Slain (18 page)

“Maybe, instead of trying to find the secret code to the little stuff, you should look at the big parts you know are true and take action to follow them. Like,
I don’t know
,” she says like it’s the most obvious thing, “loving people. And figuring out how to help them.”

Where did that come from? Maybe it’s that her parents always fawning over Mike’s spirituality, but Paige isn’t exactly the most vocal when it comes to theology. All of us are looking at her like she just landed from Mars.

“Come on, Emma,” she says. “These lunch trays aren’t going to clear themselves.” She tugs me toward the trash with our two trays stacked in her hands.

“What was that about?” I say.

“Doesn’t it ever get under your skin? How they think they know everything all the time?” She shoves our trays under the trash flap so hard she almost loses them in there.

“Yeah. But they’re always like that. Why is it suddenly bothering you today?”

“I guess I’m just in a mood,” she says, hooking her elbow into mine as we walk out of the cafeteria. “So who do you think is behind this promposal business?”

“I wish I knew. Mike’s getting so upset.”

“I know. Everybody’s talking about it. They aren’t saying so, but they totally want to see him unload on the guy.”

“I hope not.”

“Why? He is your boyfriend, Emma. Everybody knows that. It is sort of insulting.”

“I know, I just…it seems like a stupid reason to fight. I’m obviously going to say no.”

“Obviously.”

“Can we talk about something else, please?” I ask.

“Okay…have you thought about what you’re going to wear to prom yet?” she asks.

“Not really,” I say. Nothing because I’m not going at all if I can help it? “Have you thought about who you want to go with?” I ask, changing the subject.

“Nobody’s asked me.”

“Who do you want to ask you?”

She hesitates for a moment, then says, “I don’t know. No one special. I don’t even know if I want to go yet.” Which means, of course, that there is someone special, someone very special, and she’s afraid to jinx it by saying his name out loud. I grin.
 

“I’m sure he’ll ask you soon.”

“There’s really nobody.”

“Uh huh,” I say. “Sure.”

“Drop it, okay? I’m serious. There’s no one. If I go at all I’m going solo.”

“Okay. Whatever.” It’s not worth it to press her about it. She won’t tell. Paige is a vault. She can keep a secret like no one I’ve ever met.

There are more puzzle pieces after lunch too. I try to decipher the message as I get them, but I can’t make out the P-R-O-M-? that I know is coming. There’s an F-O on one. An M on another, but no question mark after it. An E-L-D. And the number six.

The only thing I’ve figured out is that it’s in the shape of a heart. The last piece will be the middle piece. It’s on my locker after eighth period. There’s a crowd when I get there. Of course there is. Everyone has heard about this by now. Everyone is trying to guess, just like me, who in the world would be stupid enough to piss off Mike.

Paige, Naomi, and Beth make up the center. Katie, Angela, and Erica smirk on the sidelines. Anthony and Chuck are there, but they both look like it’s by accident, like they just happened on the scene. Maybe it’s an act, but I don’t think so. Chuck looks downright disappointed, and Anthony is texting. A ton of freshman and sophomore girls round out the crowd, fueling their dreams for their upperclassman years and thirsty for a fight. I give them all a halfhearted smile.

Mike comes up and yanks the piece off my locker, fire in his eyes. But with everyone watching, he seems to sense that now is not a good time to lose his temper.

“Somebody here’s a real comedian,” he says. “Anybody want to fess up?”

There are giggles and whispers, but no one answers.

“Come on, who is it? Anybody?”

Still, there’s no one.

“What does the puzzle say?” someone yells.

“Put it together!” someone else says. The crowd claps.

So he does. Right there on the floor, in the middle of everybody. When it’s finished, he steps back. The message isn’t what I thought it would be. All it says is:

Football Field

6:30 p.m.

My heart sinks. This isn’t over.

Mike puts an arm around my waist and squeezes me close to him. “This is all very sweet,” he says. “I mean, I know she’s beautiful, guys, but she’s sort of spoken for.” He pecks me on the cheek, and the crowd seems to erupt in sighs and “awws,” like the air getting let out of a balloon.

