by Jesse Grey
“That’s good.” Ben brightened his face with a sudden smile. “You should focus on yourself.”
“And you should too.” Bridge pulled him into a great bear hug, clapping Ben’s back thrice in succession. “You’re coming out. Enjoy it.”
“I will do my best.” Ben stated, and really meaning it.
“Hey, my birthday is next week. I think I should have a party. With everything going on, I want to celebrate while I still can. You should come.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.” He laughed. “I’ll let you know the details later.”
“Alright, thanks.” Ben beamed again, before saying, “Hey, you need a ride?”
Just before Bridge was going to politely reject his offer, a certain Jeep rolled right up to them, carrying Bridge’s three best friends.
“Thanks, but I’ve got it covered.”
“Right. I should’ve figured your squad had already been assem-bled.”
His chest rumbled with light laughter. “We’re a ride or die sort of squad.”
He just laughed back at Bridge as the teen approached the Wran-gler. “Enjoy freedom, Bridge.”
Ben went to walk away, to head back over to his car when Bridge called back, “Ben,” A look thrown over his shoulder until his eyes met Bridge’s once again. “You enjoy your freedom too.”
Their smiling exchange wasn’t excruciatingly lengthy, but Ben could feel the surge of their lasting and former chemical reaction as they slipped into their respective vehicles.
Bridge was met with vibrant smiles of his friends, stares of thank-God-you’re-alright and we’ve-missed-you.
“Welcome back, jailbait.”
“Not funny.” Bridge hid a smile after throwing the statement up to Mercer in the driver’s seat.
“You’re really free?” Abram asked, draping an arm over Bridge’s shoulder from the seat next to him.
“Free as can be.”
“So, what do we do now?”
The question Alex proposed swam around the foursome for a few moments, Bridge nodding when the answer came to his lips without restraint. “Now we wait for Dagger to find Paige.”
Kirby didn’t want to be spying on her mother. It just so happened that Athena had answers to burning questions in which her daughter was too petrified to solicit.
It was the next evening following Bridge’s release, and her moth-er had just received a phone call from Detective Dagger, and Kirby was shamelessly listening from the kitchen after school, Athena droning on in the living room when someone rapped on the kitch-en’s conveniently placed side door of the restored Victorian. The sensation startled Kirby, the fright shuddering her subtle core, quick-ly running over to the door and opening it to see it’s yet to be re-vealed suitor.
“Hey,” Salem bore his usually sloppy, charming simper.
“Shh, just get in here.”
Pulling Salem into the kitchen, she quietly closed the door and mosied her way back to her eavesdropping rendezvous point.
“Kirby, what are you—”
“Be quiet!” She hushed incessantly, a hand up that supplicated his silence.
Drawing a huge breath within himself, Salem walked over and hunched next to Kirby as she hung off the door frame, harkening at her mother’s continued telephone discussion from the slightly ajar kitchen door.
“Alston, this is serious,” Her mother’s voice echoed the worry and doubt that her words spoke of, enabling intrigue to devour Kirby’s gathering thoughts. “You know how important that file is, and you’re just leaving it in your office?”
The file. No wonder Kirby hadn’t found its new safe hiding place when she had upturned the house a second time. Athena had turned it over to Detective Dagger. If he knew about the file, then that’s probably what her mother had previously meant about Blanche’s post-mortem findings being handled.
“Is your mom dating that detective dude that ruined the funeral?”
Closing the kitchen door to shut off her mother from them, Kir-by nodded. “She is, but that’s not why I was snooping on the call.”
“So you’re free now then? Because we should catch up.”
Kirby’s reply evaporated when the kitchen door gave way and Athena sauntered into the cutlery cavern. Her mother eyed Salem quickly, unbeknownst to the intrusion of company.
“Oh, Salem. I didn’t know you were coming over.”
