The Escape (10 page)

He should have been used to everyone looking at him by now. He had done two interviews for the newspaper and one for the local TV station—although that one was mostly cutaways of the forest and snippets of people talking about old cases. But Fletcher couldn’t get used to kids paying so much attention to him.

Girls batted their eyelashes and threaded their arms through his, purring and asking him if he was okay. He couldn’t get used to Adam’s jock friends fist-bumping him like they were old buddies or giving him that weird little head jerk of acknowledgment in the hall. He couldn’t get used to the whispers, the ones that sounded so soft but rang out so clearly—
killer…killer…killer
. When he’d turn to see who was saying it, the kids around him would look at him, though their mouths never moved.

It was even worse today.

When he came downstairs, his mother’s hands were trembling. “You should probably stay home today, honey.”

Fletcher shook his head. The house now had a giant piece of plywood fitted over the broken window, which made it feel like a prison. Fletcher pushed away the slice of toast his mother set on the table in front of him.

• • •

When Fletcher saw Avery in the hall, her eyes went wide. The news of the previous night’s attack hadn’t spread yet, but he knew that
she
knew. She made a beeline for him.

“Hey, Fletch.” She pulled him out of the flow of students. “You okay?”

“Did your dad tell you what happened?”

Avery looked around. “A little bit. Did he—” She reached out and touched his swollen cheekbone, her fingers so soft and gentle. “Are you okay?”

There was a crackling overhead and then the three chimes that signaled an announcement. Some kids stopped and cocked their heads toward the speakers, but most just continued ambling through the halls.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Principal Corben’s disembodied voice started, “there will be a memorial to celebrate Adam Marshall’s life this Friday at noon.”

The principal blathered on about the location and logistics, but Avery stopped listening. Her eyes were fixed on Fletcher, on his vacant expression. She watched him swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing. The color slowly drained from his face, and Avery remembered what she had felt when her mother died. The community had “memorialized” or “commemorated” her mother’s life, which included people dressed in their Sunday best with handkerchiefs pressed to their eyes or noses, and giant sprays of ugly flowers with ribbons with meaningless phrases like “peaceful rest” and “heartfelt sympathies.”

It was as if they were honoring someone else’s life—not her mother’s—because Avery had never seen half the people who attended. And her mother would have rolled her eyes at the cheesy, inspirational songs that were played, and the finger sandwiches and punch—two things her mother never touched—that were served.

The three tones sounded again at the end of Principal Corben’s announcement, and Avery grabbed Fletcher’s arm. “Do you really want to go to class?”

Going to class had been all he wanted, but now he just wanted to feel Avery’s touch. He didn’t mind when
she
looked at him. He liked her attention.

“Where can we go?”

Her blue eyes scanned the rapidly emptying hall. She pulled him along the wall and out one of the side doors. “Come on!”

She took off at a dead sprint, her backpack bobbing behind her. Fletcher ran to keep up, mildly surprised that Avery Templeton—search-party team lead, daughter of the chief of police—had a little bad girl in her. He was starting to like her even more.

“Okay,” she said breathing heavily and slowing to a walk. “We’re officially off school property.”

Fletcher glanced around. “Isn’t the student parking lot considered school property?”

She cocked an eyebrow, and he recognized the expression as the same one the police chief made during interviews. But while the chief’s look was pure authority, even with her hands on her hips and her legs spread slightly, Avery looked like a little girl trying to be big.

“Fine. We’re officially off the learning part of school property.”

“Ah, manipulating the scene. Very nice.”

She rolled her eyes. “Did you drive?”

Fletcher felt his cheeks burn red. “Uh, no. My mom insists on driving me now. What about you?”

Avery jammed her hands in the pockets of her jeans and shrugged. “I don’t have a car.” She said something else under her breath and Fletcher leaned in to her.

“What’d you say?”

“I don’t have a car.”

“After that.”

She looked away, tightened her ponytail, and hiked her backpack higher on her shoulders. “I don’t know how to drive.”

Fletcher felt himself smile. “Are you ashamed? It’s not a big deal.”

Avery looked stunned, her expression hardening to anger. “I’m not ashamed. What do I need to drive for anyway? There’s nowhere to go in this stupid town anyway.”

“I thought you were in driver’s ed with Adam last year.”

She shrugged him off. “Cars are death traps.”

“You know what happened to your mom was an accident.”

Avery’s nostrils flared. “I know that.”

Fletcher held up his hands, palms out. “Hey, I’m sorry.” He stopped talking when Avery hitched her chin and started walking toward the edge of the lot. He jogged to catch up with her, and they fell into a companionable silence for several blocks.

