My heart was pounding. I turned my back to him and paced the aisle. “What are we going to do?” I dragged my palm down the length of my face. Somebody knew about the car crash. Now somebody was looking for Adam.
“You could start by looking at a picture. Here.” He held out the screen of his phone. I didn’t want to look. What I wanted to do was avoid the missing boy, avoid the phone, avoid the tire marks. Despite this, I snatched the phone from his hands and held it close. “Is that him?” I asked. My breath fogged the phone’s screen. “It’s … tough to tell.”
I squinted and angled the picture. The boy in the picture was smiling a wide, natural smile. His dark hair was longer than Adam’s and covered the tops of his ears. It could be Adam’s brother, but was it Adam? I really couldn’t tell. I moved the screen closer to my nose and tried searching for the gold specks in Adam’s eyes, but the photograph was too grainy to see.
“Well?”
I pushed the phone back in Owen’s hand. “I don’t know.” I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. Whoever this Trent kid is, we have Adam and this doesn’t change anything. Got it?” The bell rang, causing us both to jump. “Keep your head down and it will all be fine.” Then I added under my breath. “I certainly don’t think it could get any worse.”
He held my gaze, and when several moments had passed, he sighed. “So I suppose now isn’t the time to tell you that we’re playing dodgeball today in PE.”
Owen smirked like he’d just scored a point and headed for the doors, disappearing toward the boys’ locker room.
*
HISTORY TELLS US that while others were slaving to invent cures for measles and polio and whatnot, some numskull was hanging out in his garage, scratching at his balls and coming up with the game of dodgeball. And so it went that every geek every day thereafter would suffer the curse of having balls chucked at his face, which, as far as I was concerned, was pretty much the modern-day equivalent of Zeus sentencing Prometheus to have his liver pecked by eagles on the regular.
Dodgeball. A Nobel Peace Prize ought to be given to the first person who can eradicate that festering boil on the heel of society.
Ten minutes later, this was me: black gym shorts cut perfectly to show off my little boy legs. Gray T-shirt to showcase my pit sweat. Mismatched socks. Skin the color of jellyfish that worked double as a protective casing for my large intestines as well as a flashing neon sign to my classmates that read Caution: This girl sucks at sports.
I stood on the basketball gym’s baseline shoulder to shoulder with Owen and Adam. It was a small consolation that Owen maybe looked worse in his uniform than me. Every bit of him was pointy. It looked as though someone had wrapped skin around a skeleton, and his shorts were entirely too short not to be reserved solely for European beachwear.
“Jenkins,” yelled William. The process of picking teams should be outlawed. In fact, it probably was everywhere but Hollow Pines. I shifted my weight.
Blake Jenkins jogged over to where William was waiting with the rest of the chosen ones.
“Wheelwright.” The other team captain, Knox, picked Paisley, his girlfriend. Surprise, surprise.
The sole benefit of my conversation with Owen was that it had taken the edge off my nerves. Bickering with Owen did that for me. I’d consider picking another fight later just to achieve normalcy. Standing next to Adam made me feel better, too. I hated letting him out of my sight, but if the experiment were to have any success at all, I realized, the science might require it.
Still, today, the day of missing boys and returning phones, I’d settle for keeping him nearby.
“Fernandez.” William’s team gained another player. I snuck a look over at Adam, where he waited, face serene.
He filled out the gray gym shirt that hid his red branchlike scars underneath. Thin scabs flaked from his shins.
Something pinched the back of my arm. “Ouch!” I yelped too loudly. The remaining losers in the line stared.
“Earth to Frankenstein,” Owen muttered in a singsong tone. “You and your boy must both be in la-la land. They’re trying to call him.”
“New kid. Hello?” Knox clapped. “New kid. Over here. Christ, is he deaf or just mentally challenged?”
I elbowed Adam, and when that didn’t work—“Adam, he means you. You’re on Knox’s team. He has a name, Hoyle,” I snapped.
I leaned over to see how many people were still left unpicked—seven. I could have been imagining this, but I swore Owen tried to stand an extra inch taller just to get picked before I did. I tugged down on his arm and he wriggled away from me.
I rubbed the stinging spot on my skin where Owen had pinched me. Still feeling moody, I pinched him back. He let out a high-pitched shriek that sounded dangerously close to that of a little girl. I gave him a self-satisfied grin. “Well, if that doesn’t get you picked, I don’t know what will.”
He glowered. In ninth grade, Coach Carlson had made Owen climb the hanging rope. He’d made it up five feet before his arms gave out and he slid back down. He had rope burn between his legs for weeks.