by Clara Kensie
And I’ll be damned if I ever let him find out that our father blames him for our mother’s death.
I put him on my lap and open a Dr. Seuss book to read to him. One Fish, Two Fish. Three brisk, hard knocks at the front door interrupt me before I get to Red Fish. The knocking immediately turns into pounding.
I rush to open the door before my dad wakes up. Ash Morrison is on my porch, clad in his black boots and leather jacket, his fist raised and ready to pound again. His dark eyes burn into me. “Why did you tell the police I was messing with you?”
Chapter Twelve
Lily ~ Eighteen Years Ago
I paused, my hand raised to knock on the Mallick family’s front door. Should I be doing this? Maybe my parents were right—again—that I was looking for trouble where there was none. No one else in this town was questioning why Neal was crossing Railroad Bridge in the middle of the night. Everyone else accepted that his death was an accident. No one was suspicious. Not even his family.
I should just place the things from Neal’s locker on the porch and leave his poor family to mourn in peace. They didn’t know me. They wouldn't believe he was my friend.
But Neal was my friend. Ever since the last week of summer before we started high school. That week had been blisteringly hot, and my friends had spent it as we usually did: running around, crossing Railroad Bridge back and forth at full speed, playing tag and capture the flag. To escape being tagged, if anyone got too hot, or if a train came along, they’d cannonball from the bridge into the creek.
I’d watched woefully from the bank of the creek with a cast on my arm, having shattered my elbow a few weeks before. At the time I’d thought it would be awesome to jump down from our giant oak tree onto my trampoline. And it was awesome. I just hadn’t planned on ricocheting from the trampoline onto our brick patio.
A few feet away, I’d spotted someone in the trees, watching everyone playing. I recognized Neal Mallick right away by his glasses and his slouch. I was hot, and bored, and lonely, so I went over to talk to him.
He’d worn a white t-shirt and yellow shorts that were too wide around his scrawny brown legs. “You should go play with them,” I’d told him. “The teams are uneven.”
He’d stared at my friends as they ran across the bridge.
“You don’t have to be scared,” I’d said. “If a train comes, you just jump.”
“It’s illegal to be on the bridge,” he’d said.
We’d spent that entire week in the shade of the trees, watching my friends play. I’d scratch under my cast with a twig and babble about everything and anything that came into my head. He’d pluck blades of grass from the ground and listen.
Late Sunday evening, as the sun had set on our last day of summer vacation and everyone was taking their last leaps into the creek, I blurted out the only thing I hadn’t told him about myself yet. “I drowned once, you know. Sometime in the 1600s. In the Mediterranean Sea. I was thirty-seven. I was a fisherman, and my buddy fell off the boat. I jumped in to save him, but…” I’d shrugged. My lungs had
burned
and squeezed
at the memory. Then I’d remembered how everyone else had made fun of me or rolled their eyes when I used to talk about my past lives, and realized I’d just done it again with Neal.
But Neal had just stared at me and blinked. “Did it hurt? Drowning, I mean?”
My surprise at his reaction had been greater than the burning in my lungs. As soon as I’d recovered my breath, I said, “Yeah. A lot.”
He'd blinked again, and his wide eyes had held no judgment, only curiosity. So I’d continued. “I’ve died in a fire, been trampled by horses, shot by bullets in World War II. I died of the Black Plague and the flu. Before I was me, I was a woman from Oregon on my way to New York City. But I never made it. I was killed in a car crash right outside of Ryland. Slid on the icy highway into a UPS truck.” I’d cringed as the memories brought the deathpain back,
exploding
inside my head one by one like
fireworks,
then disappearing just as quickly.
“Did you save him?” Neal had asked.
“Who?”
“Your friend. The one who fell off the fishing boat in the 1600s.”
“Oh. I don’t think so. I feel… sad… when I remember that death.”
He’d said nothing for maybe five minutes. As the sun had finally set and everyone had left for home, dripping and laughing, he nodded at the bridge. “It’s illegal to be on the bridge,” he’d said. “It’s too dangerous. You should stay off it.”
