Ricky made a gurgling noise. I didn’t turn this time, but it seemed like he was gaining. Even sick, he was a faster runner than me. He’d taken so many pills, but he was keeping them down. My own heartbeat was funny, rapid-fire. I pushed myself to climb faster, toward Beth and Junie. I kept scrambling, but the higher I crawled, the bigger the risk of falling grew. The height made me dizzy. I tried not to look.
“You can run, but you can’t hide,” Ricky taunted. He sounded close now, not even ten feet behind. I tried to rush ahead, but the rocks were sharp, and sweat was stinging my eyes.
“Come on!” Beth called.
She stood at the top of the rocks, outlined by the moon. I bet she wanted to take off, to run away from here and never look back. Instead, she backtracked until she reached Junie, grabbing her elbow to hurry her to the peak. She tossed me an apologetic glance.
I knew what that look meant.
Beth was going to get Junie out of here. To safety.
I wanted to weep with gratitude, but just then Ricky’s hand clasped my ankle. I kicked at him, the force nearly tumbling me into the quarry fifty feet below, into the cold gray arms of the ghost that haunted the water. I peeled my fingernails back trying to cling to the rock. Ricky flipped me over to face him, leaving me dangerously near the edge. A jagged piece of granite stabbed my spine where my shirt rode up. I didn’t dare look down.
Ricky’s eyes were bloodshot and swollen in the moonlight. Slobber ran down his chin. He released my ankle and pulled my kitchen knife from his waistband, holding it in both hands overhead, like he was about to sacrifice me.
Junie screamed.
Ricky wobbled.
Then he slipped and fell into the water.
Or I kicked him. The story I told myself changed from day to day.
Beth swore that was all right.
“Any way you need to survive, baby,” she’d tell me.
CHAPTER 55
That night at the police station, I tried to explain to a cramp-faced Sheriff Nillson what the Anacin bottle had contained. “Some of it was heart medicine, some happy pills, some aspirin,” I said, a blanket wrapped around me even though I’d stopped shivering over an hour ago. “I tried to warn Ricky before he took it.”
“Of course you did,” Sheriff Nillson said absently, drops of filmy sweat dripping down his hairline. He had me in a room all to himself, his tangy smell overwhelming in the tight space. He’d been scribbling mountains of notes until I reached that part of the story, the part where Ricky swallowed the pills I’d brought with me to kill Ed.
I pointed at his notebook. “Aren’t you going to write it down?”
He tapped his head.I keep it all up here, his gesture said. “Not necessary.”
I frowned. “Will there be an autopsy? To find out if that’s why he drowned, because of those pills I gave him?”
Sheriff Nillson’s mouth formed a cold impression of a smile. “Not necessary,” he repeated, before getting up to leave the room.
I watched him walk out, finally understanding what we’d been up against.
Finally.
It wasn’t just that us Pantown girls were on our own. It was also that Dad and Sheriff Nillson got to write the story. Any messy details that happened outside their narrative, like my dad with his hands in Maureen’s hair, pressing her to him, or Sheriff Nillson taking pictures of scared girls trembling on his apple-green carpeting, it just didn’t happen.
Erased. Wiped out.
Sheriff Nillson telling me there’d be no autopsy on Ricky meant they could even wipe out the things we did when they broke us.
And they’d been teaching us to use that eraser on each other, too. That’s why we avoided talking about Mom burning off my ear, or Mrs.Hansen’s house.
Realizing that tasted like poison, like something dying. As much as I’d learned, as hot as my fire had burned since I’d discovered that copper bracelet, it still twisted to learn we’d never stood a chance. Not if we played by their rules.
If that could happen in my home, my neighborhood, where else was it happening?
I was thinking on that when Agent Ryan poked his cinnamon-colored head into the room. He wanted to know if I needed anything—water, maybe another blanket. That was it. That was all he’d come for. Something about that, and about how he was holding himself, like he wanted to both apologize to and fight someone for me, reminded me of Claude.