“Sorry, Ms. Wheaton.” Salem inflicted in his best proper-young-gentleman baritone. It’d been many moons since Kirby had wit-nessed him using it, especially on her mother. The memories it brought to the very start of her recollect singed the edges of her sen-timents. “It wasn’t planned. Just figured I’d pop by.”
“It’s good to have you back around here, Salem.” Athena boasted. “Maybe you can stay over while I’m out.”
Alarms deafened Kirby’s auditory senses. “Out?”
The Wheaton breadwinner reiterated with the stern ricocheting of her head. “Alston and I are going to dinner. Assuming you can scrounge something up for you and Salem here? I can leave some money for you to order takeout.”
“I can whip something up.” Salem snickered. “You know how Kirby is around a kitchen.”
She shot him a glare that told him to shut up, which he gladly did as she took the time to truly hear her mother's earlier claims. Kirby couldn’t escape the sheer euphoria radiating along the lines of Athe-na’s upturned smirk. And if her mother was having dinner with Dagger, he’d be absent from his office…
“Go have dinner with your beau, Mom. That’s great.”
“Since when?” Athena laughed sharply. “I thought you had reser-vations about Alston and I.”
“If you’re happy, then I’m all for it.” She grinned enthusiastically. “The only reservation in question is yours with the great detective.”
Chuckling openly to the room, Athena agreed as she started her exit from the kitchen. “I’m just going to grab my good heels and I’ll be on my way to the restaurant.”
“Are you talking about the gold Circus City Spiked Peep-Toe Pumps?”
“Kirby, we’re headed to a five-star restaurant.” Athena guffawed. “Damn right I’m wearing my enchanted Louboutins.”
Shaking his head as Athena retreated from the kitchen, Salem let a few simple chortles slip from the outstretched oval he made as the laughter found him.
“You and your mom. I almost forgot how much fashion talk you two exchange.” His shoulders shimmied with continued amusement. “So, it’s been a while. Where do you wanna reminisce?”
“We’re not staying, so our reunion is going to be delayed.”
Confusion spread like an infection on Salem’s face, a virus of un-settled feelings driving his eyebrows upwards. “Meaning?”
A sly stab of mischievousness finely tuned her features, changing her attribute from elated to ferociously determined.
“How do you feel about breaking into the office of a police sta-tion?”
Almost an hour later, Salem was following Kirby up the steps of the Armor Falls Police Station. Having not been in Armor Falls for even a full two weeks, all Salem really wanted to do was talk to Kirby, as opposed to possibly committing a crime.
In the past year since Kirby had left Manhattan, several primeval moments had lapsed in his life that were unspoken on a critical level, because his heart was too laden to recite.
There was the adoption thing. To label the restraint of knowing a child harboring the DNA that conjoined them, and knowing they inhabited the same city, and not tracking him down as difficult, was the most severe of understatements. Salem had always wanted to be a dad, and it wasn’t that the decision to give him up was a resolution of regret. The hardship stemmed from the notion that he had a son, but he still remained as a man who couldn’t carry the rubric of father.
Then there was the father thing. His father. Actually, it was quite preferred that things had been vastly chaotic. It kept Kirby’s studies about why Zeus Simon hadn’t accompani
ed the rest of his family to New Hampshire in a dark corner that remained, as he wanted; unex-plored.
Lastly, perfecting the trilogy of turmoil of Salem Simon, was the thing concerning his sister, Sahalia. His sister, Holly, as he had nick-named her since they both were very little light-hearted adolescents, was the very reason behind their united resolve to move to Armor Falls. It was because of Sahalia that their mother had signed on to work for Hendrick Shadows at Arclan Asylum.
These sort of things were topics he would love to go over with Kirby, if some more than others. And he’d much rather enjoy think-ing about enacting those sordid altercations more than he favored sneaking into the office of a police detective.
“Kirby,” Salem ushered as they began to ascend the steps of Ar-mor Falls Police Department, eyebrows shivering with bubbling cau-tion. “Have you developed a need for danger since you left New York?”
