“What should I do? This feels weird.”
“I don’t know. Recite your ABCs or count to a hundred. I just want to be able to hear your voice.” The desperation in my own voice surprised me.
“Okay, let me see what I’ve got.” I heard some shuffling around on the other end. “You like poetry?”
“Yeah, sure.” I wondered if it was something he’d written.
“This one’s called ‘The Highwayman’ by Alfred Noyes.” He cleared his throat. “The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees. The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas. The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, and the highwayman came riding—riding—riding—The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door….”
I’d never heard the poem before, but I began to get into the story of this outlawed highwayman and his clandestine affair with the innkeeper’s black-eyed daughter. It ended horribly for both of them. She shot herself to warn him that the law was waiting for him inside her bedroom, and upon hearing of her death, he returned to the inn with a vengeance, only to be shot down in the street.
The story itself was sad enough, but the way Dare recited it nearly broke my heart. Even in his unhappiness, his voice spoke to me on a frequency all its own. I could listen to him recite terms and conditions and be utterly entranced.
I was about halfway to his house when he finished, and I asked him to read it again. It was no less moving the second time around. Dare greeted me at the door with a Bluetooth in his ear and a thick anthology of poetry balanced in both hands.
“One of my favorites.” He snapped the book shut. “I don’t feel much different. Dizzy and a little hyper, but it’s hard to say if it’s from the drugs.”
I asked to see the pills in question, and Dare led me upstairs to Mason’s room. He told me his parents were making arrangements for the service that was to take place in two days. Principal Thornton had said anyone who wanted to attend would receive an excused absence.
There were six and a half pills in an off-brand ziplock bag—the half was the remainder of the one Dare took—on Mason’s bed. I spent a few minutes searching on my phone as to what they might be based on their shape and coloring but found too many options to be able to narrow it down.
“We should still take these to the police,” I told him.
“Give them to your mom. She’ll know what to do.”
I took that as a note of confidence on his part. I glanced around Mason’s room, taking it in. It still smelled like a teenage boy with the lingering scent of Mason’s musk in the air. His clothes were scattered here and there, a belt thrown over his desk chair, textbooks stacked on the side of his desk, and an essay on springs pollution marked up for a rewrite in red pen. Mason’s bed was still unmade, and I wondered if Dare had been sleeping there. I didn’t ask.
“Where did you find them?”
Dare pulled back the curtain, where high up on the cloth a small pocket was sewn into the underside of it. I recalled the special pocket in Dare’s jeans.
“You sew?” I asked.
Dare shrugged. “I had to learn to sew pockets or else wear this really embarrassing fanny pack to carry my EpiPen. I can make costumes too.”
“Do you have a maid?” The room looked mostly untouched.
“A cleaning service. They come tomorrow.”
“Didn’t GPD search the room?”
“They searched both our rooms, but they don’t know Mason’s hiding spots, and I wasn’t allowed in to show them.”
GPD must have been careful in their search not to disturb anything unnecessarily. And it sounded like they were treating Dare as a suspect. Surely it must bother him, but he didn’t comment any further on it.
“The pills could be something like ibuprofen or muscle relaxers.” Though it was suspicious that Mason, presumably, would go through the trouble of concealing them and their identity. “Any euphoria?” I studied Dare’s eyes to see if they were dilated. I was no doctor, but they looked fine to me.
“Not much, but it’s kind of hard to tell. I don’t know what’s normal anymore.”
I knew exactly what he meant. After my dad died, I was so full of emotions—anger, mostly. I dealt with the pain by picking fights with everyone I knew, including my mom. I smashed a kid’s nose for saying my dad probably did it to get out of paying child support. That was when my mom made me go to counseling.
“How are you feeling now, Dare?” I asked, and I didn’t mean as a result of the drugs.