“I can teach you, you know,” Fletcher said finally.

Avery thought of the calm way Fletcher went about things, and her mind started to change about him—slightly.

She stopped and faced him, her expression a mix of indignation and a slight hint of curiosity. “I need coffee.”

• • •

Fletcher wasn’t the type to go out for coffee. He
was
the type to cut school, and he did that on a pretty regular basis, but not for the double latte whatever-and-ever that Avery sat in front of him. Hers was some chocolate-looking icy concoction with a swath of whipped cream and chocolate syrup, and she dove into it, sucking on the straw until her cheeks hollowed out.

He just moved his straw around and swirled his finger through the rings of condensation on the table. He liked to think that the feeling of excitement he felt was from sitting across the table from a girl as pretty and cool as Avery Templeton, but he knew the tension in his stomach wasn’t that.

“So, has your dad talked to you about Adam’s case?”

Avery’s eyebrows disappeared into her hair and she put her drink down. “What do you mean?”

Fletcher shrugged and took a big sip of his coffee, the cold making his head hurt. “Brain freeze,” he said, trying to change the subject.

Avery smiled but kept her gaze steady. “What do you mean? He doesn’t tell me all that much. He’s big on confidentiality and not jinxing an open case.” She took another swing of her drink. “Or maybe it’s that he’s too busy bugging me to finish my homework to tell me anything interesting. Why do you ask?”

“Nothing. I was just”—he paused and took another sip of the drink he really kind of hated—“making conversation.”

“Have you remembered anything?”

That caught Fletcher by surprise, and he held the coffee in his mouth for an extra beat before responding. “Not really.”

Avery scooted her chair over so they were shoulder to shoulder rather than face-to-face. She brushed up against him, and he cursed the heat that washed over his cheeks. “How about the blackouts? Are you still having them?”

How
did
she
know
about
the
blackouts?
He racked his mind, trying to remember when he’d told her,
what
he’d told her.

“I haven’t had them too much more lately.”

“And is your memory still…blocked?”

Immediately, flashes of that day snapped through his mind: running up the trail behind Adam, slugging a bottle of water so fast it dribbled down his chin and shirt, his hand clenching a fistful of Adam’s shirt.

His jaw tightened so hard that his teeth ached. Why would he remember grabbing a fistful of Adam’s shirt?

“Fletcher?” Avery waved a hand in front of his face, her drink forgotten. “Fletch?”

“I-I remember grabbing Adam by the shirt.” The words were out before he could filter them, before he could figure out what was going on. He could suddenly feel the ache in his forearm as he pulled Adam. It was as if he could feel the soft flannel fabric of Adam’s red-and-black-checked shirt.

Avery’s eyes were wide. “Really? Why were you doing that?”

Fletcher saw blood spurting. Heard screaming—his, Adam’s. Terror had overtaken him, made him leave his body. Adam lying prone, a soft, primitive moan escaping his parted lips. Fletcher on the ground, unable to move, powerless to help his dying friend.

I
was
awake
while
Adam
was
dying.

He could have helped Adam. He could have. His stomach quivered. He stood, a bead of sweat rolling down his cheek.

“I have to go.”

“Hey, Fletch—wait!”

He could hear Avery yelling behind him, the confusion and surprise evident in her voice. But Fletcher was running. His thighs ached and his calves burned, but the pain was good. He had to get away—from everyone who was watching him, from Avery, from everything.

He didn’t stop running until he got home.

• • •

Avery blinked at Fletcher’s empty chair and forgotten drink.
What
the
heck?

Her reverie was cut short by the two college kids behind the counter and the volume on the overhead TV ratcheting up.

“They’re talking about that kid who died in the woods.”

The
Dan
River
Daily
News
anchor was perched on the edge of a mustard-colored couch, her too-red lips pursed as she nodded at the woman across from her. That woman was Adam’s mother. A news ticker cut across the bottom of the screen: Dan River Police Admit No Leads in Child Murder Case.

Avery listened to Mrs. Marshall.

“I just don’t think the police department is doing all it can to find my son’s killer. And that’s putting every child in our community in danger.”

A flare of anger coursed through Avery. Mrs. Marshall hadn’t had to eat a silent dinner every night. She hadn’t seen Chief Templeton’s exhaustion, the vacant expression as he chewed, the slow way he plodded up the stairs as if his whole body were weighed down by Adam’s case.

“I just think there are a lot of avenues they aren’t exploring,” Adam’s mother went on. “What about the other child my Adam was with?”

