“You’re mad she’s gone,” he says, raising a brow. “Aren’t you?”
She blinks again.
A knock at the door.
The police sergeant steps in, impassive and unreadable. “Mind if I take over?” She has a soft way of speaking, like a sigh. The uneasy policeman goes to squeeze Minnow’s arm on his way out, stuffs his hands in his pockets instead.
The door closes softly. The sergeant sits down, crosses her legs at the knee. Silence. Too much of it. Most of the kids have gone home for the day. The school principal waits for them in the teachers’ lounge, picking nervously at a biscuit tray.
“Minnow,” the sergeant finally says, leaning forward. “I want to talk about Trav. He’s your friend, isn’t he?”
The girl considers this. She’s not sure what they are. Three years ago, Trav was slow and annoying, stuttering over the simplest words during reading-out-loud time in the library.
Two years ago, she’d nod as she passed him, cannonballing off the pier.
Last week, she stood over him as he knelt shirtless in the creek, his wrist stuffed in her mouth. She bit down deep, left baby teeth marks in his skin. After, he’d worn his school jumper all week—on purpose. Never took it off, not even after muddy, sweat-soaked games of football. Kept it on to hide the marks. For her.
That meant something. It meant that he would keep her secrets. That he understood what she needed even if she couldn’t explain why.
She’d started biting her palms that summer. Wasn’t sure why. Knew only that it helped dull the anger fizzling in her skull.
She’d trail Trav to the woods most afternoons. Find him lying flat in the bubbling current, held up by his fists. Slowly, she’d wade in, pulling her school skirt up, too high, making sure he was watching as she did it. He always was. Animal-dumb, that’s what he looked like. But he’d roll over like a dog and raise his wrist to her mouth, offering it wordlessly. After, there were no dramatic words, just a shared look, a casual nod, like it was nothing. But it wasn’t nothing.
It was loyalty.
And it was trust.
“He’s done something very bad, Minnow.”
The girl tilts her head to the side, maddeningly silent. Indifferent. The sergeant shifts in the seat. She’s a pretty kid, but there’s something off about her. Feral. Dirty-blond hair to her waist, matted. Earthy brown eyes vacant, void.
She thinks of Amy Anderson, the holes in her abdomen. She shifts again, unnerved.
“Amy sat between you and Trav, didn’t she? She told me you were friends.”
Were.
She gets to her feet, crouches over Minnow, chin level with her forehead. “Amy didn’t want to sit next to you in class anymore. A week ago, before the incident with Trav, she asked to be moved. Do you know why?”
The girl raises her chin, shakes her head no.
She’s lying.
“Minnow.” She crouches lower, eye to eye with her now. “Amy said you tried to drown her.”
Chapter 19
“What?” Chris half yells and I wince, pulling the phone away from my ear. The line is awful, loud and crackly as traffic whooshes by.
“Are you in town?”
“Out driving,” he says flatly. I picture him, arm hanging out the window of his hubcap-less Audi, smoking moodily. Pop music drifts through the phone as I wait for Chris to tell me where he is.
He doesn’t.
“I kept wondering why you changed your name,” he finally says, and the radio dims like he’s reached over to turn it all the way down. “Now I know.”
I get slowly to my feet. “Come talk to me.”
