I stare at the cop for a long time. His gaze is on his finger, but I know he’s watching my reaction in his peripheral vision. This is crazy. “You think … what? I drowned Chris?”
“What time did you leave the hospital?”
“I don’t know. A little after three.”
“Where did you go then?”
“I took Aimee home, then came here. I’ve been upstairs in my room since then.”
“What have you been doing up there?”
None of your damn business. I want to say it. I open my mouth to say it, but I can feel Mom thinking I better not say it. “Meditating,” I say.
“What’s that? Like praying?”
“Yeah. Like praying.”
“Do you use drugs for that? LSD? Pot?”
Oh. My. God.
I shake my head. “No.”
“Aimee found Noah in the river, looking for Chris,” the cop says. “Then she found where Chris’s body was trapped underwater.”
“Oh no. Is she okay?” Now it’s my turn to stare him down, to demand answers. “Is Aimee all right?”
“She’s fine.”
“I have to call her. She’s supposed to come over tonight. She wants to meet my mom.” I look from the deputy to Mom, then back. “She’s okay? You saw her?”
“I saw her. She’s fine.” He hesitates, then asks, “Alan, I’ll ask you one more time. Be honest with me. Did you see those three boys again after school?”
“No. Was Aimee— Wait. Three? You only mentioned the two at the river.”
“We can’t find Blake Stanley.” His voice is dead and flat, not quite accusing, but not not accusing, either.
“You don’t really think I did something to them, do you?” I can’t believe it.
He shrugs and his face softens a little. “Not really,” he admits. “Even before this.” He waves at the receipts, making the folded bits of paper flutter. “But, considering the circumstances, I had to ask.”
“Thank God,” Mom says. Her shoulders sink inward as the tension falls off her. Did she really think I’d done something like that? Why? How could she even think it?
“I should go and leave you folks to your dinner plans,” McKinney says. He fishes in an unbuttoned shirt pocket and pulls out a crisp white business card that he lays on the table by the receipts. “If you think of anything that might help, please call me. Chris’s mom … she’s not taking this well.”
“No,” Mom says. “What mother would? I’m so sorry for her.”
I nod. I’m sorry, too. Another river death. Another newspaper story for the school librarian’s collection. If we fail, me and Aimee, how many more will there be?
“A lot of people die in that river,” I say. I say it more to myself, but the cop and Mom both stare at me.
“What did you say, son?” McKinney asks. I hate it when men who are not my father call me “son.”
“The river. A lot of people have died in it. The librarian at school has a folder full of old newspaper clippings about it.”
McKinney nods real slow, like I’ve revealed I know some deep, dark secret about his little town. Maybe I have. This is Maine. Maybe the whole damn state is like some creepy old Stephen King story. “I guess so,” he says. “Well, I should go. We’re still looking for Blake. Please call if you think of anything. I can show myself out.”
He leaves us and I sit still, waiting for Mom to start griping about the suspension, about me not coming home after school. She doesn’t, though.
“Did we bring all this bad luck with us from Oklahoma?” she asks.
“It was already here, Mom. I think it’s been here for a long time.”
She doesn’t respond. She looks so sad. I reach across the table and take her hand.
“I’m sorry, Mom. About the fighting, and not coming home like you told me to.”
She only nods.
“You talked to Aunt Lisa? Courtney is better?”
“Yes. Even her face has cleared up. All the tests are negative. They’re going to send her home tomorrow, but she needs to stay home the rest of the week. Someone’s supposed to stay and keep watch over her. Lisa was going to.”
“I can do it,” I say. “I mean, I’m going to be home, anyway.”
“That might work. Are you hungry? Your friend is coming over?”
“I already ate.” I don’t like lying to Mom, but she frowns on the idea of fasting. “Aimee wanted to come over. I don’t know now. She’s been calling and texting, but I didn’t know it.”
“You had that chanting stuff up too loud.”
“I guess. Can I go call her and see if she’s okay and coming over?”
