I love you, Sam. Or We should be together, Sam. Or If you walk away now I won’t be alive tomorrow morning, Sam.

The groveling worked: Thirty days after Doug had humiliated himself, Sam reappeared in the room—sporting a new boyfriend, which shouldn’t have been surprising at all. Or that the universe hated girls like Sam, and so it cruelly paired them up with men like Jake Wismau.

Jake: Tall, lanky, had dreamed of playing pro baseball all through high school; discovered to his horror that his flat, reliable 90 mph fastball had curdled into an 83 mph lob by his eighteenth birthday. He worked frantically to correct the problem, then went underground. Emerged a freshly baked business major, where everyone who has recently abandoned a dream ends up.

How do I know this? The Boy Genius has superpowers, and also knows how to Google people.

Jake: The first time you met him, you didn’t like him. No one did. He seemed cocky, overly assured, fake. He smiled a lot, a wide shit-eater’s grin that implied both cruel sarcasm and complete innocence. He was a man convinced that nothing he did could ever possibly be considered bad. If you walked in on him throttling a small child, he would be amazed to discover you thought it was in poor form.

The second time you met him, you liked him. He seemed suddenly cheerful, easygoing, sincere. He had a way of softly mocking everyone around him, but there was a sphere of neutrality around him. If you were within his physical proximity—inside the Sphere—you were safe. If you were outside it, you were mercilessly mocked. It took everyone a little while to realize the Sphere was localized—Jake didn’t care who you were, only that you weren’t within earshot.

Unsurprisingly, the third time you met Jake, you wanted to punch him in the nose.

Any sane person could see that Jake and Sam weren’t going to last long. The reason was simple: They were both mean drunks. The main difference was that Samantha went through a soft, purring, warm-fuzzy period of inebriation that was followed by a squint-eyed, irritated hellcat phase where she was as likely to scream in your ear until you were deaf as she was to throw her arms around you and tell you that you were her favorite. Jake went straight to mean, a Reverse Popeye Syndrome, wherein one beer and he turned into a braying jackass who got angry at just about anything you said. Or did.

The two of them, out crawling the bars and frat parties and in-room bacchanalia? It started ugly and went downhill from there.

If I were offering a threat assessment of Doug, I would have classified him somewhere between a shrubbery and a small toy truck left in the middle of the floor. But when he suspected that Jake had hurt Samantha—physically, of course, as everyone within a half mile of the happy couple already assumed Jake was going to crush her emotionally—he suddenly developed an outsize opinion of his ass-kicking skills.

It started with a visit from Regina, Destroyer of Worlds, which already had me on edge. Sprawled on my bed, she was writing in her journal, like always since The Change. She stared, she studied, she made silent mental notes, and she rarely told you what she was thinking.

“Hey, Reg,” she said, pronouncing it reg.

“Hey, Reg,” I said, pronouncing it reeg. “Want to come to a party?”

She brightened. “Will there be beer?”

I sniffed. “Will there be beer,” I sneered. “Amateur.”

In college, of course, anything is an excuse for a party. Happy? Let’s get drunk. Sad? Drunk. Uncertain? Manipulate yourself into emotional certainty with alcohol.

Wismau was in an unofficial fraternity, which said so many negative things about him that it was difficult to choose just one. Imagining a house filled with Jake Wismaus was bad enough, but a house filled with Jake Wismaus who imagined they were in some sort of socially functioning brotherhood was horrifying. I pictured dozens of them, all in variations of the Wismau uniform (slouchy jeans, T-shirt that exposed his Adonis Arrow, checkered Vans, and hair that took sixteen hours to look like he just woke up), working in uncanny synchronicity, like an army of ants.

The house was all yellow light and bass drum, swelling and pulsing with drunken energy. In the swampy, moldy kitchen I found Jake Wismau, who smiled at me with a dead-eyed expression that indicated either he liked me or wished to eat my flesh, possibly raw, possibly while I was still screamingly alive.

“Dude,” he said, stretching out the word, his typically huge and psychopathic grin in place. “Rough day.”

He put a hand on my shoulder. He met my gaze, and I wondered if Jake Wismau thought we were friends. I felt a surprising and unwelcome jolt of sexual energy. I asked myself, how much alcohol would it take for me to hook up with Jake Wismau? And the dismaying answer: not much.

“Rough days,” he said, turning and opening a kitchen cabinet, “require rough libations.”

Jesus. Only college assholes use words like libations, which they recently learned and enjoy rolling around in their mouths like verbal worry beads. But then Jake Wismau produced a bottle of Mellow Corn, the small-town mayor of cheap whiskies, and the chances of the evening ending with me trying to turn Jake Wismau bisexual had gone up significantly.

“Libations,” I said. “Yes, please.”

Jake escaped me, melting into the sweaty scrum, and I lost Regina. A familiar sense of frustrated weariness settled over me; if Regina died or fell off the roof and became paralyzed or was abducted into a human trafficking ring and sold to a foreign prince, I would be blamed—unjustly, but rather comprehensively. So I went in search of my sister.

The invariable law of parties is that the moment you desire to find someone, they disappear into an alternate dimension, so I expected my search for Regina to be a lengthy process of deductive feats, kicking in doors, and fighting enraged seducers. Instead, as I turned to go look for her, she was crashing down the stairs, pushing people aside and cursing a blue streak so vile and forcefully delivered that by the time she arrived at the landing, people were scrambling out of her way.

She ran into me, head down, and reached up and delivered a forceful push that made me stagger backward.

“Out of my fucking way!” she hissed. Then she looked up and took a step back. She was flushed and unsteady. Her face firmed up, going blank. “I want to go home.”

I reconsidered my acerbic zinger, because she didn’t seem to be in the mood. I did some math, and decided it was better to have an angry sister moving under her own power than to wind up carrying Reg, as I had so often during our childhood.

I finished my whiskey and handed the glass to a startled kid standing next to me. “Let’s go.”

For a moment Reg hesitated and seemed on the verge of saying something, of telling me some terrible secret. And for a split second I could almost see it. Her hair was a mess, teased this way and that. A button was missing from her sweater. For the first time since adolescence, she didn’t look at me, but anywhere but me.

For a moment, the words were there, in my throat. Then she shoved past me.

“I said I want to go,” she hissed.

Irritation swamped me, burning the rest away. Whatever had just happened, I did not wish to be burdened with it. I wanted to go home, go to sleep, and start my new life tomorrow by installing Regina on a train back to my uncle’s, where she could spoil and rot on her own time.

4.

If there is a word in existence to describe a group of men prowling a city in various states of inebriation with the express purpose of locating and beating up another man, it is probably Germanic in origin.

It was Doug’s idea, of course. For a week, things were back to the normal abnormal of our intricate, beautiful dysfunction machine. Then one evening he was prowling through the suite, pacing and making fists and occasionally talking to himself. Samantha, mascara all over her face, was sleeping in his bed, and if the symbolism of him not being in there with her was obvious to Doug, he didn’t show it. He just paced around outside in his bare feet, and for some reason, despite his anger and fuming, he looked younger than ever. Like an embryo with legs. I was reminded of my complete lack of sexual attraction toward him.

The precise nature of Jake’s offense was left unexplained. Samantha didn’t look bruised, or bloodied, but she certainly had the shaken look of someone who’d recently realized the delicate nature of the unspoken social contract that prevents us all from murdering each other on whims.

I sat on the stiff, unhappy couch in the shared living room, watching a show about aspiring models and drinking from a paper cup filled with grain alcohol whenever one of them cried or seemed about to cry or got choked up or mentioned personal struggles. It was a loose set of guidelines more than rules. I was buzzed, my stomach was upset, and I had the sense that there was nothing in the universe powerful enough to lever me up off the sofa.

Regina had invited herself down again, which had, I suspected, everything to do with Jake Wismau and his admittedly compelling abdominal muscles. That Jake was precisely the sort of man that overheated high school girls and boys with self-loathing issues (read: all of them) might find darkly attractive had not actually occurred to me until Regina’s phone calls, typically robotic and disinterested, suddenly grew animated when she oh-so-casually asked how Sam’s boyfriend was doing, had I seen him, what was he wearing and how did he smell?

The worst part was, I knew exactly how Jake Wismau smelled: really, really good.

Regina had arrived in a terse, blank-faced mood, with her usual green backpack, a green backpack that was actually a Bag of Holding. Need a brush? A book? A pen? A sandwich? An MP3 player? A comfy sweater? Warm socks? Makeup? Gum? Regina could produce it from her bag. It’s also where she kept her journal, and this time a brown bottle she’d brought from home, likely siphoned from Uncle Jimmy’s top-shelf booze collection.

She was in my room, napping and making my bed smell like peppermint, and suddenly I had the curious feeling of wanting action, of desiring movement and purpose. The stillness of the place bothered me, itched me. I felt like there was energy and action right outside the door, and I was stuck inside drinking booze that tasted like burn and once again saddled with the silent, grimacing creature I’d been informed was my sister, although she didn’t resemble the girl I’d known very much.

Until Doug appeared, pulling on a blazer, holding his phone and a soft cap in his hand.

“C’mon,” he said, his voice pitched to perfect seriousness. “We’re gonna find that asshole and kick his ass.”

I was up on my feet before he’d finished speaking, a fuzzy excitement animating me. We were going to find this asshole and kick his ass. Or at least I was going to be in the general vicinity when it happened, probably filming it on my phone.

The room spun. I almost fell over. I’d been sitting and drinking for three hours. We were out the door and halfway down the hall when I realized that Regina had joined us, her face blank, her eyes blazing.

I led us to Jake’s soggy rental house, where an infinity party had been going on for weeks. When we got there, I bent down and picked up a good-sized pebble from the ground. Straightened up and tossed it in the air once, twice. Then I went into an approximation of a pitching windup, almost lost my balance, and sent a two-seamer at the house, smashing the big bay window.

“What?!” Doug managed, spinning to face me.

“Jake WISMAU!” I shouted. “Come on out and get your ass kicked!”

I turned and took hold of Doug’s shoulder before he could spook. I judged the chances of me getting popped in the nose as part of this at fifty percent, and I was prepared to take those chances, honestly. It would be worth it. Besides, I was so full of grain alcohol I wouldn’t feel it until next Tuesday.

The house had gone silent. Music off. Voices muted. Then the front door opened and guys started filing out. They were all Jake, tall and skinny and slithery, hair a little too long. Easy guys. But seven of them, a faceless crowd gathered behind them in the doorway, the windows. I gave Doug a little push and stepped back.

“Jesus,” Jake said in a stoned drawl. “Jesus. Doug.”

Doug didn’t say anything. To say that his expectations for the day had never included the possibility of successfully finding Jake would grossly understate his sense of injustice in that moment.

“All right, Doug,” Jake said, stepping forward in a disappointingly quiet, restrained way. “You want to say something to me, Doug?”

Doug’s every syllable of body language screamed no, but he appeared unable to speak. Behind Jake, the group of bros tittered, nudging each other. Jake was advancing, slowly, just walking closer. The recently erected statue of Doug just stood there. To an un-bright young man like Jake, Doug’s immobility might have been misinterpreted as truculence, but only if you squinted.

But Doug surprised me. Like a lot of people who had never been in an actual fight, Doug sought to overwhelm his opponent, to simply swarm Jake with the righteous fury of his anger, which Doug imagined would make him burst into flame like the Human Torch, destroying a large portion of the town and killing dozens. The Dougs of the world always thought their hurt feelings were secretly a superpower, and they waited all their lives for that moment.

Alas, it was not this moment. Jake spun away from Doug, grabbed his collar as he sailed past, and landed a solid kick on his ass that sent him sailing into the dead, brown shrubs in front of the rental.

Everyone went oooooohhhh. There was, I’m sorry to say, some braying, mocking laughter. I was, I am sorry to say, one of those laughing.

Doug thrashed around in the shrubs. Jake turned to look around, finally settling on me as his only peer in the general vicinity. “Take him home, Reggie,” he declared, and turned to lead his contingent of clones and backup Jakes back into the house, where the music had started up, louder than before.

I collected Doug. He was wild-eyed and scratched up, his sleeve torn. He let me guide him, staring straight ahead and walking in silence.

Back at the room, I was unsurprised to find that Samantha had left, leaving behind just the faint smell of bubble gum. Having done my duty, I turned and left Doug standing there staring at the rumpled sheets, a man clearly questioning not only his entire existence but every decision he’d ever made. The sight of my own empty, peppermint-scented bed made me realize that I’d lost my sister in the excitement.

There are certain evenings in your youth that are imbued with a sort of timeless drama, at least while you’re living them. The sunrise never comes, everything is incredibly important, and you are the point-of-view character. This was one of those nights.

I took my time with the urgent search for Regina, smoking a cigarette as I wandered, composing a moving eulogy that made this point: We’d all had more Regina than anyone could possibly have predicted. Instead of being sad to have lost her at sixteen, we should be happy to have had her the extra twelve or thirteen years she’d unexpectedly survived. She’d spent her first few years unsteady, easily distracted, and sticky, after all.

When I finally got back to Jake’s house, the party had metastasized into a rager—lights on, windows open to vent the sweaty crowd, music blaring, cops parked outside negotiating with idiots like it was a hostage situation. I walked in, hit in the face by a wall of humid humanity. As I swung onto the stairs, I stopped suddenly, confused, because coming down the stairs was Doug Pembriss.

He didn’t see me. Face red, eyes watching his shoes, he shoved past me with uncharacteristic violence, then caused a series of small scenes as he fought his way out of the house, apparently and mystifyingly ready to throw down with anyone who got in his way. It was disconcerting. It was like watching a dog do math.

Confused, I raced upstairs. Throwing open doors and making enemies. The third bedroom was empty, which seemed impossible at a party of this size and advanced state of societal decay. I stood for a moment, uncertain. As I stood there, breathing in what were likely Jake Wismau spores, I noticed an en suite bathroom in the back.

I stood there for a moment, staring. The lights were off, so it took me a second to see him.

Jake Wismau was sprawled on the floor, his head almost completely in the toilet, face down in the water. He was pretty obviously dead.

I’d never seen a dead body before. Raymond, Dad, Mom—they’d all had the decency to crawl off to a dark hospital room when their time came, like pigeons seeking a place to hide. I’d been informed of their deaths, but had never actually seen their bodies. The funerals had all been closed casket; it was like they’d just dissolved one day.

What struck me was the slackness about him. The lack of purpose. There was a subtle difference from unconsciousness. This was nothing, this was an empty shell. The sight of it filled me with horror, because all I could see was myself, just as rubbery, just as empty.

I suddenly felt seventeen, for the first time.

5.

When I got back to the dorm, Doug was sleeping in his bed, facedown, still dressed. Regina was curled up in mine, her makeup smeared on my pillowcase, her tiny hands curled into fists. I was relieved that at least I wouldn’t have to explain her death to my family.

I found the bottle she’d snagged from Uncle Jimmy’s in her bag and took it. I intended to get plastered, to fill myself up until I vibrated and channeled Our Father and his tendency to sing Irish folk songs, off-key, without rhythm.

But when I got the cork out, the smell of the liquor made me nauseous. I stuck it in my desk for safekeeping.

When Jake was found, the investigation concluded in lazy, disinterested fashion: Idiot drowns in toilet, death by misadventure. Everyone just accepted that conclusion, including Samantha, who briefly went straight edge, somehow deciding that his gruesome, untimely death made his abusive, monstrous life forgivable.

A few days later, I lay on the floor and stared at the ceiling, listening to the soft murmuring of my soft roommate. We were just a few months into freshman year, and Doug was a year and a half, two years older than me, but I saw my life stretching out in front of me, and it was just a series of misadventures in which I saved Doug’s life multiple times while he made his snaillike, Mr. Magoo-ish progress.

I tried to imagine Jake crawling into the bathroom to puke and accidentally drowning; couldn’t. I tried to imagine Doug dragging a prone Jake Wismau to the toilet and holding him under; couldn’t. The Jake Wismaus of the world were roaches. They bred, they propagated. They didn’t die.

I got up and got dressed.

Jake’s house was dark and abandoned, still trashed and damp from the party. The detritus of the party was everywhere, like someone had turned off gravity for a few seconds, waited for everything to be suspended in midair, then switched it back on. The place reeked of stale beer and smoke, and every surface glistened with syrupy spills. I crept up the stairs using my phone’s flashlight and headed to the bedroom in the back. The door was crisscrossed with yellow police tape, but it was easy to just slip through.

The room was just as I remembered it: dark and still, stuffy and cluttered. I had no idea what I was looking for. Something to put my mind at rest. Anything. I wandered the room and the bathroom for a bit, then I sat down on the bed, feeling hot and ridiculous. There was something in my mind, some dark thought that got bigger by eating all my other thoughts, bloating and swelling until there was nothing else, but I still couldn’t see it.

I realized I could smell something. Something that didn’t belong in Jake Wismau’s universe, a universe composed of beer, Jägermeister, AXE body spray, and sweat.

Against all my instincts, I leaned down to put my face near the pillow, and recognized the scent.

Peppermint.

Back at the dorm it was starting to get light out, but the place was still quiet as a tomb. It reminded me of my house as a kid, sneaking in after Mom and Dad had stopped fighting, walking through the immaculate living room straining to hear any signs of life, and wondering if this was finally the night they’d gone and killed each other.

I found Regina’s bag, the green backpack, the Bag of Holding. Her journal, or diary, or whatever you wanted to call it, was right on top. It was a cheap little dime-store notebook with a purple cover, college ruled. I opened it up and started reading, heart pounding, listening hard for the sound of Regina, the Destroyer of Worlds, shucking her chrysalis and spreading her dripping wings.

Jake Wismau

The handwriting was shaky and wild, with huge loops, slanted way down to the right of the page, like she’d been writing furiously with the notebook on her lap.

the feel of him on me, insistent, heavy, eager and i told him, i told him, i told him but he didn’t care, didn’t care. i hate him, hate him. i hate him, hate him. i can’t get the smell out of my nostrils, the taste out of my mouth.

his grin out of my eyes.

he left something behind, inside of me and i can feel it scratching, writhing. i can feel it, feel it. the feel of him on top of me and me and me and only me.

The worst part: Each ragged letter i had a tiny heart above it. The second-worst part was the sudden appearance of a clean, neat line, all in block letters, so crisp you knew she’d paused to take a deep breath and center herself before writing it:

I AM GOING TO KILL HIM, KILL HIM.

I closed the book like it was on fire. I had the experience that some folks refer to as a moment of clarity, when everything just snaps into place. Regina’s attitude shift after the party, the first party with Jake. Her crashing down the stairs all smeary and ragey.

It all made sense now. The Boy Genius had missed the obvious signs. The idea of anyone harming Regina seemed utterly impossible. Regina was me. She was a Reloux. She’d survived Our Mother and escaped. The idea of Jake Wismau hurting her was the worst thing I’d ever imagined. For one superheated moment I imagined it, Jake on top of her, Jake’s hands on her, and I was intensely, ecstatically happy that she’d killed him, and wished fervently to have the chance to someday desecrate his grave.

It all made sense now. She’d gone home to incubate and molt, and returned with the calm icy demeanor of an instrument of justice, and she’d gotten it. And how had she gotten it?

I opened my desk drawer and extracted the brown bottle Regina had brought from home on her last visit. I uncorked it; it was half empty. I took a small swig.

And froze.

The taste was instantly recognizable. It was the same bitter aftertaste I remembered from childhood, the same bitter aftertaste that inevitably followed any crime, imagined or real, that upset Our Mother.

The same thing I’d smelled on my father’s breath as he lay dying, the same thing.

I turned my head. Regina was staring at me.

I know that someday she’s going to kill me, just like she killed Jake Wismau.

How do I know this?

Because she’d become Our Mother, the Destroyer of Worlds.

CONCEALMENT

By Eileen Rendahl

They’d told us the drill was going to happen. Not exactly when, but that it would and that no one should panic. The school was ticking off the boxes, making sure we complied with what was expected. Mr. Carmichael, my homeroom teacher, went over the instructions, explaining where we should go, what we should do, how we should act. The school district now required one active shooter or intruder drill per semester.

When the drill started, Vice Principal Mendoza’s voice came over the intercom. “We are now in lockdown. Everyone please begin the protocol.”

Mr. Carmichael locked the door and pulled the blind down on the little window. Two kids moved a heavy metal table up against it. Another kid shut off the lights. I got smashed up against the cabinet where Mr. Carmichael stored supplies as we pressed into the corner, staying on our feet to take up the least amount of floor space.

Gwen Milligan whispered to Brian Lesen, “What do you think you would do if this was, like, real?” She sounded a little breathless, as if maybe she was doing too good a job of imagining it.

Brian shrugged. “My dad says these drills are stupid. He says we’re like sitting ducks in the corner. A table and a crappy lock on a cheap door wouldn’t keep anybody out.”

I opened my mouth to point out the lock and the table were just supposed to buy us time because someone would have already called the cops if it was real. No words came out, though. Instead, I nearly choked on Gwen’s Apple Blossom perfume. She was clearly trying to cover up the clove cigarette smell that clung to her clothes. It wasn’t working.

Brian said, “My dad says we should all be near the door with stuff to throw at him. Books and stuff like that. Then we should rush him. Tackle him.”

“Your dad said to do that?” I asked. I could not imagine my father ever suggesting I rush an armed intruder. Dad didn’t even like me playing defense in soccer games, even though I was pretty much always the best slide tackler on the field.

“Ssssh.” Mr. Carmichael glared at us and shooed us deeper into the corner. Everyone shuffled back. My shoulder scraped the cabinet. A waft of sawdust mingled with Gwen’s perfume, making me want to sneeze.

“What did he mean we’d be sitting ducks?” Gwen whispered.

“Think about it. All his targets jammed together. He could come in and go bang bang bang and we’d all be dead.” Brian made a gun with his thumb and forefinger and pulled the imaginary trigger three times.

My throat felt tight. I tried taking a deep breath in through my nose, but it felt like none of the air got into my lungs.

Gwen turned and looked at me, mouth a little agape. “Are you okay, Lucy?”

I nodded, even though I didn’t think I was. My heart beat fast, like I’d been running laps. I swallowed, but it felt like my throat was swollen shut.

Scenes flashed in my mind. Things I didn’t remember ever seeing or hearing. Voices. A loud bang. The smell of apples and smoke and fresh-cut wood. The color red. A door slamming.

Gwen and Brian tried to move away from me, like I might suddenly start drooling or twitching, but they couldn’t. We were too mashed in.

“You sure you’re okay?” Gwen repeated.

This time I shook my head. I wasn’t okay. My chest hurt. The room whirled around me. I heard Gwen yelling “Mr. Carmichael!” as my knees gave out and I slumped toward the floor.

“What happened, Lucy?” Dad asked as he drove me home.

“I’m not sure.” I’d felt better the second he came into the nurse’s office. He filled up the room with his broad shoulders and deep voice. My heartbeat slowed as he signed me out and ushered me into the Subaru. I folded myself into the smallest shape I could and pressed up against the door.

“Describe it.” He didn’t look at me. He kept his eyes on the road and his hands at ten and two on the wheel.

“All of a sudden, I couldn’t breathe. I kept seeing flashes of things in my head.” How to describe them? The banging noise. Voices. The color red. Apples and cinnamon. There wasn’t enough there to hold on to. It kept slipping away.

“Flashes? What does that mean? Like bright lights?” He glanced my way.

I rolled my eyes. He was so literal sometimes. “No. Not like lights. Like memories. Like sounds and smells and stuff.” I described them as best I could, then drew my knees up and gnawed a little on the cuff of my sweatshirt.

Dad reached over and gently lowered my hand. “What do you think they mean?”

I shrugged, even though I knew he couldn’t see me. He’d returned his attention to the road. “Don’t know. Probably nothing. I probably should have eaten breakfast.”

He gave me a little side-eye on that one but knew better than to say “I told you so.”

The next morning, I dutifully ate the scrambled eggs and toast Dad set out for me, without arguing.

“You sure you feel well enough to go back?” he asked. “Do you need to take a day?”

“I’m fine. That was like some weird one-time thing. It’s not going to happen again.” That’s all it had been, right? The dream from last night, the one with the bangs and the flashes and the spreading lake of red, that hadn’t been anything either, right?

He sat down across from me. He looked tired, like maybe he hadn’t slept. There were bags under his blue eyes and stubble on his jaw. “You’d tell me if there was something I needed to know?”

I looked up from my eggs and toast. He wasn’t tired. He was worried. “Like what?”

He straightened his knife and fork on the table so they were exactly parallel to each other. “You’d tell me if you were … you know, in trouble.”

It took me a few seconds to process what he was saying. “Are you asking if I’m pregnant? How on earth would I have gotten pregnant?”

That made him look up. “I’m pretty sure I explained that.” He had. It hadn’t been an easy conversation. Both of us blushed now just thinking about it. “Your mom … she fainted a few times when she was pregnant, right at the beginning. Something about her blood pressure dropping. And you … well, you’re so much like her. More every day.”

I savored that little bit of information for a moment. I didn’t know much about my mom. Dad had told me some stuff. We had photos. A wedding portrait. Snapshots of her holding me as a baby. Things like that. She’d died in an accident. A drunk driver crossed the yellow line and slammed into her as she traveled north on the Beeline Highway, one of the four most dangerous roads in Arizona.

I pushed back from the table and dropped my crumpled-up napkin onto my plate. I was done. With the eggs and the conversation. “I’m not pregnant.”

He didn’t budge. He didn’t even complain about my unfinished breakfast. “You know you could tell me if you were. We’d figure it out together.”

I opened my mouth to say something snarky, but something about the look on his face made me stop. Something naked. Something vulnerable. My dad would do anything for me. He’d step in front of a bullet for me. “Of course I would. It’s like you always say…”

“You and me. Back to back. Nothing can stop us.” He finished my sentence.

But I wasn’t fine. Not really. I felt funny. Prickly. Like electricity buzzed along my skin. Flashes kept coming, triggered by the strangest things. A puddle of ketchup next to cafeteria Tater Tots. The door to the gym banging shut. Cinnamon-flavored chewing gum. The flashes lasted longer and became more distinct. The voices were angry. I couldn’t make out words, but I knew they were unhappy.

Then there were the dreams. Two or three times a week, I woke up drenched in sweat, heart pounding, tears running down my face, the scent of apples in the air.

Then Mr. Carmichael assigned us to do an internet search on our names to show us our digital footprint, to warn us about how stuff on the internet was forever, and how we should be careful about what we put out there.

It showed me a whole hell of a lot more than that.

I’d gotten home that afternoon, made myself a snack, and curled up on the couch with my laptop. I plugged my name into the search engine. It wasn’t like I hadn’t Googled myself before. I mean, who hasn’t?

The usual stuff came up on the first page. A couple of articles about the soccer team I was on in Maryland, where we lived before we moved to California. My time in a 5K Dad and I ran to raise money for cancer research in Illinois, where we’d lived before Maryland. A mention of an art contest I won in second grade in Rhode Island, where we’d lived before Illinois. We’d lived all over. Dad said, “Changing jobs is the only way to get ahead. Gotta chase that money, kiddo. I’m it for breadwinners in this family.” So we moved. A lot.

Carmichael had said not to stop at the first page of results. He said that would be the obvious stuff. He said to keep going. That was something I hadn’t done before.

The second page had some of the same things along with some stuff about another Lucy Harding. She played the cello. Go figure.

It was at the top of the third page that things got interesting. I was listed as a possible relative of Joleen Harding. I knew that name. Joleen had been my grandmother. Out of curiosity, I plugged her name into the search engine, figuring I’d get an obituary. Dad’s parents had died when he was really young and he didn’t have any siblings. Just like Mom. It was the reason it was only Dad and me after Mom died in the accident. Him and me. Back to back.

But I didn’t get an obituary. I got, among other things, a Facebook link. Joleen Harding was alive and well and posting on the regular. She was taking a watercolor class at the senior center and had really enjoyed the tamales she’d ordered at a cantina last Saturday. I stared at her face, looking at the soft wrinkles and the fluffy white hair for traces of the woman in the photos Dad had shown me of my grandmother. It could totally be her. Except it couldn’t be. My grandmother was dead. Dad had said so.

Matthew Harding, Dad’s name, was on her list of relatives as her son. That could be a coincidence, though, right? Dad wasn’t on Facebook, and there was no link on Joleen’s page. Joleen had two other sons, though, Ian and Will, who were on Facebook. I clicked on Ian’s profile and scrolled through his timeline. Photos of a family ski vacation and some kid’s lacrosse game. I scrolled farther. My fingers froze at a #TBT photo of a wedding party clowning around, making funny faces, sticking out tongues, doing bunny ears behind each other’s heads. Except for the couple in the center. They were kissing. I recognized the couple. Dad had shown me a similar photo. In the photo I knew, Mom and Dad were alone, posing for the photographer. Under this one, the caption read: BETTER TIMES. MISS MY BRO.

My father had lied to me. His mother wasn’t dead. He wasn’t an only child. My head buzzed. My lips felt rubbery and weird, like if I’d tried to speak they wouldn’t have cooperated. My fingers cooperated, though. My fingers typed my mother’s name—Molly Ferguson, she’d kept her maiden name—into the search engine. Could Dad have lied about her, too? Was my mother alive? Were we on the run? Was that the real reason we moved every few years? To keep people from getting to know us well enough to ask questions he didn’t want to answer?

Turned out Mom was totally on the internet, but not on social media. She was in the news. The headlines screamed: YOUNG MOM SHOT DEAD BY THREE-YEAR-OLD, TODDLER KILLS MOTHER WITH MOTHER’S OWN GUN, LOCAL REALTOR KILLED BY CHILD, and ARIZONA CONCEALED CARRY LAW CALLED INTO QUESTION AFTER WOMAN KILLED BY TODDLER. All of them accompanied by a photo of my mom, a studio shot taken from her realty business.

The flashes came back. The loud noise. The pool of red. The smell of apples and spice and sawdust.

I opened the first article, trying to read, trying to understand. According to the article, Mom and I had been at a recently finished model home in a new development outside of Phoenix. Mom was the Realtor for the project and had been getting ready for an open house. The article said she must have left her purse on the floor where I could get into it. Somehow three-year-old me had been able to fish the .38 out of her bag and shoot her in the head. They’d found me sitting next to her body, trying to wake her, gun still clutched in my hand. A deputy on the scene said he didn’t know how many things must have gone wrong for me to be able to get the gun out, get the safety off, and exert enough pressure on the trigger to actually make the gun shoot. “And to hit her mama like that. Dead center in her forehead. I’ve never seen anything like it. I hope never to again.”

I heard the garage door going up. Dad was home. I slammed my computer shut, like I had something to hide. My cheeks got hot and my heart raced. Who was this man? I’d trusted him my whole life, and he’d lied to me the entire time. He’d lied about our family. He’d lied about me. I was a murderer. I’d killed my mother. My hands shook. I looked down at them, imagining them covered with blood.

“Hey, peanut,” Dad yelled as he walked into the kitchen from the garage. “Dinner’ll be ready in about twenty. Tacos okay with you?”

I picked up my laptop and padded into the kitchen, where he was throwing ground meat into a frying pan. Setting my computer on the breakfast bar, I opened it to one of the articles. I turned it to face Dad.

“Anything interesting happen at school today?” he asked, back still toward me while he cooked.

I didn’t answer.

He turned away from the stove. “You okay?”

I pointed at the computer.

He squinted at the screen. His face fell. “Where did you … How did you…” His words trailed off. “We should talk.”

“Ya think?” I said, heat getting ever higher in my cheeks.

He turned the burner under the pan off and shut my computer with a soft click as if the image on the screen was too much for him to bear. “I swear I was going to tell you. The timing … just never seemed right.”

“You thought there would be a good time to tell me I murdered my mother? I’m pretty sure that’s one of those things you just have to do.” Dad never could rip off a bandage. He always had to soak it loose.

He sat down next to me at the breakfast bar. “I know, I know. At first, I thought I’d explain when you got older. Then … it just seemed easier to keep the information from you.”

“Did it seem easier to keep my family from me, too?” I opened the computer again and pulled up his mother’s Facebook page.

He buried his head in his hands. “She agreed. Everyone agreed. If I took you away and we cut off all ties, we could protect you. You wouldn’t have to know. Wouldn’t have to live with it.” He raised his head to look at me. “When you passed out during that active shooter drill, I was worried you might have started remembering what happened. Then you didn’t say anything more. I figured the danger had passed.”

“Why did you wonder if I was remembering?” I asked.

“The stuff about the smells. The sawdust. The apples. The model home had just been finished. It still smelled like raw wood in there. Your mom always put a big pot of apple cider on when she held an open house. She said the smell of apples and cinnamon and spices made the place feel like home when they walked in.” He lowered his big head into his hands again.

The cabinet. Gwen’s stupid apple-scented perfume over the smell of clove cigarettes. The bang. That must have been the gunshots. The pool of red must have been my mother’s blood. Blood I spilled.

I didn’t even know I’d started to cry until Dad brushed the tears off my cheeks. “I’m a monster, a killer.”

“No,” he said. “No. This is why I didn’t want you to ever know. This is why we had to leave, cut off all ties. If we’d stayed, someone would have slipped. Someone would have said something. None of this was your fault. You were only a baby.”

A baby who killed. I shut the computer and slid off the stool. “I’m going to bed.”

“It’s only six o’clock. You haven’t eaten yet,” he protested.

“I’m not hungry.” I left the kitchen and climbed the stairs to the second floor.

I woke up at two A.M., the dregs of my dream still staining my brain. Voices arguing. A man and a woman. The loud bang. The growing puddle of blood. I’d fallen asleep with my laptop open, scrolling through search results and social media posts until my tears made everything too blurry to read. I had uncles and aunts and cousins and a grandmother and I was a monster, a monster who had murdered her own mother.

I sat up and rubbed the back of my neck. The prickly feeling in my skin remained. Dream images flashed. Except it wasn’t a dream. It had happened. All of it. The apple and spice smells, the raw wood, the gunshot, the blood.

My stomach clenched and growled. I was starving. I eased open my bedroom door. The house was dark. Dad’s door at the end of the hall stood ajar. I could hear his faint snores. I crept down the stairs into the kitchen and made a sandwich, trying to process everything.

The only thing that didn’t fit with what I’d learned about that day from the articles was the voices. Mom and I had been alone in that model home. The open house hadn’t started yet. Who was the angry man? I couldn’t remember. Yet.

I ate another bite of my sandwich and froze. Who had whisked me away from anything that might remind me of what had happened, from anything that might trigger my memories? My father. But he couldn’t have been there. He would never have left me like that, alone and scared. He’d have stayed, taken care of me, back to back. Him and me.

Except that was the Dad I thought I knew. The Dad that would do anything to keep me safe. That Dad didn’t want me to slide tackle on the soccer field or drive at night. That Dad didn’t lie. That Dad told me when a shot was going to hurt, and admitted that the Tooth Fairy wasn’t real when I asked.

Did that Dad even really exist? Maybe he was a lie, too.

The words of the deputy came back to me. So many things had to happen for a three-year-old to get hold of a gun, get the safety off, aim it, and shoot. What if those things hadn’t happened? What if I hadn’t shot that gun at all? What if the man with the angry voice shot my mother?

What if—that man was my father?

Twelve hours earlier, I would have told you that my father would walk through fire for me. He’d throw himself in front of a bullet to keep it from hitting me. He’d lie down in front of a speeding train to protect me. That had been before I’d known he’d been lying to me for fourteen years. He wasn’t the man I thought he was. Could he be a man who would kill his wife and blame it on his baby daughter? If he was, who could I go to for help? What would he do if I remembered all of it? It was just him and me. Back to back. We were alone in the world.

Except, we weren’t. That was another lie he’d told me. I had a family. I had a grandmother who went to watercolor classes on Tuesday nights at the senior center in Glendale, Arizona. I glanced up at the clock. If I left now I could make it there in plenty of time. I’d be going past Joshua Tree National Park before Dad realized I was gone.

I pulled the Subaru into the parking lot of the Glendale Senior Center, rolled down the windows, and watched the door. With any luck, I’d be able to talk to my grandmother before Dad found me. I’d had to use my debit card to get gas. He’d see where I’d done that and guess where I was going. What would he do then? The Dad I thought I knew would be on the next plane, but I wasn’t sure who the man who might have killed my mother was.

The door to the senior center opened, and people came out. I searched their faces for hints of the woman I’d seen on Facebook. I knew her immediately. It wasn’t just from seeing her photo online. Something in my chest leaped. It was like I knew her somewhere in my bones or my blood.

I slipped out of the car and walked toward her. She saw me and stopped.

“Joleen?” I said. “Joleen Harding?”

She nodded.

“I’m—”

“Lucy,” she finished for me. She dropped her art supplies on the sidewalk and folded me into a hug.

My grandmother’s house was pretty much as Arizona as you could get. Tile floors, high ceilings, pottery, Navajo rugs. I told her I’d found her on Facebook because of a school project. I didn’t mention the active shooter drill or the flashes or the dreams. She made me dinner—mac and cheese from what had to be the same recipe Dad used—and now we were sitting on the couch, eating ice cream and looking at photo albums.

“I knew who you were the second you walked up,” Grandma Jo said. “You look so much like your mother right now.”

I blushed at the compliment. “You knew her then? When she was seventeen?”

“Oh yes. She and your father started dating in tenth grade.”

High school sweethearts who’d gotten married. He could have gotten sick of her and wanted out. Had he killed her so he could escape?

“What about her parents?” Did I have more grandparents? More family?

Grandma Jo’s face creased. “They passed quite a few years ago. Not long after…” Her words trailed off. “She was their only one.”

At least Dad hadn’t lied about that.

We stopped at a photo of the three of us. Mom, Dad, and me. We were on a beach. Mom looked at the camera. Dad looked at Mom. My finger traced the outline of her face. “What were they like?”

“Your parents? Like any other young couple, I guess. Busy. Happy. Tired,” she said.

My finger moved to Dad’s face. “You’re sure they were happy?”

She shifted on the couch to face me. “What are you asking, honey?”

I couldn’t say what I was thinking. I couldn’t ask this sweet woman if her son might have murdered his wife and blamed it on his daughter.

Not yet. Not based just on some voices in a dream. I didn’t even know if the woman’s voice was my mother’s. “Grandma Jo, do you have any video of my mom? Something where I might hear her voice?”

She tapped her finger against her lips for a second. “You know, I think I do. I think we have some video of the night she won Realtor of the Year. Your dad was so proud. He taped the whole awards ceremony.”

It took a while for her to find it, but forty minutes later we were watching the slightly blurry images of a home video appear on the television screen. A man on a stage announced Molly Ferguson had won Realtor of the Year. The camera swung around fast enough to give me whiplash, but then there was my mom, beaming, getting up from her seat and walking to the stage to accept her award. Her voice was definitely one of the angry ones from my dream, one of the ones I’d heard in my mind pressed up against the cabinet during the drill. Was the other voice Dad’s? I wasn’t sure. I’d never heard him sound that angry.

“Thanks, Grandma,” I said, getting up to carry my bowl into the kitchen and to gather myself.

She followed me, letting the video continue to play behind us. “I can tell there’s something you want to know that you’re not asking, Lucy. I wish you’d let me help.”

I turned, about to tell her everything, when another voice came out of the television speakers. A man’s voice. Someone else receiving an award.

I froze. I knew that voice. I rushed back into the TV room, grabbed the remote, and rewound a bit.

“What are you doing?” Grandma Jo walked in behind me. “That’s not the part with your mom. That’s one of her co-workers. Carl Harrington. He’s made quite a name for himself since then. I see his signs everywhere.”

I hit PLAY. The man stood at the podium receiving an award for best newsletter. Sounded like a participation trophy to me. He thanked everyone, but he didn’t look happy.

“Did he and Mom get along?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t know, honey. Or if I did know, I don’t remember. It was so many years ago.” She put a hand on my shoulder. “Please tell me what’s going on.”

I slumped down on the couch. The angry voice in my dreams wasn’t my father’s. I was sure now. He wasn’t the one who was there when my mother was killed. Yes. He’d lied to me. He shouldn’t have done that, but maybe he really had done it for all the right reasons. Maybe he’d really done it to protect me. I told my grandmother the rest of what had led me there, about wondering if my father had killed my mother.

Her eyes were wide. “No, honey. No. Not ever. Your dad would never have hurt your mother. Never.”

“I know,” I said, miserable. “I know now, but when I realized he’d been lying to me for so long, I wondered what else he might have been lying about. There was definitely someone else there, Grandma.”

“You’re sure you might just not want it to be true that you … you know…” Her words trailed off.

I knew what she was asking. Was I trying to blame my mother’s death on someone else so I wouldn’t have to be a monster? It was possible. Maybe even more than possible. I didn’t want to be that person, the one who murdered her mother. But the flashes seemed so real. I needed to find out for sure. “I don’t know, Grandma. But that man’s voice is the one I keep hearing, and I don’t know how else I would remember it.”

“It doesn’t make any sense.”

I stifled a yawn, suddenly exhausted. That yawn was all it took for Jo to go into full grandma mode. In a half an hour, my teeth were brushed, my face washed, and I was tucked into bed in the guest room, a kiss dropped on my forehead with a couple of tears.

The dreams were even worse that night. More vivid. More clear. The man’s voice—Carl’s voice—louder. My mother’s voice matching his. I woke up, a scream clogging my throat as his face loomed in front of me. Distorted and angry. Twisted and ugly. I stared at the ceiling in the dark, eventually drifting back to sleep.

The front door slammed, and voices downstairs woke me. Dad. Of course he’d come after me. How could I have ever thought that angry voice could be his? I headed downstairs into the living room and lurked near the doorway to the kitchen for a moment.

“She’s a smart girl, Matthew. She figured out how to find me,” Grandma Jo said.

“Yeah. She’s smart. She’s like her mom in so many ways.” I hated the clogged sound in his voice, like he was trying not to cry.

I stepped into the kitchen.

In a flash, he was up from the table, arms wrapped around me in a hug. I buried my face in his shirt, soaking in his warmth and the comfort I’d always felt when he held me. My racing heart slowed to match his, beat for beat. “I’m so sorry, Dad. I should have known you’d never do something like that.”

“Hush, baby.” He smoothed my hair. “I should have told you years ago. I never should have lied about it.”

He released me from the hug and held me at arm’s length. “Explain to me what you told your grandmother about Carl.”

“He was there that day, Dad. He was there when Mom was shot.” I took a step back from him and looked up into his face. “I might not have shot my mother. Will you help me find out?”

“Of course,” he said. “Back to back. Always.”

It wasn’t hard to get an appointment with Carl Harrington. Dad used a fake name so he wouldn’t know who we were. We told the receptionist we were interested in the master planned community, the one where Mom was killed. Carl had become the Realtor for the project after Mom died. It had launched him, like it had been about to launch Mom.

He was sitting in his car near the gated entrance when we got there. I walked up to him first and knocked on the window. The air was so dry I thought I heard a hiss as all the moisture evaporated from my skin.

Carl got out of his car, squinting against the sun. When he got a good look at my face, his own paled. His gaze went to Dad then. “Matthew?”

“Carl,” Dad said.

“You should have let me know it was you making the appointment.” He got out of the car and shook Dad’s hand. Then he turned to me. “Is this Lucy? My God, you look just like your mother.”

“So I hear,” I said, stepping back from him before he could come in for a hug or a handshake. The idea repulsed me.

Carl turned back to Dad. “You’re moving back? And you want to live here?”

“I don’t think so.” Dad shook his head. “Lucy has started to remember things from that day. Flashes are how she describes it. Noises. Smells. A man and a woman arguing. We thought coming here to where it happened might jog more memories loose.”

Carl turned to me, his Adam’s apple working up and down in his throat. “Is that so?”

“Yeah,” I said, stepping up next to my dad. “It’s getting clearer every day.”

“That, uh, must be hard,” he said. “Everyone hoped you were young enough to never remember what happened that day.”

“Especially you, I bet,” I said, rubbing my arms, feeling strangely cold in the flat bright Arizona sunshine.

