by Clara Kensie
Heart pounding, I unzip my backpack and stuff the flash drive into a little case that holds my tampons. Ash returns to his chair behind the desk just as the guard comes back with a box of tissues.
I take one and wipe pretend tears from my eyes. “Is there anything I can do to get this off my transcript?” I ask the guard. “I’ve never had an unexcused absence before.”
“Save it for someone who cares, Abrams,” Ash says. “You’d better hurry or you’ll be late for second period too.” He pulls me away before the guard can respond.
“That unexcused tardy is going to affect my class rank,” I say as he tugs me down the hall. “Thanks a lot.”
“You’re welcome.” When we reach my locker, Ash stops and whispers into my ear. “I’ll stop by later tonight to watch the footage. And don’t worry about that tardy. When I was in the computer, I took it off your transcript.”
Chapter Thirty
Lily ~ Eighteen Years Ago
Mom and Dad were still sleeping—and Dad wasn’t on the couch, which meant they slept together last night, gross, but hooray!—when I left the house Saturday morning. I knew—I knew—Will Duston had something to do with Neal’s death, and today I was going to figure out exactly what that something was.
And unlike last time, I had a plan.
Step One: leave a note for my parents so they wouldn’t worry. In my neatest handwriting, I wrote, “Meeting up with Diana. Have a great day! Hugs and kisses!” on a sheet of notebook paper, decorated it with smiley faces and hearts, and propped it up against the vase of flowers on the kitchen table where they would see it.
Step Two: head to the movie theater. My car was all fixed from my little accident, but I was still not allowed to drive it. I had to walk again, but that was okay. Walking was part of my plan.
Step Three: trace Neal’s path from the theater to Railroad Bridge.
The theater was closed, of course, this early in the morning. As I headed away from it, I walked slowly, letting every detail sink in. I was going to trace Neal’s path from the theater to Railroad Bridge in daylight. On Main Street I noted the daffodils blooming in large terracotta pots next to the wrought-iron benches lining the street. The American flags swaying in the breeze. The fancy garbage cans on each corner decorated with painted flowers on green grass, a project sponsored by the Ryland Beautification Committee.
The smoky scent of bacon floated from The Batter’s Box as I neared. Rick Paladino was inside, visible through the big picture window. Bubbles was pouring him coffee. I quelled my impulse to wave at them and scurried past. If Rick saw me out here this early on a Saturday morning, he might get suspicious.
At the corner of Main and Adams, the fancy garbage can was dented and scratched. Scrapes of bright blue paint covered some of the cheery flowers. A few feet beyond that, on the street lamp, were more scrapes of blue paint. And on the curb, something glinted. Plastic, yellow, and thick: pieces of a broken headlight.
I wouldn’t have thought anything of it—a car accident; I’d had a minor one myself recently—except for one thing. Scattered among the pieces of broken headlight were red pill-shaped objects.
Hot Tamales.
Holy
wow.
Will’s pickup truck was blue, like the scraped paint on the garbage can. And that night when we’d talked on his land, he’d told me it was out of commission. Now I knew why.
Instantly, I figured out what had happened. I saw it play out like a movie in my head. Neal had plans with Will after his shift the night he’d died. At some point that night, Will must have gotten into an accident that had injured Neal right here on the corner, then Will had driven him, either gravely injured or already dead, to Duston Farm and dumped him in the creek.
God. Poor Neal. I hoped he had died immediately upon impact so he hadn’t spent the last few minutes of his life aching and terrified.
No. Scratch that. I hoped that Neal had stayed alive for a few seconds at least, and that he’d thought of me. I hoped that he’d remembered my secret as he died, and that the knowledge that he would soon be reborn had given him comfort in his last moments.
Despair made a hole in my heart, twice as big as it should have been. I felt like I’d lost two friends: Neal and Will. A small part of me had actually kind of almost thought that Will and I were becoming friends, and I’d been actually kind of almost hoping that my theory about him killing Neal was wrong. But that was stupid. I wasn’t wrong about him, and he had never been my friend. I hated him. I shouldn’t be surprised that he’d done something as callous as this.