“It’s not a big deal. And this is important.” Kirby countered, mimicking her mother’s earlier dissertation, her verbal reflexes pre-meditated and wickedly jagged.
“How important?”
“Life or death, Salem. Trust me. I just need you to create some sort of distraction so I can slither into Dagger’s office undetected.”
“Fine. I got you covered.”
When they parted the sea of mahogany that consisted of the doors to the police station, Salem threw a hand to his chest, gripping the material of his dark gray button up that hid the vital organ from the naked eye. In a split second prior to attention falling of both of them, Kirby side-stepped away from him, walking casually as Salem flopped on the floor, clawing the carpet and wailing for assistance. The officers went for him just as Kirby discreetly slipped into the office belonging to Alston Dagger without being seen by the three available cops on duty.
She allowed herself a moment to be scared. Kirby was inside Dagger’s office. Alone. And someone, any one of the officers, could determine that Salem was fine, that he was stalling, and find her rummaging in the renowned detective’s professional dwelling seeking answers.
Her fear-filled pause was over. Kirby leapt into action, a kinetic fury of movement as she went headfirst into Dagger’s desk. It began with tossing aside papers and disregarding take-out menus and end-ed with Kirby finding a manila folder in one of the top drawers un-derneath a mound of Almond Joy wrappers. Apparently her mother wasn’t the only delicacy Alston Dagger indulged in from time to time.
Plucking the folder from its candy crumb grave, Kirby flipped the file open. Of course, one thing she had expected was still true. This was the patient history file on Frankie Ellery.
The file read like a modern horror movie. It told of how the six-teen year old butchered her parents and two siblings in the middle of the night with a meticulously dull knife. Then she went back to sleep for a few hours, resting up before fleeing, and then being found by Armor Falls Police hours later.
But that wasn’t the most unbelievable part about Frankie Ellery’s Arclan file. Not when Kirby saw the date in which the young mur-deress had committed the act in question, and the estimated time in which it had taken place.
She shoved the file back into its place underneath its candy wrapper drapery, stealthily emerging from Dagger’s dungeon as Salem was attempting to persuade the officers that he dubbed his heart pain as an over exaggerated false alarm.
“Salem?” Kirby said in mock surprise, catching his eye and hop-ing he played along. “What are you doing here?”
“Ms. Wheaton?” An officer Kirby recognized regarded her with an inquisitive tilt of his taut head, an unspoken question lingering in the squeezed space between his eyebrows. “We didn’t see you come in.”
“Yeah, I stopped by to see if my mom was here.”
“Alston left with her almost an hour ago.” he nodded.
“Just missed them then.” Seeing the fading smile from her friend’s devilish features settled her worry, knowing that he knew where she was headed with their fake ailment. “Salem, are you okay?”
“Oh, I’m fine.” He threw a wrist in the air to solidify his adequate health. “I think I just forgot to breathe for a minute.”
“You should get home.” Kirby ambled closer to him, going so far as to wrap her arm around him before easing a look back toward the open-eyed officers. “I'll take good care of him, I promise. If he’s still in pain, we’ll head to the hospital first thing in the morning.”
They got out with minimal additional questions, gratitude be-tween them as they strutted over to Salem’s Eclipse. It wasn’t until they were both in the car that Salem glanced over at her, seeing the palpable dread beating against her cool skin.
“Kirby, I know we haven’t been able to talk, but now would be a great time to explain what’s happening here. If dating this guy, if da-ting Mercer, is dragging you into this Sumner Shadows case…”
“You know?”
“Of course I know, Kirby. Google can do wonders when you know what to look for. Look, Mercer and his friends—”
“Mercer and his friends, my friends, aren’t the ones that got me involved, okay?”
She didn’t want to tell Salem anything, she shouldn't. But Kirby had convinced him to drive her out to the police station. On some subconscious, deeply buried level, Kirby felt like she needed Salem to know...something. Faith and Willa, they knew about the stalker. They didn’t, however, know about Emmy Walker or anything re-volving around Frankie Ellery. No one but her knew about Frankie Ellery.
