by Pintip Dunn
“What if I made it . . . worth your while?” He lowers his voice, mock-sexily.
I laugh again, pulling him into a hug. I close my eyes for a moment and breathe him in. “You’re kinda funny, you know that?”
“Kinda? Wow, you really need to dial down that enthusiasm a notch. You’re going to give me a big head.”
I smile, because I can’t be around Sam and not smile, but now that we’re not tangled together, the ice slides over my stomach. I take a few steps back from him. I’m not going to tell him about the lights flickering inside the hotline. Because it’s the second time I may have imagined an intruder. He’ll either write me off as a delusional lunatic . . . or he’ll take me seriously and call the police. Neither option is desirable.
Besides, if I tell him about my crazed run across the cabin, then I’d have to confess where the sprint ended—in Liam’s arms. Don’t really want to do that, either.
Instead, I lead him to the kitchen, and we sit at the square table. I explain how his discussion of fonts in Mr. Willoughby’s class helped me figure out the code. Pulling the sheaf of papers out of my bag, I tell him how I hope there’s more to my mom’s message hidden in these call entries.
As our socked feet bump under the table, we scrutinize the printouts, starting with Lil’s original entry and proceeding through the entire batch chronologically. By isolating the words with a different font, we end up with this message:
darling if you are reading this something happened to me I’m close to getting proof but he knows it too I’ve hidden a box for you at the hotline the key is in the pocket of our black dress pry up the fifth board from the south wall I love you Mom
I collapse in my chair. That’s it. The whole message. I’ve dreamed so often of a final letter from my mother. But I never thought her words would be a set of directions.
“A box at the hotline,” Sam says slowly, a crease in his forehead. “Do you think it’s the box Mr. Willoughby took away? The one that’s wrapped with your mom’s wallpaper?”
“I don’t think so.” The guilt is back, shaking and spinning my stomach like it’s a blender. I never mentioned the snow globe or my afternoon with Liam, either. Now’s probably not a good time to rectify that lapse. “The hotline coordinator, um, Liam, said there was nothing inside but a bunch of papers. Besides, that box wasn’t locked. If there’s a key, it has to be locked, right?”
He bobs his head. “Okay. So it’s a locked box. Under the fifth board from the wall. When your mom wrote this note, the hotline was in its old location. Which was ... ?”
“In the old shed by the athletic field.”
“Great. So that’s where we’ll be Friday night. The football team has an ‘away’ game, and nobody will be around.”
“You mean, we’re going to break in?” I stammer.
He raises both eyebrows. “I don’t want to ask the janitor for the keys to the shed. Do you?”
The room whirls dizzily around me, but he’s right. We have no idea what we’re going to find inside that shed. And until we do, we can’t go around advertising our excursion.
“Your mother’s been gone six months, CeCe. With every day that passes, the trail gets colder. If she felt desperate enough to leave you a coded note, she’d want you to investigate, wouldn’t she? Even if it means breaking into school property.”
I take a deep breath, pressing my hands against my roiling midsection. I’m not thrilled with breaking and entering, but that’s not the only reason why I’m nervous. The old shed is where my mom’s body was found, her limbs splayed awkwardly, her hair chopped at crazy angles. Lifeless. Broken. Stiff. The poor call counselor who found her the next morning screamed so loudly the janitor heard her all the way back at the school. To this day, if the call counselor catches a glimpse of me, she still squeaks and scurries away.
But I’m not up to reliving those few days after they found my mom’s body. The chaos, the sorrow. The rage that consumed me, nibbling at the stretched-out pieces of my heart until I wasn’t sure if there was anything left.
“Okay. You’ve convinced me,” I say instead. “Friday night. It’s a date.”
My third date with Sam in the space of four days. The thought should make me giddy. Instead, it fills the hollow places inside me with dread.
Chapter 29
“My head itches.” I push back the black knit hat on my head two days later. Friday night. At the scene of a future crime.