Then why did I feel so
heartbroken?
I had a purple makeup case at the bottom of my purse. I’d drawn Asian symbols on it a couple years ago. I dumped the contents, including a hideous pink lipstick from my mom that I’d never worn and a brown eyeliner I’d once used as an emergency pencil during a math test, into the garbage can, then dropped the broken glass and candies inside the makeup case. Evidence.
Now I had to find Will’s truck and match the broken glass to his headlights. Time to go to Duston Farm.
I ducked into the alley behind Main Street, slipped under the fence at Smiley’s Used Cars, and followed the train tracks through the woods. As I stepped out of the trees onto the creek bed, Will was crossing Railroad Bridge, his Warriors cap pulled low over his eyes.
I slipped behind a tree. I heard his shoes clomping across the bridge, and then he was standing right in front of me. “What do you want this time, Red?”
That same small part of me that had thought we were becoming friends wanted to lie, wanted to tell him to forget it, that he’d be able to live his simple, peaceful farmer’s life in Ryland. But I couldn’t lie. I couldn’t do that to Neal.
I stood tall, almost matching his height, and thrust out my chin. “I know you killed Neal, Will. I know it.”
His blue eyes turned dark with anguish. “Well, Lily, you’re right. I did.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Ever ~ Present Day
It’s just a tiny flash drive, hidden at the bottom of my backpack in a tampon case under my textbooks, but I slink through the day feeling like a criminal holding a bag of explosives. Every time I see Keith, he asks about Ash. In AP World History, Courtney reminds me that the Little Warriors Training Camp is coming up and I’m supposed to be helping her and the rest of the Batgirls plan it, then she asks if I’ve asked my dad yet if I can go to Chicago with her for her birthday this summer. I’ve forgotten about both of those things completely. I’ve been a bad friend. I apologize to her and promise to do better, but with a disapproving frown, she raises her brows and slides a knowing, suspicious look to Ash.
After dinner that evening, I wave across the street at Keith, who’s watching me from his front window. He was supposed to be out partying with the baseball team, celebrating the start of spring break, but he stayed home. When Ash rumbles up my driveway on his bike, I know why.
Keith holds up his phone and mouths, “Text me if you need me.” I blow him a kiss, signaling, Everything is fine. You have nothing to be worried about. To prove it, I leave my front curtains wide open.
Without fanfare or even much conversation, Ash sprawls himself over a kitchen chair and slides the flash drive into my laptop. I’m a little worried the ancient processor wouldn’t read the files, but after a few minutes of chugging and churning and some fancy programming by Ash, a grainy, black-and-white image of the school’s back stairwell appears on my screen.
This is it. Within the next few minutes we’ll have proof that Principal Duston killed Miss Buckley.
On the screen, students trickle into view, a few at first, then more and more as everyone goes to their lockers and then first period. Then the stairwell empties; class must have started.
“Ever?” Joey, in his yellow and blue SpongeBob pajamas, peeks into the kitchen.
“Come on over here, buddy,” I say, closing the lid on the laptop. “Couldn’t sleep?”
He shakes h
is head as he pads into the kitchen and climbs onto my lap.
“This is my friend Ash,” I say. “We’re doing a project together.”
Joey gives Ash an appraising look. Ash returns it. “You play baseball?” Joey asks him.
“Nope.”
“What do you do?”
“I fly planes.”
Joey considers that for a moment. “I have a hamster,” he says. “His name is Cheeks.”
“I have a cat,” Ash says. “His name is Valeri.”
Joey wrinkles his nose. “That’s a girl’s name.”
“Not in Russia,” Ash says. “He’s named after Valeri Polyakov, a cosmonaut who lived in outer space longer than any other person in history.”
Joey breathes a slow, worshipful, “Wwwwooooooow.”