He slumped down on the edge of Mason’s bed and drew the comforter into his lap. He buried his face in it for a moment, then looked up at me with sorrowful eyes. “So many things. Right now, though, I feel stupid. Mason was doing drugs? For how long? Why didn’t he tell me? I knew he’d been hiding things from me. And where was he even going Friday night? Why wouldn’t he tell me on the phone when I asked?”
“You asked?”
“Yes, I was pissed. I told him I was sick of him blowing me off whenever he felt like it. It was our birthday, and didn’t that mean anything to him? I laid it on thick, Charlie. I was a real asshole.”
Dare didn’t sound like an asshole to me, more like justifiably irritated, but I wasn’t there to make the call on who was in the wrong. “And what did Mason say?”
“He told me not to get my panties twisted. That he’d only be a half hour or so. He gave me his order to put in for him at Waffle Kingdom so the food would be ready when he got there. He was always starving after practice.”
“Did you put it in?”
“Yes, even though I was pissed, I didn’t want him to go hungry.”
Dare could put aside personal slights and still take care of his brother’s needs. That wasn’t something someone intent on murder would do, as far as I could tell.
“What did you order?” I’d check in on Waffle Kingdom to make sure Dare was telling the truth.
“Waffle fries with a side of bacon and sausage for Mason and a two-egg breakfast for me, eggs over easy, white toast, no butter.”
“You watching your weight, Dare?” That question was more out of curiosity than anything else.
“Fatty food upsets my stomach. And if I ate waffles every time Mason and I went to Waffle Kingdom, I’d be big as a house.”
So Waffle Kingdom was Mason’s choice in restaurants, not Dare’s. I turned over their conversation in my mind. Mason must have gotten a call toward the end of practice, and he pushed off plans with Dare to make an unexpected stop. Perhaps the drugs were part of it, and that’s why Mason didn’t want to tell Dare where he was going.
But that was impossible, because GPD had Mason’s phone records. The only call came from Dare, and none of Mason’s texts suggested a change in plans or a spontaneous meet-up.
Which meant if the murderer communicated with Mason that night, it had to be in person or through other channels.
“You think he might have been going to pick up drugs?” I asked Dare.
He shrugged. “An hour ago I would have said no, but now….” He stared out the window, and the light reflected as tiny squares in his eyes. “I drove by there, Charlie. Right at the time when….” He squeezed his eyes shut, perhaps trying to stave off the image of his brother’s decapitated head. It had been assaulting me at random intervals as well. “I could have saved him. I could have….” He punched the pillow in his lap, then shook his head in frustration. There were no tears this time, just a shuddering, frustrated wail. I sat down and wrapped an arm around him. I didn’t want to make this about myself, but I wanted to let him know I understood a little bit what he was going through.
“When my dad killed himself, I asked myself so many questions. Why would he do that to us? What was so awful about his life that he would end it? Did he think of me when he was putting the rope around his neck? Did he know the last time we saw each other that he was going to take his own life? I can’t answer any of those questions, Dare. Even now. And it kills me.” My whole body tensed up as an agi
tated feeling rose from the depths like ashes stirred in the wind. The sense of betrayal had taken root inside me, and it felt fresh, even after all this time.
“Does it ever get better?” he asked.
I wanted to give him hope, but I’d already resolved not to lie to him.
“Maybe. It hasn’t for me.”
He nodded and exhaled deeply.
“I’m probably not the best person to be giving advice.” I started to stand, and Dare grabbed my arm to hold me there.
“You’re the only person I can talk to about this. My parents are too devastated, and my friends….” He drifted off again and had a wild look about him. I wondered if it was the drugs finally kicking in. “I can’t trust them.” He shook his head. “Not even Joey. I feel like they’re all lying to me. Hiding things from me to protect Mason. But it’s too late. We failed him. I failed him.”
What a terrible feeling that must be. Even though it wasn’t true, I couldn’t convince him otherwise. I knew from experience it was impossible. Dare couldn’t be rational about this, but I could. I’d help him sort fact from fiction. “You can trust me, Dare.”