“But you look cute.” Sam grins at me from across the darkened interior of the car. His teeth glint, Cheshire-cat-like, from the passing street lights. Outside, the moon shines, full and round, a spotlight berating us for what we’re about to do.
At his insistence, we’re both wearing black clothes, like robbers. He’s got on black sweats, and I’m wearing yoga pants and a thermal fleece.
“Are you sure we’re dressed appropriately?” I ask for the fifth time. “We might as well wear a flashing neon sign. Yoo-hoo! Up to no good over here.”
He runs his fingers down my braid. “If we run into anybody, they’ll think we’re doing the cute dress-alike thing. We can ask them to call us one of those celebrity couple names. Samcila. Or maybe Cesam. Yeah, I like that. Cesam.”
I try to keep my lips still, but I have no more control over my smile than a made-up clown. He thinks we’re a couple. He wants to be known by a single name. None of the kids at school know about our relationship—and with any luck, we’ll keep it that way—but I know. And that’s more than enough.
I park a few blocks from school, and we walk the rest of the way. The parking lot’s almost deserted, with only a silver Prius and a tangerine VW Bug in the corner. As soon as we step onto the lot, however, the glass double doors of the building open, and two figures come out.
We slip behind a tree, and I end up crushed between the bark and Sam’s pecs. “Did you see who it was?” he murmurs.
“I didn’t get a good look.” I wet my lips. “But I think they were headed in this direction.”
Sure enough, the sound of footsteps and the hum of conversation get louder.
A knot in the tree digs into my neck. Some kind of insect crawls up my arm. And then Sam’s lips brush over mine. “In case they see us, we’re just a couple of students with one thing on our minds . . .”
I stifle a gasp as he catches my lower lip between his teeth. “You, uh, put a lot into your performance.”
“You want me to be convincing, don’t you?”
Every inch of his body presses against mine. My mouth is on fire, my nerves smoldering embers. And yet, I’m listening as hard as I can.
The footsteps stop on the other side of the tree. I tighten my grip on Sam’s shoulder, and the kiss stills, until our lips are simply resting against one another.
“That was a good session, Amber,” a familiar voice says. It takes me a moment to place the smooth, confident tone. Mr. Willoughby. “A few more should do it.”
“Thanks, Mr. W,” a girlish voice responds. “I think I’m really getting the hang of . . . Shakespeare.”
She paused—didn’t she? Or was that my imagination?
“Next week, same time?” the girl says.
“If that works for you.” I hear the rustle of fabric against fabric. A bag slung over a shoulder? Or bodies shifting against one another? “Your mother doesn’t mind the late hours?”
“I haven’t told her. I’m going to surprise her with my report card at the end of the semester. She won’t know what hit her.”
They say goodbye, and the footsteps depart. Engines sputter to life. First one car, and then another, drives away, the headlights cutting a swath through the darkness.
“Whew,” I say when we finally separate. “That’s got to be the record for world’s longest kiss.”
“Not even.” Sam taps his lips as though they’re numb. “People have kissed for hours. Days even. I love kissing you and everything, but man, that’s got to suck.”
“You wouldn’t be able to sleep.”
<
br /> “Or eat.”
“Or pee.”
“Or poo.”
I stare at him for a moment and then burst out laughing. The sound shoots through the night, clear and bell-like, and I clap a hand over my mouth. What am I thinking? We’re supposed to be in stealth mode.
I push myself off the tree trunk and begin picking bits of bark out of my braid. “So what did you think?”
He pulls the hat off my head and helps me. As his long fingers work through my hair, taking apart the strands of my braid to make sure he gets every last piece of bark, my stomach executes a slow, liquid somersault.
“Sounds like Mr. W’s tutoring the girl. I’ve heard he does that a lot. Always willing to help out a student in need.”
“Especially when she’s young and pretty,” I murmur. “Isn’t it awfully late for a tutoring session? Particularly on a Friday night?”
He finishes undoing my braid and brushes the hair off my shoulder. His fingers linger on my back. Don’t think about his hand. Stop imagining his kisses. Must. Focus. On. Task.
