by Clara Kensie
The bell rang and he slammed his locker shut and stepped close to me. He removed the toothpick from his mouth and slowly, gently, tucked my hair behind my ear. He leaned in, his breath minty and cool on my cheek.
Breathless,
my heart
stopping,
I waited to finally hear the truth.
He leaned in even closer. “I would tell you,” he whisper-growled, “but then I’d have to kill you. In cold blood.” He walked off without another glance at me.
Who the hell did that boy think he was? No one in the world was more irritating and self-righteous than Will Duston.
I couldn’t wait to get out of Ryland.
Chapter Seventeen
Ever ~ Present Day
After the EMTs retrieve Miss Buckley’s body and pack it away like luggage in the ambulance, school is canceled for the rest of the day. My classmates chatter in hushed, shocked voices as they slowly shuffle out. Some of the girls are crying. The boys stand around stoically. Courtney sags against the lockers, her eyes glazed and wet, pressing one hand against her mouth. The swirls and dots of her Sharpie design look too celebratory now.
“It’s okay, Court,” I coo, like I do when I comfort Joey from a nightmare. “It’ll be okay.” I was the one who actually saw Miss Buckley’s broken body; Court should be the one comforting me. But I have experience with death—lots of experience. Miss Buckley, if she’s like me, really is okay. She’s probably already been reborn, or would be any second, into a new baby at the hospital in Eastfield.
“What did she look like?” Court asks me from behind her decorated hand. “Was it horrible? Was there blood?”
“None that I could see.” Her head was backward on her body. But I can’t bring myself to tell Courtney that.
“It was her shoes, wasn’t it?” she says. “Those high heels she wears all the time. She tripped going down the stairs in them.” She looks down at her feet. She’s wearing heels too. Black ones. Not as high as the kind Miss Buckley liked to wear, but she kicks them off anyway and stands in her bare feet. Her sparkly blue nail polish is chipped a little on her big toe.
Like the giant bear that he is, Coach Nolan pushes through the throng of students and hugs both Courtney and me. “The principal told me you saw her body, Ever. He said you were really scared.”
“I’m okay now, I think.” It was Principal Duston who scared me, way more than Miss Buckley’s body. He grabbed my arm and dragged me back up the stairs to my classroom and told Mrs. Ricciardelli to not let me, or anyone, leave.
“Is your father on the road?” Coach asks. “You can sleep at our house tonight if you don’t want to be alone. Joey too, of course.”
“Thanks. Our dad’s home. I’ll be fine.”
“Call us if you need anything,” he says, then takes Courtney home.
I push my way toward my locker, but my arm is grabbed for the second time that day.
But it’s not Principal Duston. It’s Ash Morrison. He drags me around the corner. Huffing heavily like he’s holding back tears, he still manages to shoot daggers at me with his eyes. “I suppose I should say congratulations now. So congrats.”
“For what?”
“The scholarship. It’s yours.”
Instead of hating him at that moment, instead of being afraid of him, I feel sorry for him. “Ash, we don’t know that. The committee still has a few weeks to decide. A lot can change by then.”
He grunts, working his jaw. “Miss Buckley promised she’d get me that scholarship. She got me to the final round, and she said she would do whatever it took to get the committee to vote for me. She said she knew how to get the committee to change their minds.”
“How?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know, and now I never will. Without her, I’m done.” He slams his fist into a maroon locker, denting it. “So congratulations, you win. Have a great life.”
He storms off, his hands clenched. He knocks into a freshman but doesn’t stop.
“Ash, wait,” I call after him. If he hears me, he doesn’t turn back.
I go home in a daze. My mind won’t stop churning. I make dinner for Dad and Joey, but I can’t eat. I can’t focus on my homework. I don’t even try to sleep.
