by Jen Nadol
The football guys started an arm wrestling tournament inside and summoned Trip. “You mind?” he asked Sarah, already being dragged off by Galen.
“Go.” She smiled, waving him away, leaving just her and me.
“You want to get a drink or anything?” I asked after a few seconds of quiet.
“I’m okay,” she said. “You want something?”
“No. I’m fine too.”
We stood, awkwardly looking at the people around us, until Sarah suggested we move closer to the hot tub. “I like the colors,” she said.
The Peterses had put it in the far corner, with the most sweeping views of the valley.
“Not quite as good as when we were at the summit today,” I said, looking out over the smattering of lights. “But not bad.”
“We had a good run,” she said, smiling. “Didn’t we?”
“We beat Trip,” I said.
“And that’s all that matters.” Sarah laughed and held up her palm for another high five.
I clapped her hand gently, and she tilted her head, grinning. “You can give me a real high five, Ri. I won’t break.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t want to be too rough.”
“You’re not the rough type,” she said, holding up her hand again. I hit it harder, the smack loud enough that the person behind her looked over.
“Ow!” Sarah frowned, shaking her hand.
“Oh!” I said. “I’m sorry—”
“I’m kidding, Riley.” She grinned, rolling her eyes. “You worry too much about other people.”
“I do?”
Sarah nodded, looking out across the dark hills. “It’s not a bad thing,” she said. “But sometimes you have to worry about yourself, too.”
“I worry about myself plenty.”
She smiled. “Maybe ‘take care of yourself’ would have been a better way to phrase it.”
“Hmmn,” I said noncommittally, not sure what to think of what Sarah thought of me or that she’d been thinking about me at all or whether I was overthinking this. Which I’m sure I was, because I worried about myself plenty. Like I’d told her.
“Do you like it here, Riley?” she asked.
“It’s better than standing in the middle of the crowd.”
“Not here, next to the hot tub,” she said. “I meant in Buford.”
My “no” was automatic—on the tip of my tongue—but I stopped to really consider it, and finally told her, “Yes. But I don’t want to stay.” I picked at the railing, adding, “Mostly because the people who make me like it will be leaving.”
She was quiet, and I could feel her watching me, the party noise all around us but feeling far away. “Will you leave too?” she asked.
“Someday.”
She nodded. “That’s why you’re dreaming about dorm rooms, huh?” I knew right away she was talking about the binoculars. Deepest wishes. She continued before I could ask her what she’d seen, “You know what I like about you, Riley?”
I looked at her, my heart beating harder at the way it sounded. Her dark eyes reflected the underwater lights—green then pink then blue. I should say something funny, I thought. But it was hard to think with her so close, and the sweet warm smell of her intoxicating. “What?” I asked thickly.
“You’re a thinker,” she said. “You’re deep but not morose. You’re funny, and there’s just . . .” She paused, gesturing for the words that were missing. “There’s so much there.”
I held her gaze, aware—like she must have been—that we were looking at each other for way too long, but unable to tear away. I think if we’d been anywhere else, I might have tried to kiss her then. But we were on John Peters’s deck and she was my oldest friend’s girlfriend.
“It’s all bullshit,” I said hoarsely.
She smiled wryly. “It sure is.” Her comment seemed to mean more than just the way I acted or what she thought of me.
Natalie came back to us then, smiling and more relaxed than I’d seen her all day. Eventually Trip drifted over too, and I stepped aside, letting him take the spot beside Sarah, where he was supposed to be. We only saw Tannis briefly when she and Matty Gretowniak came over, bizarrely hand in hand. I smelled alcohol on her breath as she said, “Matty’s driving me home.”
I’d seen the flask and had known it was circulating, even under Mr. Peters’s watchful eye. I wasn’t surprised Tannis was drinking, but Matty? I gave him a hard look, and he grinned sheepishly. I had no idea if he was drunk or just feeling foolish or something else entirely.
