I feel like I’m being flooded.
A secret can do that to you.
It can spend weeks and months and years shrunk down so small it’s just a warm knot at the base of your spine, and then all of a sudden it can gush up, like a tide rising and pulsing against the inside of your skin, and while everyone else is taking notes in last-period geometry, it’s all you can do to keep from drowning right there in your high-tops.
“Are you all right?” Pilar whispers to me when I stand up from my desk.
I try for an unconcerned nod, but end up just sticking out my bottom lip and making some sort of wobbly bobble-head motion.
Pilar laughs.
More than anything in the whole entire world, I want to sit back down at the desk with her and laugh so hard that we get kicked out of class. I want the ridiculous head bobble that I just did to get entered into the Pilar and Dylan Stupid Faces Hall of Fame, for us to make at each other in really inappropriate moments. Like during church. Or in one of those assemblies where storytellers in rainbow leotards come to “rap” to us about the dangers of drugs and drinking.
When I get to the front of the classroom, I stop. Our teacher, Mrs. Gunther, turns to me from the dry-erase board, pausing mid-isosceles triangle, and says, “Ms. Driscoll?”
I make a sound like “Arnrng!” my hand pressed to my stomach, my tongue halfway out of my mouth.
She reels back ever so slightly and points at the door with her dry-erase marker.
“Well, go, then!”
I run out into the hall and bend over double with laughter that turns quickly to tears, my shoulder pressed against the wall to keep myself from falling over.
I stand up straight and wipe my face with my sweatshirt and take deep breaths until they stop getting caught in my throat.
“I’m a mess,” I say aloud, laughing. Then crying. And then hiccuping so hard I burp. Which makes me laugh.
I peek out the window and see the buses have arrived, and that the bus drivers have gone inside the cafeteria for coffee. I slip out the side door.
The school bell rings and I stay lying down where I’ve hidden on the bus, scrunching myself a little to make sure my head isn’t hanging out into the aisle. I hear the voices of the drivers coming toward the bus. Dottie curses when she gets to the bus, seeing the door I left open. She climbs into the driver’s seat, and in a moment the lights flicker on and warm, dry air comes blasting out of the heater vents.
The intercom crackles before Dottie’s voice comes booming through the speakers. “Fran saw you get on the bus, so you might as well sit up.”
For a second I have the irrational hope that there’s some other kid slouched down in another seat, maybe all the way in the back of the bus.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Dottie’s voice crackles. “Dylan, sit up.”
I push myself upright, peeking over the tops of the seats to see Dottie looking at me in the oversize rearview mirror.
“You all right?” she asks, putting the microphone away.
I nod.
“Fran wants me to make sure you’re not on drugs. Are you on drugs?”
I shake my head.
“Say something so I know you’re not on drugs.”
“I’m not on drugs,” I say, sitting up taller.
“Okay, then.” She picks up the microphone again and turns the channel. “She’s fine, Fran. I think she just missed me.” They both laugh, Fran’s voice tinny and snapping.
The wind off the lake is whipping sand against the side of the bus. The sound makes me think of buckshot, or the way Mom makes popcorn—kernels clattering into the heavy iron pot she made my dad carry with them on the bus all the way cross-country, when they were just married and in love and still together. It makes me think of the night, in the desert, the truck’s dizzying spin sending sand into the air, and the sound of it falling back down again.
I lean out the window of the bus, keeping my mouth closed and my eyes squeezed shut against the grit peppering my face. I could let the wind and the sand work their work on me, teasing at my skin, until it starts to crack and break off and fly away, until I have no face, and then no head, and then no me. I’ll just be sand, blowing through the pine trees until the wind runs out of breath and all the pieces of me fall to the ground. My problems couldn’t follow me. They’d get snagged in the sharp branches of the tallest trees, where they would flutter and snap in the wind like gray ghosts.
“Bad cheese again?”
I open my eyes. Pilar is looking up at me from the sidewalk. She reaches up to hand me the geometry notebook I left in class. “MayBe thinks you’re lactose intolerant.”
“That could be it,” I say.
“And Thea thinks you’re faking it.” She snorts.
“I’m not faking.”
“She just wants to know how you do it so well.”
The wind picks up and we both raise a hand to shield our faces.
I’m not—”
“So, I take it you’re not coming with us over to Thea’s so she can practice on your hair?” Pilar interrupts. I’d forgotten. Thea’s mom said she’d give her a job at the salon this summer, if Thea got good enough.
“My stomach—”
“Hurts again. I know,” Pilar says.