That had been the last time I’d really hung out with Neal like that. He’d been in all the advanced classes at school, and I’d been busy with my friends and clubs and those dreadful beauty pageants. And even though most of us had spent every summer after that out there by the bridge, Neal had never come back. After school I’d see him walking home the long way, taking Main to Taft, which would take him to Garfield and all the way to Adams Street. But every time I had a new death-memory, I’d seek him out and tell him. He’d never laughed at me. He’d taken me seriously. He’d believed me. And when I’d decided to defy my parents and apply to CFGU, he’d supported me.
Neal was my friend. And now, he needed my help. So I knocked on his family’s front door.
A half-minute later, the door opened slowly. Neal’s little sister blinked up at me with wide, brown eyes that were identical to his. Her complexion was creamy brown, bringing to mind my memory of Neal in the creek, and the way his brown skin had turned a deathly tint of green.
Devi’s long, black hair melded into her black sweater and black pants. Mourning clothes. I was wearing a white button-down shirt, jeans, and my floral boots. Maybe I should have worn something more somber to visit the Mallicks.
No. I was fine. The color of deepest mourning among medieval queens was white, and white had been the official color of royal funerals in Spain until the fifteenth century. Although I personally hadn’t been a member of Spain’s royal family—just a soldier who’d been killed during the Castilian Succession in 1476.
I swiped away the pain from the bullet in my chest. “Hi. Devi, right?” I said, catching my breath.
When she nodded, I noticed the deep shadows under her eyes. Poor thing. I wanted to hug her.
“I’m Lily. I was friends with your brother.” At her curious look, I showed her my bookbag. “I brought his things from his locker. I thought you’d like to have them.”
She opened the door wider to let me in. “My mom’s sleeping,” she said. “Dad’s watching TV.” She gestured into the next room, where Mr. Mallick slouched on a bright red sofa, staring blankly at an infomercial for a home exercise machine. The top of his head was bald. He didn’t seem to notice I was there.
I gave Devi the carnations first, and as I handed her Neal’s jacket, something sprinkled from the pocket onto the tile floor. Little red pills.
Pills?
My heart
sank.
The rumors were
true.
Neal had been on drugs the night he died.
A second later, a box, thin and bright red, fell from the pocket. It landed with a soft plop. Splashed across the box in thick white letters were the words Hot Tamales.
Those weren’t pills in his jacket; they were cinnamon candies. They sold them at the movie theater where Neal worked.
Ha! I knew he hadn’t been on drugs.
With Devi’s arms full with the flowers and Neal’s jacket, I saw an opportunity. “I’ll put the rest of his stuff in his bedroom for you,” I said, dashing up the stairs before she could stop me.
One door was closed; probably where Mrs. Mallick was sleeping. The yellow and white room next to it was definitely Devi’s. Across the hall was a room painted blue. It had to be Neal’s. Yep—a felt MIT flag hung on the wall over the bed.
I opened my book bag and dumped the items from his locker onto his bed, which was made with tight corners.
Had he done that himself the day he’d died, I wondered, or had his mother straightened it for him? Judging from how neat his locker had been and how everything on his desk and bookshelves sat at perfect right angles, he’d probably made his bed himself.
Now I felt guilty for making a mess on his bed. I took his notebooks and stacked them on his desk at right angles, then looked around the room. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I had to hurry. I could hear Devi coming up the stairs. Was it possible for footsteps to have feelings? Because her footsteps sounded heavy and sad.
I opened and shut his desk drawers as quickly and as quietly as I could. Even the contents of his drawers were neatly arranged. If my mother knew that, she’d probably have tried to set me up with sweet, smart Neal instead of Seth Siegel and his chin-dimple. But no—the Mallicks weren’t “important” in Ryland.
Devi’s footsteps were coming down the hallway now.
