“Did the Langsoms ever report this?” Mrs. Donahue asked in a calmer tone.
The two officers shifted in their seats. “No, ma’am. We’ll stop by and speak to Miss Abbot.”
“Why not go right to the source and speak to the Langsoms? Frankly, I want them put on notice—”
“We’ll discuss that with our chief, sir.” Sunglasses seemed to be thinking hard about something and then he wrote in his little book. “Aside from these letters, how has the move gone?” He paused to look in his notebook. “Lucy?”
“It’s great. Other than this, it’s great.”
“But you’re seventeen, right? It must have been a shock to move away from your friends so close to graduation.”
Lucy cocked her head and directly met his eyes. When she spoke, any trace of her early frustration and sarcasm had evaporated. “Glennon Heights has a phenomenal school system, so this move provides a lot of academic opportunities. And I make friends easily, so I’m not worried about connecting with my classmates.”
Wow, I thought. She’s really good.
“What about you, Ben?” Other Cop leaned forward in his seat. “Do you make friends easily?”
Mr. Donahue leaned forward as well. “What is this?”
“Nothing. I’m just asking Ben how it’s going.”
“It’s going fine.” Ben sounded weary.
“You miss your friends?”
“Sure.”
“Any trouble back home?”
Everyone in the room sat very still.
Finally, Ben answered, “A little bit.”
“A little bit. Care to elaborate?”
“Not really.”
Mr. Donahue looked as if he was struggling to keep his voice steady. “Clearly, you ran my son’s name when you stepped outside. Why don’t you tell us what came up?”
“Well, I’m sure you know. Initial charges of assault, for one. That seemed noteworthy. Do the folks at our local high school know about these charges?”
“He wasn’t found guilty of any of the charges.”
“You pled out, from what I understand.” Other Cop pulled out his own little book. “To harassment of this other student?” Ben nodded. “That’s still some kind of trouble. I mean, I don’t know about you, Officer Wycoff, but I certainly never had to plead to harassing a classmate back in my day. Is that why you all moved here?”
“No.” Mr. Donahue spoke defiantly. “In this family, we don’t run from our problems.” Next to me, Janie fidgeted.
Other Cop was still focused on Ben. “You miss your crew back home? What would it take to get your parents to move back east?”
“Excuse me.” Mrs. Donahue stood up. “What are you implying?”
“We don’t really bother with implying. You’ll know if we believe something.”
“What Officer Coronado means is that we have to explore all avenues. You understand this, right? And so the first question we have to ask is, Who benefits if you all move out? The Langsoms sold their house. They’re not looking back. And given your son’s record for making poor choices, we’d be remiss if we didn’t ask.”
“I don’t benefit from moving back home.” Ben spoke flatly. “There’s nothing there for me.”
“Okay. And what’s here?” Other Cop asked.
Ben met his eyes. I felt weirdly proud of him for that.
“A fresh start, sir,” he said.
Other Cop gave the slightest nod to Sunglasses, as if Ben had passed some kind of test. “Good to know.” He stood up. “Folks, we have the best possible plan in place. Officer Wycoff and I will follow up and have a few conversations around town. And you know what to do if another message shows up.
“We will get to the bottom of this. In the meantime, try not to panic. And don’t go around town accusing people either. Mr. Donahue, we’d appreciate if you and Ned McGovern gave each other a wide berth for a while. Truth is, I’d like to see the men in this family take some cues from the ladies. Think things through a bit.”
Janie’s dad looked like he was thinking through the possible penalties for assaulting a police officer. He just stood there blinking slowly, obviously seething.
Thankfully, Janie’s mom stepped in. “We appreciate all your assistance today. I assure you, we are a law-abiding family. These past few months have challenged our sense of justice a bit. But it’s clear you gentlemen are here to help.” Behind her, Mr. Donahue snorted. She ignored him. “We all thank you.”