He leaned his head on my shoulder and rubbed against me like a cat until I put an arm around him.
For comfort only.
I DIDN’T want to leave Dare alone in case whatever he’d taken started messing with him, but neither of us really wanted to stay cooped up in his house with all of Mason’s half-finished projects, which only served to remind Dare of all the things he’d never get to do or experience with his brother. No wonder he’d had trouble sleeping.
I suggested we go back to the school so I could talk to Coach Gundry and Peter Orr. Wrestling practice should just be finishing up. I told Dare he could walk the track, but he wanted to come with me.
“I want to see their faces,” he said. “That way I can tell if they’re lying to me.”
I thought about sharing with Dare how difficult it was to tell if people were lying, and often innocent people were thought to be guilty because of their nervous tics and profuse sweating under duress. But if Dare wanted to feel useful, I wasn’t going to stop him.
I’d had Coach Gundry for Well-Fit (Wellness & Fitness) as a sophomore. He was in his early thirties and an Eastview alum himself. Even though he was young as far as teachers go, he didn’t talk much about himself or try to act “cool” like some of the other younger teachers. He was a no-nonsense kind of guy with a real mind for stats, not just sports stats but times and weights and conversions. He knew all the championships the school sports teams had won throughout his career at Eastview High, and he often knew the team’s winning scores. It was kind of incredible, his level of recall.
After requesting a meeting with Coach, Dare and I waited for him in his classroom, where there were posters of human anatomy, including a diagram of a pregnant woman with a fetus. Those pictures always intrigued me, a body within a body, incubating there like a tiny alien before sliding out into the world.
Dare caught me looking at the poster and said, “When Mason and I were about to be birthed, he grabbed hold of my ankle.” Dare hooked his hand to show me. “He actually pulled on it to keep me there in the womb with him. They had to cast my leg as a baby. And because of it, my right leg is a little shorter than the left. I wear special insoles in my shoes, so no one really notices.”
I’d noticed Dare’s gait was a little crooked that day he was walking down my street, but not all the time. It must be something he masked when he was around other people.
“Anyway.” Dare knocked on the table with his knuckles and looked away, perhaps thinking my gaze was one of sympathy. It wasn’t, though. I’d always studied Dare from a safe distance, and now he was giving me all these intimate details of his life. I felt a little guilty that it was under such horrible circumstances, but it didn’t dim my fascination in the least.
To mask the awkward silence, I took stock of our surroundings. The wellness room was connected to the wrestling room but had access to the main hallway. I didn’t know if it had always been the wrestling room, or if Coach had claimed it because of its proximity to his classroom. It meant he had a whole wing to himself, including access to the gym lockers through the wrestling room. Along the back of his classroom, there were locked closets and large padlocked trunks for storing his equipment. Same as in the wrestling room.
The other thing I knew about Coach Gundry was that he was obsessive in his inventory. Every playing ball, free weight, and penny was labeled and numbered, and he took great pains to make sure everything was returned to him at the end of class and stored in its proper compartment. I supposed it was shrinking budgets that made him so careful with his stuff, or maybe it was a counting thing. I’d always thought there was something just a little bit off about Coach Gundry, but I could never put my finger on it precisely.
“I’m terribly sorry about your brother, Dare,” Coach Gundry said as he came into the room, his heavy footfalls announcing him. He turned one of the desks around so he could sit across from us. He removed his hat and wiped his forehead, which was shining with sweat. His eyes were puffy and bloodshot as well. “I loved Mason like a brother, watched him put in the time and effort to be a great wrestler and a good man. I hope they catch the bastard. Let him fry for what he did.”
Dare was already withdrawing from the conversation, retreating into his mourning place. I saw it in his body language and his dejected expression. His eyes went unfocused as he stared blankly at the desktop. I quickly took over the conversation.
“Coach Gundry, we were hoping you could walk us through practice on Friday afternoon.” I glanced over at Dare, hoping he wouldn’t mind me using his need for closure as our reason for asking questions. “Dare would like to know more about Mason’s last day.”