A quick peek in Neal’s closet. Everything hung nicely, his shoes lined up in rows. His bulletin board even had everything at right angles with red push pins stuck through every paper at the top border, exactly at their centers. Even his—
Wait. There. On the bulletin board. A calendar. March, this month. Last Friday night was circled, with the word MIDNIGHT written in Neal's perfect block letters. Friday at midnight: FRI MID.
And written underneath that:
WILL DUSTON.
Neal had plans to meet Will Duston last Friday at midnight. And now Neal was dead, drowned in the creek that bordered Duston Farm.
I needed to tell Officer Paladino about this.
Chapter Thirteen
Ever ~ Present Day
Ash Morrison stands in my doorway, so angry he’s practically breathing fire. “You called the cops and told them I was threatening you.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask. Ash is huge and angry and irrational, but my dad is inside the house and my boyfriend is right across the street. I go outside to face Ash. “I didn’t tell the cops you were threatening me.”
“Oh yeah? That’s not what Paladino told me a few minutes ago.”
“Who’s that?”
“Rick Paladino? The chief of police?” he says, his black hair falling in waves down to the collar of his black leather jacket. He’s got the kind of golden beige skin that tans easily without burning. “He told me to stop harassing you.”
“I’ve never talked to the chief of police.”
His black-eyed gaze bores down on me. “This is about the scholarship, isn’t it? I’m the only one standing in your way, so you told the police that I threatened you.” He leans in close. “Listen, Ever,” he rumbles. “I get enough trouble from them. I don’t need you making more.”
Ash and I have never spoken before. He’s in my AP World History class, but I didn’t think he even knew my name. But now he’s at my house, trying to intimidate me, and suddenly my blood is boiling. How dare this guy, this cheating, thieving, drug-dealing vandal, come pounding on my door and accuse me of something I didn’t do? I draw myself up as tall as I can. He’s trying to scare me, but I’m not afraid of him. Well, I am, but I can’t let him know it. “I’ve never said a word about you to the police, but you’re kind of proving them right. You are threatening me. Right now.”
That seems to scare him a bit, ha, and he steps back. “I’m not giving up that scholarship, Ever. You think I don’t deserve it because of who my father is, but I’m nothing like that loser. I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Yeah, well, neither did—” I was about to say neither did your father but stop myself. Ash doesn’t need to know that. Not yet. “Neither did I,” I say instead.
“My GPA is two-tenths of a point higher than yours. I have less money than you do, too. Your house is a palace compared to the dump I live in. That scholarship is mine.”
My blood boils. How did Ash know my GPA? Did Miss Buckley tell him? And he has no idea how much the Lily Summerhays Memorial Scholarship is mine. “You’re not even at school half the time,” I say, “and when you bother to come at all, you come in late and you sleep through every class. I study every single day just to get this scholarship. Late nights, weekends, holidays. My GPA didn’t come easy. I worked for it. I earned it.”
“You don’t think I work for anything?” He steps closer, dwarfing me. His hair sweeps off his stubbled jaw, and his eyes are deep and black and furious. He smells like leather and wood. “I work for everything. I’m not at school half the time because Ryland High doesn’t offer the classes I need so I have independent study. I get A’s in all my classes, but everyone assumes I cheat. I can’t walk down any street of this town without everyone looking at me, on guard. I can’t go into a store without the owner following me up and down the aisles, just waiting for me to steal something.”
“You do steal. You’ve been arrested for it.”
He cocks his brow and rumbles, “I’ve been arrested for shoplifting, but never convicted. Ask your friend Paladino. He circles my block all night long, watching me, waiting for me to do something illegal. You don’t think it’s hard work, every day, for me to live here?”
“Then why do you live here?” I ask. “Just leave.”
“That’s what I need the scholarship for!” he roars. Then his voice quiets. “Listen. I’ve been accepted to Hidding University in Maryland. It’s the top college in the country for astrophysics. They gave me some money, but not enough. I need the Lily scholarship to pay for the rest, and to get out of this town. And don’t worry, once I leave, I will never come back.”