Before Ash can give my baby brother the ludicrous idea that he should also fly planes or live on Mars himself, I smooth his hair and nudge him off my lap. “It’s late, Joey. Go back to bed and I’ll come in soon to tuck you in again.”
After a glass of water, a hug, a kiss, and a sprinkling of magic fairy dust, Joey finally scampers off to his room. “He’ll be asleep within five minutes,” I tell Ash.
“You take care of him all the time, don’t you?”
I shrug. “I’m all he has.”
“What about your dad?”
I open the laptop. “We should get started again. We’ve got a lot of footage to watch.”
From the corner of my eye, I can see Ash, one brow cocked, continuing to stare at me. When I refuse to meet his gaze, he finally turns back to the computer. He slides the mouse over the progress bar, fast-forwarding through the footage of students going up and down the stairs—there’s Courtney, bobbing along with the crowd after second period; there’s Michael Granz, the Science Olympiad finalist, talking animatedly with a teammate after third period; there’s Ash, skulking his way through everyone after fourth period—alternating with long stretches of empty stillness while everyone’s in class.
Finally, we see Miss Buckley. Alone. The time stamp in the corner shows 13:05:24, a little after one o’clock. I found her body a few minutes later. On the screen, Principal Duston should be appearing any second now.
In black-and-white silence, she walks up the stairs in her high heels and pencil skirt. Her arms filled with books and papers, she has one pen in her mouth and another holding up her hair in a twist. She’s almost at the top when she falls back, her body arcing almost in slow motion as she scrambles for purchase, books and papers flying everywhere, arms flailing as she tumbles down the stairs. She comes to a stop on her stomach, limbs askew, hair loose, head backward, and becomes so still that if the time stamp in the corner hadn’t been marking the seconds, I would have thought the computer had frozen.
But I am the one who’s frozen. I just watched someone die. I remember dying, dozens of times, but this time it’s different.
“So she did trip,” Ash says. “No one pushed her.” He sighs heavily.
That’s it? She fell? She wasn’t murdered? All that work for nothing? I was so sure, so positive, that Principal Duston pushed her.
I don’t know if I’m relieved or disappointed. “Maybe we missed something. Rewind it. Go back to right before she fell.”
Lips in a tight line, Ash rewinds the footage and plays it again. I lean close, watching each movement.
“There!” I say. “She stops right before the top step and looks up. Like someone’s there, surprising her. Do it again. Maybe we can see who it is.”
Both of us lean in, inches from the screen and each other, his breath cool and soft on my cheek. We watch the footage again, but Miss Buckley is alone. “No one else was there,” I say. “She really did trip on her high heels.” I swivel in my chair to face him. “Ash. I’m so sorry. I really thought—”
“Hold on,” he says, frowning. “I’m running it again, frame by frame. This time watch the time stamp.”
At 13:05:32, Mrs. Buckley reaches the second-to-top step. At 13:05:33, she pauses and glances up. At 13:05:34—
There is no 13:05:34. The next frame shows Miss Buckley falling, but the time stamp reads 13:05:39. “Did you see that?” Ash asks. He flips between the two frames again, back and forth. Thirty-three to thirty-nine. Thirty-three to thirty-nine.
An icy tremor runs up my spine. “Five seconds are missing.”
“Gotta say, Ever,” Ash says. “I didn’t completely believe you before, but I do now. Duston tampered with the footage. Why would he do that if he weren’t hiding something?”
Five seconds. In the grand scheme of things, five seconds don’t amount to much. There are more than thirty-one million seconds in a year. Eighty-six thousand seconds in a day. Thirty-six hundred seconds in an hour.
We only need five of them. Five little seconds.
But those five little seconds, five seconds of evidence that could bring justice to Diana Buckley and Lily Summerhays, five seconds that could save Vinnie Morrison’s life, five seconds that would make Ryland safe again, are gone.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Lily ~ Eighteen Years Ago
Will did it.
He admitted it, right here in the woods by Railroad Bridge. He killed Neal Mallick.
