The Escape

by Jayne, Hannah

  He was in the middle of the dream yet again when, this time, the mirror crashed. It sounded like a sonic boom, so loud that it rattled his teeth and made him sit bolt upright in his bed.

  “Did you hear that?” his mother asked. She was in his doorway, in her bathrobe, one hand pulling the collar tight against her throat. When she clicked on his bedside lamp, Fletcher could see the hollows in her cheeks and the bags underneath her eyes. She wasn’t sleeping well either.

  Fletcher raked a hand through his damp hair. “I thought I was dreaming.”

  “No, I heard something crash.”

  He kicked off the covers and pressed his bare feet onto the floor. “I’ll go check it out.”

  “Fletcher, no.” It was a halfhearted attempt to stop him. Fletcher could barely feel his mother’s fingertips brush against the fabric of his T-shirt. “It sounded like it came from downstairs.”

  There was another unmistakable crash and then the squeal of tires.

  A dog barked.

  A light flicked on at the neighbor’s house.

  Fletcher ran down the stairs and yanked open the front door, peering down the walk. His mother turned on the porch light.

  The driveway and grass looked like a battlefield of oozing yolks and little broken shells. But it wasn’t the egging that had woken Fletcher and his mother.

  Fletcher walked down the driveway, careful not to slip on the egg slime, and stopped beside his car. He gently fingered what remained of the splintered back window of his Toyota Celica.

  “Oh, son, I’m so sorry. I heard all the commotion.” It was Mr. Henderson from across the street. The old man was in his slippers and robe. “Kids can be such jackasses. I can help you call the insurance company in the morning. We should file a police report too.”

  Fletcher nodded. On the edge of his vision, he watched his mother gingerly step down the walk, take one look at the debris on the ground and the damage to Fletcher’s car, and turn back to the house—probably hoping that Fletcher wouldn’t see her shoulders shaking as she cried.

  Fletcher glanced into the car. He put his hand through the open space on the back window and fished through the glittering glass. A rock, about the size of a tennis ball but slightly more compact. He picked it up, feeling the heft of it in his palm and swallowing hard at the words scrawled across it: ADAM DIDN’T DESERVE 2DIE. U DO.

  He looked out to the street and launched the rock as far as he could.

  • • •

  By the time Avery got to homeroom, everyone was already seated. The murmur in the halls was better than any announcement, so the whole school already knew that someone had vandalized Fletcher’s house the night before.

  Avery was upset. She had called Fletcher three times that morning, but he hadn’t answered either his cell or the home phone, and he hadn’t called her back. She texted, Are you okay? just before she’d walked onto the school grounds that morning, but still nothing.

  “I heard it was all over the house, all over everything—eggs, shaving cream, the works.” Kaylee looked almost pleased with her replay of the events at Fletcher’s house.

  Avery shook her head. “That’s awful. Fletcher has gone through enough.”

  “Fletcher?” Kaylee stood up, nearly nose to nose with Avery. “He seems pretty fine to me. I mean, he’s alive.”

  “God, Kaylee! He’s totally traumatized. He watched his best friend die! And now people…”—Avery looked around, eyes narrowed and accusatory—“you people are accusing him of murder. He’s our friend! We’ve known him since he was kid!”

  “No,” Tim said, standing up. “We’ve only known Fletch for a few years. We knew Adam since he was a kid. And Fletcher has never wanted to be anyone’s friend. He barely even talks to anyone.”

  “You know an awful lot about Fletch, Avery. Maybe you’re so defensive of him because you like him.” Kaylee flicked her glossy hair. “Maybe you’re defending him because you know that Fletcher didn’t do this alone.”

  Avery gasped. “What are you talking about?”

  The kids around them exchanged looks, and a surprised murmur rippled through the room.

  Tim shot Kaylee a look. “Come on, that’s not fair. Don’t drag Avery into this.”

  Kaylee cocked a hip, clearly not ready to back down. “I didn’t drag Avery anywhere—she did this to herself. Think about it. She was the one who found Fletcher.”

