“Are you coming over?”
I didn’t know what to say. The feds would see me, but then I realized that wasn’t so abnormal. They already knew that Stubby and I were friends. I was about to tell him yes when the sedan’s brake lights went off, and Faraday and Wallace started to get out.
“Stubby!” I hissed.
“What? What?”
“Listen to me! The feds are in front of your house! They’re on their way to your door!”
“Oh, man!” Stubby cried, and I thought he might be on the verge of panic. “Maddie, what do we do?”
“I don’t know!” I whispered. “Listen, they probably found the card. Maybe…”
At that moment I heard Stubby’s doorbell ring through the phone. Wallace and Faraday were standing on the doorstep. In the background I heard Mrs. Schroder call to Stubby to see who was at the door, and I cringed. “I gotta go,” he said meekly.
“I’ll call my uncle!” I promised. “Don’t say anything to them until they tell you why they’re there!”
The line was silent and I called out to Stubs, but then I heard a beep and realized he’d already hung up.
Next, I dialed Donny, ready to confess to him what we’d done, but I got his voice mail. “Why don’t you ever answer my call?!” I snapped when the voice mail kicked in. I took a deep breath and left him an urgent message to call me back. Then I waited in the dark, watching Stubby’s house for a long time. At last the door opened and the agents came out.
I stared at my phone display anxiously, and as their car was pulling away, Stubby called me. “I think it’ll be okay,” he said.
“What happened?”
“They didn’t ask about Payton. They just wanted me to go over your alibi again for the day Tevon disappeared. Was I sure we were together? What time did you leave my house? What’d I get on the chem test? That kind of stuff.”
My brow furrowed. Why had they asked about all that again?
As I was contemplating that, Stubby added, “Oh, and they wanted to know why we were sitting in the Jupiter team’s bleachers last Friday instead of with our school.”
That was weird. “What’d you tell them?”
“I said our bleachers were too crowded, and we had a better view of the game from the visitor’s side. But then they wanted to know why we left early, and I said because you had a stomachache.”
I sighed with relief. “Maybe we’re okay.”
Stubby was quiet on the other end of the line, and belatedly I realized he was still upset about Payton. “Do you want me to come over?”
Stubby sniffled. “If it’s okay with you, Mads, I think I want to be alone for a while.”
That took me aback, and I couldn’t help but feel hurt. I was upset over Payton, too. “Uh…sure. Okay, Stubs. Call me later, though, if you want to talk?”
“Okay,” he said. And then he was gone.
Cold and feeling sad and alone, I began pedaling back home. My cell rang on the way and I answered my uncle’s call. “What’s happened?” Donny asked sharply, no doubt irritated with me for the voice mail.
For a moment, I didn’t know what to tell him. If I came clean about sending Payton a birthday card, warning her of her imminent death, he’d be furious and he might even insist that I move to Brooklyn with him, if only to keep me out of trouble. Then again, if the feds never found the card—if Payton maybe threw it away or we’d been careful enough and they couldn’t trace it back to us—we might be worrying over nothing. I decided not to risk angering Donny unnecessarily, and luckily, I now had a pretty good backup excuse for calling him. “The feds were just at Stubby’s house,” I said. Then I explained what they’d wanted. By the time I was done, I was home, walking my bike up the drive.
On the other end of the call, Donny was quiet for a long time, and that worried me. “Okay,” he said at last. “Keep me posted if you hear anything else.” With that, he was also gone. Sighing, I headed inside to get warm and tried not to let my thoughts linger too much on Payton Wyly. That proved impossible, though, especially when Stubs didn’t text me once the rest of the night.
Friday sucked.
There was no other way to describe it. Stubby texted me that morning that his little sister was sick, and he had to stay home with her because his mom had a meeting she couldn’t miss. Not having him next to me in the hallway made me feel small and vulnerable, and at lunch it was even worse. I sat by myself at a table in the cafeteria, eating quickly. The only bright spot was Mr. Pierce, who stopped me again on my way out of class. “You hanging in there, Maddie?” he asked kindly.
I didn’t feel like talking, so I merely gave him a halfhearted nod.
“Good,” he said with a warm smile. “And great job on the lab experiment today.”
I thanked him and hurried to my next class. Still, it was nice to know that all my teachers weren’t against me.
Later, when I came out from school to get my bike, I found it once again covered in eggs and shells, but this time Stubs wasn’t around with his usual wad of paper towels and sunny disposition. It hit me how much of the sting he managed to take out of all those times I’d been bullied or made fun of.
After cleaning up my bike, I pedaled home. I’d checked the Web at lunch to see if they’d found Payton, or if there were any leads in the investigation, but nothing new was posted. I was anxious to follow the story, and by now I had a terrible suspicion that her abduction and death were somehow linked to Tevon’s, which meant that I could indeed be sucked into her murder investigation, too. It would also indicate that there was a serial killer on the loose.