“Pardon me?” He made a show of looking confused, but he wasn’t much of an actor.

“You especially wouldn’t want me to remember.” Flashes went off like strobe lights in my head. Images. Sounds. This man. This face. Yelling all this should be his.

“Why would you say that?” he asked.

“Because you’re the one who shot my mom. You came to the model home that day. I don’t know what you were planning, but it didn’t go the way you wanted, and you got angry. Really angry. You yelled, but she didn’t back down. She gave as good as she got,” I said, amazed that my voice didn’t tremble.

“She would have. That’s exactly what Molly was like,” Dad chimed in.

My dad and I had been living a lie, but so had this man. All that was going to end and it was going to end now. “I don’t know if you already knew about the gun in her purse or if you saw it there, but you grabbed it and you shot her.”

“You … you remember it?” he whispered.

“Bits and pieces. Pretty soon I’ll have all the details and it won’t matter how long ago it was. There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

Carl turned back toward his car, but Dad shifted so he was between Carl and the vehicle.

Dad shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe what was happening. “I knew you were jealous. I knew you wanted this project, and that Realtor of the Year award. But to shoot her? To kill her? Over a stupid trophy? And to let everyone blame a little girl?”

Carl looked around as if there might be an escape hatch. There wasn’t. Just houses and desert. His face twisted and it was the face from the dream, distorted and ugly. “It should have been a fifty-fifty split,” Carl said, his voice tight. “I just wanted to talk to her about it, but she … she laughed at me. She was so greedy she wanted it all for herself.”

“So you shot her? And let them think it was me?” I knew the answer. It still amazed me.

Dad took out his phone. “I’m calling the police.”

That’s when Carl made a break for it. He feinted around Dad and headed toward the desert, his dress shoes sliding on the pavement. I don’t know where he thought he’d go. There was nothing but miles of saguaro and sage all around us. Still, he ran.

Too bad for him I’m pretty much always the best slide tackler on the field.

Dad and I walked into the house, and everyone went silent. Every head turned toward us. I was used to it. I’d been the new kid at so many schools, been introduced to so many classes, walked on the field with so many new teams. Based on the way Dad’s hand tightened around mine, he wasn’t quite as inured to it.

The place smelled amazing, like baking bread and sage. Everyone ranged around a bunch of tables strung together to accommodate a crowd, and there was definitely more than enough food on them to feed everybody twice over.

Then a man stood up from the long table. I knew his face. He looked a lot like Dad. That’s not why I recognized him, though. I recognized him from his Facebook posts.

“Matthew?” my uncle said.

“Ian?” Dad responded.

Then it was like being in the middle of a rugby scrum. There were people all around us. Hugging us. Kissing us. Touching us. Everyone talking all at once. Asking questions. Making comments.

I kept hearing just one thing, though: Welcome home.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DOG

By David Bart

This night’s a complete bust.

The pizza delivery took way longer than thirty minutes, still didn’t get it free. And Chloe recently developed an interest in jocks, refused to answer my texts, except she threw a bit of shade via an emoticon with its red tongue sticking out. So, my parent-free night of debauchery and hot, spicy pizza was officially a big, fat—

Agonizing screech!

I jumped, then recognized the creaks and groans of our garage door suffering the painful throes of opening. Which was odd because Mom and Dad never got in until well after midnight from date night; often tipsy. The DVR, however, showed 11:13.

The open pizza box on the carpet was about to get me busted for eating in the living room. I slid the box beneath the coffee table with my bare foot just as the door burst open and slammed into the wall! Sheetrock particles filtered down from the newly punched hole like a bad case of dandruff.

Mom hurried inside, headed for the staircase, ignoring her only—and therefore favorite—child.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

No reply.

Are my parents getting a divorce? I can’t see Dad springing the Big D on her over stale Olive Garden breadsticks and a cheap Chianti; they love each other, get along great; after all, they do a night out every month.

Dad stepped inside, stopped, and frowned at the hole in the wall. He glanced my way and then looked up at Mom as she ascended the stairs.

I rose from the couch, flinching at the squishy sensation only lukewarm mozzarella provides as it oozes up between your toes—and no, this wasn’t the first time. “Dad?”

He rummaged inside the liquor cabinet, bottles clinking, searching for something made in Scotland or Kentucky. Finally poured himself a bourbon and gulped it down; let out that ahhh sound parents do to embarrass their kids.

“Is anybody gonna tell me what’s wrong?” I asked, probably too loudly.

My glasses slipped, and I shoved them higher up a nose so long it had inspired Jason Gonzalez to dub me Cyrano. Mom claimed my nose was regal, but moms are like that.

In response to my question, Dad gestured toward the couch as he collapsed into his leather recliner with a whoosh, sloshing booze onto his date-night Hawaiian shirt.

“Perfect,” he said, and then saw my red foot. “Wyatt, you get that tomato sauce on Mom’s new carpet, she’ll skin us both.”

“Dad, what happened?” I asked, grabbing a few napkins and sitting down to clean off my toes.

“Son, we saw a … a…” He couldn’t get it out, shuddered and turned his face away to hide misting eyes.

A car wreck? Elvis alive in Illinois?

I tossed the yucky napkins into the box next to the last pizza slice, the one with my footprint in it, and leaned forward, elbows on my knees—not comfortable when you have bony appendages.

“Wyatt, we saw a man…”

I waited, less than patiently.

Dad exhaled forcefully and said, “We saw a man shot to death.”

I snorted, settling back into the cushions with relief; he wouldn’t be joking if they were getting a divorce. My old man, eh, always kidding around!

But then I had a sobering thought: Gallows humor is not his style. Which meant he was telling the truth.

“Wait, what?” I said, leaning forward again. “You saw what?”

Why shouldn’t I be confused?—I mean, that kinda thing happens in movies, not in real life, especially in or near Urbana-Champaign. We’re way south of Chicago, and the only violent gangs we have down here are U of I basketball fans.

On the other hand, we have a septuagenarian reality-show host as the leader of the free world, so I guess anything could happen.

Dad refilled his glass. “We went to the police station, and they dispatched a twelve-year-old patrolman to check Rohnert Park. No body. No sign of violence. No other witnesses, park was empty. But the officious little twit did call the animal shelter to report the stray dog—they’re gonna pick it up in the morning, Wyatt. Breaks my heart, that pooch saved our—”

I interrupted: “What dog?”

He leaned back, took another swig, and said, “Okay … so, I’d just whacked my head on the picnic table in the park, raised up too quickly ’cause I’d heard a loud noise.”

I knew better than to ask him why they were under the table. I’m young, not stupid.

“I didn’t know what that sound was—muffled—like a gun fired in a barrel or something, but still loud.”

Not knowing what else to do, I nodded.

“We heard someone groaning from off in the distance … About fifty feet away, a guy looked like he was pointing down at a prone body, but with its leg bent at the knee, sticking up.”

“This was in Rohnert Park?” I asked.

He nodded. “Then I heard the loud noise again and I knew it was a gun, silenced maybe; not like in the movies at all. Anyway, and I’ll never forget this, the guy on the ground jerked and his leg shot straight out.”

Dad got another drink while I tried to process. I felt kinda tingly, like some kind of galvanic current was pulsing over my skin.

“Your mom cried out at the most unholy thing I’ve ever heard, son—the wet, sickening sound of bullets hitting flesh.”

I pictured movie scenes of battles, drive-bys, and shoot-’em-up scenes in Tarantino flicks—hard to imagine it in some idyllic park in the Midwest.

“The killer crouched down, looked toward our picnic table, lurched into a full-out run, gun out in front, long hair trailing behind him like some ghoul in a movie. It was surreal.”

Words escaped me, I could only just sit there and listen.

“We clung to each other and I was sure we were going to die and I’m thinking: fight or flee, fight or flee, fight or … know what I mean?”

My mouth was dry. “What happened then?”

Dad’s face lit up with his first grin since coming home. “This beautiful, wonderful dog came thundering out from behind a dumpster and stopped right in the path of the assassin!”

As Dad spoke, I could see it, feel it, my own folks in the middle of some hellish TV movie. I mean, this killer—can’t believe I’m thinking that word in the context of everyday life—was running toward them, pointing a gun he’d just used to kill a man, so they knew he’d use it on them; but Dad’s buzzed on wine, impotent to do anything, his mind vacant of any viable plan of action.

“How’d you get away?” I asked, needing details, because concentrating on minutiae often curbs my anxiety.

“The guy tripped over the dog, went ass over applecart—I heard the wind knocked out of him and his gun went flying. So we got up and ran to the car.”

But as he talked—and try as I might to pay attention—I just couldn’t focus. I thought of the ludicrousness of all of us, glommed on to video games, movies, Facebook, Twitter, interminable news coverage; never feeling, smelling, or hearing the spine-numbing terror, the acrid odor of smoke, or the ear-blistering gunshots.

I wondered: Would I be able to act under those circumstances?

Not likely. I’m not James Bond, nobody is … In fact, even James Bond isn’t James Bond.

“The dog looked like Old Yeller, Wyatt, ’member that flick?” He wiped a hand below his eyes.

Was he being sentimental about the old Disney movie or having a nervous breakdown?

I frowned. “Are you saying the mutt did it on purpose, like Old Yeller and the pigs?”

He shrugged. “It’s a reach, I know, but it was damned fortuitous.” He took a deep breath and stepped over to the liquor cabinet. “I better go up and see about your mom.” He grabbed a bottle of cognac by its skinny neck, along with a couple of snifters, and headed for the stairs.

When he reached the first landing, I said, “What if the killer followed you home?”

His head swiveled toward the night-blackened windows and he hurried back down, set the bottle and clinking glasses on the coffee table, grabbed the cord for the drapes and jerked them hand over hand until they were closed, and then headed upstairs—no doubt to the closet where he kept Grandpa’s old 12 gauge.

I’d never seen Dad scared before. I wolfed down the cold pizza slice I’d stepped on, ignoring the footprint. Comfort food, to shut out the sense of being in a nightmare with no awakening.

Went upstairs to their bedroom and hugged Mom, patting her on the back like I was the parent. After she settled down some, I said good night, headed back downstairs, and snuck out of the house; scared as I was, I really needed to check our neighborhood for strangers.

After I drove around near home for a while, I headed to Rohnert Park.

I had my choice of spaces in the empty parking lot. The cement picnic table Dad described was near the foot-powered swan boats. A bell tower on the hilltop overlooking the pond provided a little night music, but after it chimed a dozen times, my surroundings became preternaturally quiet—too quiet, as they say in old movies. No crickets. Or night birds. Not even a breeze.

A yellow dog trotted up from the pond, muzzle dripping water, the falling drops illuminated by a sodium-vapor security lamp at the far end of the parking lot. The stray’s ribs showed, and it was so scraggly it might’ve been a zombie dog—’course, those are rare in Illinois.

He trotted toward the dumpster, no doubt hoping to scare up a late-night snack, since I was apparently too rude to have brought him anything.

I ran over and jumped in my VW, drove to a Steak ’n Shake for a sack of burgers. When I returned, I asked, “Want some sliders, boy?”

He gobbled down three double-burgers, buns and all. I’d gotten one for myself with mustard and onions, and he ate that, too, then jumped into the passenger seat like he did it every day.

At Wal-Mart, I got food and water dishes, dog chow, a collar, leash, and a supersized sack of chews. I don’t make much money with my part-time gig at When Your Mouse Don’t Byte, a computer repair shop, so I didn’t have enough for the chews.

Tina Principe was on the register. We were in the Pythagoras math club and often geeked out together, shrieking over a solution to some particularly obtuse problem. She read my face about the chews: “I got this,” she said, winking while grabbing her purse from under the counter before stuffing the unaffordable chews into the bag.

At home, I fired up my laptop and alerted the embarrassingly small number of my “friends” on Facebook to the incident at Rohnert Park in Urbana: man killed, body removed. “You monkeys see or hear some evil, please speak.”

The first respondent suggested alien abduction. Probes and other things.

Another accused me of being the killer.

The third offered suggestions as to how to find the body, including a midnight séance.

But the last one—my personal favorite—posted a recipe for “killer” nachos, thereby demonstrating the amazing ability of our species to avoid comprehension.

Chloe of the wandering eye texted with, “OMG, is everybody all right—were you there?”

I replied with the tongue-protruding emoticon she’d used on me. I have some pride.

Next morning, Mom and Dad were glad to see the yellow dog, Dad ruffling its fur, Mom grateful, though less than thrilled at an obvious violation of trust: I’d snuck out to the park last night without saying anything.

And when I asked to keep him, she replied: “No. And a man was killed in that park, Wyatt—what were you thinking?”

But like most teenagers, I’d cultivated various tactics in order to get my way.

“He saved you guys from certain death, you owe him,” I said.

“That’s not fair, Wyatt,” Mom said.

“Fair? You named me Wyatt Virgil Morgan,” I blurted, pushing my glasses up my long nose. “Named me after the Old West Earp brothers. I was teased mercilessly, Mom. I mean, if we’re talking fair.”

Dad grinned—he knew my act. I’d only been teased, and mildly, a few times, and nobody beat me up, so I had little to complain about.

“I thought I’d call him Monty,” I said, scratching the dog’s ear.

Wendell Montgomery had moved to Dubai with his parents and sister for his dad’s job as an interpreter, which paid beaucoup bucks over there. He’d been my only true friend, and I missed him a lot, which my folks knew. I had called him Monty.

An hour later my folks were packed; Mom wanted us to stay with her sister up in Racine, Wisconsin—she told me to hurry, board our new dog, and pack my stuff.

I sighed. “He needs to get checked out at the vet and then I’ll board him right there, drive up to Aunt Cassie’s later.”

Mom looked suspicious. ’Course, she’d recently witnessed a murder and had almost become a victim, so that no doubt implants a distrustful view. Plus, I’m a devious teenager and she’s not stupid.

“We’ll wait for you,” she said smugly.

Queen to Rook 5.

I looked imploringly at Dad. “I can’t just put him in a cage without making sure he’s okay—he’s so skinny, might need heart worm meds.”

He sighed, not thrilled with being recruited into another of my machinations; but having once been a sly teenager himself, he said, “Maggie, the dog needs looking after, and besides, the gunman hasn’t seen him, either—Wyatt can drive up later.”

Checkmate.

And they headed north.

I felt bad about gaming Mom, but I needed some time. I figured if Monty, a dog who didn’t know my folks, could protect them, then I could certainly make an effort. The police had followed up with residents near the park, but no one had heard or seen anything. So nothing more the cops could do. We Morgans were on our own.

It was noon when I got back to Rohnert Park. An SUV was parked on the side street near the entrance, but the park was empty. Monty whimpered as he stared out the window. Geez, does he think I’ll abandon him here like his previous humans did? I opened the passenger door and said, “You’re family, dude, won’t ever leave you.”

He jumped out, headed for a gnarled old cottonwood near the pond.

I’d come to look around in daylight for something that could help the cops—spent cartridges, drops of blood, something. It was a beautiful day, and Monty and I had the park to ourselves.

Or so I thought.

Pain erupted at the side of my face and I was falling, someone riding me to the ground with a knee grinding into my chest!

A Trump Halloween mask loomed above me, wild red hair flying around, incongruous against a blue summer sky: “Okay, punk, that’s the dog who tripped me—who’re the people who saw me? Where are they?”

He had a spooky voice, kinda high-pitched. In the movies the killer always has a weird voice … remember that nasally voice in The Silence of the Lambs? “It puts the lotion on its skin.”

My blood tasted yucky, so I spit it onto his Trump mask and said, “I don’t usually do this kind of thing on a first date.”

Another smack to the face.

I spit some more blood and grinned. “Wow, returned to the scene of the crime, huh, genius?”

Okay, let’s take a breath and clear the air: I’m not brave. Or tough. Or a superhero in a teenager suit. I’m Wyatt Virgil Morgan, a kid who, when scared, tends to be a major smartass.

The killer cocked his arm, which suddenly had a dog attached to it! And it’s Monty, teeth slashing, growling and biting, backing away, then in, away, in, away, again and again, like Old Yeller protecting his boy.

“Hey, what’s going on over there?”

I squinted toward the parking lot, but I couldn’t see because the killer had knocked off my glasses. I scrambled to my feet, scooped them up, and jammed them back on my face.

The shouter came into focus: A big guy had linebacker written all over him—I mean, literally—LINEBACKER boldly printed on a facsimile football jersey. He’d just gotten out of a truck, a girl exiting from the passenger side.

“He’s a murderer, be careful!” I yelled.

The killer ran to the side street, jumped in the black SUV with no plates, and barreled down the narrow street along the park, tires smoking.

I walked over and told Linebacker what had gone down, and that by yelling he’d saved my life.

He put his arm around his girl and scoffed, as if saying: Well, yeah.

I went home, rinsed blood out of my mouth, and reported the attack on me to the police.

Half an hour later a very young cop, judging from his voice, called back—maybe the unseasoned twelve-year-old patrolman my dad mentioned. I gave him a description of the assailant. He asked for my folks and I told him they were out of town.

“The guy smelled like cinnamon?” he asked.

“Had long hair, too.”

The cop sighed. “Somebody reported a body in the bulrushes at Rohnert Park, shot three times. Might be the guy your folks saw murdered.”

“Ya think?”

See? Smartass.

“The body was weighted, came loose, and popped up due to gas,” he said.

“Yuck.”

I called my folks. “The cops are on it, but try not to laugh derisively—you should stay there until the killer’s caught or elected president.”

Mom said, “You get on the road right now, mister, I’ve had enough of this worrying.”

A scraping noise!

“I will, first thing in the—”

Trump mask outside the window, pressed against the glass!

I’m thinking: Hide! That guy out there’s not a video game killer, he’s the real thing.

I’m ready to run, but my folks always protect me, always look out for me, so I stepped down hard on my fear and said to Mom, “I’ll come up tomorrow—gotta run, Monty’s howling about something.”

So what I’d feared from the killer, him following my folks home, came to pass, only he’d followed me. I punched in 911 … within three minutes, sirens ripped down the streets of the neighborhood, red and blue lights flashed through our windows—car doors slammed, sound of running feet and shouting.

And then came a cop with questions.

Did you see who it was?

“No.”

But maybe it was the same guy, eh?

“I don’t know, he had that same orange mask.”

The walkie-talkie thing attached to his shirt screeched, and he turned away to listen and so did I. Whoever was on the other end said the body they found in the pond at Rohnert Park was a guy reported missing by his wife.

“Vern Crider, manager of Sweet Buns and Goodies bakery in the University mall,” the voice on the talkie said. “We interviewed the wife, and she’s alibied. Crider was replaced at the bakery by the assistant manager, a Doug Falconer—ex-con—we’re gonna pick him up for questioning at four o’clock.”

So, the cinnamon had been a clue. Wyatt Virgil Morgan is so smart.

But, uh … stay tuned.

Monty was excited as we entered the University Mall at ten minutes before four—lights and colors, frenetic activity. I hoped he wouldn’t relieve himself, because they frown on dog shit where the shoppers walk.

We camped out on a metal bench opposite Sweet Buns and Goodies, the refrigerated air redolent of cinnamon. Fake greenery hid us from view, but we could see through enough to keep an eye on the place. Monty lapped up Aquafina from my cupped hand and helped me watch the new manager behind the counter, Doug Falconer. Ex-con.

Cops burst through the mall entrance and Falconer vaulted over the counter, ran down the shopper-crowded aisle, arms pumping, knocking strollers and old ladies to one side.

They grabbed him in front of Victoria’s Secret, his face squished against storefront glass.

Huh, that’s strange. He doesn’t have long hair.

Anyway, they hauled ol’ cinnamon boy back to jail. Case solved, we’re all safe.

Or so I thought.

My parents were home from Racine. A family-sized pizza was on the way, some wine opened and we were celebrating—me with my very own glass of the finest California boxed cabernet that eight bucks can buy. Tasted like grape juice with an attitude.

The doorbell rang, and Dad jumped up, did a little jig, giddy with the relief people saved from the jaws of death must feel—strode to the front door, jerked it open with a flourish, and held up a fiver as a generous tip.

Gunshot!

Mom’s eyes grew impossibly wide as Dad stumbled backward into the living room and collapsed on the carpet, groaning, still clutching the five-dollar bill.

I jumped to my feet, all sense of celebration gone. The killer stepped into the living room, a silenced weapon held out in front of him just as Dad had described, and the long red hair I’d seen as he pummeled me in the park, but now framing a face so disfigured it looked like one of Picasso’s lesser works.

The brass floor lamp was nearly as heavy as I am, but I jerked the plug out of the socket by the cord and as the killer aimed down at Dad I swung the lamp, felt the jarring shock of impact through my skinny arms!

Oh, jeez. Did I kill him?

But my pesky conscience gave way to a sense of righteous justification. I called for an ambulance, knelt down beside Mom as she tended to Dad.

He grinned up at us, eyes watering and unfocused, slurring his words: “Only a flesh wound, Shane.”

Dad and I loved that old Alan Ladd western, we knew all the lines: “We want you, Shane. Mother wants you. I know she does!” And, “He was fast, fast on the draw.”

I could go on, quoting forever, but I should finish this …

The pizza delivery kid stepped inside and stood there holding the hot pack, looking down at the unconscious killer and my bleeding father. “Uh, twenty-three dollars, plus, uh, tax.”

With a glance at my watch, still feeling kind of tough, I said, “Dude, you took, like, forty minutes.”

The detective met us at the hospital. “This,” he said importantly, “is a dossier.”

A manila folder, held high to emphasize that he was an expert on dossiers. “The bakery manager’s wife hired this guy to kill her husband,” he said. “She’d taken out lots of insurance, had a taste for Cancun, piña coladas, and salsa bands.”

“I thought you look to the spouse first when someone is murdered,” I said.

He reminded us that she’d had an alibi, which had pretty much cleared her. “Prematurely, as it turns out,” I said, and the detective gave me the bad-cop look.

The cinnamon? Coincidence. The killer preferred spicy chewing gum. And Doug Falconer? The Sweet Buns and Goodies assistant manager had run away when the cops burst in because he’d been stealing from the register, thought they were about to bust him. Those sobering facts dashed any aspirations I had of becoming a private detective.

Dad was to stay a couple of days in the hospital. He motioned for me to bend down so I could hear his hoarse whisper: “Son, I want to be just like you when I grow up.”

Which, oddly, made me feel like a little kid, but in a good way.

Mom nodded approvingly. “I’ll stay overnight here with your dad. Eat something besides pizza tonight.”

Dad gave me a guy-to-guy grin. “Yeah, Wyatt, the delivery boy might be packing heat.”

At home I fed Monty, checked in the fridge, squinting against the LED brightness; just healthy food: hummus, Greek yogurt, and the like—a pale dill pickle floated in a jar like some forlorn specimen in biology class.

Doorbell rang.

Through the peeper, I saw a Hillary Clinton mask, so I opened the door.

Chloe whisked off the mask, brandishing an extra-large pepperoni pizza with green chilis, mushrooms, and double cheese. She’d heard about the incident with the masked killer, how I’d knocked him out and saved my family. Her red halter and cut-off faded jeans, stringy and torn as required by cool kids everywhere, seemed planned for effect—plus, she was emitting some kind of heady, adult perfume … giving me adult thoughts.

“Will you forgive me?” my intermittently faithful girlfriend asked.

Is she kidding? The evening promised pizza and making out—what’s to forgive?

But wait a second; she might think a self-assured boyfriend should be pissed by her infidelity. I wasn’t, because we all make mistakes, and I’m the forgiving type. But still, I said nothing. Stoic. A skinny pillar of resolve.

Chloe bit her lower lip, hurt by my apparent rebuke. She blinked misty blue eyes and handed me the pizza, turning to leave.

I took her arm and ushered her, still sniffing, into the foyer. I tried on a dark frown to assert an imagined alpha-male status, probably looked ridiculous. “Girl, there best not be any anchovies on this pie.”

Isn’t that what some cool jock would say?

She sighed, looked down at the floor, clearly disappointed.

Okay, I get it, she’s sick and tired of hearing what “some cool jock” would say.

Alrighty, then. I’d just be an ordinary boy, holding a pizza box up in the air and out of Monty’s reach, explaining, “He’s always hungry.” I didn’t even try to moderate what has been described as an astoundingly goofy grin.

Chloe bent down and stroked Monty’s head, murmuring, “Who’s a good boy?” Looked up at me and nodded at the pizza box.

Outstanding. We’re on the same page, Monty deserves the biggest slice!

Chloe stood up, looked at me in a way that made me tingle, and then rewarded me with a promising smile and a lingering smooch on the mouth. She reached up, removed my glasses, and whispered in a smoky voice: “Who’s a good boy?”

MURDER IRL

By Jeff Soloway

1.

I was finishing up a simulation for the Worldwide Virtual Baseball League when one of my users direct-messaged me:

SynderGirl: You live in NYC right? Want to hang sometime? I want to meet Commissioner SimDawg!

SimDawg is my handle. Now, this was a weird request. I had never met SynderGirl, or any of my website’s users, in real life. From her comments on our group chat, I knew she was a sophomore in high school, just like me, and lived across town. She was definitely one of the league’s most creative general managers and also a Mets fan, two points in her favor. But meet her? Forget it.

The thing is, I’m ugly. You know when you wake up to some fat klieg-light zit on your forehead and you feel like crap, but you tell yourself at least there’s someone in class who looks worse? Well, I’m the kid who always looks worse. Every exposed inch of my face—cheeks, forehead, nose, neck, even in the little crevices behind my ears—is a Jurassic-period hell-zone of volcanic activity. Every day something new and weird bursts up from the red-purple landscape. When I rub my cheeks, it’s like rubbing a huge sore.

I know what you’re thinking. I’m just another pathetic, privileged American teen obsessed with his appearance. But it’s the rest of the world that’s obsessed, not me. Kids at school are mostly used to me, but even the decent ones, the give-every-dork-a-chance ones, get distracted. Their eyes are always sliding off to something weird on my face, then back to my eyes, then off for another wander. People in the outside world are worse. They stare. I know it could be worse. I’m not a burn victim. I’m not the kid from Mask or Wonder. I’m just, among normal, healthy teenagers, in the ninety-ninth percentile of ugly.

My doctor is trying. The creams and pills have all failed so far. He says sometimes you just have to wait. And that’s why I’d rather stay in my room, doing my baseball simulations and chatting with people who will never get a glimpse of my face.

But what if I happened to meet up with SynderGirl on a particularly good day, a day when I was no worse than a normally speckly high-school sophomore? Those days are like Christmas to me, and they come about as often. But you never know. Instead of perma-smiling to hide her inner freak-out, she’d look at me like I was just another kid.

Maybe we’d start with chitchat about the league, then cruise on to intensive analysis of the Mets’ rotational and batting-order mistakes, and then to other subjects, prestige rap maybe, Kendrick vs. classic Kanye, because there really is more to me than baseball. And a few days later, I’d invite her over. My mom would insist on baking Toll House cookies, which I’d let her do, because for her, my having a girl over would be like the World Series and her birthday put together. SynderGirl and I would slip off to my room to watch YouTube videos of hilarious Yankees outfield bloopers, and after a few minutes, we’d touch hands. Is that what happens first? How do you go from friend to girlfriend? If you’re sitting next to each other, do you start by kissing her somewhere on the side first, like the cheek or shoulder, or do you have to somehow maneuver around front to get her head-on? What if you’ve totally misinterpreted all her signals because you’re an inexperienced idiot and she bashes you in the nose?

Or what if I wasn’t looking okay? What if I caught her eyes creeping all over my face?

I wanted to enjoy my life, not torture myself. I wrote back: Busy now, but maybe someday.

2.

Later that night, I was on the Instagram chat where my league users trash-talk and try to swing trades. A newbie user called PhillyFreak proposed a trade, and when RonanB swatted him down, PhillyFreak threatened to pound RonanB’s head with a baseball bat until, as he put it, “brains squirt out your skull like pus from a zit.”

What a delightful turn of phrase. And the whole league could enjoy it.

SynderGirl direct-messaged me: Did you see that? What are you gonna do?

Meanwhile, PhillyFreak had posted again: Ima drive up from Philly tomorrow and end you, RonanB.

That’s not trash talk. It’s terrorism.

My mom rat-a-tat-tatted at my door. “Justin, do you know what time it is?”

“One minute!”

I’ve been on sites where commenters descend into total savagery—beatdown threats, all-caps swearwords, body-shaming cracks aimed at people whose body types are a total mystery, and worst of all, politics. Baseball sites are as bad as any other. One minute you’re bantering about the Yankees’ latest free-agent signing, and the next somebody drops a Trump-bomb and everyone’s grabbing grenade launchers and swarming the battlefield. Once the trolls figure out how to rile up the mob, they just keep at it. The real users flee to safety. The site is finished.

You have to understand that my league is my everything. I built the app that does the game simulations and the website it lives on. I recruited users from followers of my Instagram New York Mets news page. They’re mostly NYC locals, but I’ve also got users from Florida, Seattle, even Japan. Maybe to you it sounds lame to run an app that simulates a baseball season. That’s okay. I’d probably hate your personal obsessions, full-contact Quidditch or zombie-massacre video games or annotated rap videos. But who cares what I think? You love what you love. If I lost my league, I’d be totally ordinary. Well, ordinary in every way but one.

I made an immediate decision: permanent ban. I blasted the announcement to the league.

My mom shoved open the door. When she saw my tablet, her eyes bulged and her face got as red as fruit punch. To her, my sim league was something shameful and disgusting, like dinosaur porn.

“Justin.” Her whole body drooped. “I wouldn’t mind so much if you were talking to friends.” When I’m at my lowest point, she has the superhuman ability to make me feel worse. I think riot police should hire her to yell depressing comments over a bullhorn until the rampaging masses are reduced to moping.

“I just need a minute, Mom.”

She sighed and left. I went back to the tablet.

But before I could disconnect PhillyFreak from my league and my life completely, he replied one more time to everyone. Just two words.

Too late.

3.

Saturday morning, I logged in first thing from my bed. Another DM from SynderGirl.

SynderGirl: OMG you hear about RonanB?

Me: No.

Her reply was just a link to a story in the Daily News. Someone named Ronan Blitstein had been found dead behind a construction-site dumpster in the far west side, not far from his home. His skull had been crushed. Cops found an aluminum baseball bat nearby. Bloody.

There was no picture, thank god. Another DM came in.

SynderGirl: That’s our Ronan! You think PhillyFreak did it? Did he say anything after you banned him?

About what? About murdering RonanB?

Me: No.

SynderGirl: My dad made me call the cops to tell them about PhillyFreak. Maybe you should, too.

What a terrific idea. I love barging into murder investigations. Maybe I could un-ban PhillyFreak and ask him for his real name and address. It’s not like he’s easily annoyed.

SynderGirl: I’m seriously freaked. Me and Ronan had been hanging out. He was such a good guy. Can you come over?

Was she serious? Come over?

SynderGirl: His parents are having a wake or something today. We could go together.

SynderGirl: Are you there? I’m scared. I’m also pissed off. Can’t we do something? Find the killer? Here’s my address. My real name’s Christa.

I could hear my mom fumbling with the coffeemaker. She was going to shout me awake, make pancakes, suggest we embark on some expedition out in the city—something to get me off my site and Instagram. When I’m out with her, some pizza-faced teenager reduced to hanging with his mom, I feel like the culmination of human loserdom. I try to hide my embarrassment as best as I can. I know how much she loves me.

Christa had directly asked for my help. That only ever happened to me at school when some teacher or girl (boys never ask) needed a hand with computer stuff. They always felt they had to make small-talk afterward or gush about my brilliance.

Conversation with Christa would be a billion times more awkward. She and RonanB had been friends, apparently. So I’d have to be sensitive. I’d have to be sorrowful. I’d have to maintain a free-flowing, thoughtful conversation for god knows how long—thirty minutes, an hour?

Maybe RonanB had been her boyfriend. Maybe they’d been planning to run away together and now her dreams were crushed, and I was the last person standing between her and a swan dive off the GW Bridge.

I just wanted to stay home and sim.

No. I never cut out on my obligations. I never missed school or a coding class or a haircut appointment, no matter what I looked like. My goal is to fulfill all my responsibilities so I can be fully prepared for the day, years from now, when I’m an adult, and normal-looking, and real life finally starts. Believe me, I’ll enjoy it more than anyone.

And one of life’s unavoidable responsibilities is, every now and then, to meet people face to face.

But what would I say to her? I don’t have a lot of practice consoling people my own age. Or—to be honest—even talking to them. Especially girls.

I’d never known a guy my age who died before. But then, I never really knew Ronan. Nor did I know PhillyFreak—but I thought I knew how to find him.

I checked the chat. Christa had not only announced the news of Ronan’s death, but also proposed a meet-up this evening for all local league members, in RonanB’s honor. She wrote, Commissioner SimDawg will deliver the eulogy.

Whoa.

When I opened my door, there was my mother. She stared. Fully dressed on a Saturday before 11 A.M. is not my usual condition.

“I’m going out, Mom.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“To get bagels?”

“To meet a friend.”

I might as well have said, “Join the Marines.” She was speechless. I laughed, kissed her on the cheek, and grabbed my sweatshirt.

4.

On the crosstown bus, I started to question my decisions, as you do on a bus. What if I was in danger myself? What if this “Christa” was really Kristof, an eight-foot-tall European gangster who wanted to smash my skull and eat my brains like he ate Ronan’s? Leaving the apartment was a mistake. Getting out of bed was a mistake. I had sims to do. My favorite pitcher, Jacob deGrom, was pitching for the Mets that night. It was a terrible time to be murdered. My mom hyperventilated when she caught me on a screen after 11 P.M. Imagine what she’d do if she had to identify me in the morgue.

The little girl across the aisle was squinting at me. “Why does he have so many mosquito bites?” she asked her mother, who started whispering furiously in her ear. The girl just looked confused. I decided to examine ESPN on my phone. But first I made myself smile at them both, to prove to her mother that I understood, that I loved children and their adorable innocence. Which I did, mostly.

I could just jump off the bus and go home. But then I’d know life had defeated me. That was worse than getting skull-smashed or brain-eaten or even stared at.

I got off at Ninth Avenue and found Christa’s address, a brownstone on Twenty-First Street. I knocked.

An enormous man with a forehead the size of a retaining wall opened the door.

“Is Christa here?” I asked.

He grabbed me by the sweatshirt, hauled me into the entryway, and tossed me against the wall tiles inside. His huge fist grabbed a hunk of sweatshirt, twisting up the fabric until it drew tight against my always-tender neck.

So it was a trap after all. That’s what I get for leaving home to meet some catfish from the internet. Every warning every health teacher had ever given me, every middle-school field trip to Safety City—all useless, because I was a moron.

I tried to gulp some air. The man’s face quivered, like a boulder just about to plummet from a cliff. Who needs a bat? He was going to crush my skull with his head.

Someone cried out: “Dad!”

The man shook his fist, rattling my body. “Who are you?!”

“Justin,” I croaked.

“Dad! Let me see him!”

His hand dropped slightly, and the fabric loosened slightly around my neck. He took a half-step backward while maintaining his grip.

Now I could see a girl. She was taller than me, and not fat but solid in the middle, like she was wearing protective gear under her clothes. She slipped around her dad to see me. I imagined I looked pretty bizarre, my body plastered against her entry wall, my face extra-red with surprise and oxygen-deprivation.

“Are you SimDawg?”

I nodded as much as my tightened collar would allow. I noticed she was wearing a Noah Syndergaard Mets shirt. She had dressed up to meet me.

“Dad, you’re strangling a celebrity! This is the commissioner of the Worldwide Virtual Baseball League!”

She called out my title in a booming announcer voice, as if introducing me at the home run derby. I wished I had her around to introduce me everywhere I went. Her dad dropped the stranglehold.

When I was done smoothing my sweatshirt, I found I could look them both in the eyes. These people had a) invited me to their home and b) tried to throttle me. What did I have to be embarrassed about? I decided to live up to her introduction. “You know what I like to do when I meet people?”

The dad stared at me, both puzzled and outraged. I was oddly comfortable with letting him examine my face. He thought I was strange. He thought I was dangerous. This guy was okay.

“I like to breathe,” I answered myself.

When Christa grinned, I rolled my eyes and let my tongue loll, like the fourth-grade class clown. I was confident now. I was somebody else.

She giggled.

“How does he know where we live?” Her father’s voice cracked.

“I invited him.” Christa stroked his arm like she was soothing a cat. “He’s taking me to Ronan’s.”

“You’re always sneaking out with weird people. Not anymore! Kids die out there. You’ve seen it!”

He was the opposite of my mother—she was anxious over all the time I spent at home alone; he was terrified of his daughter venturing out. Were all parents so agonizingly afraid for their children?

Now came a woman’s voice from deeper inside: “Let them go. That poor boy was their friend.”

“Boy!” He ground his fist into his other hand. “That was no boy!” Then he covered his face with his hand, as if ashamed of what he’d said. “But I liked Ronan. Everyone did. Tell his family I’m sorry.”

5.

Ronan’s apartment was nearby. “Sorry about that,” Christa said as we walked. “Can’t wait until I graduate and ditch the parents forever. Do yours try to lock you up on weekends, too?”

“I have to stay in a lot and do my sims.” But I’m trying to get out more, I wanted to say. Maybe we could watch a Mets game together.

I knew that whenever I glanced at her face—which was full, healthy, and clear—she’d be getting a full blast of mine. That was fine, I told myself, though I knew I was lying. Faking self-confidence was my best hope. We all know weird-looking kids who march right up to the class superstars and start chatting away. It’s as if they forget how weird they are, so everybody else forgets, too. Maybe I could learn the trick.

“I was lucky to get away. My dad always says I have too many friends, especially guy friends. I have to be home at ten even on weekends! Believe that?”

“Wow.”

“What do you know about PhillyFreak? I told the cops about the chat.”

“I’ve been looking through my site data. I think I can track him down.”

“That’s why I called you in, SimDawg! We’re gonna nail this guy together. You’ve got the brains and the hi-tech know-how.”

I loved the way she used my handle. “What do you bring to the team? Your”—Why not?—“devastating beauty?” I tried to say this with a twinkle in my eye. How do you make a bodily organ twinkle? But I already knew the answer—you do it by believing you’re so brilliant, so irresistible that, yes, you actually twinkle.

She snorted and noogied me in the shoulder. Who does that? Maybe normal kids do. “Listen, SimDawg, I’m a big girl who loves sports. I feel like half my friends are waiting for me to sit them down and reveal who I really am. But this is who I am, and I like it.”

“Same with me. I build websites. I run sims. That’s who I am. And I like it.”

“That’s it! Half the league’s coming to the meet-up this afternoon. Not just to honor Ronan—they want to meet you, too. Look. There’s the lot where he died.”

You could still see the police tape.

His apartment was just around the corner. I was ready.

I was the SimDawg.

6.

Entrances are always hell for me. Every pair of eyes in the room turned our way. Usually at this point I pull out my phone or examine my sneakers, but now I forced myself to scan their faces. They all seemed surprisingly hopeful, as if there were some chance Christa and I might say, “We’re from the hospital! We made a huge mistake! Ronan’s okay!”

After a silent moment, their hope faded, and they all turned back to their murmured conversations, or their coffee mugs, or their sorry little brownies. Everyone in the room looked over fifty, except for one younger man, who was also the only one in a suit. He squinted at me for a second before dipping his eyes back to his mug.

“What is this?” Christa whispered. She was staring at a mirror covered in cheesecloth. But I knew. Ronan must have been Jewish, like me and my mom. Jewish people cover their mirrors up because you’re not supposed to be obsessing over yourself and your appearance when someone dies; you’re supposed to focus on the deceased. Christa probably thought she was in some vampire ritual.

In general, I approve of disabling mirrors.

“They’re sitting shiva,” I whispered back. “That’s what Jews do after someone dies.”

She nodded, impressed with my knowledge.

An elderly woman on a sofa pointed a fragile finger at us and said, “Look, it’s Christa!” Her (somewhat) younger companion turned and collapsed into sobs, her gray scrub-brush hair shaking violently.

“That’s his mother and grandmother,” Christa whispered. “They all lived here together.”

“They look old.”

“Ronan was almost thirty.”

That was a surprise.

The older woman, with assistance from two spryer but fatter men, struggled to her feet.

The elderly are my favorite people to meet. Their baggy, disordered faces are far enough along on the spectrum of weirdness that I feel like we can relax in each other’s presence.

“I knew his friends would come.” The woman’s dark eyes were wet and bright, like puddles shining under streetlights. I introduced myself. I half hoped Christa would chime in with my commissioner title in her movie-trailer voice, but she hung back. Faking confidence has its drawbacks.

Now Ronan’s mother rose, too. Her face, though less ragged, was blotchy with grief and ruined makeup. She tried to smile, but her lips just flexed once and slumped back down, exhausted.

I hugged her. I wish I could say I just did it without thinking, but really I had to force myself to step forward and open my arms. But I did it. And she hugged back, as desperately if I was Ronan myself and this was our final goodbye.

“I’m Justin,” I said into her scrub-brush hair, which was softer than it looked. “Ronan called me SimDawg.”

She gave one last little sob and leaned back. Her lips had at last managed a smile. “He loved your website! I remember when he made your playoffs—when was it, Mom? Around New Year’s?”

The older woman nodded joyfully. “We had a can of beer left over from our celebration. He made us pour it on his head.”

I had no idea people took my championships that seriously. Christa asked the women if Ronan had ever mentioned a league member named PhillyFreak. The two women shook their heads.

“That’s what the detective asked, too.” The grandmother waved her hand toward the man in the suit, who was off in a corner jotting something into a notebook. “He’s gathering information. We like him.”

“Maybe he was the one I talked to,” Christa said.

I had to tell him what I knew. But what if he made me testify in open court? A hundred people, all staring at me …

“Ronan kept a lot of secrets,” the mother said. “He’d wait for weeks to tell us he got fired. He got fired a lot. Never had many friends. He was a bit of a…”

“Weirdo,” finished the grandmother. “Christa knew that. She always had to visit him here. Ronan made her father nervous. I suppose because he was older.”

“My dad’s super helicopter,” Christa apologized. “But in the end he warmed up. Ronan’s the only guy I ever knew who changed his mind.” She blinked a tear out of her eye. “I just wish he hadn’t.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Ronan was coming to my place that night. My dad had finally said he could come over. I hung around with my mom, waiting. He never showed.”

Was Christa blaming herself? Should I blame myself that he had perhaps been murdered by someone from my league?

“Everyone’s a weirdo somehow.” I smiled ruefully, as if to say, Just look at me. No one got the joke.

Christa nodded. “But Ronan made something beautiful from his weirdness.”

Ronan’s mother smiled. “You mean his collection.” She stretched her neck until her maroon-colored lips were almost kissing my chin, and whispered with a voice so low and intense that the whole room turned to us: “Do you want to see it?”

Christa took my hand and squeezed. I knew I should be focused on the departed, and I was, but I was also thinking about the warmth of her fingers, the intimacy of our secret connection.

The detective, from his corner, was squinting at me.

I released Christa’s hand as the two women began to lead her through the petrified forest of grieving oldsters into a bedroom.

Christa glanced back. “What’s wrong?”

“Just a second.”

She shrugged and followed the women.

I made myself approach the detective. He held his coffee mug in his palm as if to steal its warmth.

“Detective Jaggers,” he said. “Are you SimDawg? From the online baseball league? I spoke to your friend Christa on the phone.”

I had a reputation. “I think I can track down the guy who was threatening Ronan.”

“Christa already told us about the threats from this PhillyFreak. But you can’t trace an Instagram user.”

“PhillyFreak also had to register on the site when he joined. That means I have his IP address. We can trace it back to his service provider, and the service provider can find his location.”

The detective studied my face. I wondered if he read the multicolored markings there as evidence that I was too young to know anything, or, on the other hand, as evidence that I was a loner and therefore likely obsessed with computers, and reliable. I used my phone to call up the administrative version of my site. I showed him the IP address attached to PhillyFreak’s registration.

Jaggers took down the number. “Why would a kid get murdered over a virtual baseball league? Explain that. Then call me.” He handed me his card.

