“You need me to pull over?”
She didn’t answer. I slowed down. But then she shook her head. “No, I’m good.” She rolled up the window.
“You sure?”
She nodded, and I hit the gas. Jed was right. She was acting weird.
“Jed’s been back for a while, huh?”
“Yeah.”
I pulled onto the bypass road toward Trip’s. “Doesn’t he have a wife and, like, a job down in Virginia?”
“I guess his job’s flexible. And his wife’s a bitch. She’s probably why he’s here so much.”
“Oh.”
“I wonder about that, you know?” Tannis said, obviously feeling better. “How people wind up with other people who seem like, just, the wrong match for them.”
“Uh . . .” Where was this going? Her and Matty? I’d seen them talking in the halls a few times, and I’d always felt like I was having an out-of-body experience, seeing two separate worlds colliding.
But instead she said, “Like Trip and Sarah.” That caught me off guard, but then Tannis added what I prayed she didn’t know and would never say. “I know you want her, Riley.”
My breath caught, and I felt hot, my palms and armpits sweaty. I pretended I hadn’t heard, frowning at the radio, changing the station.
“You get all awkward when she’s around.”
I scowled at Tannis. “I do not.”
“You do,” she said. “Don’t worry, She probably doesn’t notice because you’re always that way with her.”
I flicked on my turn signal, nearing Trip’s house. I was itching to tell her Sarah probably noticed everything, and, oh, by the way, she hadn’t seemed to think I was awkward when we’d kissed. Though it was plenty awkward after that. “She’s Trip’s girlfriend,” I said instead.
“Yup,” Tannis said softly. “That she is.”
We drove silently for a minute through the dark fields, the grass flat and barren in the sweep of the headlights. This was my least favorite time of year, everything dying and dull, not the bright greens of summer or the clean white of the snow. Just dead broken stalks of corn and browning brush.
Once when I was fourteen, my mom surprised me with tickets to a Red Sox game. Play-offs, no less. We escaped the house like that a lot then. It was this same time of year, but riding the train, it seemed like the closer we sped toward the city, the more alive things were, till we sat staring at the vibrant green infield of Fenway Park. We lingered after the game, getting food in a diner nearby, even trading our train tickets for a later ride home. “It’d be fun to live somewhere like that, wouldn’t it?” she asked when we finally boarded our train after eleven.
I nodded, feeling a flutter of excitement through my sleepiness.
“Maybe someday we will,” she said thoughtfully.
We never went back, though. Never talked about it again. Not after her visits to Dr. Williams became routine.
“Do you really think Trip’s all that into her?” Tannis asked as we turned onto his street.
Trip and Sarah had been going out for over a year now. At first he’d told me everything. More than I wanted to know, really. How far he’d gotten with her. What she’d done to him the first night they’d hooked up. I don’t know why I was his confidant. Maybe because I was so much less experienced than his football pals and it was safe to tell me stuff. Or because I’d been there when he’d decided to ask her out. After a while he stopped talking about that stuff. Then other things followed. College. Plans for next year. It was funny, because there’d been plenty of days in our lifetime of friendship when I’d wished Trip would just shut up. But once he did, I realized I missed it. Just like I’d missed him those first years of high school when he’d cut me loose. Not that I’d ever tell him any of that.
I parked, looking up the path at Trip’s lit house and wondering if Tannis was into Trip or just sticking her nose into my business. I decided I didn’t really care. I had enough other things to worry about. “Yeah,” I finally answered, opening the door. “I do.”
Tannis nodded. “Sucks to be you, huh?” She climbed out of the car and jogged to the door without waiting for me.
***
“I think we should list out what we know,” Trip said when we were all in the basement with the door shut. Trip’s mom was puttering around upstairs; his dad was “out.” I tried not to think about where. “Sarah’s going to whiteboard it,” Trip said, motioning to an easel he’d set up.
“You’re so professional,” Tannis commented.
Trip ignored her and looked at Natalie, sitting on the couch, John Peters beside her. “Are you okay with that, Nat?”
She nodded, looking decidedly not okay.
“So,” he said. “Suspects.” Trip watched while Sarah wrote the heading on the board. “Galen Riddock,” he said. “We know he was a customer, but he says he wasn’t there that night.”
“Even though he stole and pawned my mom’s vase,” Natalie said.
“But the handwriting didn’t match,” John reminded her.
“I can explain that,” I said. Everyone turned to me.
“You can?” Nat said. “How?”
I hesitated, looking at John. “I know who took it and pawned it, but if I say, it has to stay between us. For now at least.” Moose had been so honestly freaked-out by my accusations, I really felt like he’d been telling the truth. Not that I could know for sure. But I didn’t want to be the one to turn his probation into something much worse over his vindictive act of stealing the vase.
“I don’t know that we can promise that,” Trip said finally, reading John’s and Natalie’s reactions. “Not without knowing what you’re going to say.”
“Someone admitted to me that he was there that night and took it. He pawned it under Galen’s name because Galen’s an ass. It was a prank.”
Trip frowned. “Why’d he take it? And why was he—your mystery man—there that night at all?”
“I—” I hesitated, realizing Moose hadn’t explained why he’d gone there. Had it been to buy drugs? Or something else? I figured he owed me, he’d said. For what? Jessica Milosevich’s death? “I don’t know, actually,” I admitted, wondering whether I was wrong to trust the things Moose had said.