36

I freaked. Called home. Voice mail. I dialed Dad’s cell. When he picked up, I started rambling a mile a minute. He’d been out all day, had not seen Mom, and was trying to interpret my incoherence as to why I was calling him before lunch. I made him come pick me up. He heard the panic in my voice and came right away.

Evans said I could leave, but only after I told him that I had been intimidated by someone. When he asked by whom, I just said people that shouldn’t be here. He caught my drift.

As soon as we pulled up to our house, I raced upstairs. The front door was unlocked.

I ran into Mom’s bedroom.

Empty.

“Mom!” I cried out. “Mom!”

“Hello?” she answered from the bathroom.

I stood there, my head spinning. “Are you . . . OK?”

The toilet flushed and my anxiety dropped away. “Jesus.” I collapsed onto her bed.

Dad walked in. “Now would you mind telling me what this is all about?”

Mom shuffled into the room half asleep. “I thought I was going to get some rest today. . . .”

I took out her license and handed it to her. She blinked. “What’s that?”

“Um, your driver license?”

She looked puzzled. “Why are you handing it to me?”

“The real question is who handed it to me?” I said.

“What are you on about? Why aren’t you in school?”

“That’s what I still want to know,” added Dad.

“Mom, focus. Did you leave the door unlocked?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she seemed unsure. “Why?”

I hugged her. She was surprised, but I didn’t want her freaking out more than I was. “He was here, Mom. He was in this room.”

She tensed up. She understood immediately.

“Who was here?” asked Dad.

“Kalvin. Kalvin came to school this morning with a message. A warning, more like,” I answered.

Dad got it. He walked straight to the front door and checked the lock.

“Are you OK?” I asked Mom.

She felt her clothes like she was checking for stab wounds or something. “Yeah,” she nodded.

Dad came back in, visually sweeping the room, looking under the bed. “I’m reporting this,” he said.

“What are you going to say?” I asked. “That he stole her driver’s license?”

“How about breaking and entering, for one? Threatening a witness? He’ll be behind bars today if I can help it.” He took out his phone and called Mr. Graves.

Mom was in shock. “I can’t believe they were in here. Watching me.” She shuddered. She looked tiny and frail in her nightgown. When I thought about Kalvin standing over her and what he might have done . . .

“It’s all my fault,” I said, hugging her again.

She hugged back, but didn’t disagree.

Dad put us on speakerphone as he told Graves what had happened. I added the part about my encounter at the assembly. Graves said they were going to bring in all the suspects tomorrow. They needed extra time to work out the details because the crew were all minors. But they would try to pick up Kalvin tonight just to be safe. After tomorrow, things would be alright again, he assured us.

“And in the meantime?” he asked.

“We can send a squad car over to stay with you, if you like.”

“No thanks,” said Dad. “Just do your job and I’ll do mine.” He patted his chest. I could see his holster strap under his jacket.

Mom leaned into the phone. “Send the car,” she said.

Dad stared silently at the squad car parked outside our apartment. He ordered the locks changed, but in the meantime, I took a chair from the kitchen table and propped it up against the front door. When it was jammed in good and firm, he asked, “So we’re on lockdown?”

“Yep.”

I wanted to talk to Destiny about everything, but Dad wouldn’t let me. At some point, I was getting too antsy. Even though I was grounded from communicating with the outside world, Dad allowed me to go online. I got onto the St. Louis Post-Dispatch site and saw the candlelight vigil was happening tonight, right outside the library. I showed my dad.

“Maybe we should go?” I asked.

He put his hand on my head, something he used to do when I was tiny. “I don’t think it’s a good idea with all this going on. It’ll be dark, with lots of people. You never know who will be in that crowd.”

I agreed. Maybe they’d have a live feed online or something.

I checked my e-mail. Nothing from Destiny or any of the others. But there was a Facebook notice that I had been tagged in a video. I clicked the link.

A page came up and a video called Heavy Metal Mama. I clicked Play. A serene image came up of a park somewhere on a crisp sunny day. And then I saw him: Metal Detector Man—and me coming up behind him.

I shut the laptop. Dad looked at me funny, but I tried to act normal. I opened the laptop again and untagged myself, but now I knew Kalvin still had the video. Something would have to be done.

Mom got up for dinner, which Dad actually cooked—a first. Even though it tasted horrible, I could see he was trying. We didn’t talk about much. I suggested that maybe I stay home tomorrow, but Dad said if they got Kalvin tonight, it would be good to show my face, to show the rest of them that I couldn’t be intimidated. “It makes a difference in court,” he said.

“How?” I asked.

He didn’t answer.

Mom suddenly got brave after being cooped up with us two. “I’m going to work, then. He’s not going to make me a prisoner. What’s he going to do, march into the lab? We have security.”

So we all drove to Mom’s work. The squad car followed us and it felt like having our own Secret Service detail. We dropped her off, and Dad said he’d come pick her up in the morning.

On the way back, Dad took a different route. “Where are we going?” I asked, but as soon as I saw the crowd, I knew.

We drove by the library and there were about three hundred people standing in silence, the candles lighting their faces. Some people had signs saying DEATH IS NOT A GAME and SHE DIED FOR PEACE. They marched in a circle in front of the library. There were pictures of Mrs. Lee on each sign. Someone was singing “Imagine” and playing a guitar.

Dad stopped across the street, but kept the engine running. He just wanted me to see it.

“Snow,” I said. The snow was falling gently and silently, making the whole scene angelic.

After a minute, someone startled us by knocking on the window. It was one of the cops in our Secret Service. “Just wanted to let you know that they apprehended Mr. Barnes, sir. Still, we should probably get back to your home.”

“Did he go quietly?” Dad asked.

“He gave us a bit of a chase,” said the officer.

I imagined Kalvin flipping them off and hitting the streets like one of those parkour guys, hopping walls and jumping off bridges.

“They caught him hiding in the bushes.”

So much for parkour.