by N. Griffin
But Bett knew that wasn’t true. It was more to do with the tiny size of the Salt River Police Department, and the fact that her mother was one-third of it. Sometimes the surrounding small towns teamed up for stuff, but that cost money, and none of the towns really had any. Still. Bett wished she had talked to her mother about the devil heads the first time they had appeared. What was her mother thinking about all this? Bett wished she would spill a theory or two. It would be comforting, somehow, if her mom had a lead.
* * *
Dan sat with Bett at lunch, along with Paul and, surprisingly, Ranger.
“Where’s your posse?” she asked him as he plunked his tray down. Two chocolate milks. Kids.
“In trouble,” said Ranger morosely. “They didn’t do their math homework, so they had to go back to math for lunch.”
“That stinks.” Bett tried to smile reassuringly. He looked a little nervous. Not from eating with bigger kids—Ranger never seemed to notice he was out of place in these situations—but because of something else, and Bett had a hunch it had to do with the art.
“Are you scared about the drawings and the devils?” she whispered when everyone was talking with everyone else.
“No,” said Ranger quickly. “Well, I’m kinda scared because I think I should’ve kept my mouth shut better about investigating. But it wasn’t just me. Joaquin bragged when we were in Social Studies, and now he and Martin are both in trouble for math, and they both like Ms. Sparrow, so what if they tell her and adults get involved and I get clobbered by the perp?”
Poor Ranger.
But that wasn’t even the half of it, as it turned out.
* * *
The second lunch bell rang, and in came a swoop of upperclassmen, all of them agitated as a guy named Sam was yelping, only with his huge self, even a yelp sounded deep. “What the hell?!” He took a paper out of his own pocket and slammed what was clearly another devil drawing onto the table. It wafted to the floor. “Check this out. What’s next, a guy with a gun?”
Bett’s heart sped up. Guys like Sam never let on that they were scared. And Sam was scared.
“Hell no,” boomed Doug, calmer for sure than when he’d found his own drawing, or at least fronting it. “I am going to find this asshole and beat the shit out of them. No one threatens The Doug. No one.”
“The Doug,” muttered Bett.
“Psst, Bett . . .” It was Dan. “I’m thinking maybe we should go to Anna’s meeting tonight. We need to make a plan.”
“Yeah!” Ranger chimed in. “Let’s make a good plan!”
“We don’t mean you, idiot,” said Dan. “Older heads are going to prevail here.”
“What older heads? Your older head is stupidcakes,” said Ranger, looking stung.
Bett and Dan exchanged glances. “Only upperclassmen are invited,” Bett said soothingly.
“Are you planning on more art? To show the perp you aren’t scared?” asked Ranger. “Because I can draw.”
Dan shook his head. “Kid, you are no artist,” he said.
Now Ranger was enraged. “I can, too, draw!” he insisted. And he picked up a Sharpie and started drawing on a wrinkled piece of paper fished from his backpack.
“I gotta stay at your house again Columbus Day weekend,” Mutt was telling one of his minions at the table behind them.
“Why?”
“My mom is going to Ohio or something. Some new guy. My dad’ll be away, too. Car conference. You think your sister would be cool with my sister coming, too?”
But Bett couldn’t focus on Mutt, not while she watched Ranger. What was up with that picture? He was drawing a silly sheep-looking thing, but something about it was familiar to Bett.
It wasn’t until Ranger drew the awkward devil horns on his weird little sheep thing that—No. No! But yes. Bett knew.
Ranger was the devil-drawer.
38
Thursday, Day Six of Eleventh Grade, Lunch
IT HIT DAN AT THE same time. “No way—no way!” he said, leaping up. Bett grabbed Ranger’s picture. What were they going to do? No wonder Ranger was so skittish, so nervous. He was the . . . but . . . but . . . Ranger? Rangercakes? Bett looked again at the drawing. There was no doubt. Arrgh! What the hell was going on? Her brain raced. The stupid drawings were definitely Ranger, but the drawing slashing and burning and the graffiti and angel smashing? Bett’s brain was churning, thinking back. Ranger could have attacked those drawings when he left the caf that first day to “go to the bathroom,” and he probably tried to cover up his guilt by calling all of the lunch-eaters to come see what he himself had really done. Oh my God.
