He pulled out a phone to check the time. “11:13.”
“Then I’m late for a phone call,” I said, concocting a lie that I hoped would keep him mollified. “My mother’s kind of nervous, us being out here like this, so she wants me to call every day at eleven to let her know we’re okay.” Adults didn’t usually take teens at their word, but sometimes all it took to calm them was to mention another adult. They respected imaginary authority more than the children right in front of them.
“Where did you say you were from?” asked the pastor. Was he genuinely trying to remember or was he testing us? I hadn’t said anything, but Marci had. Stilton, or Stetson, or something like that. I’d only been half listening.
“Stillson,” said Brooke.
“That’s right,” said the pastor, nodding. “I remember now. And you please remember, please: if there’s anything you need, I’m right there in the chapel.”
“Thanks,” I said, and I waved politely as he turned to walk back to the church. His dog and Boy Dog sniffed their farewells.
“Okay,” said Brooke, turning to me. “Let’s talk about this—”
“Let’s don’t,” I said, putting on my backpack. “I’m fine now.”
“But we need to…” She trailed off as I turned away, ignoring her. I didn’t know if she was respecting my wishes or just too cowed to continue.
We walked to Beck Street and followed it slowly, staying in the shade of the trees on the lawns. There was no sidewalk here, just one block away from Main Street, so we walked through the gravel on the side of the road, listening to it crunch beneath our feet. We identified Sara Glassman’s house but walked past it, looking for somewhere to kill time without being close to other people. This turned out to be nearly impossible in a town that small; there were so few people around we stood out anywhere we went. The few people we did see waved and seemed friendly enough, but I wanted to get out of sight. Finally we found a culvert adjacent to a narrow stretch of lawn and a giant weeping willow, the branches so long and heavy that they reached to the ground. We pushed our way through the leaves like a curtain of chi beads, and found a small space in the center that felt isolated from the rest of the town.
“Hey,” said Derek, who was sitting on the edge of the culvert. “It’s you again.”
9
“I figured you left town,” said Derek.
There was something in the way he said it—not just with surprise, but eagerness. He was excited to see us again. He’d been looking for us.
“You went back to the drive-in,” I guessed.
“What happened last night?” asked Brooke.
I wished she hadn’t said that, exposing her lack of memory, but Derek seemed to misinterpret her meaning.
“I just wanted to see if you were still there,” he said. He was sitting on the culvert—a big cement opening leading out into the ditch. His feet were up on the metal grate at the mouth of the hole, but as he spoke he shifted his weight, leaning back toward the hollow space I couldn’t see on the far side of the culvert. If it were me, I’d have a weapon hidden there. Did he?
“Paul wanted to call the cops,” he continued. “But he’s an idiot, and once we convinced him he was too drunk to talk to any cops, we got him back to his house and in through his bedroom window. Corey told me to leave you alone, but he’s always telling us what to do, so screw him. By the time I got back there you were gone.”
“What did you want?” I asked.
He just smiled and rapped his knuckles on the cement culvert.
How quickly had he come back? That would tell me everything I needed to know; if it was quick, then he’d been trying to catch us before we went to sleep, either because he thought we’d be making out or because he wanted to finish the fight I’d almost started. If he’d waited a few hours and come back when he knew we’d be asleep … well, there were several things that might mean and none of them were good.
“My name is Marci,” said Brooke, though I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. Was she actively trying to tell him she had mental issues? I said the first thing I could think of so she wouldn’t keep talking.
“Did you have a gun?”
He didn’t answer, and I knew that he had. He’d come back looking for us, drunk and angry and armed. I saw myself stabbing him again, like a strobed image flashing in my mind, and took a deep breath to calm myself. I put my hand on Brooke’s arm, subtly guiding her back out of the tree. “Let’s go.”