Coach squinted and looked past me as he recalled it. “Well, like I told the officers who came by earlier, it was a match day for our tournament this coming weekend. I had the team pair off and spar to see who we’d enter in their weight class.”
“Who was Mason’s sparring partner?” I asked.
“Peter Orr,” Coach said.
“Pete’s in a different weight class,” Dare said. His eyes were suddenly alert and focused, and he was sitting up in his seat.
“He was, but Mason gained some weight this summer. He’s been weightlifting quite a bit too. Working hard at it. He moved into the 195 weight class.”
“Who won the match?” Dare asked, fully engaged now.
“Mason won. Easily, I’d say. Surprised us all. Pete’s no rookie.”
“What was Peter’s reaction?” I asked.
Coach shrugged. “You know Pete. He takes it on the chin. I told him he could try again next week, but he said he was going to drop down a weight class instead. Didn’t want to fight Mason tooth and nail before every competition. He’s hoping for a scholarship this year.”
“That was Pete’s idea? Pete was willing to give up his spot for Mason?” Dare sounded suspicious. I sensed there was some history there.
Coach Gundry shook his head. “I wouldn’t say it was a sacrifice. Mason was in top form. Pete too, but we both thought he’d have a better shot dropping down. And it’s better for the team’s points overall.”
“How much weight would Peter have to lose?” I made a note of it on my phone.
Coach Gundry squinted. “Well, he weighed in at 194 and change, and the weight class beneath him is 182. Twelve pounds? Thirteen to be safe.”
“And he had a week to lose it?” I asked.
“Look, I don’t encourage that type of thing.” Coach held up his hands in a defensive posture. “I tell the boys they need to eat like athletes to keep up their strength. You can’t win a match if you’re weak and dehydrated. I don’t want of any of them developing eating disorders.”
“But losing thirteen pounds in a week,” I persisted. “Can it even be done?”
Dare nodded. “Mason’s done it before.”
Coach Gundry shrugged like it
wasn’t his area of expertise, even though as the school’s Well-Fit teacher, there was a whole unit devoted to nutrition.
“What’s the school’s policy on making weight?” I asked.
“There isn’t one,” Dare said sourly.
“Look, guys,” Coach cut in. “We have a competitive program here at Eastview. We’ve made it to state almost every year that I’ve been coaching. Last year we had two state champions. Mason and Peter. This is their senior year, and they’re hungry for another title. If they can make weight, it’s not my place to stop them.”
“Except Mason won’t be making weight because somebody murdered him,” Dare said, not even trying to hide his contempt.
Coach frowned, but he didn’t seem all that sympathetic to me. There was something he was hiding. I felt sure of it. I put a hand on Dare’s shoulder and went back to my timeline.
“Were there any interruptions during practice?” I was thinking of Mason and Daniela’s argument.
“Mason got a call. I told him to take it outside. Then I heard him and his girlfriend arguing. She was not happy with him.”
“Did you hear any of the argument?”
“No, but they were out there for a while. Don’t think she let Mason get a word in.”
“Did Mason say anything about it when he came back in?”
“He said it was going to take more than flowers this time.”
“Those were his words exactly?”
Coach nodded. “Yep.”
I jotted the expression down word for word. It seemed significant.
“What time did practice end?” I asked.
“Six o’clock, same as always. Everyone hit the showers then, except Pete. He suited up and started running the track.”
“What did he suit up into?” I asked.
“A sauna suit. Helps cut weight.”
“Did it belong to him or the school?”
“They’re mine. I got a set of them here. The good ones are expensive, and this way I can get them properly laundered. Ringworm is a wrestler’s worst nightmare. Haven’t had a case of it in years.” Coach knocked on the tabletop, for good luck, I assumed. He’d just lost a wrestler to homicide, but at least it wasn’t ringworm.
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