Ash is right: without Miss Buckley to advocate for him, the scholarship is mine. I should be happy, but I’m not. I know I’m probably slightly traumatized by the sight of Miss Buckley’s body, but it’s more than that. I feel betrayed by her too. She always had a soft spot for troubled kids like Ash, so sneaking his application through to the final round was understandable. Forgivable, even. But she promised the scholarship to him, told him she’d do whatever it took to get the committee to vote for him, said she knew how to get the committee to change their minds. Which means I never had a chance.
I worked so hard my entire life for that scholarship, and I never had a chance.
Miss Buckley was Lily’s best friend. How could she promise the scholarship to the son of the man who killed her?
But Ash’s father didn’t kill Lily. I knew that. Maybe…
Maybe…
Maybe… somehow… Miss Buckley knew it too.
Maybe Miss Buckley knew who really killed Lily.
Maybe, to get the committee to give the scholarship to Ash, Miss Buckley was finally going to spill her secret after all these years and expose the real killer.
Only now she can’t tell her secret because she fell down the stairs and died.
But maybe…
Maybe…
The end of that maybe rumbles around in my mind, getting louder and louder until it drowns out the sound of the TV show my dad’s watching in the family room, drowns out the sound of the squeaky hamster wheel in Joey’s room, drowns out every other thought.
Maybe she didn’t fall.
Maybe she was pushed.
Chapter Eighteen
Lily ~ Eighteen Years Ago
“Need anything else, Dad?” I peeked into his office at Agri-So. “I finished the filing and restocked the coffee supplies.” I’d also alphabetized the invoices, updated the customer database, and folded over two hundred advertisements, stuffed them into envelopes, and sealed them. I had several paper cuts on my fingers, and my tongue was heavy and sticky with envelope glue. I’d never realized that office work was such a hazardous job.
Dad glanced up from a letter he was reading. “You can run those envelopes through the stamp machine and drop them off at the post office. But take a break first, Lily. You worked hard today. See how much you can accomplish when you don’t daydream all day long?”
Wow. Not the best of compliments, but I’d take what I could get from him. I curled up in the cushioned chair across his desk and opened my book. The plant was quiet; he didn’t run production over the weekends. It was just Dad, me, and the permanent stench of Agri-So: chemicals and manure.
Dad broke the silence with a disgruntled sigh. He rubbed his eyes, then folded the letter.
“Bad news?” I asked.
“Another lawsuit,” he mumbled.
“From the Dustons?” I asked.
“Yep. Trying to get a percentage of my profits. I bought them out fair and square over fifteen years ago. It’s not my fault they don’t know how to manage their money.”
“You bought them out?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
“Fred and I started Agri-So together,” Dad said.
“I didn’t know that.”
“Oh, yeah. I was the chemistry and business expert. He was the agriculture expert. The land this building is on was once part of his farm. But Agri-So didn’t take off quickly enough. He got spooked and wanted to go back to farming, so I bought him out and bought the land from him too. For more than it was worth, I might add. Soon, Agri-So was turning a profit and I was able to expand the business and build a bigger plant, and his farm was struggling. He’s been trying to sue me out of business ever since.”
From the window over Dad’s desk, I could see the railroad tracks divid
ing Agri-So’s land from Duston’s soybean field, and their crumbling white farmhouse and faded red barn beyond that. I looked for Will but didn’t see him.
Should I tell Dad about Will, how I thought he might have had something to do with Neal’s death?
“Is that a textbook you’re reading?” Dad asked.
I showed him the cover.
“‘The Essentials of Human Anthropology,’” he read. “I don’t recall you taking that class.”
That’s because I wasn’t; Ryland High didn’t offer it. “It’s a college textbook,” I told him. “I ordered it from the bookstore. You know, the one on Main Street? The Secret Garden? I ordered another one too, a more advanced one. It’s coming in a couple of weeks.”
“College textbooks,” he murmured, nodding. Good. He was impressed.
“I really like it, Dad. It’s really interesting. I…” I should just tell him. We had a good day together. “I want to major in cultural anthropology in college.”
