Chapter 36 Chapter 36How to tell if you have social leprosy:
1. When you walk into a room, instead of smiling and saying hello, your fellow classmates all stop talking and stare at you like they’ve never seen anything quite like you. When you walk away, you can hear them all talking again.
2. If you accidentally trip in gym class and do a face-plant on the basketball court, instead of anyone helping you up, you’ll hear them snicker. Someone may say, loud enough for you to hear, “nice one.”
3. As you walk down the hallway, there’s a three-foot barrier between you and everyone else, as if your loser status were as contagious as Ebola.
4. Even the hot-lunch lady shakes her head in disgust when she sees you, and she’s been wearing the same pants with crusted-on baked beans since the beginning of the year.
I had to hand it to Nicole. She was better at spreading information than the emergency broadcast system. Near as I could tell, by third period everyone in school knew Nicole’s version of events. I took my lunch tray from the hot lunch lady (who had no business judging me) and stood looking out over the cafeteria. Anyone who met my eyes looked away.
“Come on. We can sit over there.”
I felt a huge wave of relief as I realized Nate was behind me. He motioned to a table near the window, and I trailed after him. There were two juniors sitting there, but when they saw Nate and me come over, they jumped up from the table.
“You don’t mind if we join you, do you?” Nate plopped his lunch sack down and, without waiting for them to answer, dropped himself into the seat. They scurried away without saying anything, looking over their shoulders as if they thought we might be chasing them down. “Guess they were done with their lunch.” Nate pulled his sandwich out and then looked up at me. “Are you still getting hot lunch? Talk about a slow learner.”
“I didn’t make anything this morning. I had other stuff on my mind.” I shifted from foot to foot. “Maybe we shouldn’t eat in here.”
“Why not?” Nate asked, his mouth full of sandwich.
“Are you telling me you haven’t noticed we’ve become the social lepers of Nairne High?”
“I noticed. I just don’t care.” Nate pushed the chair next to him away from the table with his foot so I could sit down. “If you ask me, what that lunch is going to do to your internal organs is a much bigger concern than what people here think of you.”
I looked down at the tray. There was some sort of square piece of grayish meat covered in gravy. I poked it with my fork. I couldn’t think of a single animal that came in a square shape, which left me with the uncomfortable image of some sort of meat press that stamped out uniformly square chunks of meat made out of things like beaks and hooves. Nate tore off half of his sandwich and passed it to me.
“If you keep this up, I’m going to have to start making extra sandwiches for my lunches so I won’t waste away,” he said.
“You had to give me your lunch twice. It’s not exactly a radical starvation program I’ve got you on.” I shoved the sandwich in my mouth before he could take it back.
Nate looked over his shoulder and then leaned in. “About what we were talking about in the car, I think we should go to the police.”
The sandwich stuck in my throat and I had to force it down. “The cops? Are you sure?”
“No.” Nate ran his hand through his hair. “The whole situation makes me sick, but I don’t know what else to do.”
I chewed on the inside of my mouth. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. If we go to the police, they’re going to talk to your dad and he’ll deny everything.”
“We’ll show them the bank statement and the email.”
“And your dad will have an answer for it. He’s a big guy on this island. They’re going to look at me and see someone who has a lot of crazy in the family, is already seeing a therapist, whose parents are taking her for an evaluation with a residential treatment center, and has made it pretty clear I didn’t want to move here. The cops are going to blame me.”
“We’ll tell them how you found the stuff.”
“Oh, that will convince them. Make sure you mention how I’m getting messages from your deceased sister. The police love stuff like that.” I rubbed my temple. I liked Nate, but we saw the world differently. He came from a background where the police were all Officer Friendly types. It wasn’t that I was on the wrong side of the law, but I knew enough to know that cops were influenced by stuff like how much money you have and if your parents donate to the Police Charity Drive. There were plenty of times in Seattle when I’d be doing nothing more than walking down the street, and a cop car would slow down and follow me for a while before they got out to ask me where was I headed and what I was up to.
I knew exactly how a meeting with the police would go. Dick would shake his head sadly and mention my mental difficulties and how I didn’t seem to be managing the transition well. My mom would disown me for causing more trouble in her perfect marriage, and it would be the final nail in my coffin. I’d be locked up before the day was over. Nate would stick up for me, but everyone would decide that he was blinded by sex and depression over losing his mom and sister. The fall guy in this situation would be me. No way they would believe me over Dick, no way.
“If you don’t want to go to the cops, what do you want to do, confront him?” Nate asked.
“I don’t see that going well either. He’s just going to say he had nothing to do with it.”
“We can’t ignore the situation either.”
“We need proof,” I insisted.
“Okay, Sherlock Holmes, what are we going to do? Try out some forensic techniques? Maybe go through the attic and see if we can find my uncle’s old college microscope? Look for fingerprints?”
I sat back in the chair. Nate was pissed. His hands were clenched in fists, and I could see his lips pressed into a tight line. Suddenly the saying about not shooting the messenger was making sense. “Don’t be mad at me,” I said.
“Could have fooled me.”
“Okay, I’m pissed. Not at you; at the whole situation. Do you realize what we’re talking about? About what all this means?” He looked around the cafeteria to make sure no one was listening in and then leaned closer. “If we’re right, my dad, maybe with help from your mom, murdered my mom and sister. Murder. We can’t sit on that information. We have to do something. I know Deputy Burrows. He used to coach my Little League team. He’ll listen to us.”
Deputy Little League might listen, but I knew that was a long way from believing. The problem was, I was lacking a plan B. I didn’t know what else we should do. Nate was right that I didn’t have the slightest clue how to get any evidence to back up what we were saying.
“Can you wait a day?”
“What’s a day going to do?”
“I don’t know. I need some time to think, and maybe there’s a way to get more proof.” I shrugged. “Once we start talking, there’s no way to take it back. We’re not going to get a do-over. I know you trust Deputy Burrows, but I don’t know him. We’ve waited this long. Would a day or two more really matter?”
Nate sighed. “No, a day isn’t going to change anything. We’re running out of time, though. They’ve arranged an appointment for you in Seattle for Friday. Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. I’d been planning to come up with the most moronic plan I could think of, but I guess now I won’t.”
“I mean it, Isobel. If you go head-to-head with my dad, you won’t win.”
“I know.” What I didn’t say was that I wasn’t planning to go head-to-head. I was going to hopefully sneak up on him somehow. I just needed to figure out how. And I needed to figure it out quickly.