A shadow crossed behind my car, and the light was blocked momentarily through the back windshield. I jolted upright, gripping my hands tightly around the base of the steering wheel. What was that? My brain conjured the first words that came to mind: the Hunter. Only a few cars were left in the lot. I glanced around. I was being stupid. The place had been swarming with cops only hours earlier. This was probably the safest place in town now. Footsteps crunched in the gravel directly next to Bert’s passenger side, and, despite my internal monologue, the hairs on the backs of my arms stood on end.
But it was only Old Man McCardle. I tilted my chin up to the ceiling and shook my head. He appeared carrying a stick with a sharp point. He’d speared an aluminum Coke can and was now depositing it into his trash bag, which was exactly the sort of thing a school janitor should do. Not the Hunter of Hollow Pines. I exhaled. Apparently, the murders were getting to me, too. I slouched into my seat as the janitor crossed in front of the hood of my car, bending down to pick up a piece of garbage. Still, I had to admit, McCardle gave me his own brand of the creeps ever since he’d driven to school with a dead deer in the back of his truck last year and Principal Wiggins had insisted he return home.
I turned the key in the ignition and the headlights flared. He stood up, shielding his eyes. He stared at me with his watery blue eyes through the glass. Sorry, I mouthed without feeling all that sorry. I was eager to get away without having to talk to him. Even though I hated seeing the other students play stupid tricks on the old man, I couldn’t help having the same instinctual response to want to distance myself from him. The truth was, Old Man McCardle wasn’t even such an old man. Sun had been hard on his skin, thinning and wrinkling it like animal hide left to dry, and his hair was a silvery white with patches of a sun-spotted scalp peeking through. But he couldn’t have been much older than Mom.
The gear still in park, I gently pressed my foot on the accelerator, and the engine revved. His lips worked without making any noise that I could hear, and at last, he dropped his hand and shuffled out of the way, trash bag in tow.
Relieved, I eased Bert out of the back row and left McCardle behind without sparing another thought, just as the players began to trickle out of practice and climb into the remaining cars.
I made a wide arc with the wheels and pulled up next to the sidewalk.
“Nice ride, Torantula.” Knox shook his sweaty hair and flashed me a grin. Right as he was crossing in front of the hood, I laid my heel into the horn and let it blare in his ears. He jumped in surprise.
I smiled sweetly and folded my hands into my lap. Adam’s face showed up at the window. He knocked and I unlocked the door for him to come inside.
“You’re loud, Victoria,” he said, folding his legs like a lawn chair to fit in the seat. “Why are you making the car yell?”
I let the foot off the brake. “Sorry. Thought I saw a rodent.” I shrugged. “My bad. So how was practice?”
“You never ask how practice is,” he said, no hint of accusation in his voice. He buckled his seat belt.
“You’re awfully observant today, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Adam smelled like mud and grass stains. I wrinkled my nose. I liked him better when he smelled clean, like rainwater.
I sighed and turned at the stop sign. The stadium faded from view. I hadn’t realized how good it’d feel to get away from the school and to distance myself from the lingering image of the boy with the missing eyes. When I asked Owen whether Adam was storing a set of legs and eyeballs in his locker, I’d meant it to be rhetorical, but what had he meant when he’d responded that he didn’t know? That Adam was dead.
I glanced sidelong at Adam. His face was serene. He seemed utterly incapable of harming anyone. But then there had been the mirror in the dressing room and the times just after his recharges that I could hardly recognize him. This, I realized, was further evidence of the need for a more permanent solution, something that didn’t change Adam into … something else. Something darker.
“So no one asked you anything today? No police officers, I mean. They didn’t come to talk to you?” I ventured while at a red light.
“No, no police officers. Was I supposed to talk to the policemen?”
“No,” I answered too fast. “I was just curious.” I slid my hands down to the bottom of the steering wheel and let my foot off the brake. If the Lie Detector’s forum kept finding an audience, it was only a matter of time until the authorities would want to speak to him. The question was, how much time?
We drove through the small town center of Hollow Pines, past the two-theater cinema and Walton’s Drugstore. The red cobblestone made the wheel axles rattle, and we bounced down Main Street until we got to Grimwood Drive and took a right where the cobblestone changed into dusty road and the buildings faded into miles of landscape that was no more hilly than a sheet of cardboard.
“Home, sweet home,” I said when, after ten minutes, we pulled up to my house. The weather vane screeched and howled in the breeze. I glanced up to see it pirouetting on the spot. Nails on a chalkboard. The wind blew an empty pail across the yard.
Adam put his hand to his stomach. “Can we have the tater tots?”