“Exactly. This”—he turned the notebook horizontally and moved his finger to the upper left-hand corner of the page, where he’d drawn a squiggly blob—“is Lake Crook. And these two lines over here…” He traced what looked like a river with a winding turn that crossed the page. “This is State Highway Twenty-Four. I figured right around here is where you … well, where you found Adam.” My back tensed. “It’s about a fifteen-minute drive. A longer walk but doable.”
I looked up from the page, stared hard at Owen, who I knew better than anyone else on the whole planet, who understood me better than anyone else except for maybe my dad, and he was gone. “Stop, Owen,” I said.
But Owen didn’t stop. The twitch was already in his fingers, the way it was when he was working on a tricky bit of machinery. He was fiddling, testing, probing, the cogs were turning. “Here’s the field. I’ve marked the time the body was found approximately based on what you’ve told me. Adam was there, too.”
“Owen…” The wind picked up again, fluttering the page. He ignored that, too, and I felt my throat get all tight and narrow like I’d been stung by a thousand bees. Suddenly I felt too exposed out here in the stadium, in the open air where any bird could simply fly over.
“Finally, we know we found Adam at the locker room,” he continued, “the night before a boy winds up dead at our school, outside of that same locker room.” To Owen’s credit, his tone was grim. There wasn’t an I told you so in sight. Just the bare-bones facts, exactly how I liked them.
My joints were stiff. “Let me see that.” I leaned over, then, as Owen was handing it to me, I snatched the notebook, tore out the page, and crumpled it into a ball.
“Hey, that took effort!” I hated it when he whined.
On the field, Coach Carlson blew the whistle, and the team huddled together. I kept switching my attention back to Adam after short intervals.
“Yeah? Well, then it was a waste,” I said, tossing the crumpled paper out of Owen’s reach and shoving the rest of the notebook back into his hands. “These are coincidences, Owen. I thought you’d know the difference. I was on Highway Twenty-Four that night, too, remember? I was at the field where the body was found, and I was also with Adam and you at the boys’ locker room last night. Does that make me a killer?”
Owen looked down at his untied laces propped up on the bleacher below. “No.”
“And who are you looking out for, anyway? We’re supposed to be looking out for Adam, not piecing together his prosecution.” I was on my feet without realizing it. “I suppose he’s just storing his spare eyeballs and legs in, what, his locker?”
“I don’t know, Tor. He’s dead. I think we should at least think through the possibility. Before somebody else does. And FYI, the person I’m looking out for is you. You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong.” I pulled the strap of my bag over my shoulder and collected my things. “I’ll see you later, Owen,” I said, despising the niggling worm of doubt that squirmed inside me. “Find me when you remember who your friends are.” After that, I didn’t look back.
The bleachers shook underneath my clomping feet as I stormed down the stadium rows and out into the parking lot. The cool breeze wrapped itself around my neck and throat again, making me walk faster. Adam was mine. Owen would never have had the guts to create him. He would have never even tried. Owen’s fear of Adam was that he was different. He had questioned Adam’s existence since before he’d taken his first breath. Now he was looking for an excuse to be right.
I fished my keys from a front pocket of my bag, unlocked Bert, and slumped onto the fake leather seat. The cabin smelled moldy from where the moisture had seeped in through the crack in the windshield.
What I needed was to find a way to make sure last night didn’t repeat itself, to make sure that I didn’t find Adam on the brink of dying again—or worse—beyond saving.
I bit the nail on my pinkie finger down to the quick. The only way to do that was to find energy that would last.
On the opposite side of the parking lot, I watched Owen lope across the gravel, chin down and shoulders hunched. For a brief moment, he lifted his head and stared right at Bert. I wasn’t sure whether he could see me or if he could only see the fractured mess of my car that would remind him of that night. Whatever the case, he must have decided something, because he walked the rest of the distance to his Jeep. Soon his taillights were glowing red, and he was backing out of his spot.
The band of skin where I’d chewed away the nail was pink with blood, and I squeezed it in my fist. Maybe I was too hard on Owen. Maybe—