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“Work was good, Rowen had to chase down a guinea pig in Miss Lula’s front yard.”
“Please tell me you got a video.”
I click my tongue. “Left my phone in the car.”
“Damn.” She shakes her head. “Would have been great to hold that over his head.”
After another bite of dumplings, I continue. “Knox brought me my car back and said some kind of catalytic converter needs to be replaced?”
“Cadillac? But you have a Nissan?”
“That’s what I said.” He also looked at me like I had a couple screws loose, but oh well. “I, uh, went to the bakery too. Talked to Sheila while I was there.” I shove a massive dumpling in my mouth to keep busy.
“Dangerous.” Riley smirks. “That woman knows things about people that even they forgot.”
“True. She, uh, mentioned someone Mom used to be friends with… Cricket, I think?” I pray to God my voice sounds convincingly nonchalant.
Riley’s fork pauses midair. “Cricket?”
“Yeah, I think that’s what she said.”
She shakes her head so fast that the short hair of her bangs fall out of her bun one by one. “Nope, never heard of her. Probably got the name wrong.”
“But Sheila remembers everything.”
“Not everything, apparently. She’s getting old, and she’s sniffing in those sugar fumes all day. Bless her heart, it’s probably all going straight to her brain.”
Huh… To be fair, Cricket is a really, really weird name.
“Right.” I nod. “Probably.”
As soon as Riley finishes dinner, cleans up the kitchen, and traipses off to her bedroom down the hall, I take off to the storage bins in the closet attached to the garage. Mom took very little with her, just enough for one suitcase, but I know she will miss some of her stuff. Old ornaments we made together, the macaroni heart-shaped project I gave her in first grade, a picture frame of the two of us when I was a month old. Anything we felt worth saving for her we distributed in storage bins and tossed in this closet for safekeeping.
Thankfully, one of the things I saved was my mom’s junior-year yearbook. She never got to graduate—she got pregnant with me the summer before—so this is the closest thing I’ve got to finding Cricket.
As soon as I find the navy-blue bound book, I slip open the clear container, quietly grab it, and race up my stairs, shouting goodnight down to Riley.
My room is quiet, lit only by the small lamp on my nightstand. I sit cross-legged on my bed with the old yearbook. The spine is cracked and the pages smell like dust and a hint of mildew.
I flip through the pages, searching for familiar faces, all the way to the juniors’ section in Mom’s forty-five-student class.
Pictures are scattered with kids frozen mid-laugh—cheerleaders, football players, teachers who probably retired ten years ago. A few odd shots of random kids with their hoodies pulled over their head and the strings pulled tight where you can only see their noses. A couple of the same staff members that still work there. There’s even one picture where Mike the janitor wears the same smile that he gave me just a couple days ago; I take a picture of it on my phone to show him on Monday.
Finally there—on a page halfway through—a name comes across:
Langsley, Cristina “Cricket.”
She’s smiling wide, eyes bright, hair pulled into two messy braids, and sitting right beside her is a familiar red-haired face with braces on her teeth and an oversized Alabama jersey across her chest. They’re hugging in a tight embrace, and I smile to myself; it’s nice to think that Mom had friends back then. At least better friends than the ones she brought back to our place, stumbling and making the whole trailer shake.
I glance around for any other signs of the two of them, but there’s not many, just a couple more group photos where they’re scattered throughout. No pictures of guys around my mom either, which really doesn’t help.
This is going to be harder than I thought. I pull at my hair and text the only person that is smart enough to help me out. Regardless of if I can tell him the real reason I’m doing this or not, I really need Knox right now.
Me: Do you want to help me solve a mystery?
Knox: Who’d you kill?
Me: Har Har.