She scuffs the pavement with a black high-top, and I follow her gaze to where MayBe and Thea are walking out of school. They wave to us, and Pilar points to me and makes a barfing motion. “Feel better!” they call.
“It’s all right,” Pilar says. “We’ll do it tomorrow if you’re better. Okay, then.” Pilar pauses, and then looks up at me. “Well, get well soon.”
She steps back from the bus.
“Pilar, come on, I’m sorry,” I say, leaning farther out the window. “Please don’t be mad at me.”
“I’m not mad at you,” she says. “I just wish you’d feel better already.”
“I will,” I say quickly. “I’m sure I’ll feel better soon.”
“Go home and drink some ginger tea or something.”
The bus rumbles to life with the last of the students trailing on, and I pull myself back inside. “You still love me, though, right?” I call out the window.
“Like the sister I never wanted,” she says. She runs for her bus and calls back over her shoulder, “Call me after you puke or poop or whatever it is you need to do.”
“Okay!” I shout. “I will! Bye!” I close the window, collapse against the seat, and wipe the dirt away from the corners of my mouth and eyes.
The rain has started again, and Dottie has turned on her windshield wipers. I rub a line into the steam that’s gathered on the window and then touch my chilled finger to my bruised cheek.
In the village the school bus stops in front of the grocery store with its vinyl banner strung up across the front, reading, NEW MANAGEMENT! There’s a bunch of construction workers standing outside of the store’s giant new front window, and as I walk up to the front of the bus, I stoop a little to try to get a closer look. I get to the front just in time to hear Dottie’s shocked whisper. “Those dirty sons of buttercups!”
“What’s going on?” I ask, and she shifts her position so I can see out her driver’s side window. The workers have ripped off the letters that have, for as long as I’ve lived here, spelled out SHEBOA’S GROCERY. They’ve even pried off the giant lopsided wooden cutout of a pine tree that used to tower over the letter S. The new sign, laid out on the ground in the rain, reads PARADISE MOUNTAIN GOURMET GROCERY in fancy script, punctuated by a perfectly straight drawing of a pine tree.
Dottie’s already on the radio, barely bothering to open the bus door for us, saying into the receiver, “Frannie, you’ll never guess where I won’t be buying my groceries from now on.”
When I get off the bus, I see the weekend bumper sticker war has already started. In the parking lot in front of the grocery store, there’s a sports car with a bright yellow bumper sticker that reads IF YOU DIDN’T WANT US UP HERE, WHY’D YOU CALL IT PARADISE?
“We were outvoted,” I say to myself, weaving through the small crowd of locals who have gathered in the rain to curse the new sign.
“You got that right,” one of them says as I walk by.
“Like to see that little whippet try to drive down the hill in this rain.”
“Robbie, you’ll be towing them up over the side before the weekend’s out, I guarantee it.”
I turn and see that Frank’s dad is in the crowd, laughing from under the brim of his grease-stained baseball cap. “You gonna drum up some business for me?” he asks the man who just spoke. “Give that hot rod a little nudge toward the guardrail?” Everyone laughs.
I walk away from the crowd and step into the narrow alley that runs between Mountain Candy and the pharmacy and leads to the back parking lot, where I can get to the police station’s side door without being seen. The space is tight enough that I have to walk almost sideways, my shoulders rubbing against the brown-shingled walls.
I come out of the other side of the alley to the narrow dirt parking lot that separates the buildings from the forest. Most of the people who work in the stores park back here, freeing up parking spaces out front for the weekenders. I walk quickly down the line of cars until I come to the end of the last building. I peek around the corner and then hurry down the side to reach a set of metal stairs that are just out of sight of the front sidewalk. I take them two at a time, yank open the door, and almost trample a girl my age who’s trying to walk out.
She looks me full in the face and gives me a wide smile, like we’re long-lost friends, like we’ve just been reunited and we’re studying each other’s faces to see what’s changed.
“Sorry,” I mumble, stepping aside so she can get through the door.
“That’s okay,” she says, still studying me as she passes. She pauses for a moment when we’re face-to-face, her smile exaggerating the sharp point of her chin.
I step farther out of the way, but she doesn’t move. I clear my throat and say, “Okay, then.”
She nods, still staring at me, and finally starts down the steps. I let the glass door close behind me, and watch the girl walk down. I look quickly away when she turns and smiles at me.
“Friendly people freak me out,” I say, walking over to where Lucy Barrett, my childhood babysitter, sits reading behind the reception desk.
