Overexposed

by Adrianne James

  Then she just stared at us. Not one word was said for at least two full minutes, just staring. It was becoming extremely uncomfortable.

  “Uh, Mrs. Nash—” Macy had begun to speak but Mrs. Nash held her hand up, very ‘talk to the hand’ style. Macy stopped talking and looked to Ashley and me. We had no idea what was going on either.

  “Girls, you three need to drop this silly escapade. The pictures you showed me prove nothing. The police found nothing. All you are doing is prolonging a difficult and embarrassing time in everyone’s lives. You need to tell the Sherriff you want to retract your statements. Those boys do not need a drug charge on their records, that is, if they even have them.”

  She was speaking so calmly it was as if she were giving directions on how to make cookies or something. She even lost her scowl and was smiling slightly and speaking with a soft voice. If anyone was a candidate for multiple personalities, this seemed like a prime example.

  “Jason came forward this morning. He told the truth. I won’t take back my statement.” I stood up grabbed my bag and walked to the door. When I opened it, I turned back to face a very red faced Mrs. Nash and said “They were dealing drugs to kids, they deserve to have a drug charge on their records, and in my opinion, you deserve to be charged with something for hiding those pictures, and lying to the police.”

  Ashley and Macy stood up at that point, and met me at the door. We linked arms and closed the door behind us as we walked out into the hallway.

  ***

  The final bell rang, and Ashley and I were still cleaning up all the materials she had brought in to rebuild her sculpture. I hadn’t attempted to redo my own, but the teacher let me know that it was okay if I helped Ashley rebuild hers.

  When the whole classroom had emptied, the door opened again. Looking up I saw Macy and Jason step in, and close the door behind them.

  “Hey, what are you two doing in here?” Ashley and I put the last two pieces of fabric away in her big pink kit. It was an old toolbox that she spray-painted pink and covered in stickers. She called it her UFO box because all of her Un-Finished Objects were stored in it. When a project was complete, the box was empty. She said it helped to keep her organized.

  “Thought you might want to walk home together,” Jason said as he grabbed a broom to help sweep up. I could tell he was trying to be nice, especially to Ashley because of what had happened with her project.

  “Yeah, Jason found me in the hall and mentioned it. I thought it might be a good idea since we have no idea what is going on with Brock or Nate,” Macy said.

  “Sounds good to me, thanks for thinking of us,” Ashley said.

  I just smiled at my brother and he smiled back. Once the room was back to its normal state, we grabbed our bags and left.

  The front doors opened, the bright sunlight hitting us, making us all squint. That was the funny part about winter; you almost needed sunglasses more in the winter than the summer because when it was sunny, the light would reflect off the white snow. Looking up was out of the question because of the sun. All you could do would be to wear sunglasses or squint, looking straight ahead.

  “Do you know if Sheriff found anything?” Jason asked after a few minutes. We were all pretty wired, looking around in every direction to make sure that no one was following us or planning to do anything else to us. We were headed in a direction that we weren’t used to going because we had to take Macy home first, then walk all the way back to our house.

  “Nope, he pulled us in to the office to ask if we could think of anything, besides that, I did find out that Mrs. Nash is a royal bitch.” Jason laughed, a full out belly laugh. It was nice to hear and of course turned a bit contagious because soon we were all laughing hysterically.

  We dropped Macy off then turned around to head back towards the square. I wanted to check in on Dellighla’s. I had not been able to go back and talk to her since the day when we were looking for new dresses and that felt like so long ago. Plus, I thought that maybe with the shop closing, she might need a day or two of help packing, boxing, and moving everything. Any little bit I could earn at that point would be really helpful.

  JASON ONLY COMPLAINED a little bit about having to go into a girly store, as he put it. Once I explained why I wanted to go, he shut up and was more than willing, hoping he would be able to snag a position as well.

