It wasn’t something you could keep secret. For one thing, we were all splattered with salsa. It was lucky none of us had been cut by the glass. It wasn’t a happy ride back. Janelle spilled to her mom. Matt blurted it all out to Shan and Roy as soon as we got in the door. I didn’t know what to think, except that Ty was on drugs and now I knew what Griffin meant by “stay safe.”
“Oh God,” Shan moaned. “He’s using again. And how did he get down here?” She looked at us mournfully and started to cry. “Matt, you know Ty has a problem, right? I’m sorry you had to see this, hon. And Danny, don’t take it hard. You remember, it’s not him when he’s like that. After you disappeared, he blamed himself. He was so, so sorry you’d fought that day. So sorry. He just tore himself apart. Said he should have gone to pick you up when you called. So now…he was just so surprised, probably, and he can’t handle it when that stuff is in his system.”
I nodded. “Like seeing a ghost, almost.”
Her face blanched as if she’d seen one. “Oh God. Don’t even—” She was in her housecoat. It had blue and yellow flowers on it. Where it fastened I could see something lacy underneath. She motioned Matt to her and gave him a hug, salsa and all. Then she tried to call the Dewitts, but their number wasn’t listed. Roy just shook his head. I wondered how often he’d shaken his head after he got saddled with Shan’s family. His own family lived in some faraway place called Truro. I was supposed to know where that was, but I didn’t. It sounded as if the wildest thing Roy’s family ever did was go bowling.
Matt and I got cleaned up. Shan let Matt stay up with me to play a video game. We killed things until we calmed down. Then I tried to sleep and shut it all out. By then, I’d forgotten all about Griffin’s book.
I remembered it the next day, though, while I was working with Dave the Garden Fairy. We finished around two. I got forty dollars. Then I asked to use Matt’s bike, and I rode out to the beach with Huckleberry Finn. I left the bike hidden in the weeds at the top of the bank and climbed down. It was breezy, and warm when the sun was out. Mountains of mashed-potato clouds drifted across the sky. The ripples on the lake had a new glare, like Danny’s mirrored shades, when the sun caught them. It made the water look cold, reminding me that it was fall. I hunkered down in my shelter, using the Styrofoam block and the log for a windbreak. It was good there. I’d lined up bits of green frosted glass like pebbles along one log and hung a cracked orange Frisbee on a stick, like a flag, beside the running shoe.
Then I opened Huckleberry Finn. Like I said, I’d read it before, back when it was all I’d had time to boost from a bookmobile somewhere. Fresno, maybe. I remembered thinking it was good but tough, because it was set in olden days down south. Everyone talked funny. I knew it was about Huck, who bailed on his drunk dad and rode downriver on a raft with this escaped slave, Jim. They met people and had crazy adventures before it all ended up somewhere with this other kid, Tom Sawyer. I’d liked Huck because he kept on the move and he was good at lying and faking and because once, by coincidence, I was reading it when we were riding in the van after a job and Harley merged us from a ramp onto the interstate, popped his gum and said, “We’re in the river now” as we blended into the traffic. The rest was a blank.
The first slip of paper Griffin had stuck in the book was at chapter eleven. It was a part where Huck pretends to be a girl and an old lady spots that he’s faking.
The second slip said 25–29. The chapters were about Huck and two scammers showing up in a little town and pretending to be long-lost relations of a rich guy who’s just died. Huck gets confused and lies his face off and then feels bad because the dead man’s daughter is so nice.
I didn’t read it all. I didn’t have to. By now I knew what this was really all about. Griffin knew. How much didn’t even matter. He was telling me he knew.
At first, the feeling wasn’t even panic, just this sick sureness. I closed my eyes, then opened them, because I thought I might throw up. Another paper was sticking out of the book. I pulled out the folded sheet of mug shots. I looked at Michael Bennett Davidson. He looked back at me, just the slightest bit cocky. I could see how he’d turned into the Harley I knew. That was then. I needed him now. I needed Harley to pull up in the van and take me and Gillian away with him. But he wasn’t going to, was he? In my world, no one came back, especially me.
As I folded up the mug shots and stuffed them in my pocket, the panic set in. All at once it hit me: who else knew? My brain was fast-forwarding through every talk I’d had since Shan got me on that plane. Did Carleen know? Roy? Shan? All of them? What was going on? Was I being set up for something? Who was conning who?