The Space Between Trees (23 page)

“What? Who?”

“He drove past my house last night, twice.”

“Did he stop or—”

“He drove past, but slow.”

“And you’re sure it was the same guy who—”

“Yes, Evie. God. It was the same car. You know, the one outside the woods that almost ran me over.”

“Okay. Okay.”

Hadley leans in, her eyes bright, scary. “You know what I did?”

A little minnow of fear swims up through my gut. “What?”

“After the first time he drove past, I got one of my brothers’ baseball bats. I climbed out my window and waited, and when I heard him coming, I stepped out into the middle of the road. I just stood there, you know, with the bat in my hands. And when he saw me, he stopped his car. His headlights were on me. I just stood there, hitting the end of the bat against my palm like I was ready to smash something.”

“What did he do?” I whisper.

“He reversed. He turned around and drove away.”

Hadley’s face is calm now; she’s beaming. I’m not sure what I feel. I can picture her standing in the middle of the road in the boxer shorts and T-shirt she sleeps in, feet bare, face hard, the headlights setting her aglow.

“He could have run you over,” I say. “He could have done . . . bad things,
terrible
things.”

“But he drove away.”

She puts her hand on my shoulder and leans in closer as if to tell me a secret. I can see the place around her ears where the tiny hairs grow into fuzz, almost a fur, and in the corner of her nose where her makeup is a patch of unblended mud.

“It’s him, Evie. It’s got to be.” She takes my face in her hands and draws hers close, impossibly close, even with the dozens of kids around us. “We did it. We found him. We
got
him.”

“We should make sure. Before we do anything—”

The school bell rings in its cage above us.

“It felt amazing, Vie, standing there, it felt . . . to do that, it felt . . . strong.”

I can’t find Hadley during next passing, and she isn’t in the cafeteria. I worry about what she’ll do if the burgundy junker appears again. Maybe next time, it’ll run her over. Maybe the driver is the one who killed Zabet, punched her face, kicked it again and again, until she wasn’t Zabet anymore. We’re sixteen, I keep thinking. We’re kids. What can Hadley possibly want us to do next? And, yet, even though I don’t know what she wants, even though I’ll probably think it’s crazy, I also admit that I’ll end up doing it, to do something, to do something back. And I think of what Hadley said about Zabet when we were in the woods. If you wanted to do something, she’d do it with you. Am I that way, too? And really, isn’t that just another way to describe someone who’s a pushover, a tagalong, weak-willed?

I go to the door by the teachers’ parking lot to stare across at the wheat where Hadley is likely making out with Garrett Murray—she, digging gouges in his skin; he, pressing bruises into hers. I’m searching for their shadows in the wheat, so I don’t see it right away. In fact, I’m already turning back toward the cafeteria and the Whisperers, when some tiny voice nags me to turn back. There it is: the burgundy station wagon.

At first, I think that I’ve conjured it up, that it’s not really there at all, or if it is, that it’s a different burgundy station wagon, a coincidence car, a teacher’s. It’s not parked in the teachers’ lot, though, but
along the road by the field. It’s really there. And, what’s more, I can see someone in it.

I consider my options: running to get Principal Capp, sneaking past the car into the field to warn Hadley. I think about calling my mother or even the police. I think about doing nothing. But in the end, I picture Hadley stepping out, barefoot, pajamaed, into the middle of the road, standing in the beam of those headlights. And it’s this that makes me walk out across the parking lot, across the road, and tap on the burgundy junker’s window.

The driver is pressed against the opposite window, his jacket balled under his neck, his eyes closed. There’s something familiar about him in profile, the jacket covering half of his face. I’ve seen him before. Yes, I decide, it’s him. Hadley is right. He’s the guy from the parking lot, the one she almost ran over. And rather than scare me, this gives me courage. Our list worked. We caught him. I lean down and knock on the window again. He wakes, blinking at the light of the afternoon and then at me. He recognizes me and looks—it’s the strangest thing—
scared
. He grabs for his keys, still in the ignition, and cranks them. The car makes a grinding noise but doesn’t start. He tries again; same deal. And me, I’m still standing there knocking away. It starts to feel absurd, each of us repeating the same action—me rapping on the window, him turning the keys—without success. I decide to stop knocking, and he, in turn, stops with the keys and, with a sigh, reaches over and pops the lock.