  Pushing open the glass door, the little bell rang. The store looked sparse and I was sure that meant that we were out of luck. Dellighla came out from the back and embraced Ashley and I in a hug.

  “How have you two been? How was the dance? How was the date?” She wiggled her eyebrows at Ashley for the last part, but her smile soon fell when Ashley’s face did.

  The next twenty minutes were spent going over the past week and finally getting to talk about what had been bothering us with someone who wasn’t directly involved and didn’t need anything from us.

  “Oh my goodness! I had no idea that was still going on!” Dellighla exclaimed. She reached forward and patted my hand then began to pack up some more boxes with unsold merchandise.

  “What do you mean still?” Jason asked. He was right, she said still, as if it wasn’t a shock or something.

  “When I was in school the varsity team sold pills and pot. It wasn’t a lot, at least that I knew of, but they did. I remember Vance, the captain at the time, telling me how he was making a killing, getting it cheap from a teacher and selling at a premium. I think he was trying to impress me or something? I don’t know. I just left him standing there and never spoke to him again. I am sorry you kids are mixed up in all this.”

  “Did he say which teacher? Maybe they are still there?” Ashley asked hoping up from her seat.

  “No, sorry. But Vance still lives in town, over on Milford Street. Just two houses past the corner of South Mt. View.”

  We all said thanks as we ran out the door. We had to get to the Sheriff, if this Vance guy could just tell him what was going on back when he was in school and which teacher was supplying, then maybe this whole thing could finally be over.

  We went straight home and before I even put my bag down, I had the phone in my hands. I had Jason run to the kitchen to get the Sheriff’s number and he yelled it out from there.

  With shaky hands, I dialed each number. The phone rang in my ear and I tried to calm myself down. It could lead to nothing and we could still be at a dead end...but it could lead to everything and this could all be over.

  “Sheriff’s Department, Deputy Maxwell speaking.”

  “Deputy Max, hi, it’s Vi. Could I speak to the Sheriff please? It’s important.” I was bouncing from foot to foot. Ashley and Jason were standing just a foot away from where I was watching the phone like it was a television, waiting to see what would happen next.

  “Sorry, Vi. He isn’t in. Can I take a message?”

  “Can you ask him to call me as soon as he can. I think I might know something that can help.”

  “Will do,” Max said a bit hastily. Then the line clicked off. I hung up the phone and sat down on the wooden floor, leaning against the wall under the old corded phone.

  “He wasn’t there,” I told them. They sighed and sat down as well.

  “What do we do now?”

  “We wait for the Sheriff to call back. Besides that? I think we have some homework to work on.”

  “Or, we could go down to Vance’s house ourselves and ask him who it was,” Jason suggested. He was smiling at us as if he just suggested the best idea in the world. All I could think was this guy at least used to be into drugs, who knew how much he had taken himself or if he was just selling like Jason was without testing the stuff out.

  “Don’t you think that might be a little, I don’t know, dangerous?” Ashley asked him. She was looking at him like he was nuts, and I think I might have been too.

  “Maybe, maybe not. Would you rather sit around and wait for the police to do something about it? Because they have been so very helpful up until this point.” />
  “You talk as if you have not been living this nightmare for the past week, like you weren’t part of it.” Ashley stood up, and was yelling at him. I was rather impressed.

  “She has a point, Jason,” I said.

  “I know she does, but you guys didn’t think that maybe being the brother of the ‘narc’ was a bit hard to handle with them? Forget it, the sooner this whole damn thing is over, the sooner we can stop watching our every move. We can go back to normal. And what if the Sheriff doesn’t call back? What then?”

  “I think we should go,” I said, looking at Ash. Her mouth dropped open and she shook her head. “You don’t have to come. It’s probably safer that way, I mean if something happens, you can tell people where we went.”

  I grabbed Jason’s arm and was pulling him to the front door before Ashley could respond. The corner of Milford and South Mt. View was only a few blocks away from our house. Which was a good thing, if it was much longer than that I might have lost my nerve.