Officer Wycoff said, “I’ll stop back tomorrow morning with a plastic tarp so that we can sift through mail on a plastic surface.” Then the two cops were out of the house, back in their car, and down Olcott Place.
“Family meeting,” Mr. Donahue announced, but the rest of the family groaned in protest.
“No. No more family meetings.” Ben’s jaw was set. “I’m going out.”
“Keep your phone on,” Mr. Donahue said.
But Ben was already out the door.
I’d decided the Donahues definitely didn’t need me lurking around. They had conversations to avoid, resentments to build. And the texts from my mom were piling up, in various degrees of dramatic capitalization and punctuation, because she’d seen the cop car in the Donahues’ driveway. If I didn’t get home soon, she was going to come and get me—and I didn’t want that.
I made plans with Janie to meet a bunch of people at the mall the next day and then ducked out.
I offered to switch sleepover locations, but Janie wouldn’t come with me.
I was home all of three seconds before my mom breezed deliberately into the kitchen. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Not really.”
She rummaged in the fridge and pulled out three apples. “Ordinarily, I’d respect that. But not when the police are involved. So why don’t you start talking?”
It felt good to spill, actually. I sat on the stool, watching the cutting board fill up with translucent white slices. It made my mom mad to hear about the second note and to realize that we’d been in the back of her car, on the way to Target, keeping it a secret. She didn’t say that but she sucked on two front teeth, the way she does when she’s considering how much temper to lose. And she cut that particular slice of apple really hard. But then she laughed at the idea of Gavin Donahue running out to beat up Ned McGovern.
“I can’t think of two men I’d rather see punch each other,” Mom told me. “Oh gosh—the disdain dripping between the two of them.” She snorted. “Someone should have sold tickets.” She offered me an apple slice and then said, “It sounds like you think Mr. Donahue wrote those letters.”
“I did.” I felt better, admitting it out loud. “He’s weird. And he’s really stressed out about money. Maybe he regrets buying the house. I got suspicious when he wouldn’t read the second note, like maybe he already knew what it said. But then I saw the way he got so defensive about his family.”
Mom sighed. “I don’t like the guy. And this whole episode certainly doesn’t reassure me about you spending so much time over there. But it would shock me if someone wrote notes like that to their own kids—prank or not. It just goes against every instinct you have as a parent—to protect and shield your child.”
“Yeah. That makes sense.” I nodded, mildly surprised that my mom wasn’t going ballistic and locking me in my room or something. Had she always been this reasonable?
No, she had not. “Your father has forbidden me from forbidding you to spend time over there. But I’m not thrilled, Olivia Lynn. You’re lucky you headed right home, because if you had let one more text go unanswered …”
“You said yourself they were just letters.”
“I said that about the one letter, before the police were involved.” She reached over and tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. “I’m really trying, Olivia. I know it’s important to give you a little more freedom, a little more privacy. But this is all so strange. No more secrets, okay?”
I pictured the hidden room behind the D
onahues’ bookshelf and thought about Ben and everything I’d learned about him that afternoon. “Of course,” I lied. “No more secrets.”
The next day at the mall, it became glaringly obvious that my friendship with Janie fed off secrets. Kaia was back from band camp, Mirabelle’s beach tan hadn’t yet faded, and of course Brooke had commentary on everything, but so many topics lay off-limits. We relied on our shared fascination with Thatcher Langsom to propel us through the awkward silences. And the imminent beginning to our high school careers.
“I’m leaving my backpack at home,” Brooke announced while browsing through the Kate Spade store where none of us could afford a bag, let alone a key chain. “No one uses backpacks.”
“They do, though. I think they do,” Mirabelle supposed. “You have to carry stuff.”
“I’ll bring a bag, like a tote or something, but backpacks seem so juvenile.”
“My sister brings a backpack. Every day,” Kaia offered.
Janie nodded. “Yeah, the last thing you want is to have a handle break or swing a tote onto your shoulder and accidently hit someone.”
