“I promise you won’t get in trouble.” Even as she said this she sensed his panic. “But I can’t protect you if I don’t know what to protect you from.”
He finished the cake. Left the plate on his tray and took a long draw at the straw in his water glass. He was studying her, trying to decide whether or not to trust her.
“I know about the salvia,” she said and saw his eyes widen. “I don’t care who brought it or where you got it. I just need to know what happened. What were you doing in the forest?”
“My dad was a quarterback in high school.”
Maggie had no idea what this had to do with anything. Would he just avoid all her questions? Still, she listened.
“He really liked Johnny.” Dawson stared at his hands, twisted the top of the bedsheets. “Sometimes I think he wished Johnny was his son instead of me.”
He paused. He was waiting for her to say something. Another one of those knee-jerk responses like “I’m sorry.” She stayed quiet. She had no idea what to say to that.
“I just wanted to fit in. You know, be cool.” He looked up to make sure she was listening. “I was just excited they invited me.”
“Last night wasn’t the first time?”
“Third, for me.”
“It was an invitation-only party?”
“For some. Some new kids were always invited. Kind of a test.”
“Like an initiation?”
He shrugged.
“You always tried different drugs?”
He shrugged again.
“You’re not going to get in trouble,” she reassured him. “I’m just trying to figure out what happened.”
But she could see he was still trying to decide what to tell her and what to leave out.
“Were you filming your experiences for YouTube?”
His eyes flashed and she knew she’d hit on a kernel of truth.
“You found the camera.” Not a question but an admission.
She didn’t admit that they had not. Why didn’t they find one? Had someone taken it before they arrived at the scene?
“And what about the pig’s blood,” she tried another shot in the dark.
To this he just shook his head.
“That was some dumb-ass idea of Johnny’s. He wanted to see what the losers would do if he splattered them with blood.”
She noticed he was still holding the fork she had brought with the piece of cake. He waggled it in one hand then shifted to the other, back and forth.
“Who attacked you, Dawson? Was that part of the ritual?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Who was it then?”
“I don’t know.” And the panic returned.
“I need your help, Dawson.”
For the first time he really looked at her. He was scared, but also perplexed that someone would ask such a thing of him.
“You need my help?”
“Yes. Will you help me?”
He almost smiled but then the teenager in him took control and he pretended to be negotiating when he said, “If you get me another piece of that cake I’ll tell you whatever you want.”
CHAPTER 38
NORTH PLATTE, NEBRASKA
Maggie thought Wesley Stotter’s tale, though interesting, sounded too fantastic to be true. She hoped she might get some answers out of Dawson. She left Donny to figure out what to do with the entertaining Stotter.
On her way out of the cafeteria she went through the line again and grabbed a piece of chocolate cake for Dawson.
She was glad to see him awake until she got a good look at his eyes.
“He’s here,” he whispered instead of a greeting. His head jerked back and forth as if he expected someone to jump out of the room’s dark corners.
“Who are you talking about?”
She set the piece of cake on the cart beside him. He looked past it. Looked past her, over her shoulder, trying to see out the door.
“I saw him walk by the door three times.”
She stayed in his line of vision, shifting and trying to get him to meet her eyes. He was panicked, sweat glistening on his face, his arms pushing himself up.
“I know he was in here. I could smell him.”
She wondered if it was a reaction to the drugs they were giving him for pain. Or maybe it was simply the aftereffect of the electrical shock. She knew disorientation and incoherency could linger. So could the blurred vision.
“What does he smell like?”
“River mud. And sweat.”
She turned on a lamp in the corner of the room and came back to stand close to him.
“You think he wants to hurt you?”
“He said I’d be sorry.” His eyes flittered by, touching her face briefly before going off again. “Said I’d be sorry I survived.”
She wished she had talked to Lucy about side effects of salvia. Could the hallucinations return? Certainly the hospital staff had done a toxicology workup on Dawson. She needed to tell them about the salvia. Would this be another costly mistake?
“Dawson, you need to talk to me. I want to help you, but you have to let me in on what happened last night.”
“Can’t. I promised Johnny.” He caught the slip and looked to see if she had caught it, too.
“Johnny’s dead, Dawson.”
He stared at her as if waiting for a punch line.
“Johnny’s not dead. I saw him this morning.”
“He was here?”