  “I was on a search team.”

  Kaylee shrugged. “So was I, but I didn’t find him. You told us not to leave the group for any reason, Avery, but who left the group? You. And when you did, you went straight to Fletcher. Coincidence?” Her blond eyebrows rose.

  Avery wanted to defend herself, but her voice was trapped in her chest. She looked around for someone to defend her, for a teacher to step in, but she was surrounded by suspicious stares. “That’s not true.”

  “And then the only person Fletcher wanted to talk to in the hospital? Avery again.” Kaylee was gathering steam now, patrolling the classroom like a prosecutor in front of an adoring court. “Everyone knows Fletcher was jealous of Adam. Fletcher’s a freak. Adam was perfect. He practically had a full-ride college scholarship already, a brand-new car…he had everything. Fletcher had nothing, and he couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “That’s not—”Avery tried to interrupt.

  “Kaylee,” Tim said again.

  “And everyone knows you had a major crush on Adam. You probably just got mad because you knew it would never happen for you and him. One of those scorned-lover things. ‘If I can’t have him, no one can.’”

  Avery’s head started to spin. The only thing she could register was Kaylee’s sharp, snotty voice.

  “He thought you were a freak too.” Kaylee pointed her index finger, jabbing at the air in front of Avery’s chest.

  “He didn’t—” Avery heard herself say. “Adam and I were friends.”

  “No you weren’t. When was the last time he even talked to you? When was the last time he said anything more than ‘Excuse me’ or ‘Can I borrow a pencil?’ He felt sorry for you because your mom died. Just like Fletcher: You. Are. A. Freak.” She punctuated each word so that they hit Avery like poisoned darts. “You probably wanted him dead.”

  “What’s going on in here?” Ms. Holly broke through the door like a wave of fresh air, and Avery felt her legs nearly give way. She wanted to report Kaylee, to defend herself and Fletcher, but there was nothing left in her. Kaylee had shredded her, and Avery didn’t know how to begin to put herself back together.

  The class answered Ms. Holly with silence. No one stepped in. No one pointed out that what Kaylee had said was mean and just plain wrong from beginning to end. No one asked about Avery.

  “Take your seats, everyone. Come on, come on. Class is starting.”

  Avery could hear Ms. Holly’s voice, but it felt like her ears were full of cotton.

  “Avery? You can sit down now.”

  Avery snapped to attention, gasping for breath as though she had been holding it the whole time. Tim wouldn’t meet her eyes. Kaylee looked unaffected, lazily flipping through pages in her textbook. Avery sank into her seat. Did that really just happen?

  Twenty-three

  Avery had no idea how she made it through the rest of her classes. Around her, the rumors circulated—that she and Fletcher had attacked Adam together, that it was their plot all along, that they were the modern-day murderous Bonnie and Clyde.

  “She snapped,” Avery heard someone say under her breath.

  “Fletcher is in love with Avery. He’d do anything she said…”

  “Avery said if he got rid of Adam…”

  Each new theory was a stab to Avery’s self-worth, but the accusatory stares were even worse. Once upon a time, she had been invisible, a goody-goody—now she was a celebrity criminal, tried and convicted in front of a jury of her peers. There was no reason to defend herself. The decision had already been made: Fletcher killed Adam, and Avery had helped. Maybe Fletcher
would have defended her, but he didn’t show up at school nor did he answer any of Avery’s calls or texts. When the final bell rang, she tried again.

  After the third ring, a woman answered in an uncertain, scared voice. “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Carroll?”

  “Who is this, please?”

  Avery cleared her throat. “It’s Avery. Avery Templeton. I’m a friend of Fletcher’s.” She knew that Mrs. Carroll knew exactly who she was, but adding that she was Fletcher’s friend somehow felt important.

  “Yes, Avery. May I help you?”

  Avery’s eyes started to fill with tears, even though she knew the offer to help was part of a greeting rather than any actual offer. She couldn’t talk to her father much, and she’d always been able to talk with her mother…

  She cleared her throat. “Is Fletcher there?”

