I got the feeling that from her, this was high praise. Beside me, Brooke stiffened.
“Don’t wrinkle your forehead, dear,” Mrs. Camden chided. She must have had incredible eyesight, because as hard as I looked, I couldn’t make out a single wrinkle. “You’ll have worry lines before you’re thirty.” Then, without sparing Brooke so much as another look, she turned her attention back to me. “Why didn’t you disable the intruder?”
I hedged around the question. “When I first noticed her, I mean, when I first noticed another person in the room, I was engaged in combat with the … uhhhh … third hostile.”
“And then?” Mrs. Camden prodded. She was sharp. Nothing got past this woman, and there was no way around telling her the truth.
“I went to help Brooke.”
“And why did you need help?” Mrs. Camden asked her daughter, like someone talking to a very young child who’s been quite naughty.
“I didn’t disarm them fast enough.”
“Which,” Mrs. Camden said, “wouldn’t have been a problem if you’d been properly armed.”
Brooke looked away.
“Tell me, Brooke, if they’d had knives instead of guns, do you think you would have been able to disarm them quicker? Or what if you’d had a gun as well?”
I didn’t see where this line of questioning was going, but Brooke apparently did.
“I’m not sure.”
“Yes,” her mother said, “you are. One of these days, Brookie, you’re going to have to get over this thing you have with guns. You’ll have to use one eventually, and you can’t freeze up every time you see one, not even for a second.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Brooke said, her calm exterior cracking just a bit.
“Don’t get worked up, dear,” her mom said. “And don’t talk back. Right now, I don’t want you to even worry about the operations end of things. I’ll smooth things over, and you’ll have a new case before you know it. I’ll make everything all right. You just worry about homecoming.”
I read the look in Mrs. Camden’s eyes and the expression on Brooke’s face and translated them into words, even though neither Brooke nor her mother actually said a thing.
Mrs. Camden: Try not to screw that one up, too, Brooke.
Brooke: I won’t. I’m not a screwup. Screw you. Don’t be mad.
And before I knew it, Brooke was walking me to the door.
“Do drop by again, Toby,” Mrs. Camden called. “We expect great things from you.”
Sure, I’d drop by again. WHEN HELL FROZE OVER.
On the way out, we passed a bookshelf full of pictures. All of them were of Brooke, and in each and every one of them, she was cheering. In the earliest picture, she was probably about five or six. Trophies sat on the top shelf, and I squinted, making out the names of several individual cheerleading competitions.
1ST PLACE.
1ST PLACE.
1ST PLACE.
Why did I get the feeling that first place was the only place that Brooke or her mother understood?
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Brooke said evenly. “We should practice before school. Big game on Friday.”
Her voice sounded the same as it always did, but I felt like there was something missing, something dead.
“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my own voice sufficiently subdued.
I didn’t realize until I stepped out of her house and onto the front porch that I didn’t have a way home. I pulled out my Squad-issued phone and dialed the other girls one by one.
