Relief flooded over her in waves. “Oh. Right.”
“Sawyer Dodd?” The voice that came over the PA system was deep and gravelly and bounced off the plethora of sterile metal and linoleum in the hallway. “Sawyer Dodd to the administration office, please.”
Sawyer’s eyes went up to the overhead speaker.
“Sounds like someone might be in trouble,” Logan tried to joke, but Sawyer couldn’t find the humor. He flushed red immediately and looked at the floor. “I’m kidding. I know you’re not—you know, the kind of kid who gets in trouble.”
“Thanks, Logan. Apparently, I’ve got to go.” Sawyer turned, songbook clutched to her chest, and Logan kept step with her.
“How about I walk you?”
“That’s really okay.”
“Too late.” Logan gestured toward the fall leaves taped to the open door of the administration office. “We’re here.”
Logan turned and offered Sawyer his awkward salute, and she was left standing in the hallway, watching his back as he headed down the hall.
“Sawyer Dodd to the administration office, please.” The overhead speaker squawked again, this time slightly more insistent. Sawyer blew out a sigh and pushed the door open.
The administration office was a cavalcade of students zigzagging through the bright orange half doors that separated the back office from the front. Most of them carried file folders or thick stacks of copy paper while they went about their work study office duties.
Sawyer cleared her throat. “I’m Sawyer Dodd,” she said to no one in particular. The girl at the closest desk blinked at her and blew a bubble the size of her head. She sucked it in, eyes still focused on Sawyer. She pressed the black button on the intercom in front of her, and Sawyer could see her wad of gum protruding in her cheek.
“Sawyer Dodd?”
“That’s me.”
“Oh.” The girl looked surprised to see her. “Principal Chappie wants to see you.”
“What about?”
The girl shrugged, went back to chewing her gum. She pointed to a bank of chairs lined up in front of Mr. Chappie’s closed office door. “You can wait over there, please.”
Sawyer hiked up her backpack and did as she was told, sliding her feet out in front of her. She absently studied the toes of her sneakers, then clapped the sides of her big toes together, a pleasing cloud of red clay dust puffing off the soles.
Sawyer looked at her shoes, looked at the fine red powder that now littered the gray, industrial-grade carpet. Her skin started to prick and she sat up straighter, her left hand slowly reaching out in front of her. Her fingers flicked. She imagined reaching under her bed in the dim, near-dawn light. She remembered her fingers falling over the soft leather of the single metallic flat as she looked for her sneaker. She remembered rolling the hard buds of dirt under her index finger.
Then she remembered the photograph that Detective Biggs had slid across the table to her.
Sawyer’s throat constricted. Her tongue darted out to lick paper-dry lips. How had the shoe—just one shoe—ended up under her bed?
Her body started to tremble, a slow, painful jitter.
How did the mud get there?
Sawyer remembered the hollow ring of Detective Biggs’s voice when he mentioned that someone might have been there when Kevin was killed. That a woman may have pushed the passenger seat back, gotten one shoe stuck in the mud when she slipped away.
One metallic, mud-covered flat.
Sawyer doubled over and held her head in her hands, her mind racing, trying to go back to that day, trying to go back to the day she had spent the last three weeks desperately trying to block out.
Had she taken a pill? Had she blacked out or blocked it out?
Her breath caught in her throat as her heart tried to hammer its way out of her chest. She shook her head.
No. There was no way. I would have remembered…right?
She felt the wind on her face, the moist, biting sting of the wind as she jogged down the hill, picking up speed as she put precious distance between her and Kevin.
“I was running,” Sawyer mumbled. “If I was running, I wasn’t wearing flats.”
She thought back, clamping her eyes shut, trying to remember the way it felt each time her foot hit the ground. Before a track meet she would pinch her eyes closed and concentrate on the feeling of her feet falling in perfect quick-time rhythm, hitting the red clay of the track just softly enough to propel her forward one more step.
How did her foot feel?
“Ms. Dodd?” Principal Chappie poked his head out of his office, his voice shaking Sawyer out of her revelry. She sighed as her mind failed to grasp the image of her leaving that night.
“I’m right here,” Sawyer said, standing up slowly.
Principal Chappie stood aside and ushered Sawyer down the hall. He pushed open the door and she followed him in.