Christa appeared in the bedroom door. “SimDawg! Get in here.”

7.

Ronan’s bedroom was a museum of baseball memorabilia—stacks of balls in plastic globes, each with a scribble representing the human touch of some ballplayer; display-cased jerseys, some gloriously stained with dirt or sweat; baseball caps dangling from hooks in the wall; baseball cards in protective sheaths; bobbleheads; and more.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Christa said.

Ronan had built a private world out of baseball fantasies, just as I had. Was it beautiful? Maybe, if it had given his lonely life a purpose.

“All his money went to his collection,” his mother said. “But no one else ever really appreciated it. And then he met Christa!”

“You should’ve hung out with us, SimDawg.”

Mounted on a plastic pedestal was a limp baseball glove labeled KEITH HERNANDEZ, 1985. Ronan’s mother picked it up and offered it to me like a plateful of Oreos.

“Touch it!” Christa urged. “It’s game used!”

The two women gazed lovingly and gratefully at Christa. The mother whispered, “She loves the collection almost as much as he did!”

“How did you meet Ronan?” I asked Christa.

“We messaged after he won your championship. We met at a Starbucks, and then he took me home to meet his collection—and also his mom and grandmom.”

They hooted at this.

“Could I see a picture of him?”

His mother held up her phone to show her lock-screen photo. Ronan’s cheeks were a little gerbilly and his nostrils ornamented with twin bouquets of nose hair, but otherwise he looked normal. Whatever scars or flaws he carried, they went deeper down. No doctor could have fixed them, but the right person—a girlfriend, boyfriend, whoever—could have made them easier to live with. And now he’d never find that person.

I always assumed that when I got older I would move away, get a job, gather real-life buddies and a girlfriend, enjoy my freedom and my clear face. But Ronan proved that there was no guarantee. You can be lonely all your life.

“I supposed we should sell the collection.” The mother swept her hand over the room. “We don’t want to. But we can’t care for it properly.”

Christa picked up the Hernandez glove.

“We might,” the mother added, “give the collection away. To someone who really appreciated it.”

Christa nodded as she caressed the glove.

I felt my face grow suddenly hot, not with embarrassment (for a change) but fear. Christa was sweet, understanding, clever, obsessed with baseball. She seemed perfect to me—she would’ve seemed perfect to Ronan, too.

But what if she was only pretending to laugh at my jokes? Maybe secretly I disgusted her. Maybe Ronan disgusted her, too. People can hide their thoughts when you meet them, just as they can hide their identities online. There was evil in the world. Ronan’s murder proved that.

If his killer knew about my sim league, he—or she—might have invented PhillyFreak and faked the threats to put investigators off the trail. Christa knew the sim league. And she had something to gain.

I had no evidence. But I knew how to get it.

“We’d better go,” I said. “We’ve got the league meet-up, remember?”

Ronan’s mother and grandmother hugged us again and said goodbye. The detective had already left.

Out on the sidewalk, I said to Christa, “Can we stop at your place before the meet-up?”

“I dunno. My dad’ll be there.”

“I need a computer. To get started on the week’s simulation.”

“For real?” Christa’s stare went right to the bottom of my eyes. For once, I was more afraid of what she’d find there than in my face. “You want to sim—at my place?”

She was all for it. On the way, I texted the detective.

8.

Christa’s dad jumped up from the sofa when we came in. It was as if he suspected that I was plotting against his daughter. Which I was.

“SimDawg needs to use my laptop, Dad,” Christa said. “He’s a computer genius.”

“That I believe.” As he stared at my face, I could see the telltale wandering of his eyes.

Christa could, too. She grabbed my hand and hauled me to her bedroom. This was what other kids did—slip away with some girl to a private room. But only normal-looking kids. Christa—at best—felt sorry for me. At worst, she was cozying up to distract me from my suspicions.

If only I was normal-looking. Then I could forget my suspicions and insecurities and simply enjoy the astonishing full-body sensation of a girl’s hand in my own.

She let go and snapped open her laptop. We heard heavy steps pounding down the hallway.

“He’s afraid I’m losing my virginity,” she said. “Hold on.”

She darted out the door. I could hear harsh whispers outside. I bent to the laptop, confirmed the internet connection, and accessed her router’s IP address.

My worst fears always prove to be justified. Bus riders really are staring at me. Girls really do feel sorry for me. And Christa’s IP address really was the same as PhillyFreak’s. That meant that PhillyFreak’s threats on Ronan’s life, the ones that had proved so accurate, had come from this router. This house.

When Christa returned, I made myself stare at her face, which I would normally never dare to do, for fear of provoking someone to stare back. Her skin, flushed with the intensity of whatever she’d been hissing at her dad, was free of even the lightest blemish. How can you trust someone like that?

“What’s wrong, SimDawg? Are you thinking of Ronan’s mom? I was. Ronan was her only kid. I’m an only, too.”

“Me too.”

“Yeah? I think having just one makes parents crazy. They love us too much to think straight.”

“Christa, I have to ask you something.”

As soon as I said it, I knew she’d misunderstand.

She folded her hands, as if to prevent herself from touching me. “SimDawg, we gotta keep the relationship professional. For the integrity of the league.” Her smile was gentle and sympathetic.

For an instant, my suspicions and fears dropped away, and I felt only disappointed at her preemptive rejection, and at the same time grateful that she had kept herself from laughing or groaning at my supposed confession of love. And then I felt angry and ashamed. Because why should I be grateful for simple decency?

And then those feelings faded, too. Christa wasn’t asking for gratitude. She was just being herself—kind, generous, and good-humored, even when she had to disappoint me. She deserved my respect, not my resentment, for this part of her nature, at least.

I heard more footsteps outside.

“My dad’s listening in,” Christa whispered. “He freaks out over every friend I ever bring over. Every guy, I mean. Except Ronan, in the end.”

“When did he change his mind about Ronan?” I asked.

“Just last week really—after months of being a total jackass about him! But that’s a good sign, SimDawg. It may take a while for you, too, but it’ll happen. We can be friends.” She repeated the last word for emphasis.

And now I knew.

The doorbell rang. We heard her mother’s voice in the distance, and then more footsteps down the hall. Christa’s door opened.

Detective Jaggers was there.

Christa’s father was right behind him. “What’s he doing here?”

“The kid says he knows who was threatening Ronan Blitstein,” Jaggers said.

Christa’s father shook his head in confusion. “You mean the maniac from Philadelphia?”

“PhillyFreak’s not from Philadelphia,” I said. “Detective, you already wrote down PhillyFreak’s IP address. Now look at this.” I showed Jaggers Christa’s laptop. “That’s the local IP address. Same number. PhillyFreak lives right here.”

Jaggers checked his notebook.

“SimDawg?” Christa asked.

My first new friend in years, and now she’d hate me forever. Her bed creaked as she sat down.

“The same,” Jaggers said.

“Are you saying my daughter sent those threats?” her father demanded.

“No,” I said. “I’m saying you sent them.”

The detective tucked the laptop under his arm. Evidence.

“The IP address identifies the router,” I explained, “not the device. Any computer in this house could have sent the messages. PhillyFreak joined the league a week ago and started threatening Ronan just a few days after. He was always planning the murder. He wanted the police to assume the killer was from Philadelphia. Not here.”

“The kid’s a liar,” Christa’s father said. “Look at him. He’s diseased.”

“Christa, you told me your dad changed his mind about Ronan a week ago. That’s when PhillyFreak joined the league. We know Ronan was an unusual guy, a thirty-something baseball nut with no friends. We know your dad is nervous. Ronan creeped your dad out. He wanted you to keep away. But you’re not the type of girl to follow rules. Your dad decided the only way to keep you safe was to eliminate Ronan completely. We know Ronan was coming to your house when he was murdered. Your dad knew he was coming, didn’t he?”

“I—I told him,” Christa said. “I always tell him.”

The detective asked Christa’s father: “Where were you that night?”

“Out. With friends.”

Christa’s voice was cold: “You said you were working.”

“If it wasn’t you who sent those threats,” Jaggers said, “it was someone else in this house. Your wife. Your daughter.”

Christa’s father slumped against the wall. “Wasn’t them.”

“Was it you?”

“Who else would protect her?”

Jaggers pulled out his handcuffs.

“I’m sorry, Christa,” I said.

“Just leave, SimDawg.”

9.

So I left, just as ugly and alone as when I climbed on the bus that morning. Half a dozen kids about my age were standing on the sidewalk by Christa’s stoop.

“Should we try knocking again?” one of them asked.

“You knock,” said another.

They all turned to me as I trudged down the steps.

“Is Christa in there?” The questioner was a chubby teen whose rectangular glasses formed the only straight lines on his moonish face.

“Yeah, but she’s busy.”

“Are you SimDawg?”

I nodded.

One of them gasped; the others grinned.

A gawky, freckled kid in desperate need of a comb bounced up on his toes. “SimDawg! I’m PinstripePlayuh!”

The bolder ones shouted their handles and crowded forward for half-hugs and high fives; the others hung back and chanted “SimDawg” or “Commish.”

A police cruiser rolled down the street, and two cops jumped out and lumbered past us, up the stoop, and inside.

The Worldwide Virtual Baseball League members went quiet.

“They’re arresting the guy who killed RonanB,” I said.

“What happened?” PinstripePlayuh asked.

I told them the whole story. When I was done, PinstripePlayuh laid a hand on my shoulder. “Are they sitting shiva again tomorrow?”

“I think so.”

“Then let’s all go. Support Ronan’s family. League members stand up for each other. Right, SimDawg?”

We agreed. The chubby kid suggested we present them with a plastic trophy in commemoration of Ronan’s championship. We liked that idea, too.

We all walked back to the subway and bus stop together, telling stories about the league and ourselves. A few people glanced around my face, but I didn’t mind.

I took everyone’s real-life name and cell number, to arrange the meet-up tomorrow and others in the future. I usually hate selfies, but I admit I took a few with them before we parted. Mostly to show my mom.

A KILLER STORY

By Julie Tollefson

Drought-scorched grasses disintegrate beneath my feet as I lean into Suicide Hill. Halfway to the top, my thighs burn. My lungs scream for a break. The full heat of August pushes against me, but I push back harder.

With every strike of my foot, the betrayals of summer rise like puffs of dust from the trail and fuel my drive to the peak of the high school’s grueling cross-country course.

Strike. Ethan’s “I spent the summer in Europe and you didn’t” smirk.

Strike. Celeste’s sudden and total devotion to summer youth theater, to the exclusion of everything else, even me.

Strike. And the new journalism advisor, Ms. Compton? She of the too-short shorts and too-tight tank top? Gutless.

I grind each insult under the heels of my teal-and-fuchsia running shoes. Inhale fury. Exhale resolve.

Senior year begins in two days, and I am sitting on an explosive story that will set the district on fire. Tantalizing. Provocative. Absolutely true. Journalism gold. If only I can convince Ethan, The Beat’s editor-in-chief, and Ms. Compton to let me pursue it.

I push myself harder on the final strides up Suicide Hill, the steepest part before I earn a break at the top, but can’t blot out the incredulous look on Ethan’s face when I told him this morning that I want to expose student drinking on campus and worse, that our beloved drama teacher knows about it.

I fly past the cedar tree that marks the crest of Suicide Hill. Goal achieved. I bend over and gasp for breath. Sweat streams down my back and I swallow hard against bile rising at the back of my throat. It would be so easy to collapse here, to give in to the gravity that tugs at my noodle-weak legs, but I straighten, put my hands on top of my head, the way coach taught us, and take slow steps in a wide circle.

I won’t let this story drop. To ignore what I’ve seen would be a betrayal of my principles.

On my second turn past the cedar, I glimpse something so out of place I stumble to a halt in disbelief. A pair of legs poke out of a clump of waist-high little bluestem and twists of poison ivy.

What happens next is a blur. I somehow manage to call 911, and the next thing I know, cops swarm the trail. I’m bombarded with questions but can’t think clearly enough to answer intelligently. Finally, my mother arrives to take me home, but as we leave, one of the cops calls out to stop us. In a gloved hand, he waves a flip-flop, a lime green thong with a yellow sunburst on its black rubber sole.

“Does this belong to you?”

I look from the flip-flop to my dust-caked running shoes. The question is ludicrous. At this time of year, after a summer of neglect, the cross-country trail is rugged, not yet worn down by the daily assault of dozens of teenage runners. Jagged rocks lurk under mats of weeds. Sticks and branches lie in wait to trip inattentive runners. Last year, I ruined a new pair of Nikes when the stump of a sunflower as thick as a small tree branch burst through the sole of my shoe and barely missed puncturing my foot. It would be stupid to attempt to climb Suicide Hill in flip-flops.

I shake my head and let my mother lead me away.

An unnatural hush smothers halls that should be crowded with laughter and reunions and lost freshmen trying to find their classes and fellow seniors counting the days until we can put high school behind us forever. This … pall, that’s the word, hangs over everything. The WELCOME TIGERS sign sags, its orange a little less cheery than most years. Teachers cluster in twos and threes, only a few even attempt to smile.

As I pass, students whisper. “She’s the one…”

“… Mr. Kendall…”

“… can’t imagine…”

Mr. Kendall, last year’s state teacher of the year and the target of my big exposé on student drinking, is dead, and I found his body hidden in the weeds at the top of Suicide Hill.

I hunch my shoulders against the curious stares, but I don’t know what to do with the toxic mix of fear and rage and guilt that bubbles in my veins. I didn’t even like him, so why should his death make me feel so, so bad?

Ms. Compton waits outside her classroom, one of the few teachers who offers a smile as she greets students, though her smile is tense and her greeting is little more than a tight nod. Her welcome speech is almost word for word the same talk she gave seniors two days ago in a painful get-to-know-each-other breakfast. Standard teacher bullshit, but her delivery barely breaks from monotone.

At the end, she gives Ethan the stage and slumps into her chair, as if she has a limited supply of perkiness and now she’s drained. I already miss Mr. Ornelas, my favorite teacher three years running. Why couldn’t he wait one more year to retire?

Ethan’s summer in Europe agreed with him. He’s taller and stronger and more confident than the Ethan of last spring. The Mediterranean blue of his shirt reflects the deep color of his eyes, and he’s tamed his wild dark brown hair into something resembling a modern style. But he hasn’t reined in his nervous energy. His fingers drum on his thighs as he talks.

“So, the first thing I want to say, for those of you who haven’t been part of The Beat before, is that what we do in here is real journalism,” he says.

I glance at Ms. Compton, who’s obsessively rubbing her calves through her long skirt. If we do real journalism, as he says, the story we should be talking about is Mr. Kendall’s death.

Ethan, oblivious, keeps talking. “We hold ourselves to the same standards as professionals, and we have the same protections under state law. The work we do can make a real difference. Like the kids in Kansas a couple of years ago who discovered their new principal lied about her qualifications for the job. Their reporting forced the woman to resign. It made the district look bad, but they did what journalists are supposed to do—seek the truth, report the facts.”

That’s the longest speech I’ve ever heard Ethan make. He sounds so sincere, so convincing. So completely, one hundred percent opposite of how he reacted when I pitched the story about Mr. Kendall and the booze in the prop room to him and Ms. Compton in a private meeting after the senior breakfast. Before I went for that awful run.

“We can’t print that, Olivia.” His face turned a shade of red I’ve never seen on him before. Then he adopted the same condescension he’d used since we were six to put people—me—in their place. “Mr. Kendall’s an award-winning teacher. Loved by all. No one is going to believe he lets students get wasted at school.”

“I have proof.” We’re not six anymore, and what I’ve discovered about Mr. Kendall is far too egregious to let Ethan intimidate me into covering it up. Once I would have caved to peer pressure, but in the last year, I’ve learned a few things about idealism without action. Ethan’s willing to look the other way, but we have to stand up for what’s right and expose what’s wrong if we have any hope of changing the world. Celeste taught me that.

I showed Ethan and Ms. Compton the photos I’d taken over the last three weeks. I found the bottle of bourbon in the theater’s props department, hidden in plain sight among legit props from last spring’s production of The Drowsy Chaperone. I pulled out the cork to be sure, and the sweet sting of the real deal knocked me back. Definitely not fake. The bourbon level dropped to nothing over a couple of days, the bottle replaced by a couple of six packs, the beer replaced a day later by a fifth of cherry vodka. And most damning of all, video clips of my classmates stumbling out of the performance arts center after “play practice” as Mr. Kendall waved from behind the PAC’s big glass doors. My more frivolous classmates compare his sapphire blue eyes and wavy black hair to an unkempt Henry Cavill, but I don’t see it.

“This is a big deal. I mean, how do you think they got the booze? The only person in these photos old enough to buy it is Mr. Kendall.” I turned to Ms. Compton, expecting to find an ally, but her platinum ponytail swung side to side as she shook her head.

“Ethan’s right. We can’t print this story,” she said. “A few photos are not proof. You having nothing to connect Mr. Kendall to the bottles, and for all you know, he had no idea what the students were up to. Teenagers are very good at sneaking around, as I’m sure you know. Unless you have a source willing to confirm what you suspect, we’re not touching this story. Even then, if it’s true, it’s a matter for the administration.”

I queued up one last video, my final appeal. Celeste. Late. Her car the only one in the student lot. A slight breeze lifts her long chestnut hair from her shoulders in a scene so perfect it would make a cinematographer weep. The brilliant purple streaks that frame her face, a minor revolt against her mother’s stringent ideals of decorum and style, gleam in the moonlight. She stumbles, then giggles and wags her fingers at Mr. Kendall. The expression on Mr. Kendall’s face alone, while not exactly proof, should set off anyone’s journalistic alarm bells. She’s drunk, and he knows it.

But Ethan was all stubborn resistance (“Lots of kids drink, Livvie. Give it a rest.”), and Ms. Compton’s delicate face faded to an even paler shade of white. Teacher training must not have prepared her for this. The most popular teacher in school involved in a student drinking scandal? Say it ain’t so.

“Celeste’s not that stupid.” Ethan’s near whisper as he caught me alone after the meeting revealed another truth. He always chooses Celeste over me. Always has, always will. “Why do you want to hurt her? What happened between you two while I was in Europe?”

Nothing. That’s the problem.

“She’s self-destructing, Eth. She quit everything that mattered to her, including her volunteer work at the animal shelter she was so excited about, and instead spent the entire summer hanging out with the so-called cool crowd. The drinking’s only part of it. We can’t let her do this to herself.”

“So your solution is to expose her in the most humiliating way possible, instead of just talking to her? She could be expelled. And her mother will kill all of us.”

I hated to admit Ethan had a point. Deep down, did I want to write this story to save Celeste? Or did I want revenge for the hurt I felt? I hadn’t thought beyond the headline to the consequences for Celeste, or for myself.

The bell rings and as we file out, Ethan grabs my arm and pulls me toward the end of the hall. “We need to talk. About … you know.”

I’ve thought of nothing but for the past forty-four hours. I wrench my arm free. “Did you mean everything you said in there?”

“Of course I did.”

“Because you didn’t seem on board when I told you about the—”

“Shhh.” His head shifts side to side in quick, jerky motions, and he pulls me farther into the corner. “Did you tell anyone else?”

“Why?”

“Listen, Mr. Kendall’s dead now. The alcohol doesn’t matter. It’s not like that’s what killed him, right? There is no story.”

The police haven’t released the cause of death yet, but I don’t point that out. “His death doesn’t erase what I discovered over the summer.”

“You have to drop it, Livvie. You’re obsessed.”

He’s questioning my credibility, my objectivity, as a journalist now. He’s gone too far. I glare in stony silence until he drops his eyes and clears his throat.

“Have you seen Celeste?”

Celeste, my one-time best friend?

I shake my head.

“You should talk to her. She’s taking Mr. Kendall’s death really hard.”

I literally bite my tongue. Did he forget that I’m the one who found the body? That I might be traumatized, too?

For two days, I haven’t been able to close my eyes without seeing a pair of feet poking out of the weeds, drag marks on the trail, a yellow sunburst on black rubber. And now, as Ethan pleads with me to be a better friend to Celeste than she’s been to me, I remember where I’d seen the flip-flop before.

My next class is Calculus, near the main office, but I detour through the silent and shadowy PAC. When I’m sure I’m alone, I slip into the props room behind the stage as I did a dozen times this summer to gather evidence of illicit student drinking.

The booze is gone now, but nothing else seems out of place. I search the corner table with its jumble of props from the summer theater one-act plays. There in the center, just as I remembered, is a pastel-striped mesh bag full of beachy things—oversized towels, floppy hat, sunscreen, water bottle. And one flip-flop, with its lime green thong and sunburst pattern against black sole. I pull the bag toward me and confirm the name stenciled on its handle. My heart skips a beat, and I don’t even think about it. I snatch the flip-flop from the bag, stuff it in my backpack, and get out before someone who understands its significance stumbles across this secret.

Out in the deserted hallway, the enormity of what I’ve done—and why—strikes like a blow. I’ve stolen evidence from a death investigation. That’s a crime, right? Tampering with evidence or obstruction of justice or some other charge that will derail my life before I even graduate high school. And for a girl who may or may not still be my friend. This is not who I am, not who I’m meant to be. I’ve never felt so disconnected from reality, and I wonder if I’m having an attack of nerves like some lame heroine in an old novel. I duck into the girls’ bathroom and lean hard against the sink.

I don’t know how long I’ve been like this when I hear a noise, a hiccup or cough, come from the farthest stall. I’m not alone, and somehow knowing that does more to restore my self-control than anything. I can’t let a classmate see me like this.

I dash cold water against my face and unroll a length of paper towel from the dispenser. I move fast, but not fast enough. The stall door swings open, and for the first time in two months, I stand face-to-face with my—former?—best friend.

“Hey,” I say. This is awkward. Celeste’s eyes are red and puffy, her skin sallow, and the way her deep red lipstick has worn away except at the outermost edges makes her lips look like crudely drawn outlines.

Ethan was right, dammit. Mr. Kendall’s death has hit Celeste hard. Then she looks at me as if I’m the one who broke our friendship, and the tiny shoot of sympathy I feel dies.

Before I can say anything else, she gets right in my face, chest to chest, her breath hot and her fury palpable. “Ethan told me,” she hisses. “About your so-called story? About how you spied on us. Took pictures.”

“That’s”—true—“not what happened.”

“Don’t even. You’re jealous because we didn’t hang out as much this summer as we used to”—true, again—“but that wasn’t all on me, you know.”

I don’t take her bait. The three of us—me, her, and Ethan—always made time for each other before, no matter what. Nothing changed for me this summer. Nothing. But after Ethan left for Europe, Celeste dropped out of my life, too. That is on her, not me.

“Why do it, Celeste? Drinking on school property? Do you really want to sabotage your senior year?”

“I’m not going to get in trouble.” She reapplies lipstick, but her hands tremble so much she can’t stay within the lines.

“Because your mom’s the mayor, or because Mr. Kendall’s dead?”

She flinches and smears lipstick on her bottom lip. Now she looks like the Joker.

“That doesn’t change what happened this summer,” I say. “I still have a story. I only have to convince Ms. Compton that the truth is far too important to cover up.”

Celeste places her lipstick into a leopard-print pouch and drops the pouch into her red leather tote. She won’t look me in the eye.

“Ms. Compton has her own secrets to protect,” she says “She’s not covering for Mr. Kendall or anyone else. She can’t afford to lose another job.”

It is so Celeste-like to lash out when she feels cornered. “What does that mean?”

“God. You’re so naïve, Livvie.” She whirls away from the sink, but the strap of her tote catches on my outstretched hand and everything inside spills onto the floor between us. Makeup. Tampons. Money.

A pregnancy test lands at my feet.

I stare at the unopened box, hoping it’s not what I know it to be, then slowly I raise my gaze to meet hers. I see tears in her eyes, but a snarl on her lips.

“You can’t tell, Livvie. If we were ever friends, you will not say a word to anyone.”

The flip-flop in my backpack. The pregnancy test in Celeste’s tote. Both are rocks dragging at my heart.

I can’t stay here, where the orange-and-beige cinder-block walls suffocate. I can’t go home, where Mom is sleeping before her next overnight shift. I can’t go anywhere people might ask questions I don’t have answers for.

So I flee out the nearest door and down a path that leads to the creek at the edge of school property. Its banks are deep and steep, carved through layers of limestone and shale. Trees throw dark shadows into the ravine but do little to block the August heat. I reach an abandoned concrete culvert and lie faceup on its sloping side. Water trips over rocks and tree roots. I can’t seem to wrestle my unruly thoughts into submission.

I feel another presence, and without turning I know it’s Ethan. His cologne precedes him.

“This isn’t how senior year was supposed to go,” I say. Air thick with humidity wraps around us, separates us. “Why did you tell me to talk to Celeste?”

“She’s our friend, and she’s in pain.”

I turn my head toward him so I can judge his response. “Not because she’s pregnant?”

He goes still, a total absence of movement in a boy who’s never once been able to stop fidgeting. I think he’s even forgotten to breathe. “She’s … what?”

I feel an evil satisfaction that I’ve been able to shock him. But it’s a satisfaction tinged with despair. Celeste needs us, despite how she’s treated me. She needs us both. Ethan because he’ll support her no matter what, and me because I’ll always tell her the truth whether she wants to hear it or not. “What’s happened, Eth? The three of us used to be so…” I can’t think of a word that’s not trite.

He shakes his head. “Everything will be fine. It always is.”

He’s wrong, but then he doesn’t know everything I know. I pick a twig off the concrete. It branches into three thinner pieces, each with a single leaf quivering at its tip. I peel one piece back and break it at the joint, like a wishbone, then repeat with the two remaining pieces. Everything is not going to be fine. I let the broken twigs fall from my fingers and drift away on the slow current of the creek.

Then I dig the flip-flop out of my backpack and place it on the culvert between us. “This was in Celeste’s bag of props for the one-act play festival. It’s the mate to one the cops found next to Mr. Kendall’s body on Suicide Hill.”

Ethan stares at the sandal as if I’ve pulled a gun out of my bag. “What are you going to do with it?”

For the second time today, I act without considering the repercussions. I slide off the culvert and shove the sandal as far into the mud of the creek bank as I can. Ethan jumps down beside me and grabs my arm. “It’s evidence, Livvie. You have to take it to the police.”

“They’ll want to know where I got it, and they’ll want to question Celeste, and she’ll hate me more than she already does.”

He holds my gaze for a long moment, then drops his hand from my arm. Together, we drag a blown-out tire to cover the spot. We don’t speak. We don’t look at each other, and when we’re done, we climb out of the creek, wet and muddy, and walk away in different directions.

It’s near midnight when I find it.

I couldn’t sleep, not with my brain constantly replaying Celeste’s cryptic comments about Ms. Compton. I could dismiss them as Celeste being Celeste, but her accusations were oddly specific. She can’t afford to lose another job.

I’d left our meeting with the impression that Ms. Compton—only a few years older than the seniors in her classes—was a first-year teacher. But when I think back, no one actually said that. I made an assumption based on her appearance and my outrage at her response to my discovery. Journalism 101: never assume.

And now, after an hour of online sleuthing, I’ve discovered a cyber trail that ties Ms. Compton to a hushed-up scandal in a high school across the state last year.

I send a Snap to Ethan. Can you come over?

A minute—almost an eternity—passes between when I hit SEND and his reply. On my way.

I drop a pod of his favorite coffee in the machine and wait. He arrives breathless, as if he’s run the entire six blocks between our houses, and maybe he has. His hair sticks out in all directions, and he still has a red imprint of a crumpled sheet on his cheek.

“Tell me,” he says.

“I think I found Ms. Compton’s secret.”

This is not what he expected, and anger gathers in his eyes. I put my hand on his arm before he erupts. “Just listen.”

I show him Tweets I found from students at Pineville High School. The snarky comments about a new teacher’s looks and clothing, uncomfortably similar to my own first take on Ms. Compton, take a darker turn near the end of first semester. Most are innuendo, but one stands out and I want Ethan to see it.

Everyone in our wing heard Ms. C scream EFF YOU. She’s done here for sure.

Ethan gives me a “get to the point or I’m out of here” eye roll.

“I checked the Pineville Press around that date. A twenty-two-year-old woman was arrested at Pineville High School on suspicion of assault and battery. The victim was a man, aged thirty-six. Minor injuries, and he refused treatment. No charges filed, but get this—Ms. Compton turned in her resignation at the next school board meeting, effective immediately. Think about it, Ethan. It can’t be coincidence. She resigns quietly. The victim doesn’t press charges. And now she gets a fresh start here, but only if her past remains a secret.”

He still doesn’t bite.

“I DM’d the girl who wrote that Tweet.”

“So?”

“So she says everyone knew Ms. Compton was involved with the teacher she assaulted. He told her he didn’t want to see her anymore, and she flipped out. Serious anger issues, is how the girl described it.”

“Why do you care? Why get me out of bed? You couldn’t tell me this tomorrow?”

I don’t have an answer for him, but my instinct tells me it’s important to understand Ms. Compton’s past, if only because Celeste mentioned her secrets in the same breath as Mr. Kendall.

“How would Celeste know about this?” I sound more defensive than I intended.

“We could ask her?” He rubs his eyes.

“She won’t talk to me, especially after today.”

He’s already tapping on his phone. “Maybe she’ll talk to me.”

He sends the message and we wait. He finishes his coffee. I chew my thumbnail.

“Maybe she’s asleep,” I say.

Another moment stretches into minutes. Finally, he turns the phone screen-side down on the table. “She’s not going to answer.”

“She knows you’re with me.” I shouldn’t have dragged him into this.

Then Ethan’s phone chimes, and he snatches it up. But as he reads the message, his brows draw together and his lips twist down. He slides the phone to me.

Stay out of it E

Ethan spins a pen on the kitchen table. We both watch it with the intensity of gamblers at the roulette wheel. Nib toward him, we drop the subject. Nib toward me, we what? I’ve already ruined a friendship. What more damage can I do?

When the pen stops, the nib points halfway between us.

He’s about to bail on me, and the thought makes me panicky. I’m on my own three or four nights a week, depending on Mom’s schedule at the hospital. It never bothers me. But tonight, I don’t want to be alone.

To my surprise and eternal gratitude, he doesn’t walk out. Instead, he breaks the silence with a question that catches me off guard, even though it’s been flitting around the edges of my thoughts since I saw Celeste’s pregnancy test.

“Who’s the father?”

“She didn’t talk to me this summer. I didn’t even know she was dating anyone.”

“You didn’t talk at all?”

I spin the pen and hope for a different result.

That wasn’t all on me, you know, she said. Much as I hate to admit it, maybe there was a kernel of truth in that. I told Ethan nothing had changed, but that wasn’t right, was it?

“I was pretty busy, too. I pulled extra shifts at the diner and both days each weekend at the library. I only saw her once, when she came into the diner with her theater friends.”

“Did she seem especially close to anyone that night?”

I shake my head.

“Separate checks?”

“Mr. Kendall picked up the tab for everyone.”

“He was there? Hanging with students?”

I drop my head back and roll my eyes in the most exaggerated and melodramatic way possible. “That’s what I tried to tell you and Ms. Compton. State teacher of the year or not, he doesn’t … didn’t have good boundaries.”

“Let me see your photos again.”

He swipes through the shots of the prop room and drama students holding each other up. Every time Celeste appears, he scrutinizes the photo as if in the crush of students he’ll find a neon sign proclaiming “he’s the one” over Celeste’s boyfriend’s head. At the last photo of Celeste, he stops and cocks his head sideways. He rotates the phone so I can see. “Tell me about this night.”

Celeste leans on her open car door and waves to Mr. Kendall. She’s alone in the student parking lot. The picture is dark and grainy at the edges, but pools of light illuminate her car and Mr. Kendall at the PAC door. She had lingered after everyone else left that night, long enough for me to finish reading a novel and scan new Washington Post articles online.

A moment later, I see what Ethan recognized in the photo. “Oh my god.”

He swipes the screen to blow up the photo, centered on Mr. Kendall. Last year’s state teacher of the year had fingers pressed to pursed lips, a gesture universally recognized as the first step in blowing a kiss.

Police cars jam the parking lot when I drag myself to school the next morning. Inside, students cluster in the hall minutes before the first bell, all eyes trained on the cops who have taken over the main office. They lean against desks and doorjambs or stand with their thumbs hooked in their belts. They’ve displaced both secretaries, who now try to break up the knots of students and shoo us toward our classrooms.

Ethan emerges from Principal West’s private office, his eyes downcast. He tugs at a lock of hair, the way he does when he’s deep in thought or deeply distressed. Halfway across the outer office, he stops abruptly and returns to shake hands with a cop who sticks his head out Principal West’s door. I feel sick. Ethan and I had talked until near light, and we agreed to keep our conclusion to ourselves. What has he done?

He spots me and hurries over, then shoves me down the hall and away from the office windows.

“Hey!” I don’t like being handled, and he owes me an explanation.

“Not now,” he says. “We have to find Celeste and get out of here.”

I balk. “You find Celeste. I’m going back to find out what’s going on.”

He rubs his hair, then drags his hands down his cheeks. “This is as much about you as her. Please please please, just this once, believe I’m on your side.”

He’s more agitated than I’ve ever seen him, more serious. I narrow my eyes and search his face for deception, but all I see is fear, and it is contagious. I nod, and we set out in search of our friend. It’s a sign of how far the three of us have drifted apart that neither of us knows Celeste’s schedule.

It takes a while, but we find her in the PAC, sitting in the last row in the dark.

She sighs, long and loud, when she sees us. “Leave me alone.”

Ethan reaches for her hand with both of his, and in that moment, I’m on the outside again. A third wheel. “We can’t do that. You’re in trouble, and when one of us is in trouble, we all are.”

It’s a silly thing we used to say when we were kids, but it’s the right thing. It breaks the barricades we’ve constructed between us, and suddenly I’m free to ask the question that haunts me. “What happened to you, Celeste? You abandoned everything this summer”—including me—“and for what?”

She’s been crying. Her tears left dark streaks like twin scars on her cheeks. “Haven’t you ever wanted to do something crazy, Livvie? Just once. Just … be?”

“He was a teacher.” God, I sound prim and judgmental.

She spares a pity-filled glance for me, then shakes her head, as if I couldn’t possibly understand. “At first, it was flirting. Only flirting. He’d catch my eye at practice, smile like we had a secret. Take me to coffee to discuss my one-act script.”

She makes it sound like a role she’s played. The secret girlfriend. The forbidden love. My anger flares. How could she be so dumb? Maybe Mr. Kendall encouraged her to see him as an equal, a friend, but the word any right-thinking person would use was predator. He separated her from her friends, her passions. And now he’s dead, Celeste is pregnant with his child, and someone’s framing her for his murder.

“He took advantage of you.”

“He chose me. He got me. We had a connection.”

“There’s a difference between being adventurous and ruining your life.”

Ethan has been quiet so far, but now he wriggles into the space between us and hugs us both hard. “I’m glad we’re talking again, I really am. But we don’t have time for this. We need to figure out who’s setting up Celeste.”

“Setting me up?” She’s equal parts confused and outraged, or maybe that’s the new role she’s settled into.

In tag-team fashion, we tell her about the flip-flops from her props bag, the one on Suicide Hill and the other now buried in the creek. “Someone wanted the cops to look hard at you, Celeste,” I say.

Ethan tags in. “Which means someone knew about you and Mr. Kendall.”

“Someone who has access to the prop room. Did anyone hang around this summer? Anyone not connected with summer theater?”

She draws her lips back and bares her teeth. “Besides you?”

Not helpful, but I deserve it.

Someone hits the main switch, and light floods the PAC.

“Olivia Smith?” It’s the cop who shook Ethan’s hand when he left Principal West’s office, and he’s coming our way. Our time’s up. “Olivia? I need you to come with me.”

Why is he looking at me like that? My stomach turns over again. “What did you tell him, Ethan?”

He’s stricken. He shakes his head and raises upturned palms in an “I didn’t do anything” gesture. “They knew about the props room and the alcohol. They knew you have pictures.”

“You told them about the pictures?”

“I didn’t tell them anything!”

Only one other person knew about the photos, and as if on cue, she appears in the PAC door behind the cop. Ms. Compton’s wrapped her arms tight across her chest as if that’s all that holds her together. “That’s her,” she says, pointing at me. “She has the photos. And that’s your suspect beside her. Once you see the photos you’ll understand.”

The connection I’ve been chasing since I confronted Celeste in the girls’ bathroom clicks. I squeeze her hand. “How did you know about Ms. Compton’s past?”

She looks from me to Ms. Compton, confused, and Ethan shoots me a deep scowl.

I nudge Celeste, but don’t take my eyes off the teacher. “Mr. Kendall told you, didn’t he?”

The cop’s eyes dart from Ms. Compton, to me, to Celeste, and back again, unsure how this drama will play out.

“He did,” Celeste struggles to find her voice. “Greg … Mr. Kendall told me about how you lost your last job.”

Ms. Compton blanches. “That’s a lie. He wouldn’t. It’s too late, Celeste. I told them how Greg tried to mentor you, but you willfully misunderstood his intentions. I’m sure you didn’t mean to kill him.”

“I didn’t kill him. How can you think that?”

Ms. Compton’s fingernails bite into her biceps and remind me of the first day of class, when she couldn’t stop rubbing her calves, her forearms. I attributed it then to the same shock everyone felt over Mr. Kendall’s death. But her arms are covered with scabs, like she’s scratched them raw. Like a rash, the kind caused by poison ivy. No one could have dragged Mr. Kendall’s body into the weeds without getting covered in it.

“She knows you didn’t kill him, Celeste, because she knows who actually did.” I rise from my seat. “Your anger problem got you fired from your last job, and Mr. Kendall knew it. He told Celeste. Did he threaten to tell someone else? You really lost it this time, didn’t you?”

She doesn’t seem to hear me. Hatred burns in Ms. Compton’s eyes, but it’s directed at Celeste, not me. I recall the accusation Celeste hurled at me in the girls’ bathroom. You’re so naïve, Livvie. Another click. “Wait. He didn’t threaten to reveal your secrets. He betrayed you, cheated on you. And you couldn’t let him get away with that. But you knew his secrets, too, and you used them to frame Celeste.”

“I don’t have to listen to this.” Ms. Compton pivots and loses her footing when she sees her way out blocked by one of the cops. She recovers and jags sideways to get around him, but he cuts her off again.

No one moves. No one speaks. It’s as if we’ve collectively hit the PAUSE button.

Then, like an actress taking her final bow, Ms. Compton slowly turns back to face us, her ivory skin now mottled. When she speaks, her voice is low and measured.

“I’ll say this once. I did not kill Greg. He tripped. He hit his head. We were friends. End. Of. Story.”

Beside me, Celeste suppresses a sob. Her whole body shakes with the effort.

“You were more than friends,” I say as I link hands with my best friend again.

Monday morning. Journalism. School goes on, almost as if the last week never happened.

Ms. Compton’s in jail, charges pending. She’s held fast to her story that Mr. Kendall tripped and hit his head when they went for a run together up Suicide Hill. So far, though, she can’t explain why she pulled his body off the trail into the weeds or why she tried to implicate Celeste. She also can’t explain why she didn’t call for help. The justice system does not like these loose ends.

I think she recognized long before Ethan and I did the significance of the photos of Celeste leaving the PAC. I recall how pale she was that day. I put it down to her inexperience as a teacher, but now I think what I saw was anger that she’d been betrayed.

I take my seat, and Ethan slides in across from me just under the bell.

Mr. Ornelas—dragged out of retirement as a long-term sub while the district searches for a replacement for Ms. Compton—welcomes us to class and talks about the adventures we’ll have together this year. Standard teacher bullshit, but it’s comforting coming from him.

Ethan nudges a piece of paper across the table. False alarm. When I don’t react, he worries that I’ve missed the point and leans across to whisper in my ear. “Celeste’s test was negative.”

I let a smile touch one corner of my mouth. I wish Celeste had told me herself. Despite our stand together in the PAC, I’m afraid our friendship is broken beyond repair. My calls and texts have gone unanswered beyond a single devastating line: I thought we were friends. We’re awkward with each other at school. Ethan feels it, too, but he’s determined to make things right. Some days, I hope he can. Other days, I think those eight weeks we were apart this summer didn’t change us so much as break a habit of togetherness. Whether it was a good habit or bad is still to be determined.

Celeste’s news is definitely good, though. Ethan’s grin widens. He’s ready to forget everything that happened, but the tightness around his eyes means that he, too, recognizes it isn’t over.

Mr. Kendall’s role in buying alcohol for students, confirmed by several drama kids after the story broke in the city paper (not, unfortunately, in The Beat), is all anyone can talk about. So far, Celeste’s mom has managed to squelch the bigger, more sinister part of the scandal. We had a predator in our midst. He likely victimized others before Celeste. That kind of ugly won’t stay buried.

The story will come out eventually. Enraging. Sad. Absolutely true. Journalism gold.

And I will write it.

GNAT

By Joseph S. Walker

His father’s truck wasn’t in the driveway when he got home from school, so Grant was spared having to explain why he was still wearing his gym clothes, or why there was a reeking plastic bag dangling from the passenger-side mirror of his battered old Ford Escort. He carried the bag at arm’s length into the house and dumped the contents into the washing machine, along with an extra cup of detergent. The bag went into the garbage can behind the house while the machine was running through its hottest heavy-duty cycle. As soon as it was done, he poured in more detergent and started it again.

If Dad came home now, Grant could say that he’d fallen in a puddle or something. He wouldn’t have to confess that during PE someone had broken into his locker and put his clothes into one of the toilets. And then used it. He wouldn’t have to see the look that would flicker across his dad’s face for a moment before he remembered to be supportive and kind, the look that said that having a son with a perpetual target on his back was just one more in an endless series of humiliations and defeats. He wouldn’t have to worry about Dad calling school, which would only invite more problems.

Grant sat on the floor with his back against the whirring machine. He’d like to just throw the clothes away, but Dad might notice them missing. Even more, he’d like to wrap them around Henry Spears’s throat and pull until his eyes bugged out of his ugly, blotched face. If Henry hadn’t done this, he’d heard about it by now and laughed his ass off.

There were only a few weeks left in Grant’s junior year. Only a few more weeks of being the shortest kid in school, with scrawny, awkward limbs that seemed all elbow and knee. A few weeks of boys’ viciousness and girls’ indifference and teachers’ pity and his own pent-up, roiling bile. A few weeks of sitting in the back of every classroom with red visions of baseball bats and tire irons and his own fists putting out teeth. A few weeks of being Gnat, the nickname Henry had given him in the third grade that had never gone away. Get through a few weeks, and he’d have the whole summer to help out around the cabins and otherwise be left to himself. Then just one more year. He couldn’t imagine what was after that. Something different.

The clothes were in the dryer when there was a knock, almost a pounding, at the front door. Grant opened it and found Mr. Becker leaning against the railing, looking out over the lake.

“Hey, kid,” Becker said. “Your dad around?”

“No, sir,” Grant said. “He’s got a lot to do to get ready for the summer.”

Grant’s father was the caretaker at Silver Waters, a vacation property high in the Ozarks. There were fifty cabins on the grounds, scattered around a large central lake. By late April they would all be occupied and stay that way through late September. Right now only a few were taken, two of the prime locations right on the water by Becker and his partner, Mr. Riddell. The two men had arrived a couple of days ago and taken the cabins for a week. Grant had only seen them a few times since then, sitting on the dock or puttering around town in a big blue SUV with Illinois plates.

“Fridge in my cabin’s on the fritz,” Becker said.

“I’ll tell him,” Grant said. “Do you want him to come look at it tonight?”

“No rush,” Becker said. “I’ll just keep my beer at Riddell’s place for the moment.” He grinned at Grant. “Hey, I’ll bet this place is something in the summer,” he said. “Lots of women in bikinis and tight shorts, right?”

Grant flushed. He backed into the house and started to ease the door shut. “I’ve got to do homework, sir,” he said. “I’ll tell my dad about the fridge.”