She jumped up.
“What’s the matter?” asked Paul, startled.
“I forgot to take Ranger to the nurse . . . for his medicine!” cried Bett. “Come on, Ranger!”
Paul cocked his head. “Isn’t he old enough to take himself to the nurse?”
“Uh—” Bett started, even as Ranger piped up, “I don’t have to go to the nurse,” and Dan punched him and said, “Yes, you do.”
They had to get him alone. Find out exactly what he and his tiny terrorist group were up to, and Bett was going to have to stop them, and her mother would be even more involved, never mind Mr. McLean, and this was all so much more horrible than if the slasher-crasher person was a stranger. And he’d wind up in juvie—Ranger!
The second they got into the hallway, Dan lit into him. “You goddamn idiot, you drew those devil drawings, didn’t you!” he spat out, punching Ranger in the arm. “Those horns are a dead giveaway!”
Ranger’s eyes were wide. “It wasn’t me! I swear!”
Dan looked apoplectic. “Of course it was you.” His voice tight, dangerous. “You can’t draw, man, and everything you can’t draw is can’t-drawn the same way.” He shook Ranger’s arm, hard. “Spill it!”
“I didn’t ruin those summer pictures,” Ranger pleaded, his voice tight and high-pitched. “Honest to God I didn’t! And I didn’t mess up the wings or smash the cherub or write that graffiti message either!”
“No?” Dan’s face was now an inch from his brother’s. “You just thought devil heads would accentuate them all nicely?”
Ranger choked out a sob. Bett felt bad, even if he might be a baby psycho.
“Okay! I did do the drawings,” Ranger confessed at last. “But that’s all! It isn’t like you think. I didn’t do those other things! Everybody will think I did those other things!”
Bett looked around nervously. “We better go outside. I don’t like talking in the halls like this.”
“I can’t,” Ranger wailed. “I’m not an upperclassman!”
“Just come,” said Dan, grabbing him by the upper arm. “We’ll say you’re with us.”
“We’ll figure this out, Ranger,” Bett assured him, even though she was in no way sure. Ranger snuffled. Bett lowered her voice. “Explain to us exactly what you did do and why, and maybe we can help you.”
“Or get Bett’s mom to arrest you,” muttered Dan, and Ranger was crying, and Bett gave Dan a cool it look. Hard.
Outside, the rain had stopped, but the air was still damp.
Ranger was now in full sobbing, gulping mode. “Those drawings aren’t even devils,” he hiccupped out. “They’re about justice.”
“Dude, they’re devils,” said Dan. “Look.” He pulled out the picture Sam had dropped, and there it was, the same devil blowing flames.
“It’s not a devil,” Ranger insisted. “It’s justice.”
“What the hell are you on about?” asked Dan.
“Me and my friends knew we couldn’t take on the art destroyer. But we wanted them to know we were watching them. So we made up a symbol of justice to leave at the crime scenes.”
Bett gaped at him. “Your symbol of justice was a devil?”
“It’s not! I keep telling you! It’s a—”
“A what?” Dan demanded.
Ranger turned beet red. “A tufty-eared mountain lion of justice. Breath
ing out justice in a big breath cloud.”
“Breathing out justice in a big breath cloud?” Bett and Dan said in unison.
“Yes,” said Ranger. His tears had slowed.
“So,” said Bett, aiming for calm. “You drew a mountain lion, not a devil. To . . . scare? Yes?”—Ranger nodded—“The person doing all this wack destruction. Is that it?”
“Yes,” Ranger said again. “Cakes,” he added.
“Dammit, Ranger!” Dan was beside himself. “Don’t you know the minute you draw anything else the game is up?”
“He won’t draw a thing from now on,” said Bett. “At least, not for a while. Right, Ranger?”
