by Barry Lyga
She couldn’t be sure he was telling the truth… but she also couldn’t be sure he was lying. It was—frustratingly—possible that none of them had done it. That the blood on the knife matched her father’s blood type… and a billion other people’s.
“What about the cassette?” she asked. “There were two in there. One was a mixtape for sure, but the second went missing after someone broke into my garage.”
Except for the sheriff—who’d read the dossier—the other parents reacted with shock. None of them had known about the theft of the tape.
“This is about a mixtape?” Brian asked. “Have you all gone crazy?”
Elayah clenched her jaw. Marcie’s dad wasn’t around much and didn’t really stay in touch, so he’d missed out on most of the drama. “We think the missing tape had something else on it. Maybe something incriminating.”
“Like New Kids on the Block?” Brian joked.
“They weren’t a thing until eighty-seven, eighty-eight,” Kim pointed out.
Brian rolled his eyes theatrically. “Oh, sure, right, of course.”
“The tape is a strange one,” Liam’s dad admitted. “But I’m still not certain that it wasn’t just misinventoried. I’ve already got someone looking through the evidence room at the station. What else have you got for us?”
The other parents were already checked out. Kim had withdrawn, gnawing at the cuticle on her left thumb. Marcie’s dad had folded his arms over his chest early on—his posture since had become even more defensive, which Elayah would have thought to be impossible. Her own father slumped next to her, occasionally sighing. Jorja’s dad kept yawning.
None of them acted like criminals. They seemed more like offended and irritated parents.
“Well…” Jorja held her phone up to Elayah and raised an eyebrow. You think we should?
“What about Douglas Rumson?” Elayah said, picking up on the item Jorja had flashed to her. Next to her, Liam still stared down at the yearbook; she was a tiny bit miffed that he, too, was checked out, and it came across in her tone.
“Who the hell is Douglas Rumson?” Her dad’s voice rang out as though insulted by the mere name.
The sheriff sighed. This had been in the dossier. “The pizza guy.”
“What pizza guy—oh.” Dad’s face contorted into mingled remembrance and shame. “What does he have to do with it?”
Elayah took a deep breath and explained the theory that possibly one of them—or all of them—had killed Rumson. Jorja chimed in with the drug angle.
Dad’s jaw dropped. “You thought we killed the pizza guy?”
And then he started to laugh.
The laughter prompted something in the other parents. After a moment or two, they each began to chuckle, some of them shaking their heads at the sheer idiocy of it. Brian snorted and wiped a tear from his eyes.
“Stop it!” Elayah yelled, standing. “Stop it right now!”
To her surprise and savage delight, they did. “You think this is funny? You all did lousy stuff when you were kids and never told us any of it, and now we’re here trying to figure out why and what’s going on and I had my throat cut because of it!” She jabbed a finger at her father. “I don’t even know if you’re my dad or my uncle!”
Tears streamed down her cheeks. Snot clogged her voice, but she kept going, shouting into her father’s astounded expression.
“Did you kill your own brother and take his place?” The words wrenched from her with the force and pain of glass shards ripped from flesh. Her body and her mind went light as they punished the air between her and her father. After so many days of wondering, of fearing, of nausea and confusion, it was out.
Dad’s eyes jittered and his lips twitched. “What?” he whispered.
No one spoke. Elayah’s body vibrated, and Liam—damn it!—was still looking at the stupid goddamn yearbook!
“El, maybe—”
“No.” Her dad rose, interrupting the sheriff. “Let me. Baby, let’s step outside.”
They pulled on their jackets and stepped out onto the front stoop. She wrapped her arms around herself, tucking in, like a hermit crab.
Her dad jammed his hands into his pockets and stared up at the night sky. Elayah seethed next to him. She barely needed the jacket—her anger kept her warmer than she’d anticipated.
“Is that what you think?” he asked quietly. “Is that what you’ve been thinking?”
In a rush, her life flashed at her. Like the moment of death. And there was her dad, running to her on the soccer field. Bellowing in the night as her throat bled. Charging into the garage the night of the second break-in. These and more, battering her, buffeting her like wind-driven waves against the hull of a ship.
“I don’t know what I think,” she said just as quietly. “Nothing makes sense anymore. Nothing.”
Her tears began afresh. “I’m sorry” spilled out of her before she knew she would say it. “I guess I know… I guess I know you’re exactly who… It’s all been so… I’m sorry.”
“Oh, honey,” Dad said, his face fallen and gray. “Oh, baby. No, no, no. I’m so sorry.” He clutched her to him, and for the first time in forever, she let him. “No. No. I swear to you: I have no idea whose blood that is. And I swear I never held that knife. And I’m sorry I never told you anything, but I promise you, I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
He sniffled against her, loud and somehow comforting in her ear. She’d never seen her father cry.
“This is all my fault,” he said. “Your whole life, I’ve always made so much of Antoine. Built him up to you. Made him a legend, when he was just a person. And that made it so that… so that you had to dramatize his disappearance. Make it something bigger than life. But, baby, it wasn’t bigger than life. There’s nothing dramatic about it. I loved him, but he was selfish. Selfish and wrong.”
