Just like I told her, Uncle Bill is not home. Once inside, I notice her glancing around, checking things out. “Do you want something to drink?” I ask her.
“No, thank you,” she says. “Where’s your proof?”
“I’ve got it hidden upstairs in my room.”
“Your bedroom?” Amy sounds more wary. “Can’t you bring it downstairs?”
“I don’t want my uncle to see it if he suddenly comes home.”
“I thought you weren’t expecting him till later.”
“I’m not. But I can’t be totally sure.”
She glances around the house again.
“I guess I could bring it down,” I say, heading toward the stairs.
“No, that’s all right,” she says abruptly.
Amy follows me upstairs to the second floor, and we head down the hall to my room. She keeps looking left and right, as if she expects someone to jump out at any moment. When we reach my room she waits for me to go in first, then, moving cautiously, she follows me in. As she looks around I feel embarrassed at how barren my room looks. Most teenagers would have posters on the walls, pictures on desks and tables, something. Except for the single photo of my parents, I have nothing. It looks more like a prison cell than a bedroom.
“I’ve got it over here.” I head into the closet and come out with the bag. Without thinking about it, I sit on my bed. Amy hesitates, then pulls out my desk chair and sits on it, keeping a fair distance between us.
Before opening the bag, I tell her, “I’m sorry about this. I really am.”
“Just show me what you have,” she says, looking grim and a little scared.
I take a deep breath. “When I realized Greg had killed you…I mean her…I panicked. I ran home.” No need to tell her Charlie had any part in this. “I called the police, anonymously. I used a pay phone. I didn’t mention you or Greg then, just that a girl had been killed. But the police didn’t find anything. Not a body, no sign of an attack, nothing. The next day, I went back and looked around. That’s when I found your necklace. At the time I thought it confirmed it was you he killed, but now I know Greg had it. It must have fallen out of his pocket while he was killing her or maybe when he was getting rid of her body.”
Amy cringes at that.
After a few seconds, I continue. “I think he hit her with his backpack. It was filled with books, and he swung it at her.”
“You think?” Amy says.
“They were standing behind the dugout wall on one of the fields. I didn’t actually see him do it, but I heard Alycia cry out, then saw the backpack for a second, up above the wall then down, like he was swinging it. I heard the backpack hit her.”
“If you didn’t see all of it, how can you be sure?”
Without saying a word, I reach into the bag and pull out the backpack. She stares at it for a moment. With all the familiar sports patches on it, she knows that it belongs to Greg. “Is that blood?” she says in a timid voice.
“Yes. I found blood on the dugout wall. I think the force of the bag of books hitting her caused her to hit her head against the wall before she fell. Some of the blood must have splashed on Greg’s backpack. Or maybe Greg dropped the backpack after he hit her and her head landed on it when she fell, and that’s how the blood got on it.”
“He told me he’d torn the strap, which is why he hasn’t been using it the last few days,” she says in a distant voice.
“I walked around the edge of the wall,” I continue in as gentle a voice as I can, “and saw him holding it. Alycia was lying on the ground at his feet.”
“How…how did you get the backpack?”
I hesitate. “He was hiding it in his room.”
She looks at me. “You broke into his house?”
“Yes.”
I expect her to be upset about that, but she says nothing. Continuing, I reach into the bag again and pull out the smaller bag containing Greg’s bloody clothes. I take them out one by one and show each item to Amy. She gives a little gasp when she sees the shoes, which I show her last. Perhaps she recognizes them in particular, making it impossible for her to deny that the clothes, just like the backpack, belongs to her boyfriend.
“Did you break into his house to get those, too?” she asks.
“He tried to throw them away. I got them out of the trash can before garbage pickup the next day.”
She seems resigned to what I’m telling her. “You’ve been spying on him, haven’t you? For how long?”
“Since Saturday, the day after he killed Alycia.”
“Not before?” She stares at me.
I stare back.
“You were spying on him before Saturday,” Amy says. “You followed him. That’s how you saw him…hurt that girl. Right?” She takes my silence for a yes. “That’s kind of weird, you know. But I’ve heard that about you.”
“What?” My face is suddenly hot. “How did…”
“Rick Kellerman thought he noticed you spying on him, I heard. He’s pretty upset. ”
Suddenly, everything feels twisted. It looks like I’m not as good at this as I thought. If Rick Kellerman noticed, how many others have?