“Sure, kid,” Becker managed before the door closed. Grant leaned against it and listened to the familiar creak of the steps as Becker headed off the porch. He could feel his face burning. He was under strict instructions to be polite to the guests at all times, but he didn’t need them riding him, too. Becker’s leer had made Grant feel exposed, made him feel like Becker had been there during PE, watching Grant struggle to get just a few feet up the rope, listening to the mocking calls of “Gnat sucks!” disguised by coughing fits.

His father didn’t get home until past eight, having spent most of the day replacing rotted floorboards in a cabin where a pipe had burst over the winter. Grant heated a frozen pizza, and the two of them ate on the porch, saying little. In a normal family he would have been asked how school went. His own father had learned not to ask.

The next day was Saturday. Grant usually stayed in bed as long as he could on the weekends, but today he lurched upright at a little after seven, the world outside the window just beginning to brighten. The camera. Preoccupied with his clothes, he’d forgotten to go up the hill after school and reclaim the camera. Had it rained overnight? He didn’t think so, but this time of year he could have easily slept through a shower.

Cursing, he pulled on jeans and went out to the kitchen. His father was already gone. A note on the table said he was at cabin 37 working on the air conditioner. Barely reading it, Grant darted out the door and started his Escort.

The one part of school he got even a small bit of pleasure from was the photography club. An Ozarks arts promotion group had given the school dozens of high-end cameras, and Grant was fascinated with tinkering with them, making the world look different with filters and exposures and focus.

Right now he was experimenting with time-lapse photography. He’d signed out one of the cameras on Thursday and taken it into the hills surrounding the lake to an isolated meadow off one of the uncounted, unnamed dirt roads that threaded through the countryside. He could see the lake glimmering far below, but the cabins were lost in woods and haze. It didn’t look like anybody ever came there, but to be safe he climbed a small tree at the northern edge of the meadow and carefully mounted the camera on a branch with a clear view. He set it to take a high-definition exposure every ten seconds and left it there. If he’d done everything right, he should have a nice short film now showing the moon rising over the lake and moving across the sky, compressing every hour into a few minutes. Depending on the battery life, maybe a second night, with a complete day in between for good measure.

That was, if the camera hadn’t fallen, or gotten too wet, or simply been stolen. People went up into the hills for all kinds of reasons—to run meth, to tend small fields of pot, to make out, just to wander around. How could he have been so stupid as to forget about it? He couldn’t begin to guess how much the thing cost. If it was gone, he’d have to get a job in town this summer to pay it off. That would be a nightmare. Grant wanted to spend his summer the way he always did: alone.

Up in the hills, he had a bad moment when he made a wrong turn and had to go three miles before he found a place to turn around. The Escort wasn’t made for this kind of driving; it bucked and wheezed, clattering like it was going to come apart at any second.

Finally, though, he found the right place. He pulled the car over and jogged up the short trail as fast as he could manage.

Climbing the tree, he let out a whoop. The camera was still there. It seemed absolutely fine, and the battery was still alive; even as he reached for it he heard the minute click of the lens opening and closing. Moving carefully, he loosened the bracket, slipped the camera into its case and slung it over his shoulder, then eased himself down out of the tree. There was a business center at Silver Waters, with computers that Grant often used for homework, but the internet connection there could be slow and sometimes went out completely, to the endless annoyance of summer people frantic to be in touch with the jobs they were supposed to be getting away from. If the time lapse had come out well, he wanted to add music to it and post it online. For that the school would be better. The computer lab was kept open over the weekend for the benefit of students who couldn’t get online at home.

Driving down the hill, he kept one hand on the camera case in the passenger seat. He imagined the video online. The number of views mounting, the amazed comments about its beauty. If it looked good enough, he might even show Dad.

What he should have remembered was that it wasn’t only computer users who visited the school on weekends. He was walking toward the side door closest to the IT lab when a group of kids exploded around the far corner of the building, jogging toward him in matching shorts and tank tops. The cross-country team, out for their early morning practice run. Grant shrank against the building, but it was too late. Several of the boys pounding past him shouted “Gnat!” a few reaching out to slap his shoulders or give his hair a quick yank. Bringing up the rear was Henry Spears, puffing and a little more out of breath than the others. He was too stocky for cross-country, really, but he did it in the spring to keep in shape for football.

His head had been hanging low, but seeing Grant his eyes lit up.

“Gnat!” he shouted. He pulled up next to the smaller boy. “Just the runt I wanted to see!”

“Leave me alone,” Grant said. He tried to head for the door again, but Henry grabbed his upper arm and casually pushed him up against the wall.

“Not so fast, Gnat,” he gasped out. “I stepped in some dog shit a couple of blocks back. Clean my shoe.”

“No way,” Grant said. He squirmed, trying to break away, but the hand against his arm was heavy and relentless. Henry had ten inches and probably sixty pounds of advantage. “Get off me, you big asshole.”

“Come on, Gnat,” Henry said. “Help a brother out.” He jerked Grant off the wall and slammed him back into it, jarring him and making the camera bag slip to the ground. He pulled him off again, but this time he flipped Grant around and shoved his chest against the wall, putting his hand on the back of Grant’s head to hold him in place.

The brick against Grant’s cheek was rough and cold and he struggled harder, but without effect. Henry’s foot came up against his rear end, and there was a rubbing motion as he wiped the shoe against Grant’s jeans.

“Spears!” came a sudden shout from off to the right. Grant was released. He almost fell as he and Henry turned to see the track coach, Mr. Sullivan, standing at the corner of the building about thirty feet off, his hands on his hips.

“Yeah?” Henry said.

Sullivan shook his head. “Leave Grant alone,” he said. “Get your rear in gear. I want you on the track in five minutes.”

“On my way, sir,” Henry said. Sullivan turned and rounded the corner, and Henry pivoted and buried his fist hard in Grant’s stomach. Grant blew out air as stars exploded behind his eyes and he fell to the ground.

“Be happy I didn’t make you use your tongue,” Henry said. He jogged off. Grant struggled to catch his breath. He watched to be sure that Henry was really going away and then closed his eyes and let his face settle against the grass. Sullivan had seen enough that Henry should be in big trouble, but Grant knew it didn’t matter. Henry’s not-so-secret power: His mother was the principal of the school and, against all evidence, believed her son to be a blameless angel.

It was several long minutes before Grant had the air to push himself into a sitting position. He stayed there, his back against the wall, his head slumped. He couldn’t think of a reason to get up. He listened to the day grow silent and still around him. An occasional bird sang. Somebody a few streets away was mowing. The world hung in space, time ticking away to its next chance to hurt him.

It was more than an hour later when Grant finally went into the computer lab, wearing the gym clothes he had put in the car to bring back to school Monday morning. He’d cleaned his jeans the best he could manage in the restroom, but they’d have to go in the laundry when he got home. He no longer cared about the camera shots, but he couldn’t stand the idea of going back to Silver Waters and having his father read the raw scratches on his cheek.

There was nobody else in the lab. He went to the station farthest from the door, booted up the computer, and got the memory card from the camera.

At least the time lapse looked good. He had to work on depth of field, but he liked the framing, with the meadow sloping down to a line of trees on the other side. Part of the lake was visible through a gap in the trees, shifting to different colors as the light changed. The daylight image was a little washed out, but the night sky was appropriately black, and the moon and stars wheeling across it looked impressive.

After the moon sank out of sight, the sun came up and started its own trek. The grass and leaves in the picture vibrated as the camera caught them in slightly different positions because of the wind. He was about to reach for the mouse to fast forward to the second night when something flickered across the bottom of the screen, a brief impression of figures and a strange flash of light.

Frowning, Grant paused the image. He rewound through several dozen frames, watching the tiny preview window until the figures had blurred through again. Leaning forward, he started advancing through the images one at a time.

Click. The world jumped ten seconds.

Click. Another ten.

Click. Now two men appeared, walking across the far side of the meadow, about twenty yards from where he had placed the camera. In the next frame a third man appeared behind the other two, holding his arm at a strange angle. The men were walking in from the right side of the frame, coming from the side of the meadow near the road.

Grant enlarged the bottom part of the frame. The men were mostly in profile, but he knew the one in front, Fred Jameson. He worked at a hardware store in town where Grant’s dad often shopped, and he had a daughter a couple of years younger than Grant in school. In the frame where Grant recognized him he had his hands raised up near his head, like he was about to try to kill a bee buzzing in front of his face. Behind him were Becker and Riddell, the men staying in cabins 9 and 10. Becker was in front, walking casually. Riddell was trailing behind, looking back over his shoulder. He was carrying something in his right hand, but the image was blurred from movement.

Grant clicked forward, his vision tunneling. The ten second delay made it seem like he was watching the men in a strobe light, but the sequence was clear. The men reached the middle of the frame, just to the right of the break in the trees. Jameson turned and faced the other two, his hands still raised. Then he got down on his knees, stretching out his arms toward them. They seemed to be reaching toward him, too, but it was clear now that the thing at the end of Riddell’s arm was a handgun, and Becker had one as well. Grant paused on an image of the three posed like this, Jameson’s desperation clear.

Click. Nothing had moved, but there was a sharp arrow of light at the tip of Becker’s gun, almost as bright as the sun at the top of the image.

Click. Jameson had fallen out of sight behind the grass. Becker and Riddell had lowered their arms.

Click. They had turned and were walking back toward the right edge of the frame.

Grant realized he was standing up, and that his breath was coming fast and shallow. He looked around. There was still nobody else in the room. There was a security camera in the ceiling, but it was set to cover the door. It couldn’t see him or the screen he was looking at.

He sat back down and closed his eyes, waiting to not feel lightheaded. He’d forgotten the scratches on his cheek, the lingering pain in his stomach. He wondered if he was going to faint.

He couldn’t remember the name of Fred Jameson’s daughter. Sheila? Cynthia?

He went back through the frames again.

He couldn’t stop looking at that little flash of light from Becker’s gun.

He let the rest of the short film run through, and then watched the whole thing again from start to finish. There were no other unexpected appearances, aside from a deer that had wandered through the meadow early Saturday morning.

The machines around him hummed on smoothly, waiting for him to do something.

He stayed at the school until it got dark, eating some snacks from the vending machine in the cafeteria. Nobody else ever came in to use the lab on Saturday. Everyone was saving their work for Sunday.

It was almost nine when he drove away from the school and, just a few blocks away, pulled into the parking lot of the diner across from the police station and stared at the sleek red-and-blue lights atop the parked cruisers.

Half a dozen times he put his hand on the car door handle, thinking about Jameson’s daughter, picturing himself walking in and asking to talk to the chief. Leading the cruisers out to cabins 9 and 10 and standing in the flashing lights as Becker and Riddell came out in handcuffs. That was what he should want to do. What stopped him every time was the smell coming from his soiled clothes, the memory of Henry standing over him, and the vision of that little point of light in the photo. It was such a tiny thing, but his eyes kept coming back to it. The power in that tiny yellow flare. He seemed to see it every time he blinked.

At last he put the car in gear and drove home.

His father was sitting on the porch drinking a beer, with two empty cans crumpled under his chair. Grant climbed the steps and headed for the front door, carrying his backpack and another plastic bag for the laundry. He grunted something that might have been a greeting.

“Hey,” his father said before he could go in. “Sit down a minute. Where you been all day?”

“School,” Grant said, leaving his hand on the knob. “Working on the computers. I gotta put some laundry in.”

“Laundry,” his father said. “Come here. Let me see you.”

He put the bags down and walked over, keeping his eyes fixed on a point six inches over his father’s head. His father reached up and held his chin, turning his face to catch the light from the lamppost in the yard.

“Fall down?” he asked.

Grant nodded. He shoved his hands into his pockets.

“Nothing else you want to tell me?”

Grant still couldn’t look him in the eyes. He shook his head. At last his father dropped his hand and turned his own face back to the still waters. “Bring me another beer after you get your laundry started,” he said. “Maybe a sandwich.”

Not bothering to answer, Grant grabbed his bags and hustled through the door. It was a relief that Dad hadn’t asked to look in the backpack, which he did sometimes because he was worried about drugs. For some reason, it was also a disappointment.

For a moment, coming up the stairs to the porch, he’d wanted to tell Dad everything, but somehow seeing those beer cans crushed on the floor had stopped him. If he hadn’t gone to the police, he sure as hell wasn’t going to run to Daddy, especially since he knew what Daddy would say. Don’t stick your neck out. Play it safe. Destroy the pictures and don’t ever talk about it again. Dad was an expert at keeping his head down and not talking about things.

Grant had made his decision and, even though he still felt like he couldn’t really catch his breath, he was going to stick to it. He watched the washer shudder and clang through its cycle, telling himself over and over again that Fred Jameson must have done something to deserve being taken to that clearing.

The next morning, Dad left to go into town for church. He’d stopped trying to make Grant come with him years ago. Grant slowly ate a bowl of cereal, then got dressed. Picking up his backpack, he walked down the path that would take him to cabins 9 and 10.

Becker and Riddell were scheduled to have the cabins through Tuesday night, but it was still a little surprising to see the blue SUV parked in 10’s driveway. He walked around to the lake side of the cabin, and found Becker sitting at the picnic table on the deck with a plate of scrambled eggs and a glass of juice. Grant started up the stairs as Riddell came out of the cabin with another plate and mug. He looked at Grant blankly and sat down.

Grant thought the same thing he’d thought when the men had arrived a few days ago, that they were the most aggressively average-looking men he’d ever seen. Becker’s hair was a little darker, Riddell a little leaner, but they both had the kind of generic looks you’d give security guards in a video game.

“Morning, kid,” Becker said. “You can tell your old man the fridge is working great. Appreciate the quick work.”

“I will,” Grant said. He stood at the side of the table, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Becker squinted up at him. “Something else we can help you with?”

Grant swallowed. He took a folded piece of paper and held it out.

“What’s this?” Becker said. “Some kind of extra charge?” He put his fork down and took the page and unfolded it. He looked at it for a long moment and blew air out through his nose. “Oh, kid,” he said, sounding mournful.

He passed the paper across to Riddell. It was a printout of two of the frames from Grant’s film. He’d chosen the one where you could see all three men’s faces most clearly, along with the one with Becker’s muzzle flash. Riddell looked at the page and folded it back up and put it in his breast pocket. He looked flatly across the table at Becker.

Becker was shaking his head. “Let me guess,” he said. “There are all kinds of copies of these that will go straight to the cops if, for example, you were to go missing.”

“Something like that,” Grant said. His mouth felt incredibly dry. He’d put the images on a flash drive and mailed it to himself from town.

“Everybody’s seen a damn movie,” Becker said. “Your dad in on this? He send you?”

“No,” Grant said. “This is just me.”

He didn’t like the way Riddell cocked his head at that.

“Okay, kid,” Becker said.

“Grant.”

“What?”

“Call me Grant.”

“Grant,” Becker said. “You got it, Grant. I don’t see a SWAT team coming through the woods, Grant, so what the hell exactly is it you want, Grant?”

Grant put the backpack down on the table. “I want a gun.”

Becker frowned. “You want a what?”

“A gun,” Grant said. “And ammo,” he added. He’d reminded himself to specify this a dozen times.

Becker and Riddell looked at each other. “That’s it?” Becker said.

Grant nodded. Becker picked up his fork and finished his eggs and drank from his coffee. Riddell seemed to have lost his appetite. He sat with his hands flat to the sides of his plate, watching Grant watch Becker.

Becker wiped his mouth. “What happened to your face, Grant?”

Grant flushed. He didn’t answer. Instead he just picked up the backpack and set it down a little closer to Becker.

Becker nodded. “Get the keys,” he said to Riddell. He stood up and picked up the backpack and started down the steps at the side of the deck. “Come with me, Grant.”

Grant followed. Becker went to the SUV and opened the back door and put the backpack on the seat. He opened the front passenger door and jerked his head. “Get in.”

Grant didn’t move. Becker sighed. “You’re holding the cards here, kid,” he said. “Grant. You’re gonna get what you want, but we’re going to do it my way.” Riddell came out of the front of the house and got in behind the wheel of the SUV. Becker gestured again at the open passenger door. Moving slowly, Grant got in. Becker closed the door behind him and got in the back seat.

“Put your seatbelt on, Grant,” he said. “Awfully bumpy roads around here.” To Riddell he said, “Take us on up.”

Riddell started the engine and pulled out onto the road. He drove confidently and quickly. When he turned onto the dirt road that would go up to the meadow, Grant clenched his fists.

“So what’s the deal with your mom, anyway, Grant?” Becker might have been asking about the weather. “Your old man drive her away?”

“She died,” Grant said. “When I was born.” The SUV was taking the back roads much more smoothly than his Escort. Grant would have been impressed if he wasn’t terrified. “Mr. Becker, I hope you understand I’m not threatening you.”

“Do I seem threatened, Grant?” Becker said. “That’s a shame about your mom. I’m sorry. Really.”

Riddell looked straight through the windshield. He turned onto an even smaller road, barely having to slow for the corner.

“Why did you kill Mr. Jameson?” Grant blurted. He hadn’t known he was going to say it until he did.

“You knew him?” Becker said. “Small town, I guess. Let’s just say, Grant, that his name wasn’t always Jameson, and he didn’t always know enough to keep his mouth shut.”

“He’s got a daughter at my school,” Grant said. Stop talking, he told himself fiercely.

“That’s a shame,” Becker said. “He should have thought about her more a while back.”

Grant closed his eyes and bit his lip. His fists were clenched so hard that he could feel his nails biting into his palms.

The car stopped. He didn’t have to open his eyes to know where they were. Riddell and Becker got out and then his door opened and he felt a hand on his arm, right where Henry had grabbed him the day before.

“Come on, kid,” Becker said.

“I don’t want to,” Grant said. He hated the whiny sound of his voice.

“I know,” Becker said. “But let’s not play games here, Grant. We can make you.” He reached around Grant to release the seat belt and pulled the boy out of the car. “Let’s go.”

The three of them started toward the meadow, Riddell taking the lead. Becker kept his hand lightly on Grant’s arm, steering him.

Grant’s legs felt like rubber. He thought about what the three of them would look like from across the meadow, where the camera had been, and almost fell down. He moaned out loud. “I’m sorry.” They were halfway across the meadow now, almost to the spot where Jameson had turned and gone to his knees.

“Nothing to be sorry for, Grant,” Becker said. Riddell had stopped. He turned and waited for them. Grant tried to stop walking, but Becker easily dragged him forward.

“Don’t kill me,” Grant said.

“I’m not gonna kill you, Grant,” Becker said. “I just want you to take a look at something.” He suddenly shoved Grant forward, releasing him. Grant stumbled and fell to his knees, just missing falling directly across Fred Jameson’s body. The stench and the sight hit him at the same moment, and his eyes widened in panic.

“Birds have been at him,” Becker said. “You get, what, turkey vultures out here?”

Grant recoiled. He scrambled and clawed at the ground and spun to get away from the thing, lurching to his feet and almost immediately falling again. He vomited, everything in him coming out in a rush of burning bile. Clutching his hands across his stomach, he tried again to get up and run and instead fell to the side. He felt Becker’s hand on his back.

“Okay, kid, take it easy,” Becker said. “You don’t have to look again. Take a few minutes to calm down, and we’ll take you home.”

It took more than a few minutes. The two men stood and watched him as he slowly stopped shaking, as he wiped his eyes and mouth on his shirt, finally as he rolled to his knees and, moving like an old man, rose to his feet.

Becker took his arm again, more gently now, and the three of them walked back to the SUV. Without being told, Grant got in the passenger seat and buckled his seat belt. Becker got in the back and Riddell got behind the wheel and started back down the hill.

Grant slumped against the door. He felt more exhausted than he could ever remember feeling before.

They stopped outside Grant’s cabin. He was relieved to see that his father wasn’t home yet. He reached for the door handle, but Becker put his hand on his shoulder and pulled him back.

“Deal’s a deal, Grant,” he said. He put Grant’s backpack on the wide center console between the front seats. From somewhere in the back he produced a handgun and held it out between the seats and popped out the magazine.

“This is a Glock 19,” he said. “It’s one of the most common handguns in America. I’m sure you can find all kinds of stuff online on how to clean it and everything.” He put the gun and the magazine into the backpack. He reached somewhere in the back seat again and held up two more magazines. “You wanted ammo, right?” He put the magazines in the backpack, zipped it up, and put it against Grant’s chest.

Grant didn’t move. He stared out the windshield at the house he’d grown up in.

Becker’s other hand came to rest lightly on his shoulder. The man leaned forward and spoke calmly in his ear. “This is what you wanted, Grant. Now, I might be of the opinion that your redneck cops here have never done anything in their lives but write DUIs, fish dead people out of the lake, and try to stop people from beating on their wives. And I might be of the opinion that your clever little pictures won’t be worth a damn once I’m twenty miles out of town. But I am, by God, a man of my word, Grant, and I expect you to be as well. That’s reasonable, isn’t it?”

Grant nodded. His breath was coming in fits and starts.

“So take the damn gun, Grant.” The fingers tightened on his neck, and the backpack ground into his chest until Grant’s arms came up and tightened around it.

“Am I gonna be seeing you on the news any time soon, Grant?”

“No, sir.”

“Good boy. Now get out of my car.”

He got out and watched as the SUV drove smoothly back down toward their cabins.

That night, his father told him that Becker and Riddell had left suddenly because of an emergency. Grant wondered if his father had ever heard Riddell speak, but he didn’t ask.

Monday morning Grant acted sick enough to stay home from school. He didn’t have to do much acting. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast Sunday, or slept at all overnight.

Lying in his bed, he had tried to conjure up the visions of Saturday night, visions of Henry Spears on his knees, begging. Henry in tears, soiling himself, pledging never to say anything about Grant again. Visions of himself, cool and smooth, the gun held out in front of him, sideways like in the movies, almost casual in his consideration of Henry’s groveling pleas. He couldn’t see any of it anymore. All he could see now, eyes open or eyes shut, was Fred Jameson’s body. The smell was still in his nostrils, and he could still feel where Becker’s fingers had dug into his neck.

And then, early in the morning, rising out of the swirl of exhaustion and nausea, came the face of Jameson’s daughter. He still couldn’t remember her name, but a choking sob escaped him at the shame of how he’d failed her. Becker was right. It was too late to do anything now.

As soon as Grant was sure his father was on his way into town, he retrieved the backpack from where he had hidden it in the crawl space under cabin 23. He shoved rocks into the bag until it was bulging, and he could barely zip it closed. He took one of the rowboats from the main dock and went out a couple of hundred yards from shore.

The first few real summer guests had arrived over the weekend, and a few of the cabins bustled with activity. He could hear voices and laughter echo over the lake.

Grant slid the backpack into the water, and watched it vanish from sight.

A DIFFERENT HERO’S DAY

By Anthony Franze and Barry Lancet

For the first time it has a name: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. I’ve heard of it, of course. From kids in class. From the movies. I heard my mom whispering about it on the phone the day I came home suspended from school. The mighty ADHD.

I slip the report back into the envelope as I head down the broken escalator into the mouth of the subway. I wasn’t supposed to read it. The envelope was sealed tight, and Mom said take it directly to the office at school. But what’d she expect? I have impulse control problems—it says so right in the report.

The platform is crowded this morning. Not the usual cast of commuters. Today it’s packed with kids my age, all wearing the same shirt. A bright orange monstrosity that reads NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL LEADERSHIP SOCIETY, WASHINGTON, D.C., SUMMIT. I’m not quite sure what this “society” is, but they look pretty pleased with themselves. I bet none of them have ADHD.

I think of the report again. Twenty full pages, single spaced. It’s hard to understand and lists all these tests I took that day at the doctor’s: BAI, BDI-II, BASC-3, D-KEFS, HTP, MACI. Alphabet soup. But I get the gist: twenty pages of all the ways I’m screwed up.

Kyle has deficits in executive functioning, especially in the cognitive regulation domain.

Kyle has difficulty with attention, major limitations in ability to complete daily tasks.

Kyle has limitations in his basic perceptual-motor and integration skills. Kyle’s past impulsivity issues suggest earlier testing was warranted.

And so on. I don’t need a stupid report to tell me that I have struggles. I live with them every day. The schoolwork I forget to turn in, the tests I don’t finish on time, the constant feeling of restlessness. It’s annoying to see pages and pages of negatives in the report and only five sentences of “positive” aspects of the condition.

I hear a ping and pull out my phone and read the text:

Remember to take the report to the office. Love you!

Wow, no emojis, a first for my mom. One of the guys in the orange shirts eyes my flip phone. Yeah, that’s right, flip phone. Mom won’t let me have a smartphone—says I don’t do well with screen time.

I hear the kid say, “Is this a subway or time machine?” The other pumpkins laugh with him.

I feel the breeze from the train pushing into the station. I think again about the report, the five positive lines, trying to do the math: five sentences out of twenty pages. If each page has fifty sentences, that’s one thousand sentences, making the positive-to-negative ratio …

My calculations are interrupted by the sound of gunfire.

1.
“CHILDREN WITH ADHD ARE CALM UNDER PRESSURE.”

I duck behind one of the trash bins, the large cement ones that look like they’re designed to take the blast of a bomb hidden inside. The kids are screaming. The train pulls into the station, and there’s a mad dash of orange shirts into the cars. I peer around the concrete cylinder. There’s a man curled up on the grimy platform floor, not moving. Worse, there’s another man wearing a ski mask. He’s pointing a handgun at one of the kids in the orange shirts, a girl. There’s chaos all around me, but everything seems to be in slow motion, and my head is surprisingly clear, hyper-focused. I feel calm, in control. The ski mask guy grabs the girl with one hand, tucking the gun into his pants with the other.

The lights lining the track are flashing as students cram into the train to escape the mayhem. The masked man picks up the girl and starts to carry her away. She’s bucking and kicking, a blur of orange.

Before I can think things through, I charge out from behind the trash bin and run toward him. He’s a big guy, a scary guy. With a gun! But he’s turned away from me, and he’s distracted with the girl.

I take my backpack, heavy with schoolbooks, and swing it hard. It connects with the back of his skull and he stumbles forward, the girl weighing him down, pulling him off balance. They topple to the ground. She’s now trapped under him. The man clings to her as she desperately tries to pull herself free.

I lash out with my backpack again. It smashes into his head, slamming his face into the hard tiled floor. He stops moving. I yank the girl’s hand and drag her out from under the bulky body of her would-be abductor.

Her eyes are wide with terror, but I also see determination. As she struggles upright, the man’s hand snakes out and grabs her ankle.

The rail car chimes. The doors are closing. If they do, we’ll be stuck on the platform with this lunatic. This armed lunatic.

One ankle still clamped in the man’s grip, the girl twists around and stomps on his arm with her other foot. He roars in pain and releases the leg. She grabs my hand, and we race into the train car just before the heavy doors clamp shut.

2.
“CHILDREN WITH ADHD ARE CREATIVE THINKERS AND PROBLEM SOLVERS.”

Once inside, an adrenaline rush slams me.

I bend at the waist, hands on my thighs to catch my breath. I look up. The train is crowded with a sea of orange shirts. Where are all the grown-ups? Maybe they ran out of the station. Or are in other cars. I hear crying. Panic hangs in the air.

Someone floats a water bottle in front of my face. I grab it, straighten up, and chug down the cool liquid in huge gulps.

A bulked-out high school jock is standing in front of me, his muscles stretched against his shirt. At least it isn’t orange, like the rest of them. He’s either not with the group, or had the good sense to break the rules and nix the shirt. Or he’s absentminded like me and forgot it.

A look of admiration flits across his pale face.

“Nice moves out there,” he says. “You okay?”

I nod, still breathing hard.

The girl who was attacked is being consoled by three other girls, though she’s not crying. Her brown face is defiant.

She sees I’ve risen and pushes past the girls. She looks at me with large brown eyes. “Thank you,” she says. She has a slight accent, but I can’t place it.

And I’m taken aback for a moment. I hadn’t realized she was so pretty. “It was nothing,” I say, trying to sound cool, though I can feel my hands shaking now.

The train rattles over a rough section of tracks and the kids get quiet, in shock maybe. We’ve all grown up on “active-shooter” drills at school, but the problem is we’re not at school. I think about sending my mom a text to say I’m okay, but there’s no service in the tunnels. And, besides, I don’t want to rock the flip phone in front of the girl.

“What’s your name?” she asks.

“Kyle,” I say, feeling my face turn red.

She sticks out her hand. “I’m Natalia.”

I take her hand. It’s delicate, but her grip is firm. “Are you all right?” I ask. “I mean, that guy was trying to kidnap you or something.”

The meathead who made fun of my phone butts in. He has a ruddy face and mean eyes.

“Who are you?” he barks at Natalia. “Why’d he try to grab you?”

I’m surprised, since they all have on the same shirt. Shouldn’t he know her?

Natalia doesn’t answer.

“I asked you a question,” the kid says, a barb in his voice.

“Lighten up, man,” the jock says.

I nod, backing the jock. I like him. And I don’t like bullies. “Let’s everybody calm down,” I say. I look over at all the scared faces in the car. “Everything is gonna be okay,” I add in a loud voice. “They have protocols. Security plans for things like this.”

I’m making it all up as I go, but it sounds good. Reassuring. I see some of the anxiety in the crowd lift. Natalia relaxes, and I feel good about that.

Then, we’re all flung forward as the train jolts to a stop.

And the lights go out.

It’s dark, an inky black. Kids are wailing again. My heart is thrumming in my ears. What’s going on?

As my eyes adjust to the gloom, I see nothing but dark piles of kids, arms and legs flailing. Then Natalia’s face is hovering over mine. She offers me a hand, and with her help I scramble to my feet.

The kids are rising, and the crowd pushes about, a swell of bodies. A ripple in the pack knocks Natalia against me. I try to give her space because I don’t want to be a creep, but our bodies are pressed together by the surge. We exchange a look, and I manage to back off an inch or so, my thoughts ping-ponging from the smell of her hair to the terror of the darkness.

I take hold of the railing above, and I feel her hand on the same handle. As my thoughts start to settle, the car grows quiet, everyone realizing we’re stuck a hundred feet underground, maybe more. I wonder if this is a terror attack, like my mom always feared when I started taking the subway to school. Or maybe the authorities stopped the train to get things under control. Or maybe they did it because things are out of control. Maybe there are more gunmen and they stopped the train.

Natalia nudges me. “We need to do something.”

It’s so dark. I keep hoping the train lights will come back on, but they don’t. “Do you have your phone?” I ask.

I feel her moving about, and then a smartphone is jabbed into my chest.

“Here,” she says. “But there’s no reception.”

“I know.” I fumble with the slab of metal and glass, swiping until I find the phone’s flashlight. With the slide of a finger, a tiny light comes on, and I see my reflection in the train window. I look like a ghost.

“Everyone!” I yell, waving the beam over the scared faces huddled in the car. “Get out your phones and turn on your flashlights. Hold them high.” I demonstrate, holding Natalia’s phone in the air.

Slowly, more beams appear. One or two to start, like stars in a dark sky, and then more, until the whole cabin is illuminated by a constellation of cell-phone lights.

“Is everyone okay?” I ask. The kids look about. Heads are nodding. “We need to stay calm and wait for them to come get us.”

Even as I take in the ashen faces in the group, my mind is moving ahead. There is something I don’t like about our situation, but I’m not sure what it is.

The bully yells at me. “How do you know anyone will come? And who put you in charge?” He points at Natalia. “They want her. I think the farther we are from her, the better.”

He walks to the red emergency latch and yanks on it. The door to the train makes a loud hissing noise, then inches open. The bully jabs his fingers through the gap and shoves open the door.

“I don’t think it’s safe to go into the tunnel,” I say. “There could be trains or…”

I don’t say it, but I am thinking more guys with guns. The image of the man I knocked to the ground flashes in my head. Then the other man, motionless on the platform floor. I try to beat back a rising fear—a churning in my stomach, a flutter in my chest. Are there more bad guys? Did they somehow manage to stop the train? Are they coming after Natalia again? Is one of them on the train?

My thoughts are interrupted by a scream straight out of a horror movie from the other end of the car.

“He’s dead, he’s dead!” someone shouts.

Then there’s a stampede for the exit.

3.
“CHILDREN WITH ADHD ARE OFTEN CHARISMATIC AND NATURAL LEADERS.”

I don’t follow the crowd. That’s never been my thing. So I’m still in the train car.

It’s dark again, lit only by Natalia’s phone in my hand. I fear I’m all alone now, but then I feel a hand touch my arm. Natalia has stayed back.

“You didn’t need to stay. You’re safer in the group,” I say.

“You have my phone.” She grins, and I know it isn’t about her phone.

In the back of the car—where the scream came from—we see two other points of light. As my eyes adjust, I recognize the jock. I can’t make out the other figure.

“We better take a look,” I say to Natalia, and we walk over.

The jock and a blonde girl are crouched over someone, a boy. He’s sprawled on the floor, motionless, his legs splayed out. He’s shirtless, with what looks like red puncture wounds. And blood on and around him. The blonde and jock seem to be trying to find a pulse.

“You know those two?” I ask Natalia as we draw closer.

She shakes her head. “No, it’s our first day. We’re, like, from fifty different schools.”

Together, the jock and blonde look like they’re a couple of Instagram models. A bit too perfect. There’s an obvious familiarity between them. The girl is wearing an orange shirt. It’s a bit large on her, so she’s tied a knot on the side to make it more form-fitting. There’s also blood on the front of it from trying to help the kid.

The jock stands up, looks at me, and shakes his head.

“I lifeguard every summer,” he says. “I know a little about this stuff. He’s not coming back.”

The blonde girl straightens up, too, and leans into the jock, who wraps a protective arm around her. Yeah, they’re definitely a couple. Pretty fast, if all these kids just met. But guys like him tend to be lucky that way.

We’re all looking at each other, none of us sure what to do.

I move the phone-flashlight over the dead kid’s torso. I swallow hard. It’s the first time I’ve seen a dead body. The killer took his shirt. But why? So he could blend into the crowd of students? That means he’s out there somewhere, in disguise. Then I notice something else is off. The boy’s muscles are well formed and dense, and he has a web of tattoos across his chest, blue against a darkish skin. I’ve never seen a kid with so many tattoos. My mom would freak.

The light hits the boy’s face, and Natalia gasps.

What is it? I wonder. I look at Natalia, who’s obviously shaken, then back at the kid’s face, which is now glowing under the beam of the jock’s flashlight as well. He’s also curious about her reaction.

The dead boy’s face is the same olive tone as Natalia’s. That’s when I realize that this is no boy. Under our dual spotlight, I see wrinkles, perhaps covered by makeup. A developed neck. He’s older than us by a good five years. And there are scars running down his left side.

“Do you know him?” I ask the group. I’m thinking maybe he’s a chaperone or counselor.

“No,” the blonde says.

The jock adds, “I met him this morning. He said he goes to high school in New Mexico … or maybe it was New Hampshire.”

High school. No way.

“He’s my bodyguard,” Natalia blurts out.

“Your what?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer, but says, “And they killed my other bodyguard—on the train platform.”

My mind flashes back to the beginning.

“Wait … what?” the jock cuts in.

Natalia glances around, although there’s only the four of us in the train. Then, standing so close to me I can smell her perfume or body spray or whatever it is girls put all over themselves, she says, “My father is an important man—back home. There are bad people in our country who want him to do things he won’t do, so they threatened our family. That’s why I’m in boarding school in the U.S. That’s why they killed—” Her voice catches.

“Where’s home?” the jock asks.

“Far away.”

“What kind of answer is that?” he says. “If we’re in this because of you, we deserve to know who—”

“Leave her alone, Alex,” the blonde girl says. “She’s as scared as us.”

“Don’t tell me what to—”

“Everyone relax,” I say, loudly. Too loudly, I realize, and drop my voice. “Let’s all take a deep breath.” I let everyone do that, like my mom has me do when I get worked up. When I hyperfocus and can’t get back to the regular world.

I take a breath myself, count to ten in my head, then say: “As I see it, I’m with the bravest people in your ‘leadership’ group.” I put air quotes on leadership since I’ve seen only four leaders so far, these three and the bully who led the group into the tunnels. “I’m Kyle and this is Natalia.” I gesture to her.

“I’m Jennifer,” the blonde says.

“Alex,” says the jock.

“Where are you two from?” I ask. It’s a weird time for small talk, but it seems to be calming them down. Me too.

“Illinois,” Alex says.

“Texas,” Jennifer says. “We met at the regionals.”

All eyes turn toward Natalia. Before she answers, I say, “We know: You’re from ‘far away.’” I smile. And they all do, too.

Natalia seems to collect herself. Then she says, “They’re not after you. Just me. So go. You don’t want to be near me when they come.”

I swallow at that. Not if they come. When they come.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I say, a little surprised at how quickly I make the decision.

I see Jennifer and Alex contemplating the idea. They eye the train door. They eye us. Then they exchange a small nod. They’re staying, too. But I’m paying more attention to how Natalia is looking at me. I wish everyone looked at me that way.

“What do we do?” Jennifer asks.

“I see two options,” Alex says. “Stay here and wait for help, or follow the others into the tunnel.”

But before we can make a decision, we’re interrupted by the sound of screaming coming from outside. It washes through the tunnel like a wave. Then, through the row of windows between cars, we see flashlights bobbing in the distance.

More screams. Whoever they are, they’re coming our way.

“Follow me,” I say. “Quickly.”

And they do.

4.
“CHILDREN WITH ADHD ARE INTUITIVE AND OFTEN NOTICE THINGS OTHERS OVERLOOK.”

It’s a simple matter of standing at the open door, jumping up and grabbing the lip of the train’s roof, doing a pull-up, then foisting a leg up to climb on top. Okay, not so simple, so I go first. I usually have trouble with the small things—tying my shoes, holding a pencil, and that kind of stuff—but getting out of this train, I can handle that. And I make it onto the roof easily enough.

I then shoot a hand down for Natalia, who gets a boost from Alex. She’s followed by Jennifer. Alex brushes off my assistance and glides up effortlessly, his muscles bunching and stretching with an athlete’s natural ease. But when he stands upright, he scrambles to keep his balance on the slippery surface. His shoes aren’t sneakers, but dress shoes with slick bottoms, an odd fashion choice. I reach out to steady him.

With the four of us topside, I feel an overwhelming urge to dash across the roof to the farthest end of the train for safety, zigzagging to dodge bullets I imagine flying past us. But now there’s flashlight beams coming from beneath us in our train car. We need to be quiet, really quiet.

I motion for everyone to drop down on their stomachs. We flatten ourselves on the roof. We listen. Below us, the carriage rocks. How many of them are down there?

Peering over the ledge, I watch as the flashlight beams move through the car. I stay dead still. The lights stop right under us and I hold my breath. I feel the train car shift as the shaft of the light shoots through the open door. A bad guy pokes his head out. Don’t look up, please don’t look up. After what seems like an eternity, the lights head back.

“To the far end,” I whisper, my eyes adjusted to the darkness.

We slide across the dirty metal roof on our bellies, like a family of snakes. When we reach the end of the car we all stand, Alex shuffling his feet in a panic as he nearly slips in those stupid shoes.

In a silent and intent line, we find our way forward with care, leaping over the narrow gaps between the cars. I look back, and Jennifer seems to glide across the rooftop, her demeanor calm, like she’s a gymnast or superjock like Alex. Why is everything so easy for the Beautiful People?

We reach the end, a good seven cars and one hundred yards from where we started.

Then I see a large light up ahead. I realize it isn’t a single light, it’s three flashlights and another group thirty yards back and gaining. A voice is shouting something from behind the glow.

Then I hear gravel crunching from behind us.

My heart sinks when I realize we’re trapped. There’s figures coming from ahead and behind.

Natalia grabs my hand, which somehow gives me courage.

Alex calls to us. “Follow me,” he says, shimmying down the side of the rail car. He’s found a door along the wall of the tunnel. Maybe a maintenance entrance.

But something is holding me back. Something doesn’t feel right. All of the details I need to sort through are a hopeless jumble in my head.

There’s more shouting. And I can make out what the first group of advancing shadows are saying now.

“Put your hands where we can see them!”

“Don’t move, we’re federal agents!”

My senses are telling me they’re real, but I hesitate. What if they’re faking it? What if the bad guys are trying to pass as agents? Like Natalia’s bodyguard as a high schooler? We’d be walking right into their hands. Then one of them calls out again. His voice has power. He sounds so commanding. It must be the FBI.

“I think we should go to them,” I say.

“That’s crazy,” Jennifer says. “It’s a trick. We need to run!”

There’s something desperate in her voice I don’t like. Then the jumble in my head begins to clear. Goose bumps roll down my arms as the pixels fall into place. First off, Alex isn’t wearing an orange shirt. It didn’t seem strange in the beginning—kids forget things. I do all the time. But then there’s his dress shoes.

Plus, Jennifer’s shirt is covered in blood and it’s too big for her. It’s got to be the missing shirt from Natalia’s dead bodyguard. And this perfect couple supposedly met at regionals, but Alex said he was from Illinois and Jennifer from Texas—those states wouldn’t be in the same region. And I don’t hear even a trace of Texan in Jennifer’s voice.

My suspicions are confirmed when Jennifer slips behind Natalia and pushes her through the tunnel door. The last thing I see is Alex’s sneer before he slams the door shut, leaving me by myself in the tunnel.

I plow through the door after them, the voices of the federal agents, who I now think really are agents, echoing behind me.

I’m in a long, dark hallway. There’s small bulbs along the cement corridor. Control panels along the wall. I don’t see them ahead. I start to run, when I’m broadsided.

I’ve never been hit so hard—another first for today—and I land with a hard thud, Alex on top of me. I flip over on my back. Alex straddles me and pins my arms with his hands.

I struggle under his bulk but it’s hopeless. He outweighs me by thirty pounds.

Alex turns to Jennifer, who is holding a gun on Natalia.

“Get her out of here,” he says. “I’ll take care of this idiot.”

That was a mistake. I hate being called stupid. Hate it. And, like I said, I hate bullies even more. As I’m pinned, I lock eyes with Natalia. And I see fire in them. She nods at me, then comes alive. She whirls around and grabs Jennifer’s gun arm, slamming it against the cement wall. The gun goes off just before it comes loose and clatters away. The sound of a ricocheting bullet fills the tunnel.

“Over there,” Alex says, lifting a hand and pointing at the gun for Jennifer.

With one arm momentarily free, I let fly at Alex’s jaw, but miss and strike him in the Adam’s apple. Crap, I think, my only chance, and I blow it.

But Alex starts gagging. Both of his hands go to his neck. I heave and buck and he topples off of me.

I race over to Natalia and Jennifer, who are rolling around on the ground, lashing out at each other, clawing for the gun inches away. I circle around them and get to the weapon first. I bend to pick it up, but collapse to the ground when a fist slams into my back, knocking the wind out of me.

Alex scrambles over me. Fighting back the pain, I wrap my arms around his leg. He totters and falls over, his hand stretching out for the weapon.

He’s kicking in a rage now, wanting to break my hold. A strangled sound comes from his throat. His fingertips touch the grip and begin drawing the weapon in.

If he gets the gun, we’re—

That’s when I hear a yelp and see Natalia stomping on Alex’s back. He curls up into a protective cocoon. I let go of him, jump to my feet, and take two giant steps to scoop up the gun. I see a shadow of Jennifer running back the way we came.

Then a blast of light shoots through the door. Men and women in windbreakers rush toward us. They have flashlights and firearms.

Jennifer screeches to a halt and raises her hands, Natalia and I raise ours. I let the gun tumble from my grasp. Natalia looks at me with those brown eyes again and smiles.

Finally, we’re safe.

5.
“CHILDREN WITH ADHD ARE RESILIENT AND BOUNCE BACK QUICKLY.”

The long hours of questioning begin. FBI, CIA, NSA, ICE, almost as much alphabet soup as my ADHD report.

The report. My mom’s gonna kill me. I lost my backpack at the station. At least my excuse today is better than usual. Stopping a guy trying to abduct my friend. That’s what she is now, my friend. Someone who, after today, I’ll never forget.

They’ve shut down the station and cordoned off the area for the victims of the attack. The kids in the orange shirts are huddled together. I notice the bully from before, and he’s blubbering away now.