“You can talk to me,” Salem’s voice sounded muffled, like he was far away as opposed to sitting in the driver’s seat next to her. “You can trust me.”
“I saw Sumner the night before school started, before I knew an-ything about him or his friends. That’s what started all of this. I was out taking pictures and I caught one with him in it. And since he had been missing for six months…” Kirby sighed, cracking her fingers as nerves boiled among her veins. “It’s why I had to come here tonight. It all goes back to Sumner.” She scoffed. “It always does.”
“Okay.” Reaching over, Salem grabbed one of her hands and slid his fingers across her knuckles. “Maybe I don’t understand, and I don’t know all the details. But you can tell me in due time. I’m still here for you. Always.”
“God, I’ve missed you.” She chuckled sarcastically, a tear slipping past her defenses. “But you’ve gotten sappy since Manhattan.”
Laughing, he just agreed with her, the bobbing of his head filling the silence in the car along with his hitched hilarity. “Yeah, I guess I have. Just tell me one thing, and I’ll follow you into the dark, Death Cab For Cutie style.”
A grin bruised her lips as she shook her head. “Okay.”
Salem had no idea what he was agreeing to, what he could possi-bly be signing up for by reassociating with her. She supposed she should have disclosed the full terms and conditions of what it meant to be back in her life, about every little detail about Kirby Wheaton that Sumner Shadows had altered with his antics of dire destruction, but she needed this. She needed Salem by her side again. Like old times. Kirby needed some normalcy amidst the detached feeling that had taken over her life since she’d moved to Armor Falls.
“What did you find in that detective’s office?”
Salem witnessed an entire glow ebb its way through Kirby’s de-meanor, a sneer quick on her lips, a sharp side-eye glance in his di-rection.
She said, “A lead.”
The planning of his upcoming eighteenth birthday was keeping them all busy, much to Bridge’s appreciation. A lot had been muddled since Bridge’s arrest and subsequent release. School was thrashing them through the academic mud, basketball tryouts were soon, and the police still hadn’t found anything about where Paige was or any further incriminating evidence associated with her motive. So focusing on his Halloween birthday bash was a good way to wind down from all the crazy.
“Quit saying no, it’s a great theme.” Bridge was telling his friends as they sat in the sunroom of the moderate M
eadows residence. “And it’s my birthday party, isn’t it?”
“You can’t have a Día de los Muertos themed party, Bridge.” Alex declared, swiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “It’s in terrible taste, with what our lives entail.”
“I happen to have great taste, thank you.”
“So, since we’re talking about taste, should I mention Ben right now or…?”
“Fuck off, Meadows.”
All of them did the ritual of barking in a few choice chortles, Bridge even taking them up on their cue and joining in on the fanat-ic guffaws his friends were emitting around him.
“Just kidding, B.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Bridge nodded at Mercer, sipping on the strawber-ry lemonade that Clay had made upon their arrival. “Seriously though. My birthday is on Halloween. Día de los Muertos is a great theme for the party.”
“Aren’t we surrounded by a heavy amount of death without a Day of the Dead themed birthday party?”
“It’s just face paint and costumes, Alex. I love everything the tra-ditions of Día de los Muertos hold, and I think it’s a nice nod to my heritage. Anyway, it’s cool, right Abe?”
“Yeah, it’s awesome.” Immediately after such a response, Alex el-bowed his boyfriend in the ribs, which elicited Abram to amend his earlier statement, saying, “I mean, it is a little morbid.”
“Oh, what do you know. You’re blinded by sex.”
“That’s rude.” Alex scoffed, clearly not taking the comment to heart by his small laugh.
“I’m definitely not blinded by sex and I think reconsidering the theme might be a good idea.”
“No, you don’t count either. Blinded by virginity.”
“Fuck off, Mathison.”
Another round of merriment struck them as Clay walked into the sunroom, smiling at them as he garnered their communal heed. And he had someone with him.