I decide to leave it to fate. I’ll take Buddy out to the paddock so he can spend
the afternoon outside, and then I’ll head home. If Leah gets back with Snow before
I leave, I’ll talk to her. If not…I’ll let it go.
I clip a lead rope onto Buddy’s halter. “Come on, Bud. Let’s get out of here before
Jake shows up, hey?”
I lead him outside, turn him loose in the fenced-off end of the field and return
to the barn just as Jake’s students are filing out of the arena. Horseshoes clatter
against concrete floor, girls’ voices chatter, and Jake laughs.
I hang my lead rope
over Buddy’s stall door, not taking the time to put it away properly, and hightail
it to my car.
Guess I’m not talking to Leah.
I spend the afternoon napping, doing homework and listening to podcasts. Dad orders
takeout for dinner, and my parents and I sit around the living room together, eating
Thai food and watching Netflix. Everything feels wonderfully normal. Detective Bowerbank
calls to confirm that the white powder in the mailbox was not anthrax, and
we celebrate
by defrosting a chocolate cheesecake in the microwave and eating an impressive amount
of it.
Dad finishes his second slice and pushes his plate away with a sigh. “Pad Thai, beer
and cheesecake. Life is good.”
Mom licks her fork. “Back on the wagon in the morning.”
“I’ll make dinner tomorrow,” I say. “I’ve found this great website called Homemade
and Heart Healthy—”
Dad groans and folds his hands across his belly. “Don’t talk about food. I’ll never
be hungry again.”
“Not until at least midnight,” Mom says.
My cell rings. I hesitate.
“Go ahead,” Dad says. “Talk to your girlfriend. You’ve put in your time with the
old fogy.”
“Dad! You’re not—”
He laughs. “I meant your mother.”
She pokes him with her fork. “Remind me again why I put up with you?”
I roll my eyes and answer my phone, walking toward my room. “Leah?”
“Yeah. Hi.”
“Everything okay?”
“Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”
Because I snuck into your house and searched your brother’s room
. “No reason,” I
say, trying to keep my voice light. “How was your ride?”
“Good. How come you didn’t wait for me to get back?”
“Take a wild guess,” I say.
“Jake?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he say something to you? I asked him, but he said he didn’t even see you.”
I clear my throat. “I’m kind of avoiding him.”
“Well, you can’t keep that up forever,” Leah says.
I stick my hand into my jeans pocket and pull out the piece of wrapping paper. “Yeah,
I know.” I clear my throat. “So what are you guys up to tonight? Got a party to go
to?”
“A party?” There’s a pause. “No. Why?”
“I don’t know. Saturday night. I just thought you might have plans. Or Jake might.”
“No plans,” she says. “Franny, are you okay?”
I can hear the frown in her voice. “Yeah,” I say. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
“Good. Want me to come over?”
Of course I want her to come over—but there’s something else I have to do. “I think
I’m just going to crash early tonight,” I say. “I’m kind of tired.”
“Oh. Okay. Sure.” She sounds hurt.
“I’ll be down in the morning though,” I offer. “I’ll see you then. When you get back
from church.”
And I’ll see Jake, I think. She’s right. I can’t avoid him forever.
After we hang up, I go online and google Jake Gibson. I try Jacob Gibson too, since
presumably that’s what Jake is short for. I even try Jackson Gibson, though it sounds
awful and doesn’t fit the biblical naming scheme of Leah’s family.
Nothing.
Well, not
nothing.
There are tons of Jake Gibsons—
TV
producers, actors, lawyers,
football players. But for the Jake Gibson I’m interested in, the only things that
show up are a couple of local newspaper articles about a summer riding camp he runs,
his dad’s obituary and some track-and-field results from back in high school. He
has a Facebook page too, but his privacy settings won’t let me see anything, and
given that I’ve
never seen him comment on any of Leah’s posts, I’m guessing he doesn’t
use it much anyway.
So much for that.
I smooth out the scrap of wrapping paper and tuck it under the corner of my keyboard.
Then I search for articles about the recent bomb threat at the hospital. There are
several, but they’re all pretty much the same—the few facts the police released,
a request for the public to come forward with any information, and a rehashing of
the threats from last year and Jennifer Lee’s resignation. I bet she wishes they’d
stop printing her name.
