by Amy Brashear
“See, I told you,” I whisper, looking at Karen.
“But you can’t ask that; it says not to ask about their death,” Karen protests, suddenly serious. “Carly, you’re making this up as you go, aren’t you?”
“I am not,” I fire back.
Our fingers linger on the planchette. Without warning—and I swear I don’t move it—it slides abruptly to the bottom of the board.
good-bye
Audrey peers between her fingers and decides to scream.
That seems as good a reason as any to bolt.
CHAPTER THIRTY-six
Monday morning Karen wants to tell the entire school what happened at the séance. I know she’s going to lie and make it seem creepier than it was. But she listens to Mary Claire and me when we warn her that the wrong people might overhear and start talking.
I don’t let her out of my sight until the three of us make a pact not to utter a word. I try to make my voice like Dad’s. Case closed.
I’m not worried about Audrey. She goes to GCHS, and she was so petrified by the whole thing, there’s no doubt she’ll keep her trap shut. Besides, what would her father, the deputy, say?
So I’m not sure why I tell Landry. Not that it matters. He thinks its hooey.
When I arrive home after school, I find Bobby sitting on our porch swing. I can tell right away that something’s wrong. I try to make a joke.
“You know you can ring the doorbell. We will let you in.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” he says. He sounds as if he’s talking to himself. His skin is pale and dark circles ring his eyes. I realize that I didn’t see him in school today.
I wrap my arms around myself, shivering in my coat. The sky is gray. In homeroom, Mrs. Ford talked about the possibility of snow today. In the way only Mrs. Ford could, of course, marveling over “every individual snowflake’s miraculous and unique beauty” while fretting over “the problems they cause when falling from heaven by the millions.” I think she was right about the forecast, though.
Sitting beside him, I ask, “Shouldn’t you be at basketball practice?”
“Yeah, I should, but I’m not.”
“Why?”
He stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets. “It’s like I told you the other night. Everywhere I go, I get strange looks. My friends have turned on me. I thought you would understand.”
I glance toward the windows of our house. The sun is already low in the sky. The living room lights are on, and I know Mom is home. I wonder if she’s watching us. Lowering my voice, I tell him, “Don’t worry, they’ve got suspects, real suspects. And they’re going to be caught soon.”
He shifts away from me and looks me in the eye. “How do you know?”
I blink. I’m at a loss for words. What have I done? The truth came out because I wanted to be honest with him. I know because I’ve stolen confidential material from the Garden City courthouse, because I wanted to clear your name. But I returned the report at least . . . Nope. Not saying that. Not even thinking that. Banishing that from my brain.
“Bobby, I’ve—”
“Carly, what have you done?”
I laugh miserably. If only I could tell him I just asked myself the same question.
“Did you do something again?” he presses.
I feel all my defenses melting away. All I want is for him to understand. I turn and stare at the ground, trying to formulate my thoughts. The swing jerks beneath us, almost violently. He must be angry. “Nothing bad, I swear. Nothing . . . well, some people might say it’s illegal—or not even—but not if they knew it was for a good reason . . . because . . .” When I realize I’m rambling, I look up.
Bobby is gone.
I stand up. I frantically search for him, catching a glimpse of the back of his coat, vanishing down the sidewalk beyond the hedges. He’s running away. To distance himself from me, from trouble. My shoulders sag.
When I turn to go inside, I see my mother at the living room window, looking at me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-seven
Tuesday morning. I can’t bear the thought of going to school. I’ve barely slept. I’m sitting at the kitchen table with my family, eating cereal in grim silence, when the doorbell rings. Dad answers it. I can hear Bobby’s voice.
“I thought Carly might need a ride to school,” he says.
Depression falls away like some ugly winter coat I’ve just shed. I jump up, but Dad has already let him in. Bobby is here. He has returned. He’s running his fingers through his damp hair, standing in the kitchen doorway. He looks much better rested than I feel, much better rested than he looked yesterday.
I muster a smile.
“Hey, Asher,” Bobby says.
Asher doesn’t look up from his textbook and cereal bowl. But his tone is friendly when he responds, “Hey, Bobby.”
“Are you hungry, young man?” Dad asks, returning to his chair and his newspaper.
Mom pours herself another cup of coffee and stands beside me at the kitchen sink. “What about Landry?” she whispers in my ear as she sips her coffee.
“What about him?” I say, grabbing my lunch.
She and Dad exchange a look. Dad returns to his newspaper, snapping it so that it remains upright. Asher remains oblivious as always, his face buried in whatever he’s reading. Or pretending to read. Now I wonder about what he notices and what he doesn’t. But I don’t have time to dwell on Asher.
“Carly, have a good day at school,” Dad says.
“I will. Bobby . . . I just need a moment, okay? Thanks for the lift.”
“I’ll wait in the truck,” Bobby says.
After dashing upstairs for a last peek in the bathroom mirror, I vow again not to do anything bad or dishonest. I look terrible. Ugh. But this is my just reward. I hurry back down. “Bye, Mom,” I say.