  Vance’s house was one of the better-kept homes in the miner’s part of town. There weren’t any obvious signs of the house falling apart like some of the others, and all the windows looked to be in one piece.

  Jason and I stood on the sidewalk, staring at the house before I felt my little brother grab my hand and pull me forward. We walked up the stairs, one at a time, and stood before the large wooden door on the wraparound porch.

  I lifted my hand and knocked on the door. After about thirty seconds, I couldn’t believe I was standing there, on the doorstep of a one-time drug dealer. I had to be insane. “Okay, not here, let’s go!” I tried to pull Jason off the steps with me, but he wouldn’t budge.

  “Vi, don’t chicken out now. Just chill out. Listen, footsteps.” He was right, I could hear the heavy footfalls racing to the door.

  The door swung open, and while I was expecting to see a large man standing before me, I found two little ones instead. I had seen the twins around before, and I knew exactly who their father was, I apparently just didn’t know his first name was Vance. Mr. McCall was our car guy. Anytime our car would act up Dad would call Mr. McCall, and he would come down to the house and fix it. Most of the time, he would do it for a plate of cookies that Mom and I had made.

  “Jason!” The boys screeched and attached to his legs. Jason may be a jerk to me most of the time, but he was great with kids. When Mr. McCall had a broken leg, Mom would pick the kids up from day care, and then Jason took the boys to the park and played ball with them.

  “Marcus! Craig! What are you two up to?” he asked, lifting one leg at a time, inciting giggles from the four-year-old twins.

  Mr. McCall came running down the stairs yelling for the boys. When he spotted Jason and me, he stopped and smiled. “Oh, Vi, Jason, what are you two doing here? Your Dad’s car giving him grief again?”

  “No, not this time. I think we need to talk to you though. We were sent to this house to speak with a man named Vance. Is that your first name?”

  He just laughed and nodded his head. “Yes, that is me. Come on in and we can talk in here while the kids play. Their mother is still at work and someone snuck them a bucket of sugar to make them super hyper today just for me.”

  The kids ran off to their playroom and the three of us sat down in the living room. It wasn’t a large room, much like every other house in the neighborhood, but it was cozy. They had a fire going in the fireplace, and the couch and chairs actually matched. There were some toys lying around, but what else is expected from a house with twin boys?

  “So, who sent you down here?” Mr. Blake, Vance, asked.

  “Well, sir, the thing is, Dellighla sent us down. We told her some of the things going on at the school and how it is affecting us, and she said you might be able to help clear up some of the confusion going on,” Jason said. He clasped his hands and unclasped them, he looked at the table and the chair and the fire, anywhere but at Mr. McCall.

  “What is going on?” his voice changed to a slow and steady rhythm. He knew what we were referring to but before he divulged any information, he was making sure that we were talking about the same thing. The only reason I knew was that I had used the same tactic on Mom and Dad since I was ten.

  So I once again told the story. Each time I told it I felt as though I was getting farther and farther from it, like it was a story from a book that I was just reading to someone else. Mr. McCall just sat and listened. When I finished, he still said nothing.

  He stood and walked over to the stairs and lifted his ear a bit, checking for sounds from the twins before coming back and sitting down. Jason and I didn’t speak. We didn’t know what else to say.

  “Kids. A long time ago, I made some very bad choices. Choices that I am not proud of and would never wish on anyone. I applaud you, Jason, for getting out before you really got pulled in. I hate to say it, but we didn’t even need the money as a family back then. At least your intentions were genuine. Mine were purely selfish.”

  “So it’s true? The team was selling back then? Do you think it could be the same person supplying them?”

  “Could be. But, I will say that I am not going to talk to you two about this. I will go to the Sheriff as soon as my wife gets home. That way nothing is lost in translation. I hope it all works out for you two.” He stood and we followed his lead.