A gift-wrapped package was found…
No convenient detailed description of the wrapping paper.
I shake my head. I’m being crazy. Jake’s just a jerk, like plenty of other people.
He’s anti-choice and he doesn’t like me dating his sister. Which is a drag,
but it’s
also not a huge deal. And it definitely doesn’t make him a murderous lunatic. I crumple
up the piece of paper and toss it in the recycling bin under my desk.
Enough craziness.
I wake up smiling the next morning. The sun is streaming through my bedroom window,
and I’ve been dreaming about Leah.
I sit up, stretch and yawn widely.
Today is going to be a good day. I can feel it.
I dress quickly, bolt down a huge bowl of granola and nuts and yogurt, and head to
the barn. No one’s there—it’s Sunday morning, and they’re all at church. I groom
Buddy till his coat shines and take him for a ride in the woods—a good long one to
make up for yesterday’s getting cut short. The sun streams
through the bare branches
of the trees, and the air has that cold, crisp feeling of fall. Buddy acts like a
two-year-old, tossing his head and snorting and taking big sideways leaps of alarm
over every harmless shadow and fallen twig.
“You big baby,” I say, feeling a flood of affection for him.
I hear someone approaching, and Leah appears around a bend in the trail, riding bareback
on her gray mare. “Franny,” she says, out of breath. “I was hoping I’d find you guys.
How’s Buddy? Better, I guess, or you wouldn’t be riding.”
“He’s fine today,” I say. My ears feel hot at the memory of yesterday’s lie.
“Good.” She brings her horse alongside mine. “Mom and Jake are off looking at some
old equipment on a friend’s farm and won’t be back till dinnertime. Got plans for
the rest of the day?”
“Uh, yeah. I do now,” I say, giving her a goofy grin.
Leah grins back. And my perfect morning is followed by an even more perfect afternoon.
The next day, everything falls apart.
I get home from school to find Detective Bowerbank in the living room, sitting on
the couch beside my mother. “What happened?” I say, my heart in my throat. “Where’s
Dad? Is he okay?”
“It’s fine,” Mom says. “Dad’s fine. He’s at work. There’s a security meeting.”
I look at Rich. “A security meeting. Something happened? What’s going on?”
He leans back on the couch, folds his arms across his belly and sighs. “Hello, Franny.”
“Hello, Rich,” I say. “Don’t torture me. Something happened, right?”
He nodded. “Your mother received a letter at work. A threat.”
“What did it say?”
He slides a page to me across the coffee table. “This is a copy. We’re having the
original checked for fingerprints, DNA—anything.”
I stare at it. It’s not a letter. It’s a photograph.
My hand flies to my mouth as if I can catch the breath that has suddenly whooshed
from my lungs.
“Franny,” Rich says. “I know this is upsetting, but try not to worry. We’re looking
into this. We’re going to put some extra security measures in place—”
I touch the photo. It’s of my house. My parents, on our driveway.
With bright-red Sharpie targets drawn on their chests.
“Franny, wait!” Mom says, getting to her feet.
I run up to my room, throw myself on my bed and lie there, curled up in a ball.
A minute later Mom knocks on the door. “Franny? Can I come in?”
I don’t answer, but she lets herself in anyway and sits on the edge of my bed. “It’s
horrible, I know. Scary.” She rubs my back, moving her hand in slow circles. “But
we’ve been living with this risk for years. It’s going to be fine.”
“You don’t know that,” I choke out. “You can’t promise that.”
Her hand stops moving. “I can’t promise it,” she says, “but I do believe it. So does
your dad. And so does Rich. He’s looking into everything, you know. Interviewing
people, following up every possible lead…”
Except Jake Gibson, I think.
If I tell him about Jake, I might lose Leah.
But if I don’t tell him…
If I don’t tell him and it turns out that I’m right…
Then I might lose my parents.
Leah sends me texts all evening, but I ignore them. I can’t imagine telling her what
I’m thinking. And I can’t imagine talking to her and
not
telling her.
