Olivia hopefully. She nodded.
"What about after that?"
"I was in my room all night," Bron said, "asleep."
Officer Walton looked to Mike, who just shrugged. "As far as I know, he was in his room."
Olivia chimed in. "I woke up in the night and went to the restroom. I heard Bron singing at about 1:00 a.m., and peeked in his room. He was singing in his sleep."
Officer Walton turned away angrily, as if to cuss, then whirled and glared at Bron. "You were the last one to talk to that girl. What did you two talk about?"
Bron's heart pounded.
Had the silly girl gone skinny dipping and drowned—or been attacked by a wild animal?
Bron held silent. He couldn't tell them that Galadriel had suggested a tryst. In part he didn't want to ruin her reputation, but mostly he didn't think Walton would believe that he had turned her down.
But Bron did want the Mercers to find Galadriel, no matter what stupid thing she might have done.
Olivia touched Bron on the shoulder reassuringly, as if urging him to speak up.
"She told me that there was a pond out on our property," he suggested. "She said that she was thinking of going swimming out there, in the dark."
Officer Walton squinted suspiciously as his face darkened with rage. "For such a short conversation," he said in a voice as hard as gravel, "it sounds like you sure led that girl down an awful dark path. What else did you two talk about?"
Bron bit his lip. He didn't dare say anything more, not when Officer Walton would twist his words against him.
"Sheriff," Olivia said, "you can fish for confessions all day long, but that won't help. Maybe we should look down by the pond?"
Mike told the sheriff, "I'll unlock the gate for you."
Walton's eyes were like magnifying glasses on a hot day, and Bron was a small creature, burning beneath their cruel attention.
Mike trundled in that hunched way of his back to the gate and unlocked it while Deputy Walton grimaced and stalked to his car. When the police officers got through the gate, Mike ducked his head and folded himself into the passenger seat. They drove down an old trail that probably only saw a tractor three times per year.
Bron wondered if he should have gone with them. He wanted to help them find the girl, if only to clear his name.
"Don't you worry about them," Olivia suggested. "You come in the house, and help me make breakfast."
Bron followed her into the kitchen, where she fired up a griddle. He molded sausage patties and sliced cheese while she toasted some muffins, then fried the sausage to make sausage-egg muffins.
Work helped a little. Bron kept imagining the worst—Galadriel floating naked in the pond, with Officer Walton certain that she had been murdered. Or maybe someone had cut her open, flayed her like that calf, and her guts would be lying out in a steaming pile.
Walton would accuse Bron of course, but there wouldn't be enough evidence to convict. After all, Bron told himself, how could they convict me when I haven't done anything wrong?
So Bron focused on putting together the sausage-and-egg muffins, and the room began to fill with heavenly aromas.
Back at the Stillmans', Bron had been ordered to make pancakes just about every day. Bron hated pancakes, especially ones made from mixes. The ones he'd eaten in that house had tasted as bland as cardboard, and probably were just about as nutritious.
But breakfast here at the Hernandez house was special.
When the table was all set and the food steaming hot, Bron looked around nervously. It had been half an hour. The sun would be up soon, and Bron needed to get ready for school.
"They should have been back by now," Olivia said. "That pond isn't more than five feet deep at this time of year, and not a hundred feet across. It wouldn't take five minutes to search it."
Bron shrugged, and she gave him a piercing look, as if to draw him out. When she saw that he would hold silent, she shrugged and said, "Let's eat."
Bron felt guilty about eating without Mike, but they really had no clue when he might return.
Something is going on, he reasoned. Either they've found Galadriel dead, or they're searching around the pond. Otherwise, they would have come straight back.
He worried about Riley and that creepy old man. Had they come to the house in the night, found the girl, and killed her for sport? Were they trying to terrorize him and Olivia?
Maybe the police had found her corpse, and were trying to put together the clues.