I’m not getting in,
my mind says firmly. I open the door and lean down. “I’m not getting in.”

I should be scared. My blood should be howling through my veins like a tangle-haired woman through the streets. Instead I am
still. The streets of my body are empty; everyone is inside, calm, lights blazing. In fact, he’s the one who looks scared. He doesn’t rise from his spot against the driver’s side window. He doesn’t make a grab for me. I don’t see a weapon, a gun or knife. Though, I remind myself, Zabet’s killer simply used his hands, his feet. He blinks at me a few more times, his eyes red and sore looking. He has his shoulders hunched up near his jaw, as if I might reach out and smack him.

“I didn’t know,” he says, and his voice is high-pitched for a guy. I wonder if he’s nervous or if his voice is always that high.

“You said that before,” I tell him. “At the diner, in the parking lot, you said that there.”

He shakes his head—no, no, no—like I’m not understanding, and the words climb over each other as if in a rush to get out his mouth. “I want you to know. No matter what Hadley says, I didn’t . . . I thought she . . . she just freaked out. She seemed fine during, but then after, she . . . If she reports me . . .” He puts his face in his hands.

“Stop following her.” My voice does not boom out strong and heroic like I intend it to, but is only a whisper, a scratch, barely a breath because suddenly I’m unsure. How does he know her name? What does he mean
she freaked out after
? After what? I look down at him, his hands still pressed to the sides of his face, and he looks suddenly familiar, not from the parking lot, but from somewhere else. He lowers his shaking hands from his face. I stare at them.

“I didn’t mean to scare her more. I just wanted to talk to her, to explain. But then, well, you were there and I—”

“
Me?
”

“No, no, I don’t mean . . .” he splutters and makes a pleading gesture with his hands, as if he’s afraid he’s upset me. “You were angry
for your friend, I get that. But you, at the diner, you almost hit me with the car. I know you were trying to give me a good scare, and I don’t blame—”

“
Me?
” I say again. “That was Hadley. She was driving. She almost hit you.”

“Oh,” he says in a small voice. “You got out of the car. I thought . . .”

“You were scared of
me
?” The idea is so preposterous that I almost laugh right there in his face, the face of a killer. But he’s not a killer. He’s scared, scared of me. Something occurs to me. “Is that why you drove away that afternoon in Hokepe Woods? Because you saw
me
?”

“You came running and shouting and I just thought . . .” He presses his hands to his eyes, hard. “I thought if I could talk to Hadley alone, explain to her that I didn’t know.”

Suddenly, I’m irritated by his whiny voice, his palsy, and his pleas.
Pathetic
, I think. “Didn’t know what?”

“That she’s only sixteen,” he says miserably.

I freeze. My irritation is replaced by a feeling of alarm rising up in me.

“She said she was in college. She
told
me that. And she seemed older. I didn’t even think . . . And then she freaked out, ran out of the room. Everyone at the party saw her . . . and heard you say . . .
Jesus
. I’m twenty-two, you know? I slept with a sixteen-year-old. It’s . . . it’s illegal, you were right. I could get kicked out of school. My father would . . . or the police, and they’d send me to . . . aw, God, I didn’t know. You’ve got to believe me.”

That voice, the hand pressed to the side of his face, his face hidden under the cap, in the dark of the hallway: Chad, the boy from the
party. I remember what I said to him.
My father’s a lawyer. He’ll call your parents, your school, the police.
No wonder he was scared of me. But that night, the night of the party, Hadley was sobbing in the hallway, and I was sure he’d attacked her. I’m not sure about anything anymore. I feel a terrible wrongness in the center of me. I take a step back. I let go of the car door. It swings half-closed and stops.