Mom nods, so I race back up the stairs.
Aimee answers on the second ring. “Alan! Where were you? Are you okay? Oh God, I was so worried. Chris Paquette—he’s dead. I found him. I found him in the river.”
“I know, Aim. I know. Are you okay?”
“You know?”
“A cop was just here. He thought I might have done it.”
“Are you serious?” She sounds as shocked as I was.
“Yeah, but it’s okay now. I think. He left. He said he was convinced I didn’t do it, but … whatever. Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. Just freaked. I want to come over.”
“I’ll come get you.”
“Okay. Umm. I’m not sure Dad will let me go. But can you come anyway?”
“Yeah. I’ll be there in a few minutes. Mom doesn’t seem as mad as I thought she’d be. And she wants to meet you. Ten minutes?”
“Okay.”
“Aimee …”
“Yeah?”
“The cop who came to my house? He said Blake is missing.”
I don’t really ask Mom’s permission. I just announce that I’m going to pick up Aimee as I head for the door. She doesn’t protest—at least that I can hear before the door closes behind me. I make it to Aimee’s house in seven minutes and am getting out of my truck in her driveway when a white van with a satellite dish on top of it slams to a stop in front of the house. A woman with a microphone and a man with a video camera spill out the sliding side door and rush at me like rabid linebackers.
“Are you here to see Aimee Avery?” the woman screams at me as she crosses the lawn in ridiculous high heels and a beige skirt that’s too tight to allow her to run as fast as she wants to. “Do you know about the boy pulled out of the river?”
I turn away from them and catch a glimpse of Benji looking through the curtain in the front window. Big man hands pull him back and the curtain falls into place.
The newswoman is beside me now, shoving the microphone under my nose like it’s an ice-cream cone. Her cameraman stands behind her, pointing his lens at me. This is what I wanted a week ago. I wanted to be the football star, with the media surrounding me. Now I just want to swat the microphone away and break the camera.
“Were you a friend of Chris Paquette?” the woman asks, her voice shrill.
“Leave me alone,” I say. “Leave Aimee alone. Go chase an ambulance.” I turn around and make for the porch, but she follows.
“What can you tell me about Chris?”
The front door of the house opens a crack and Aimee’s hand motions me forward. I sprint up the three stairs. The door opens and I slip inside. Aimee slams it behind me and throws herself against me, talking into my chest.
“Those people won’t go away,” she says. “They’ve been parked up the street, just waiting for something to happen. I’m sorry. I should have warned you.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her.
“He sure does have some long hair,” Benji says.
“Benj,” his dad says, but he’s grinning. So am I.
“Can you come over?” I ask Aimee, then I look at her dad. “Is it okay if she comes to my house? My mom’s there and wants to meet her.”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Aimee’s been through a lot today. I think some rest—”
“Dad? Please?” She li
fts her head from my chest and looks at her father. “I’ll be okay. I won’t be gone long, and Alan will bring me home. Won’t you?”
“Of course. Yeah.”
“What about our paparazzi out there?” Gramps asks.
“Here.” I press my keys into Aimee’s hands. “You just go straight to the truck and get in and lock your door. I’ll block them while you run.”
“Alan,” her dad warns, “don’t do anything stupid. Don’t break any cameras or push them down or anything.”
“I won’t.” I peek out a corner of the window. The reporter and her lackey have retreated to the van. They’re sitting in the front, talking. He’s not holding his camera. “Okay,” I tell Aimee. “We’ll have a few seconds to get to the truck before they can get out of the van. You ready?”
She nods. “Bye, Daddy.”
“Alan, be careful with her,” he says, his voice almost a plea, like he’s lost her.
“I’ll guard her with my life, Mr. Avery. I swear it.”
“Whoa. That’s deep,” Benji says.
“Let’s go.” I open the door and guide Aimee in front of me like she’s a blocking tackle not moving fast enough to get out of my way. I maneuver her through the door with my hand, my eyes on the defenders scrambling to get out of the van with their equipment. “Come on, Aim, we gotta move.”