“Ranger, you are a nutjob,” said Dan. “Nobody would ever guess those pictures are about justice, and if anyone suspects it was you—”
“I know!” cried Ranger. “And my fingerprints are all over the walls and the tufty-eared-mountain-lion pictures, too! And . . . and . . . Eddie knows I have those plastic knives sometimes to peel my apples with! What if they ask him if I had one the day the pictures were slashed? Why didn’t I wear gloves?” His eyes brimmed with tears again.
“Don’t worry about that, Ranger,” said Bett. “Without your prints already on file, the police won’t know it’s you. Unless you do something else stupid and get caught and my mom takes your prints for that. Then you’re screwed.”
“I won’t!” cried Ranger. “And I’ll never draw my mountain lion again!” Then he frowned. “What’ll I do in art class, though?”
“What the hell, Ranger?” Dan exploded. “Who cares about art class? Listen, douche, if anyone else makes the connection between your other stupid artwork and . . . this tufty-eared devil of righteousness or whatever, they are going to think you are the one who destroyed school property and threatened the school, and you, my brother, are in for it. On top of that, Mom and Dad will kill you. The principal will kill you. Bett’s mother will probably kill you. You are totally dead.”
“So what do I do?” Ranger wept, head bowed. “And what if the psycho finds out it’s me?”
But there was something Bett wanted to know. “How did you hide those pictures in people’s clothes?” she asked.
Ranger’s head shot up. “I have study hall first period. Me and the guys asked to go to the library and we just went to the boys’ locker room in the gym instead.”
“But why the boys’ locker room?”
“No one ever really locks their lockers,” Ranger explained, “so we could go in and put the pictures in people’s pockets. We targeted the tallest guys first. Football team. Doug because he’s such a jerk, and then Sam. For tallness.”
“He thinks that tall people are the only ones who could hang the pictures and bash the angel,” Bett explained to Dan. “Because he doesn’t believe people can stand on chairs.”
“Hey, you know what, whoever did it must have had goggles,” said Dan. “To protect their eyes from all that glass from the cherub smashing. Idiot, you should have focused on the swim team. They come with goggles.”
“Not so loud,” Bett hissed, putting her arm around Ranger’s skinny shoulders.
Dan turned to Bett. “Now we have to go to Anna’s Art League or whatever thing. Just to see what people are talking about, if anyone suspects Mountain Lion Justice Boy here or has any other ideas.”
Did he mean go together? Bett looked down and cleared her throat. “Do you know where and when it is? Did you already talk to Anna about it?”
“Yeah,” said Dan. “It’s going to be in one of the basement holes. Coyote Acres. Same stretch where Eddie threw Mutt’s phone. Tonight at seven. I’ll pick you up.”
He’ll pick me up.
Stop!
Ranger bounced on his toes. “I want to come! You guys have to let me come!”
“The hell we do,” said Dan. “You can’t be trusted to draw a circle, much less shut your mouth when you’re in front of, like, victims of the crimes. We have to see how much of a mess you’re in and figure out what’s really going on.”
“No fair!” cried Ranger, bouncing harder. “You all are an Art League and my posse’s a Justice League! We could join forcescakes.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what you should be thinking about, jagweed,” said Dan, and led his brother back into the building. “You’re the one who’s going to burn if the other kids find out you drew those devils.”
“Tufty-eared—”
“Shut up!”
Bett trailed behind, her mind off Ranger, suddenly shifting instead to tonight’s meeting. She wondered if it was going to be a gathering of Twinklers, with her and Dan as the token Stays. Better to think about that than about being in a car alone with Dan.
39
TWO YEARS AGO . . . Bett pressed play.
“I have something to tell you all,” the girl was saying. “I’m changing things up. No more cosmetics. I want to show you what I’ve found.”
And the camera panned toward the bed, upon which lay a doll. Her clothes were beautiful—an angel robe with a halo. But the doll itself was creepy as hell. No eyes in its sockets. Just staring, empty holes.
Bett shuddered.
No. I can’t. Press stop.
No way, bitch. This is what you get.
And Bett forced herself to look at the doll until anxiety and terror grew, until she had to go out of her bedroom window to one of her outside stashes and eat.