“You okay?” I asked Matty. “You shouldn’t drive if—”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Ninety-eight percent sober.” He held up a hand. “Scout’s honor.”
“Well, then . . .” I shrugged. “Mazel tov.”
“Dude,” Tannis said fuzzily. “You know I suck at Spanish.”
Trip dropped me off sometime after midnight, Sarah asleep on his lap in the front seat and Nat already deposited at home. My mom was at work, and I crashed hard, feeling the full exhaustion of the Dash and the high of being with Sarah and everything else.
I woke up to the shrill ring of my phone, the red numbers of my clock blurry but definitely not double digits.
I checked the caller ID, then picked up hesitantly. I couldn’t imagine why Tannis would call me at all, much less before six on a Sunday.
“Riley,” she said breathlessly. “Natalie’s dad is dead.”
CHAPTER 7
I STOOD IN MY ROOM stupidly, trying to figure out what to do. Trip was on his way.
“Shot.” Tannis’s words echoed in my head. “And, Ri?” she’d said. “Nat found him.”
“Oh my God.” But she’d already hung up.
I couldn’t remember the last time there’d been a murder in Buford. The girl who’d died last year had been a big deal because before that it had been just the usual stuff—heart attacks, old age. My dad’s shooting four years ago had made all the papers, and a TV station had even showed up. Maybe they’d thought that was a murder, instead of what it had turned out to be—a hunter shot by a stray bullet, bleeding out in the woods. I’d been thirteen, and now I remembered only fragments: my mom crying; people bringing food; dishes and dishes of it piling up, uneaten. Staying in the McGintys’ old-people-smelling house, wondering when my mom would be back, worrying that she wouldn’t be. And after, the absence of my dad, a gaping and permanent hole of never. He’d never take me hunting again or teach me to drive, see me graduate, get married, have kids. There was an icy feeling in my gut, thinking of him and of Nat and her dad. And what she’d seen that night at the cave.
Trip’s honking out front startled me. I zipped up my backpack and went out to meet him, careful—for once—to lock the house door.
They were all there—Trip, Tannis, and Sarah—their faces pale and serious. Sarah had been crying.
“What happened?” I asked.
“He was shot in the head and chest,” Trip said bluntly.
“Who . . .” I couldn’t even finish the sentence.
“I don’t think they have any idea yet, Riley,” Sarah said. Her voice was shaky. “And Nat—”
She stopped, trying to catch her breath. My brain called up the inside of Nat’s trailer, painted it in the splattered blood from the physics closet. “Jesus,” I whispered.
We rode silently, Trip’s headlights swinging across the bramble as he turned onto Ohoyo Road. Everything looked gray in the early morning light, a sheen of silver dew coating the bushes and grass. I kept hoping we’d round the final bend to find the trailer quiet, all of it a case of mistaken address or identity.
It wasn’t, of course. Every police car in Buford was there—all six of them—lights flashing, colors and shadows bouncing off the woods. I got out of the car slowly, eyeing the yellow tape already strung around the yard. A handfu
l of gawkers had gathered—a fat lady in a housedress, an old guy, three men I recognized from the restaurant.
Trip was already talking to the old guy when I reached them. William Johnson. He lived up the road a mile past Nat’s house.
“. . . heard the sirens an hour or so ago. After ’bout the third one, figured I better come see what was goin’ on.” William Johnson shook his head. “They already had the girl out by the time I got here. Saw her sitting in the back of a cruiser. She was still there when they brought out the body. I’da thought they’d take her away before that, but I guess seein’ the black bag prolly wasn’t any worse than seein’ what she did inside.”
“Do they know what happened?” Trip asked.
“If they do, they didn’t tell William Johnson.”
“Where’s Natalie?” Sarah asked.
Mr. Johnson looked her over. “I reckon they didn’t tell that to me neither, sweetheart,” he said. “Maybe you’ll have better luck with them police types.”
