“We’ll go first.” Spam glowers at me across the table. “Oh right. Lysa and I weren’t there. Is that straight enough?”
“I’d give anything to not have been there,” Journey snaps. “No one wants that.” His arm accidentally brushes mine and we quickly jerk away from each other.
“It’s interesting that you’re willing to tell us everything now that you need our help,” Spam says, still sulking. “How do we know you won’t go rogue again?” She tears open a bag of chips and drags one of the drinks over to her.
“I won’t. I promise.” I look to Journey for confirmation. “We’ll work together. Like a team.” He agrees, also taking a drink for himself.
“Awesome. Kumbaya all around,” Lysa says with a sarcastic edge. “Can we get on with this? I have a ton of homework.”
I tip my hand toward Journey. “You start.”
He clears his throat and leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. “Miss Peters knew I was coming that night, too. I was dropping off a toothbrush that belonged to my father to see if she could get his DNA off of it.”
“So you can try to get him a new trial,” Lysa says.
This surprises all of us, but no one is more surprised than Journey.
“How’d you know?” he asks.
Lysa smiles. “My father was your father’s attorney. It was his first murder trial.”
Journey’s lips tighten. “That means he’s my attorney, too. I mean, I’m hoping I won’t actually need one. But at the moment.”
I thought I was the only one keeping secrets but wow, Lysa knew Journey’s father was in prison and never told us. Now Spam and I exchange side-eyes.
Lysa scowls. “You know, there’s a rule of law called attorney-client privilege. Just because I accidentally hear something around my house doesn’t mean I can go blabbing it all over. You guys understand that, right?”
Spam and I nod. Journey pauses, taking it all in.
“Anyway.” He shakes his head and continues. “Miss P’s house is on a corner. I pulled up and parked along the side, not the front. Erin can tell you, my van is stupid hard to start and I didn’t want to get stranded. The neighborhood was completely deserted, so I left it running while I ran up to her porch.”
At the mention of Miss Peters’s porch, I fade out a little. The images are still too fresh.
“All I had on me was the toothbrush, no bag or anything. I didn’t want to just—you know—leave it on the porch.” Journey glances at me. “It didn’t occur to me to put it in the mailbox. My brilliant idea was to use the drawstring from my hoodie and tie the toothbrush to her doorknob. But instead of taking my sweatshirt off, I tried to pull the string out while I was still wearing it. The hood got all closed and wrapped around my head. While I was dealing with that, I heard someone jump into my van and start to drive it away.”
I can tell by the way Spam and Lysa are paying attention that Journey’s goofy charm is having a good effect on them.
He acts out the next part. “I’m trying to rip off my hoodie and run after my van.”
I stifle a laugh at his depiction. He snaps a serious look in my direction.
“Hey. It wasn’t funny. I seriously had to chase my own van.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” I say.
“Anyway, I ran five blocks before I found it! Sitting in the middle of Pine Lookout. The driver’s door was open and the keys were on the hood.”
Spam frowns. “How weird is it for a car thief to leave both the van and the keys?”
“At the time I figured it was just someone punking the idiot who left his car running,” Journey says. “But after I found out about Miss P, the motive definitely seemed more sinister.”
“At this point he didn’t know anything was wrong with Miss P,” I say.
“Right,” Journey agrees. “After I got my van back I drove around a little looking for the creep who stole it. Usually when someone steals a car it’s because they don’t have one. I’m coming down the block when I see Erin walking up to Miss P’s mailbox. I was going to drive up and talk to her. Maybe she saw who took my van. But one second she’s walking up to the door and the next she’s on the ground, screaming.”
I hold up my hand. “Miss Peters was already—you know.” My eyes well up as I remember that awful sequence of events and how nothing I could have done would have changed things for her.
Journey pauses to take a sip of his drink. “I freaked out. I didn’t know what was going down but I didn’t want any part of it.” He glances over at me with an apologetic look and reaches out to swipe the veil of hair off of my face.
I’m so stunned at his hand coming toward me that I rear back, making me look kind of crazy. “Sorry,” I say, tucking my hair behind my ear.
Journey shifts back to telling the story. “Anyway, I started to feel terrible for driving away. I mean, there was something obviously wrong with this poor girl. I had to go back and check on her.”
Holy cow. I didn’t even know this part. Journey’s charming description of coming back to rescue me is really sweet. A glance at the smiles on Spam and Lysa suggests they think so, too.