He takes my hand, and we walk away, leaving the heart on the floor behind us.

“We’re coming back at six thirty,” he says to me. “And I’m going to watch while you tell whoever this is that you’re not interested.”

M
IKE
HAS
LACROSSE
PRACTICE
until four thirty, so at least I get a little break from him. Which gives me plenty of time to dread what’s coming up tonight. I mentally brace myself for discovering my would-be suitor. I have no idea what I’m going to say, or rather, how I’m going to say it. Guys never understand this, but I think it’s harder to say no to someone than it is to ask. I’ve never wanted to be in the heart-smashing business. Today I’m certain I will be.

I decide that instead of thinking about it anymore, I’ll go look for something I’ve been thinking about ever since I talked to Nicolas. I walk across the overpass into the church building. A lot of kids are hanging out at the Connections Café, doing homework and chatting. But what I’m looking for is a little farther down.

I open the door to the auditorium, which is dark, totally empty right now, and make my way toward the stage. There’s a fabric curtain on the front of the apron, which is about four feet tall. The curtain hides the structure that holds up the stage. Before I would have thought that the only thing under here was storage for extra chairs, but now I know better.

I duck behind the curtain, and all the light disappears. There’s a flashlight app on my phone, so I turn it on and crawl through the space. I go past a row of chairs that’s on a rolling cart, past a Nativity cradle and some stage flats, but I don’t see anything until I’m almost to the back wall.

It’s right there, just like Nicolas said it would be: a couple of nursery mats and a sleeping bag. This is where June lived. If she had anything else here though, it’s gone, probably taken away by the police as evidence.

I crawl onto the mats and lie down, thinking about what it would be like to have this as my home. It’s hard to imagine anyone being comfortable here. But it makes me a little proud of June for thinking of it. Hiding inside the church is very resourceful. There’s always stuff going on. It would be almost impossible to notice her. She had access to food and water and showers off the gym. The church is heated in the winter and cool in the summer. And setting up under here where no one would ever look, even by accident? It was really smart.

I shine my phone around the walls and see, overhead, a heart scratched under the stage. Inside the heart is written:
 

N & J
 

4ever

Oh, June. This part of you I think I can understand. The part that knows what it’s like to be in love. I miss Jackson so much right now. I wish I could hide him away down here, just so I could sneak off to see him whenever I want.

When 4:30 rolls around, Mike is done with practice. I promised to meet him in the Connections Café, and I make sure I’m there before he is. We sit with Paige and some other kids, all of us buried in books and the pile of catch-up homework the teachers have assigned. The downside of going to a good school is all the homework, sometimes five or six hours a night, and this week it’s double the usual.

I spend the next couple hours working through the homework and checking e-mail. There’s one from May; she says she’s going back up to CU in Boulder this week. Her spring break is long over, and she doesn’t want to fall any further behind. Things with her and Trisha have gone sour. She gives me her address in case I need to visit. I wish her well and thank her again for loaning me her ID.

It’s 6:15 before I know it.
 

“Ready?” Mike asks.

“I guess so,” I say.

We pack up and head across. It’s starting to get dark. The windowed overpass is neon orange with the setting sun, like being inside molten glass before it takes its final shape. I am the dark spot against its glow, within its fiery center.

There’s a crowd down there, but I can’t make out faces. At least twenty-five people, and more driving up, their headlights cutting through the warm haze of the evening, gossipy girls popping inside like corn kernels.

I make an effort to smile when I walk out on the quad. For a second I get caught up in their attention, and the smile comes easier. I can’t lie. There’s a little bit of magic being me in this moment. Me the prize in a fight between two boys, one of them a mystery, and all these people gathered to see it. Our curiosity is amped-up the way the sky feels electric before a thunderstorm.

Mike takes my hand in his, reminding me he’s there at all, reminding me that doing this is really more for him than for me. The whole point is to hurt someone’s feelings so Mike can look like the top dog. I guess I’d be hurting someone’s feelings either way. If it wasn’t for Mike, I wouldn’t go to prom this year. My parents would never agree to let Jackson take me, and why would I go with anyone else?