We turned toward the house, watching silently as shadows moved inside. John Peters’s dad had to be in there somewhere. Maybe he could tell us more. But it was Bob Willets and Lincoln Andrews who came out first and stopped to talk by the door. Then Lincoln went back inside and Bob headed down the yard, toward the police van parked just outside the tape. I moved to that part of the cordoned-off area.
“Hey, Bob,” I called. He was a regular at the restaurant, friendly with everyone there.
He glanced up, his face grim. “Riley Larkin,” he said tiredly. Some guys probably were excited by the idea of “real” police work, but Bob wouldn’t be one of them. He had a little girl and a pretty wife and seemed content to shoot the shit with the townies and write the occasional parking ticket. “What are you doing here?”
“Natalie Cleary’s a friend of mine,” I said. “Is she okay?”
He pursed his lips. “She’s not hurt, if that’s what you mean.”
“What happened?”
He shook his head. “I can’t tell you anything, Riley,” he said. “You’ve seen enough cop shows to know that.”
I nodded. “Can you at least tell me where Nat is? Or how to get ahold of her?” To our left, the tight knot of Trip, Sarah, and Tannis were all staring numbly at the house.
Officer Willets followed my gaze. “They took her down to the station,” he said finally. “She’s going to be there for a while, I’d guess. And frankly, she’s not really in a state to chat, even with her friends. I’d go home and get some sleep.” He gave me a once-over. “You look like you could use it.”
He started to walk away, but I called after him. “Where was she? When it happened?”
He paused, and I saw his jaw tighten. He shook his head, and I thought he wasn’t going to answer, but he did. A single word. “Inside.” He sighed heavily. “Go home, Riley. Hug your mom. Say some prayers for that poor girl.”
***
The four of us stood out in the cold for more than an hour. The sun rose gradually, light bouncing off the white trailer, but there wasn’t much else to see or learn. Nat was gone. The police came in and out. Mr. Peters waved to us, his face tight and unsmiling, but aside from what Bob had told me, no one was talking.
I told the others what he’d said. That was why we stayed, hoping to get even the smallest clue what it meant. “If she was inside, she must know who did it,” Tannis said. “Right?”
“You’d think so,” Trip answered simply. We stood, watched, waited.
Eventually we gave up, piling back into Trip’s car. It wasn’t until we were driving slowly down the hill that Tannis brought it up. “You don’t think . . .” She paused. I knew what she was getting at but wasn’t about to be the one to say it.
“What?” Trip glanced at her in the rearview.
Tannis shifted uncomfortably. “Well, you know how the other day when she had the bruise . . . and, I mean, this is what she saw, right? In those binoculars.”
“Oh! Shit,” Trip said. It hadn’t occurred to him before.
“What are you saying, Tannis?” Sarah asked. Her voice was low and controlled. I could tell she’d already considered it, just like I had.
“I don’t know,” Tannis backpedaled. “Just that . . . you know, what Riley said at lunch that day—about, like, our hidden desires . . .”
“You think she did it?” Trip’s eyes in the rearview were wide in disbelief.
“Nat would never, in a million years—” Sarah started, but Trip didn’t even let her finish.
“No way, Tannis,” he interrupted. “Nat’s been putting up with his shit for years, and she was fine when we dropped her off last night—”
“But who knows what happened after?” Tannis argued. “You saw the way he was acting at the mountain, Trip. How was he later? When you guys got him home?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Wasted? Unstable? Fine one minute and pissed off the next.”
“And if he was in the same mood when Natalie got home from the party . . . ,” Sarah said slowly.
“Or was whacked-out on some drug . . . ,” I added.
None of us said anything else, letting it hang there. The idea that Natalie might have shot her own dad was suddenly fairly easy to imagine. Trip turned down Main Street. The town was just starting to wake up. A few tourists walked quickly from the coffee shop, steaming cups in hand. We let the radio play, watched sun light the metal ski lifts strung across the mountain face. We’d run there yesterday. The start of the season, almost anything seeming possible. Except this.