They’ve separated me and Natalia from the group. There’s a ring of agents around us, like we’re getting special protection.

“Who is your dad, anyway?” I ask, thinking he must be pretty important given what happened and the attention we’re getting.

“He’s a man with lots of enemies,” she says. “I begged him to let me out of that prison of a boarding school to come on this trip. He’ll never let me out on my own after this.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I think you handled yourself pretty well.” I smile. “You saved me.”

“And you saved me big time. Twice.”

She places her hand on mine, and I feel electricity rip through me.

After endless questions, they start releasing kids to their tearful parents. My mom rushes in and wraps me in a tight hug. I try to calm her down, when I notice a group of what look like dignitaries march in and surround Natalia. She rolls her eyes.

A stiff man in a dark suit says something to her. I don’t think it’s her father. He seems too formal. She points at me. The man stares at me for a long moment, then the whole group marches over.

My mom’s eyes widen as they approach.

The man stops squarely in front of me. Straightens his shoulders. “You’ve performed a great service for our country, young man. His Highness has asked me to personally extend his deepest gratitude.”

I look over at Natalia, who’s smiling.

His Highness? That would mean … Holy crap.

My eyes swivel back to the dignitary and I say, “He’s, uh, very welcome.”

The man nods approvingly, says he’ll be in touch, then whirls around on his heels and nods to the men in his group. They form a protective circle around Natalia and usher her toward the subway exit.

She cranes her neck to look back at me.

“Could I ask you for something?” I call out to the man.

He turns. “Of course, anything.”

“Can I say goodbye?”

The man hesitates a moment, then turns back and barks something in a language I don’t recognize. Natalia’s protective escort halts.

They create an opening in the circle and Natalia appears. I run to her.

“I hope we see each other again,” I say.

She smiles, brushes a lock of hair from her face, and plants a kiss on my cheek—my first kiss. And before I can recover, the circle closes, and they whisk her away.

Mom’s looking at me now—one of those looks.

“What?” I say.

“Nothing,” she says, a gleam in her eye.

I’m relieved she doesn’t say more.

“Can we go now?” she asks one of the agents.

“In just a moment. There’s someone who wants to speak with your son.” The agent directs us to a train car that’s parked on the tracks near the end of the platform.

We see a lone silhouette stalking around inside.

My mother and I exchange a questioning look.

I’m directed toward the door. My mom starts to follow when the agent holds up a hand. “Just Kyle, if you wouldn’t mind, ma’am.”

My mom starts to protest but I shake my head. “I’ll be fine. The trouble’s over.”

The man in the train is tall and intimidating. He wears a dark suit.

“They said you wanted to talk with me?” I say. “Are you with the FBI or CIA or something?”

He chuckles to himself. “Neither, son. But that’s where my team trains before they’re promoted.” He hands me my backpack.

“You found it!” I say.

The man nods. “We also read the report inside.”

I’m about to look away, ashamed at the twenty pages of problems. But I realize I’m not ashamed. Not anymore. I think about the five lines in the report that saved me today. Saved Natalia. Maybe even saved everyone. I look the man directly in the eye.

“Yeah? So what?” It sounds edgier than I intend, particularly since I am talking to some kind of superagent.

He smiles. “It was interesting reading. We like the way you think—and the way you handled yourself out there today. You’ve got rare talents.”

I stand there quietly, not disagreeing.

“So, when you’re ready, and if you’re willing,” he continues, “we just might have some work for you from time to time…”

I like the sound of that. I like it a lot.

FIRST PARTY BACK

By Emmy Laybourne

Drew is not three steps inside the door when a redheaded girl slams into him. She’s got two full keg cups in her hands. “Watch it,” she says. Then she sees it’s him and drops her eyes. “Sorry.”

Already the music and the stench of beer and sweat is hitting him hard. Already he wishes he stayed home.

“Come on,” Malik hollers, pulling Drew by the arm toward the back of the house. Malik is Drew’s only remaining close friend.

Drew recognizes the house—sort of—from junior year.

It’s a big brick house up on a hill, back a good ways off the road. The girl who lives here, Meghan, throws a couple parties every year. She brags she’s never been busted, even though the parties always get out of control. One time she let someone burn one of their lawn chairs.

“Drew!” Big Chris shouts. He toasts Drew across the crowded room, and beer sloshes out of his cup. If Big Chris is here, Skinny Chris is here somewhere, too. They’re both on the football team with Drew and Malik.

The whole team’s probably here, Drew thinks.

They’ll act cool, but they’ll be watching him. They all know he hasn’t been to a party since fall. And it’s April now.

Malik pushes through a crowd of juniors blocking the hallway into the kitchen, pulling Drew behind. They’re all too close, shouting and pushing each other. Drew doesn’t want to be jostled and doesn’t want to be hedged in. He pushes past the last few, maybe a bit too roughly, and finds himself in the kitchen.

There’s maybe ten, fifteen kids in there. He doesn’t know any of them. Wait, does he? His breath is coming so fast it’s hard to make himself calm down and look around.

This is a mistake, Drew thinks.

“This party’s all right, huh?” Malik asks. Drew nods, fakes a smile. He’ll wait until Malik gets drunk, then he’ll sneak away. Call a Lyft.

The kitchen’s fancy. Black marble countertops, gleaming white cabinets, pendant lights kids keep knocking their heads on. There’s Cheetos spilled on the island, and a big bowl of punch with a big, soft lump of orange sherbet in it. Somehow that sherbet makes Drew sad for Meghan. Like, she pretends to be cool—the Montvale, New Jersey, version of hard core—but she still bought a tub of ice cream to make her party nice.

Malik leads Drew over to the island. “Hey, Andre! Look who I got!”

Malik’s friend Andre turns from where he’s leaning on the back counter. He’s handsome, with dark brown skin and an ’80s-style fade. A big grin breaks over his face. “No shit!” Andre says. He brings Drew in close, claps him on the back. “Good on you, man.”

If he notices that Drew’s sweating, he doesn’t let on.

“Oh yeah,” Malik says. “We’re gonna have a good time tonight! Drew’s back!”

The floor is tacky with spilled punch. Drew lifts his sneakers one at a time.

Malik turns to two girls Drew doesn’t know standing close together at the punch bowl. Pascack Hills High is big. Over eight hundred kids. Drew doesn’t know them all, not even close. And these girls look like sophomores, anyway.

“This spiked yet?” Malik asks the girls.

They’re okay-looking.

“I don’t know, but I like it,” one of them says. She juts her chin out at Malik, trying to look tough.

She’s wearing dark lipstick and her already-white skin is powdered into extreme paleness and there’s a cross on a velvet ribbon at her throat. Her hair looks newly dyed black, and her clothes are all black, but very dark black—not faded at all. Like maybe she decided to try being a Goth the day before yesterday.

This is reinforced by the fact that her friend is dressed regular. She’s wearing a pale blue T-shirt with lace sleeves and jeans shorts. She seems uncomfortable, like she doesn’t really know what to think about this new way her friend is dressing—this is what Drew thinks as Malik throws his arms around the two girls.

“How many stars would you give the punch? Be honest,” Malik says. “Me and my friend do not drink second-class punch.”

“I give it four stars for taste, and five stars for color, because I love orange,” the Goth says. She says it like she thinks this could maybe be a sexy thing to say.

Drew sees Andre shoot Malik a raised-eyebrow look—really? That girl? But Malik ignores him. Malik has bad luck with girls, mostly because he’s not very good-looking.

If looks matched a person’s insides, Malik would be handsome as hell, but that’s not how it goes. He’s large, like most football players, but his light brown skin is badly scarred from acne and his teeth could use some work. But Malik is kind, he’s deep-down, to-the-bone kind, so maybe the Goth sees that. Or maybe she just knows he’s a senior who’s fairly popular.

Whatever the reason, she’s flirting with him and he’s going with it.

“Well, I like orange, too. I’m in,” Malik says. “What are your names, anyway?”

“I’m Kaitlyn and that’s Eve,” she says, pointing her punch cup toward the regular-dressed girl. Eve rolls her eyes, like the whole thing is too embarrassing.

“Nice to meet you, ladies. I’m Malik and these two losers are Drew and Andre,” Malik says as he scoops out two cups of punch. There’s no ladle. He just dips the cups into the frothy punch and they come up dripping and slimy.

“Here, Drew,” Malik says.

“Thanks, man,” Drew says. He takes the punch and drinks it down. It tastes like a boozy Creamsicle.

“That’s the way,” Andre says.

Skinny Chris and this a-hole Paul from Drew’s History class come in from the patio. They’ve got cans of beer.

“Drew!” They both shout.

Jesus, it’s not like he never sees anyone. He goes to school every day. Baseball practice every afternoon. Everyone’s making out like he’s some kind of recluse.

“Drew Nathanson in the house! Party gonna get real!” Skinny Chris hollers, cupping his hands around his mouth. Drew wishes he’d shut up.

Two senior girls on the other side of the room look over at Drew and exchange a whisper. He’s used to that.

Skinny Chris grabs a bottle opener from the counter and pulls out the corkscrew thing.

“Wanna shotgun a beer?” he asks Drew. “I’ll poke the hole for you.”

“I got it, I got it,” Paul says, snatching the beer from Skinny Chris. Paul’s got a real ferrety face. Thick curly blond hair that looks like a carpet. Before Drew can say no, he doesn’t want a beer, Paul jams the corkscrew into the beer can.

It slips and he gashes his arm.

There’s blood, and Kaitlyn screams.

The blood drips onto the floor. Drew feels his legs going out from under him.

“I’m fine!” Paul says. “Just a flesh wound.”

He holds up his arm to the sophomore girls. It’s a shallow cut. Nothing much but there’s blood on the white tile floor and it’s mixing with some spilled beer and Drew’s gonna pass out unless he gets out of the damn kitchen right now.

He pushes past the kids near the glass doors and is out into the air.

The April air is cool and crisp. Drew drags in big gulps of it.

Malik grabs Drew’s arm.

“It’s okay,” he says. “You’re all right.”

“I think I should go,” Drew says.

He’s sweaty, he realizes. There’s cold sweat trickling down from his armpits.

“Look, if it’s too much, we’ll go, but I really think, if you just have a drink or two, talk to a couple girls—it’s going to be good for you.”

“I don’t know,” Drew says. Something is rising up in his gut. Not bile, but the need to tell Malik about it—what it was like to lose control of the car. How terrifying it was—one second he was going fast on Harper Street, the windshield wipers swiping in time to the music and Drew singing along, and the next second the wheel just jerked out of his hands, the car sliding on the wet leaves … and then the impact.

The terrible thump.

The old man’s body reeling away from the car.

The blood on the windshield, smearing with each swipe.

“Come on, man,” Malik says. His face is wide open. Hopeful. Encouraging. “You with me?”

Drew looks off, over toward the kids fooling around near the pool.

He can’t open up about the accident. Not now, obviously, and not ever. If Drew talks about it, he might come fully apart. He might die. That’s how Drew feels. He might go insane or explode. Something like that.

He watches the kids by the pool until his throat loosens up enough to talk. Malik waits, pretending to look down at the road below the lawn.

If you don’t go back in there now, you’ll never go back, Drew tells himself.

He makes himself say, “Okay.”

Malik claps his hand onto Drew’s shoulder.

“Just make it till midnight,” Malik says. “You can do that, right? It’s just a couple hours.”

“Okay.”

They walk back toward the house.

Drew can tell Paul’s talking about him inside, because through the glass door he can see that Kaitlyn’s and Eve’s eyes are wide with horror and intrigue, and Paul’s got his arms up like he’s driving a car.

Drew can see his reflection in the sliding glass door, too. He looks wan, and there are dark circles under his eyes. Drew’s already pretty pale. But in the harsh light coming off the deck, he looks completely bleached out.

Paul’s got his back to the sliding door, doesn’t know Drew and Malik are coming back in. The girl Eve reaches out and touches Paul on the arm, warning him.

“We’re back!” Malik says, before he even gets the door open.

It’s awkward for a second, and Drew makes himself say, “So, did you a-holes leave any punch?”

They all laugh hard, like that’s just such a super-funny thing to say.

Then Drew drinks four cups of punch, two beers, and one shot of vodka.

Amy Legrange comes in at some point when Drew is getting shitfaced. She smells just like Drew remembers her. Vanilla and soap. She says hey. Puts her arm around him. Asks if he’s doing okay.

She does it all with a proprietary air, letting the sophomore girls know that Drew was hers once upon a time.

Drew tells her he’s all right. He uses the fewest words possible. He pointedly does not ask how she is.

He cannot let himself reach out to her, because if they start to talk, he might say too much. Her kindness is like a warm light, and he does not want to be melted.

She stays for a moment, and then her friend Rachel comes and takes her away. Rachel hates Drew because blah blah blah he’s so closed off and whatever else girls say to comfort each other when they get dumped.

The sophomore girl Eve watches all this go down with wide, stoned eyes, like it’s a documentary about seniors on TV. She’s got a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and she looks too drunk now. She should quit.

Meanwhile, Malik is working his charms on Kaitlyn. He’s making her laugh, telling her about the time he accidentally gave a waitress a twenty-dollar tip and the waitress cried, she was so happy, so Malik couldn’t ask her for it back.

Drew checks his phone. It’s 10:53 P.M.

Drew drains the dregs of the punch bowl, making his friends laugh.

He pretends he doesn’t see Malik and Andre consulting silently about him.

He okay? Andre says with a nod and raised hands. Malik nods back, gives a thumbs-up.

If only.

Drew’s drunk enough now that his vision of the room is real slippery.

Outside, kids started throwing each other in the pool. Now they’ve come in, wet and steaming. There’s water all over the floor, and the kids are sliding, crashing into each other.

Uneasiness rises in Drew’s chest—the slamming and the screeching.

“Is it midnight yet?” he turns to say to Malik, only Malik seems to be gone. So is Kaitlyn. So’s Eve.

Three screaming kids CRASH to the floor.

Drew jumps. His nerves are shredded. It doesn’t matter that he’s drunk. It doesn’t make it go away—the way he is now.

He makes for the glass door.

Screw midnight, he thinks.

Just as he approaches, a wet body SLAMS into the glass door.

Drew’s heart seizes up in his chest. He jumps back, and his feet go out from under him and he falls to the floor.

Someone’s laughing at him. He looks around and locates the source of the laugh. It’s Paul. Ferret-faced Paul, watching him from across the kitchen, sitting over in the breakfast nook, laughing.

Then Drew is punching Paul.

Paul’s braces cut Drew’s knuckles. They also shred the inside of Paul’s mouth. Now there’s blood on Drew’s hand.

No other fluid feels the same on the hands as blood.

Drew remembers how it felt on the night. The way the old man bled from the gash on his head.

Drew tries to punch the memory away.

Meghan screeches, pulling Drew off Paul. Paul’s crying.

“Not in the house, you asshole!” she screams. “If you want to beat each other up, take it outside!”

Drew looks at her.

“Sorry,” he says.

He looks at the blood on his fist.

“Sorry,” he says to Paul, who hunches away from him, shielding his face.

“Fuckin’ jerk,” Paul says. His words come out garbled.

He’s gonna need stitches.

Drew looks at his hand. The skin over his knuckles is abraded and slick new skin shines underneath. There’s blood welling up at the edges. He feels nothing. It’s like in football practice. He can hit and hit, and get hit back, and he feels nothing. It’s why he likes football.

Drew goes to the bathroom to wash his hands. The cold water feels good in that it stings like hell. He doesn’t let himself look at his reflection. He sees that sickly, screwed-up kid in the mirror. He doesn’t want to look straight at him.

If he did, he’d shout at him: You freaking loser. You screwed it all up.

You killed a man.

You’re a freaking murderer.

Drew looks anywhere in that stupid bathroom except the mirror. The gray tile floor. The white marble sink. The high-quality paper hand towels in a pile on the counter, all half wetted through. The fancy soap in a glass pump dispenser.

Tears are coming, and he’s starting to shake.

He puts his hand in his back pocket and slips his finger into his wallet.

There’s a letter in there that he keeps because it comforts him to touch it.

It’s from Julia Townsend, the wife of Harold Townsend, the man he killed.

She says that she forgives him. That Harold was in the Vietnam War. That he killed civilians. It haunted him. And that when he came back, he vowed to help people as much as he could.

Julia Townsend writes that once, Harold saved a woman’s life by giving her the Heimlich maneuver in a restaurant.

She says if he wants to, Drew can be the kind of hero Harold turned out to be.

The paper is bent awkwardly to fit into his wallet, and he’s touched it so many times the edges are starting to disintegrate. If he opened it now, it would have holes shot through where the folds lie.

Drew turns the handle marked COLD and splashes his face with water.

There are pristine white bath towels stacked on a little gleaming chrome cart. He takes one and presses his face into it.

Drew glances at himself in the mirror. He sees his eyes, bleak and desperate, ringed with red. Dark brown circles under them, like bruises. His straight, dark hair flopping in his eyes but not long enough to cover them completely. His mouth drawn tight, lips pressed into a colorless line.

“Just get out of here,” he says to himself.

The lights go out.

It’s a blackout or something. They’ve blown a fuse. Out in the hall, kids start to shriek.

Drew turns on the flashlight on his phone.

It’s 11:28 P.M.

Everyone is yelling, all excited about the blackout.

Maybe Meghan did it on purpose, cut the lights to make the party memorable. Or maybe she just wants everyone to go home.

Drew exits the bathroom, and a girl pushes in past him grabbing her crotch, like she’s gonna pee in her pants.

The party is now lit by the strobing arcs of phone flashlights.

Drew wishes he could find Malik.

His hand hurts and he can feel blood trickling down his pointer finger. He doesn’t feel that drunk anymore. He just wants to leave.

There’s crying coming from the room to his left.

He wants to leave, but the girl’s crying is pitiful. She sounds scared.

It’s a laundry room, he sees. Of course, it’s a super-nice laundry room. In the light from his phone, he can make out two big machines and a white table for folding laundry and a sink, and in the corner there’s a wheeled, canvas-sided laundry cart.

Next to that there’s a girl sitting, leaning against the wall. He can only see her legs and her sneakers. Keds.

“Hey,” Drew says. “You okay?”

He draws close and the smell of vomit hits him.

It’s Eve, the sophomore.

“Hey,” he says.

“I threw up,” she says. Drew can see this. The girl is covered in puke. It looks like she bent over and vomited right into her own lap.

“It happens,” he says.

She’s crying harder. “Don’t tell Kaitlyn,” she begs. “She’ll be so mad.”

Drew turns to go get her a washcloth.

“Don’t go!” Eve cries. “Please!”

“Okay,” he says.

“I can’t go home like this,” she wails. “My parents are so strict. They’ll kill me.”

Eve has big brown eyes that are pleading with him, glistening with tears. Her thin blonde hair hangs in a limp ponytail. The little bits that have escaped are stuck to her face and neck with sweat.

“Okay,” Drew says. He’s trying his best. “How about I find Kaitlyn, then?”

Eve begins to cry again. “She’s going to be so mad. She’ll say I always ruin everything.”

Drew looks down at her shadowed form.

“I’m sure she’ll be nice,” he says.

Eve doesn’t answer, just cries with her face pressed to the wall. Very dramatic.

“Let me get you a Coke,” Drew says. “It always helps.”

Drew leaves despite her protests. He walks toward the kitchen, pushing past phone-lit, giggling drunk people.

In the kitchen, he keeps his feet down so he won’t slide too much. He skates over to the counter where there are some cases of soda. He takes two Cokes—one for Eve, one for him.

“Eve?” he asks.

Eve has passed out. She’s slid down the wall and now she’s lying slumped on the floor. Her head’s lolled to the left.

“You okay?” he asks. He sets the sodas down on the dryer and shines his flashlight on her. Can’t really see.

He shoves the laundry cart out of the way with his foot.

“Hey,” he says. He shines the light from his phone right on her face. There’s a rivulet of bright green bile coming out of her mouth, going down her neck and disappearing into the mess on the front of her shirt.

Drew’s heart is hammering.

He leans forward and puts two fingers on her neck. Her skin is cold, clammy.

“Help!” he cries out.

She’s breathing, but she looks green. She looks not right.

“I need help in here. There’s a girl passed out,” he calls.

He gets up, slipping a little. Goes to the door.

He grabs a girl walking by.

“Find Meghan,” he says. “It’s important.”

Drew puts his hands to his face, distressed. He gets a grip on his hair and realizes he’s smearing something wet in his hair. Blood from his hand. His knees go soft.

“Malik!” he shouts into the hallway. “Malik! Kaitlyn! Eve’s really sick!”

He kneels again at Eve’s feet. Maybe he should pull her out of here. The cart is in the way. Maybe he needs a cold cloth. Maybe if he throws ice water on her she’ll wake up.

“What the fuck, Drew?” Meghan says. She’s in the doorway.

“We need to call 911,” Drew says.

“No way,” she says.

“This girl Eve is really sick. We need to call an ambulance.”

“I would get in so much trouble,” she says.

“Malik!” Drew shouts again.

“Stop shouting!” Meghan says. “Can you please calm down?”

Drew can’t calm down. He is fully adrenalized. He feels like his heart is about to explode.

“She’s really sick—”

Meghan pushes past Drew to stand over Eve. Other kids have gathered to see what the shouting is about. Roving lights swarm in the room; it’s all lit up from their phones. He wonders if someone is recording the scene.

“She’s just passed out,” Meghan says. “She’s okay.”

“What’s up, hon?” says Dmitri Miller. He’s Meghan’s boyfriend, and he’s in college.

“Drew’s freaking out over some girl who threw up,” Meghan says.

“We should call 911,” Drew says.

There’s a flurry of talking. Everyone’s got an opinion.

“Don’t be an asshole, man. Don’t ruin the party for everyone,” Dmitri says. He pulls Drew up and gets in his face. His breath smells like garlic and beer. “Why you gotta ruin the party, man?”

Drew pushes out of Dmitri’s grip. He pushes past Meghan and bends over Eve.

“What are you doing?” Meghan says.

“What’s your problem, man?” Dmitri says behind him.

“I’m just going to take her outside,” Drew says.

“That’s a good idea,” someone says. “The cold air might help her wake up.”

Drew gets his arms under Eve’s body and lifts. She’s very light. She weighs maybe as much as an armful of laundry.

A short girl holds a light so he can see his way down the hall and out through the front. She seems like the type of girl who loves to be helpful.

As they pass through, Drew sees the party has destroyed the living room. Beer cans and crushed cups are everywhere. Chips ground into the sofa cushions. A candle melted all over the coffee table, wax dripping down to the rug.

The girl opens the front door.

Drew carries Eve outside. It’s lighter outside than it was inside. Clouds are lit up from behind by moonlight, casting a silver glow onto the lawn. The driveway is cluttered with cars, some people parked on the grass.

Drew can see Malik’s old red Toyota Camry through the trees, way down on the street where they left it. So at least Drew knows Malik is still at the party.

Drew sets Eve down on the grass, wet now with the first dew of the nighttime.

“What can I do?” the helpful girl asks. Behind her, the front door gapes open and the sound of yelling and laughing and partying spills into the night.

“Can you get me a wet washcloth?” Drew asks.

“Of course,” she says.

As soon as she’s inside, Drew takes out his phone and calls 911.

The ambulance is escorted by two cop cars. The party breaks up, everyone screaming and running out the back.

Meghan comes out and curses at him. She says he’s ruined everything and why does he have to be such a Boy Scout and what the hell is wrong with him anyway and everyone’s going to hate him and whatever sympathy people felt for him because of the fucking accident is going to be gone after this. He’s gonna be hated and he should know it.

Dmitri comes out and shouts over and over in Drew’s face, “You’re an asshole! You’re an asshole!” Drew keeps his eyes on Eve, who lies still on the grass, her skin a sickly green in the moonlight.

The paramedics drive the ambulance right over the grass, tearing up huge ruts in the rich, smooth lawn. Meghan shrieks about the grass. She dissolves in tears in Dmitri’s arms.

Malik and Kaitlyn have finally materialized.

“Her parents are going to kill her,” Kaitlyn screams at Drew. “They’re very religious, you don’t understand!”

“It’s all right. Everyone just calm down,” Malik says.

“You don’t get it. She’s dead! She’s as good as dead!” Kaitlyn says.

Drew wants to shut his hands over his ears, but the paramedics have figured out he’s the one who called them, and now one of them, a young, tall Latino man with terrible coffee breath, is up in Drew’s face, asking him questions. The other paramedic, an older white guy wearing a baseball cap, is at the ambulance, bringing out a stretcher.

Coffee Breath puts his hand on Drew’s arm, trying to get him to focus.

Has she done any drugs?

How much did she have to drink?

What’s her name?

Drew turns to Kaitlyn for Eve’s last name.

Kaitlyn won’t say. She turns her head away, shaking, she’s crying so hard.

“Miss, this girl’s life is in danger. Cut the nonsense. We need her name right now!” Coffee Breath says.

“Robbins,” Kaitlyn says, her voice strangled. “Eve Robbins.”

“I’m ready,” the older paramedic says. Coffee Breath goes over. Together, they lift Eve onto the stretcher. They handle her limp, light body efficiently, but with care. The paramedics buckle her down, then raise the stretcher so Eve’s body is at hip height and push her a short distance down the lawn to the ambulance.

Drew trails behind the stretcher. Somehow he doesn’t want to let Eve out of his sight.

Coffee Breath is talking into a walkie-talkie as they load the stretcher into the ambulance, telling the hospital they’ve got a girl, possible alcohol poisoning, possible drug OD. He gives them her name.

The other paramedic climbs in the back, starts locking the stretcher in place.

“Is she going to be okay?” Drew can’t keep himself from asking.

The paramedic takes off his baseball cap and scratches at his stubbly white hair.

“Yeah, I think so. But only because you called. You did a good thing, son.” He waves dismissively toward everyone else on the lawn. “Don’t let these shit-for-brains give you any grief about it.”

Kaitlyn stands there sobbing, watching as the ambulance drives down over the grass. Malik tries to put his arm around her.

“Don’t touch me!” she screams. “You and your friend ruined everything!”

Kaitlyn levels a glare at Drew. Her extreme black eye makeup is now running in two gray streams down her face. “Eve will never forgive you.”

“Whatever,” Drew says. He’s suddenly exhausted.

Most of the cops are inside but one is out on the lawn, writing down the license plates of the cars.

“Let’s get out of here,” Malik says.

Drew looks over at the cop. She’s not paying them any attention.

They walk down the lawn toward the street, where Malik’s car is waiting. Drew expects at any second that the cop will tell them to stop and then take down their names, but no one calls out.

They drive for a while.

“I’m sorry,” Malik says. “We went off and were kind of fooling around, but then she got going on this thing about her parents getting divorced and she started crying and I didn’t know what to do.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Drew says.

“She just kept talking and crying and I didn’t wanna just quit on her, but I knew you were probably looking for me. I’m really sorry, man.”

“It’s fine.”

They pass the Dairy Queen. Then the strip mall where Bowl-A-Rama used to be. Now it’s a shooting range called Longshots. Malik keeps stealing glances at Drew, making sure he’s okay.

“It was good you called 911. If anyone gives you any shit for it, I’m going to tell them what the paramedic said.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does, though,” Malik insists.

They drive some more. The streetlamps are on. There are hardly any cars on the road. It’s 12:33. He made it to midnight and then some.

“Drew…,” Malik says.

Malik doesn’t say anything else. Drew’s name just hangs there. Malik doesn’t know how to finish the sentence.

Drew looks over at his best friend, sitting there, driving him home. Driving him home like he has all year, ever since the accident.

“Malik,” Drew says. His voice is tight and constrained. “Can I tell you something?”

Tears are rising in his eyes. The streetlights get halos on them.

“Of course, man. Anything,” his best friend says.

“Can I tell you about the accident?” he chokes out.

“Of course.”

Malik pulls the car onto a side street.

Drew starts to talk.

The story spills out of him. Bursts out. He doesn’t leave out a thing. Tells Malik about the sound of the impact, how the old man’s blood splattered on the hood of the car, the smell of it. How Drew went to the funeral with his parents, but they all stood off behind a tree while the mourners buried Mr. Townsend. He had grandchildren, three girls standing by the grave wearing dark dresses, holding their parents’ hands.

Drew’s body shakes as he talks. He’s aware his voice is too loud in the car and that he’s sobbing, gasping to get air so he can push onward with the story.

He wants to tell Malik everything all at once. Get it over with.

“What kills me,” he says, “is I was happy. That’s why it happened. I was … I was singing. Singing to a song on the radio and then I killed a guy! A grandpa.”

Drew shakes and sobs. He presses the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.

He’s been living for so long with the fear of what anyone will say about it that he suddenly doesn’t even want to hear what Malik will say. He wishes he would die, right now, before he can hear what Malik is about to say.

“Oh man, that sucks,” Malik says. His voice is quavering. “That’s fucking horrible and scary and I’m sorry and you’re the best. You can’t forget that.”

Then they’re hugging in the front seat. Across the gear shifter, seat belts in the way. It doesn’t really matter what Malik is saying, what matters is the awkward sideways hug. Feeling someone is there with him.

“It was an accident. It was just bad luck, Drew. It’s not your fault.”

“It was, though,” Drew says. “That’s the thing. It is my fault.”

Malik just hugs him more.

Drew cries into the shoulder of his best friend’s sweater.

After a while, Drew sits back. He wipes his face off on the sleeve of his shirt.

“You okay?” Malik asks.

Drew nods. “Thanks,” he says.

“That’s what I’m here for, man,” Malik says. He starts the car. “Tell you the truth, I was hoping you would cry all over me tonight.”

“Yeah, I knew you’d be into it,” Drew says. It feels good to joke.

“I didn’t want to get laid,” Malik says. “No, no, no. My goal was just to have my dumb-ass friend cry on me.”

“Well, I live to serve,” Drew says. Malik’s smiling now. They both are.

Drew knows his mom will be waiting up, reading a science-fiction paperback in the lamplight. When she asks how the party was, he’s going to tell her that he’s glad Malik made him go.

Drew will tell her it ended up being really good that he went.

WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION

By Jonathan Maberry

1.

It was the sixth time I’d been out on a real job, but the first time they let me fly solo.

And by “fly,” I mean they left me alone to guard a kid.

About every fifteen minutes, the kid—Carlo Palmieri—asked me the same question.

“Are they going to kill me?”

The exact same question. Like clockwork. And I had to staple the same reassuring smile onto my face and repeat the same thing I’d already told him a zillion times.

“Nobody wants to kill you, Carlo. Besides, I got you.”

2.

Seems like everything in my life comes with backstory. So, here’s the short version of why I’m telling an eleven-year-old kid I was going to keep someone from murdering him.

It’s my job. Sort of.

I mean, it will be my job. Currently it’s a trial run with overtones of probation. Right now everyone in the Quinn clan wants me to join the family business after school. They want me to go to college and all, but to study criminal justice and some other related stuff. Then, when I get my bachelor’s, there’s an open door for me to become Dylan Quinn, bodyguard.

And when I say “everyone,” I’m not joking. My family—Dad and his brother, Uncle Bear; Mom and her sister, Aunt Dix; and a couple of cousins—are all in the personal protection game. So’s my older sister, Ayleen. All bodyguards. Or, as one of our clients called us, thugs in suits.

Everyone in the family wears a little silver pin of the ancient Celtic emblem of the solar cross. The four stubby arms symbolize protection from all directions.

Thing is, everyone assumed being a bodyguard was what I wanted to do, too. I mean, I did all the martial arts and gun range stuff, all the lock picking and surveillance after-school classes. Blah blah blah. I don’t recall a single time in my whole life where anyone—any-freaking-one—asked me what I wanted to do. There’s that whole thing about assumptions. You know the joke.

What did I want to do?

Okay, so it’s not like I had that completely mapped out. There are a lot of moving parts in my head. I like to draw, and I’m pretty good at it. I like to sing, and if I had the time, maybe I’d audition for a school show. I know admiring girls isn’t a profession, but I bet I’d be good at it if it was. There are a lot of girls in drama club. Including Emily Ito. Actually, Emily Ito is why I started thinking about doing stage stuff in the first place. She has that triple threat combination of brains, a voice like Rihanna, and a face like … well, like Emily Ito.

My point is that being a bodyguard isn’t—and never has been—at the top of my list. Not even top five. Barely top ten, and even then it’s on the list because I kind of feel I’m supposed to want to be a bodyguard.

And look, here I was pretending to be a bodyguard for a kid that didn’t need to be guarded. Well, probably not.

His parents on the other hand? Yeah, they needed the whole Quinn family on the clock. Which they were.

The job we’d been working all summer was down in the islands. St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Maarten. I know, tough life, right? This gig has its perks, no doubt. Except that a lot of it is about as much fun as a root canal without the funny gas.

We were here protecting the Palmieri family. Yeah, those Palmieris. The ones with all those juicy millions. Nine hundred million, according to Forbes.

I had to spend some time just saying that to myself.

Nine. Hundred. Million. I like saying it slowly. Tasting it, because … that’s yummy.

The father, Antonio, a tech mogul. His company isn’t sexy like Apple or Samsung. They don’t make things you’d go out and buy. No, PalmTech makes parts for things. Without him, your smartphone would be kinda dumb. His wife, Sofia, had her own money from her mother’s design business. Absurd clothes for people who are so rich no one will tell them they look ridiculous. My ’rents and my aunt and uncle take turns watch-dogging them. Mr. Palmieri and his wife are the targets. Not of death threats, but for professional kidnapping.

That is a big, big business. Snatching rich folks, posting ransom demands, providing proof of life, and then handling everything like a business transaction. The kidnappers run it straight, and most of the time people like us are the ones delivering the money and returning with the hostage. Unless we can prevent the actual kidnapping, we generally don’t do heroic rescues with guns blazing and a lot of kung fu. That’s the movies.

In the real world, we have to—as Dad likes to say—be practical about the safety of our clients. Meaning gunfights and brawls aren’t the go-to choice. Besides, guys like Palmieri have kidnap insurance. Yes, that’s a thing.

Targeting the kids—Valeria, who was eighteen, a year older than me—and Carlo, was not a big factor for this job. Ayleen seemed to be spending most of her time shopping with Valeria. Ayleen loves to shop, but Valeria is apparently Olympic level. There were no actual threats—death or kidnapping or anything—aimed at Valeria. From what my sister says, it’s probably because no one, not even kidnappers, would want to subject themselves to her company, even for money.

“Valeria is the world’s single most annoying person,” Ayleen confided to me after the first night. “She’s either shopping, talking about shopping, shopping online, planning the shopping she’s going to do tomorrow, or complaining. Actually, maybe she complains more than she shops, but it’s close.”

“Complains about what?” I asked.

“Pick a topic. Any topic. She’ll have something negative to say about it. She could drive the Dalai Lama to start kicking puppies. Seriously, I’ve never seen a more spoiled, self-centered, narcississistic—”

“Narcissistic,” I corrected, but she ignored me.

“—poor little rich girl in my life,” concluded Ayleen. “If I didn’t think Mom and Dad would ground me for life, I’d feed her to the piranhas.”

“First,” I said, “you’re eighteen. They can’t ground you anymore.”

“Yeah? Try telling them that.”

“Second … there are no piranhas in St. Thomas.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, actually. Piranhas are freshwater fish from South America.”

“Well, then what kind of man-eating—or snotty-rich-girl-eating—fish do they have around here?”

“Barracudas?” I suggested. “Moray eels? They’re cranky. Some sharks…”

“Maybe one of them will eat Valeria and get her off my hands,” said Ayleen, “because about the only thing she’s good for is harassing retail employees or fish food.”

I’d met Valeria, and barracuda snacks or not, Ayleen had a point.

As for Carlo…? He’s just a kid.

The threatening letter the Palmieris received was the kind nobody took seriously. I mean, it was actually composed with words cut from magazines and catalogs. Like in old mystery movies. Like … who does that? I’m not even sure anyone ever actually did that. When Uncle Bear showed me the note, he was laughing. We all were. It read:

WE WANT TEN MILLION DOLLARS OR WE KILL THE BOY

SMALL UNMARKED BILLS

NO TRICKS NO COPS

No punctuation, either.

“Tell me what’s wrong with this?” asked Uncle Bear. His real name is Barry, but he looks like a shaved grizzly bear with a beer gut and a lot of Marine Corps tattoos. He’s also six five, and weighs way north of three hundred pounds. Trust me, a lot of it isn’t fat, though it looks like it is.

He held the note out in a plastic evidence sleeve. I read it, shrugged, handed it back.

“They don’t know what they’re doing?” I said.

Uncle Bear had a plastic drink stirrer between his teeth, and it bobbed as he chewed on it. “Tell me why.”

“Well, first, the whole cut-and-paste-from-actual-magazines thing,” I said. “All they needed to do was compose it on a laptop and print it out. If they were afraid that the cops could somehow identify the printer—”

“Which they mostly can’t do.”

“—which they mostly can’t do,” I agreed, “they could have gone to any Staples, or even a business center at any hotel, and printed it out. No one would ever be able to trace it.”

“Uh-huh. What else?”

“They didn’t give any instructions. They didn’t even say how they’d be in touch with instructions.”

“Uh-huh. And…?”

I shrugged. “Pros don’t make these mistakes. They call from burner phones, and they never use the same burner twice.”

Burners are disposable cell phones that come with prepaid minutes. Mom says that the biggest market share for them are people in organized crime, from small gangs to multinational crime families.

I nodded at the note. “But what if it’s real, though? What if someone tries to grab him? Not a pro, but some jerk?”

Uncle Bear laughed and punched me playfully on the arm. Which hurt. And left a bruise. “That’s where you come in, Dylan. They want him, they got to go through you. But don’t go all googly-eyed over it. No one’s going to try it. This is some whacko fan being cute. Heck, if he was a couple of years older and as much of a Goody Two-shoes, I’d think the kid sent it himself. Cry for attention and all that crap.”

“Carlo wouldn’t do that,” I said.

“Didn’t I just say he wouldn’t?” asked Uncle Bear, and took another swipe at me, which I evaded.

3.

All of that was three days ago. Now it was day four, and I was discovering just how exactly mind-numbingly dull bodyguard work was. I mean, seriously, I bet if I sat down with a bucket of popcorn and watched paint dry, I’d have loads more fun.

It was also stupid.

Carlo was on the island of St. Thomas for a photo shoot at Blackbeard’s Castle. Now … St. Thomas is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Like—total CGI beautiful. It’s in the Virgin Islands, in the Caribbean, and if you haven’t seen videos of it, go search YouTube. “OMG” doesn’t begin to describe it. Perfect temperature, perfect beaches, perfect everything. Even though Hurricane Irma kicked its butt pretty hard back in 2017, it bounced back, and is any sane person’s definition of amazing.

But … were we on the beach? No. Carlo burns easily, despite the forty pounds of sunscreen his mom makes him put on. Were we snorkeling? Nope. His dad was afraid of Carlo drowning.

Side note—Mr. Palmieri is afraid of pretty much everything when it comes to Carlo. Even though he’s seven years younger than Valeria, he’s the heir. It’s this ugly thing that everyone who reads about them on the Net knows, but nobody talks about. Valeria was born to Antonio Palmieri’s first wife, and that marriage ended in World War III. Valeria’s mom got some sleazy private investigator to take the wrong kind of pictures, and Mr. Palmieri had to fork over some serious bank during the divorce.

Weirdly, though, Valeria’s mom didn’t want to take her daughter with her. She pretty much dumped her and went off to spend her money. Which sucks, and more so because Mr. Palmieri seemed to take it out on Valeria. As if it was her fault that he slept around and got caught and then had to hand over all that money.

When Mr. Palmieri got married again—to a woman who wasn’t a whole lot older than his daughter is now—and they had a son, everything became about Carlo. He was the one Mr. Palmieri was always photographed with. Carlo was the one who’d inherit all those hundreds of millions.

I don’t know, maybe that’s why Valeria loved to shop so much. Spending money while she had it in case Carlo wasn’t generous when he got it all. Spending it now in case Carlo grew up to be a jerk like his dad. Spending it because it probably felt like buying love. Kind of sad, really.

News flash: Families suck.

So, the photo shoot at Blackbeard’s Castle was part of a big feature spread for a feature on Carlo’s dad. It was for—big surprise—Money magazine. The photographer wanted to put Carlo in a costume and take shots of him in a real pirate captain’s castle. Sounds fun, right? Not really. They made him look like the son of Captain Jack Sparrow. That’s wrong from the jump. Eyeliner, a bad wig, a fake mustache that looked like someone took some linguini, dyed it the color of dog poop, and pasted it to the kid’s upper lip. One of those three-corner hats and a plastic sword.

I was standing behind the cameraman, and the kid gives me a look that said this is where his therapy bill was starting. I tried to give him a reassuring smile, but I don’t think he was reassured at all.

So, there he is, standing by the big statue of Blackbeard, posed on a pile of decorative rocks they brought in for no reason I can imagine, holding a plastic sword, flanked by two girls who looked like they stepped out of a reality show about plastic implants. I mean, nothing that I could see on them had its origins in human DNA. Besides, Carlo’s eleven. Have a little perspective.

Blackbeard’s Castle is in the city of Charlotte Amalie. It’s right out in the open. If, say, a sniper wanted to punch Carlo’s ticket, he could have done it from anywhere. On the slopes around the castle, from behind any of the other statues on the island, even from a boat in the water.

A sniper, everyone told me, wasn’t likely. A snatch-and-grab team wasn’t likely, either. Aunt Dix ran all these computer projections on the statistical probabilities of anyone trying an abduction in public, on a small island like St. Thomas, in broad daylight. The odds were—and I’m being as precise as possible here—a bazillion to one. If there was even a whiff of a chance of that note being serious, they’d have canceled the photo shoot and Antonio Palmieri would probably have locked his heir in a bank vault.

Which is why I was working Carlo alone. The rest of the Dylan family were one radio call away. I was wired. All I had to do was say the right words and they’d come running. But … this was supposed to be what Uncle Bear called a “vacation gig.” Meaning keep my eyes open, but otherwise work on my tan.

Things don’t always work out the way people think.

4.

I was walking in a slow pattern of wide half circles, watching the area around the photo shoot when I saw a white SUV pull up in the visitors’ parking lot. Two guys got out, and I could see a third guy, smaller than the first two, seated behind the wheel. One of the two guys was white, the other black, but I didn’t like the looks of either. The white guy was tall and gangly, with basketball player muscles and a shaved head. The black guy was short and almost as wide as he was tall, with biceps like soccer balls and no trace of a smile. They both wore Oakleys and Hawaiian shirts over shorts. At a quick glance, they were a couple of blue-collar guys on vacation in the islands. Maybe some pro ballers chilling during the off-season.

I wasn’t taught to take quick glances, though.

My dad drilled me on making what he called the “twice-over.” A first glance to kind of capture a photo image of the person in my head so I could remember height, weight, race, hair and eye color, clothes, and age. Then a second look to do a Sherlock Holmes on the picture. What looks normal? What doesn’t? What’s supposed to be there and what’s out of place? Do it enough times, especially with Dad giving me looks of icy disapproval every time I screwed up, and you get good at it. Later, it becomes like a game. Other kids at parties think it’s a magic trick. So do girls, and I’m seriously okay with anything that makes me interesting to girls. Juggling, I’ve found, doesn’t get me very far.

So, I’m scoping these two guys, and suddenly the details aren’t really jibing with the clothes.

First, both of their shirts were a size too big. They also wore the shirts unbuttoned over tank tops, and with the breeze, they used their right hands to press the shirt flaps against their stomachs. Who bothers to do that on a tropical island? It’s ninety-three degrees. A little breeze feels good.

But it wasn’t really that. It was the fact that they used their right hands.

Here’s the logic. Most people are right-handed. When we’re in public, there’s always a chance we’re going to open a door, shake hands, whatever. You do that with your right hand, which means you do maintenance stuff like carrying a briefcase with your left. The dominant hand is almost always free. So why were both of these guys holding their shirt flaps closed with their rights? How come neither of them bothered to button their shirt? How come they were both wearing oversized shirts?