The crowd parts like the Red Sea as we walk through them. And beyond, I see it. Not him, but it. Instead of a person waiting, there’s something set up in the middle of the field.
 

We walk toward it, Mike and I. The other kids follow in a hush of excited whispers and sneakers swishing through grass. As we get closer, the object on the green grows clearer. It looks like a big rectangular picture frame, maybe five feet wide and half that tall, set up on an easel. But instead of holding a painting, it’s covered in black paper, with my name scrawled in big silver letters across it. Am I supposed to unwrap it?

No. When we get closer I see a small envelope taped to a white string dangling below the left corner. I pick up the envelope, and inside is a cigarette lighter wrapped in a note:

Light me.

Well that’s a little more original. That’s when I notice the smell. It’s sharp and strong, like gasoline or lighter fluid or propane. There better be someone with a fire extinguisher nearby.
 

I look over at Mike, and he shrugs, rolling his eyes. From the hot air balloon guy, this probably seems pretty lame.

What else can I do with everyone watching? I flick the lighter to life. With a shrug to the crowd, I place the flame on the edge of the string, and it feels like I’m lighting one of those cartoon bombs, black and round and ready to leave everyone with crazy hair and smoky faces.

It takes. The flame dances up the string, onto the paper.

The paper catches with a whoosh, and I stumble back from the blaze. In an instant, it’s ashes on the air. And there’s something else burning, orange-hot flames licking rope, nailed to a metal backing in a pattern.

There are gasps from the onlookers.

It takes me a moment to register it, for the mess I’m seeing to switch from a jumble of letters to something that has a meaning, for my mind to adjust from what I was expecting to what this really is.

On the board, spelled out in flaming rope, is a single word:

KILLER

T
HERE
’
S
CHAOS
ALL
AROUND
me, but my hearing goes fuzzy, blending everything together into mush. It’s like I’m wearing earmuffs, like when I was a little kid going out to play in the snow.

Mike yanks me away from the blaze. I stumble, but he holds me up.

The fire spreads to the easel. Some boys race back to the school building to get a fire extinguisher, Mike among them.

I feel woozy and sit down on the ground.

Then Paige is in front of me, holding my shoulders, saying something, but I can’t make out what.

Focus, Emma. Focus.

“Emma!” Paige says. She looks worried, terrified.
 

All my senses return at once. The sharp smell of the smoke, the feel of the air—hot and scratchy in my throat, the sound of the other kids—some spooked and tugging their friends away, others standing shocked, waiting for me to explain.

“Are you okay?” Paige asks.

“I’m fine,” I say. “I’m fine.”

The boys come back, spray down the flames, but not soon enough to avoid leaving a blackened spot on the field. With how dry Colorado is, we’re lucky it didn’t spread farther.

I struggle up to my feet, staring at what’s left of the crowd. It’s mostly just the kids in my circle now, maybe ten of them.

“Did anyone see who set this up?”

A couple people shake their heads no, wide eyed and confused.

“It’s really important, you guys,” I say. “Someone is playing a very sick joke, and I need to know who it was.”

“I was the first one here,” Chuck says. “Me and Ben. That thing was here when we got here.”

Ben shakes his head, “Yeah. We didn’t see anything. Sorry, Emma.”

I look out to the rest of the kids. “How about at school today? Did anyone notice who put those puzzle pieces up?”

More nos.

“Katie, you have Bible in Mr. Stearn’s class right before I do. You didn’t notice anyone putting that piece up on his bulletin board?”

“It was already there,” Katie says.

Ruth pipes up, “I have homeroom in there. It was there before the first bell rang.”

“Same in the science lab,” Chuck says. “There was a puzzle piece right at your spot in first period. Casey French sits there and asked what to do with it, so Mrs. Boris took it and put it on the chalkboard.”

“Math too,” Ruth says. “I saw it on the computer station in fourth period. Isn’t math your last class?”

I nod. Whoever did this taped up those pieces before school even started, then snuck back to the school after all the sports practices and clubs were done for the day.