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“Rumors,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I think his parents are rich too. And he’s hot. That’s the truth.”
“I don’t know.”
“Sure you do.”
I’d been flirting with the idea of myself as asexual—even though I wasn’t totally sure what that meant. Steph assured me that I just hadn’tawakened sexually, which in retrospect seems like a very advanced theory for a kid who was getting a C in psychology. But Steph was, if anything, sexually awakened.You like boys, she told me.Your body just hasn’t figured it out yet.
She was a couple months younger but somehow seemed to know everything about the world, sex, and me.
“So, you didn’t give him your notebook?” she asked, taking a long sip of her Coke, holding me in that kryptonite stare.
I shook my head and stopped short of telling her that he was coming over tonight—allegedly.
And then Badger, Ainsley, and Sam joined us, Badger pushing up against me roughly, Ainsley railing about the totally unfair C Mrs. Baker gave her on her essay. “Overly simplistic and derivative? What does that even mean?”
Steph was still looking at me, though. And I kept the secret of Evan from them all. It was the first time I hadn’t completely spilled my guts to the group. Looking back, I see that as the first of the hairline cracks that would grow to chasms between us in the months to come.
Tonight, when I pull up to the Wallace place, the Mustang is in the driveway and there are some dim orange lights glowing in the windows. Through one of the big front windows, I see what looks like a Christmas tree—which for some reason surprises me. Harley Granger doesn’t seem like the holiday decoration type. But what do I know? We all think we know the authors we love because we spend so much time in the worlds they create or illuminate, because we listen to their podcasts, or watch them interviewed. But I have met enough of them to know that it’s not true. The person who lives on the page often bears little resemblance to the one who occupies the world.
I slide out of the car, and walk up the groaning porch steps, alive with memory. All the other times I ran up these steps, slept in this house, played hide-and-seek in this yard, or waded in the creek in the surrounding woods play on a chaotic reel in my head. I used to ride my bike up the long drive, huffing and puffing, and then toss it tilting onto the lawn so that Mr. Wallace wouldn’t come home from work and not be able to pull in the garage.
This house sometimes felt more like home than my own place—my dad always working, my mom long gone. I was a free-range kid mostly, making meals and putting myself to bed when Miranda couldn’t be there, long before I should have been considered old enough to do so.
In the cold of this winter night, I can still hear the echoes of our childhood laughter, our happy shrieks, see the beams of our flashlights on summer nights.
I’m standing there, so lost in remembering that I forgot to knock, when Harley Granger opens the door. He wears a crooked smile and leans against the doorjamb in a gray waffle Henley, jeans, feet bare.
“I was wondering if you’d come.”
He runs a hand through his already tousled, thick dark hair. The light is bright behind him, and he is just a dark form though we’re standing close.
“Ready to talk?”
I shake my head. That’s not why I’m here, is it? I’m here to tell him to leave, that there’s no story except for the one everyone knows as the truth. That Evan Handy killed Steph. That he left me for dead. And that he probably killed Ainsley and Sam and won’t tell anyone where he hid their bodies because he is a sadistic psychopath, his only motive to cause as much pain on this earth as possible. I want to implore Harley Granger to not cause this town any more misery. Because people are still hurting. And I’ve slowly built a life here despite it all. And some questions don’t want answers.
“I’m going to do this with or without you, Maddie. You might as well have a voice.”
He steps aside, and despite myself and all better judgment, I walk in.
8
Evan came that night around eight. I heard his motorcycle long before I saw its bright headlight in the drive.
“Who’s that now?” my dad asked finishing up the dishes with me.
We made a point to cook and eat together on his days off. That night it was beef stroganoff, the savory scent still lingering. My dad was a decent cook, said he tried to learn when mom left us. On those nights we talked about school, events and people at work, my grades, my friends. Things with my dad, they were always pretty easy. But that, too, would change with the arrival of Evan into our lives.
He peered out the window over the sink, unconsciously resting a hand on his hip where his holster would be if he was on duty.
“A kid from school,” I answered. “New. He needs help with chemistry.”
“New?”
“Evan Handy.”
My father didn’t say anything right away, moved from the window, and put away some plates, but I saw a frown wrinkle his forehead.
“I had a call about him,” he said finally. The engine grew louder, a great rumble that came to an abrupt quiet.