“I know you love that kind of stuff, Lily, but as a career?” He looked at me over his glasses. “It’s impractical.”
“Not to me.”
“You won’t make any money being a cultural anthropologist.”
“I don’t care about money.”
“You would care about money if you didn’t have any,” he said. “You can take a few classes in anthropology, but you need to major in business. It can be finance, or marketing, or business management. You have lots of choices. You’ll find something you like. But it needs to be something you can use at Agri-So.”
I looked around his office. A metal desk, a set of dusty bookshelves, thin blue industrial carpeting. The only things decorating the white drywall were a few photographs of me, a map of the U.S., the periodic table of elements, and a few awards from the Chamber of Commerce in cheap wooden frames. “What if I don’t want to work at Agri-So?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Lily. You have a job—a good job—waiting for you when you graduate college. And one day you’ll run this place. You’ll own it. You know how many kids would kill for this opportunity?”
“But, Dad,” I said. “I don’t want to spend my life making dirt.”
He laughed. “I didn’t grow up dreaming of manufacturing enriched soil either. But I knew I wanted to own a business. Running my own business and making it grow is what I love. It’s not necessarily the product.”
I held back a sigh and returned to my book. I’d never convince him.
“It’s not all about soil,” Dad said. “I’m going to a convention for small business owners next week. Why don’t you come with? You can miss a couple days of school.”
Missing school sounded good, but not to go to a business convention. “No thanks.”
“It’s in New York City.”
With a gasp, I jumped up. “New York? City?”
“I’ll have my secretary buy you a plane ticket. I’m sure you’ll enjoy flying too.”
I’d already flown lots of times in Javier’s single-engine, but Dad didn’t know that. And this time I’d be flying in a jet. “We can go to Chinatown,” I said. “And Little Italy. And Little Greece!” I’d died in each of those countries. Carroll-Freywood Global University was based in New York City too. Maybe a visit to the admissions office would help me get accepted, and as a bonus, convince my dad to let me go.
“What about Mom? She’d love to see a show on Broadway,” I said, then instantly regretted it when he leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes again.
“This isn’t a vacation, Lily. It’s a business trip. I doubt your mother would be interested.” He turned back to his computer. “Why don’t you take care of those envelopes and then you can go home. I have a few more hours of work to do.”
Chapter Nineteen
Ever ~ Present Day
Maybe she was pushed. Maybe Miss Buckley was pushed.
I still can’t get the idea out of my head the next day after school as I walk the three blocks down Main Street and turn into the alley behind the movie theater.
Earlier that day I slipped a note into Ash’s locker, asking him to meet me here. I can’t ask him to meet me at school, where Principal Duston could see us. And I can’t ask him to meet me at any place along Main Street, where the police station is and Chief Paladino could see us. I can’t ask him to go to my house. The only place I could think where no one would see us was here, in the alley.
Ash probably won’t even come. He probably read my note and crumpled it up.
I’m about to leave when Ash’s motorcycle roars into the alley. So much for subterfuge.
“Your engine is so loud,” I hiss when he shuts it off. “This is supposed to be a secret meeting.”
“Don’t worry,” he says, shaking his head and making his black hair brush his jaw. “I didn’t tell anyone who I was meeting here.”
“But if the cops followed you…”
“What’s with the cloak and dagger? You need to buy some pot?” He chuckles. “Prudish little Ever Abrams, a pothead. Never would’ve guessed.”
I’m too stunned to speak, but I feel my jaw fall open.
“I hate to break it to you, Ever, but despite what everyone thinks, I don’t use illegal substances anymore. I don’t sell them either. My mother’s current boyfriend does, though. You need me to set you up?”
“I don’t do drugs either.”
At the end of the alley, a police cruiser rolls by quietly, slowly. Ash must see fear on my face because he suddenly becomes solemn. “Shit, you’re serious about this, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” I hate the way my voice cracks.
