“No, ma’am,” Mattie interjected. “We’re his students. We were supposed to get our tests back today and he didn’t show up for class.”
“Well, hell!” the woman said. “I tell you, we get in fights all the time. And some days he just takes off. Sometimes he comes back an hour later, sometimes, it’s a damn week.” She cleared her throat.
“Have you tried him on his phone?” Mattie asked.
“Doesn’t carry one. Hates ’em, actually. He says he has enough phones with the ones his students carry.” She laughs, and it is gruff and clogged with phlegm. “He wouldn’t answer my calls now anyway, even if I knew how to reach the bastard.”
Ivy watched Mattie’s hand curl around the gearshift, his knuckles white. He was doing a good job so far, but he was about to freak out. Or maybe she was.
Maybe they both were.
“If we hear from him, we’ll tell him you’re looking for him, okay?” Ivy tried to smile at Mrs. Stratford, but her mouth wasn’t working right. Nothing was going right.
Mrs. Stratford flapped her hand at them. “Don’t bother, kids. He’ll get home when he gets over it. Don’t fan the flames, okay?” She chuckled. “Have a good night.”
And just like that, Mrs. Stratford threw her rust bucket into reverse and backed out of her space.
“Holy shit,” Ivy whispered at the steering wheel.
“I don’t know what shocks me more,” Mattie said. “That someone agreed to marry him or that that just happened. We almost got caught that night. Do you realize that?”
Her breathing shaky, Ivy began driving slowly, wordlessly, to her home. She’d realized something else, too.
There was already someone out there looking for Stratford.
Soon, there would be more.
Mattie
Monday, June 15
It was big and shiny and beautiful and it was sitting in the driveway with a big, glossy bow in the center of the hood.
He’d been staring at it with wide eyes ever since Ivy had dropped him off at the end of the drive. (She hadn’t noticed. But then, neither had he, until he saw the giant red bow.)
Mattie put his hands on both sides of his head. Was it for him? No. It couldn’t be. Guys like Mattie did not randomly get surprised with Audi A3s. They got ties from their overprotective fathers and kisses from their mothers, but definitely not cars.
Besides, his mother had just gotten him a brand-new bike, right before he’d come here. One he’d barely ridden.
One that was now gone. He’d looked everywhere. He’d combed the area behind the school. He’d even checked around his aunt’s block, in case someone had taken it by accident and dropped it off nearby. But no.
Someone had stolen the bike. On the night of the accident, someone had taken the bike he had left there after they’d stashed Stratford.
“Do you like it?” His aunt stood in the driveway, her chubby arms crossed over her chest. She was grinning a wide, cheesy grin of pure happiness. It was making her glad to give him something.
“Is this . . . is this for . . .” Mattie trailed off.
“I already have enough cars.” His aunt dug in her pocket and pulled out a key fob. It was black and smooth with silver buttons and a keychain attached that said Mattie in ornate lettering. “Take it.”
He stared.
She laughed, and then she crossed the driveway and placed the key fob in Mattie’s hand. He felt his fingers close around it.
It was warm from being in her pocket.
He couldn’t stop looking at the car.
The gift would have made him uncomfortable on a normal day. Neither of his parents could afford more than a used Toyota, and now his aunt had unloaded a beautiful black car that his parents couldn’t afford in a million years. And it was for him.
Of course, it wasn’t a normal day. It was infinitely worse. Because on a normal day, he might have just said he couldn’t accept such a valuable gift and felt guilty for declining.
But today? All he could think today is that he didn’t deserve it. He’d helped cover up a murder. He was a criminal.
(And lost his bike.)
And so he got a fancy car. Sitting there in the driveway.
A physical manifestation of his guilt.
“I don’t deserve something so nice,” he said, voicing his thoughts. “I can’t accept it.”
His aunt stepped closer and squeezed his shoulders. “Look, Mattie. I’ve been watching how hard you’ve been working at this class, okay? You’re killing yourself over it.”
Or someone else. Mattie gritted his teeth. “Yeah,” he managed finally.
“Plus, I noticed that your bike has disappeared. What happened, Mattie?”
This was so hard. This was all so hard. “I don’t know. I forgot to chain it up at a convenience store the other night, and when I came back, it was gone.”
It wasn’t true.
It wasn’t.
After class, when he’d gone to unchain the bike—he hadn’t forgotten to lock it up after all—the chain was lying broken on the ground where his bike had been.
And he thought he was being messed with. Or punished. Or maybe someone had been watching them.