“She was just being friendly,” Lucy says, absently, turning a page in her romance novel.
“Exactly. Freaky. What are you reading?” I ask, walking over to the desk and resting my chin on its high counter. Lucy’s got a wet chunk of her hair stuck to her cheek. Lucy has always chewed her hair, especially when she’s reading romance. Pilar and I stole one of her books once, when Lucy babysat for us. The book was called Forbidden Lust, and we took turns with MayBe and Thea reading it out loud to one another at slumber parties.
Lucy closes her book, placing it cover-side-down on the desk. “I’m not reading anything. And that friendly freak of a girl is going to be starting at your school in the next couple of days.”
“No way!” I say, looking back toward the door. “That was the new girl?”
Yep.
My excitement at being the first one of my friends to see her disappears when I realize that when the new girl sees me at school, she’ll probably mention seeing me here, at the police station. I’ll need to make up a lie.
“Say you’re picking up a wood-burning permit for your mom,” Lucy says.
I look at her. When Lucy started working at the station, I made Deputy Pesquera promise that she wouldn’t tell Lucy about me.
“Look,” Lucy says, exasperated. “I don’t know why you’re here, and I don’t care. It’s obvious you care, though, so just tell the new girl you were here picking something up for your mom. Does it have something to do with the bruise on your cheek? Because I’m not above kicking someone’s ass for you. Are you here for Deputy Pesquera?”
I nod.
“She’s out, but should be back soon. Do you want to see Sheriff Dean instead?”
“That’s okay, I’ll wait. Did you see that bullshit going on in front of Sheboa’s?”
“Watch your language, and yes, I saw it.”
“You don’t think it’s bull … crap?”
“Weekenders spend money, Dylan,” Lucy says with a sigh. “And they’re more likely to spend their money in a place called Paradise than a place called Pine Mountain.” She draws out the i in “pine,” imitating the flat-sounding vowels that the old mountain folks have. “That’s why the new name passed, because lots of people up here have no other way to make money except from the weekenders.”
“I guess. It’s still bullshit. They’re not supposed to change the name till January.”
The front door of the station opens and Deputy Pesquera walks in.
“Lucy,” she says.
“Dylan’s here to see you,” Lucy says, as if the deputy couldn’t see me for herself.
“Come on back.”
I follow Pesquera through the heavy glass-and-metal door that separates the reception area from the main part of the station.
When we get to her office, she sets her hat on top of the computer printer and sits heavily in her chair.
I sit in the chair across from her.
“So, what can I do for you?” she asks me.
“Did you find anything out?”
“About what?”
“About who it was who killed that girl.”
“Nothing conclusive.”
“Nothing conclusive,” I mimic. “But you think it might have been …”
“Dylan, what are you doing here?”
I look away from her heavy stare. “What is that?” I ask, standing and walking to the map hanging on her wall. “When did you put this up?”
She doesn’t answer. She just sighs, gets up, closes the office door, and walks over to where I’m standing. The deputy towers over me, the elbows of her crossed arms even with my ears.
The map is of the mountain and of the flatlands below. There are two pins stuck into it.
“This is where we were the other night?” I ask, pointing to the red pin set into the desert.
She nods down at me.
“And this blue one’s in the woods outside the village, where they found Clarence?”
She nods again.
I press a finger next to the pin in the desert and stretch out my hand until it reaches the pin in the village.
“You think he’s coming back,” I say, looking at the small bowl full of tacks sitting on the bookshelf below the map.
“Let me show you something.” I follow the deputy back to her desk and watch as she opens the top drawer. She looks at me. “I’m not supposed to show you this.” She pulls out a large plastic evidence bag. At first I think it’s empty, until she holds it out for me to see, her large knuckles gripping the top of the bag.
“What is that?” I ask, peering at the tiny shreds caught in one corner of the bag. They look like tiny wood shavings, except made out of metal.
“Do they mean anything to you?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“Look harder,” she says, holding the bag closer to me. The thin shreds are curled around one another, some of them corkscrew-shaped, others in the shape of Cs or Ss.
“Where did you find these?” I ask.
“In Clarence’s hair,” she answers, dropping the bag back into her drawer. I sit down heavily in the chair next to the desk, painfully bumping my hip on the chair arm as I do.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I say, rolling forward so my palms are pressed against the linoleum floor. I close my eyes to keep the view of my sneakers from swirling in front of me.
I hear the deputy step closer, and open my eyes to see she’s set the wastebasket next to me.
“Why did you show me that?”