All the air left my lungs, all the strength left my muscles, and I sank against a tree trunk. I knew I should run away from him, a killer, but I couldn’t. I knew I should feel hatred for him, and fear for myself, but all I felt was sorrow. “How did it happen?”
The temperature dropped ten degrees as he answered. “I forgot about him.”
“Forgot?”
“I was going to have a party. That Friday night. My parents were going to visit my brother in Chicago, and I thought I’d have a party for the team.”
“I was with Diana that night because she and Brandon broke up again. I don’t remember hearing about a party.”
He gave a sad laugh. “That’s because the party never happened. My parents ended up staying home and I had to cancel it. I told the team, but I forgot to tell Neal. He wasn’t friends with any of us. I only told him about the party because he was standing there in the hallway and heard us talking about it. You know how he’s always hovering a little too close. Seth was being an asshole and said something like, ‘Girls and players only, no turtles allowed.’ I felt bad for him, so I said, ‘No, you can come too, Neal.’ I never thought he’d actually come. And then when I had to cancel it, I didn’t even think to tell him. I didn’t think about him at all.”
I sighed, my heart aching. “But what exactly happened?”
Will shrugged. “He was crossing the bridge on the way to the party he didn’t know was canceled, slipped off, and drowned. You found his body the next morning.”
Wait. No. Will still wasn’t telling me the truth. “But when did you hit him with your truck?”
“Hit him? With my truck? Lily, what are you talking about?”
“Your truck is blue.”
“Yeah. That’s why I call it Ol’ Blue.”
“You told me it was out of commission.”
“It is.”
“It’s out of commission because you hit him with it.”
He gave me a strange look. “No, it’s out of commission because it’s old. It was old when my brother bought it ten years ago. The transmission blew out again last month. Why the hell would you think I hit Neal with my truck?”
“You haven’t driven it in over a month?”
“That’s correct.”
“Show me the truck. I need to see it.”
Looking at me curiously, he led me back across the bridge and through the field to the side of a large storage shed and pointed. Dusty and tired, the blue Toyota sat dejectedly in a patch of dirt and weeds. The headlights were dirty from being outside, but they were whole.
“These are old headlights,” I said.
“The originals. Came with the truck.”
“They’ve never been broken.”
“Never.” He rubbed the back of his n
eck. “Lily. Why do you think I hit Neal with my truck?”
“Because I found—” I gasped, and it was like the air was helium, because I suddenly felt lighter than a balloon. “Will! Do you know what this means?”
“No.”
“It means it wasn’t you.” I threw my arms around him. “It wasn’t your fault, Will!”
And then I was kissing him. We were two separate people one moment, and the next we were one.
My mouth
on his,
our bodies
pressed together,
limbs
intertwined,
leaning against his old, dirty, dented, undamaged, beautiful truck, and I was laughing and crying and kissing at the same time.
He pulled away, breathless, his blue eyes lit with surprise. “I—why—what—”
So happy. So relieved. I ran my palms down his face. I wanted to kiss his reddening cheeks. And then I turned somber. “Neal didn’t slip off the bridge, Will. He didn’t get that far. He was hit by a car outside the movie theater.” I told him about the blue paint on the street lamp, the broken headlight and the candies on the curb, and the empty, bloody box of Hot Tamales in the woods. “I think whoever hit him took his body to the bridge and dumped it in the creek.”
As he stared at me, his face paled from red to white. “So it wasn’t my fault? You’re sure?”
“I’m positive. It wasn’t you.” I swiped tears from my cheeks. “I was so upset when I saw that blue paint. I didn’t want it to be you. And it’s not.”
He removed his hat and swiped his hand through his hair, his beautiful white-blond hair. As the enormity of the truth hit him, he sank against the truck. “It wasn’t me.”
Suddenly, he whooped and threw his hat on the ground. “It wasn’t me!” He swooped me up and spun me around, crushing his lips to mine.
When he finally put me back on the ground, I was dizzy. And not because of the spinning.