The two ate in silence for several minutes, and Olivia said, "There's something that you didn't tell Officer Walton. I could see it in your face, and I'm sure that he saw it, too. Is there something more that you wanted to say?"
"Not to him," Bron said. "He already thinks I'm a creep. Anything that Galadriel told me, he'd twist it around in his head."
"So this Mercer girl, she told you something that bothers you?"
Bron ducked his head a little, swallowed a bite of muffin. "She told me that she was bored," Bron admitted, "and she asked if I've ever thought of running away. She said that she was thinking of going to Las Vegas, or maybe Hollywood."
"So she might have run away?"
"Maybe," Bron admitted.
"Did she want you to go to the pond with her and go swimming last night?"
"Yes."
"Did you go?"
"Of course not," Bron said vehemently. "I didn't touch her. I wouldn't. I just wish that I hadn't even talked to her. I wished that she'd—I don't know—I just wanted her to ... quit wanting the things she wants."
Olivia nodded. "She's a dangerous girl, especially for someone with your past."
Outside, a bird flew into the window. Bron looked up. Two male hummingbirds, scintillating creatures of emerald, blurred about the feeder.
"I don't have a past," Bron said.
Olivia frowned in concern. "What do you mean by that?"
"I don't have the kind of 'past' that people think I do. People always think I'm crazy, or a liar, or a criminal or something just because I come from social services. If you look into my file, you'll see plenty of weird accusations. When I was little, people thought that I was schizophrenic. One doctor said I was autistic when I was four. Another thought that maybe I had split personalities."
Bron's voice quavered. "To tell the truth, I've always thought that something was wrong with me, but I can't figure out what it is!"
Olivia reached up and smoothed his hair. "There's nothing wrong with you. You're right not to tell the sheriff that Galadriel asked you to run away. He suspects that you tried to seduce her. He can't see the truth. So keep quiet."
"Okay," Bron said.
"If he presses you, tell him that you talked about the cows and the weather. Just make up something."
No adult had ever told Bron to be so evasive before. It was refreshing to see that sometimes even adults could admit that being completely honest was foolish.
"But what if she did run away?" Bron asked. "Shouldn't we tell them where she went?"
"I could tell them for you, if you want?"
"She was thinking of going to Vegas or Hollywood."
"The usual places," Olivia sighed. "They're magnets for the young, vapid and pretty."
Bron was just finishing up his breakfast when he heard the police siren blurt out by the gate. He raced for the side door, to see what was going on, and Olivia came up to his back.
Mike was opening the gate to the pasture, while the car waited, lights flashing. His dog was leaping about at Mike's side. The siren began to scream, and Mike shouted, "We found her!"
He swung the gate open, and the car sped out, spitting gravel, siren wailing. Bron tried to see inside, and could only glimpse Galadriel in the backseat, her face pale and dotted with cold sweat. Her hair was stringy, and she appeared to be shaking violently, her lower jaw trembling.
"Oh, my god!" Olivia whispered as the car neared, and she gripped hard onto Bron's bicep, as if to keep from falling.
Officer Walton glared up at Bron and looked as if he would pass, then he stomped on his brakes and rolled down his window. In the back of the car, Galadriel was weeping and growling like an animal.
"You're involved in this, boy," Officer Walton said. "I don't know what part you played, but this is your fault, and I'm going to get you."
Bron shook his head. "I didn't do anything."
"I've lived up here for eighteen years," Walton said, "and we've never had no kind of trouble. You're here one day, and now we got this...."
From the back of the car, Galadriel shrieked, "Let me die! I just wanna die! Let me out of here!" she thrashed about, and the emergency blanket that was wrapped over her came off. Her clothes were soaked and muddy. Her hands had been cuffed.
She looks like a crazed animal, Bron thought.
As the other officer pulled the space blanket back in place, Officer Walton hit the gas and the car surged down the road, turned on Main Street, and sped through town.