He disengaged and pushed her away. Gently. Dug into his coat pocket. Withdrew the frame she’d recovered from the time capsule.
“Been carrying this around since you dug it up. Same way I’ve been carrying around the past my whole life.” He opened it and gazed down sadly. “But that’s not right. You shouldn’t be carrying my burden, Elayah.”
She took his hand in her own, turned the frame so that she could see it, too. Mom and Dad on one side. Dad and Antoine on the other.
“Why did you put this in there?” she asked. “None of the others put anything really personal in there.”
He sighed deeply, from the marrow of his bones. “Because every damn thing going in there was about white people. I wanted something to show we were here. We were real.” He clacked the frame closed. “I didn’t know it would be Antoine’s last picture. I didn’t know I would never see him again.”
This time, she held him.
Back inside, the others were midconversation. Elayah peered around.
“Where’s Liam?” she asked.
“Bathroom,” Wally answered from his post by the kitchen, where he’d been keeping silent watch.
She and Dad sat down on the couch again.
“Have we solved the past yet?” Dad cracked hollowly.
Muted chuckles all around. The mood of the room was melancholy, rusted over.
“The past? Hell, the past was nothing. It was all about the future, remember?” Jorja’s dad said somberly. “We all thought the future was open to us. We thought it would be easy.”
“You convinced us it would be easy.” Marcie’s dad spoke for the first time in a long time, his voice smoldering. “We slacked off. We knew the grades would be changed at the last minute. And then…” He gestured with three fingers like an exploding chef’s kiss. A magician’s poof. “It all went away. Too late for our grades to recover.”
“Colleges didn’t look too kindly on seniors who slack off like that,” Liam’s dad said.
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Kim said. “You’re just all looking for a convenient excuse for what your lives have become.”
“Speak fo
r yourself,” Peej said.
“You wanted to be a cop, Jay,” she said, coming down hard on the old nickname. “How’d that work out?”
Peej moved as though to rise from his seat, but Liam’s dad gestured him into calm.
“You know, sometimes,” Elayah’s dad said slowly, “sometimes I think the hardest thing… one of the hardest things about living in this world is understanding that it’s not personal. Or directed. Good things happen. Bad things happen. And sometimes they’re for a reason, but sometimes they just are.”
“And some mysteries never get solved,” Liam’s dad said soberly. “I have a slew of cold cases to prove it. This may end up being one of them.”
Elayah glanced over to the hallway. Liam stood there, wan and troubled. He gazed right through her.
“Kids, no one died,” said Liam’s dad. “Am I one hundred percent sure of that? I’m never one hundred percent sure of anything, really. But I feel pretty confident about this one.”
Marcie and Elayah locked eyes. Then Jorja. Lastly, Liam, who didn’t flinch or change his expression in the least.
The room fell silent for a protracted moment that expanded to the border of discomfort.
And then Marcie’s dad groaned out a breath, slapped his knees with his palms, and said, “Right, okay, so are we done here?”
LIAM
Liam’s spit dried up entirely as the parents all stood up and began doing that shoulder-slapping, guy-hug stuff that grown-ups did with people they pretend to be close to. His mouth clicked when he moved his jaw.
El caught his eye and tilted her head in a What is with you? direction.
Oh, God. She didn’t know.
But she would.
He checked his phone again. To make sure.
Was he really going to do this?
El’s dad shrugged into his jacket. Jorja stood off to one side, murmuring with Marcie.
“Could…” He heard the syllable escape from the dry captivity of his mouth. He cleared his throat. Tried to work up some spit so that he could speak. “Could everyone sit down again, please?”
Dad looked over. “Oh, good, just in time. Help Pop and me clean up when everyone’s gone.”
Liam shook his head. He had to do it. Everyone was here. He had to.
“Dad, remember you said everyone in town had a knife like that?”
Dad cocked his head, peering quizzically at Liam. Everyone else seemed to realize that there was something going on; a half dozen separate so long conversations fell silent.
“Are you all right, Liam?” Pop asked. “You look pale.”
He didn’t so much as flick an eyeball in Pop’s direction. “Dad, you said everyone in—”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“You said yours is probably up in the attic.”
“Yeah.”
“Show it to me.”
Dad blinked rapidly, his expression that of a man who is only barely able to control his disbelief. “What did you just say?”
Liam choked a bit on the next words but managed to get them out. “I wasn’t in the bathroom before. I went up in the attic. Looked all over, opened every box, but I couldn’t find it. Just a bunch of your old comic books and some of Pop’s stuff. So show me what I missed. Show me the knife.”
A short blurt of an aggravated laugh escaped Dad’s lips. “I said it was probably up in the attic.”
“It’s been more than thirty years,” El’s dad said. “I don’t expect you kids to understand, but things go missing.”
“What’s going on, Liam?” El asked. She came to his side, reached for his hand, but he pulled away.
“You wrote…” Words became jumbled in Liam’s head and on his tongue. But he had to get them out. “In Marcie’s mom’s—in Kim’s yearbook. You wrote I’m sorry about the prom, but I know you understand!”