  When we got home, Ashley was sitting on the front porch. In the freezing weather. Like a numskull.

  “Oh, thank God, you two are back! I was so worried!” She ran over, and wrapped her arms around both of us, and hugged tightly.

  “Sorry to worry you. It was fine. Vance is Mr. McCall. Can you believe it?” We all went inside and pealed off our outer layers and started in on our homework at the dining room table.

  “Mr. McCall is Vance? Mr. McCall sold drugs?” Ashley asked after a few minutes.

  “Yeah, he said he was going to go to the Sheriff tonight to talk to him. Hopefully, that will be enough to end all this craziness.”

  We were all in agreement on that, and fell silent to work on regular teenager stuff—homework and chores.

  WHILE SITTING AROUND the television after dinner, there was a knock on the door. Dad got up to answer it, and Ashley cursed under her breath before running around to collect her things. Apparently, she was still on house arrest and was not supposed to be over.

  “Ashley, your father is here,” Dad called from the doorway.

  “Coming! Sorry, sorry! I forgot.” With that she raced out of the house and the door closed behind her. I really hoped once Mr. McCall came forward with whatever it was that he knew things would go back to normal all around, meaning my best friend was actually allowed to hang out with me.

  Dad hadn’t even made it back in the room when there was another knock on the door. Expecting it to be Ashley and her father, Dad swung the door open and said something about forgetting she sorta lived here too, only to stop mid-sentence.

  “Mr. Blake, have you seen Brock? I know a lot is going on right now, and I am one of the last people you want to see, but we can’t find him anywhere. His car is in the driveway and all of his stuff is still at the house, but he isn’t. We called all of his friends too, and no one has seen him.” I could hear the worry in Brock’s mom’s voice.

  “No, Anita, I am sorry, I haven’t seen him since this morning at the Sherriff’s station. Just a second.” Dad came into the room and asked both Jason and I if we had seen him.

  “I saw him leave in his car from school grounds this morning. That’s it,” I said. Dad nodded and went back to the door to relay the message. I stood up and started to get my shoes on. I had a gut feeling I knew where Brock was.

  After Brock’s mother left, I headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Dad asked.

  “I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back.” I grabbed a flashlight from the cabinet and my jacket from the hook.

  “With everything going on and now Brock missing, you are going out alone? Are you insane? No. It is no
t happening. Whatever it is can wait till the morning.” Dad stood with his arms across his chest.

  “But it can’t. What if Jason went with me? Jason, think you could go for a walk with me?” Jason was up, and getting ready before I even finished asking, and my Dad just chewed on his bottom lip. He was considering his options, but I knew he would let us go.

  “Don’t tell your mother I said you could go, and you call me every fifteen minutes to check in.” I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and Jason and I were out the door.

  “You want to tell me where we are going?” Jason asked as we power walked down the dark street. The flashlight that lit our path kept making the dogs bark and people stick their heads through the curtains of their windows. Small town folk like us don’t have street lights, why should we, there isn’t any crime at all. Yeah, right.

  “I think I know where Brock is, and if he is hiding out there, something is wrong.” We turned off onto Libby Street. Libby was the outer most street and lined the mountain and woods. It also was the only way to get to the old mine shaft access point.

  “You want to go find the guy who has been torturing you, and has been threatening both of us, in the dark? Do you hear yourself?” Jason grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop.

  “Look, I know it sounds insane, but if he is hiding, it’s because he is scared. Maybe we can get him to confess, and tell the Sheriff what adult is supplying him. Maybe they are threatening him, as well. I know it sounds nuts, but I just feel like I have to go, okay?” I stepped off the sidewalk and climbed under an old wooden log fence. I turned to look at my brother who was staring at me.

  “You are crazy. You’re going to the old mine! What the hell, Vi?”

  I let out a long sigh then put my hands on my hips. I couldn’t see him because he was pointing the flashlight right at me, but I could just imagine what his face would look like.