Say it with me.

Guns.

That was half of it.

The other half was the way they approached. The photo shoot had already gathered a crowd of tourists. Sure, that happens; you expect it. But rubberneckers kind of wander in. They don’t get out of a car and head straight for the shoot. Why would they? How would they know about it? Carlo’s not Jennifer Lawrence in a bikini. He’s an eleven-year-old boy.

Whose parents are sick rich.

The last thing was where these guys were looking while they approached. They looked at the crowd, they looked at the paths to and from the statue, they looked at me, they looked at the pool. They looked everywhere but at Carlo.

I understood that. It’s what scared me.

Once you zero a target for a grab, you don’t need to look at him. If you’re moving toward him, you have the target in your peripheral. You look at witnesses, access, escape routes, obstacles. You look for security cameras and security personnel.

And you look for the bodyguard.

They saw me, and I saw their mouths tighten. I didn’t look like a tourist; I was dressed in a sport coat and khakis and had wire behind my ear. And I’m over six feet and built like a defensive tackle. I looked like what I was supposed to look like—hired muscle.

Most celebs don’t have a teenager for a bodyguard. It depends on the image the family wants to send, and it depends on whether they want their kid to have someone protecting them that they can relate to.

But that’s not to say I was flying without a wingman. Or without adult supervision.

Carlo had a regular bodyguard, too. One that worked for the family. He took a weekend course to be a “protection professional.”

Or, as those of us in the game call it: a mouth-breathing brain-dead dumbass.

His name was Ray. Did I not mention Ray? Now you know why.

Ray was a slouchy guy who was Mrs. Palmieri’s third or fourth cousin, or a nephew twice removed. Something like that. He got the job through nepotism, because that’s the only way a doofus like him was ever going to get this kind of work.

The two thugs spotted him, too. They separated. The tall guy peeled off and headed to where Ray stood, leaning against the wall of the castle, probably texting his girlfriend back in Milan. Something he’d been told about. The short guy veered my way.

Short Guy saw me watching him.

He smiled.

Smiling is not always a good sign.

“Carlo,” I called in a terse whisper, “jackrabbit. Now!”

Jackrabbit. That was today’s danger code. We’d gone over what he was supposed to do, what Ray was supposed to do, and what I was supposed to do when that word was used.

It’s a simple, smart, safe, easy-to-follow plan.

Carlo looked at me with wide brown eyes and then blinked twice with a total lack of comprehension.

He’s a good kid, like I said. Really nice. But he is dumb as a box of hammers. Parents are geniuses. This kid can’t color inside the lines.

Tall Guy rattled off something in Italian that was way too fast for me to understand. I know exactly enough Italian to decipher the menu at Olive Garden. These guys weren’t ordering endless breadsticks.

Short Guy grunted acknowledgment and ran straight at me.

Ran.

He was still pressing his shirt closed. This wasn’t a hit.

It was a grab.

That was how the whole day changed.

If they had pulled guns right there, it would have been over. Short Guy was twenty feet from me, Tall Guy was twenty feet from Ray, and Carlo was between us. With a gun at that distance, there are only two things I could do: jack and squat.

Instead, Short Guy rushed me.

I think he was reading the scene from an adult perspective. Ray, the family bodyguard, has been with the Palmieris for years, so they’d know everything about him. They’d know he was a doofus. On the other hand, the new-hire bodyguard looks like a kid to them. Which I am. So, Short Guy figures, why pull a gun? Why make the witness statements more interesting?

Instead he comes at me, a nasty smile breaking out on his face. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Tall Guy grab Ray by the shirt and shove him out of sight around the curving face of the castle wall. The tourists murmured. Not yelled, not screamed. There was a camera and a professional camera crew, and this looked like the sort of thing you’d see in movies. They probably had no idea this was what it was. Or they thought it was part of the shoot.

“Shoot” being an unfortunate word, come to think of it.

I have to admit, though, that as soon as these guys made the scene my heart rate jumped to something like machine gun fire and sweat broke out all over my body. I’m tough, sure, but definitely human, and this was scary as hell.

Uncle Bear once told me, “Let your body get scared, young’un. Can’t help that. But keep your foot on the gas and the radio turned all the way up. After that it’s all rock ’n’ roll.” Not exactly Zen, but the meaning stuck with me.

Short Guy reached for me. And that was what I was hoping for.

I’m big for my age—six feet two and change, and I clock in at two oh five. Big enough. But in a fight it isn’t big that really matters. What matters is quick.

And I have a whole lot of quick.

It’s in the genes. The Quinns are all quick. Even Uncle Bear, who—like the grizzlies he resembles—is always faster than you think he’ll be.

Short Guy grabbed for my shirt, and I moved in on him, slapped his hand away and down, and hit him in the nose, the throat, the short ribs, the solar plexus, and the nose again. At that speed, you don’t go for a knockout blow. You make the guy feel like he’s fallen into an industrial dryer filled with rocks. You hit him from every possible direction, and you keep hitting him until the bright lights in his eyes go dull and that crap-eating smile he wears cracks apart and his knee joints turn to overcooked rigatoni. Then you hit him some more. You don’t want to ever find out if he’s a good fighter. You don’t want him to show you why he won a Golden Gloves or an MMA belt. You want him to be very surprised and filled with personal disappointment as he slides into unconsciousness. That’s the Quinn Family Method. It works for Mom and Dad, for Uncle Bear and Aunt Dix. It works for Ayleen, and now I was finding out if it was going to work for me.

Suddenly, Short Guy was falling before I was done hitting him.

But out of the corner of my eye, I saw that pretty much the same thing—in reverse—was happening to Ray. Tall Guy was handing Ray his butt. Raw, on a platter. The only thing keeping Ray from falling was the other guy holding him up so he could keep hitting him.

In my mind, Dad was saying, Don’t stop to admire your work. Move, move, move.

So I moved. I was running before Short Guy hit the deck. I tapped the earbud I wore and yelled the right code phrase to call in the cavalry. Today’s call phrase was “hopscotch,” and I yelled it ten times as I ran.

Carlo was still standing there, shocked and wide-eyed, no sign of understanding on his face, not even the beginning of a move toward safety. He even still held his plastic sword. The models had bolted; so had the photographer and most of the crowd. Not Carlo. Kids, y’know?

Ray did one thing right. While he was in the process of falling down and passing out, he managed to cling desperately to Tall Guy’s arm for about a half second. That was fine. It was long enough to tilt Tall Guy over. It kept him from using that half second to whip open the flaps of his Hawaiian shirt and pull his nine.

It gave me time to get there.

Tall Guy shook loose of Ray and saw me, evaluated me, looked past me to see his buddy lying in a gurgling heap, reevaluated me, and went for his gun.

By then I was there, by then I was in his face.

I jumped the last few feet, and while I was in the air, I pivoted and put every ounce of my body weight into a hook punch that should have decked this guy and given his whole family a headache for a month.

Tall Guy had game, though.

He spun with the punch, riding the force of it, turning all the way around and using that spin to put some real oomph behind a spinning backfist that very nearly took my head off. My left eye felt like it had been spooned out of my head.

The guy could hit. Uncle Bear would have been impressed.

Then Tall Guy tried to prove how really tough he was by throwing a few thousand other punches at me. It seriously sucks when someone tries to do to you what you just did to someone else. It steals your thunder.

I backpedaled, using forearms and shoulders and elbows to block the shots. It hurt, but punching all that bone had to hurt him, too. I didn’t wait to look for it in his eyes, though. I pivoted my hip and tagged the outside of his knee with a side-thrust kick.

And that was the ball game.

In the movies, guys shake off all sorts of kicks, but here’s the news: You don’t shake off a solid kick to your knee. You fall down and try to remember what the deductible is on your health plan, and hope you know a really good physical therapist.

I had to kick him again, though, because he realized that he could still use a gun with a sprained knee. He could not, as it turned out, use it while unconscious. The third time I kicked him wasn’t really necessary, but it felt really, really good.

I wheeled around, looking for Carlo, making sure he was still okay.

And that’s when I heard the roar of the car engine.

Carlo was looking past me. Staring. Then screaming.

All in a microsecond, and I turned to see the white SUV slam through a decorative chain barrier, smash aside a wire-mesh trash can, and race at Carlo at fifty miles an hour.

5.

There are moments when time seems to slow down. You read about that; you hear people who have been in combat or crisis talk about it. Time slowing down. I know that it’s probably some physiological thing. Adrenaline or something. This was the first time it ever happened to me.

I saw the car coming. It was a white blur but oddly slowed inside that strange envelope of a stalled microsecond. I saw Carlo, standing there, too scared and confused to run. Staring at the driver, his eyes wide and mouth open. His finger pointing. I saw Ray, the useless payroll bodyguard on his hands and knees, too dazed and hurt to get out of the way. His mouth was open, too, and I could hear him yelling at Carlo, telling him to run.

Ray knew he was going to die. Knew it. And he was using his last breath to warn the kid. That stabbed me right through the heart. It also made me furious.

And, bang, suddenly time caught up and then sped up, ripping apart the moment and making everything happen at once.

I was moving, running, scooping up one of the decorative rocks, pivoting, throwing it with all the power I could muster, like a shortstop throwing a runner out at first. Then hooking an arm around Carlo, snatching him off the ground, moving, moving, moving.

We fell, rolled, and I covered him with my body as if that could somehow protect him from the grinding horror of the wheels.

Sounds smashed together in the air.

Glass shattering.

A scream—weirdly high-pitched.

The awful sound of the car hitting Ray. Crushing him. Destroying him.

A fragment of silence.

And then the horrible whump as metal and plastic struck something that rang like a church bell.

I turned, still holding Carlo in my arms, and saw the car. The whole front end was wrapped with equal force around the statue of Captain Blackbeard. And once more time seemed frozen. Except that it wasn’t.

All of the moving parts had simply stopped moving.

Ray was gone, and I was thankful that I couldn’t see him beneath the totaled SUV. The crowds were ringed around us, staring in shock. Though, sick as it was, half of them had cell phones out and were taking photos or videos. Probably posting them to Twitter and Instagram or Snapchat.

Beside me, Carlo was staring at the wreck. At the hole in the windshield I’d punched with the rock. At the face we could both see. Bloody but visible. The third guy had been small, and I figured that’s why he was the driver and not part of the pickup team.

I was wrong. About that, and a lot of other things.

Carlo stared at the driver’s face. At a face he knew so well and should have been able to trust. He said a word. A name. “Valeria…”

But his sister was past the point of responding. Or explaining. Or … anything.

The kid put his face in his hands and began to cry.

6.

My uncle Bear came running. He arrived less than two minutes after I called.

The cops showed up right after. Then my folks. Then the Palmieris.

They tore Carlo away from me and held him as if he was going to suddenly fly off the planet. They barely looked at the car and did not, as far as I could tell, look at the face of the driver.

Valeria.

I stood with my family. Mom hugged me. Dad put his hand on my shoulder—which was a lot of emotion for him to show. Uncle Bear wrapped his arm around me and kissed the top of my head. He, of all of them, had lived in the skin I was in now. He’d been in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He leaned down and spoke very quietly so that only I heard him.

“You saved that kid’s life, Dylan. Hold on to that. You hold on to that because it’s going to matter. You’re gonna need it. Do you know why?”

I couldn’t speak at all. I just shook my head.

“’Cause you just crossed a line that most people never do. You killed someone. Yeah, I said it, and you have to hear it, because from right now that’s always going to be part of who you are, kiddo. You’re a killer.”

My mouth was dry as dust.

“But listen to me, Dylan, and you listen good,” continued Uncle Bear. “Being a killer isn’t the definition of who you are. It’s something you did. Something you had to do. You’re not a monster, and I know you’re going to have some long, bad nights thinking you are. But it’ll never be true. Not unless killing is something you get your jollies from. Or unless it doesn’t mean a dark thing to you, like taking out trash. If it ever turns into that, you go running, kid. You go talk to me or to someone, because it’ll mean some wiring’s come loose.”

“How … how…,” I began. Stopped. Tried again. Fighting tears. Fighting how big this all was. “How do you … let it be real? I mean, how—”

“I know what you mean, Dylan,” he said gently. We watched them cutting open the car to retrieve the body. Guys were there with jacks, too, to lift the car to get to Ray. “Here’s the thing. It’s all about perspective, it’s about the practical details, you dig? This was Valeria trying to get rid of Carlo so she’d inherit. Basic greed. The goons were probably someone she found out about online. She had money, so anything can be arranged. We’ll find out when we interrogate them. They’ll talk. There’s no such thing as honor among thieves. And for the record, she slipped something into Ayleen’s Diet Coke, and she’s still unconscious. Okay, but out. That’s on Valeria, too. The real villain here is Antonio. He’s a greedy, small-minded, vindictive piece of whale crap, and the things he did twisted his daughter into this shape. Doesn’t make her less a villain, but makes him complicit. That’s a fact.”

“But I—”

“You did what you were here to do. You stopped the bad guys and you saved a little kid’s life. And you did that after everyone, me included, told you this was a nothing gig and that it was just you out here with training wheels. We were wrong. Should have been one of us working the kid’s detail. So, we have to own this, too. Just like we got to own what this is going to do to you. That’s on us. We put you in this situation. But, Dylan … you stepped up. You saved the kid. Carlo’s maybe the only innocent in the whole freaky family. And you saved him. You hear me? You saved his life.”

“I killed Valeria.”

“Yeah,” he said, “you did. And she killed Ray and—here’s the truth of it—she killed herself by forcing you to do what you did. That’s on her.”

I pushed away from him and walked over to the car and watched them remove a slim, pretty girl who I’d killed. I could feel my heart shift, dropping to some lower place in my chest, and I knew that it would stay there. Forever.

Then I looked around. At my folks, seeing them as different people now. For all their experience in the trade, I’d now crossed a line and stood in a different place than they did. I was a different kind of person than they were. And I always would be.

I looked at the Palmieris. Hating them. Feeling sorry for them, too. I saw Carlo watching me from inside the circle of arms that held him. We stared at each other for a long time. He gave me a small, sad little smile, and I gave him one back. He, too, had moved into a different place. People had died for him. Maybe something like that wouldn’t matter much to his father, but I’m pretty sure I knew how it would affect Carlo. Sometimes apples do fall pretty far from the tree.

I’d killed someone.

I’d seen someone murdered, too.

I looked around. At the sky, the sea. The day was the same, but the world was different.

In five days, school was going to start. I’d have to go back and try to be me again. Dylan. High school kid. I wondered what Emily Ito would see when she looked at me? What would the other kids at school see?

I had no idea.

There was a breeze off the ocean, and I moved to where it would wash over me.

The only thing I knew for sure about things was that I now knew what I was going to do when I graduated. After high school, after college, I was going to go into the family business. Carlo was alive because I was here. The thought of what would have happened if I wasn’t here was so big, so ugly.

I was here, though.

Someone else might need me to be there, too. And someone else after that.

That was a broken thought. It was damage talking.

It was real, though. I could feel Uncle Bear watching me. Being afraid for me. Willing me to be okay with this.

I turned and nodded to him. I touched the little silver pin on my shirt. The family symbol. The solar cross. He saw me do it. I saw him wipe a tear from his eye with the back of his hand.

He touched his pin, too.

Mom and Dad didn’t see any of this. But, really, they weren’t meant to.

THE THINGS WE DON’T TALK ABOUT

By Stephen Ross

My mouth was full of dirt and I was going to die. I tried to scream and choked on the earth. I had been buried alive. I was going to die.

I woke up.

But I didn’t wake up.

I was caught between asleep and awake. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even open my eyes. My mind was severed. A fury of energy rippled through my body as I tried to shake myself fully awake. I could hear the bedsprings. I could hear a low, guttural cry crawl from my throat. I fought like an animal caught in a trap.

The alarm clock on my phone went off and I immediately opened my eyes.

Six. Daybreak slid through my bedroom window.

I sat up.

I was hyperventilating. My hands were numb. I hadn’t had sleep paralysis since I’d hit puberty.

My name is Dean. People call me Dee. You can call me whatever you want. This is a story about Birdy, me, and Frank; Birdy could run faster than me and Frank, and I would do anything for him. Anything.

It all began a week ago, when my girlfriend, Cristina, messaged me:

She didn’t reply.

I checked her status: Cristina is in a relationship with Frank.

I threw the phone at my bedroom wall. My mom called out something from another room. I needed to get my own place. I was eighteen. I had a job.

My relationship status: It’s complicated AF.

Frank.

Frank was dangerous, if you didn’t know him. He was a hurricane of heterosexual rage wrapped up in a tight body of flesh, blood, and bone. Intense. Silent. Staring. And if he didn’t know you, you sure didn’t want to mess with him. A kid called me a name once. Frank broke his nose. I loved his rage; it came from the same place as mine: rejection.

I had known Frank since grade school; same with Birdy. The three of us were veterans of the Education System of the United States of America, and we could run. We had been the stars of our high school track team. Glory days.

Frank and me had jobs at the Cooper Fulfillment Center, south on the I-65. Birdy was interning at the mayor’s office; after the summer, he was going to college to study political science. The high school yearbook had said he was the most likely to succeed. It had said nothing about Frank and me. We had gotten expelled.

Welcome to Divine, Alabama.

Welcome to my shitty life.

Headlamps lit up my bedroom wall through the open window, and I heard the tires of Birdy’s Volkswagen minivan on the short gravel driveway that led up to my mom’s house. We lived on the edge of town in a small three-bedroom; just the two of us. My dad walked out one day and never came back. I have zero interest in where he went.

Everyone knew a Birdy, everyone wanted to be with a Birdy; Birdy was the irresistible guy who made everything he did look easy. He lived effortlessly.

He climbed out of his minivan and walked over. He leaned in through the window.

“You doing anything?”

“Nope.”

Birdy had blue eyes like pale sapphires, and a welcoming smile, with full lips you always wanted to kiss.

“Get in the van. I have something important to tell you.”

“Okay.”

As I climbed out the window, he asked: “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” I said. Right or wrong, I’d have given Birdy my life. I’d have followed him to hell, if he’d asked. Yeah, you think crap like that when you’re in love with someone.

Birdy got back behind the wheel. I climbed in the passenger side. Frank sat between us. Birdy drove back out onto the road, and we headed away from town, out into the hill country.

We didn’t talk about Cristina.

“What’s the something important you wanted to tell me?”

“I’ll tell you when we get there,” Birdy said.

There was a knowing glance from Frank. His dark eyes held me. There was a conspiracy in the air.

Frank had beautiful eyes, dark eyes. Birdy and I were the same height. Frank was an inch shorter, and slimmer. His features were softer, and his dark hair shinier. He was the best-looking of the three of us; girls always fell for him. They fell into his eyes. We all did.

Frank reached for his pack of cigarettes on the dashboard. He had a fresh row of cuts down his left arm; maybe fifteen slices. There were things in our lives we didn’t talk about.

Frank smoked in our silence.

We drove for some time through the hill country, with its farms and farmhouses, and few people, and no cars on the road, and then Birdy turned off. The Volkswagen’s headlamps lit up a dark dirt trail into woodlands, and we drove along it. I didn’t know where we were going; there were a million of these turnoffs.

After a minute, we drove into a small clearing in the trees, and Birdy parked the minivan.

We climbed out.

In the moonlight, I realized we had parked next to a lake, a small lake you could skim a stone across. Lake Trentini, I figured.

Hidden in the back of the van under a blanket were two ancient television sets: boxy wooden cabinets on wooden legs, with big control knobs, and square-shaped screens, with speakers behind cloth. They were more furniture than appliance.

“They belonged to my grandmother,” Birdy explained. “One in the living room, one in the bedroom. She never turned them off.” Frank and I hauled them out.

In the light of the headlamps, we stood them side by side on the ground at the edge of the lake. One of the TVs was broken; there was a hole in it, its glass screen had been shattered, and inside you could see the broken rear shell of the cathode ray tube and shards of glass. The look of it burned into my brain. I would remember it later and think I had been looking inside my head.

Birdy was holding a beer bottle. Before we could take cover, he hurled the thing into the unbroken TV set. Its screen shattered on impact and the vacuum tube exploded. There was a bang like a gunshot. Glass sprayed out onto the ground, and a metallic cloud of smoke ascended into the night air.

Birdy asked me again, “Do you trust me?”

“You know I do.”

He had an odd look on his face. Nervousness. Excitement. It was as though he was about to tell me the biggest secret in the world.

But he never said a word.

He took a gun out of his jacket pocket.

He shot Frank in the head.

My mouth was full of dirt and I was going to die. I tried to scream and choked on the earth. I had been buried alive. I was going to die.

I woke up.

But I didn’t wake up.

Sleep paralysis.

The alarm clock on my phone went off and I immediately opened my eyes.

Six. Daybreak.

I sat up.

I was hyperventilating.

I took the bus.

I stared out the window.

I tried not to think about the lake.

Denial had always been my default.

I clocked in at the Cooper Fulfillment Center five minutes before my shift. I changed into running pants and a Foo Fighters T-shirt. I pulled on a fresh pair of low-cut socks and got into my red racing flats. Last on was an orange safety vest; we wore these so the guys riding the forklifts could see us as they thundered down the aisles. They rode those things like they were chariots.

Boxes.

My job was to collect an assignment sheet from the order desk; it listed a box size and one or more serial numbers. I’d get the box from a pile and fold the flat into the right dimensions. I’d then hunt down the serial numbers in the warehouse; they were for the objects that needed to go into the box: books, movies, food, clothes, toys, kitchen spatulas, garden gnomes, anything at all. I’d then take the box and its contents to the dispatch desk.

Everything I did was done on foot and fast. The fulfillment center was two million square feet of shelving and aisles. In my ten-hour shift, I probably walked and ran around forty kilometers—a kilometer is about one-sixth of a mile. When you’re a runner, you get used to metrics.

Birdy, Frank, and me were middle-distance runners; that’s how we met. After school, while everyone else hit their computer games or hung out at the mall, we would be out on the track: 800 meters, 1,500 meters, 3,000 meters.

On my first break, I sat outside the fulfillment center and waited for Frank; we had always timed our breaks to coincide.

Frank didn’t show up.

I ate a banana.

Of course he didn’t show up, and he wouldn’t. Ever.

The only word that had come out of my mouth since his last breath had been: “Why?” It had come out as barely a whisper.

Birdy had answered with: “It had to be done. There was no other way.” He could barely speak, either. He was trembling.

We said nothing else.

Birdy and I had carried Frank’s body around the lake and deep into the woods, with Birdy wearing a bicycle helmet with a lamp. A hole had already been dug; there was a shovel. I helped Birdy get Frank into the hole, and then watched as Birdy shoveled the dirt back into it.

There had been preparation.

I had none.

I hadn’t really been there at all.

I still wasn’t anywhere now.

I had no frame of reference for this shit.

I clocked out for the day and left the fulfillment center. I took the bus. It rained for the first time in three weeks.

The bus drove through town. It stopped and waited for a set of lights, and I saw Cristina on the sidewalk. She stood thirty feet away under an umbrella with her friend Sally. They didn’t see me.

Cristina was on her phone. She wasn’t talking; she was waiting for an answer. She was concerned. I guessed she had been leaving messages. Birdy had probably gotten one: Had he seen Frank? I wondered how he had replied, if at all.

“It had to be done. There was no other way.”

Frank had always come third, Birdy always first, me second; no matter how hard Frank and I had run, we couldn’t ever change that. And there we were last night: the first and the second carrying the third into the dark of the woods.

The bus dropped me a quarter mile from my house.

When I came in, my mom asked: “Have you seen Frank? His mother called. He never came home last night.”

I said I hadn’t seen him that day.

I didn’t lie.

It was Friday night, and we ate pasta for dinner; I had always gone to track meets on Saturdays, and the habit had stuck.

I ate hardly any of it.

After dinner, I put on a T-shirt and running pants. I laced up my blue runners, and I went out.

I ran on the road. There was no sidewalk at my end of town, just loose gravel. There was a full moon and no cars.

Running takes you to another place. I don’t mean so much that you physically go somewhere; I mean that it takes your thinking to another place. Call it what you want: calm, the zone, high, nirvana, or the I-simply-don’t-care.

I thought of heading into the woods and going to the Jellybean (an old cabin that Birdy, Frank, and I had made our own), but I had to pass by Frank’s house on the way, and I stopped there.

There was a police car parked in the driveway. A police officer was standing on the porch by the front door talking to Frank’s mom and dad. Frank’s dad owned an appliance store and had something to do with the church; everyone in town went. His mom looked worried. Frank hadn’t been at home for nearly twenty-four hours.

I woke up.

But I didn’t wake up.

Sleep paralysis; I fought against it.

In my dream, I had a mouth full of dirt, and I had been choking on it, swallowing, suffocating. And I had dreamed of the man with no face; it had been pecked to death, pecked away to bare wood.

I woke up proper.

I opened my eyes.

Daybreak. Ten minutes before six.

I remembered the rumor.

I took the bus.

I clocked in at the fulfillment center.

I collected an assignment sheet and an empty box. My brain was a box, too, and a lot of things had been put into it, but it wasn’t processing the information; the order was not being fulfilled.

My supervisor was talking to the police. I could see her through the glass window of her office. There were two policemen, guns at their belts. My supervisor was a nice woman. Divorced. Childless. She was telling the two officers that she hadn’t seen Frank; the box in my head could work that much out without hearing the words.

I ran.

The first item on my assignment sheet was forty-four aisles away; I ran toward it.

The man with no face was a picture pinned to the wall at the Jellybean. A picture of a man ripped out of a running magazine. Frank had used it as a dartboard. He’d thrown darts at it so often, the face had gone and all that was left was a circle of the bare wooden wall of the cabin behind it. I had been there when the first dart had gone in. The man in the picture had been Mr. Murray.

The rumor had been about Mr. Murray and Frank.

Shit.

I got hit by a chariot.

I spun in the air like a ten-year-old girl on the uneven bars. I landed on the concrete floor with a thud, and I stared up at the ceiling—it seemed so far away. There were skylights up there. There was daylight.

Mr. Murray had been our coach on the high school track team. He had been an Olympic champion. He taught us that movement is the body’s music; that when you run, it’s like a symphony of muscle, flesh, and bone.

Mr. Murray liked to touch you.

People made a fuss. They lifted me onto an empty pallet, and I was transported by forklift to the sick bay. My supervisor instructed me that the company doctor was ill. I would have to go and visit my family doctor. The company would pay.

I said I was fine.

She insisted. “You can’t tell just by looking at the surface of the skin what’s going on underneath.”

I took the bus into town.

I didn’t have a family doctor. I went instead to the town’s central civic building, the mayor’s office, where Birdy was interning. An election was coming up in a week, and Mayor Fulton’s picture was all over town; he was seeking a fifth term.

I stared at a poster of the man as I walked up: fat face, red cheeks. Underneath a photoshopped set of impossible teeth ran his campaign slogan:

A MAN IS A MAN, AND A WOMAN IS A WOMAN

Birdy was wearing a dark suit and tangerine tie, and he had his hair combed. He wasn’t happy to see me. He was pale and drawn. He took me outside, away from any ears.

Birdy was being groomed by the mayor for a career in state politics. There were great expectations. And why not? Birdy was smart and he could speak well. He had the blue eyes and the fair complexion. He was the most likely to succeed, the most likely to get out of town.

“Have you stopped eating, again?”

He looked at me and said nothing. The answer was in his eyes. They were dead.

We stood by a tree at the side of the building. Tree and concrete. There was no one around. There were cigarette butts everywhere.

“It had something to do with Mr. Murray, didn’t it?”

Birdy looked away. He didn’t want to say anything and maybe wouldn’t know how, even if he did, I suppose. How could we talk about the things we never talked about?

I knew I was right. My instincts were yelling inside my head.

“I trust you, and you have to trust me. You have to tell me why you did it.”

He looked at me again with those blue, blue eyes; they held sadness.

“I loved Frank,” he said.

That hurt. And I knew it was true; my instincts had been yelling it for a while.

He then walked away, back to his aspirations.

I skipped dinner.

I went on a night run.

I ran past Frank’s house and kept going.

About a mile farther along the road lay the Wilson Woods, a large, wide swath of trees and undergrowth at the back end of the Wilson farm. When I got to them, I climbed over the fence. The Jellybean was a five-minute walk through the trees in the moonlight.

The Jellybean was an abandoned old cabin about the size of my bedroom. Frank had discovered it years ago; the word “Jellybean” had been spray-painted in red across the front of it. It had a door, a window, and a table and two chairs inside. Frank had made the little wooden building into his little house; he’d fixed the holes in the roof, and he and Birdy had carried an old sofa out to it. It had become Frank’s adopted home. The place he’d said he’d felt the safest.

There was a light on.

Birdy was inside and lit by a candle. I stepped in and sat next to him at the table. He wasn’t surprised I had come; I wasn’t surprised to find him there. The Jellybean had meant a lot to all three of us. I lost my virginity there. Frank and Birdy, too. We were odd friends. Frank the hurricane heterosexual, and his two odd friends who weren’t.

We sat for some time in silence, our quiet memorial. I could smell gasoline.

Birdy finally spoke: “Frank was going to kill Murray.”

There was an unfamiliar sound in the woods, in the distance.

“Murray did things to us, right from ninth grade. You know that.”

I wasn’t likely to ever forget it.

“He did things to Frank, too.” That had been the rumor.

“Frank told me about two months ago.”

The sounds in the woods were those of people, a group of them. They were heading in our direction. Someone called out, “Frank?”

The police were searching.

Birdy picked up the candle.

“Run.”

He threw the candle onto the sofa. The flame immediately ignited the gasoline he had soaked the thing in.

The cabin became engulfed in fire.

We ran.

When I arrived back at home and came in, my mom had the TV on in the living room. There was a report on the local news: Residents out near Lake Trentini had reported hearing what had sounded like two gunshots on Thursday night. The police had investigated and had found two old busted television sets.

Kids.

I screamed, but nothing came out of my mouth.

The sound of Birdy’s gun firing was a loud, piercing jolt of noise. A spray of blood shot out of Frank’s head and his body slumped lifeless to the ground. Birds shrieked in the trees around the lake.

I woke up.

But I didn’t wake up.

Sleep paralysis is a bitch. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. Frank had seen the gun come out of Birdy’s pocket. The look on Frank’s face was three hundred different things.

I woke up proper.

I was damp with sweat. I rolled to the side of my bed and vomited.

It was Sunday, my day off.

At midday, I stood outside the mayor’s office. I was like one of those lone protesters, but nobody knew what I was protesting about. I guess I was protesting Birdy.

He finally came outside. People had been staring at me through the windows.

He wasn’t happy to see me.

I wasn’t happy to see him, either.

“Would Frank killing Murray have been so damn bad?” I asked.

He wasn’t happy I’d asked him that; he looked around to see if anyone had heard it. No one had.

I grabbed him by his suit sleeve. I pulled him to me. I whispered, “Tell me why you did it. Give me one good reason, or maybe I go and tell someone where Frank’s body is buried.”

Birdy looked at me. He could say nothing. He was afraid. I had never seen that before. He asked me to meet him at the rear of the bus depot after five that afternoon.

Okay.

The rest of the day was a daze.

I spent it walking.

Cristina worked in a café in the center of town. I stood outside and didn’t go in. I liked Cristina, and she had been the perfect cover girlfriend. I had liked her to the point where I had started to hate the lying. How do you tell someone about the things you don’t talk about?

Maybe my life would have been different if I had grown up in a big city, or out on the coast (any damn coast), and I could have just been me. But, hell, this was Divine, Alabama; there were requirements and obligations …

A man is a man, and a woman is a woman.

At five, I stood at the rear of the bus depot, and I waited for Birdy. At the rear there lay a small park: a lawn, a fountain, and an intersection of cycle pathways. I could look across at my old high school over on the other side.

I hated school.

One day, between classes, a kid I barely knew called me a name; not Dean, or Dee, but one of those names kids like to punch you with. I crossed a boundary. I hit him. The kid called me another name. Frank was with me. He broke the kid’s nose. The principal asked him to explain. He chose not to. Expulsion. Both of us. The fact that the kid who’d started it didn’t want to press charges was the only reason Frank and me didn’t get into trouble with the police.

At fifteen after five, Birdy walked up. His movements were weak. We sat on a bench. There were few people about.

“You need to eat something.”

He shook his head.

He spoke wearily. “Frank and I had become close. You knew that.”

I suspected. I suspected Birdy had fallen away from me and was falling for Frank.

“An impossible relationship,” Birdy said. “A moth to his indifferent flame … We had a pact.”

“What kind of pact?”

“We were going to kill Murray together.”

A mother walked by pushing a baby carriage. He waited until she was out of hearing.

“We argued for several weeks about how to do it. I mean, how do you kill someone and not get caught?”

He looked at me as though I might provide him with an answer.

“How many weeks?”

“Huh?”

“How long did you and Frank have this private pact?”

“About two months.”

I felt more hurt in my gut; I hadn’t known about it. Not a thing. My two closest friends.

He continued. “We talked about cutting the brake line in Murray’s car, poisoning him, or setting fire to his house. And then Frank decided he’d had enough talking. Two weeks ago, he went out and bought a rifle at a gun fair.”

“He was going to shoot him?”

Birdy nodded. “Frank had a plan, which in theory might have worked.”

“What was it?”

“Hide the murder.”

Birdy was staring across at the tops of the school buildings.

“How do you mean hide the murder?”

Tears welled in Birdy’s eyes. “If you kill one person, then everything is specific. The police will ask: What was the specific reason someone specific killed that specific person?”

He took his eyes from the school and looked at me.

“If you kill several people at once, seemingly at random, then no one thinks about specifics.”

I had begun to guess what he was telling me. I could feel my stomach tightening.

“Frank said he could hide Murray’s murder in that randomness.”

“He was going to—” I didn’t know how to say it. “A shooting? A massacre? At the school?”

Birdy nodded. “He was going to walk into the gymnasium with his rifle while Murray was teaching PE class. He was going to strafe everyone in the room with bullets, making sure that Murray got it first.”

I thought I was going to be sick again.

Birdy stood up. He indicated for me to do so, too. Twenty yards away, at the intersection of the cycle pathways, stood a row of bicycle lockers, those large, metal, vault-like boxes you could feed in a few coins and safely lock your bike inside for the day. He led me over to them.

Birdy looked around. There was no one. He pulled out a latex glove from his pocket and put it on. He took out a key. He opened the end locker’s metal door.

There was no bicycle. Inside was stashed a bundle of clothing: workman’s overalls, hard hat, boots, and eyesight protection goggles. Next to it sat two boxes: a small fat one, and an oblong one that, according to its label and markings, held a leaf blower.

Birdy reached in and lifted the lid of the oblong box. Inside lay a rifle. It looked like something a soldier might head onto a battlefield with.

Birdy whispered: “It’s a semiautomatic assault rifle.”

“Shit.”

He dropped the lid.

“The other box contains a dozen clips of ammunition. Frank was going to do it on Friday morning last week.”

I could barely breathe. “How did he think he’d get away with it?”

“Invisibility.”

Birdy closed and locked the bicycle locker. He peeled off the glove and hid it back in his pocket.

“There are no security cameras here at the rear of the bus depot.”

I looked. I couldn’t see any.

“Frank worked out a route from this locker, through the school, and out the other side, a long, narrow, blind spot, where no public or school security cameras are pointed at.”

We walked away from the bicycle locker, toward the school; one of the cycle paths led into it.

Birdy spoke wearily. “Disguised as a workman, Frank was going to walk along the blind spot, walk into the gymnasium, take the rifle out of the box, and open fire.” He shook his head. “It would have been a slaughterhouse.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“He’d drop the rifle in the gymnasium, and in the panic and chaos that would rip through the school, he’d continue walking along the blind spot. He’d walk out of the grounds, he’d lose the disguise, and then he’d vanish into randomness.”

We stopped at the school gate.

“I told Frank no. I told him I wanted out. I said it was insane, he couldn’t do it; he couldn’t kill innocent people.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he’d do it alone.” Birdy looked at me. His eyes were bloodshot and wet with tears. “And you know he would have.”

I did.

“He thought taking you out to Lake Trentini on Thursday night was to bring you in on the plan. I took you out there because you’re the only person I trust.”

“You shouldn’t have kept it a secret from me.”

He shrugged. “You do stupid things like that when you think you’re in love with someone.”

Word.

Mr. Murray had an Olympic gold medal. He’d won it three decades ago. Every now and then, he’d bring it into school. We’d all want to hold it. We’d all want to hang it around our necks and, just for a moment, feel like we were the best in the world. Mr. Murray could teach you how to run and how to win, and you trusted him. Birdy, Frank, and me had, and we could run fast. He’d taught us how.

We watched him now.

Murray was building the trust of another runner.

We were seated in the bleachers on the other side of the school stadium.

The track is addictive. It was the late afternoon, Sunday, and Murray was teaching a kid how to start, how to come out of the starting blocks like a jackrabbit. He had his hand on the kid’s backside. He was crouched alongside, whispering in his ear.

There are boundaries between you and me, us and others; between you and me and everyone we know. For Mr. Murray, the boundaries were made of chalk. They meant nothing.

“Frank had a lot of hate,” Birdy said.

The kid shot out of the starting blocks. He ran a few meters and then stopped. He turned and walked back to Murray, who put his arm around his shoulders and spoke to him. We couldn’t hear the words, but it was no doubt a whisper, a creeping confidence between runner and coach.

“We all have our demons, one or two. Frank had a whole circus of them. I had to stop him, Dee. You know that.”

The kid tried a couple more starts, and each time he got a little better, a little faster. He was a quick learner. He listened to his coach.

“What did you do with the gun?” I asked. “The gun you shot Frank with.”

“It’s in the bicycle locker. Why?”

“I’ll kill him.”

Birdy shook his head. “I’m not going through that again.”

“I’ll kill him for Frank. I’ll kill him for all of us. Put the gun in my hand. I’ll do it right now.”

Birdy was wide-eyed. “Out here? In the open? Are you serious?”

“Get the gun.”

“The stadium is probably full of security cameras.”

“So what?”

He stared at me. He finally let out the breath he’d been holding. I think he understood.

He went to get the gun.

When you run a race, you focus on who is in front of you. You focus on the track ahead, and you focus on the finish line. You visualize yourself crossing it first, and you throw every ounce of your energy and soul into seeing that happen. Mr. Murray taught us that.

His training with the kid finished. The kid picked up his bag and headed to the tunnel at the base of the grandstand; a quick shower and then go home. He waved goodbye to Murray as he left.

Murray took out his phone. It looked like he was checking it for messages. More whispering.

Birdy came back.

I held the gun in my hand.

Murray put his phone into his back pocket. He collected up the blocks and dropped them into a bag.

I walked out onto the track.

Birdy walked out alongside me.

“We could have stopped Frank,” I said to him.

Murray picked up his clipboard and a bottle of water.

“We could have told someone. He could have been stopped before anything had happened. But then everything would have come out, wouldn’t it have?”

I walked toward Murray, with my hand behind my back holding the gun.

I focused on the finish.

Murray looked up. He squinted. There was recognition in his face. He smiled.

I stopped ten feet from him.

I raised my hand.

The other one. The empty one.

I aimed my index and forefinger at his forehead.

He stopped smiling. In that finish line freeze-frame moment, he knew.

“I’m fucking tired of this game,” I said.

Birdy and I went and telephoned the police.

Those things we don’t talk about, that no one around here talked about … We’re going to make sure everyone has to talk about them.

ENEMY LINES

By Caleb Roehrig

Two years ago, in the spring of 1940, Gerhard Volz put a bullet through my father’s head. Now, if my aunt Marguerite got her way, I might have the chance to repay him.

“The man deserves to die!” She slammed her fist down onto the small table, her glare stark beneath a single, bare bulb.

“I don’t disagree.” My uncle exhaled wearily. “But that is not the mission.”

“To hell with the mission!” Marguerite’s voice was sharp as a spike. Color bloomed in her cheeks, her eyes blazed, and she thrust her hand out at the cramped cellar around us—the maps, the Ally-issued radio, the earthen floor, and the wine racks in the gloom behind her. “This is my mission. The only one that matters. And after years of waiting for it, the opportunity is right here, right now! We’ll never get a chance like this again, Henri, you know we won’t.”

Uncle Henri sagged. “Perhaps, perhaps not. But we—”

“‘Perhaps not’? Think of what you’re saying. Think of who you’re saying it to!”

Henri Barbier’s eyes flickered to me, and I did my best to appear calm. Inside, however, my guts were knotting together. Gerhard Volz. I was going to see him in the flesh—a man I’d loathed for so long the hatred felt grafted to my bones—and here, tonight, my aunt and uncle would decide what happened when I did.

With an expression that muddled guilt and regret and annoyance, Henri tore his gaze away from me and turned back to my aunt. “I am thinking of Fernand, Margot. Believe it or not, I would very much like to see Colonel Volz in the ground with a French blade in his Nazi heart—and that goes for every jackbooted German on our soil. But what we’re asking of Fernand is already enormously dangerous, and his lack—”

“Exactly,” Marguerite cut him off. “It’s already dangerous. And he’ll be under the same roof as the man who—”

“His lack of experience,” Henri continued loudly, “means that the more we ask of him, the greater his chances are of failing.” Her jaw snapped shut at this, and her gray eyes slid to me with a mix of regret, guilt, and determination. Henri pressed on. “He is only fifteen years old, and we’re asking a tremendous amount of him. We’re already asking him to take a life!”

Marguerite nodded precisely. “So, we ask him to take two.”

“Margot—”

“Can I say something?” I interrupted, and both of them finally gave me their full attention. “Gerhard Volz shot my father. He deserves to be killed.” My folded hands closing into fists, I added, “And I deserve to be the one who kills him.”

A troubled exhalation escaped from Henri, while Marguerite’s lips curled into a cold, satisfied smile.

On May 10 of 1940, the Germans had invaded France. The battle lasted a scant six weeks, at the end of which our country was forced to surrender and agree to a terrible armistice that divided the nation into two halves: an Occupied Zone under German control, and a “Free” Zone—which was effectively under German control as well, for all the influence they held over the puppet government.

I was thirteen when panzers first rolled through the streets of my hometown in what was now Occupied France, when explosions shook the walls and bullets etched scars into the stone of bridges and buildings. When my father—drunk and scared at a bar full of drunk and scared people doing their best to find solace in the midst of unrelenting terror—made an ugly remark about the invading Nazis. When a Nazi commander who happened to be seated nearby, availing himself of France’s hospitality during a short respite from murdering her citizens, took offense and shot my father point-blank through the forehead.

That Nazi was so good at killing the French that once the Armistice was signed on June 22, and swastikas hung from Parisian flagpoles, he was promoted to the rank of colonel. My mother had passed when I was six, and so, upon the death of my father, I had been claimed by my nearest living relative: my father’s oldest sister, Marguerite Barbier.

Together, we learned the identity of the man who had killed my father and her brother, and together we tracked his movements—using every possible source of information we could find—from Dijon to Dole to, now, Beaune, one hundred twenty-eight kilometers north of our village of Saint-Étienne-du-Bois in the Free Zone. For two years, my aunt and I had eased the burden of grief by dreaming countless gruesome deaths for Colonel Gerhard Volz.

And now I would see him. At last.

“May I say something?” Henri countered in the silence. “Aside from the satisfaction of revenge, what do you think will happen after you kill a Nazi colonel?”

The question was rhetorical, and I didn’t answer.

“They will retaliate. They will make indiscriminate arrests, they will unleash violence, they will hurt the innocent to set an example. And they will replace Volz. Cut off the head of the monster and more will spring up in its place, with sharper teeth and quicker anger.” It was my uncle’s turn to smash a fist on the table. “And if our connections in Beaune do not turn on us, they will die as well. The Maquis cannot afford to be reckless, to indulge in vengeance at the expense of pragmatism.”

