Instead, in front of our poster board, Owen had displayed the Florence flask and the sulfuric acid that had resulted from our chemical process. The whole thing lacked pizzazz. It was boring, and I was sulking as a result.
“We’re lucky we even have a project given that our other one is currently on the run and, oh yeah, a federal crime,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth.
I touched the lightning-bolt charm dangling from my damaged wrist. I still hadn’t tried to contact Meg’s phone. It seemed smartest to lay low and submit stupid, subpar science fair projects like nothing much had changed.
One of the judges passed with a badge pinned to his lapel. I stared down at my shoes. When he passed, I turned to Owen. “How long do you think until they stop searching for the body?”
Owen’s mouth formed a line. “I don’t know. Another week? I—” He took a deep breath and shook his head. “It’s hard letting all those people go to all that trouble searching for something they’ll never find.” He pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose.
A couple days ago, the city had started dredging the lake for Adam’s body. Twenty-four hours after the Homecoming dance, he was declared missing. Shortly after that, he was presumed to be one of the boys killed by Roy McCardle Sr., the Hunter of Hollow Pines.
It hadn’t taken long for Owen and me to mastermind the crime scene. We’d used a screwdriver to whittle away the serial number from Meg’s gun and placed it in McCardle’s lifeless hand. We’d wiped clean the tools and the traps. Owen insisted on searching the grounds for the rest of them. We found seven more bear traps and made sure that they snapped closed by using a thick stick to press the triggers. I had wanted to burn McCardle’s old house down, but Owen was right, I had never been in the criminal system and any hairs they found there would be a match for no one. One anonymous tip from a pay phone and it was all shockingly simple. They had found the mutant body with the pieces of the missing boys. There were suspected to be more out there. Especially since there were two unidentified blood samples left in the bear traps. But no one had found anything yet.
“Stop worrying about them, Owen. This town has never paid attention to us. Why should we feel bad about it now?”
I read the Lie Detector religiously, devouring any mention of Adam. Commenters thought it’d be a matter of days before they found Adam Smith’s body strung up somewhere in the countryside. Adam had received some “posthumous” sympathy for Knox’s death, which many now viewed as an accident. Of course, there were fringe commenters who created a conspiracy theory where Adam had been working with McCardle and was now in hiding. I appreciated their creativity if nothing else. Or others that thought he’d just gotten spooked and ran after Knox’s death. But few were convinced that a high school boy could get very far on his own without getting caught.
Owen and I fell silent. We’d been doing that a lot the last few days. Another judge—the junior college professor—passed. I watched the judge linger over the Pop Rocks experiment. When I turned back, Cassidy was standing in front of me. I jumped and knocked over our poster board.
“Sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Behind me, Owen righted the project. I could feel him listening.
Her fingers worked, twisting themselves around and around. Her hair was pulled up into a bun, and she looked sickly thin, like she hadn’t eaten or slept in days. She parted her lips and, at first, no sound came out. I just stood there staring at her. She blew a long breath out and began. “I just wanted to say, I’m sorry, for … not giving Adam a fair shake.” She glanced away. A tear slipped onto her cheek, and she quickly brushed it away and took another deep breath. “We all saw what Knox did. What he was doing and … I know you’re not Adam, but I can’t say it to him and this doesn’t change the fact that what you did to me was terrible. But, you know, I just want to find him.” She sucked in her lower lip. Her nose was turning red, but she was holding it all together. “I feel responsible in some way.”
I noticed Paisley on the outskirts dressed in all black. She was shaking hands with people and holding a hot-pink handkerchief. She’d been scheduling her breakdowns for smack in the middle of class for days. Paisley’s “grief” was on full display.
“Anyway,” Cassidy continued when I didn’t say anything. She had appeared on the five o’clock news to talk about her boyfriend, Adam Smith. To her credit, she didn’t pull a Paisley. There was no choreographing the wardrobe or doing her makeup. Cassidy appeared bare-skinned, wearing a fourth-grade Mathletes tee and looking the worst I’d ever seen her. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry for your loss.” Her throat contracted.
“Thanks,” I said. “He actually really liked you. I wish you hadn’t turned against him.”
At that she made a little hiccupping sound and spun on her heel. She grabbed Paisley by the elbow and whispered something in her ear, and then Cassidy Hyde was gone. I wondered if I would ever talk to her again in my life. Somehow I doubted it.