Aimee jumps off the porch, sags for a moment as her bruised leg threatens to give, and then she’s up and loping for the truck. I charge straight at the cameraman, wearing my game face. He stops and looks around his camera like what he was seeing in his viewfinder couldn’t possibly be right. He starts backing away, almost tripping over his own feet. The newswoman drops her microphone to her hip and moves to the side.
Aimee makes it into the truck, so I break away from the newspeople and jump into the driver’s seat. Aimee has the key in the ignition. I fire up the Ford and drop it into reverse before the news team can recover. As we roar out of the driveway, I see Benji jumping into the air, throwing up a victory fist, while Gramps holds the curtain open and laughs.
• 21 •
AIMEE
We don’t say much on the way over other than how relieved we are that the news van isn’t following us. That’s not normal for us. There’s this big ball of dread inside me, filling up the pit of my stomach, tugging at me every time I breathe. Chris is dead.
“I’ve been doing ridiculous things lately,” I say as Alan turns onto the bridge. He doesn’t say anything, so I go on. “I mean, going alone to the hospital didn’t seem ridiculous at the time, but it was, I guess. You go through your life figuring there’s certain things you can do that are safe. You can take a walk. You can kayak. You can just be by yourself in your house, but that’s not the way it is. If I were watching my life as a movie, I’d be all, ‘Dork! Do not kayak alone! Do not go into the woods alone!’ ” I pause. “I don’t want to be the damsel in distress.”
“You aren’t.” He seems so confident.
I rest my fist on his thigh. “I’m not?”
“No, you aren’t. Technically, I guess Courtney is.”
“And you’re the knight errant who’s going to save her.”
“No,” he says. “We are the knight errant who’s going to save her.”
“Maybe …”
“No ‘maybe’ about it. Instead of thinking of it as putting yourself in harm’s way by going to the hospital and going kayaking, maybe you should think of those acts as tests of courage. That’s what you’d think if it was me doing it. You’d think I was brave. You wouldn’t think, ‘Oh, Alan is being a damsel.’ ”
“Sure I would,” I tease. I know, though, that he’s right. Why is it when women do something brave, we think it’s something dangerous? And when a guy does something dangerous, we think it’s brave?
I’m about to ask Alan this when he goes, “You saved one of those guys, Aimee. Yeah, he sucks. But you saved him. You know it.”
“Chris died.”
“You couldn’t have stopped that.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.” He says it as if it’s absolute knowledge.
“I wish I did. I wish I knew.” I swallow hard. “I know you hate him, but I’m worried about Blake.”
“I know.” He pulls the truck onto their road. It bumps along. I close my eyes.
Alan’s voice steadies me. “It must have been hell out there, huh?”
I open my eyes and stare up at Court’s familiar, cozy house. “It was.”
Alan switches off the car and turns to face me. He kisses my forehead soft and sweet, which is not what you expect from such a big guy, such a football-player kind of guy, and I can’t help it. I tilt my head up. He doesn’t pull his lips away from my skin; instead he trails them softly down my nose. It’s a light grazing touch. My skin feels like it swells to meet his lips, wishing he would press against me. He kisses the tip of my nose the way a brother would. I do not want him to be my brother.
“Aimee …” His voice comes out husky and low and very unbrotherlike.
My hands grab the side of his face and I pull him to the proper angle because I can’t wait anymore, can’t hope for him to make the first move. So I kiss him. My lips touch his lips. My breath meets his breath. And we grab at each other. His hands clutch the fabric of my coat and my hands cling to his face, holding him there, because I’m so afraid of letting him go, of having him drift away.
There is enough light coming through the truck windows that I can see the tiny lines in the skin by his eyes, the place where his eyebrows stop. When he opens his eyes, the brown of them makes me smile and laugh, surprised and happy.
