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I smile back automatically. I bet those fat pearls she’s got in her ears are real. If I asked politely, she’d probably let me wait on her porch. Maybe even make me a sandwich.
My stomach grumbles. I ignore it. After another moment she goes back inside, the screen door slamming on my chances for lunch.
The trees shake with a sudden gust of wind, and a few still-green maple leaves fall around me. I toe one with my booted foot. It doesn’t look it, but it’s already dead.
The cab pulls up, the driver frowning when he sees me. I slide into the back and give him directions to the garbage house. Happily, he doesn’t ask any questions about picking up a kid three blocks away from a high school. Probably he’s seen a lot worse.
He drops me off, and I hand him the cash from a few recent wagers. I’m low on funds and I’m spending money that I don’t really have. An unexpected dark horse bet coming in could clean me out.
I head up the hill toward the old place. It looks ominous, even in the day. Its shingles are gray with neglect, and one of the windows in the upper story—the one to Mom’s old room—is broken with a bag taped over it.
Barron had to know I might come here. He had to think I might hide the body, now that he warned me that he knows where it is. But whatever surprises he left for me must be in the basement, because the kitchen looks identical to the way I left it on Sunday. My half cup of coffee is still sitting in the sink, the liquid inside looking ominously close to mold.
The coat is right where I left it too, in the back of the closet, gun still rolled inside. I kneel down and pull the bundle out just to be sure.
I picture my mother, pressing the barrel against Philip’s chest. He couldn’t have believed she’d shoot—he was her firstborn. Maybe he laughed. Or maybe he knew her better than I did. Maybe he saw in her expression that no amount of love was worth her freedom.
But the more I try to imagine it, the more I see myself in his place, feel the cold barrel of the gun, see my mother’s smeary lipsticked mouth pull into a grimace. A shudder runs down my back.
I force myself up, grab a knife from the block and a plastic bag from under the sink. I need to stop thinking. I start chopping the buttons off the coat instead. I’m going to burn the cloth, so I want to make sure any hooks or solid parts go into the plastic bag with the gun. After that I plan on weighting it with bricks and sinking it in the Round Valley Reservoir up near Clinton. Grandad once told me that half of New Jersey’s criminals have dropped something down there—it’s the deepest lake in the state.
I turn the pockets inside out, checking for coins.
Red leather gloves tumble onto the linoleum floor. And something else, something solid.
A familiar amulet, cracked in half. At the sight of it I know who killed Philip. Everything snaps into place. The plan changes.
Oh, man, I am an idiot.
* * *
I call her from a pay phone, just like Mom taught me.
“You should have told me,” I say, but I understand why she didn’t.
* * *
On the cab ride back to school, I get a text from Audrey.
I remember how there was a time when that would have thrilled me. Now I open my phone with a sigh.
mutually assured destruction
meet me @ the library tomorrow @ lunch
I have been too busy worrying about my immediate problems to really consider who to tell—or even whether to tell anyone—that Audrey threw a rock through Lila’s window, but Audrey raises an interesting point. If I report Audrey, then Audrey reports seeing me in Lila’s room. I’m not sure which crime they’ll think is worse and neither of us has any proof, but I don’t want to get tossed out of Wallingford in our senior year, even if I get tossed out with someone else.
And I do know which one of us Northcutt thinks is more trustworthy.
I text her back: i’ll be there
* * *
I’m exhausted. Too tired to do anything more than drag myself back to the dorm and eat the rest of Sam’s Pop-Tarts. I fall asleep on top of my blankets, still in my clothes. For the second time that day, I don’t even remember to take my boots off.
* * *
Wednesday afternoon, Audrey is waiting for me on the library steps, red hair tossed by the wind. She’s sitting with her hands in bright kelly green gloves, clasped in the lap of her Wallingford pleated skirt.