“Fletcher Carroll?” the news anchor asked.

Mrs. Marshall pressed a handkerchief to her nose and nodded primly, a fresh wave of tears flooding her eyes.

“Is Mr. Carroll a suspect?”

Avery’s stomach dropped.

She remembered Fletcher in the hospital. Saw the way he moved, protecting his broken limbs. She saw the fresh cuts and bruises.

If so, then
who
hurt
Fletcher?

Avery grabbed her backpack and made for the door, passing the counter and hearing a snippet of conversation on her way.

“I thought that other kid was weird,” the barista was saying. “He totally could have killed Adam.”

Avery pushed the macaroni in wide circles on her plate as she sat at the dinner table. She had every light on in the house, and though the heat was kicked up to nearly eighty, she couldn’t shake the chill that had settled in her bones. Her thoughts were on Fletcher and the way he seemed to stare off into nothingness when Adam was mentioned.

Although she tried to drown them out, the words from the barista swirled in her mind:
I thought that other kid was weird. He totally could have killed Adam.

She had tried to speak with her father when she got home, but she kept getting his voice mail. Even Connie at the police department, who usually put Avery right through, told her that Chief Templeton was “unreachable.” So Avery waited, her pulse a constant thunder.

The sound of her father’s GMC pulling into the driveway snapped her back to reality, and she dumped her plate in the sink, quickly shoving her untouched dinner down the drain.

“Hey, sweetie,” her father said, peeling off his rain-slicked jacket and shaking a fine mist from his hat. He kissed Avery on the forehead, then gestured toward the refrigerator. “Anything decent in there for dinner?”

“The mac and cheese isn’t hairy yet.”

The chief retrieved the casserole dish while Avery handed him a plate. “You eat?” he asked.

Avery nodded, taking a ginger ale from the fridge. She popped the top and took a long swig. The carbonation burned her stomach but calmed the waves of nausea.

Her father put his plate on the table. “Hey, sit with me,” he said, his cheek full of macaroni.

“Anything new on Fletcher’s case?” she asked carefully.

The chief chewed. “We’re working on a few leads.”

Avery tapped her fingers. “Is it true that you think Fletcher might be a suspect?”

“Avy, you know we consider every angle.”

She glared.

“It’s my job to do a thorough investigation.”

“Dad,” she started.

He cut her off smoothly. “Any gangs at your school?”

Avery nearly shot ginger ale through her nose. “Gangs? What are you talking about?”

Her father chewed slowly, his eyes fixed on her. “So?”

“You’re serious? No, Dad, though Dan River is obviously a booming metropolis”—Avery rolled her eyes—“as far as I know, there are no gangs running rampant, running meth through the Applebee’s or whatever.”

He didn’t smile. “I’m serious, Avy. Maybe not full-fledged gangs. What about any kids talking about gangs, gang affiliation, maybe even just off-the-cuff?” He unfolded a white piece of paper from his pocket and smoothed it on the table in front of Avery. It was a photocopy of hand-drawn symbols—two sets of dice, some stylized pitchforks, a few numbers in bubbly, funky scroll.

“Have you seen anything like this? Could be on binders, book bags, just around the school or grounds.”

Avery pushed the paper back. “What is all this about?”

Chief Templeton cleared his throat. “One of the theories we’re working on”—he raised his eyebrows and fixed his gaze on Avery in his
this doesn’t leave this room
stare—“is that Fletcher or another suspect maybe killed Adam to gain entry into a gang or at a gang’s behest.”

Anger fisted her hands, almost unconsciously. “Are you kidding? First of all, ‘at a gang’s behest’? You don’t talk like that. And you know as well as I do that Fletcher isn’t involved with gangs. There are no gangs in this stupid town, and Fletcher
didn’t
do this, Dad. He didn’t!”

“Avy—”

“No!” She was breathing hard now, tears burning behind her eyes. “The real killer is out there, probably trying to figure out which one of us is going to be next, and you guys can’t see it because you have your noses so far—”

“Avery Elise Templeton, you better think long and hard about how—or if—you want to finish that sentence,” her father said. “You should consider that up in your room.”

Avery stomped upstairs and slammed her door, hot tears stinging her cheeks. She and her dad had argued before and she had always gotten over his unyielding responses, but this was different. This wasn’t a halter top or a later curfew. This was her friend and it was his life. She fired up her computer and started searching anything she could think of: serial killers, spree killers, people who kill in the woods. And then, when the night had gone from dark to an impenetrable, inky black, she searched something else—
trauma, memories, blacking out
.