He had to shake it once, insisting, before I finally, reluctantly took it.
“Open it,” he said when it was obvious I didn’t plan to.
I turned it over, saw that the back was unsealed, and glanced inside, feeling my throat constrict as I read the numbers on the cashier’s check.
“I can’t take this—” I shoved it back at him. I couldn’t imagine what crazy idea made him think I’d let him hand me that kind of money.
“You have to,” he interrupted. “It’s earmarked for school. For—” His voice broke, edged to desperation when he continued. “What am I going to do with it? Pay bills? Remodel my house? For what? What does any of that mean? Take it. You’re a smart kid. Use it to get yourself out of here. Do something good, something that’ll mean something—”
“Stop.” It was rude, but I couldn’t listen anymore, couldn’t hear the things I knew were coming. For Trip. So he’ll be remembered, valued. In his memory. I kept the envelope. It felt like a deal with the devil.
I laid it on the table by the door, the envelope suddenly feeling too heavy to hold, laden with the responsibility of memorializing Trip. It wasn’t the kind of thing I could say no to, even though everything in me told me I should. I was taking Trip’s life. His college savings. His girlfriend. None of it had been my fault or on purpose, but it still felt very, very wrong. I had wanted Sarah and I’d wanted to leave here, but ohmygod, I didn’t want either of them this way.
CHAPTER 32
OF COURSE, I REALIZED IT was the final pieces.
Why Trip had never seen anything in the binoculars. No future.
How I’d pay for college.
It took Tannis a few days longer, but one day at lunch she said it. “We have to get rid of them. It’s all coming true.”
I looked at Natalie and Sarah, their eyes deeply vacant, something I’d come to accept as our general state of being. We were in a vacuum of meaning. We were statues, sitting together but none of us really there. Nothing mattered. Nothing seemed possible.
I would take the SATs the following weekend. I was leaving Buford. I’d go to college next year.
I didn’t give a damn about any of it.
“You guys do it,” Natalie said. “I’m not touching them. I don’t even want to see them again. Ever.” Her voice was high, hysterical. Not that Tannis was much better.
I nodded. Thinking was so hard. Just do it. Go with it. “Okay. They’re at my house. We’ll go after school.”
“I can’t,” Sarah said. “I have an appointment.” She smiled mirthlessly. “My dad’s making me see a shrink.”
It would have been funny. But it wasn’t. Sarah was the worst of all of us. I wanted to talk to her, tell her the things I wished I could believe about how it wasn’t our fault and there was nothing we could have done. But she wouldn’t even get near me alone. I hated it, and I was worried about her—it was the only real feeling I had these days—but I understood.
“So, just you and me,” I said to Tannis. “You okay to go?”
“Well, my back hurts all the f**king time, I have to puke every morning, and I’m exhausted,” she said, “but I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again until I know they’ve been mashed, bashed, burned, or destroyed. So, yeah, I’m good to go.”
I nodded. “It’s a date.”
***
We walked to my house, her and me. Neither of us had a car that day. We could have asked her brother or someone else, maybe Matty, but it was too much effort.
“How are things with him?” I asked her on the walk. “And . . . stuff?” I couldn’t bring myself to say “baby” or “pregnant.” I didn’t even like thinking it.
“Okay. I guess. We’re talking about what to do.” Tannis smiled vaguely. “He really digs me,” she said, looking over. “Isn’t that funny?”
“Why? You’re hot,” I said. “At least that’s what you’ve always told me.”
Tannis nudged my arm playfully. “I just never thought . . . I don’t know. He’s not my usual type.” She finished quietly, the sense of who her type was—had been—hanging there.
We walked in silence for a few minutes until Tannis asked, “Do you think they’ll ever find out who killed Nat’s dad?”
“Does it matter?” It slipped out before I realized how it’d sound.
“What do you mean?” Tannis looked at me like I was crazy. “Of course it matters.”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry,” I said, not meaning any of it. I couldn’t tell Tannis the things Sarah and I had talked about. What we’d been planning to ask Trip. And how the whole thing was wrapped up in his death for me now. And because of that, wrapped up in my role in it, something I couldn’t bear to think about too much. “No,” I told her honestly. “I don’t.” Whether that was because the murderer was dead himself or because what Trip had known had been a key to the puzzle, I didn’t know or care.
Tannis nodded. “Yeah, I’ve kind of been thinking that too,” she said. “I read somewhere that most murders are solved in the first forty-eight hours.”
“You can read?”
“Shove it, Ri,” she said, before continuing. “I guess if the police haven’t figured it out yet, they’re probably not going to.”
Tannis and I turned onto my walk. The power had been back on for almost two weeks, but I still had a second of apprehension when we pushed into the living room. I flicked on the light switch, and everything worked.
But something was still wrong.
It was that same prickly not-right feeling I’d had the day I’d caught my mom with Trip’s dad.
“What?” Tannis asked, seeing me motionless just inside the door.
I listened, and a soft sound confirmed what I’d been thinking. “Someone’s here,” I told her quietly. Her eyes went wide. “Mom?” I called, already knowing from the missing car that it wasn’t her.
No one answered. There was a creak and another, moving faster. The squeal of rusty hinges. My thoughts flew to my room. Moose’s lighter in my drawer, traces of Mr. Cleary’s blood on it. I should have given it to the cops.
“Stay here,” I told Tannis. I strode through the hallway to the kitchen and yanked the back door open. I stepped out into the yard just in time to see a shadowy figure disappear into the woods.