“I didn’t hurt her,” he pleads.

“I know.”

He stops, blinks, cocks his head. “You . . . you do?” “It was a misunderstanding,” I say, my voice matching his in energy. It’s a voice not so different from the one that I used to tell him that my father was a lawyer who’d call the police. It’s the voice I use to persuade, to tell a story. “She told you she was older. You didn’t know.”

“Right, that’s right.” He nods. “She did.”

“It was a misunderstanding. It wasn’t . . . a crime.” I take another step back. “She won’t report you . . . just . . . don’t follow her anymore.”

He shakes his head now as rapidly as he had, just a second ago, nodded it. “I won’t. Thank you. I won’t.” And, like an eager salesman, he leans forward with his hand out, to shake mine before closing the car door. But I can’t touch him, can’t even move, so I wave and he does too.

“Thank you,” he says again before he drives away, but the window is rolled up, so the words sound like they are traveling to me from somewhere very far away.

“You’re welcome,” I answer, not sure if he can hear me through the glass.

I
WALK BACK TO THE SCHOOL
, thinking about what I’m going to say to Hadley. Should I tell her that it was Chad who was following her? Should I tell her why? Ask her what happened in that room the night of the party? Why she hit him, why she was crying? Ask her what’s happening between her and Garrett Murray now—the bruises, the scratches? I’m not sure I want to know the answers, not sure I’m ready for them. My curiosity, usually so eager, is nowhere to be found. And for the space of that walk back to the school from the road, I want to be ignorant, naïve, wiped clean. I want things to be, if not easy, at least simpler. I want the past three months not to have happened, even if it means not being Hadley’s best friend, even if it means being alone again. For the first time, I truly and earnestly wish for Zabet to be alive. Even so, the wish is more for myself than it is for her. I want to be the old Evie, the Evie who delivered papers and told bullshit stories to the Whisperers and avoided Zabet and Hadley when they strutted down the hall. I want to only imagine things, not know them.

Our list of suspects is in my science notebook, in my locker, up on the shelf where you’re supposed to set your sack lunch. We
haven’t crossed off a name before (only Garrett’s and only temporarily), but now I cross off
guy from the parking lot
and
Chad from the party
. There are so many names on that list—Chrises and Scotts and Justins. These are the only suspects I’ve ever eliminated, and it’s not even two suspects really, just one. I tell myself that if the guy in the burgundy junker isn’t following her around, then maybe Hadley will forget about him. Maybe he’ll fade from her memory, and some other name—maybe one of the other names here—will take his place in her suspicions.

I spend the rest of my lunch hour leaning against the locker next to mine. Lunch hour ends, and the kid who owns this locker—Bill Grauer—returns and hovers nearby until I notice him; he’s too polite to tell me to move. Voices rise at the other end of the hall, and both Bill and I look over. Something’s causing a stir, but we can’t see what it is, because everyone’s drifting to the middle of the corridor, kids standing on tiptoe to get a better view, hands on their friends’ shoulders so that they can hoist themselves up an extra inch. As whatever it is approaches, people peel back, making way, but still lining along the lockers so that I can’t see what they’re looking at until she walks right past me.

I see her hair first—long, light hair rubbed with dirt and stuck with arrowheads of wheat. She hops a bit, favoring one foot, like she has a stone in her shoe. But people aren’t staring at that; they’re staring at her face, which is swollen like she’s been crying for hours, except the puffiness is different somehow. It’s not just around her eyes but all over her face, a yellowish tint like she’s caught an illness from a rogue mosquito or long ocean journey. That familiar scar on her chin has opened up into a cut, as if time has reversed itself to the
moment of the initial injury; a spot of blood has dried on her neck like a beauty mark. Hadley hasn’t been crying; she’s been beaten.