How We Fall (15 page)

another household rule. I preferred the days kids cooked. Mom, Aunt Shelly, and Uncle Ward were watching the news in the living room. Since Uncle Ward and Aunt Shelly approved of being informed, news was an appropriate use of the television.

I glared at the back of her head when I walked into the living room. Aunt or not, Shelly Reed had better stop following me around.

“Hey,” Dad sat on the couch beside Mom. “He left. So, I guess problem solved.”

Something wasn’t right. Everyone was too quiet.

Mom glanced up and took his hand. Aunt Shelly and Uncle Ward looked grim.

I frowned. A girl’s photo was being broadcast on the news.

Ellie. “Mom! That’s Ellie.”
Sixteen-year-old St. Joseph girl’s body
recovered
scrolled across the bottom of the screen.

“I know, honey,” Mom said. “How awful.”

Body.

Recovered.

Sixteen. She should have been seventeen by now. But she wasn’t, because she was dead.

I sat down on the arm of the couch. Ellie. Dead. Her body turned up now? My vision swam. Drugs, an accident, an aneu-rism or blood clot, some kind of illness she hadn’t told anyone 103

How we Fall

about? Maybe someone had kidnapped her.

No, no, no. There was no reason for her to be dead.

She’d always been so cheerful, even when we lost games.

She’d been a competitive player. I had a particular memory of her jumping during practice, her whole body primed and under control. The slap of her hand on the ball still rang in my ears. I was nowhere near that good.

Found in the woods, west of St. Joseph. After this long, her body must have been barely identifiable.

Marcus walked up behind me. His hand brushed my shoulder. I looked up at him. Looking in his eyes hurt.

Mom glanced up at us from the couch, and Marcus dropped his hand from my shoulder. He walked back into the kitchen, and Mom turned back to the news.

My cell phone buzzed.

Outside?

I caught his attention and nodded. I pulled my shoes back on and went out the kitchen door, and a minute later he followed me.

He caught the screen door and kept it from banging. We walked around the back of the house. The sky was overcast, gray but thin, like an old wool blanket. He reached over and took my hand.

She was gone.

We sat down on the hill our house was built into. “I should have tried harder,” I said.

Marcus shook his head and put his arm around me. “You can’t do that.” He shifted around so he could see me. “You’re always so hard on yourself.”

Ellie was dead. This shouldn’t be about me. “Someone—

someone must have killed her.”

Marcus touched his hand to my face and brushed my cheekbone with his thumb. “I’m sorry,” he said.

I leaned my head on his shoulder, but my insides were too numb for me to cry.

104

Kate Brauning

• • •

Muggy and warm, the day was already too hot by the time we left to get the tires for Marcus’s truck.

Somewhere, someone was doing an autopsy on Ellie’s body, and here we were buying tires. The unfairness of the world and my own insensitivity stunned me. I shouldn’t be buying tires, I shouldn’t be sleeping and eating the day after my friend’s body had been found.

The mechanic’s was a twenty-minute drive away, in Harris, and for most of the way there, Gorillaz pumped from the speakers and Marcus and told me about this new online game he was playing with three guys in Idaho and somebody in Eng-land. Something about spaceships and mining ore on moons.

Talking about normal things hurt.

We pulled into the parking lot by a steel building marked

“Riley’s Auto Shop.” An old Coke sign hung on the building, and buckets and various hunks of metal lay scattered around the lot. Tires were lined up against the exterior and stacked inside.

“I’ll be two minutes.” Marcus left the truck running for the air conditioning and went inside. My phone buzzed a second later with a text from Claire.

Tell Mom I got back to campus fine?

She’d left late last night to get back in time for work this morning. I was surprised she’d stayed as long as she had, but then most of her friends weren’t on campus for the summer. I texted her back.

K. Hey have you seen the news?

My phone vibrated again almost immediately.

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How we Fall

Yeah. Horrible. They’d better find the bastard. Keep me updated
on Marcus.

Having someone know about me and Marcus was an inex-pressible relief. So many times I’d wanted to talk to someone, but I’d never been able to. She’d been right that I had to end it, but at least she hadn’t called me a freak.

