“Off the car. The stupid Fit. I had it.” He sees my look. “I didn’t take it. She gave it to me.” I wait as he scrubs his hand across the top of his head, making his cowlick stand up in the back. “God, I’ve already explained this nine thousand times.”
“Better make it nine thousand and one, bub.”
He speaks slowly, like maybe I’m touched in the head. “She gave me the keys that night in the barrens. After Kat took you home.”
“She gave you her car.”
“Basically. She didn’t give a shit. You oughta know. That car was just her parents throwing more money at her to keep her out of the way. We were the last to leave that night. She said would I do her a favor and take the car.”
“How was she gonna get home?”
“She said she had a ride coming. I don’t know, I thought she wanted to freak out her mom by not bringing the car home that weekend or something. When I left, she was sitting by the fire alone. I slept it off at our camp on Alamoosook that night. Sent my dad a text, let him know where I was and everything. No big. I done it before. Next morning, Kat called me saying nobody can find Rhiannon, and had I seen her.”
“So, what—you were too scared to tell anybody you had it?”
He gives me a naked look. “I’m not stupid, okay? The cops know me. They would’ve had my ass in lockup so fast, asking me where I put the body or whatever. They never would’ve believed I didn’t steal that car. God, I was shitting bricks.” Nervous energy sends him over to the heavy bag hanging in the corner, which he shoves and throws a left into, pulling his punch at the last second so it lands with a muffled whump.
I walk as far as the hood of Kat’s pickup. “Come on, you could’ve told somebody. Kat would’ve tried to help you.” He ignores that. “Where’d you hide it this whole time?”
“In the camp shed. Left it there all winter.” He snorts. “Then back in June Dad started talking about opening up camp again for the summer. I freaked.” He rubs his eye. He and Kat are built the same, thin as whips with long-fingered hands they can’t seem to keep still. “I thought if I left it somewhere they could find it easy, right? But nobody did, for like, weeks. I couldn’t take it anymore and called in a tip. I’d wiped down the steering wheel and door handles and stuff, but when they dusted for prints—ding-ding-ding—bells and whistles.” Another punch. “I’m the only person with a record who ever touched that car, I guess.”
Kenyon was busted for possession of a tiny bag of weed at a school dance sophomore year. They let him off with community service and some drug counseling, I think. “They gonna charge you with something?”
“Probably. But I told them I don’t know where she is.”
“Do they believe you?”
He tosses a dark look over his shoulder. “Do you?”
“Duh.” And I do. Sounds like whoever picked her up that night was the last one to see her alive. “I wanna know why you threw me under the bus. I told the cops Kat and I were out driving around that night.” Kat backed me up, too. She didn’t want to get busted for trespassing any more than the rest of us did.
He won’t meet my gaze, and I think of all the times he tickled my sides in the school hallway, or lugged me over his shoulder through the parking lot while I shrieked and laughed. “I gave them other people’s names from the party, too. Not just yours.” He finally glances at me. “Sorry. Seriously. I had to give them something . . . you know, to get them off me.”
My nails dig into my palms. He can’t know why this matters to me so much. He can’t know why Nell called Kat looking for me that night, hysterical, why I had to leave the party ASAP. He can’t know what he’s turned the cops onto, how this jar I’ve put over Nell could crack at the slightest pressure. But I know one thing. No matter what the cops did to me, I never would’ve thrown him under. Ever. All I say is, “Yeah.”
We stand in silence for a long time, Kenyon pushing and punching the bag and watching it swing. When I’ve got my voice under control, I say, “Do you think Rhiannon’s dead?”
“She must be.”
It clicks, then. His sullenness, not asking any questions when Rhiannon told him to take her car. “You liked her, didn’t you?” No answer. “Did she know?”
Kenyon puts his fist out very slowly and presses his knuckles against the leather, holding them there. “Wasn’t gonna happen.” His voice is quiet.
I say, “See you around,” though I hope I don’t, and leave. As I walk to Mags’s car, the songs of crickets and the smells of a hot day cooling down to night strike me differently. In some way, everything’s changed since I stepped into that house.
FOURTEEN
THE FAIRGROUNDS ARE deserted except for a line of cars belonging to the Princesses parked in a dirt lot behind the central pavilion where they hold the sheepherding trials every year. I hesitate for a second, watching Nell run to the gate, turn, and wave for me to come on.
Things just got real.
Mrs. Hartwell sent out an email telling everybody that the stage was good to go, so Sunday’s rehearsal would be held here, where this whole crazy coronation is going to go down. My legs actually wobble as I follow Nell, crossing the track that runs around the huge sheltered stage, up the steps, into the thick of the other girls. The air smells like the ghosts of last year’s onion rings and cow flops. I feel Nell’s arm link through mine. She doesn’t say a word, just squeezes and gives me a small smile that dents the dimple in her left cheek. For once, I’m not too stubborn to squeeze back.
Mrs. Hartwell wears electric blue and her cheeks are rosy. “A lot more impressive than the town hall, am I right?” Murmurs from us. Maybe everybody’s as nervous as I am. Except Bella, of course; she’s whispering with Alexis like Mrs. Hartwell doesn’t rate the attention she’d give a mosquito.
Mrs. Hartwell points to a folding table set up on the ground below. “That’s where the judges sit. Expect them to take lots of notes and talk among themselves as you go through your choreography—don’t let it shake you! They’re getting their first impressions down. During the interviews, they’ll take turns asking each of you a handpicked question based on your bios, meant to learn a little more about you and your worldview.”
That almost takes my knees out. I curse under my breath.
“Darcy? Is there a problem?”
I can’t believe she heard that. I clear my throat, my voice drifting up into the rafters. “Uh . . . in front of everybody? I mean, they’re going to ask us right in front of—?”
“Don’t worry. We’re going over all that today. You’ll know what to do when the time comes.” She smiles. “I won’t leave you hanging. Now, Princesses, split into the same groups as last time, and I want to see two single-file lines waiting in the wings for my cue.”