AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Stevie shook their head. “She definitely wouldn’t have gone without telling us.”
“Even after she broke up with Lorcan,” Arthur said. “She would have told us.”
“Is that right?” Auggie asked.
Lorcan spread his hands—a small, helpless gesture. But then he said, “She’s not posting anything. And she doesn’t reply to texts.”
Theo knew there were explanations. She’d been sent back to Kansas as a punishment. She’d had her phone taken away. But he didn’t say any of that; all four kids practically vibrated with fear, and it had driven them to do something stupid—brave, maybe, and in a weird way, admirable, but undeniably stupid. “What do you think happened to her?”
The kids traded looks again, and Arthur said, “Someone killed her, of course.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because she was investigating another murder, of course.”
“Cut it out with the ‘of course’ business,” Emery said.
Arthur flushed, but he said, “It’s obvious that whoever killed Leon would desire to keep the killing secret. Shaniyah was investigating Leon’s disappearance. She was going to post about her search on TikTok. She conducted several interviews—everyone at school knew she was looking for Leon. But she never posted any of her videos, and now she’s gone.”
“Why,” Auggie asked, “do you think Leon is dead?”
The silence had the disbelieving quality that Theo associated with teens mentally asking,How stupid can you be?
Stevie answered, “Because everyone knows he is.”
“Uh huh. But how does everyone know that? Were you friends with him too?”
“Oh God no,” Dot said.
“Not because he was gay,” Arthur said, “in case you were worried about that, Mr. Hazard.”
“I was not.”
“Because he was a self-absorbed asshat,” Dot said.
“In what ways?” Theo asked.
“Everything was about him. He loved making a scene. He always had to be the center of attention. I swear to God, Dr. Stratford, in the middle of Lifetime Fitness once, he started singing ‘Let It Go’ and twirling just because he was bored.”
“He could be pretty mean,” Stevie said. “You think he’d be, you know, an ally, but he’d say stuff about my hair, about my clothes.”
“He called me Oscar Mayer,” Lorcan said. “He’d say it really loud because it always got the other kids to laugh.”
“Does anyone have any proof that he’s dead?” Theo asked. “We know he was emancipated—”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Arthur asked. “He was killed by Mr. Weber to cover up an illicit sexual relationship, of c—” He managed to cut himself off, but not before a pair of amber eyes glittered in his direction.
Dot burst out, “I heard he was at a truck stop, and there was a man at the truck stop, and that man had a hook for a hand, and he followed Leon into the bathroom and did this with his hook—” She mimed slicing it across her own belly. “—and Leon’s guts spilled out into the toilet, and the man with the hook used the little point to pull out his eyeballs, and that’s how the police found him, only they didn’t know it was him because of the eyeballs.” She stopped, turned bright pink, and seemed to shrink inside her headgear. “That’s what I heard, anyway.”
“A man with a hook,” Emery muttered. “Fantastic.”
“All right,” Theo said. “Thank you. Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?”
Arthur frowned. Lorcan shook his head. Dot considered her stun gun. Stevie flicked the tab on their jumpsuit’s zipper.
“Did people know about Leon and Mr. Weber?” Auggie asked.
Surprise flickered on the faces of the Breakfast Club. Lorcan finally said, “No,” and the others shook their heads.