The Maquis—the Resistance. The French government had been forced to yield to the German military, but the French people would never wholly submit to tyranny. When surrender became inevitable, some soldiers escaped, disappearing into the hills and forests. Decentralized and anonymous, they staged organized attacks that damaged munitions and supplies, intercepted communiqués, and disrupted operations. Before long, they were joined by private citizens—people like the Barbiers, who were angry and determined and only willing to die if they did so fighting.

My aunt and uncle were the de facto leaders of the Resistance group in our area of Burgundy, based in a village thirty kilometers south of the Demarcation Line—the boundary the Nazis had set up, partitioning France—where it ran through Chalon-sur-Saône. They’d forged papers and sabotaged radio installations, hijacked convoys and relayed sensitive intelligence to the Allied Forces. I knew that Aunt Marguerite had even killed two men while working undercover in the Occupied Zone. Once because it was him or her, and once because she needed to stop a soldier from sounding the alarm when her team had been spotted. But this was the first time I had ever been included in their plans. It was the first time they’d stopped treating me like a child and viewed me as a potential soldier in their covert actions against the Germans.

Reaching for a bottle at the edge of the table, Henri poured three glasses of dark red wine and pushed one into my hands. “You are shrewd, Fernand. Clever. I’ve watched you, and I think you can do this job. But not if you allow yourself to be led by your emotions.”

A silence fell around the table, so total it hurt my ears. Aunt Marguerite’s fingers tightened on the stem of her glass, but she pressed her lips together, deciding not to renew the argument.

After a moment, I answered, “I won’t. I’ll carry out my mission as ordered.”

Henri raised his glass to me. “To your health, then.”

The flavors of earth and iron in the rich wine reminded me of blood.

One week later, after sunset, Aunt Marguerite and I left the village in the Barbiers’ old Citroën, the countryside a shifting black void.

“Hiking through the woods at night won’t be easy,” she said.

I shifted my jaw. “I know how to use a compass.”

“You’ll be lucky if you can see three inches in front of your face.”

“I have a good sense of direction.”

My aunt laughed, a husky and unexpected sound that filled the automobile. “You’re like me, Fernand. Too much like me. More guts than brains. The Bougnol family curse.”

“And Henri?”

“Your uncle is … the reverse.” She huffed out a breath. “More brains than guts. He’s right, but he’s wrong, because he sees the odds before he sees what can truly be accomplished when you stop caring about them.” A stiff silence ticked by, and then, “What is your mission?”

“Someone in the Maquis is feeding Gerhard Volz sensitive information during his periodic stays at the chateau of André Lagarde, a vintner and business owner in Garance. The kitchen boy under Lagarde’s chef will be sick for one week, during which time I am to take his place. I will spy on Volz, I will find out who visits with him, and when I know who the traitor to France is … they will die.”

She waited a moment. “And then?”

“And then,” I continued, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, “I will return home.”

Another moment passed before she replied, “Good.” I’d repeated those exact words, in that order, for her and my uncle countless times over the past days. If she wanted to change the plan now that Henri was safely out of earshot, she had her chance; but instead, she surprised me. “I’m going to contradict something I already told you, Fernand. You must only kill your target if you can get away cleanly.”

“But if I don’t—”

“If you don’t, we find another way. We’ll have the double agent’s name, and then it will only be a matter of time.” She spared me a look, moonlight flashing in her eyes. “Only kill if you won’t get caught. You’re the last blood I’ve got left, and as much I hate the Germans, I love you more. I won’t lose you to them like I lost your father.”

“I’ll be careful,” I promised.

After a moment, she reached across in the darkness and squeezed my hand.

We drove for forty-five minutes before my aunt turned off the road, steering the Citroën onto an unmarked track and killing the headlights. The world vanished and then re-formed in layers of blue on black, the moon touching lightly on trees, a field of grain, and the winding lane before us. Marguerite drove with confidence, barely slowing down, and when we came at last upon a crumbling stone farmhouse backed by a dense forest, she stopped.

“There.” She pointed to a hulking darkness that spread out as far as I could see. “On the other side of those trees is the Occupied Zone. If you walk north by northeast, and don’t get lost, you’ll find yourself in a pasture when you reach the other side. There is no barricade because there is no road, but the Germans know this is a weak point, and so they patrol it to keep people from crossing over.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” The question wasn’t meant to be answered. “Be as quiet as you can. Stay low. Don’t get caught.” Reaching into the glove box, my aunt produced a bundle of papers, which she pressed into my hands. “Your name is Pierre Dupont. You were born in Besançon, but you live in Dijon now with your mother and father and your three little sisters. If there’s anything on you that identifies you as Fernand Bougnol of Saint-Étienne-du-Bois, give it to me now.” I hesitated and then removed my father’s watch from my wrist—his name engraved on the backing. “When you reach the pasture, stay low. Last time I crossed, the grasses were high. You can use them for cover. Continue northeast until you find the road, stick to the shadows, and one kilometer due north of the first crossroads you will meet your contact, a Maquisard who goes by the code name Rabbit.”

“I have a contact?” I looked up, startled. “I thought I was on my own.”

“You’re always on your own,” Aunt Marguerite returned seriously. “Never forget that, Fernand. Rabbit is the one who contacted us, saying someone was sharing information, but only you can decide who is trustworthy.”

Slowly, I nodded. “North by northeast, stay quiet, look out for German patrols. Cross the pasture, make it to the road, and one kilometer past the crossroads, I meet Rabbit.”

“Your code name is Mercury.” She hesitated; then she reached into her purse and pulled something out of it—a flat wooden shaft with a metal tab on the side. When she pressed it, a blade snapped out. She showed it to me, folded it up again, and put the pocketknife in my hands. “It was your father’s. He’d want you to have it. If need be, he’d want you to use it.”

I studied her face. “On Volz?”

A moment slid past, Marguerite’s eyes shielded by the darkness. Finally, she said, “Kill only if you won’t get caught. Good luck, Pierre Dupont.”

Climbing out of the car, I headed for the trees. My aunt had started the engine again and was already driving away before I reached them.

Crossing the woods at night was even worse than Aunt Marguerite had made it sound. Every other step brought me to my knees, shrubs and vines tangling around my ankles, trunks and branches surprising me in the impenetrable gloom. Every rustle in the underbrush could have been a snake or a wolf—or a German. I was almost shocked when the trees broke at last, and I could see stars in the sky for the first time in what felt like hours.

I crawled when I reached the pasture, slithering through high, pale grass and praying for invisibility. The Nazi patrol missed me—but only just. At one point the men came close enough that I could make out distinct voices, clipped German words carrying clearly on the breeze, and I went still. Unbreathing, my face tucked in the fold of my sleeve, I realized that I had hardly understood how easy it would be to get caught.

Once I felt safe enough to move again, I was twice as careful, and when I finally reached the crossroads, my shirt was heavy with sweat. On the balls of my feet, I hurried up the roadside under the cover of plane trees that obliterated the moonlight—and when I had gone just about a kilometer, I came upon a small truck parked on the verge.

It was a summer night, the air alive with the chirr of insects, and I rounded the vehicle with care. There was someone behind the wheel, the driver’s window down, the ember of a cigarette flaring like a signal in the dark. My heartbeat was almost painful. Was this my contact?

The shadow behind the wheel moved, turning and leaning out of the cab, a man’s face materializing like a ghoulish mask conjured from nothing at all. “What the hell are you doing out here at this hour?”

Swallowing hard, I replied with the code phrase I’d been taught. “It seemed like a nice night for a long walk.”

A silence stretched out until I wasn’t sure I could take it anymore, and then the mustachioed driver answered with the corresponding phrase, “There’s no such thing as a nice night.” He tossed the cigarette butt at my feet, the end still smoldering. “You can’t be Mercury. Tell me they didn’t send a kid.”

His disgust was palpable, and I gathered every bit of dignity I had. “You can’t be Rabbit. Tell me they didn’t send an asshole.”

A beat passed, and he began to laugh. “All right, at least you’ve got spirit. Get in.”

Rabbit drove slowly and carefully, sticking to dirt roads slung beside the rubble of demolished farmhouses and seemingly empty villages. I wondered what life was like on this side of the Line, with a constant Nazi presence. In Saint-Étienne-du-Bois, we felt them like humidity—something that stuck to the skin and made it impossible to sleep—but we rarely saw them. What was it like to live, day by day, alongside the people who’d ravaged your homes and killed your neighbors, and still insisted on a please and thank-you when buying a pint of milk in your store?

“What’s your name?” Rabbit asked suddenly, disturbing the quiet. He was maybe in his thirties, a barrel-chested man with a permanently furrowed brow.

“Pierre Dupont. I’m fourteen,” I answered, citing my new documents.

“You have any family?”

“Three sisters—Danielle, Marie, and Louise—and my parents own a restaurant in Dijon.”

“A restaurant? What’s it called?”

“The Twin Lanterns. It’s on Rue de—”

“Stop!” Rabbit barked so sharply I jumped in my seat. “Stop offering information I didn’t ask for. The names of your sisters, your parents’ occupation, where their restaurant is … never give what you don’t have to. Every lie can be used against you.”

I fought the urge to roll my eyes. As if my aunt and uncle hadn’t taught me the same rule already. As if I’d have volunteered those things if I hadn’t thought Rabbit was just trying to help me rehearse my story. Staring out the window, I watched as we rolled through another village, jagged German words painted along a whitewashed fence facing the road. “What will happen if we’re stopped?”

“We won’t be.”

“But if we are—”

“If we are, I’ll do the talking,” he answered. “Just keep your mouth shut.”

It sounded like an immediate order. Rabbit’s hands were large and chapped, and he exuded an air of unpleasantness that felt purposeful and calibrated. Maybe that was how he staved off inconvenient questions about his covert actions against the occupying army. Maybe he wanted to seem cold and unapproachable. But I was tired and unimpressed.

I must have slept, because the next thing I knew, I was being roused in my seat. The truck idled in front of a half-timbered building with a wooden sign hanging over the door: L’AUBERGE DES LILAS. The Lilac Inn.

Gruffly, Rabbit announced, “Here’s where you’re staying for the next week. Do you know how to find the Chateau d’Armont?”

“Yes.” Somewhere in my belongings was a map I’d been given by my aunt and uncle. “But I don’t know how I’m supposed to get there.”

“You can borrow a bicycle from the innkeeper,” he told me. “Be at the chateau by six, present yourself at the kitchen entrance, and ask for Eugène—that’s the cook’s name. Understand?”

“Yes,” I repeated, a little more sharply than I meant to. Pinning his eyes with mine, I stated, “Stop talking down to me. I’m a Maquisard, just like you, and I’m here to find and eliminate a traitor because you can’t do it yourself.”

It was well past midnight, and soon enough the sun would rise. Mere hours stood between me and the moment I would share a roof with the man who shot my father. I was on a mission to kill for France and for freedom, and I was sick of being treated like a poodle that hadn’t been housebroken yet.

With a glint of something like respect in his eye, Rabbit shifted his jaw. “Very well.”

I wondered if I’d see him again. I wanted to ask for leads and names—but I knew if he’d wanted to share that information, he’d have already done it. And I wasn’t about to waste a perfectly good exit line.

Grabbing my bag, I jumped out of the truck and slammed the door shut. Trapped between close buildings on the narrow street, the sound echoed like a gunshot.

The innkeeper, a stout and friendly man named Georges, wasn’t as bothered by being woken in the middle of the night as he had a right to be. He showed me to my room—small and spare and situated above a soot-blackened alley—and bade me good night. I fell into a dreamless sleep as soon as I crawled between the thin sheets, my father’s knife tucked beneath my pillow.

A dismally short time later, I was awake again, groggy and exhausted, and headed downstairs. Georges, dressed and in the dining room, poured me a cup of coffee as thick as house paint before showing me where the bicycles were kept.

It took twenty minutes to reach Chateau d’Armont, a straight shot out of town once I left the main road, hillsides rippling with grapevines under the lightening sky. I’d seen evidence of war in the center of Garance—the wreckage of collapsed walls, track marks left by smoke, places where the road cratered or disintegrated under my wheels—but out here, Burgundy remained pristine.

The Lagarde home was a breathtaking sprawl of plaster-fronted stone surrounded by poplar trees. Capped with a slanted roof of gray shingles, its chimneys and turrets stabbed the sky. Flower beds greened, birds darted overhead, and an endless vineyard rose and dipped across the hills behind it. I couldn’t count the windows, couldn’t begin to imagine how many rooms there were, or how much luxury the Nazi who had killed my father enjoyed there.

When I found the kitchen entrance, my knock was answered by a tall woman with a ruddy face and a hateful scowl. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“I’m Pierre.” The words stumbled out of my mouth. “My cousin is Lucien, but he’s sick, and I’m taking his place. I’m to ask for Eugène?”

Nervous, I’d volunteered information I hadn’t been asked for, and berated myself internally while the woman grumbled and stepped aside. “All right, then, you’d better get inside. You’re late.”

“The road in the village is damaged—” I began, but she ignored me. Whirling, she started down a long hallway at a determined pace, putting two meters between us before I realized I was supposed to follow her.

“The kitchen is this way,” she said briskly. “Tomorrow, you don’t need to knock. Get here on time, don’t bother the staff, and do not—under any circumstances—speak to the Lagardes or their guests unless they speak to you first.”

“Understood.”

“Eugène!” she barked as we swept around a corner and into a vast kitchen with great, tublike sinks and a butcher’s block that could double as a dance floor. “Lucien’s replacement is here. See that he doesn’t steal anything. And don’t forget the maids will be in your room to dust and collect laundry today, so if you’ve left personal articles around, go and put them where they belong.”

With those words, she spun on her heel and stormed out of the room, leaving me slack-jawed and speechless. Looking up from where he stood, chopping a pile of greens on the butcher’s block, the chef said, “Don’t mind Albertine. Her bark’s worse than her bite.”

But it wasn’t the woman’s attitude that had me shaken. Eugène—the Lagardes’ cook and the man I’d be working alongside for the next week—was none other than Rabbit.

Summoning my voice, I demanded, “What is this?”

“Breakfast,” Rabbit retorted, and then pressed an emphatic finger to his lips, his eyes flashing to the open door. “Here—put this apron on and get ready. We have work to do.”

We did a mad pantomime of normalcy as my contact took me on a tour of his domain, showing me where the cookware and cutlery were stored, explaining how the pantry was organized. Only when he led me into the cavernous isolation of the chateau’s wine cellar, at least four times as large as that of Le Chevalier—the tavern owned by my aunt and uncle in Saint-Étienne—did he drop the act.

“Watch what you say when you’re in the house. Albertine listens at doors, and this family is not sympathetic to the Maquis.”

“You’re already spying on him.” It was a statement, not a question, because I’d had time to figure that much out for myself.

“On them,” Rabbit corrected me with a toneless sigh. “But it isn’t so easy. There aren’t many Resistants in Garance, but in a way, we’re all spying on each other already. And there’s no time for a prolonged match of chess; the traitor must be identified as quickly as possible.”

“You must have someone in mind,” I observed, studying his expression.

“I’ve thought about it. Obsessively.” The man wiped his hands on the front of his apron. “Here or there, all members of the group have had opportunities to pass information … but only three of us have regular contact with Volz. There’s me, obviously.” He did me the favor of looking me in the eye as he acknowledged this fact. “There’s Josette Brunot, who serves drinks at La Belle Fontaine in the village center. She’s a good-time girl, and Volz goes to the bar sometimes to get soused and pay for an evening of her company. She’s learned things from him in the past that have helped the movement, but any street carries traffic in two directions, if you get my meaning.”

“Okay.” There were good-time girls in Saint-Étienne-du-Bois, too—and even a few good-time boys. My aunt and uncle would probably have preferred me to remain innocent about such things, but I was hardly scandalized. War and its poverties made entrepreneurs of everyone. “Who’s number three?”

“Him, you’ve already met.” Rabbit shifted his weight. “The man who owns the Lilac Inn—Georges Renard.”

My brows tugged together, and I took a breath. “He’s the one you really suspect.”

Again, it wasn’t a question. There was a reason the Maquis had fronted money not only to buy a week’s worth of illness from the Lagardes’ usual kitchen boy, but to put me up at the inn instead of having me sleep on Rabbit’s floor—which was apparently in a servant’s quarters right there on the estate.

“No matter what is on the menu here at Chateau d’Armont, Volz dines at the inn at least twice a week.” The man’s face took on a rosy hue. “I’ve worked at Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris and Dijon, but he chooses to eat at that … that shabby little rathole, where they serve canned vegetables and boiled meat!”

It took me a moment to realize he was insulted. His eyes were bright, and breath streamed through his nose. “Twice a week, he goes into town. Sometimes he has drinks, sometimes he has supper—and sometimes he spends the night at his favorite inn or with his favorite barmaid. But one of those two people, Georges or Josette, is whispering dangerous little nothings in his ear.”

My list of suspects had been both created and narrowed down for me—but unless I could disguise myself as Gerhard Volz’s shadow, how was I to listen in on his private conversations with the innkeeper and the barmaid? I turned the question over in my mind as I sliced tomatoes, slid proofed croissants into the oven, and arranged a selection of cheeses on a slate. No answer came to me.

Breakfast was served in the traditional style, and I was ordered to join Albertine—who was housekeeper and head servant—in carrying the food to the dining room. The next hour was devoted to setting up a mise en place for lunch, based on a ludicrously elaborate menu, and then I had to assist in bringing the dishes back down to the kitchen. I was still scrubbing the flatware when Rabbit demanded my help in building a roux for a béchamel.

As we were washing the dishes from lunch, Albertine appeared in the kitchen doorway again like an accusing specter. “There’s six at dinner tonight. Madame would like sole meunière.”

“Sole meunière?” Rabbit reacted as if he’d been asked to produce the king of Sweden. “The menu she already approved called for cassoulet!”

“Madame has changed her mind.” Albertine’s expression was deadpan.

“I’ve spent two days curing duck legs and making confit!”

“Nevertheless.” Albertine departed, her skirt swishing aggressively.

“Damn it,” Rabbit cursed. “Hellfire and … and shit.” To me, he snapped, “Get ten filets out of the icebox and start a cold bath. Also bring butter, parsley, lemon, and … and some asparagus and mushrooms. Go.”

We scrambled madly to prepare a sophisticated dinner for six. My aunt and uncle’s tavern wasn’t much different from the Lilac Inn, in terms of the fare, and as their kitchen boy, I’d never worked with so many fine ingredients or on so many complicated dishes. In truth, our regular patrons would have been confused by the mere notion of Michelin stars.

With no time to plan, Rabbit conjured up golden sole filets in a rich sauce, a risotto of wild mushrooms and comté, asparagus and vinaigrette on toasted bread, a soup, a salad, an assortment of fruits and cheeses—and even a tarte tatin for dessert.

Sagging against the butcher’s block, the man mopped his forehead and eyed me at a peculiar slant. “You’ll help Albertine serve. Most of the men and boys left the staff to join the army, but their uniforms remain. You’ll find something that fits.”

It wasn’t until I stood in the dining room, reciting in my head all the instructions I’d received from Albertine regarding proper serving procedure, that I finally understood Rabbit’s look. I hadn’t seen the family at breakfast or lunch, but now they entered and took their seats, less aware of my presence than they’d have been of a scratch on the furniture. André Lagarde sat at the head of the table with his wife, Suzanne, to one side, and their daughter, Julie, to the other; beside Madame Lagarde was Gustave—their son.

Raffish and debonair, with tanned skin and a toothpaste ad smile, Gustave Lagarde drew the eye without trying. He was probably nineteen or twenty, and I couldn’t stop staring at his broad shoulders and sturdy build, at the casual, unconcerned way with which he moved. I was still staring when they were joined by a fifth diner—another young man—and my back went rigid at his German military uniform.

Blond and square-jawed, he projected a cockiness that outdid even Gustave’s. The Lagardes addressed him as Konrad, their voices light and warm, unfazed by his appearance—even as he flaunted the swastika on his arm, the pins and patches that marked him as an enemy of France. As he took his seat beside Julie, a look passed between them that practically vibrated with affection, and my head spun.

And then the click of boots sounded against a hard floor, and another man swept into the room. He wasn’t tall or fiendish-looking, he didn’t have pointed teeth or clawed fingers or green skin or bat wings. He was nothing like any of the ways I’d seen him in my nightmares for the past two years … and yet I knew, all the way to my ice-cold center, that I was in the presence of Gerhard Volz.

He greeted his hosts warmly, accepted a glass of white wine, smiled from ear to ear. I felt as if I were floating, vibrating, my blood frigid one second and too hot for my skin the next.

Moving around the table in a trance, I ladled soup and portioned gougères, I swapped clean dishes for dirty ones, I topped off glasses of wine or water, and every time I came close to Volz, my hand itched, the table gleaming with sharp silver that called my name.

By the time the meal ended, and I was back in the kitchen, I was dizzy and sick to my stomach. Images revolved in my mind like a penny arcade: Volz shooting my father, Volz toasting the health of the Lagarde family; Volz leading his Nazis in the slaughter of my countrymen; Volz eating sole meunière and tarte tatin and drinking Chablis like a lord of the manor. My hands shook as I filled the sink with scalding water, but before I could punish myself by reaching into it up to my elbows, Rabbit stopped me.

“Here.” He shoved a glass into my hand. It was cognac, and I hesitated for only a second before downing it in one bracing, numbing mouthful. “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t know my history with Volz, and I wasn’t going to share it. Let him think my distress resulted from having to wait hand and foot on a German. “So that’s him.”

“That’s him. He’s hard to miss when he’s in the village.”

“And the younger one? Konrad?”

“Konrad Scheller, Obersoldat in the Führer’s army. I believe he met Mademoiselle Julie at a dance in Beaune this winter.”

Digesting this information, I watched steam rise from the water in the sink. “I knew the family had a son. I didn’t realize he was…”

“Living at the chateau?”

“Not in the army.” I looked over at him. “How many of the men and boys that left the staff to serve France were arrested by Colonel Volz and Obersoldat Scheller?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he poured more cognac into my glass. “Drink up.”

After dinner, we went over the menus for the next day; and by the time I finally departed Chateau d’Armont, the sun was setting. My thighs burned with the strain of pedaling fast enough to reach Garance before dusk settled over the countryside, my mood as black as the coming night. Once, my father said he would have gladly fought for France, if it hadn’t meant the risk of leaving me an orphan. And now here I was anyway.

After I reached the village, partway back to the inn, I passed a bar, the sour reek of cheap beer carrying to me through windows open to the night air. The door was shabby, and the sign above it was weathered and cracked, belying its lovely name—La Belle Fontaine. I paused, watching for a moment, listening to murmured conversations and the soft lull of music, feeling an impulse to do something.

Georges Renard was waiting for me when I reached the inn, perhaps having heard my wheels rattling over the ruined cobblestones, and I started when he emerged from the doorway—suddenly and silently—moving into my path.

“Any trouble finding the Chateau d’Armont?” His tone was pleasant, but his eyes assessed the bicycle, checking to see if I’d damaged it. He wore a beard, his head covered by a cap I’d seen both that morning and the night before. He looked like a professor—not a fighter, and certainly not a traitor.

But then again, I was quickly learning how little I knew about how things looked.

Making a joke of it, I returned, “No, it was pretty easy to see from the road.”

“And the Lagardes? They were kind to you?” He seemed genuinely concerned, and I decided it was all right to be honest.

“They didn’t take much notice of me. I spent my day with Eugène, the chef. He was kind.”

“Did you compliment his cooking?” The man’s tone was light, but his eye twinkled mischievously. When I nodded, he nodded back. “Eugène loves anyone who loves his food.”

He took the bicycle from me with a cheerful good night, and I waited until he was gone before ducking into the front room. On the desk, beside the guest register, stood a vase of wilting roses. Picking the healthiest-looking one, I hurried back out into the night.

I kept my mind blank for the short return trip to La Belle Fontaine, not wanting to overthink or reconsider what I meant to do. Boldly, I marched right in through the front door of the bar, the air thick with alcohol and smoke in a way that made me homesick for Le Chevalier.

A woman with a stiff blond coiffure stopped me almost immediately. “You sure you’re old enough to be in here, love?” Her tone was at once disapproving and coquettish, and she gave me an easy smile.

“I … I have a gift. For Josette?”

Her smile vanished, and she jerked a thumb at some tables in the corner of the room. “That’s her. Knock your socks off.”

A buxom girl with dark ringlets stood between two tables full of men, telling a story they seemed to find enthralling—or perhaps it was just her they loved. Even from across the room, I felt her magnetism. It was the same kind of pull I’d felt from Gustave Lagarde, except that where he projected arrogance, Josette Brunot radiated warmth. I watched until her story ended, until she’d collected empty mugs and glasses and taken orders for another round, and then I intercepted her at the bar.

“A gentleman outside told me to give this to you.” I presented the sad dying rose, hoping my unpracticed delivery sounded like nerves.

“He did, did he?” She took the flower, her fingertips brushing mine deliberately. “You didn’t happen to catch a name off this fellow, did you?”

“No, he … didn’t give me his name.” I told myself, repeatedly and unsuccessfully, not to look at her breasts. “He, uh, he was wearing a hat.”

“Well, that certainly narrows it down.” Her response was wry but not mocking. After a beat, Josette sighed, relinquishing the rose to the bar top. “Listen, kid, there’s no need to be coy. I know what I am, and money is money.” Gesturing to the back of the room, she continued. “I live upstairs, with my granddad. He doesn’t get out of bed anymore and usually can’t remember me, but he isn’t bothered when I have company.”

It took me an embarrassingly long moment to realize what she was implying. My face warm to the tips of my ears, I stammered, “No, I … I really did get that from a man outside! He told me to tell you he was a secret admirer.”

She evaluated this for a moment. “I can’t decide if I’m flattered or terrified. What’s your name?”

“Pierre. My cousin is Lucien, who works at Chateau d’Armont.”

“Ah. The Lagarde place.” Her lacquered fingertips found the rose again. “We don’t see much of that family here in the village. Too … quaint for them, I think.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it didn’t sound like a compliment. Recklessly, I ventured, “The chateau is beautiful, but I didn’t care for their guests.”

Josette’s mouth pressed into a thin smile, and the rose’s stem bent at a fatal angle in her grasp. Her voice soft, she observed, “They’re all our guests, aren’t they? Whether we care for it or not?”

Despite what Rabbit had told me about Volz’s habits, days passed without the man making a single excursion into the village. Instead, he enjoyed Monsieur Lagarde’s company, his books and his wine, took daily strolls on the property, and occasionally went horseback riding. Our continent was at war, and he was on a pleasant vacation.

Wednesday morning, Albertine announced a change to the preapproved menu for the following afternoon; the family and their guests would be going on an extended ride to tour the vineyards and forage in the countryside, and requested a picnic lunch.

“They’ll be out of the house for hours,” Rabbit interpreted for me once the housekeeper was far enough away. “I’ll secure you a key to Volz’s room. He may have something among his personal effects that will identify his informant.”

It sounded dangerous, but I was already becoming desperate, my time running out. The real kitchen boy would be returning on Sunday, whether I’d accomplished my mission or not. Without hesitation, I said I’d do it.

The next day, Volz, the Lagardes, and Obersoldat Scheller rode off into the hills surrounding the chateau, with baskets packed full of cheese, charcuterie, fresh bread, and chilled wine. The second they were out of sight, Rabbit slipped an old key into my hand and told me where the colonel was quartered.

Unsurprisingly, Volz had the largest and nicest of the guest rooms—a fireplace, a canopied bed, Louis XV furniture, and a sunny, postcard view: A burbling stream, bordered by cowbane and watercress, threaded its way alongside the estate’s manicured flower garden, and the vine-combed hills rose behind it. The quarters contained few personal effects, the colonel’s clothing limited to the interchangeable shirts and pants of military attire, and I turned up nothing in the single suitcase I found beneath the bed.

One drawer of an ornate desk was locked, and after a thorough search of the rest of the premises, I was convinced that if there was anything to find it would be there. A letter opener, an untwisted wire clip, and a lot of patience were what it took to jimmy the compartment open—and when I saw what I’d found, I drew a breath: Nestled together were a small two-way radio, a notepad filled with neat German scrawl, and a codebook emblazoned with the insignia of the Third Reich.

My mind raced. I wanted to take the codebook and run all the way back to my aunt and uncle’s tavern, its potential immeasurable. Who knew how many secrets could be learned, how many lives could be saved—how many nations could be freed from Nazi tyranny—with this in the hands of the Maquis?

But Volz could notice it missing at any time, and then heads would roll. Literally. And the radio … the radio meant he might be able to exchange information with the mole in Garance without ever leaving the exquisite comfort of this guest room. For all I knew, he’d been at it every day this week while I was in the kitchen, mincing shallots for his escargots and melting chocolate for his after-dinner mousse.

Frustration and dismay brought a helpless ache to my chest. The writing in the notepad was plain, precise—and nonsensical. It was clearly encrypted, and even with the cipher key right there, I feared I wouldn’t have enough time to make head or tail of it.

The pages of the codebook were crisp and clean, and I took strenuous care not to bend them or leave noticeable smudges; but after fifteen agonizing minutes, I knew the effort was pointless. There was one word, however, that showed up time and time again with repeated corresponding phrases, and after another quarter-hour, I’d cracked it: P-A-S-C-A-L. Pascal tells me … According to Pascal … Pascal says …

Pascal. Certainly a nom de guerre—like Mercury, my own—used so intercepted messages couldn’t be traced back to their real source. It was a boy’s name. Did that mean it was Georges? Or was Volz clever enough to give Josette a male pseudonym, to further occlude her true identity?

The clock on the mantel struck three, and my heart jolted, the picnickers due back any minute. Shoving everything into the drawer again, I somehow forced the lock closed with my improvised tools. As I raced for the kitchen, information clicked in my mind like a teletype machine.

“Don’t forget tomorrow is my day off,” Albertine announced the next morning as Rabbit and I were in the middle of reviewing Saturday’s approved menus, “and tonight it shall be dinner for two, only. Mademoiselle Julie is off with Herr Scheller, young Gustave is in Beaune, and Colonel Volz will be in the village. Madame requests something simple, like onion soup, steamed mussels, and perhaps a small filet mignon.”

Rabbit was practically twitching with fury as Albertine stalked away up the hall again, tearing up yet another preapproved menu. “Something simple,” he repeated hotly in a mocking, nasal undertone. “Just fourteen dishes and, oh, perhaps a small filet mignon!”

“At least it’s only for two. That can’t take us long.” I was depressed. I’d come to the Occupied Zone to kill a Nazi, and instead I was making haute cuisine for an oblivious couple spared the privations of war.

“No.” Rabbit was decisive. “Set a mise en place for the soup and prepare the base ingredients for mussels Provençal. Then you take the evening off.”

“But—”

“Volz will be in the village,” he pointed out. “Finally. And I’ve worked for Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris and Dijon; I can certainly handle dinner for two on my own!”

His meaning hit home. I chopped vegetables in record time and was on my bicycle and speeding back to Garance while the sun was still high in the late-afternoon sky.

When I reached the inn, I grabbed a paperback from a shelf in the front room and stationed myself in the restaurant, waiting. I’d finished two cups of tea by the time Volz finally made his appearance, bursting through the doors with a cadre of young Nazi soldiers—and Josette Brunot hanging on one arm. Slumping in my chair, I pulled my cap over my eyes. They claimed a corner of the room, the colonel demanding a beer list, the group’s conversational German too fast and thick for me to understand. I kept my head down and book up, but Volz never so much as glanced in my direction.

They were loud and only got louder as the alcohol flowed, demeanors boisterous, verging on quarrelsome. Josette smiled and laughed, but even from across the room, the performance read as forced. At one point, the Germans demanded that Georges join them, and though he demurred, they wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“This place,” Volz declared, face flushed and eyes shining, “is a dump! Why is your place such a dump, Renard? Why do I love it anyway?”

“Don’t be so unfair, Colonel,” Josette interposed with careful smoothness. “Monsieur Renard’s restaurant is the most popular in the village.”

“The food is like something my mother would make. And my mother is dead.” Volz roared with laughter at his own joke, and his flock of swastika-wearing gargoyles laughed with him, everyone making sure the most lethal man at the table felt suitably appreciated. When the Nazi colonel had consumed his share of attention, he rose to his feet. “I would like to drink a toast to my mother! But not with the swill they serve here at the Lilac Dump. Let’s drink the swill at Josette’s dump instead!”

The German soldiers cheered their agreement, and the entire group stood to leave, preparing to head for La Belle Fontaine. Again Georges demurred. “Regrettably, I cannot. I have to watch the inn. We’re short-staffed these days.”

“You still have your wretched cook, don’t you?” Volz rejoined. “It seems you lost the wrong staff! But I’m sure this place can handle a few hours without your presence.”

Georges ducked his head. “Perhaps so, but—”

“Renard. Do I have to insist?” The Nazi’s tone was buoyant—with an edge as fine as a knife’s point. This was neither an offer nor a request. “I’m inviting my favorite innkeeper to a drink. Don’t insult me by refusing.”

A very complicated smile spread across Georges Renard’s face, and the man nodded haltingly. “Very well, then. I’d love to.”

I wasn’t sure there was any point in following. There would be no private, one-on-one conversation tonight between a Nazi and his contact; and while a teenager might be inconspicuous in the dining room of an inn, I’d stand out like a white sparrow at La Belle Fontaine. And I had other plans, anyway.

Five minutes after the group left the auberge, I found the door to Georges Renard’s private quarters; ten minutes after they’d left, I managed to spring the lock with a bobby pin and a nail file from the front desk; twenty minutes after, I discovered the loose floorboard beneath the man’s armoire, and the small two-way radio it concealed. Of English design, it was identical to the one my aunt and uncle had hidden in their wine cellar—the fruit of a midnight airdrop by the Allied Forces.

Twenty-five minutes after Georges had left the inn with Gerhard Volz, I discovered my second German codebook. Wedged deep between the mattress and box spring of the innkeeper’s bed, it was floppy and soft with age and use; inside, the margins were cluttered with notations, particular words circled and phrases underlined. At the top of the very first page, written in cipher text, I found a now-familiar word printed in all capital letters:

PASCAL.

It was difficult to sleep that night, my mind a violent storm of ugly facts and uglier plans coming together. I had one more day; in twenty-four hours, I would be dodging a German patrol and creeping back through the woods to the Free Zone—and before that, I had a man to kill. Could I do it? Marguerite hardly seemed bothered by the two lives she’d taken in defense of a free France, but I could never really know the weight of her conscience. If I did this, would I regret it?

Would I regret it more if I did not?

I left earlier than usual the next morning, not only because I’d been awake for hours, but because I also had a task to see to. When I finally let myself into the Lagardes’ sprawling, idyllic manse, I found Rabbit at work in the kitchen, unwrapping a selection of cheeses. His head snapped up the moment I entered the room.

“Well?” Excitement gleamed in his eyes. “Did you follow Volz? Were you able to learn anything?”

“I think I did,” I answered nervously, and described the previous night’s adventure.

“So it was Georges.” Rabbit was quiet. “I’d hoped … well, I’d hoped it would be neither of them, somehow.”

“I don’t understand what makes a person do it.” Bitterness crept into my voice. “Turn on their friends, their country.”

“The Germans were likely blackmailing him,” Rabbit suggested moodily. “Threatening him or his family, perhaps, if he didn’t betray France. It’s happened before.”

“Maybe.” Shoving a tray of proofed croissants into the oven, I slammed the door. “But I don’t care. He chose his life over everyone I’ve ever known—over everyone else in France. He’s helping the Nazis destroy us.”

“He may not feel as if he has a choice.”

“I came to Garance ready to die,” I returned with conviction, facing him. “There’s always a choice. Even if it’s a bad one.”

He fell silent and stayed that way until well after breakfast. We were starting the preparations for lunch—a mushroom soup, followed by chicken roulade with a puree of carrots and parsnips, and coeur à la crème for dessert—and my eyes were fixed on the clock. Less than twelve hours to go until sundown.

“I’m sorry,” Rabbit finally said, his voice a tense hush. “It’s just … Georges is a friend of mine. He was the first person I met when I moved here, and he’s the one who approached me about joining the Maquis. Another reason I asked for someone from the outside is … I wasn’t sure I’d have the guts to do the job, if the time came.” Turning a butcher knife over in his hands, he set it aside. “I make excuses for him not because I agree with what he’s done, but because I know there’s goodness in him. I’ve seen it.”

“I’ve seen it, too,” I acknowledged. He’d been kind to me—had even refused to accept my money for the rented bicycle I was riding hard over damaged roads every day. “But we are at war.”

Another moment passed as I chopped ingredients for the puree. I could feel pressure from Rabbit’s corner of the kitchen, a question at his lips. Finally, “How will you do it?” And then, immediately, “No, never mind. I … I don’t want to know. Just tell me what time I need to drive you to the border.”

“After dark,” I said simply, trying not to think about the task before me. My hands shook, and I willed them to stop. It was too late for nerves. Too late for second thoughts.

With Albertine off for the day, Rabbit helped me carry everything up to the dining room for lunch, but I had to stay there alone to tend to the family’s needs. After filling bowls with soup, I poured the wine and stood quietly in a corner as Konrad Scheller opened the meal with an announcement that he and Julie were formally engaged to be married.

There were cheers and toasts, but I felt nothing inside as they started to eat.

It was following the main course, as I circled the table to fill cups of coffee, that Madame Lagarde at last groaned and clutched her stomach. The family stared in curious alarm as drool spilled from her lips, as spasms shook the hand she thrust out in a hopeless grab for the table’s edge. But as she tumbled from her chair, her body racked with convulsions, the symptoms had already begun to spread around the room.

Konrad Scheller dropped next, wheezing loudly, his lips slowly turning blue as tremors took him like St. Vitus’s dance; then Julie, Gustave, and Monsieur Lagarde—one by one they crashed to the floor, writhing and gasping for uncooperative air, trying their best to beg for help. Clutching the coffeepot tightly to keep my own hands steady, I forced myself to watch.

In the end, it was Volz alone who managed to stand up. Volz alone with enough strength left to stumble from the room. He made it all the way to the telephone in the hall, and I had to disconnect the line while I waited for him to die, his eyes bulging as his lungs labored, slowed, and then finally stopped.

Not plunging my father’s knife through his neck was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

When I returned to the kitchen, Rabbit stood hunched over the sink. He looked ill, and when he turned around, he was holding his stomach. “Are they done with the chicken? Should we bring up dessert?”

“They’re done, but don’t worry about dessert.” My voice was thick, in spite of my clear conscience. “They’re all dead.”

“I—What?” Rabbit blinked slowly.

“They’re dead.” I repeated, steeling my nerves. “Go see for yourself.”

He stared until he realized I was serious, and when he left the room, I poured him a glass of cognac. He was going to need one. Come to that, I needed one, and poured a second glass before I collapsed into a chair to wait his return.

He wasn’t long. There wasn’t anything to be done upstairs, and so Rabbit reappeared in the kitchen minutes later, ashen and shaking from head to foot. “What…” The words came out in a strangled croak, his eyes wide and wild. “What have you done?”

“Did you know,” I began, pushing the cognac in his direction, “that dozens of people die in this country every year from accidental poisoning? We love foraging, but in the wild, the deadliest plants grow right next to the harmless ones, and sometimes it’s difficult to tell them apart.” Helpfully, I added, “It’s like that with Nazis and traitors, too.”

“What have you done?” Rabbit repeated, coming closer.

“Cowbane root looks an awful lot like parsnip, and there’s some growing right beside the stream here at Chateau d’Armont—I dug it up this morning when I arrived. But it’s unbelievably poisonous. If you consume enough, you go into convulsions and stop breathing.” My own chest tight, I took a healthy sip of cognac. “It’s also called hemlock. Did you know that’s how Socrates died? Hemlock?” The alcohol warmed me. “Aunt Marguerite taught me that. Because of the food shortages, we spend a lot of time in the country, looking for things to eat. It’s important to know what to avoid.”

“You … you poisoned them?” Rabbit’s voice was a hoarse whisper.

“Not just them,” I admitted. “There wasn’t any way to sneak cowbane into the vegetable puree without you tasting it, so if you don’t feel well, that’s the reason.”

Rabbit blanched even further, dropping into a chair, staring at me with glassy eyes. I could see his sense of alarm growing, his understanding of the situation finally catching up to him. “Am I going to die?”

“Not from the puree, I don’t think.”

“You … have you lost your mind?” Rabbit wiped his brow with a shaky hand, his voice thin. He still hadn’t touched his cognac.

“Two years ago, Gerhard Volz killed my father,” I told him at last, the words cold and metallic in my mouth. “The only reason I came here was to kill him. I wasn’t going to leave Garance while he walked freely over the same earth on which he’d spilled Bougnol blood.”

“But they’re all dead!” His voice was becoming shrill. “All of them! You killed all of them!”

“We are at war,” I repeated, “and they chose their side. While France starves and burns and dies, they break bread with Nazis; they live a life untouched by our suffering and offer comfort to the men causing it!” Anger violated my body, humming in my temples. “I’m sorry they had to die, but I’m not sorry they’re gone. They claimed their own fate, and good riddance.”

“You’re a fool!” Rabbit scrubbed his face with both hands, eyes reeling. “A child. You have no idea what you’ve done. The Germans will burn Garance to the ground for this!”

“No, they won’t.” I took another sip. “What happened here was just a tragic accident.” Kill only if you won’t get caught. If I’d targeted Volz alone, it would have invited retribution, but if everyone in the household fell victim to the same, horrible mistake? “And when investigators discover your confession, the case will be closed.”

“My—” He blinked rapidly. “My confession? Are you … is that a joke?”

“Not at all.” I set my glass down with a click, and pulled a sheet of paper out from under the menu beside me. It was a typewritten admission of guilt, awaiting Rabbit’s signature. “You are the traitor.”

“That’s absurd!” Rabbit recoiled. “You just told me yourself you found what Georges has been hiding at the inn!”

“It was basic stuff, making sure I’d discover a radio and codebook in both their rooms. But it didn’t make sense.” I leaned forward. “If they both had radios, then they would’ve never had to meet face-to-face to exchange information. Volz would never even have had to come to Garance at all. He and Georges could have traded all the secrets they had from hundreds of miles apart—which would have been smarter and safer.

“And we both knew there would be a radio among Georges’s things. As the leader of the local Maquis, he was guaranteed to have one; you and Volz just needed to make sure I had enough time to find it. It’s the only reason the colonel went into the village that night and convinced Georges to leave the inn.”

Rabbit’s face colored. “That doesn’t even—”

“The whole time I was in that dining room, Volz didn’t look at me—not once,” I elaborated. “In fact, I was the only thing in the room he didn’t look at. A soldier thinks about things like that—who’s sitting in his blind spot—but he put his back to me and made a point not to notice I was watching him.”

“You’re basing this on where he looked when he was drinking?” His tone was snide, dismissive—false.

“It was clever, lying to me about Volz going into the village on a regular basis, about him eating at the inn and sleeping with Josette. But he had to ask Georges what beers were available, which no regular patron would need to do, and Josette called him ‘Colonel’—not Gerhard or some pet name, but Colonel. Addressing him by his rank seems pretty formal to me, considering the relationship you claimed they had.”

“You are utterly unhinged.” Rabbit’s jaws flexed.

“But Volz having a radio at all got me to thinking. I expected Georges to have one—and Josette could easily hide one from her sick grandfather.” Picking up my glass again, I swirled what was left of the cognac. “But you live here, with people coming and going from your quarters, to dust and clean and take the laundry. You’re the only one who’d have trouble concealing a radio. The only one Volz would need to come into Garance to meet.”

He didn’t answer me—just glared, his eyes dark and mutinous.

“And then there were the codebooks. The one in Volz’s room was so new the ink was practically wet, like it had been printed for the purpose of being discovered.”

“The Germans probably change their codes all the time,” Rabbit declared stiffly. “No doubt they reprint those books more often than the bible.”

“And yet the one I found under Georges’s mattress was so old and used it was falling apart.” I smiled. “There are Nazis crawling all over France, and not one of them could bring a fresh copy by the inn? And then there’s the fact that it was hidden under his mattress—the first place an amateur would think to look. He has two objects in his room that could get him killed, and one he conceals under a loose floorboard below his armoire, while the other he … tucks beneath his mattress?”

