Chapter 70

At school on Monday I switched my minirecorder on and slipped it into my shirt pocket. Then I met Ashley in the lunchroom. She had her brown bag and candle catalog out as she moved toward Tracy. Cammy was nowhere in sight. We heard she was making up an English test.

“Anybody here like candles?” Ashley said in a little-girl voice.

The girls looked at each other and rolled their eyes. Ashley went straight to Tracy and sat across from her. The others stared like Ash had leeches hanging from her.

“Tracy, whose idea was it to make up that story, yours or Cammy’s?”

Tracy dropped her spoon in her chocolate pudding and it slopped on her. She tried to wipe it off with a napkin, but it smeared right into her pink shirt.

Ashley was using our mom’s method of getting the truth. One day, instead of asking if we cut a tree down, she said, “I’ll bet it was pretty hard to cut down that tree.”

I spoke right up. “No, it wasn’t that hard. Ashley bent it down a little and I . . .” I told her everything.

No such luck with Tracy. The pudding distracted her enough to give her time to think. With everyone at the table looking at her, she said, “We told the truth. That guy attacked us. Now the police caught him, and I’m glad.”

“Even though he’s innocent?” Ashley said.

A girl said, “You’re taking up for that drunk?”

“How many more people does he have to attack before you believe us?” Tracy said.

Ashley pursed her lips.

Strike one against us.