The tailgate clanged down. Marcus and Riley heaved a set of tires into the truck bed. “Thanks again,” Marcus called, then climbed back into the cab. “Okay, let’s go.”

I loved driving on this highway. The blacktop rolled over hills, wound around S-curves, and stretched over half a dozen creeks. It wasn’t a safe road, especially during the winter. Deer were constant casualties on this road, as were coons and the occasional cow.

Marcus was a good driver. Watching his arms and shoulders move as he shifted, I settled back in the seat. I could drive a stick, but not very well. I needed more practice, and our cars were both automatic.

“Admiring my mad shifting skills?” Marcus asked, grinning.

He was trying to take my mind off Ellie. “You know how good I am with my hands.”

“Oh, God.” I adjusted the vents to blow on my face.

Marcus squinted into the rear-view mirror, his smile disappearing. “Is that the white truck you’ve been seeing?”

I sat up straight. He crested the hill right behind us, going way over the speed limit. “Yeah.”

Marcus frowned. “Is your seatbelt on?”

“Yeah, why?”

“He’s way too close.”

The truck was close enough now I could see the bald man in sunglasses. He was less than three feet behind us. Marcus drifted to the side of the lane, a clear invitation to pass. The white truck only accelerated.

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“Don’t stare at him. I really don’t like this.” Marcus shifted and sped up a little. “I’m already going ten over. Faster isn’t good on this road.”

I looked in the side mirror. He was right on our tailgate, and he was inching closer. I dug an old receipt out of my purse. I could see his license plate if I looked in the rear view. I jotted it down. At least now we could turn in the plate number and figure out who this guy was.

The truck jerked forward and something banged. I slammed forward into my seatbelt. Marcus gripped the steering wheel.

“What the hell is his problem?”

He’d just rammed our tailgate. The white truck’s engine roared above our own and fear settled in my gut. If we pulled off the road, this guy would stop too. I’d rather keep moving.

We were still at least ten miles from home.

The highway rolled over another hill and around a curve.

Marcus had a good grip on the wheel, but we were driving too fast. The road swung back into an S-curve and a tire slipped off the blacktop, grinding on the gravel shoulder.

The white truck pulled into the opposite lane. Marcus’s jaw tightened. “He’d better be passing. Oh, shit, Jackie—call your dad. Right now.” Calling 911 would do nothing. They took nearly half an hour to respond out here.

I already had my phone out. The truck pulled up beside us and drifted closer as we sped downhill. He was half in the oncoming lane and half in our lane.

The phone kept on ringing. Marcus braked hard a second before the man in sunglasses jerked the wheel. Our truck dropped back half a length and his bed slammed into Marcus’s door. The side view mirror crumpled and fell and my head cracked into my window. We spun sideways, tires screaming on the asphalt. The tires hit the gravel shoulder and the truck rocked as we plunged off the road. Pain split through my head.

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How we Fall

I gripped the door handle as we careened down the slope. The truck jerked and bounced at the bottom of the incline and we plowed straight into a cornfield.

Stalks crunched beneath us, but the field swept uphill and we ground to a halt. The white truck roared over the next hill and kept going.

Marcus leaned his forehead on the steering wheel for barely a second before asking if I was okay.

“I’m fine. You aren’t hurt, are you?” Pain radiated through my head and neck.

“I don’t think so.”

I sank back onto my seat. We sat there for a minute before I touched the bruise on my head. No blood, and it was throb-bing less now. The window wasn’t cracked. My shoulder was sore, too, from slamming into my seatbelt. “He could turn around and come back. What do we do if he comes back?”

Marcus forced the door open, cracking cornstalks. “I can’t hear his engine anymore. He’s gone.” He looked around and exhaled. “If there had been any kind of ditch here, we would have rolled the truck.”

It was a miracle we hadn’t. “Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m gonna see how bad the damage is.” He forced the door open further and jumped out.

My hands shook as I brushed the hair out of my face. I didn’t think I’d ever been so scared in all my life. If the truck had rolled, who knows what would have happened. He could have killed us.

Marcus crashed around in the corn and banged on the tailgate. He came back after a minute. “The tailgate is dented and I can’t get it open. The side mirror is broken, obviously, the whole side of the cab is scraped, and my door is dented.

