Authors: Eliot Schrefer
H
e didn’t seem as creepy this time. Maybe the light from the streetlamps was better; maybe it was just that he was closer. I still couldn’t see his face—he was standing within the razor shadow of an abandoned store—but I had an instant suspicion of who he actually was. His hoodie had a giant many-sided die on it, for one thing. The kind that, back before she got into drugs, Maya might have rolled to see whether she’d hit a dragon with a +1 longsword.
I watched him from the exit door, buffeted by people entering and leaving. Our looks started the conversation.
Me:
Tell me you’re not following me.
Him:
Sure am. Sorry.
Brian waited for me to cross the lot. “I saw Cheyenne leave just now,” he said, throwing back his hood.
“Let’s go,” I said, scanning around to check whether we’d been seen. “My car’s at her place. Can you give me a ride over to your neighborhood?”
“I had to return the car before my parents saw it missing. And I shouldn’t be driving, anyway. I’ve only got my learner’s permit.” He said it like we were close, like we had some reason to know each other’s birthdays and habits.
“Well, then, let’s get walking,” I said sharply.
“You okay?” he asked after I’d untied Cody and we were passing back into the park. The sun had fully gone down by now, so we stuck to the lighted path that arrowed between the dark trees.
“Life’s been totally wonderful lately. How ’bout you, champ?”
He smiled. “You’re cranky.”
“And you’re annoying. But we knew that.”
I bit my lip. Last thing I wanted was another fight. But Brian seemed to brighten. I’d shown him the same callousness Jefferson had always shown him, no doubt. Maybe I’d made him feel nostalgic.
“What’ve you been up to lately?” I asked him.
“Mmm…not much.”
“Did the, um, laptop issue cause you any trouble?”
“Nah. No one’s noticed yet. The police will probably take the computer into evidence someday, but until then, no one will know.”
“Have you even been home?”
“Oh yeah, I’ve been staying there instead of my grandma’s. She does her best to take care of me, but she’s too old for it and usually forgets I’m even supposed to be there. And my parents mean well, but they’re a bit distracted. Well, a lot distracted. I’m taking care of myself these days. Lots of pizza delivery.”
“And have the police been by much?”
“I guess so. Not while I was around. They talked to me the day after Jefferson’s body was found, but I guess they’ve been busy following leads since then.”
I told him about Alcaraz and Jamison coming by to talk to me. “If I don’t track down Maya soon, there’ll be trouble. Three days until the Feds get involved.”
Feds.
What a heavy word.
“You don’t have any idea how to locate her?”
I shook my head. “It’s killing me.”
“Online?”
“She hates the internet. And I’m sure the police and my parents are flooding her with messages. But yeah, I’ll try that first.”
“If you find her, maybe I could just hide out with her wherever she is. I can barely even fit in my parents’ trailer. It’s clogged with flowers and wreaths and casseroles and stuffed bears.” He chuckled ghoulishly. “It’s become the Jefferson memorial.”
Brian walked with me to Cheyenne’s house, where we piled Cody into my car and drove over to his place. I sent the dog out back, and he spent the evening showing me how to make some Chinese warrior chick throw fireballs. My phone kept buzzing and wheezing, ignored in my bag. I glanced at it occasionally, while Brian was fighting. Dad three times, Mom twice, Alcaraz once, Cheyenne once. I didn’t check any of the messages, though each one pushed me further and further into my funk. The more that came in, the harder it was to start listening to any of them. Brian
and I withdrew into our own world for a few hours. I was really grateful for his company, for the privacy of his trailer hidden within the leaves, for the worlds we escaped to in his video games.
“How did you get your parents to pay for this huge TV?” I asked as he electrocuted some hairy Russian dude.
“Oh,” he said. He paused, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he was vying for time or trying to execute some special move. “They didn’t. Jefferson did.”
“That was awesome of him.”
“Um, kinda.” The announcer declared the next fight was going to be incredible.
“Kinda?”
“Yeah. Kinda.”
“Why just kinda awesome?”
“There was no such thing as a free gift with Jefferson, you know? Just ask Maya. She knows all about that.”