“Janie, will the twins drive to school?” I hadn’t thought of that. Would they? And more importantly, would they take me too? For a brief second I had myself sitting in the passenger seat, looking over at Ben, as he steered into a space in the high school parking lot. But that was ridiculous. Lucy would ride shotgun. She’d probably fold me into the trunk.
But the dream dissolved. “Neither of them drives. I guess we’ll ride the bus.” Janie noticed our troubled faces. “What? Don’t people ride the bus?”
“I mean, sometimes,” I said. “Usually, my mom drives me, though. She could take you too, and Ben and Lucy, if they wanted.” I saw the look curl between Mirabelle and Brooke. The only thing more awkward than a senior riding the bus was a pile of kids climbing out of some mom’s minivan. “Or we could ride bikes.” As soon as I said it, I could tell by their faces: Bikes counted as worse.
“Doesn’t the bus come right to the corner?” We had migrated, en masse, to shop for cosmetics. Janie trailed her finger along the rows of magenta lip glosses. “My parents won’t want me to ride a bike right now. Paranoid.” She grinned at me and then realized her mistake. “They’re just really protective,” she told the rest. “Last year I fell and got a concussion.”
“The worst,” Kaia agreed. I almost snickered, thinking, Yep, right up there with anonymous death threats. Kaia said, “Brooke, I think you need a backpack for gym class.”
“I’m not taking gym.” And because she was Brooke, we didn’t even question her. For a second I wished I could be someone that people didn’t question so much. Or someone who didn’t second-guess herself so often. If I could have been absolutely honest, in the middle of the makeup store, I would have told my friends how much I dreaded high school. I didn’t want to be invisible again, to perch the lowest rung on the social totem and go through the work of climbing, climbing, climbing just to rate as good enough or fast enough or smart enough.
But before I made the grave social mistake of an epic meltdown at Sephora, I snapped myself out of it. Janie could start over, knowing no one, without even a pool deep enough for her diving. I could certainly survive the town I’d grown up in. I didn’t even need a blender to put my best face on. Even when Brooke asked, as we sauntered between stores, “Any Langsom news?” I didn’t allow my eyes to flicker.
“What do you mean?” Mirabelle asked.
“Are they staying? Is Dr. Langsom in rehab? Does Thatcher need … comforting?” Brooke cackled. “Where is he staying?”
“There’s this crawl space behind a wall in my dining room,” Janie said, her face expressionless. “Thatcher and his mother live there now.”
“Not Dr. Langsom?” I asked, even though I knew it was dangerous to goad her on the topic.
“I think he’s in the chimney.”
“You two are crazy.” Mirabelle shook her head. But at least we all laughed and the moment moved forward.
We ended up going to dinner and a movie, so it was late when we got back to the Donahues’. Once again, I told Janie she could come sleep over at my house, but she opted out.
“I just feel like I need to be home,” she said. Then she changed the subject and told me, “You know, your friends are okay.” She laughed. “Even Brooke. I get her now. Sorry to be so judgey before.”
“They can be a lot to deal with. But they’re your friends now too,” I told her.
“Not yet. That’s okay.” I watched her disappear into her house, making sure she wasn’t snatched before making it through the door.
My house was quiet when I got home, my parents already asleep. When I heard the soft tapping on the screen door behind me, I assumed Janie had changed her mind and come over.
“Hold on,” I whispered, worried more about waking my parents than hiding anything from them. By the time I reached the door, the tapping had stopped. I only saw the back of the person slipping away into the darkness.
It wasn’t Janie.
Without thinking, I chased them. They were taller and decidedly masculine and for interminable seconds I watched the hooded figured skulk toward 16 Olcott. I could practically taste my halted breath.
“Stop,” I hissed. And when the figure kept moving, I threatened more loudly, “Stop or I’ll call the police.”
Slowly, the figure turned. I gripped the deck railing, trying to gauge the distance between us. If he ran at me, could I get back to the screen door? If I screamed, would my dad hear over the hum of the air-conditioning?