PART THREE
40
Thursday, Day Six of Grade Eleven, Late Afternoon
“WE’RE GOING TO AUNT JEANETTE’S for dinner,” Bett’s mom told her when Eddie’s bus had brought Bett home after detention. All had been quiet on that bus. Ranger and Mutt were tired out from practice, and besides, Bett and Dan had threatened Ranger within an inch of his life if he opened his mouth.
“What’s going on?” Eddie had asked, looking at Bett and Dan in the mirror, his brows furrowed. “Are you two that mad you got detention?”
“No,” Bett had said.
“We were just thinking about our wrongdoings,” Dan improvised.
Mutt grunted. “Aren’t you angels.”
“Shut up, dillhole,” said Dan.
And now here was Bett’s mother, with folded arms and that look she got on her face when Bett was in trouble. “The school office called to let me know you had detention today. We will discuss why, in detail, at Aunt Jeanette’s,” she said.
“I can’t come,” said Bett. “I have to go out. A meeting. For school.”
“Really,” said Bett’s mother. Her hair was particularly curly and pyramiddy today, what with the rain earlier. “You think you get detention and then you can just go out, la-di-da?”
“No,” said Bett. “But it’s for school. And all I got detention for was texting on the bus, and I was only texting because me and Dan didn’t want to hurt his little brother’s feelings.”
“What brought on this noble sentiment?” asked her mother.
“He . . .” Bett thought quickly. “Ranger was wearing a stupid hat, and we were trying to think of ways to talk him out of it so he wouldn’t get teased.”
Bett’s mother held out her hand for Bett’s phone. Bett forked it over and prayed.
“All right,” her mom said at last, after reading the texts. “But don’t break rules like that in the future. Even to help a little kid. And why would he be scared about a hat when you have so much else going on over there? Seriously, Bett. I talked to your principal again today. Devil drawings? Smashed glass? Why do I discuss everything with McLean before my own daughter?”
“I just got home!” Bett protested. “You know more than I do, up at the school with all your questioning. You’re the one who doesn’t tell me anything.”
Bett’s mother raised one eyebrow at her. “Be home by ten,” she said finally. Bett’s shoulders relaxed. “And quit texting when you aren’t supposed to,” she added, “or that phone becomes mine.”
41
Autumn, Thursday, Day Six of Grade Eleven, Evening<
br />
BETT WAS WAITING AT THE bottom of the slope for Dan by ten of seven. She didn’t want him to see the crazy house shack she lived in now. It was weird enough, feeling weird about Dan.
But all the weirdness left as soon as he pulled up in his mother’s station wagon. Bett half expected to see Ranger’s happy face popping up from the back seat.
“Hi,” she said awkwardly.
“Hi,” said Dan. Then: “Why don’t you get in the car?”
“Oh, right.” Bett got in the car and slammed the door. She knew this wasn’t a date or anything, but what if Dan thought she thought it was? Oh, crap. God, help me.
“How’s Ranger doing?” she asked Dan as he pulled away along the dirt road.
“Able to keep his mouth shut so far,” said Dan, driving with easy competence. “I guess that’s something for someone whose ass is, like, way on the line.”
“It is,” said Bett. “I was worried he wasn’t going to be able to take the pressure, and he’d start confessing all over the place.”
“At least now we’ll see if any of the kids at the meeting suspect anything about the little idiot,” said Dan. “Then maybe we can intercede.”
Bett nodded. Then, realizing he couldn’t see her face in the dark, she said, “Yeah,” instead. Intercede? But how?
By the time Dan and Bett reached the designated basement hole—the same one Mutt’s phone had been thrown into, ironically—everybody else was already there. Someone had thoughtfully brought a rope ladder for people to climb down, and there was a tarp spread out over the dirt, which was still wet from the morning’s rain, as well as a fire built in one of the basement corners. Bett was glad it was still humid out. She had taken another shower after she’d eaten and then let her hair dry naturally, so now it hung down her back in curls and waves. She’d used the flat iron on her bangs again, though, and she hoped they wouldn’t frizz. She’d put product on them, but still.