“Hey, don’t worry,” Amy says. “There are people who think I’m weird because I’m a Christian and I’m not afraid to say so. I won’t judge you for it. I know what happened to your parents.” She leans toward me. “I understand. I do. You’re trying to help people. You don’t want what happened to you to happen to anyone else. If you hadn’t spied on Greg, I wouldn’t know what he’d done. Who knows, he might’ve attacked me someday.”
I stare at her, awestruck. Amy really does seem to understand; she even appreciates it. She understands more than Charlie, my supposed best friend, who keeps telling me I should stop. Charlie, who, when I need her the most, isn’t here for me.
“Are you okay?” Amy asks.
“Uh…yeah. Thank you for that.”
She gives me the briefest of smiles, then turns serious again. “Is there anything more you have?” she asks. “You haven’t shown me anything that proves absolutely Greg and this Alycia were seeing each other.” Her voice becomes shaky. “Did you see them kissing before Greg killed her?”
“No. She kept trying to hug him, but he’d push her away. Then they were arguing.”
“Then maybe he wasn’t seeing her. Maybe it was something entirely different. Maybe he didn’t—”
“There is one more thing,” I say.
“What?”
Reaching into the backpack, I pull out the cell phone. Hoping there was enough power left after I’d turned it off before, I turn it on. After a split-second hesitation, the screen lights up. “He had this hidden in here. I found it by accident. It belonged to Alycia.” After the phone finishes powering up, I extend it to her. “I’m so sorry.”
At first, Amy does nothing. Then, slowly, as if I’m giving her a bomb that might explode at any moment, she takes it from my hand. “Go to the text screen,” I tell her. “You’ll see texts between them. They’re all places where they met. About once a week, it looks like. The last one shows they were meeting at Miller’s Park. The text date is the date she was killed.”
“Okay. So he was meeting her. That still doesn’t mean they were—”
“There’s a picture.” I don’t like telling her about it and wish there was some way I could do this without her seeing it, but she needs to know the truth. She deserves to know.
“Check gallery,” I tell her.
Amy touches the icon and brings up the only picture there. The selfie of Alycia and Greg together, Greg looking like he hadn’t expected the picture to be taken.
Amy’s face falls . “I guess this proves it.” She seems to be fighting tears. “Is that everything?”
She doesn’t need to see any more. I don’t want her to be hurt any more than she is. “Yes,” I answer, maybe a little too quickly. I stick my hand out for the phone, but she ignores me.
“Was there anything else on this thing?” she asks without looking up.
“No, nothing,” I say. “I’ll take that.” I fight to keep a sudden urgency out of my voice.
“What’s this other icon? It needs a password.”
“It’s nothing. There’s nothing there.”
She looks up and frowns at me. “Why are you acting funny?”
“I’m not,” I say with a shaky laugh, which only makes things worse.
She stares at me. Her sudden look of determination reminds me of Charlie. “What’s the password, Alden?” she asks.
“Amy,” I plead, “you don’t want to—”
“What’s the password?” she snaps.
I hesitate, then before she snaps at me again, “G and A.”
“For Greg and Alycia,” she mutters under her breath.
“The ampersand for ‘and.’ No spaces,” I add feebly as she punches in the correct letters.
A sudden gasp tells me she has accessed the hidden pictures. I wait as she swipes her thumb across the phone. The look of horror on her face grows as the photos make it very clear that Greg’s relationship with Alycia went far beyond kissing. Once she has seen them all, she closes her eyes for a moment, then extends her hand with the phone and says, “Take this. Please take this.”
Like it’s hot to the touch, I take it, shut it off, and toss it into the backpack. Just as quickly, I put all the evidence back into the bag while Amy sits very still. Then I return to the bed and sit down. And wait.
Her look of horror has changed to sadness. I’m not sure if it’s a question or a statement when she says, “You’re taking that to the police.”
I answer anyway. “Yes. I think it would mean more if you came with me.”
“When?”
“As soon as possible. Maybe right now.”
“We should find Greg. Show him what we have. Confront him.”
“What? No!” I say. “He killed Alycia! And he threatened me.”
She looks at me, eyes widening. “He threatened you?”
“In so many words. He knows I have the backpack and the phone.”
“How did he find out?” Before I can answer, she waves her hand. “Never mind.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, though I’m not sure why I’m apologizing.
“Don’t be,” she says. “It’s not your fault.”
Her emotions have veered all over the place. Now she’s back to angry.
“If you don’t want to go with me—” I start.