“What if Mr. W’s the person behind my mom’s photos?” I ask. “Maybe this is how he ensnares his victims. I mean, he dresses like a kid, with all those superhero shirts. And he hasn’t had a date in twenty-some years. Maybe his dead wife is an excuse. Maybe he’s just not interested in other adults.” I gasp. “Oh god. That would make him a child pornographer, right? If he’s taking photos of underage girls?”
“If it is Mr. Willoughby. But we have no evidence of that.” He places the hat back on my head and kisses me on the nose. “And speculating about Mr. W’s personal life isn’t going to get us into the shed.”
I swallow hard. Enough stalling. It’s time to do what we came here to do.
We circle to the back of the school and make our way to the athletic field. No one else is around. No guys playing pickup basketball. No overachieving runner loping around the track. Just me, Sam, and that damn spotlight moon.
The hair stands on my arms, and my scalp tingles. There’s no wind tonight, but I shiver inside my fleece. Don’t be silly. There’s no one watching me. My texter’s not here. And even if he were, he’d have to get through Sam first.
I grit my teeth and ignore the moon, as much as you can ignore the largest orb in the sky. I place one foot in front of the other until we arrive at the square, squat building.
The shed was updated a few years ago with a tiny bathroom, but no one’s bothered to do anything to the outside. The paint peels off in patches, and the wood is rotted through with holes.
The chill creeps inside my gut. Is it me, or is it cooler here? As if the air remembers somebody died. As if the very molecules cling to the remnants of violence.
We stop in front of the door, and Sam reaches for the padlock hanging on the handle. “It’s busted.”
“What do you mean?”
He hands me the lock. In the light of the moon, I see the shank’s been sawed through.
“It’s hanging here, useless. But you’d never know until you touched it. Someone’s been here.”
My pulse skitters. “Who?”
He shakes his head but doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. The possibilities stream in the space between us. My mysterious texter. The child pornographer. The person from whom my mother was hiding. All of whom may or may not be the same person.
“Are they here now?” I whisper.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“But they could come back. Any second now, they could be back.”
We stare at each other for a full sixty seconds. He jams his hands under his arms, and the breath rushes in and out of his mouth, as if he’s gearing up for a race. Everything inside tells me to bolt, to get away now before something happens to us. The same something that happened to my mother.
Sam huffs out another breath. “We might as well go inside. We didn’t come here to turn around and go home.”
“We didn’t?” I ask faintly.
He smiles, as if I’ve made a joke. But nothing’s funny when you’re breaking into a shed. Nothing’s funny when you’re about to return to the place where your mother died. In fact, I can’t remember anything that was ever funny, at any time.
My legs, arms, feet vibrate with the need to run. But before I can take off, Sam grabs the handle of the door.
“Sam, wait! I have to tell you something.” I close my eyes and take shallow, quick breaths. Just do it. Say the words. They won’t kill you. “This is . . . this is where a student found my mom’s body.”
A few seconds pass. He doesn’t say anything. I crack open my eyes to peer at his expression. He doesn’t look surprised—which is a pretty big surprise. At least to me.
“Oh my god, you knew?” I wheeze.
Reluctantly, he nods. “Newspaper intern, remember? Researching an article on the anniversary of the hotline suicide? It’s my job to know.”
I double over, grabbing my knees. This isn’t a betrayal. It isn’t. What he’s saying makes sense. With all the research he’s done, of course he would know exactly where my mother’s body was found. How she looked. What she was holding. Only an idiot would think otherwise.
Well, this idiot, for some reason, thought that the boy she kissed would have confessed that he’s been prying into the most intimate details of her mother’s death.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask. “My god, I’ve told you everything.” Nearly everything. Minus a couple incidents of hand-holding and arms-wrapping. “You couldn’t tell me you knew my mother died with a sex toy in her hands?”
He reddens. “I’m sorry, CeCe. I didn’t know if you wanted to talk about it. I guess I was waiting for you to broach the subject.”