Late that night, I phone Detective Bowerbank. I don’t want to have to talk to him
in person, so I call his office phone and leave a message. I tell him
about Jake
and how he’s been acting toward me and what he said about my parents being baby killers.
I tell him that it’s probably nothing and that I’m probably being stupid and that
I’m sorry I’m wasting his time.
I don’t mention the wrapping paper, because I don’t want to admit to snooping in
Jake’s room, and besides, who doesn’t have wrapping paper?
My message is a garbled mess, and I wish I could just erase it and start over. After
I hang up, I lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling.
I can’t stand the thought of losing Leah, but I don’t think I could survive if something
happened to my parents.
In the morning my parents head to work, and I go off to school like everything is
normal.
Only it isn’t.
I feel sick to my stomach all morning. I send Leah a text at lunchtime.
Miss you.
She replies a couple of minutes later.
Miss you too. How come you weren’t at the
barn last night? I called you 100 times.
So nothing’s happened yet, obviously. And maybe nothing will. Maybe Detective Bowerbank
will listen to my message, laugh a little about how crazy I’m being and press
Delete
.
I hope he does.
I’ll be there after school today
, I text.
Her reply is instant.
YAY! XO
XXXXXXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOO
, I send back.
I want every one of those in person.
I picture Leah’s wide eyes, her full lips, the way the corners of her mouth lift
and her cheeks dimple when she smiles.
Me too
, I tell her.
I have Biology after lunch, which I usually like, but today I spend the class thinking
about Leah and hoping desperately that she’ll still feel the same way about me at
four o’clock. That nothing will have changed.
My lab partner elbows me. “What’s wrong with you today?” She gestures at the half-dissected
cow eyeball in front of us. “I thought you’d be in future-vet heaven, but you’re
like… somewhere else.”
“Sorry,” I say. The eyeball blurs and I blink back tears. “Back in a minute.”
I dash to the girls’ washroom, which, luckily, is empty, and dial Rich Bowerbank’s
number. Voice mail. “Hi, it’s Franny,” I say. “Listen, about that message I left
last night. Just ignore it, okay? I was just freaked out about the threats and being
paranoid. I mean,
lots of people aren’t comfortable with abortion, and it doesn’t
make them deranged losers. Or, you know, stalkers or murderers or whatever. So, uh,
what I said about Jake? Just pretend that never happened. Um. Sorry.” I hang up before
I can ramble anymore.
He’ll probably think I’m the one who’s a deranged loser.
That’s fine with me.
After school I head straight to the Gibsons’. I think at first that the barn is empty—the
lights are off. I switch them on—
And see Leah, sitting on the tack box in front of Buddy’s stall. Her arms are crossed,
and her mouth is a thin, straight line.
“You’re home early,” I say stupidly. Like that’s the point.
“Because Jake called me,” she says. “Because the cops were here. Interviewing him…”
She starts crying. “Franny, how could you?”
I shrug helplessly and stand there, just inside the barn door. Twenty feet away from
her, and it feels like a mile.
“They searched his room,” she says.
“Don’t they need, you know, a warrant or something to do that?”
“He said they could,” Leah says coldly. “He told them to look around. Let them look
through his emails too.”
“He did?”
“Yeah. Because he has nothing to hide, Franny. Because he hasn’t
done
anything.”
I slide down the wall so that I’m sitting on the cold cement floor. “I’m sorry, Leah.
I’m so sorry. But—”
She cuts me off. “He didn’t even know what your parents did until he
heard you telling
my mom the other night.”
“Let me explain,” I say. “Please.”
“Fine. Explain.” Her voice is like ice.
“There was another threat,” I say. “Yesterday. A photo of my parents leaving our
house, and targets were drawn on their chests…and I was so scared that something
might happen to them. And Jake…the things he said…”
“You should have talked to me, Franny. I could have told you he’d never do anything
like that.”
“He’s your brother,” I say. “You trust him. Of course you wouldn’t think he’d—”
“Yeah, he’s my brother. I trust him because I
know
him.” She meets my eyes for a
second and then looks away. “And I thought you trusted me.”
“I do,” I say. “Of course I do.”
“If you trusted me, you’d have talked to me. Not acted like everything
was fine and
then gone behind my back and told the police that Jake might be some crazy killer.”