“I’ll go,” she says suddenly.
“Really?” I ask, surprised.
“Like you said, it’ll mean more if I’m with you.”
She surprises me again by sitting next to me on the bed. Her sudden closeness makes me nervous, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “Look, I want to help,” she says in a quieter voice. I’m suddenly warm all over. Our legs brush, sending a shudder through me. “You’ve done so much work. I want to show you how grateful I am.”
She can’t possibly mean what I think she means. This is Amy Sloan, for God’s sake. Sweet, innocent, cross-wearing Amy Sloan. To confirm it, she adds, “So I’ll go with you,” and I exhale a little shakily. “We’ll show the evidence to the police chief together tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” My throat is rough and dry and my voice raspy.
“If we go now, I don’t know if I can… I’m still having trouble believing that Greg…” She takes a deep breath to settle herself. “As horrible as it sounds, what you’ve told me helps explain why he’s been so different lately. I need time to process this. There’s no school tomorrow because of the teachers’ workshop. Let’s take it to the police first thing in the morning. And I’ll back up everything you say. Here, I’ll give you my phone number, just in case. You want to give me yours?”
Everything seems to be happening so fast all of a sudden, and somehow too slow at the same time. But, of course, she’s right. One more night’s not going to make a difference. The important thing for now is she knows the truth about Greg, and she’ll stay away from him. “Sure,” I say.
We exchange numbers. “I’ll meet you at the police station at 9:00 a.m.” She gives me a soft, uncertain smile.
“Okay.”
“Is that bag going to be okay here?”
“I’ve had it all this time,” I say. “It’s safe here. It’s just my uncle and me, and he’s hardly ever in my room.”
“Okay,” she says. “I have a younger sister and brother. They’re always snooping. If I hid it at my house, they’d find it.”
I nod. “Tomorrow then.”
“9:00 a.m.,” she repeats, then points at me. “Don’t forget.”
Like I could. “I won’t.”
We stare at each other. I guess it’s time to say goodbye. “Let me put this away,” I say, indicating the bag. When I come back out of the closet, there’s Amy. “Thank you, Alden,” she says. “You might have saved my life.” With that, she hugs me.
It catches me by surprise, and I’m clumsy and awkward as I hug her back, but we remain this way for a second or two. When she pulls away, I notice again how perfectly her bright red hair frames her face, making her blue eyes sparkle.
The distinct sound of someone clearing his throat jolts us apart. Uncle Bill stands in the doorway. “Um, I just wanted to tell you I’m home.” He looks about as uncomfortable as I feel. “I can just—”
“I need to go home anyway,” Amy says.
My uncle is giving me a look, and I find my voice. “Amy, this is my uncle Bill. Bill Ross.”
“Very nice to meet you, sir,” Amy says in a sweet voice, any sign of how our previous conversation affected her gone from her face. “Your nephew was helping me with some of my homework.”
“You don’t have to go on my account,” Uncle Bill says.
“My mom’ll be expecting me.” She looks at me and smiles. “Bye, Alden.”
“Bye,” I say back.
Uncle Bill moves aside to let her pass. She steps into the hall, and as soon as my uncle turns his head away from her, she mouths to me, “See you tomorrow.”
I give her a barely perceptible nod, and she walks away, down the hall.
As soon as we hear the front door close, Uncle Bill, seemingly flustered, says, “I’m sorry if I interrupted something. I didn’t mean for her to leave.”
“It’s all right,” I say. “She really did have to go.”
“Is she someone, you know, special? A girlfriend?”
“No,” I tell him, but he doesn’t seem to hear me.
“’Cause, if you ever need to talk about stuff like that, you know…”
“She’s just a friend,” I tell him, wishing he’d get off the subject. “I was helping her with math.”
“Uh-huh.” He doesn’t seem to believe me. “Anyway, I got off early again today. I’m off tomorrow and you don’t have school, so I thought we could do something.”
“You mean tomorrow?”
“Well, I was thinking tonight. See a movie. Maybe even two. Unless you have other plans?” He raises his eyebrows, tilting his head in the direction of the front door.
“No, I don’t have any plans,” I say quickly.
“Movie it is then,” he says, his face beaming. “We’ll see one, then we’ll decide what to do. If we want to do another, we’ll just have candy and popcorn for dinner.”
He looks so happy I don’t have the heart to say no. “Sure,” I say.
He slaps me on the back and, with my insides still churning from my conversation with Amy, I get my phone to check movie times.