  There was an extra-long silence. “I’m sorry. Fletcher can’t come to the phone right now.”

  Avery found herself nodding even though she knew Mrs. Carroll couldn’t see her. “Sure, yeah, okay. Would it be okay if I came by the house later?”

  Another pause. “I don’t think so, Avery.”

  “Can you tell Fletcher that I called? I’ve been trying to get hold—”

  “Sure, Avery,” Mrs. Carroll’s soft voice cut her off smoothly. “I’ll let him know that you were looking for him.”

  Avery was about to reply when the line dropped and she was listening to silence. She stared at her phone as if that would explain everything: Fletcher seemingly avoiding her and Mrs. Carroll’s quick cutoff. Or did Mrs. Carroll just not want her to talk to Fletcher?

  Avery turned and Ellison, standing with Tim and some other kids, wandered over to her. “Hey,” Ellison said.

  Avery wasn’t in the mood to talk, her head swimming with thoughts about Fletch and Mrs. Carroll. “Hey,” she said offhandedly.

  “About all the stuff—all the rumors and stuff—”

  Avery stiffened, nearly ready to sprint for the car the second she heard her father honk. “I’ve gotta go.” She turned her back on Ellison, trying hard not to strain to hear the murmuring voices behind her.

  “That was fast,” Chief Templeton said. “Didn’t you want to say good-bye to your friends?”

  What friends? Avery thought. Instead, she just shook her head, eyes focused on her hands resting on her jeans. “Can we just go?”

  They drove in silence for a few moments. Then her father started to make small talk—something about a cake coming into the office, the sugar rush killing a week of “clean eating.”

  “They think that I had something to do with it,” Avery said finally.

  “What’s that?

  She couldn’t announce—admit—it again.

  “Nothing. Have you heard anything from the Carrolls? Fletcher wasn’t in school again today. Did any of the tox or blood screens come back?”

  Chief Templeton rolled the car to a stop at a red light, and Avery could see the muscle jump along his jawline. “We’re not going to talk about this anymore, Avery.”

  She crossed her arms in front of her chest, the needling pain she’d been feeling all day replaced by an indignant anger.

  “You shouldn’t have to worry about stuff like this. You’re just a kid.”

  “Just a kid? Dad, my friend died. And my other friend is being accused of his murder.”

  “No one is accusing Fletcher of murder.”

  “No one but the whole school.”

  “We’re not talking about this. You’re too close to this case—I shouldn’t have even talked to you about it in the first place.”

  “Dad, I was the one who found Fletcher, remember?”

  “Yes, Avery, I remember. But it’s time to let me take over, okay? We’re doing what we can.”

  “What you can?” Avery spat out. “You’re letting the entire town prosecute Fletch and his mom. His locker and his house have been vandalized, and you’re just letting it happen!”

  “We are taking care of it. Just because you can’t see the progress we’ve made right in front of you doesn’t mean that we haven’t been building a case.”

  “What kind of progress? And a case against who? I mean, someone tried to kill me, Dad. Has that figured into your investigation? Or are you just brushing that aside because you also think Fletch is guilty?”

  “I’m not going to come down on you for being so disrespectful because I know you’re hurting right now. But, Avery, you’d better watch your mouth.”

  “Dad!”

  “This is out of your hands, out of your life now, kid.”

  Avery was seething. She glanced over at her dad whose face looked almost serene, like the last three minutes had never happened. She hated how he did that, went from animated one minute to shut down the next. She wondered what else he was able to hide with that closed-off look.

  • • •

  Fletcher overheard his mother’s exchange with Avery. He turned his back to the door, and a few minutes later, his mother knocked on his door frame.

  “Anyone call for me?”

  “No, honey.”

  He didn’t have to turn around to know that his mother was holding a plate in one hand and a glass of milk in the other. He didn’t have to turn around to know that she was feeding him those pills again, the ones from Dr. Palmer or Dr. Roy or maybe some other doctor who she had dreamed up to poke at him and shine lights in his eyes even before all of this happened.