“Um, I can’t ask Maya, remember? So I guess you’re going to have to fill me in.”
“I said I wanted my own TV, and my parents said absolutely not. But there was a delivery at the door a couple of days later. You can guess from who, and how he got the money.”
“Jefferson. From dealing.”
“Atta girl. And then I owed him. That’s what he loves, to make you indebted. After that he’d start having me keep his books. He’d give me a package to deliver, some sketchball to go talk to because he didn’t have time or just didn’t want
to take the risk. And he didn’t threaten to take the TV away, but he knew I owed him. So yes, Jefferson
gave me a TV.
It was
awesome
of him.” A fat sumo guy was whaling on Brian, his hands flying everywhere. “So,” he continued, changing the course of the conversation as the death countdown started ticking, “Cheyenne seemed pretty upset when she left.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, picking up the controller as the game went back to the main menu. “How do I get back to the Chinese girl again? I like her laugh. She’s such a bitch.”
“I figured Cheyenne’d be on cloud nine these days,” he said. He took the controller and chose her for me.
“You heard about the Miami thing?”
“No. What do you mean?”
“Oh, what do
you
mean?”
“That AP scandal.”
“What? I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.
“Oh, I forgot you weren’t in Euro. You know how Jefferson and Cheyenne used to help each other on assignments last year? He’d give her quiz answers from first period, if she’d tell him what was on the bio test, that sort of thing? Well, she got nailed for plagiarizing an entire paragraph of a practice AP essay. She got sent to the principal, but since it was her first time she got off easy. But that paragraph hadn’t been from the web—it’d been from Jefferson. She never told you this?”
No, she hadn’t. “And
he’d
gotten it off the web?” I said.
Why hadn’t Cheyenne ever said anything? A more searing sadness was replacing my earlier funk.
“Yeah, and then tipped off the teacher. It was a total setup.”
“For what?”
“Cheyenne’s from the same neighborhood as us. He knew she had no money. Getting valedictorian and Florida’s Scholars meant so much to her. If she was banned from it, it would ruin her.”
“And he wanted to be valedictorian instead.”
“Sort of. Honestly, he probably couldn’t have cared less about the actual title. It was more that he wanted her to be indebted to him. He knew she was insecure about her writing, and he’d been feeding her essays all year, in return for her letting him copy her calculus. He’d slipped her five more plagiarized essays, all from that same site. I know because he’d gotten me to find them. All he had to do was breathe a word, and Cheyenne would have been expelled. He had her at the drop of a hat.”
“Why did he do it?”
“Because he could get her to do anything for him. Because it was fun. Really, there didn’t need to be a ‘why.’ Putting her in danger
was
the point.”
“I died,” I said, pointing at the screen. I’d forgotten how to do that fireball thing.
It was so ironic. Cheyenne had accused me of withholding from her, but then Jefferson had been dangling this
heavy stuff over her and she hadn’t said a word. What a total hypocrite. I wanted to go confront Cheyenne right away, but then I thought better of it: Shouldn’t I wait and think first about the position this new information put me in? Would the police believe that Cheyenne had killed Jefferson? Did I
want
the police to believe that Cheyenne had done it? Then Maya would be scot-free, after all. I prayed I wouldn’t have to make a choice between my sister and my best friend. Alcaraz’s card was still stiff in my pocket.
Brian’s door opened, and in walked his dad, a tall, gruff, khaki guy with a bald head and a tendency to wear marathon T-shirts. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said when he saw me sitting on the bed. “I didn’t realize.” He closed the door, and then immediately opened it again. “Abby Goodwin? What are
you
doing here this late?”
“Hi, Mr. Andrews,” I said, with a little wave.
His eyes were surrounded with this crazy purple color, grief and insomnia and sudden age. “Brian,” he said, “what did we say about this? Unbelievable. I’ll talk to you later. In the meantime, Abby, you have to leave. Right now. No guests.”
“Okay,” I said, standing. Mr. Andrews was well known for his temper—he’d once famously reamed out Brian in the middle of the parking lot, in front of the whole school. It’d ended with a loud slap that no one had told guidance about, though we’d talked about whether we should. I wasn’t about to test his limits today.