“Please don’t call the cops,” the figure said, pulling off his hood. “We’ve already gone a few rounds today.”
“Ben?” I said. His eyes gleamed a little, in Mr. Park’s floodlights. He raised his arms and hands, as if surrendering. “Are you nuts?” I couldn’t be certain but it seemed like my heart was pounding even harder than before. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know.” Ben’s laugh scraped out of his throat like it was one step away from a sob. He held up two baseball mitts. “You wanna play catch?”
“What? Are you kidding?” The question escaped my lips before I considered a slicker way to play it.
“Listen, Livvie,” he whispered. “Maybe you could keep your voice down? Someone might be watching.” He giggled and then promptly shushed me again.
“Come inside,” I said and then realized that if my mom came down and found Janie’s older brother sitting in my family room, making Sentry jokes, ours would be the next house listed for sale in the neighborhood. “Never mind.” I steered Ben back from the steps. “Let’s go for a walk.”
We moved slowly and he seemed to steady a little. “Sorry,” he said a few times, then, “I don’t know what I was thinking. I haven’t been sleeping a lot. I tried to go to bed early tonight but … I’m just so tired I’m wired, you know?”
“I guess it was a hard day.”
“I wanted to explain.” He stopped walking and turned to me.
“You don’t have anything to explain.”
“Okay.” We walked in silence for a little bit. He stopped again. “Where are we going?”
“I have a place.” He nodded and kept going. I checked my phone, made sure my mom hadn’t woken up and discovered me missing. No texts. I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “What do you need to explain?”
“I thought maybe we could play catch.”
“It’s almost midnight.”
“Is there some kind of town ordinance against playing catch in the middle of the night?”
“Probably. Yeah.” We reached the park. “This is my place.”
“This is a public park. I thought you meant like you had a fort in the woods or a vacant house.”
“It’s a baseball field. You’ve got two gloves. Sorry I don’t have access to an abandoned stadium.”
“Okay. Okay. I see it now. It’s just that …”
“What? Just say it.”
“The one pla
ce police usually patrol late at night is a public park. You know, because of unsavory characters.”
“Glennon Heights isn’t the kind of town that needs patrols.”
“Even tonight? After meeting with us this afternoon? You don’t think they might come by?”
“Nope. One of them will say, ‘We should just swing by Olcott Place, check things out.’ ” It turns out my cop voice is sort of deep and doofus-like. “And then the other will say, ‘No need, let’s just think of more ways to be an absolute dorkwad.’ ”
Ben laughed, a full-bodied, belly-shaking laugh. “You’re pretty funny, Olivia Danvers.” He reached toward me and handed me a glove.
A warmth spread across my chest. “Do you do this a lot?”
“Not a lot, really,” Ben answered.
We were so close that it felt like if I concentrated really hard, the molecules of my body would reach out to the molecules of his body.
Finally I asked, “Are you going to tell me about it?”
Ben shook his head, then said, “Let’s play catch.”
He jogged out to second base and motioned with his gloved hand for me to take first.
“No pitching from the mound?” I asked mostly to have something to say.
He pointed to the place where the fence stopped and a white line differentiated the field from plain grass. “If we need to run, it’s a clear shot,” he instructed. “You’re pretty fast.”
“Just leave you behind to stumble around in the headlights of Officer Wycoff’s squad car?”
Ben laughed ruefully. “It would probably go better for me if you weren’t here.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
We started tossing the ball then. When I was little, I played rec softball and sort of hated it. In my first at bats, I really expected to hit the ball. I pictured nailing a line drive right past the pitcher or setting it to sail long into left field. But then I’d get in the box and feel the weight of all those eyes on me. Even my teammates cheering me on made me uneasy. Mostly frozen, I hardly ever swung the bat. I certainly never connected. And eventually I couldn’t even imagine hitting the ball.
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