I turned to Tannis, thinking about the after-party. “What happened to you last night?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Matty?” I said, raising my eyebrows.
“God,” she muttered, rubbing her forehead. “Don’t remind me.”
It was just after eight when Trip dropped me at work. I’d texted George that I’d be late, explaining why. He’d already heard, of course, and I knew by the end of the day, it’d be all over town.
CHAPTER 8
THE FIRST REPORTER WAS ALREADY at the restaurant when I arrived. A skinny guy in jeans and a button-down. He’d come from Burlington the day before to cover the Dash—I guess it was a slow news week—but suddenly found himself with the scoop on a much juicier story.
Not that any of us were answering his questions.
“You’re not gonna tell him anything, right?” Moose asked, his eyes darting to the restaurant floor, the entrance, then me.
“What would I tell that half the town doesn’t already know?” I asked.
“Yeah, yeah, exactly,” he said, bobbing his head. “Just . . . you know . . . nothing about that one time we went up there with Wynn, right? I mean, I didn’t even know Mr. Cleary. I was just doing a favor. It—”
“Moose. Calm down,” I interrupted, taking a step back. “You’re freaking out. Talk like that, and they’ll think you did it.” I raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t, did you?”
I was joking, but Moose didn’t think it was funny. “Jesus Christ,” he exploded, “that’s exactly what I don’t need!”
He stalked away, and I stared after him. I’d never heard him yell before. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. Nat had found her dad dead, and there’d been a murder in our little town. People were going to be freaking—it wasn’t something to joke about. I kept my head down the rest of the morning, busing and cleaning and trying to ignore pretty much everyone and everything.
“You must go to school with Natalie Cleary.”
The guy behind me at table ten was sipping a Coke and wearing a flannel shirt that looked fresh from a package, still creased down the front. There was a pen and notebook open on the table, the page clean and white. Reporter number two. I wondered how many others would follow.
“No comment,” I told him, loading the last of table nine’s plates i
nto the bus pan and heading for the back.
Bob Willets and Lincoln Andrews walked in just after one p.m. “Too busy to make it this mornin’, I reckon,” Patti said. They looked less rumpled but more exhausted than when I’d seen them behind the yellow crime scene tape six hours earlier. “There’s some outta towners at yer table.” She gestured to a pair of city people. “But I can seatcha by the fountain.”
I was busing table three and watching them from the corner of my eye. Patti was pulling menus from the rack when Bob said, “Actually, Patti, we’re here to ask some questions. About the Clearys.”
She froze. I did too.
“We’ll need to have a few minutes with a couple of people here,” Bob continued.
“I best get George out here, then,” she told them.
Lincoln nodded. “Yep, we were figuring to talk to him first. Where’s his office?”
They followed Patti back to see the manager. Moose was fidgeting beside me as soon as they disappeared.
“You think they’re gonna talk to all of us?”
“I don’t know.” I surveyed Moose, who looked ready to jitterbug right out of his uniform, tap-tap-tapping his fingers on the seat back. “Dude,” I said. “Calm down.”
“Yeah.” He nodded, a little manic. “Sure, sure.”
“Just be straight with them, Moose.”
He hesitated. “You know I can’t,” he said softly.
“Look,” I said. “So you did things up there that”—I looked around at the empty booths nearby before continuing—“weren’t exactly legal. So what? When was the last time you went up?”
“I dunno. A couple months ago.” He flicked his eyes toward the ceiling. It was a classic tell. Trip had taught me that back in third grade, after his mom had caught us taking quarters from her purse.
“Look them in the eyes,” he’d said sternly when his mom had finished scolding us. “And don’t fidget. That’s how they know.” I’d never gotten good at it.
“Moose,” I cautioned now. “Don’t lie to them. You’ll just get in bigger trouble.”