“Dad!” Brian said. “Chill out. Abby had nothing to do with it.”
“I don’t care what you think you know. I’m sorry, I have to ask you to leave, Abby.”
“What, I’m not allowed to hang out with anyone at all now?” Brian said. “Do you care at all what
I
might be going through?”
“Of course I do. But I’m not going to discuss this right now, do you understand?”
I watched Mr. Andrews’s jaw muscles do this crazy wavy thing. Brian caught his father’s dangerous vibe, too. “I’m sorry, Dad,” he said meekly. “Can I at least walk her out?”
Mr. Andrews’s hand clenched on the doorknob. Finally, he nodded.
“Let’s go,” Brian said. He powered down the game system and we ducked under his dad’s arm to get out. I could feel Mr. Andrews’s eyes on my back as we hurried down the hallway.
“He seems really worked up,” I whispered. “But I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a son.”
“I don’t think he can, either,” Brian said. Which was a weird thing to say. But then again, weird was Brian’s normal. “That’s only half of what’s on his mind. We’re totally out of money.”
I stuttered, unsure of how to phrase what I wanted to ask. “You mean for the funeral? Is someone dying expensive?” Surely that hadn’t been the best way to put it.
“I guess,” Brian said. “But even given that, it seems serious. Money’s all my parents ever seem to talk about. Even though their son just
died
.”
We were at my car. I wanted to ask Brian more, but I looked back and could see the blinds at the window rustle, like someone was watching. It wouldn’t do any good to get Brian any more in trouble than he already was.
I also couldn’t help but wonder if the reason I was being kicked out was because I was Maya’s sister, and that Mr. Andrews had heard the rumors.
“Has Rose been by a lot?” I asked.
Brian groaned. “God. Rose. Before, she’d never bother to come here, because her house is, you know, so much more
comfortable.
But the minute he’s dead? Suddenly, his house is the best place in the world for her. My mom actually had to go see her mom and explain that our family needed time to grieve alone. I don’t think Rose took that very well, but at least she isn’t coming by anymore. One of the reasons I keep dreading school is that if she sees me, I know I’m never going to get her to stop talking.”
“I can understand that,” I said.
“Yeah,” Brian said. “I know you can.”
“Call me later?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
“I wish your parents weren’t being so awful,” I said.
“Just come by,” he said. “Secretly. You know my entrance. I keep a key inside that urn at the back door. I’m going to youth symphony rehearsal tomorrow night, but I’ll be back
by eight. My parents are in bed by ten. You could come over anytime after that. We could play games. Or maybe go have some coffee together or something.”
“I’d like that, Brian. I’d really like that,” I told him, then added, “Keep your eyes and ears open. If you hear anything about Jefferson and Maya, let me know.”
He nodded. As he walked away, I called Cody and stroked her head and held open the passenger door, my thoughts churning.
I now had a man—well, a boy—on the inside.
To: Maya Goodwin
From: Abby Goodwin
Hey. Just wanted to check in. Veronica won’t tell me where you are, do you know that? Anyway, she’s probably got you staying with one of her friends or something, and your phone is shut down, but I bet you’re going online, anyway. Always do it on some public wireless network, though, okay? Because the police can track stuff like that. Wait, you just came online.