“I kissed you,” I say, breaking away, but not going too far. My hands fall into my lap.
“Yeah,” he says.
I punch his arm. “That’s all you have to say? ‘Yeah’?”
“Hell yeah?” he teases, then hops out of the truck. I manage to scurry across the seat, open my door, and jump out before he can open the door for me. Landing on my leg hurts a little bit. Still, I gloat.
“Ha!” I point at him.
He fake clutches his heart. “How will my macho masculine self survive?”
“Shut up.” I bop my hip into him. He drapes an arm around my shoulder and we head toward the house, but then I stop at the last second. “I’m scared.”
“Of the house? It’ll be okay. I’ve smudged it. And I’ll be right here.”
“No,” I explain. “Not of the house. Of your mom.”
He lets go of me. “My mom?”
I nod, kind of fiercely.
“You look like a little kid when you do that,” he says.
I shrug.
“And now you’re shrugging?” He cracks up.
“Not funny.”
“No? But I’ll tell you what is funny: you being scared of my mom.” He gets that gigantic smile he gets.
“Like you weren’t scared of my dad?” I grab the doorknob and start to turn it, but then it jerks open and Alan’s mom (I mean, I think it must be Alan’s mom) is standing there, a super-huge look of happy planted on her face.
“So,” she says, and I catch a lot of tired in her eyes. “You must be Aimee. Oh, what a cute girl you are, all that red hair.”
She hustles me inside, not giving me a second to answer. Instead, she just keeps talking and talking and talking. I catch phrases like “Oh, I am so glad that Alan has found someone.” And “Courtney says such good things about you.” And “I heard you were a good student. I hope that rubs off on—”
Seriously, it’s a frenzy of mom-talk, and finally Alan goes up to her and puts his hand gently over her mouth. “Mom. Breathe.”
She grabs his wrist and pulls his hand away. “I can’t breathe with your hand on my face.” She adjusts her shirt and then her hair. Some wood chips sprinkle out like overlarge pieces of dandruff, and she says, “I guess I was talking your head off, wasn’t I?”
“I do that all the time when I’m nervous. Not that you’re
nervous.” I cringe.
“Oh, she’s making excuses for me. She is nice.” Ms. Parson bends down to pick some wood chips off the rug. I squat down and help her. They are tiny beige chips in a carpet of red. It’s amazing to think they were once part of a living tree. That poor tree. “She’s really nice. You don’t have to help, Aimee.”
“Yep. Yep. She’s nice.” Alan shakes his head like it’s all too much and too awkward to deal with.
“It’s good to meet you, Ms. Parson,” I say, and extend my hand even though I’m still squatting.
She shakes it.
“It’s the mill work,” she apologizes and stands up. “It’s giving me blisters. My hands haven’t toughened up yet.”
I stand up, too. “I’m so sorry. I hope I didn’t squeeze too tight.”
“Not at all,” she says while Alan turns her hands over and inspects them. There are new blisters on the pads underneath each of her fingers where they join the palm, but as we watch the redness starts to fade. I’ve healed her.
She cocks her head like a puppy.
“How strange.” Her voice goes serious and quiet. “I can tell you’re a good girl, Aimee. You’ll be good to him, right?”
“I will,” I say. “I promise.”
She drops her hand and the moment is gone. “You two go on and talk. As long as no police cars or principals show up, I’ll be happy. What a day.”
Alan hugs her. “You’re a trooper, mom.”
“Yeah, right …” She laughs.
Alan leads me up the stairs. “My room is up here.”
“Next to Court’s, right?”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot you’ve been here before.”
“Only about a million times,” I say.
“Keep the door open!” Ms. Parson yells up the stairs.
“Mom!” Alan turns bright red. He closes his eyes and breathes deeply for a second. “Sorry …”
He motions to the guestroom that Court’s mom used to do quilt projects in. It smells tangy and sweet. I sniff. “That’s sage.”
Alan nods to some herb stuff by the bookcase. “I was burning it.”