The quick whoop of a siren interrupts him. A police cruiser is rolling down my street. Ash turns on his booted heel and storms to his motorcycle on my driveway.
I storm right after him. “Hey. Hey!”
“What?”
“There are other scholarships out there. You can take out a loan. What’s so important to you about the Lily scholarship?”
He swings his leg over the seat and thrusts his heel onto the pedal. The engine roars to life. “I could ask you the same thing,” he shouts over the engine, then he shoots past the police car, bolting down the street.
Motorcycle accidents cause over five thousand fatalities every year, and he’s not even wearing a helmet.
The police cruiser pulls up to my curb, and the officer leans out his window. His eyes are intense and chocolate brown. “You okay, Miss Abrams? I warned him to stay away from you.”
This must be Chief Paladino. As with Ash, I wasn’t aware that the police know who I am. I’ve never been in trouble. Not at home, not at school, and certainly not with the law. I start to tell him that I’m not okay, that Ash was harassing me, but that’s not quite true. “I’m fine.”
“You can tell me the truth,” the chief says. “He made you call the station this morning, didn’t he? What did he do, threaten you?”
“No, sir. We’ve never even spoken to each other until just now.” How does the chief know it was me who called? I used a public payphone, I made sure no one saw me, and I didn’t leave my name.
He smiles patiently, paternally. His teeth are very white. “I know it was you, Miss Abrams. A call came in at 8:07 this morning. The caller, a young female, said that Vinnie Morrison is innocent, and that Will Duston, the principal at Ryland High School, is Lily Summerhays’s real killer. The call came from the payphone at The Batter’s Box. All I had to do was go across the street to ask Floyd Stout if anyone used the phone this morning. He didn’t think anyone had, but when I asked if any young females came in this morning, he said there was only one. You.”
“Oh.” Betrayed by Mr. Stout, the nicest guy in the world.
“Did Ash Morrison force you to make that call?” Chief Paladino asks. “It’s okay, sweetheart. You can tell me. I won’t let him hurt you.”
“He had nothing to do with it,” I say.
The chief drums his clean, trimmed fingernails on the car door. His genuine concern has quickly turned into impatience and irritation. “Okay, fine. Then tell me,
why did you say Will Duston killed Lily Summerhays? What happened, did he give you detention at school, and now you want revenge by accusing him of murder? I can see Ash Morrison pulling a stunt like that, but a good girl like you?”
“No, it’s nothing like that. I’ve never even really spoken to Principal Duston before. Or Ash Morrison, except for a few minutes ago.”
“Well, someone must have put that ridiculous idea in your head. If it wasn’t Morrison, who was it? Who have you been talking to?”
I’m like a bug pinned under a microscope, so closely does he scrutinize me. “No one. It was my own idea.” I dig my toe into the grass. “When you look into it, you’ll see that I’m right.”
“The case is closed, Miss Abrams. It’s been closed for almost eighteen years. Lily Summerhays walked in on Vinnie Morrison burglarizing her house, and he killed her.” He pulls a business card from his shirt pocket and holds it out between his fingers. “This is my direct number at the station. When you’re ready to tell me what’s really going on, give me a call.”
“But—”
“But,” he says, “if you accuse Will Duston of murder again, I will arrest you for harassment and slander. Understood?”
Arrest me? Can he do that?
The chief is scowling, his nostrils flaring. Keeping me pinned with his eyes, he slowly, deliberately, removes his hand from the steering wheel and lowers it to the gun at his side, lightly stroking it. “Understood, Ever?” he rumbles again.
I nod because “Yes, sir” gets stuck in my throat.
“That’s my good girl.” He hands me his card and drives off.
Chapter Fourteen
Lily ~ Eighteen Years Ago
“Do you know the exact time Neal Mallick died?” I asked Officer Paladino. With the incriminating calendar page in my hand, I’d gone from Neal’s house straight to The Batter’s Box. I knew I’d find my favorite cop there. The owners always gave Ryland cops free coffee and pie.