I straighten. Again, reasonable. Again, not a betrayal. He didn’t keep his knowledge from me because he was laughing at me. I’m just so used to the taunts and whispers that I automatically leaped to that conclusion.
“Are you okay to go inside?” Sam asks. “If you’re not, I could go in, get the box, and bring it out to you.”
It is tempting, so tempting. But my mother left that coded message for me. She wanted me to retrieve the box. I’m not about to disregard her final request.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Let’s just do it quickly before I change my mind.”
He grabs the door handle once again.
Screeeeech.
We both freeze, and my pulse thuds in my throat. For what feels like an eternity, we wait. Nothing. Nobody rushes out to clobber us over the head. No pitter-patter of rats scurrying for cover.
“I think we’re safe,” he says. “No one’s here.”
“For now.”
He nods, waits a few beats, and then walks inside. Just like that, he’s swallowed by the darkness, disappearing from view like a coffin being lowered into the ground.
Run! Don’t go in there. You don’t have to do this.
My muscles strain, but I don’t give in to the panic. I can’t. These are my mother’s final instructions. Sam’s in the shed because of me, and I won’t leave him. We’re a team, and he’s my . . . He’s the . . .
My mind stutters over the word, and even to myself, I can’t think it. But I don’t need to. He’s Sam. That’s all I need to know.
I take a shuddering breath. And then I follow him inside.
The smell hits me first. The cloying scent of dying flowers, sweetness edged with decay. And then Sam switches on a flashlight. I grope in my pocket for my own light, even as his beam dances frenetically around the room.
A couple of rumpled sleeping bags are zipped together on the floor, next to a mountain of jewel-colored pillows. Rose petals mingle with the sawdust, and empty wine bottles and long green stems are strewn across the floor.
Sam bends down and touches the cooled wax that has dripped onto the floor. “Someone’s been using this place as a rendezvous. They went to a lot of trouble to make it romantic.” His tone is quiet and measured. I can almost see the wheels turning in his head. “Former Hotline
Center Hosts Secret Tryst. Not bad. Better than talking about the air fresheners the hotline uses.”
He grabs his backpack and takes out a camera and portable LED work lights, which he strategically positions around the sleeping bags. “You mind if I take a few pictures? As long as we’re here.”
I stare. Maybe Sam should’ve been a Boy Scout instead of a newspaper intern. “Prepared much?” I say dryly. “Don’t mind me. I’ll just be over here, following a trail of clues my dead mother left me.”
He doesn’t respond, already absorbed with setting up the perfect shot, and I roll my eyes and move to the south wall. Gripping the flashlight between my teeth, I kneel in the corner. The wood planks are rough, plagued with splinters waiting to be embedded in my skin. I touch the floor with my fingertips and count over five planks.
This is it. Trembling, I slide my nails into the cracks around the board. No give. I pry my nails up, praying they don’t break. There! A little lurch. And then the whole plank lifts up.
“Sam,” I croak, the flashlight falling from my mouth. “I think I found it.”
“What is it?” He’s by my side in an instant.
I retrieve my light and shine it into the hole. At the bottom, partially covered by dirt, is what looks like a small, thin briefcase. Except there’s no handle, and the edges are rounded. A metal strip seals the center, culminating in a lock with a keyhole.
“A portable safe.” I close my hands around the cool metal just as a loud noise pierces the air.
I dive to the ground, the box clenched to my chest. Oh my god. He’s back. The guy who set up the romantic tryst. Or my texter. Are they one and the same? Does it matter?
The noise sounds again, and I curl into a fetal position, moaning. A gunshot. It has to be. I’m going to die in this shed, just like my mother.
I feel a hand on my shoulder and look into Sam’s eyes.
“A garbage truck,” he says shakily. “Emptying out a Dumpster.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
The air wheezes in and out of my lungs. My heart tries to drill a hole through my chest. Again, we wait, limbs stiff and muscles tight. Not daring to make a sound, but ready to sprint if it comes to that.