CHAT INITIATED
AbbyNotShabby (3:53pm):
Hey Maya, it’s me.MayaPants10 (3:57pm):
Sry, just noticed this. Was reading ur message. Who r u?AbbyNotShabby (3:57pm):
Thank god ur there. Its Abby. Don’t you recognize the screen name?MayaPants10 (3:58pm):
prove it.AbbyNotShabby (3:58pm):
For real? You were born May first. You went to Xavier High until you dropped out.MayaPants10 (4:01pm):
not good enough.AbbyNotShabby (4:01pm):
You have four matching pink and black striped mini-tees.MayaPants10 (4:03pm):
u could have seen that.AbbyNotShabby (4:03pm):
M! It’s me. You call me “Shabby” when you’re mad at me. I made fun of you majorly for getting all four of those shirts. Mom would only pay for two, and you borrowed forty bucks to get the other ones. You still haven’t paid me back, btw.MayaPants10 (4:04pm):
hey.AbbyNotShabby (4:05pm):
HOW ARE YOU??!!!MayaPants10 (4:05pm):
fine.AbbyNotShabby (4:05pm):
WHERE ARE YOU??!!!!MayaPants10 (4:07pm):
cant tell u.AbbyNotShabby (4:07pm):
For real? Are you someplace secure?MayaPants10 (4:07pm):
yes. Stop worrying.AbbyNotShabby (4:10pm):
Anyway. I know V canceled your cell phone, but you can call me if you want. From a pay phone. You have to tell me where you are. It’s not safe if no one knows at all. What if something happened to you? I’d never forgive myself.MayaPants10 (4:12pm):
alright, shabby. calm that stuff down.AbbyNotShabby (4:12pm):
Do you think all of this is funny?MayaPants10 (4:12pm):
no deffinately not.AbbyNotShabby (4:13pm):
The police want me to give you up.MayaPants10 (4:13pm):
r u going 2?AbbyNotShabby (4:13pm):
Of course not. I wouldn’t ever.MayaPants10 (4:13pm):
thx.AbbyNotShabby (4:14pm):
but they say they’ll go easier on you if you turn yourself in.MayaPants10 (4:14pm):
uh, yah! that’s how they GET people to turn themselves in.AbbyNotShabby (4:14pm):
exactly. You have to stay away. For good, maybe. You think you can handle it?MayaPants10 (4:14pm):
ive run away b4.AbbyNotShabby (4:14pm):
yeah, but then you could always come back. You always DID come back. And you didn’t have the police coming after you.AbbyNotShabby (4:17pm):
If you ran away Jefferson’s murder would just be what, left permanently unsolved?AbbyNotShabby (4:18pm):
Maya. you still there?AbbyNotShabby (4:18pm):
maya?AbbyNotShabby (4:22pm):
…?AbbyNotShabby (4:29pm):
Call me. Let me help you. And stay away, okay?
I conducted the chat in the parking lot of a Target, sitting in my passenger seat and leeching wi-fi. I closed the laptop and fiddled with the car radio for a while, I guess searching for a song so mind-blowingly awesome that it would carry me away from my worries. But a song that powerful doesn’t exist.
I’d had no idea that the police would set their focus on Maya so early, and so thoroughly, and that my parents’ sympathies would so quickly peel away from her. She was
heading into a storm, and I was the only one who could do anything about it.
It was the end of the chat that got to me. Why’d she stop typing? I hadn’t gotten a firm promise from her: Was she planning on coming back? What would I do if she didn’t stay on the run, if she insisted on putting herself in danger?
In order to prove her innocent, I’d have to prove someone else guilty.
I sat in my locked car and listened to the slurry of voice mails on my phone. I deleted three angry rants from my dad, then listened to my mom pleading for me to come back and apologizing in advance if my dad was too harsh. She said she’d meet me in the driveway and I wouldn’t have to talk to Dad if I didn’t want to. She said she’d be out there, waiting, until I came home. Added that she promised not to be angry, just that I should come home as soon as I could bring myself to. It nearly broke my heart, the idea of her with both daughters missing, promising to censor her feelings if I’d just return.
Detective Alcaraz, however, was
not
breaking my heart. “I wanted to check in with you after our conversation yesterday. You’ve already got two calls on this phone from me. Not responding to us can be considered obstructing justice, so I need you to get back to me today. I came by your house, and you weren’t home, even though school is out for the day and your father told me you didn’t have any after-school activities. Please don’t make me pull an officer off the streets just because you won’t call me back. Look, I have a few
questions to ask you about persons potentially connected to Mr. Andrews’s death, and at this point I’m still politely asking for your assistance. But on the subject of your sister I couldn’t possibly be more emphatic: Time is running out. Get her to bring herself in, and she’ll avoid the harshest punishments. But if she remains at large, her future gets grimmer and grimmer. She wouldn’t be out of prison until she was an old woman. Listen, Abby, if we find you had
any
information that you didn’t share with us, you, too, could face imprisonment. I trust you understand the enormity of what I’m telling you.”