She stands between the kitchen and the living room, leaning against the door frame. “Carly, be careful.”
“I always am,” I say.
“Please be careful,” she says, more sternly this time.
I race outside. Bobby starts the engine. I close the truck door.
“It’s really nice of you to pick me up, but I know it’s a little out of your way,” I tell him.
“I bet you’re wondering why I came to your house last night,” he says.
I nod several times. “Why did you?” I ask.
“Because you know what it’s like.”
“What it’s like?”
“You understand,” he says.
“Understand?”
“You know . . . what it’s like to be an outsider. When Nancy took you under her wing—”
“She didn’t take me under her wing,” I point out.
“Didn’t she?” he asks.
“No.”
“You were over the house a lot,” he says.
“I was tutoring her.”
He jerks to a stop and turns to look at me. “Tutor?”
I nod again.
“But . . .” He scowls and shakes his head. “She didn’t need a tutor.”
“Yes, she did,” I say.
“I think I would know if my girlfriend needed a tutor or not,” he snaps.
The words sting. But I’m too tired for a fight. I turn and look out the window. “We’re going to be late,” I tell him. “Let’s just get going, okay?”
He puts the car back into drive. “Carly—”
“What?”
With a sigh, he says, “Nancy told me she was trying to help you fit in. Teaching you things. About Holcomb.”
“That’s true,” I say shortly. “Don’t worry, Seth made it perfectly clear that I was only friends with you all because I was dating him. That’s true, too, right?”
“Well, not exactly. Seth can be a real zero sometimes. I know
that now. But when a new girl—”
“I thought he was your friend,” I interrupt.
“Things change,” he says. “See, I know what it’s like for you now.”
“But you have friends,” I say.
He laughs sadly. “Had friends.”
“Well, me, Mary Claire, and Landry are still your friends.”
“I don’t really know Landry,” Bobby says with a shrug.
“He’s great,” I say, maybe a little too enthusiastically. My voice sounds shrill in my ears. “He’s helped me prove your innocence. You should get to know him.”
“Maybe,” he says. “Like Nancy thought you should get to know Holcomb?”
I nearly explode, but instead I take a deep breath. “It’s different. Listen to me, Bobby. Landry doesn’t think you killed Nancy and her family. I know you didn’t. You asked what I did. I saw a report about the investigation. One of the suspects lives in Edgerton. Near where Landry’s from.”
Bobby slows to another stop. “You think he might know the person. Can you ask him?”
I nod.
Bobby grins.
Friday, Asher’s got his second basketball game—against Satanta High School. The school lets us out of our final class early for a pep rally. The cheerleaders work themselves into a frenzy as the basketball team is introduced one by one to the crowd. Mary Claire and I sit next to Karen on the bleachers, applauding along with everyone else.
Since the séance, Karen’s actually been friendly. Friendlier than usual, anyway. She’s even kept her sarcasm to a minimum.
I’m bored with all the school spirit I can’t bring myself to feel; my attention drifts. I see Landry standing by the wall behind the pep band. He sees me and waves.
“I’ll be right back,” I say to Mary Claire and Karen, but neither hears me.
It’s better that way. I hop up and scramble toward the aisle. I’m suddenly on a mission, one that’s just occurring to me. I don’t have to get Bobby involved in clearing his own name. I can leave him out of it. I can talk to Landry myself and tell him the truth.
Somewhere in the dim recesses of my brain, I hear my mother’s voice at breakfast on Tuesday, warning me to be careful.
Be careful of what? I wish I’d shouted back. Mom couldn’t care less about what it means to be an outsider in Holcomb. She wants to be an outsider. If you ask her where her home is, she won’t hesitate to tell you: it’s New York City. Holcomb is temporary. She clings to the silly dream that we’ll be back on the East Coast in no time—back to the world of Jack the Presidential Hopeful and Handsome and Aunt Trudy. Back to all those rich, sophisticated, colorful lives. Back to where Truman Capote belongs.
It’s sad. But what’s really sad is that I only see it now.
We’re never going back.
Dad has said it a hundred times: most people consider the defendants he represents to be monsters. It doesn’t matter if a jury finds them not guilty. It’s worse. When that happens, the victims and their families see Dad as a monster, too. People believe that he puts—well, put—dangerous criminals back on the streets of New York. It’s impossible for us to ever go back. But Mom just pours another martini and laughs him off. “Always so dramatic,” she says.
Landry is staring at me.
“Outside,” I mouth to him, pointing at the exit.
He follows me out of the gym and into the hall. We sit on a bench across from the restrooms. For a second I don’t say anything. How do I say this? How do I ask this?
“Landry, I know you lived in Olathe,” I begin. “Well, I know for a fact that the main suspect in the Clutter murders lived and might still live in Edgerton. That’s close to Olathe, right? Well, what I’m asking is—”
“How do you know this?” Landry interrupts me.
I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter. Listen. Do you know a man named Richard Hickock? He’d be called Dick, probably.”