“And the cops can’t see us?”
“No one can.”
“Then this isn’t a great place. I hate it here anyway. Come with me.”
He tucks his bike behind the dumpster. I follow him down the alley and around to the weed-ridden used-car dealership that went bankrupt two years ago. Ash doesn’t appear to be rushing, but his legs are longer than mine, and I have to hustle to stay a few steps behind. He never looks back to see if I’m following.
He pushes open a loose section of the fence surrounding the car dealership and we slip through. We follow the train tracks as they disappear into the patch of trees that line Deep Creek. The only sound is the rush of the creek and Ash’s booted footfalls as he plods along.
The tracks cross over Deep Creek by means of an old crumbling bridge. Ash gets halfway across before he realizes I’m not behind him. “You coming?” he calls.
A memory strikes—not a death-memory, but a memory from when I was little. A warning from my mother. “Didn’t some kid slip off this bridge once and drown in the creek?”
“Yep. Kids used to jump from the bridge all the time. That’s why they stopped. But come on. You’ll be fine.”
I lick my lips. “What if a train comes? Five hundred people a year die getting hit by a train.”
“You just happen to know that statistic?”
“It’s an important statistic to know.”
“If a train comes,” he says, “you’ll hear it. Plenty of time to run to safety. But it’d be more fun if you jump in the creek.”
Both options are way too risky. “Just come back,” I say. “No one can see us here.”
In an exaggerated, mocking manner, Ash peers up and down the tracks. “You’re in luck. No train coming.”
I look up and down the tracks too. No train in sight. No whistle. No rumbling. But I can’t make my feet move. The rails are rusty and the wood is warped and rotting in places. What if I slip and fall like that kid did? My lungs squeeze at the death-memory of drowning when I was a fisherman in the early 1600s.
“Jesus.” Ash stomps back to me, his black boots making the crumbling structure vibrate. He grabs my hand and yanks.
I stumble and have to grip him tight to keep from slipping as he tugs me across the bridge. His hand dwarfs mine and feels warm and rough. Odd. Unexpected. Keith’s hands are big too, but they’re soft. Holding Keith’s ha
nd always reminds me of when I was six and my dad took me fishing in his rowboat and made me take the fish off the hook.
Ash pulls me across the bridge. It’s terrifying, but we reach the other side without tripping. That was literally the most dangerous thing I’ve done in my entire life. I stifle a relieved exhale, and it comes out sounding like a gleeful, triumphant giggle.
I follow him along the creek bed. The ground is dry, and the grass and weeds are plush. Soon we come upon a massive oak tree budding with leaves. Ash sinks against the trunk. From the other side he drags an old duffel bag covered with dirt. He pulls a flask from it and offers it to me. “Vodka?”
“Oh. No thanks.”
He take a swig, then wipes his mouth with his forearm. The corner of his mouth turns up into a smirk. “I’m kidding. It’s water. Thirsty?”
I am, thirsty enough to take a tiny sip, just enough to make sure he’s not tricking me. Yes, it’s water. I take a bigger sip and hand it back to him. “Thanks.” I sit next to him and look around. Sprawled on the other side of the tracks is the squat, red-brick Agri-So plant, and on this side, there’s an open weedy field and a few trees. It feels like we’re in a different world, a world with just the two of us. “It’s kind of nice here,” I say. “Quiet.”
“The field behind us,” Ash says, slipping the flask back into his bag, “used to be Duston Farm.”
“Duston, as in Principal Duston?”
“The very same. Agri-So bought the land a long time ago but never developed it beyond putting in an extra parking lot at the far end. No one ever comes back this way but me. In the summers sometimes I’ll stay out here until dawn, looking at the stars through my telescope.”
“Doesn’t your mom worry about where you are?”
He gives a resentful huff and leans against the trunk. “Yeah, it’s great out here. I just have to be on the lookout for snakes.”
I scramble up with a shriek. “Snakes?”