Jesus. He was full-on threatening me.
But he could call me a hundred more times. There was no way I was turning in my sister. I didn’t know where she was, but I wouldn’t give the police even what paltry information I had on her. Not when staying on the run was her only hope.
It was a cloudless night, and under the moonlight Brian’s mobile home park became actually beautiful, white from the sky and yellow from the street lamps illuminating those perfect boxes, so much neater and simpler than ordinary homes. I rumbled over gravel, stopped a hundred feet shy of Brian’s, and put my car in Park.
I paused every few feet as I crept to his door, watching for a light to come on, but there was nothing. His trailer lay in the darkness, still and quiet. There was a glow from his parents’ place up the hill, but if I kept to the far slope
they wouldn’t be able to see me even if they got up from the TV.
Just as Brian had promised, a rusty key was in the urn. I slowly turned it in the lock, my dread deepening as each tumbler clinked.
The entire mobile home creaked as I moved through it—I hadn’t noticed the ricketiness when I’d been with Brian, but in my nervous state the whole structure felt like it might betray me, alerting the Andrewses to my presence or just tumbling off into the night.
I knew that Brian had told me about the key so I’d come to see him. But he’d also given me access to what was left of Jefferson’s world. I could do a full-on search now, find some real evidence that would lead me to a suspect.
I didn’t dare turn on a light, so I had to creep down the hallway with outstretched hands. I felt the plastic tape first and ducked beneath it. Jefferson’s room got enough moonlight through the window that everything in it was outlined.
I’d been able to get to the laptop when I came in with Brian, but now I could get into the desk drawers themselves. I knew Jefferson kept a token from every girl he’d been with—a piece of underwear, a car key, an earring. It was in a shoe box; Rachael McHenry had once told me about it.
I plucked a tissue from a box on Jefferson’s desk and slid open the drawers.
The top drawer contained neat rows of pencils and pens, the second, scraps of paper. The third was the size of a filing
cabinet, and there were files inside—empty, but beneath them was an age-softened VANS box. I opened it and found the evidence of Jefferson’s conquests. There were velvety things and scraps of fabric, as well as pins and ticket stubs. I looked for anything I recognized. There, at the bottom, was a silver chain bracelet, its clasp broken. Aha. I pocketed it and returned the box. I did a quick glance around, but there was nothing else left for me in the room.
I passed down the hall to Brian’s room. I’d be waiting for him, like we’d planned. The bracelet was hidden away in my pocket. There was no way he’d know that I’d taken it. But still, I was nervous. I fidgeted as I sat on his bed, got up and paced the room. His weapons—two swords and a mace, a club with a metal end—were mounted high on the ceiling. I looked around the room, checking out the cheesy mall-goth glow-in-the-dark skulls and fairy incense burners. Underneath a particularly large specimen with glass balls for eyes were papers. Drawings. I’d figured Brian was good—in that geek fantasy, dragons-and-centaurs way—but these were incredible. I pulled them from underneath and held them up to the stray streetlight. On top was some guy in a Viking helmet. It was done in thick pencil, but the whites of his eyes were pure, brilliant, unmarred by erasures or insecurities. Next was some short guy with a lute, the tendons of the backs of his hands tender and exact. I kept flipping through.
Beneath those drawings were some of Jefferson.
Being killed.
In many different ways. Pleading before a disembodied club. Holding his throat, poisoned. Wearing a circlet in his hair like in a mythological painting, arrows piercing his torso. Placing a revolver into his own throat. The details were what made the drawings most alarming. In each one, Jefferson was wearing a pair of jeans I remembered well, rips over the knees and a name brand stitched across the back pocket. He deflected a blow with just the expression he would have taken on should his brother have struck him, outrage and fury and surprise exploding on his face.
Holy crap. Brian was way more messed up than I’d thought.
I grabbed as many drawings as I could clench in one hand and headed into the hallway.
I wondered: How much
had
Brian hated Jefferson? Before, his lack of grief over the death, his unwillingness to put on a false face, was almost refreshing. Now it seemed like more than rebellion. It seemed genuinely cold and uncaring.
Like a killer.