Landry doesn’t answer. He squirms on the bench, turning away from me.
“What is it?”
“Dick?” Landry says in a paper-thin voice.
“Yes. It’s—”
“Dick Hickock?”
I nod.
Landry looks a little green. He bends over and clutches his stomach. He’s going to be sick. Thankfully, he runs to the restroom. The door closes behind him. There’s coughing and gagging. I run after him, pushing right through the door. I don’t care if there are other boys in here or if I see them. I have a little brother; I’ve seen plenty. This is an emergency.
“Landry?”
“You shouldn’t be in here,” he shouts from inside a stall. His voice is strained. He’s retching.
“I want to make sure you’re okay,” I tell him.
The toilet flushes and the stall door opens. He’s got his color back. Now he just looks embarrassed. He washes his hands and rinses his mouth with some cold water, then dries off with a paper towel. For a very long while, he stands at the sink, the faucet still running. Finally he straightens.
“I’m sorry,” he says to me in the mirror.
“Don’t be.”
I hold the bathroom door open for him. He turns the faucet off and heads back into the hall.
“His family’s nice people,” Landry tells me. He wipes his mouth with his sleeve. “I helped out on their farm sometimes. In the summer. Mrs. Hickock would give us lemonade. I . . . talked to Dick. Not much. It makes sense, though. He wasn’t like them. His parents, I mean.”
“Do you think they know that their son did this?” I ask.
He looks at me. “I don’t know. But why would they want to?”
I don’t have an answer. Honestly, I hadn’t even thought of the question.
CHAPTER THIRTY-eight
It’s a six-hour trip—both ways.
Landry talked his parents into letting me tag along with them to Olathe for the weekend. I talked my parents into the same. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Mr. and Mrs. Davis have to go to their farm to check on their crops and animals before the freeze sets in; they’re worried about the place. Meanwhile, Landry and I want to check out KU. We might want to attend college there after we graduate.
So it all makes sense.
Secretly, I do make Landry promise we’ll visit the campus. It may not be as close to home as the “right Manhattan,” where KSU is, but it’s still Kansas. I know Kansas is my home, unlike Mom. Shouldn’t I go to college here?
Truth. Not a lie. Not that part.
Dad is impressed by my “initiative.” That’s what he calls it. He’s proud that I seem to have moved on from the tragedy of Nancy’s death and that I have started to think about the future. He has no clue that I’m not telling the whole truth, or that I know what he knows. Besides, since he represented Landry’s uncle a long time ago, there’s a built-in trust between him and the Davis family. They know we’re friends.
Even Mom is silent. Maybe she thinks I’ve chosen Landry over Bobby, as if that were even a choice. Maybe Landry is the choice she prefers. Or maybe she just can’t be bothered, as long as I’m “not sleeping overnight in the same room as this . . . boy.”
She actually says this part out loud when his parents pick me up.
We all laugh together, the Davis family and the Fleming family, standing in the freezing cold. (Asher had the good sense to stay inside.) We clumsily reassure ourselves such a scenario could never happen—not in Olathe or Holcomb or New York City. Of course not. I wonder if Mom’s already had a martini. It’s ten o’clock in the morning.
I wave good-bye.
Landry and I exchange a secret smile as we head to his parents’ car. None of the adults know that our trip is a ruse to pay a visit to the Hickock home. Is a ruse the same as a lie? I should ask Mr. Capote what the difference is, if I ever see him again. He would know.
There’s n
o driveway at the Hickock residence, just dirt and gravel. Landry turns off the engine and I reach for the door handle, but he grabs my arm.
“What?” I whisper.
He shakes his head.
“You’re not getting cold feet, are you?” When he doesn’t answer, I add, “We’ve come all this way.”
It’s Saturday evening and not even dinnertime but already pitch-black. Squinting, all I can see in the inky void are hints of a dilapidated farmhouse off to the right. Curtains obscure the dim lamps within. This is deep Kansas, far from everything. Everyone thinks we’re at KU.
“Carly, wait. You can’t just go on in there and accuse their son of a crime,” he says. “They won’t talk to you if you do. Let me do the talking.”
I nod. He’s right. “Okay.”
Getting out, we brace ourselves against the cold. Landry hurries up the walkway. I follow, head down, noticing empty flowerpots. He knocks forcefully on the door.
“Who’s there?” a woman yells.
“Landry Davis, ma’am, you knew my dad. We own the farm down the road from here . . .”
It takes a while, but the door opens. The woman who answers is stooped and gray. She smiles, and invites us inside. The light and warmth are blessed relief. Landry and I sit on the couch, and before I know it, she’s offering a plate of sugar cookies cut out like bells and Christmas trees. Then she gives us each a cup of coffee. He drinks his. I do not.
“Oh, my, you’ve grown, child!” Mrs. Hickock exclaims. “I seen many a picture of you when you were a youngster. You were just yea high. So what brings you here?”
“Orders from my dad. I have to pick something up at the farm.”
“Aren’t you a good son!”
Landry manages an awkward smile.