Mike came jogging up to the house, panting. Olivia asked, "What happened? Where did you find her?"
Mike shook his head. "Down by the pond. We found her clothes first, all stripped off, like she went swimming. But there wasn't any sign of her, so we had to search that marshy area. We found her about a quarter of a mile away, naked, just huddling up with her arms wrapped around her legs."
"Was she okay?" Bron asked. He added, "She didn't get, like, attacked by an animal or something?"
Mike shook his head. "Nothing like that, no bruises or nothing that I could see. She's just...." He shrugged, unable to explain what was wrong. "Walton's going to take her down to the hospital in Saint George, get a rape kit done on her, have her checked out."
"Rape?" Olivia asked. "They think she was raped?"
Mike glanced at him. Bron wondered if Officer Walton really thought that Galadriel had been raped, or if the test was just a ruse to determine if Bron had slept with her.
"Just a precaution," Mike said. "I don't know what's wrong with her. Maybe it's drugs or something. She was just curled up in a little ball, and wouldn't talk, and when we tried to take care of her, she said that she wanted to die. I don't know, maybe she had a mental breakdown."
Olivia bit her lower lip, looked back and forth between Mike and Bron. Her eyes widened, and Bron realized that she knew something, that she wanted to talk privately with him.
"Hey," Mike said, as if trying to ease the tension, "is that breakfast I smell?"
"Better go in and get some," Olivia urged, "before it gets any colder."
Mike lunged through the door. Olivia closed it so that Mike wouldn't hear.
She peered deeply into Bron's eyes. "Have you ever seen anyone act like that before, like Galadriel did just now?"
"What?" Bron asked.
"Someone who no longer wanted to live?" Olivia clarified. "Someone who begged for others to just let them die?"
Bron looked at her blankly, shook his head "No."
"What about Mr. Lewis, in the third family you stayed with. He had a mental breakdown. Do you remember?"
Bron shook his head. "I was just a little kid back then," he said. "All I know is that he died in the hospital."
Olivia stammered, "You and I need to have a talk!" Bron shifted uneasily. "About what?"
"About the people who chased us in town—about what they are. About what you are."
Chapter 12
Learning the Hard Way
"Life's most profound lessons are often learned on the streets, when someone pounds them into you."
— Mike Hernandez
Bron grabbed his pack and dressed for school by 7:30, feeling jarred and rattled. He'd been troubled by dreams all night, dreams in which Olivia forced him to play the guitar while suction cups formed on his fingers, and now the accusations about Galadriel only muddled his mind more. He worried about the people who had tried to attack him, and about the cow that had died in the woods.
All of these things circled like wolves, and he didn't know which to fear most.
Olivia knows something about what is going on, but how much does she really know? he wondered. A worry hit him. Does she know about the suction cups on my fingers?
Those scared him most of all. He dared not talk about it.
If it was a disease, he didn't want to have to deal with it. If it was something else.... He felt overwhelmed by the possibilities.
As he prepared for school, Olivia rapped on his bedroom door. "Do you want to drive with me," she called, "or do you think that you can find your own way?"
"I'll come with you," Bron said. His thoughts were too jangled to let him drive. There was no sense getting lost on his first day. He already felt like enough of an idiot.
Olivia drove his Corolla that day, wearing big sunglasses, hidden by the tinted glass in every window. Bron suspected that he understood now why she'd purchased this particular model. The dark interior let her hide.
Bron waited for her to broach the topic of the strangers, sure that she would talk about his problems, but she never did, and he angrily tried to force it from his mind. If she could be patient, Bron decided, he could be more patient.
So as Olivia drove that morning, he silently paid attention to the route, trying to take refuge in a simple task. Getting to the highway was easy enough, and once there, all he had to do was turn left and drive for fifteen miles until he reached the first stoplight. After that, signs along the road would lead him straight to Tuacahn.
The morning sun shining upon the red cliffs above the school stained them like copper. His heart thrilled. They went to the school and waited for nearly an hour before classes started at 8:30.