“You’re reaching. You’re desperate! You’ve killed an innocent family and now, now…”

“And now we come to code names.” I finished the last of the cognac. It did nothing to rid me of the six corpses upstairs. “Rabbit is not your call sign as a Maquisard. You wouldn’t have been foolish enough to risk the Resistance encountering your real pseudonym in a transmission sent across the Line and connecting it back to you. You chose Rabbit.”

“So?” He was utterly still now, aside from a slight twitch in his clenched fist.

“So, the name the Germans gave you was Pascal—Easter. Which I guess makes you the Easter Rabbit, leaving hidden gifts for the Nazis. It’s almost too cute for me, but I don’t believe in coincidences.”

“You have no—”

“Real proof.” Sitting back, I tucked a hand in my pocket. “But I’m right, all the same.”

“If I were the traitor, why—”

“Would you have asked for someone to come look for you? Simple. You were afraid the local Maquis were aware a traitor was in their midst, and you needed a scapegoat—and who better to do your dirty work than an outsider? Someone unfamiliar with the players, someone you could manipulate. You planned to frame Georges, and for me to kill him, so you could return to the Maquis an exonerated hero. So that you could continue selling our secrets and helping the Nazis in their destruction of France.”

He was silent for a long moment, fighting something within himself. “All of this is conjecture.”

“But it’s true.” I was as sure of it as I was of my own name. “And I left a note at the inn that Georges could discover any time now—or perhaps he already has—explaining everything.” I let that sink in. “Even if you kill me, your secret is coming out. It’s over.”

“What have you done?” The familiar words came out in a whisper.

I pushed his glass of cognac another inch closer. “You should drink this.”

“What’s in it?”

“A quicker end than you deserve.” I eyed his clenched fists. “You could kill me, but Georges and Josette and the others will still know who you are, and you’ll be useless to whoever the Germans send in Volz’s place. You’re dead either way. But if you drink this, the Resistance will have no reason to expose your crimes. You might even be remembered as a hero—the Maquisard who took out a Nazi colonel and died for a free France.

“I know you were talking about yourself when you said maybe the Nazis were blackmailing Georges. I don’t know what Volz had on you, and I don’t care. Everyone has a choice, and it’s time for you to make the right one.”

I expected him to attack. Deep in my pocket, I gripped my father’s knife, ready to draw it and drive it into his gut when he lunged across the table, but he surprised me.

With shaking hands, he signed the confession and drank the cognac, and then he slumped back in his chair. He sobbed and blubbered, told the truth and apologized, and begged forgiveness that wasn’t mine to offer.

And then, finally, he died.

Killing Volz had been my plan all along, and I had known it would demand a piece of my soul. I called the village after Rabbit drew his final breath, mustering tears and terror, describing the scene and pleading for help. Having passed myself off as the cousin of the kitchen boy, I couldn’t just disappear without Albertine raising troublesome questions.

Various authorities turned out and, through panicked sobs, I delivered my story. On Thursday, the Lagardes had ventured into the countryside, returning with baskets of mushrooms, berries, nuts, and vegetables; Monsieur and Madame had asked that Saturday’s menu be based on the spoils of their outing; and the mushroom soup, the root puree, the herbs in the roulade, the berry reduction … everything we had prepared for the luncheon had been sourced from their pickings.

My story, coupled with Rabbit’s signed confession, made events clear: The party had brought something poisonous back to the chateau, and the shorthanded kitchen staff had failed to catch it. The chef’s guilt over the deaths of the family he worked for, coupled with his fear of reprisal from the Nazis, had led him to take his own life.

The account of Pierre Dupont was recorded, and I was permitted to leave.

It was Georges who drove me to the border after the sun had set. He was silent the whole way. Eugène Gounod had been a personal friend, and even if the innkeeper comprehended the cook’s treachery, it was difficult for him to process. He never thanked me for what I’d done, but I didn’t take offense.

Evading the German patrol was harder exiting the Occupied Zone than it had been entering it, but I managed; and when I emerged from the shadow-choked forest, stumbling into the moonlit clearing of a familiar, abandoned farmstead, I felt changed. I would never get my father back. The injustice of his death would be with me always, a stamp upon my heart, and what I’d done at the Chateau d’Armont had only temporarily satisfied my need for vengeance.

But there were plenty of Nazis where Colonel Gerhard Volz had come from.

Leaning against the truck, captured by the pale glow of the moon, Aunt Marguerite was waiting for me with a cold, satisfied smile and a long, warm embrace.

SIX WAYS TO KILL YOUR GRANDMOTHER

By Barry Lyga

If there was one thing Jasper Dent had learned from his father, it was this: There were many ways to kill someone, but damn few ways to do it without being caught. This is what sufficed for “pearls of fatherly wisdom” from Billy Dent, quite possibly the world’s most infamous serial killer.

The killing part is easy, Billy had told him time and time again. Might even be too easy. It’s the getting away that separates the men from the boys.

Jasper was only fourteen years old, but he thought there was a good chance he could fit into the “men” column and get away with it. His theoretical victim was his own grandmother, Jasper’s only relation who wasn’t in jail or flat-out missing.

Killing his grandmother was something he thought about with a frequency that would have disturbed most other fourteen-year-olds. Or most other people of pretty much any age, really. But Jasper figured that as long as he thought about killing his grandmother, he wouldn’t spend any of his time thinking about how to kill anyone else.

That was a good thing. He couldn’t stop thinking about death, but at least he could direct it.

Besides, if anyone deserved to die, surely it was his grandmother. Clara Marie Devane Dent had given birth to William Cornelius Dent, Jasper’s father, and that sin alone demanded some sort of punishment. But Gramma was also crazier than a cat in a laser pointer factory. Racist, paranoid, you name it, she had it going on in her graying skull.

Even as a young child, before his father had been arrested and sent to prison for the rest of his (un)natural life, Jasper had both disliked and feared his grandmother. She vacillated from an almost childlike mien to fierce and brutal ranting, her moods shifting like a whipsaw in a strong wind. Younger Jasper had avoided her when at all possible, often prowling the dark, cobwebbed recesses of her rambling, falling-apart old house while his father placated her and calmed her and tolerated her.

But now Billy was in jail and Jasper wasn’t a visitor in his grandmother’s house—he lived in it. All the time. Whether he wanted to or not.

A social worker named Melissa Hoover had brought him here the day after Billy’s arrest. The police—specifically, Sheriff Tanner—had taken Jasper to the hospital, to check him for injuries and wounds, even though Jasper had complained and protested that Billy had never struck him or harmed him in any way. No one believed him. They’d poked and prodded him, checked every last inch of him, and when they found exactly nothing, they’d finally let him sleep.

Hoover had been there when he’d woken up the next morning, her smile too wide, her eyes too bright. Jasper knew how to read people—a gift handed down by his father, who could size up victims at a glance—and he read Hoover in an instant. Too eager. Too hopeful. Smart and savvy enough that she was dangerous to him, but also to herself.

He told her what she wanted to hear, making certain that he pretended to slip up a few times. She thought she was taking him down paths he wanted to avoid, when in reality they hiked nowhere he did not want to go.

In the end, she remanded him to the custody of his grandmother, his only living kin.

Better than foster care, he reasoned, but still not ideal.

“Ideal” would be living on his own, with no one around to control him or corral him. For that to happen, his grandmother had to go away.

Easy enough.

He just had to decide how.

He sat in the room on the topmost floor of her house, the room that she said was his, but that he thought of as borrowed. He hadn’t fully unpacked his things yet. He hadn’t put anything on the walls. He would go back to his house someday, his real house. He was just a boarder here. It was temporary.

This was just a place to do his homework and sleep. He pored over his algebra notes, which made precisely zero sense.

Without knocking, his grandmother came into his room. “Dinner!” she announced, even though it was four in the afternoon. With little fanfare, she plopped a bowl down on his desk.

A bowl of Lucky Charms—dry—with half-cooked ground beef mixed in.

“It’s your favorite,” she said brightly

“It’s not even dinnertime!” he blurted out. Why that was the thing bothering him he couldn’t say.

“No backtalk!” she shouted, her mood shifting suddenly. He had no time to dodge or flinch—she slapped him as hard as she could on the back of his head.

Fortunately, “as hard as she could” wasn’t all that hard. Gramma was built like an anorexic scarecrow, and her slap had probably caused more lingering pain to her hand than to his head.

Still.

Still, he shouldn’t have to worry about being smacked around all the time. Billy was a serial killer, but he’d never so much as spanked Jasper.

“Knock it off, Gramma!” he scolded, turning around in his chair. She slapped out at him again, and this time he brought up his hand, deflecting the blow.

She howled in pain, grabbed back her wounded hand, and hissed as she backed out of the room.

ONE: THE ACCIDENT

This is the easiest one, you know.

She’s old. Old people are clumsy and have trouble seeing and hearing. They’re fragile, and normal everyday things like tripping or banging into a doorjamb shatter their bones and send them to the hospital.

If you fall down a flight of stairs, you’ll get up and walk away with some bruises and a feeling of self-recrimination.

But if she falls down a flight of stairs …

She’ll just break.

So you line the top stair with slippery plastic. Remove the four screws holding the handrail in place. In the middle of the night, you wake her up, tell her there’s danger, watch her go running for the stairs …

Pick up the plastic and reattach the handrail. Call 911. Oh no, my grandmother fell down the stairs …

The next day, he couldn’t even bear to go back to her house after school. She had once again packed him an inedible lunch—today’s consisting of wadded-up paper, some old screws, and a hairnet. On other occasions, he’d found a toy rubber frog, a chunk of drywall, and a collection of coin batteries in his lunch bag, among other things. Fortunately, his best friend, Howie (his only friend, if he was being honest), had not just a full lunch box, but also five bucks in his pocket. They had a pretty decent lunch, all things considered.

“Your grandmother has a weird sense of humor,” Howie had offered, edging into territory best left unexplored.

Jasper had shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to make it any more real.

So after school, he grabbed his bike and rode out to the house he’d grown up in, the one he still thought of as home. It was impossible to think of his grandmother’s house as home. It just wasn’t. Home was the place with his bedroom, the place with the living room he watched TV in, the place with the kitchen where he watched his dad make dinner most nights, including his favorite, Billy’s special recipe for macaroni and cheese.

The place with—yeah, OK—the rumpus room, that hidden enclave where Billy kept the trophies from his serial killing.

It had been a little over a year since Sheriff G. William Tanner had had a lucky day and arrested Billy. Tanner didn’t know what he’d had on his hands at the time. He thought he’d lucked into apprehending the Hand-in-Glove Killer. But Billy was Hand-in-Glove and so much more: Green Jack. The Artist. And many others. Jasper had answered the door that day, thought nothing of the sheriff standing there. He should have, though. He’d been taught to despise and fear those whom Billy dubbed “the bastard cops,” but for some reason on that day his danger sense had been on the blink, and it had seemed perfectly ordinary for Sheriff Tanner to stand there on the stoop. And within twenty minutes, Billy was pepper-sprayed and handcuffed on the living room floor. Right there.

In his house. The place where he’d obeyed Billy’s orders that day; he’d run to the rumpus room to gather and destroy the evidence of Billy’s crimes. And then Sheriff Tanner had exploded into the rumpus room, his gun leveled, shouting at Jasper to drop the backpack full of souvenirs …

Drop it! Drop all of it! I swear to Christ I’ll shoot you!

Jasper’s front tire juddered over a piece of broken asphalt, shaking him out of the memory. He’d never actually believed that the sheriff would shoot him, but a part of him was beginning to suspect that this was naive. He’d been closer to death that day than he wanted to believe.

He skidded his bike to a halt at the spot where his driveway met the road. To his shock, there was something new here.

The house had stood alone and neglected since shortly after Billy’s arrest. There had been no bail and Billy’s trial had been expedited at his own request. Within months of his arrest, as the scope of his crimes became evident, it became obvious that Billy Dent would never breathe free air or cross the threshold of his own house again.

With the help of Howie, Howie’s parents, and Melissa Hoover, Jasper had packed up his things and moved into Gramma’s house. The house he’d grown up in sat on its lot, shrinking behind a lawn that no one would bother tending to.

But now … Now there was something new. The lawn was still wild, but there was a sign staked in the front yard, just barely high enough to be seen over the tall grass.

It was a real estate agent sign. Someone named Darcy Quinn.

And topping it off was a big red banner that read SOLD!

Jasper slammed his way into his grandmother’s house. Sold? Sold? What the hell was that about?

Gramma was sitting in the living room, watching cartoons. She usually left on a steady diet of insane foreign cooking shows, but occasionally the remote accidentally led her to binge episodes of old cartoons. As he stomped into the living room, she was staring slack-jawed at Ren & Stimpy.

“Gramma!” he said, more loudly than he’d intended. Still, it worked—she started, gasped, and turned to him.

“Jon!” she said, pleased. “When did you get home? Dinner’s almost ready!”

It was actually close to dinnertime this time, but Jasper wasn’t his grandfather, Jon Dent. No one was Jon Dent because he’d died a million years ago, before Jasper was born.

“It’s not Grandad, Gramma. It’s me. Jasper.” He’d come into the house angry and confused. Now the delay and the need to walk her through history into the present flustered him and made him angrier. “Jasper. Your grandson. I live here.”

She blinked rapidly. “What does that have to do with dinner?”

“Nothing!” he yelled. “Nothing! Focus! Someone bought my house! Who bought my house?”

Gramma tilted her head, her unbound gray hair spilling down that side. Her eyes were wide and vacant, an icy, almost transparent blue. Like his father’s.

“No one bought the house,” she said slowly. “We live here.”

“Not this house! My house! My real house!”

As he ranted, he realized she was shrinking away from him, occasionally calling him Jon. Tears gathered in her eyes, and something deep inside him told him to stop, but something even deeper told him to keep going. He leaned in close, screaming now, disgorging all the pain, the anger, and fear he’d felt since Billy’s arrest.

And Gramma began softly slapping the side of her own head, first with one hand, then with both, knocking her face back and forth like a Ping-Pong ball as she went. The tears streamed down her face.

“I’m sorry, Jon!” she cried. “I won’t let it happen again! I didn’t mean to do it! I’m sorry!”

As he watched, she pulled her feet up onto the sofa and curled into a fetal position, sobbing, covering her head and face with her hands and forearms.

“Please don’t hit me anymore!” she whimpered.

Jasper took a step back. He realized he was heaving his breaths, barely able to get one in before purging it. He turned and ran from the living room, down the hall that led to the kitchen, then burst through the back door.

The backyard was fenced in, private. He ran its length and pounded his fists on the fence, listening to the rattle of the boards. A scream clawed at his throat from the inside, but he refused to give it voice. He was invisible here, not inaudible. Neighbors would hear him. Rumors and gossip would zip around town like Wi-Fi signals. Bad enough he was the serial killer’s son. The last thing he needed was people talking about how he was cracking up.

Like father, like son. Always thought that kid was off. Heard him out in the backyard just screaming his head off the other day …

It wasn’t fair. He wanted his life back. He wanted things back the way they were before.

But at the same time, he knew that things shouldn’t be the way they were before. That would mean Billy was free. Out there. Killing people. Billy had taught Jasper that hunting prospects (Billy’s word for his victims) was a good thing, a moral necessity, and Jasper had almost believed him. Almost.

He knew that he couldn’t wish away Billy’s arrest. It was wrong.

But it would mean Jasper could actually be happy.

Back inside, Gramma had fallen asleep in her fetal position. Jasper was suddenly, savagely glad that he’d never met his grandfather. He knew Billy had committed unspeakable and grotesque crimes, but for some reason, his grandfather beating his grandmother seemed worse.

Even though you want to kill her, he chided himself.

Well, at least then she’d be dead and at peace, right?

TWO: THE INTRUDER

It’s a relatively peaceful town. Petty crime—public drunkenness, graffiti, that sort of thing.

Still, the Lobo’s Nod sheriff’s office handles the odd burglary, an occasional mugging …

At Billy’s knee, you learned the rudiments of breaking and entering. Not that you need to break into this house.

But you can make it look as though someone broke in.

Wait until quite late at night. Go into her room while she sleeps. Waken her roughly.

She flails at you, sleep-addled. You allow her a few moments of successful defense. To make it look good.

Then you beat her over the head with the heavy lamp at her bedside. Rummage through her dresser, leaving clothing and cheap jewelry scattered everywhere.

Home invasion gone wrong. Thief breaks in looking for something valuable, wakes up old woman, scuffles … Boom. Dead.

It happens. Even in the Nod, it happens.

When Gramma woke up a few hours later, she woke up mean. She betrayed no memory of their earlier conversation, and she no longer thought he was his grandfather.

She thought he was Billy.

“Marrying that woman!” she screamed, and hurled a notepad at him. Jasper knocked it aside. “I told you to steer clear of that bitch, and what did you? What did you do, Billy? You went and married her! She’s full of blackness and horror, that one! She’s no good!”

Jasper clenched his jaw. His mother had disappeared years ago, no doubt one more of Billy’s victims, though his father refused to speak on the subject at all. And he wasn’t about to let his grandmother spew her crap about his mom. No way.

“If you’d had the sense God gave a goose,” she went on, “you’d’ve turned your back soon as you saw her! Instead of letting her get inside you, worm her magic into you, and rot you from your own guts!”

Trembling, he realized that all of the hypotheticals were falling away. If he stood here and continued listening to her, he would kill her flat out. No preplanning. No cover story. He would just kill her, period.

He knew he had to wait. To bide his time. To be patient. If she died now, he would end up in the foster care system. He would be shipped off to who-knew-where, away from the only town he knew, the only people he knew.

But in four short years, he would be eighteen. A legal adult. Able to make his own decisions and to care for himself. He would not need her any longer.

Four years to plot and plan.

He backed away from her, as though her invective were a force unto itself, shoving him back, and when he got to the door, he pulled it open, darted outside, and ran.

THREE: THE OVERDOSE

She takes a welter of medications, all of them meticulously organized in a massive plastic pill case gridded with days of the week along the top row, each column divided into morning, afternoon, dinner, and bedtime.

It takes you maybe an hour with the original pill bottles and the internet.

So simple to switch out some of the meds.

Double up a dose here, halve a dose there …

Beta-blockers and blood thinners and powerful diuretics …

Gramma is a walking pharmacy, held in a precise and delicate balance.

Tip that balance, and you tip her.

Old folks make mistakes, people will say. No one will be shocked that an old woman accidentally took the wrong meds at the wrong time. Accidents happen all the time. Mistakes are made all the time.

This is your favorite, to tell the truth.

He ran blind for a long time, and then—as though guided by a homing instinct—found himself on the street where his best friend, Howie Gersten, lived. Howie’s parents—his mother, especially—weren’t fond of Jasper. Not anymore. They’d liked him just fine right up until Billy’s arrest. One more casualty of dear old dad’s career.

Still, the Gerstens managed to pretend to tolerate him, at least. After a few gulps of air so that he wouldn’t appear out of breath from his run, he knocked on the door and waited.

Mrs. Gersten answered. Her lips twitched into something resembling a smile. “Jasper. Hello.”

“Hi,” he said, and threw her his most charming smile. It was a good one. Billy had taught it to him, and it usually knocked down her defenses a little bit. “Is Howie around?”

She didn’t ask why he hadn’t called first. “Yes, he is, but we’re just sitting down to dinner.”

Jasper startled. He looked around. Sure enough, it was getting darker out. He hadn’t even realized.

“Ah. Oh. Okay.” Stupid. The startle and then the babble … Stay in control, Billy had told him. Always stay in control.

He offered up the charming smile again and tried to recover. “Thanks. I guess I better be getting home, then.”

She actually let him get down the concrete steps leading up to the front door before she sighed and said, “Would you like to join us?”

Cold cereal and old cartoons with Gramma or a hot meal and his best friend? Not even close. Jasper allowed himself a relieved, triumphant grin before he turned around, said, “Sure, I guess,” and bounded back up the stairs.

Howie was delighted to see him. At six foot something and still growing, he was a type A hemophiliac who seemed incapable of taking his own disease seriously. Or anything else, for that matter. The first time Jasper had seen Howie after Billy’s arrest, Howie had looked at him very soberly and said, “Man, your dad will do anything to get out of coming to the school talent show, won’t he?”

Emotions had warred inside Jasper. It would be easy—so, so, so easy—to kill Howie. There was really no challenge there at all.

And yet, it was funny. He had to admit it. He’d laughed, and then Howie had laughed and pulled him in for what he called a “hemo hug,” which was the lightest, least clingy hug you could imagine. In Jasper’s ear, he’d said, “Dude, I’m here for you,” and Howie had been. For everything that followed, Howie had been there.

And was still there.

“How’s life in the crazy house?” Howie asked when he saw Jasper.

Jasper opened his mouth to answer, to tell Howie about the SOLD! sign, but Mrs. Gersten interrupted them.

“Don’t even get started,” she admonished. “Dinner is ready now.”

So they gathered in the dining room, where Mr. Gersten hurriedly put out a fourth place setting.

“Jasper, it’s your lucky day,” Mrs. Gersten said, bearing a square glass baking dish from the kitchen. “I seem to remember macaroni and cheese is your favorite.”

“Yes!” Howie fist-pumped in joy. “The secret is the bread crumbs on top,” he confided in Jasper. “She uses garlic bread, not regular.”

Jasper nodded and feigned satisfaction as he bit into the elbow noodles, which oozed cheddar. Macaroni and cheese was his favorite. But not this kind. His dad had some kind of personal recipe, where he made macaroni and cheese not with elbow noodles, but rather with linguine. He still called it mac and cheese, but it was some other species. The result was less pasta-doused-in-cheese sauce and more like a solid pie, with the linguine held together by the clotted cheese. Billy baked it in a round Pyrex dish and served it cut into wedges.

Jasper had never asked how he made it. He probably should have. He knew exactly who and what his father was, that when Billy went away on “business trips,” he was actually slipping into another identity and into someone else’s life. That he was scratching a very specific and very intense itch. He knew this because Billy was grooming Jasper, raising him to be the next generation of serial killer.

And Jasper had both wallowed in his father’s teachings and fought against them at the same time, but right now all he could think was Why didn’t I ask him to write down that stupid recipe?

It was so self-absorbed that it was almost painful. He knew it was wrong to obsess over something like his dad’s cooking, but his own home had been sold out from under him and he felt like everything in his life was in danger of evaporating like a rain puddle on a hot day. He could grab at the vapors of his old life around him but never keep them.

By the time he got back to Gramma’s, he was angry, wrung out, exhausted, frustrated, and still no closer to knowing anything at all about that damn SOLD! in his front yard. Out of deep desperation, he did the one thing he hated to do more than anything else in the world: He called Melissa Hoover.

“Jasper,” she said when he told her why he was calling, “I’m sorry. I was going to call you last night when I found out, but I had a … a case. I can’t tell you about—”

“I don’t care about your other case! Who bought my house?”

“It’s not … I’m coming over there.”

He didn’t want her to come, but he had no choice. He was just a kid, and he had zero control over what she did. Over what anyone did, really. He couldn’t stop any adult from imposing their will on him.

Well, except for one.

FOUR: THE MISUNDERSTANDING

The riskiest method. Requires the ability to confound and to lie with true conviction, a skill Billy had spent many, many hours imparting to his son.

First, you dress in all black, including a ski mask. Pretend to attack Gramma.

She defends herself, of course. In the ensuing melee, she hits her head or falls down the stairs or what-have-you.

Ditch the mask. Call the cops. Explain to them that there’d been some sort of horrible misunderstanding: You came home late; she was out of sorts, thought you were an intruder … She attacked, and you had no choice but to defend yourself …

At this point, break down sobbing. Very important. Emotion sells the story. Oh, what a horrible accident, and he’s only fourteen and his mother is missing, and his father is in jail.

The police and the courts go easy on you. You’re free.

Melissa Hoover was that odd blend of gentle and tough that he never could wrap his head around. On the one hand, she was clearly able to put up with a lot of abuse—he’d hurled plenty of it at her in the year since Billy had been taken away, and she’d never even blinked. At the same time, she relied on a steady stream of platitudes and adages, a crutch for people who can’t think on their feet. Her voice was always pitched too young, as though for some reason she thought he was ten years old. Everything about her grated, and he always had to fight not to let his contempt bleed through.

“A man named Roland Hunt bought the house,” Melissa told him, sitting in the living room. Gramma was upstairs, asleep, so Melissa spoke more softly than usual. “He’s the father of one of your father’s victims.”

Jasper had a good memory, and he’d spent a lot of time in the rumpus room, poring over Billy’s kill trophies. The last name Hunt didn’t mean anything to him, but fathers and their kids didn’t always have the same last names.

“So…,” he said slowly, turning it over in his head, trying to make sense of it. “So … this guy wants to live in the house of the guy who—” He broke off. It’s not that he couldn’t say the words “killed his kid.” It’s just that there was no point to it. He knew what Billy had done; Melissa knew. Why say it?

Melissa hesitated before answering. “No, not really,” she said.

“Then why?” He was standing near the TV cabinet, arms folded over his chest, as far from her as he could get and still be in the same room.

Her entire expression fell. She would have been a lousy poker player. Or serial killer, for that matter. “I want you to know that I’m here for you—”

“I know that. Just tell me what’s going on.”

She heaved a sigh. “Hunt plans to demolish the house.”

Jasper blinked a few times. He rooted around in his memory, certain that he must have forgotten some crucial, obscure definition of the word demolish. Sometimes people used it to mean “gobble down.” Howie sometimes said things like, “I’m gonna demolish that pizza!” before diving in.

“Take your time,” Melissa said too soothingly. “Process it.”

It snapped him out of his idiotic reverie. Process it? Was she kidding?

“They’re gonna destroy my house,” he said. His voice sounded hollow and too high-pitched to his own ears.

“It’s not yours, Jasper. I’m sorry. The bank foreclosed after your father couldn’t keep up the payments. They sold it to Mr. Hunt. He can do whatever he wants with it.” She wrung her hands, and he had the distinct impression that she wished he would let her hold his. She was the sort who believed that human contact meant something. As though the press of someone else’s flesh could in any way compensate for the knowledge that the only home he’d ever known was going to be reduced to rubble.

“When?” he asked.

She told him. It was sooner than he’d thought to be possible. Then again, it was probably pretty easy to knock down a house.

“Jasper, I think maybe we should—”

“You can go,” he told her.

With a shake of her head, she stood up, put her fists on her hips. She thought a superhero pose meant something to him. “I think I should stay. You need someone to help you work through this.”

“There’s nothing to work through.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you going to do something stupid?”

He laughed. For a fleeting instant, he had considered handcuffing himself to something in the house in order to stop the demolition, but he didn’t have handcuffs. And if they were going to destroy the house, they would have no compunctions about cutting away whatever he’d cuffed himself to anyway.

Once he’d gotten her out the door, he trudged upstairs to his bedroom. He was exhausted, and he just didn’t have any energy left in him to rage against Hunt and his bulldozers. He collapsed in bed with his clothes still on and gratefully dropped into an immediate slumber.

A slumber that was absolutely wrecked twenty minutes later by a high keening sound and a rapid tattoo of knuckles on his door. Bleary-eyed and jolted from a deep sleep, he rolled off the bed and crashed to the floor before he realized it was his grandmother. Of course.

“They’re here!” she hollered. “They’re here, oh Lord, they’re here!”

Picking himself up off the floor, he demanded, “Who’s here?” though he thought he knew. He had always known that this was possible, that someday the families left behind by Billy’s predilections might decide to take their revenge on the only people they could access, Billy’s last living relatives. It had been a constant worry at first, during Billy’s trial, as the courtroom was packed with angry fathers, mothers, siblings, best friends. Jasper knew that their hate and potent rage were aimed at Billy, not him, but he sat behind his father in court most days, and the blasts of sheer loathing went right through him on their way to Billy.

He knew it would be ridiculous to think—even for a minute—that none of that hate would transfer.

Now, sleep-jostled, he stumbled into the hallway and tried to calm her screaming. He told her to call 911, but she wouldn’t listen, slapping at him, crying out, all while Jasper’s danger senses spiraled into high alert.

And then, slowly, as he came more awake, those same senses quieted down.

There was no one here. “They” were just more figments of her fragmented imagination.

“Goddamn it!” he swore at her, and she didn’t even hear it, now roaming the upstairs hall, poking her head around every corner, scrutinizing every dark nook. “Gramma! You have to stop this!”

He resolved to sleep with earplugs that night, and to lock his door. And as he made his way back to bed, he realized that—in a way—she’d given him a gift.

FIVE: THE REVENGE

The most poetic plan. Also the most intricate and, no doubt, the most satisfying.

Requires falsifying evidence, planting bogus clues and leads for the police, and generally developing an entire alternate reality to present to the world.

You make it appear as though a relative of one of your father’s victims has come to the Nod with the express purpose of killing Billy Dent’s only living relatives as revenge. They succeed, partially. Clara Dent lies dead in her own home.

You injure yourself, of course. Somewhat seriously. To make it look real. The house becomes a bloodbath.

Make it a game. Leave behind snippets of evidence to lead the police on a merry chase that ultimately dead-ends.

Difficult, but utterly believable.

Maybe five plans was overkill, but Billy had always been fond of the adage “Measure twice, cut once.” That was the closest thing to Scripture in Jasper’s house. It was Billy’s mantra, his philosophy, and his crutch all at the same time. It had kept him out of prison for the length of a twenty-plus-year-long killing spree that had ranged over thirty of the fifty states, encompassing multiple serial killer identities and evading dozens of local law enforcement organizations, a wealth of task forces, and, of course, the FBI itself.

In the end, it hadn’t saved him, though.

Now, in a twisted way, Jasper wanted to ask Billy for advice. Which of the five ways made more sense? Some were obviously easier than others, but simplicity was not always the hallmark of success.

Knowing that he had five ways to do it, five ways to get away with it … The thought warmed him. Made his life more tolerable.

Everything, he realized, was better when you had an escape route planned.

He wasn’t really going to do it, of course.

He didn’t think he was going to do it.

He wasn’t entirely sure.

He wondered if his father had thought, that first time out of more than a hundred: I ain’t really gonna kill this girl. I’m just pretending. I’m just fantasizing.

And he shivered all over.

Days later, it happened.

Sitting on the living room sofa, watching some sitcom rerun that took his mind off the real world for a while, the local news cut in.

In the kitchen, Gramma was puttering and banging pots and pans together. Jasper was just making a mental note to himself to check in five minutes to be sure that she hadn’t set anything on fire when the picture on TV switched to something very familiar—his house.

Billy’s house.

A crowd had gathered. In the background, he saw a bulldozer. A man with a hard hat was speaking to reporters, but even though the volume was turned up, Jasper suddenly couldn’t hear him.

This wasn’t really about to happen, was it?

Oh God, this was really about to happen.

Smoke purled from the exhaust pipe atop the bulldozer. The crowd shrank back.

As Jasper watched, the bulldozer full-on collided with his house. The walls crumpled like paper. He couldn’t believe it.

The crowd … cheered.

Frozen, rooted to the spot, he was helpless to change the channel. He could only watch, numb. The bulldozer backed up and took another run at the house.

More cheering. More walls collapsing. It had felt so solid to him, when he’d lived there. It had been his shelter.

And now, in mere minutes, it was gone. It was all gone. It was a pile of rubble.

When it was over, Gramma entered. “Dinner!” she announced, brandishing a plate with a flourish. He dragged his eyes away from the TV.

On the plate, a shakily cut wedge of linguine and cheese.

“Wait, what?” he said, so surprised that he momentarily forgot the television.

“Dinner!” she said again.

“But … but this is Dad’s recipe.”

She clucked her tongue and shoved the plate at him again. “Who do you think taught him that recipe?”

He took the plate and stared down at it. On television, someone said, “This can’t bring back the dead, of course, but maybe this can start the healing process in this town.”

“How did you remember?” Jasper asked.

Gramma snorted. “How could I forget?” And then she stomped back into the kitchen.

Hesitant, half expecting the dish to be loaded with Tabasco or sugar or glass, he took a bite.

And oh God, it was perfect.

He felt a stupid tear well up, and he rubbed it away savagely.

And then he ate every last bite.

SIX: MERCY

Do nothing.

Wait.

Be as kind as possible.

Hold your tongue when you can; apologize when you can’t.

Let time and tide do their work.

And someday in the future, let her go gently in her sleep.

That, he decided, was the best way.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

KELLEY ARMSTRONG is the author of the Rockton crime series and the YA thrillers Aftermath, Missing, and The Masked Truth. Past works include the Otherworld urban fantasy series, the Cainsville modern gothic series, the Darkest Powers & Darkness Rising teen paranormal trilogies, the Age of Legends fantasy YA series, and the Nadia Stafford crime trilogy. She lives in Ontario, Canada, with her family. You can sign up for email updates here.

DAVID BART’s short fiction has been published in the Mystery Writers of America anthologies Show Business Is Murder, edited by Stuart M. Kaminsky, and A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime, edited by Jeffery Deaver, which has recently been republished, as well as the anthology Fedora III, edited by Michael Bracken. Many of his short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. His story “Under the Playground,” originally published in AHMM, was chosen to be reprinted in a French anthology. David and his wife, Linda, live in New Mexico with their rescued cat, Ripley.

ANTHONY FRANZE is a critically acclaimed novelist with St. Martin’s Press and a prominent Washington, D.C., lawyer. A family member’s experience with ADHD inspired his story in this collection. The Strand magazine said that “Franze has earned a seat at the table of legal thriller masters.” His latest novel, The Outsider, has garnered accolades from #1 New York Times bestsellers James Patterson, Lisa Gardner, and the Associated Press. With respect to his previous novel, The Advocate’s Daughter, the LA Review of Books said, “Lawyers by trade are storytellers, and good lawyers tell good stories—Franze’s book is a case in point.” He is on the board of directors for the International Thriller Writers organization, where he is a vice president charged with managing the prestigious ITW Thriller Awards.

BARRY LANCET is the author of the award-winning Jim Brodie series that began with Japantown (Simon & Schuster). The mystery-thriller won the Barry Award for Best First Novel and has been optioned by a major production company for television. The follow-up, Tokyo Kill, was a finalist for the Shamus Award. Lancet’s most recent Brodie novel is The Spy Across the Table. He is currently working on the next Jim Brodie book and a stand-alone novel.

EMMY LAYBOURNE is a young adult novelist best known for her Monument 14 series, an internationally bestselling trilogy that has been translated into nine languages. Her stand-alone book Sweet won a Junior Library Guild Award, was a YALSA Quick Pick, and got a Perfect Ten rating from VOYA. Her latest books, Berserker and Ransacker, tell the story of a family of Norwegian teens with ancient Viking powers and are currently being adapted for television. A former character actress, she is occasionally recognized from her role as Mary Katherine Gallagher’s best friend in the movie Superstar. She lives outside New York with her husband, two kids, faithful dog, and flock of seven nifty chickens. Visit her online at www.EmmyLaybourne.com.

Y. S. LEE’s debut novel, The Agency: A Spy in the House, features a mixed-race girl detective in Victorian London. It won the Canadian Children’s Book Centre’s inaugural John Spray Mystery Award in 2011. The Agency tetralogy continues with The Body at the Tower, The Traitor in the Tunnel, and Rivals in the City (Candlewick Press). Ying was born in Singapore, raised in Vancouver and Toronto, and lived for a spell in England. She has a PhD in Victorian literature and now lives in Kingston, Ontario, not far from the penitentiary where Sarah Jane Pierce served her sentence.

Called a “YA rebel-author” by Kirkus Reviews, BARRY LYGA has published more than twenty novels in various genres in his career, including the New York Times–bestselling I Hunt Killers. After graduating from Yale with a degree in English, Lyga worked in the comic book industry before quitting to pursue his lifelong love of writing. In 2006, his first young adult novel, The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl, was published to rave reviews, including starred reviews from Booklist and School Library Journal. Publishers Weekly named Lyga a “Flying Start” in December 2006 on the strength of the debut. Since then, he has written more critically acclaimed novels, including Boy Toy, Hero-Type, and Goth Girl Rising (the sequel to his first novel), as well as the Archvillain series for middle-grade readers and the graphic novel Mangaman (with art by Colleen Doran). His series I Hunt Killers was called by the LA Times “one of the more daring concepts in recent years by a young-adult author” and an “extreme and utterly alluring narrative about nature versus nurture.” Lyga lives and podcasts near New York City with his wife, Morgan Baden, their nigh-omnipotent daughter, and their preternaturally chill son.

JONATHAN MABERRY is a New York Times–bestselling author, six-time Bram Stoker Award winner, and comic book writer. He writes in multiple genres, including suspense, thriller, horror, science fiction, fantasy, and action, and he writes for adults, teens, and middle-grade readers. His vampire apocalypse book series, V-Wars, is in production as a Netflix original series, starring Ian Somerhalder (Lost, Vampire Diaries) and will debut in 2019. His works include the Joe Ledger thrillers, Glimpse, the Rot & Ruin series, the Dead of Night series, The Wolfman, X-Files Origins: Devil’s Advocate, Mars One, and many others. Several of his works are in development for film and TV. He is the editor of high-profile anthologies, including The X-Files, Aliens: Bug Hunt, Out of Tune, New Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Baker Street Irregulars, Nights of the Living Dead, and others. His comics include Black Panther: Doomwar, The Punisher: Naked Kills, and Bad Blood. He is a board member of the Horror Writers Association and the president of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. He lives in Del Mar, California. Find him online at www.jonathanmaberry.com.

MELISSA MARR writes fiction for adults, teens, and children. Her books have been translated into twenty-eight languages and have been bestsellers internationally as well as on the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestsellers lists in the United States. She is best known for the Wicked Lovely series for teens and the Graveminder series for adults. She lives in Arizona with her family and a multitude of pets.

EILEEN RENDAHL is the national bestselling and award-winning author of the Messenger series and four Chick Lit novels. Her alter ego, Eileen Carr, writes romantic suspense. She writes cozy mysteries as Kristi Abbott and Lillian Bell. Born in Dayton, Ohio, she moved when she was four and only remembers that she was born across the street from Baskin-Robbins. Eileen remembers anything that has to do with ice cream. Or chocolate. Or champagne. She started writing for the worst of reasons (she thought it would be easy!) and has since spent years working on her craft, earning an MFA in creative writing at Antioch University in Los Angeles. She now teaches creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University. She has had many jobs and lived in many cities and feels unbelievably lucky to be where she is now and to be doing what she’s doing.

CALEB ROEHRIG grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but has also lived in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Helsinki, Finland. A former actor and television producer, Roehrig has experience on both sides of the camera, with appearances on film and TV, and seven years in the stranger-than-fiction salt mines of reality television. In the name of earning a paycheck, he has hung around a frozen cornfield in his underwear, partied with an actual rock star, chatted with a scandal-plagued politician, and been menaced by a disgruntled ostrich.

STEPHEN ROSS’s short stories and novelettes have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, three previous MWA anthologies, and numerous other magazines and anthologies. He has been nominated for an Edgar Award (2011), a Derringer Award (2011), an International Thriller Writers Thriller Award (2015), and was a 2010 Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Award finalist. He has lived in Auckland, London, and Frankfurt, and he currently resides on the beautiful Whangaparaoa Peninsula of New Zealand, where his dog, Mycroft, takes him for regular walks. Stephen maintains a website at www.StephenRoss.net.

JEFF SOLOWAY won the 2014 Robert L. Fish Memorial Award from the Mystery Writers of America. His Travel Writer mystery series, published by Random House/Alibi, includes The Travel Writer, which takes place in Bolivia; The Last Descent, which takes place in the Grand Canyon; and, most recently, The Ex-President, which imagines the surprise resignation of America’s billionaire reality-TV-star president and his subsequent comeback, beginning on a luxury cruise in the Bahamas. Jeff’s short fiction has been published in the anthologies The Black Car Business, Volume 2 (edited by Lawrence Kelter) and Scream and Scream Again! (edited by R.L. Stine).

JEFF SOMERS (www.jeffreysomers.com) was born in Jersey City, New Jersey. He wrote his first novel at the age of nine and was sent to a deprogramming camp by his parents. Escaping, he set several records in hard-boiled-egg consumption, video games, and sleeping. He’s published nine novels, including the Avery Cates series and the Ustari Cycle. On the internet, he writes about books, and his book on the craft and business of writing, Writing Without Rules, published in 2018. He lives in Hoboken, New Jersey, with his wife, the Duchess, and their cats. He considers pants to always be optional.

R.L. STINE is one of the bestselling children’s authors in history. His Goosebumps and Fear Street series have sold more than 400 million copies around the world. He has had several TV series based on his work, and the movies Goosebumps (2015) and Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween (2018) starred Jack Black as R.L. Stine himself. Bob lives in New York City with his wife, Jane, an editor and publisher.

JULIE TOLLEFSON grew up in the sand hills of Southwest Kansas and now makes her home in the northeast corner of the state. She landed her first paying writing gig just out of high school, investigating such hard-hitting stories as “Do blondes really have more fun?” and “Does father know best?” for her hometown newspaper. After stints as a copy editor for a daily newspaper and an editor in a corporate technical writing department, Julie joined the ranks of academia, helping researchers communicate their discoveries to the public. Find her on Twitter @jtollefson, Instagram @julie.tollefson, and the web (julietollefson.com).

RACHEL VINCENT is the author of more than twenty-five novels for teens and adults in a variety of genres. A former English teacher and an eager champion of the Oxford comma, she shares her home in Oklahoma with two cats, two teenagers, and her husband, who’s been her number one fan.

JOSEPH S. WALKER is a teacher and cultural critic living in Indiana. His story “The Only Child” appeared in the MWA anthology Scream and Scream Again! and his fiction has also appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly, Dark City, and other magazines and anthologies. Two of his stories, “Pill Bug” and “Awaiting the Hour,” have been named Distinguished Stories of the Year in recent volumes of the annual Best American Mystery Stories. He is almost halfway through a quest to see a game at every major league ballpark. Follow him on Twitter @JSWalkerAuthor.

AMANDA WITT’s fiction has been called “hottest of all” by Kirkus Reviews and “arresting” by Publishers Weekly. She served as a judge for the 2017 MWA Edgar Awards, holds a PhD in English, has taught writing at various universities across the United States, and is happy to now be settled with her husband back in their home state of Texas. Though mystery is her first love, she also has written four dystopian novels in the Red Series.

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LIFE IS SHORT AND THEN YOU DIE: MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA PRESENTS FIRST ENCOUNTERS WITH MURDER.

Copyright © 2019 by Mystery Writers of America.
Introduction copyright © 2019 by Kelley Armstrong.
“Floater” copyright © 2019 by Kelley Armstrong.
“The Day I Killed Coach Duffy” copyright © 2019 by R.L. Stine.
“In Plain Sight” copyright © 2019 by Y. S. Lee.
“Daddy’s Girl” copyright © 2019 by Melissa Marr.
“Summer Job” copyright © 2019 by Amanda Witt.
“The Boy in the Red Vans” copyright © 2019 by Rachel Vincent.
“The Company I Keep” copyright © 2019 by Jeffrey Somers.
“Concealment” copyright © 2019 by Eileen Rendahl.
“Night of the Living Dog” copyright © 2019 by David Bart.
“Murder IRL” copyright © 2019 by Jeff Soloway.
“A Killer Story” copyright © 2019 by Julie Tollefson.
“Gnat” copyright © 2019 by Joseph S. Walker.
“A Different Hero’s Day” copyright © 2019 by Anthony Franze and Barry Lancet.
“First Party Back” copyright © 2019 by Emmy Laybourne.
“What I Did on My Summer Vacation” copyright © 2019 by Jonathan Maberry.
“The Things We Don’t Talk About” copyright © 2019 by Stephen Ross.
“Enemy Lines” copyright © 2019 by Caleb Roehrig.
“Six Ways to Kill Your Grandmother” copyright © 2019 by Barry Lyga.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

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First hardcover edition, 2019

eBook edition, September 2019

eISBN 9781250196408

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