“They found the same sort of metal shavings in the barrel with Tessa. They look like a match. And what I need”—she crouches down in front of me—“is for you to think back to the other night, and to Clarence, and see if you can remember anything.”
“But I can’t,” I say quickly. “I told you everything I saw.”
“I know you did,” she says, “but maybe you can think back. Maybe there’s something you missed.”
“There’s not.” I try to keep the growing panic out of my voice. “There’s never anything different, just what I saw the first time.”
She can’t hide the disappointment in her face.
“I’m s-sorry,” I stammer, a familiar hotness creeping up my neck. “I’m really sorry.”
The deputy pulls a tissue from the box on her desk and hands it to me. “It’s all right. I shouldn’t have asked you that. You’ll be hearing a lot about those shavings. In the next couple of days we’re doing a joint press release with Salvation. Until then, keep it to yourself.”
“Okay.”
“You want a ride home?”
“No, thanks. I’ll call Mom from the library.”
Great. I’m just coming out of the driveway between the police station and the post office when Frank’s truck rumbles to a stop in the street in front of me. Next to Frank is Thea, and sandwiched next to her are Ben and Cray. Frank says something to Thea, and she shrugs. Cray opens the passenger-side door without saying anything, and I grab his outstretched hand and get in, climbing over him and Ben so I can sit in Thea’s lap.
“Hey, neighbor,” Ben says. “How’s that belly?”
“It’s all right,” I say, bracing myself with a palm against the peeling roof of the truck as we start bumping down the road. “Frank, you need new shocks.”
“You and Pilar have a fight?” Thea asks.
“Nope. I just had to come to town before I went home.”
“But I thought your stomach …”
“Nope. I’m fine. I had to pick something up for my mom; that’s why I couldn’t go to your house.”
“Whatever.” Thea snorts.
“We’re taking a shortcut,” Frank says.
Thea slips an arm around my waist, and we all sway to the side as Frank pulls sharply off of Lakeshore Drive and onto the trail that runs up the mountain to Ben’s house. When we come out of the woods into the small field above Ben’s barn, Frank stops the truck. Cray opens the door and looks at me. I look at Ben. “Aren’t you going home?”
Ben shakes his head.
“Yeah, he is. We’re running an errand,” Frank says. “He doesn’t want to come. Neither do you.” Cray opens the door farther.
“Come on, neighbor,” I say, trying to laugh. “I know when we’re not wanted.”
I climb over Ben and Cray and out of the truck. I can’t hear what the low conversation is that Ben’s having with Frank, but I can tell neither one of them is happy about it. Ben finally gets out of the truck, and Frank starts driving before Cray even has the door closed.
We watch the taillights disappear into the forest. I look up the trail that cuts through the woods from Ben’s, and see the dark outline of my house, and wish that its black windows were glowing with the warm lamplight that would mean my mom was home. Instead the house stands dark and uninviting.
“You want help with the horses?” I ask.
Ben’s still staring at the tracks left by Frank’s truck. He finally sighs and grins at me. “Sure. Thanks.”
“Hey, Toots,” Mom says from the kitchen when I walk into the house an hour later. “It’s dark out; I was getting worried.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, dropping my bag and jacket onto the couch in front of the fireplace and going into the bathroom to wash the dirt from my hands. I can smell chicken baking. I’m starving. “I was helping Ben with the horses.”
“That was nice of you.”
“Who’s the message from?” I ask, eyeing the blinking red light on the phone.
“Your aunt Ruby.” Mom opens the oven and pokes at the chicken with a fork.
“Again? Why’s she stalking us?”
“Don’t talk about your aunt that way. And I don’t know why she’s stalking us. Damn it!” she yells, running to the sink and putting her hand under cold water. “I burned myself.”
I’m already at the freezer, wrapping ice cubes in a dish towel.
We eat dinner in front of the TV, trying not to spill rice on the old quilt that covers us both. The angry red blotch on Mom’s thumb fades to a muted pink, and the uneasiness inside of me settles with the sound of Mom laughing at dumb jokes on the television.
“I’ve got homework,” I say. “I’m going upstairs.”
“You sure?” my mom asks. “I thought maybe we could talk.”
It’s too late, I think, you’ve already ignored anything worth talking about out of existence.
“I have got to call Pilar,” I answer, standing up and laying my share of the quilt over her lap.
She takes my hand and gives it a quick squeeze before letting go. “Okay,” she says. “Just don’t stay on the phone too long.”
I nod and head upstairs.
I call Pilar.