  “I don’t want anything to eat.”

  “You have to eat something, Fletcher.”

  He hated the patronizing way she said his name. Her sigh told him she was tired of being his mother, his warden, his gatekeeper.

  “Just leave me alone.”

  Fletcher heard her put the plate and milk down on his desk. He knew she wouldn’t leave without poking at him, asking him questions, and trying to get him to talk.

  “How are the blackouts?”

  The blackouts were shorter now, sharp pieces of dark. But some of the time from his escape was starting to fade into a gray fog. He could see shadows and shapes. He could hear voices.

  Maybe he could piece it all together. Maybe if he really concentrated…

  “Try not to stress yourself. Remember what the doctor said?”

  He didn’t.

  “Just relax and make sure you eat your sandwich and finish your milk.”

  He stayed quiet.

  “Fletcher?” Her voice rose.

  “Sure, Mom.”

  • • •

  Avery and her father didn’t speak until they turned down her street. “So I’m just going to drop you off and go back to the station. I shouldn’t be too late tonight. Maybe we can go out, grab a couple of burgers?”

  He poked her on the shoulder when Avery didn’t respond. “Avy?”

  “Burgers. Sure, fine, whatever.”

  The chief guided the car down the street and into their long driveway, the tires grating as they bit the gravel. He pushed the car into park and turned toward her.

  “What else is going on, Avy? Come on, something with school? Boys?”

  Avery tried to hide the scowl on her face.

  “You know you can talk to me about anything.”

  Avery got out of the car. She kicked the door of the police cruiser shut. “Right, Dad. Anything except for police work.”

  Chief Templeton rolled down his window. “That’s not fair, Avy. This is police business.” The stern look in his eyes shifted, and suddenly the chief was her father once again. “A kid is dead. And I don’t want you messed up in this. I won’t put you in any danger. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you too.”

  A lump formed in the back of her throat, and Avery was pulled back to the months after her mother passed. The casserole brigade had stopped coming, the “just checking in” calls had gone silent. For the rest of the community, life went back to business as usual. And they expected Avery and her father to do the same. But there was nothing usual about their n
ew existence. She and her dad had tried to do everything the same way—church on Sundays, dinner at the table from serving dishes and plates—but the silence was too hard.

  Avery and her father found there was safety in the darkness, in meals eaten off paper towels in front of the kitchen sink or in front of the TV, the flickering light an appreciated shadow for the tears in her father’s eyes.

  Avery softened. “You won’t lose me, Dad. I’m not stupid.” She offered a small smile. “I am your daughter after all.”

  The chief smiled back. “I’m not sure that makes either of us exempt from stupidity.”

  Avery jammed her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “I just want to help, that’s all. I know Fletcher. I knew Adam. Just let me help.”

  Her father let out a measured sigh. “I’ll tell you what. You can help from in there.” He pointed to the house. “No crime-scene visiting. No interrogation, and definitely no strip searches.”

  “Ew! Dad! Gross!”

  “In the house, Avy.”

  “Will you at least tell me what you find and then listen to my theory?”

  “I’ll tell you what. If your homework is done and the house is cleaned, I’ll let you know what we’ve got and listen to your theory.”

  “Homework and housework?”

  “A cornerstone of a good investigation is an impeccable police report.”

  “And housework?”

  Chief Templeton shrugged and clicked the key in the ignition, letting the cruiser’s engine roar to life. “Hey, the chief of police likes a clean house. Do we have a deal?”

  Avery smiled in spite of her dad’s annoying rules. “Fine!” She trudged to the front porch and spun around, pointing at her father. “But don’t forget, we have a deal!”

  Chief Templeton waved, waiting until Avery was in the house with enough time to bolt the lock before he pulled out of the driveway.

  • • •

  Avery finished all of her homework and nearly wore out the battery on her cell phone playing games before she groaned and texted her father. It was only four forty, but she was starving.

  ETA? She texted.