But otherwise, I think we’re okay. We’ll have to get the suspen-sion checked out and we plowed a darn good trail through this 108

Kate Brauning

corn.” He leaned back in his seat and finally looked at me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Just a bruise. My head hit the window.”

“What?” He leaned over and gently turned my head so he could see. “Oh, Jackie, that’s swelling.”

“Not much.” It didn’t hurt that badly. I held still while he touched my face.

“Can you see okay? Are you dizzy?” He peered critically into my eyes. “Do you think you have a concussion?”

“No, I’m okay. I can see fine. I can count backwards. It’s just a bruise.”

If we could do over our fight in the garden, I’d tell him I didn’t want him to find a girlfriend. If I could go back to that moment on the blanket, I’d tell him I’d wanted to stop not because we should but because he meant too much to me.

His thumb slid over my cheek. “Okay. Let’s go home. But you tell me if you start to feel dizzy or nauseated or get a bad headache.”

“Deal.” I’d had a concussion before, from a four-wheeling accident shortly after we moved, and this didn’t feel like that.

My head did hurt, but it was just a bruise.

We drove the rest of the way home in silence. My whole body felt like a wet rag from the adrenaline crash. I called Dad again, and this time he answered.

The parents were all standing in the driveway when we pulled up. “Good lord, son,” Uncle Ward said. “What happened?”

“Well,” I said, because Marcus was having trouble with his door, “someone ran us off the road.”

“Oh honey, are you okay? Are either of you hurt?” Mom hugged me, a little too tight. My shoulder had to be all sorts of colors by now.

“Jackie has a wicked bruise, but I’m fine,” Marcus answered.

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“The truck’s banged up, though.”

Chris let the door bang behind him as he walked down the steps. “Geez, Marcus. Who’d you piss off?”

Marcus slammed his door, and it finally latched. He told the story and the gunmetal sky hung over us, no longer thin and wooly but heavy with rain.

Chris frowned. “I asked Will, but he hadn’t heard of anything going on in Harris. He said to put your truck in the garage next time.”

Will. Chris’s hero, to hear him talk. What brilliant advice.

Marcus shook his head. “Well, a garage wouldn’t have helped me with this.”

“Oh. I forgot. I got his plate number.” I pulled the white paper out of my pocket.

“You did?” Marcus asked, surprised.

Uncle Ward reached for the receipt with the number. “I’m calling Sheriff Whitley. This is ridiculous. That man needs to be locked up.”

“Thank goodness you’re okay,” Aunt Shelly said. “These roads. I swear.” She hugged Marcus. “I’m so glad you aren’t hurt.”

Dad frowned, heavy lines on his forehead. “First the tires, now this.”

Uncle Ward was still on the phone, gesturing wildly as he paced around the yard. We went inside, Aunt Shelly fussing over Marcus and even me as if we were desperately ill. “Do you want some hot chocolate, honey?”

Marcus sank into a chair at the table. “Sure. But can you make—”

“I’ll make it from scratch,” she said, hurrying over to the stove.

“Okay.” He grinned. “You want some, Jackie?”

I shook my head. Sugar didn’t sound good right then. I 110

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wanted a nap.

“So, this guy doesn’t go to our school, right?” Chris asked.

“You saw him?”

“He’s definitely not in high school,” I said. “He’s probably thirty. I don’t know.”

Uncle Ward came in. “Sheriff Whitley said the truck is regis-tered to someone in Kansas City. That’s all he’d tell me.”

“Kansas City? He’s a ways from home,” Marcus said. That was a good four hours away.

Aunt Shelly poured hot chocolate into six mugs and I took it as a sign of acute distress that she made one for herself. I let my mug steam in front of me while Mom got me ibuprofen.

“Until we get this figured out, no one goes anywhere without one of us,” Dad said. “We know you won’t do anything stupid, but you could have been seriously injured or even killed.”

Clearly. Of all the ways I’d expected my drive with Marcus to go, this wasn’t it. “I’m going to go to my room.” I’d wanted to talk to him on the way home about what Claire had said and his mom’s suspicions. And he needed to know that we were done.