My best friend grinned and nodded at me. “Can I borrow a pack of your mom’s cigarettes?” he asked, his gaze traveling to the carton on the counter.
“Why?” I asked sharply. I lived with a smoker, and it was a disgusting habit. I didn’t want Stubs to start up.
He rolled his eyes, then he took up one of Ma’s half-empty packs, got out a cigarette, dangled it at the corner of his mouth, then rolled the pack up into his shirtsleeve. “Dean used to roll the pack up like this,” he explained. “Makes me look cool, right?”
I offered him a skeptical frown. “Don’t you think meeting kids at the door with a cigarette hanging out of your mouth might tick off some parents?”
Stubs smiled sheepishly and removed the cigarette dangling from his lips. “Good point.” Then he reached for his backpack and pulled out the candy he’d promised me, like a hunter bringing home a trophy. “Where do you want it?”
“Can you dump it in this and put it on the front porch?” I asked him, handing him our big salad bowl.
Stubs eyed the bowl doubtfully. “You sure, Mads? Usually the first kids at the door take all the candy and run for it.”
I bent over to lift up the cuff of my sweats to demonstrate exactly why I wouldn’t be getting up and down to answer the door every five minutes. “Yikes,” Stubs said, dumping the candy in the bowl. “Got it covered.” When he came back to the table, he sat down with me and said, “I can’t stay long. Mom wants me to hand out candy while she takes Sam and Grace trick-or-treating.”
“Okay.” I felt a little disappointed that Stubs couldn’t stay longer and keep me company. I hadn’t been able to shake my melancholy.
While we sipped at our soup he asked, “Anything new about Tevon?”
“No,” I told him. “At least there wasn’t a car parked in front of my house today when I got home from school. Not that I noticed much after I crashed.”
Stubs offered me a sympathetic frown before brightening. “You gotta heal quick, Mads. Next Friday is the Jupiter game.”
I felt a smile tug at the corners of my mouth. “Oh, I’ll be there,” I said. “No way am I missing it.”
Stubby nodded. I could tell he was looking forward to going to the game, too. “Cheerleaders,” he said with a loopy grin, and that got me to laugh.
A lot of the kids at school assume Stubs and I are a couple, but the truth is, we’re more like brother and sister than anything else
“You gonna say hi to Aiden this year?” he asked me slyly. “Or are you gonna sit there and pretend you’re not seriously crushing on him?”
I pushed him on the shoulder. “Don’t rush me,” I said. “I’m working up to it.”
It was Stubby’s turn to laugh. “Working up to it? It’s been two years, Mads. At this rate you’ll graduate before you even smile at the guy.”
I rolled my eyes before reaching over to dunk the rest of his sandwich in his soup. He shook his head, but he was chuckling. “Women!” he said.
We hung out for a while more before Dad’s clock chimed six times and Stubs got up, taking his bowl and his plate to the sink. “Gotta go!” he said. “Thanks for dinner. Hope your leg feels better!” With that he banged out the back door with barely a wave good-bye.
After finishing my own meal, I got up and limped over to the sink to rinse out my dishes. The TV was still on in the living room, but I couldn’t make out much more than white noise. As I turned off the faucet, however, I thought I heard a familiar name. Moving to the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, I saw that the news was on, and there was a reporter standing in front of a large stately home that had to be in Parkwick. I could tell right away she was talking about Tevon Tibbolt. “…the body of the thirteen-year-old was discovered on the banks of the Waliki River, about six miles from his residence here in Parkwick, where Tevon was last seen walking home from the bus stop on Wednesday afternoon. Tevon is the son of prominent hedge fund manager Ryan Tibbolt and his wife, socialite Patricia Tibbolt. We have few details other than the boy’s body has been positively identified, and police and the FBI have ruled the death a homicide….”
I leaned against the door frame; my knees were threatening to give out from underneath me. I stood there breathing hard as a mounting sense of panic began to overwhelm me. The news reporter rattled off that the FBI was now leading the investigation in the disturbing murder, stating that Tevon’s body had been found riddled with wounds, and there were preliminary signs that the boy had been tortured.
When the news cut to commercial I reached a trembling hand toward the phone, but Uncle Donny’s line went straight to voice mail again. “Donny? It’s Maddie. Did you hear the news? It’s Tevon Tibbolt. They found him, and he’s been murdered. Please call me, okay? Right away. Please?
Still gripping the phone, I hobbled over to Dad’s old leather chair and collapsed into it. I stared at the TV, but the newscaster had already moved on to a house fire in neighboring Willow Mill.
The doorbell rang twice and shouts of “Trick or Treat!” echoed through the door, but I didn’t move out of Dad’s chair. Instead I sat there and wept for a long time, feeling so guilty I could barely keep my dinner down. If only I’d insisted that Mrs. Tibbolt listen to me. If only I’d run after her before she left our house and said, “Please don’t let him out of the house next Wednesday!” or if I hadn’t hung up on her later that night but had tried harder to get her to listen to me, Tevon might still be alive.
At eight o’clock I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my sweatshirt and stood gingerly. It’d gotten dark in the room, and in spite of Ma sleeping on the couch, I turned on a light, then I hobbled over to the door to check on the candy.
After struggling to get the door open, I saw the plastic bowl smashed and broken at the bottom of the front walk, and a roll of toilet paper hanging from the branches of the small maple tree in our front yard.