Dad threw his hands up in the air helplessly. He exchanged a half-wounded look with Kim. “She thought we were going to go.… That was when I was figuring things out. I don’t… Liam…”
“You always told me you didn’t realize you were gay until college.” Liam realized he was trembling, his teeth threatening to clack together with each word. “What were you figuring out?”
Pop approached him, put a hand to his forehead. “You don’t feel warm. But you’re shivering. I’m getting the thermometer.”
“Don’t,” Liam told him, his tone commanding, his gaze unwavering.
“I matched it up,” he went on. “Just like we did to compare the note with the postcard from Antoine.” He held out his phone. “Three samples of the exact same words. Written around the same time. I’m sorry. And they all three match.”
Pop jerked his hand away from Liam’s forehead as though it had caught fire.
“Wait, what?” El’s dad.
“Dean!” Peej yelled suddenly, startling everyone. “Dean, don’t say a word! Not a word, you hear me?”
“What the hell?” said El’s dad, peering around as though fog-swaddled. “What the hell is going on?”
But Liam ignored him, staring straight ahead at Dad, whose lips pressed together into a flat line, his expression unreadable.
“You wrote the note. And the postcards that were supposed to be from Antoine. And I bet it’s your saliva on the stamp. So, Dad, seriously: Where is your knife?”
“I’m not your lawyer,” Peej said, coming around the coffee table to stand between Liam and Dad, “but seriously, don’t say a word.”
In a severe, implacable silence, Liam and his father glared at each other over Peej’s shoulder.
Pop said, “Sweetheart…?” in a too-high voice.
“And while you’re thinking about where the knife is,” Liam said, “maybe you can explain why I found this in your gun safe.”
Digging into his pocket, he produced a pristine Wantzler cassette tape.
The room went utterly and deathly silent, so it was easy for everyone to hear El whisper, “Oh, hell.”
And Dad sank into a chair and said, “Damn it.”
1986: DEAN
Dean got to the hideout early and took measurements of the drafty window. By the time Antoine arrived, he was down on all fours, cutting lengths of weather stripping with his hunting knife. He’d laid out a cloth and a roll of masking tape, but it turned out he didn’t need them.
“What are you doing?” Antoine had come in behind him, silent.
“Fixing the drafty window. Like I promised.” He was in the middle of holding the stripping in place, so he didn’t turn around, but he did excitedly wave a ribbon of the gray padded weather stripping over his head.
He slid the window open, bracing himself against the cold. With the knife in his teeth, he began stuffing the weather stripping into place, occasionally pausing to retrieve the knife and nick away a too-long piece.
When he finished, he turned around with a flourish and a ta-da! gesture at the window. Antoine was pacing the room.
“It’ll be a lot warmer now,” Dean said.
Antoine kept pacing. Dean knew what this meant—Antoine was excited about something.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s up?”
THE PRESENT: LIAM
Liam, that’s stolen evidence,” Peej said. “As an attorney, I’m going to advise you to—”
“To hand it over to the cops?” Liam asked snarkily, indicating Dad, who sat staring at the floor.
“Just… just don’t do anything with it. Or to it. I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
“Isn’t it a conflict of interest for you advise father and son?” Kim said.
“Not now!” Peej barked.
“How did you—”
Liam interrupted his dad with a mirthless chuckle. “Like I said: I was looking for the knife. I’ve been able to get into your gun safe since I was eleven, Dad.”
Pop groaned.
Liam shrugged. “Let’s hear what’s on it.”
The family stereo was Dad’s old receiver and speakers from college, alo
ng with a combo cassette/CD player that had last been used when George W. Bush was president. Liam snapped open the tape case, slid the cassette into the player, and hit Play before anyone could say anything.
“Liam,” Dad whispered.
A voice boomed from the speakers. El’s father gasped.
“My name is Antoine Louis Laird,” said the voice. “This is my confession.”
1986: DEAN
Antoine said nothing for a moment, his expression one of mingled delight and fear, trapped in that liminal uncertainty between the two. Dean gritted his teeth together. He wasn’t up for a big, intense talk. Not tonight. All he’d wanted, after the chaos of homecoming, was a night with his…
His…
He still didn’t have a word.
“Talk to me,” he said. He tucked the knife into his belt and approached Antoine, holding out both hands. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I… I’m just trying to think of how to…” Antoine’s eyes flashed with excitement. His words tumbled over themselves and then finally he just said it:
“I’m leaving.”
Dean blinked a few times. “But… but you just got here.”
Antoine shook his head. “No, not here. Here.” His gesture encompassed the whole of Canterstown. “I can’t take it anymore. I can’t stay here. I can’t do it, Dean. I have to go.”
Dean stepped back as though someone had punched him in the chest. His heart thudded like elephant feet. “What?”
This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t happening. He would not let this happen.
“You can’t go,” he said. “You… your family… Marcus…”
“They’ll be fine. They’ll get along without me. But I can’t stay around here. My bag is packed. There’s a bus leaving at six in the morning.” He took Dean’s hands in his own and stared into his eyes. “Be on it with me. Please.”
Dean pulled his hands away. They were shaking. A bus. On a bus. With Antoine. Off into the unknown. Together.
He wanted it. He wanted it more than anything. It hovered before him, almost like a mirage.