Freddy sighed loudly. She knew Mel would notice and Roland wouldn’t. If he had, he would have ignored her. It was their whole relationship: she was helplessly angry with him without knowing exactly why, and he pretended she wasn’t there. Maybe I should just lose it and yell at him for an hour, she thought. She knew she never would. She didn’t confront people. Confronting people was just another way of drawing attention to yourself, which wasn’t the best thing to do when you weren’t even sure you were right about anything. At school, she had turned not confronting people into an art form. It wasn’t always fun to be invisible at school, but it was safer that way.
She peered over the top of her book at Roland and Mel, happily engaged in a discussion involving the logistics of pleasure-dome ice caves. Neither of them was invisible at school. Both of them had friends. Roland had Todd and Marcus, and Mel had Jonathan and Clara, and sometimes they even all hung out together, and there was always a lot of laughter, plus some squabbling and the occasional full-out screaming match. It was all just … messy. Freddy was glad she wasn’t part of it.
I have friends, too, she thought. She hadn’t seen Rochelle and Cathy in weeks. She would talk to them tomorrow, anyway, and they would start doing stuff together again, and she could stop feeling as if she was—
No, thought Freddy, I am not the odd one out. She plunged back into the book, which she was genuinely beginning to despise.
“Stop squirming,” said Mel. “If we’re stopping you from enjoying your pink sparkly book, go read it somewhere else.”
Freddy said, “I was here first.” She cringed at the whine that had crept into her tone.
“It’s our house, too,” said Roland, “in case you hadn’t noticed.”
She opened her mouth, then shut it again. The anger surged, choking off her voice. She saw Roland’s mouth quirk in what could easily have been contempt. He thought she was a coward. Maybe he would have liked her more if she had yelled at him. Maybe not. She couldn’t imagine a world in which she and Roland were friends.
Her right hand hurt. It was in her pocket, and it seemed to be clenched tightly around … that key. She had no idea why. Impatiently, she straightened her fingers. “Whatever you say.”
“Don’t you go and cry,” said Roland.
Her hand clenched again. “I don’t cry.”
Roland laughed derisively. Mel pulled herself to her feet. Outside, there was a crash so violent that even Roland jumped as the impact vibrated through the floor of the living room.
Freddy said, “What the—?” and ran to the window.
“No,” said Mel, “not that way. It was on Grosvenor.”
She took off into the kitchen. Roland and Freddy shared one glance, then followed, out the door and across the yard to the gate in the hedge that led to Grosvenor Street.
2
There was only one house on Grosvenor Street, but the park tended to have people in it, especially on weekends and holidays. It didn’t today. Grosvenor was quiet and deserted as Mel led the others out onto it, or as quiet and deserted as it could be after an accident that had left a small moving van wrapped around a tree.
The van had run headfirst into the pine that separated Freddy’s family’s property from the front yard of the house on Grosvenor Street. The front of the van had folded in on itself like an accordion. There were creaking noises coming from it, and quite a lot of smoke. “Freddy,” said Roland, “Mel should go back in the yard.” For once, Freddy agreed with him. It didn’t seem likely they were going to find anything good in the driver’s compartment. She felt her stomach contract.
“I’m not a baby,” said Mel, though when Freddy glanced at her, she saw that her sister had gone white.
Freddy said, “Go—”
The driver’s side door swung open. All three of them jumped back. “Jesus,” said Roland.
“No no no,” said a woman from inside the van, “no Jesus here. Where’d that tree come from?”
“It was standing by the side of the road,” a muffled voice replied, “dumbass.”
“It was not standing by the side of the road,” said the first person, still unseen amidst the wreckage. The front of the van belched more smoke, and metal scraped against metal. “I was looking specifically. There’s got to be something illegal about trees that appear out of nowhere and jump on top of your van.”
“Do we hit trees for fun now?” asked the second person, his voice cracking on the fourth word. Freddy recognised that crack. Most of the boys in her class had it, or had had it recently, or would have it soon.
“I was under the impression it was a driveway,” said the woman.
“You … are … a … moron,” spat the boy. Freddy edged closer to the van; the others were doing the same. Someone was thrashing around in the middle of the smoke.
“I certainly seem to be,” said the woman. “Do you have your foot in my face? Why do you?”
“Because I’m stuck,” said the boy.
“Uh…” said Roland, but that was all. Freddy glanced at him, then at Mel. Why are we behaving like this? No one was leaping forward to try to help the people trapped in the van. No one had called 9-1-1. She thought it was the bizarre contrast between the totalled van and the voices. Neither the woman nor the boy sounded impaired or in shock. They might have been conversing over sandwiches and root beer.
“I hear spectators,” said the woman. “I wonder what this does.”
Something went sproing. Mel jumped again as the woman fell out of the van through a cloud of smoke.
She looked up at them and smiled. “Did one of you put this tree here? I’m thinking of lodging a complaint.”
She was perhaps thirty-five and would have looked as boring as any other grown-up if she hadn’t been wearing a trench coat and a fedora. Freddy and Roland both turned towards Mel. Mel had discovered the mystery genre at the age of nine. She’d handed various books on to Freddy, who had been able to get only about a quarter of the way through The Big Sleep before giving up, but Freddy had also been forced by Mel to watch plenty of films about private eyes in the big city, and she could see that this woman would have seemed perfectly at home toting a gun in a shadowy alley at midnight.
“Excuse me. Hello. Trapped in smoking wreckage,” said the boy. “If the van explodes, I shall be displeased.”
“Don’t mind Josiah.” The woman bounced to her feet. She didn’t seem injured at all. “He got up on the wrong side of the bed some time ago, and he hasn’t been back to sleep since.”
More scraping noises happened, and the boy followed the woman much less gracefully. “Ow,” said Mel, watching him tumble into a puddle. Oil, maybe from the van, had got into it, turning it rainbow coloured. Freddy twitched. She wanted to run forward and help these people, but … she didn’t.
The boy rolled over and sat up, dripping. Roland and Mel both squeaked. There was a gash on his forehead, and blood had streamed down his face, making him look as if he were peering out at them through a mottled red-and-brown mask. “It’s nothing. It’s only a flesh wound. Et cetera. Don’t faint. Cuerva Lachance, you’re just going to leave me sitting here, aren’t you?”
“Probably,” said the woman. “Have you taken a look at these ones, Josie, dear?”