He sat out by the concession stands as the sun rose, a dry morning wind rising from the valley floor. For a long time, no one came. There was no reason to be early.
Then cars began winding up through the canyon, while parents dropped off students in their uniforms. There were a lot of girls, Bron decided, a sea of girls. Most of them were pretty, many downright beautiful.
The guys, Bron didn't care for so much.
Most of the new students lounged around the concession stands or the green theater or the Indian statue, and just talked. They didn't separate into the normal cliques, with jocks, social snobs, geeks and dopers.
Oh, they had cliques, he just couldn't quite tell what united most of them. The dancers he spotted easily enough, and a couple of kids sat down with sketch pads and began to draw, forming another small group.
A young man came and asked, "What's your name?"
"Bron Jones," he replied.
"Are you the one living with Olivia Hernandez?" he asked.
"Yeah," Bron said. He thought the young man would sit and talk. Instead the kid turned and went to a large group. He whispered to a girl, who picked up her cell and texted furiously. A dozen phones around the school rang at once.
There were a lot of kids peeking at him for the next thirty seconds. News of Bron's identity spread as if a rock had dropped in a pool. He heard muttered whispers and tittering laughter.
I've been through this all before, he told himself.
But he'd never been dressed this well. He'd never had his hair cut and dyed. He'd never looked cool.
He sensed that it was making an impression. He remembered Olivia's suggestion, that he act as if he were king of the school, and so he sat alone, threw his shoulders back casually, and smiled with genuine affection at his beloved subjects.
It had an effect. The kids at school all greeted one another with hugs and squeals, but he saw a lot of questioning glances thrown his way, heard bits of whispered conversations. One pretty blonde ventured that he was "Cute." A Mexican girl just stared at him with wanton eyes. He tried not to get his hopes up, and when the doors opened, he hurried inside, grateful that he didn't have to be on display.
The first day at Tuacahn was like the first day at just about any other school. Aside
from the freshmen, there were maybe a dozen other new students, all dressed alike. Though Bron wore the uniform, he felt like a stranger.
His first period, mythology class, was full of freshmen, mainly, with a surprising ratio of good-looking people to the plain folks, and more girls than he'd even been led to expect. He sat next to a brunette who chewed bubble gum in secret, and did a great job of texting under her desk.
The class was all introductory stuff: here's the book. I'm the teacher, Mrs. McConkie. This is our schedule. I hope that you're excited to learn! The teacher seemed devoted to her subject, not your average cheerleader for education.
Sometimes, Bron thought, teachers get the idea that the best they can hope for is to prepare you for a life of drudgery.
"We'll be learning about gods in this class," Mrs. McConkie said, "but in learning about them, we'll learn about entire cultures as well, about their hopes and aspirations. Maybe by learning about them, we'll even raise our own sights, and learn to dream greater dreams."
She looked so cheerful when she spoke. She finished her intro early and started talking about her Star Wars club, where she'd be showing movies at lunch. They couldn't watch a movie in just an hour, of course, so sometimes they had to spread it out over days. She made sure to let the kids know that everyone was invited.
Bron thought that the Star Wars club sounded entirely too weird for him. He wasn't that into science fiction, and he didn't want to embarrass himself.
Class was half over when two guys and a girl came in to deliver a "one-minute musical" to the students. One boy carried a lute and was dressed as a troubadour, while the other two were dressed in medieval garb—the boy in tights, the voluptuous girl in an archaic dress.
They presented a play called "Lassiter's Lament." The troubadour, a tenor with red hair and freckles, played the lute expertly and sang of how "In ages past, our semester last," Sam Lassiter sought to impress the fair Ophelia Bascom by leaping from the landing of the stairwell to the bottom of the atrium here at Tuacahn High School. The boy and girl danced their parts as the tenor sang:
"But the maid was not impressed,
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