How We Fall (32 page)

All we did was kiss, but it was so much, and it was everything. For hours we lay there, hearing the clock tick but thinking it must be for other people, seeing the dark but still able to see each other. And if someone came downstairs, all they’d find was the truth.

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I woke Marcus at four am. He’d fallen asleep with his arm around me, and I’d stayed there on the couch with him. At night, the house was another world where we could be like this. I traced my fingertips down his chest. He stirred. I touched his nose. He blinked at me, then sat up.

“Oh my god,” he said. “Sylvia.”

“I know,” I said.

“What do I—we still can’t—”

“I know.” Everything had changed, but at the same time, nothing had changed.

He bit his lip, touched my knee, then put his head in his hands. His words were so quiet I had to lean closer.

“I cheated on her,” he said again.

That stung me. I was not the other girl; she was.

But she was his girlfriend, and she would not want him kissing me, especially not like that.

He stumbled up the stairs to bed, and I went to my room.

I got a horrible two hours of sleep before I had to get up for school, and my shower took twice as long as it should have.

Marcus was gone by the time I got out.

When Kelsey and I got to school, the sky hung low and thick like a gray tundra. End-of-summer storms were predicted for the entire week. Even though the sun was hidden, the heat kept building. At least it was Friday.

Sylvia was in all of her classes that day, but she looked as tired as Marcus and I did. Even though the humidity was suffocating 249

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outside, she wore a long-sleeved shirt.

I stopped her at her locker after class again, and she whirled around, her eyes angry.

“Listen,” I said, before she could say anything. “If you’re being harassed, you have to tell someone.”

Her eyes widened. “I—I have to meet with the guidance counselor,” she said, and then just left me there, her books and backpack on the floor and her locker hanging open. I had no way to make her show me, but I was pretty sure if I did, I’d see bruises on her arms.

I had to go to St. Joseph.

• • •

When I went out to check on him, he and Chris were washing tomatoes in the industrial sinks. I rolled up my sleeves and plunged my hands into the cold water. When Chris carried a crate of green onions to the cold cases in the garage, Marcus stared at the road as a little green car drove by. “Are you okay?”

he said.

“I think so.” The clouds had turned darker, twilight falling much too early. Knowing hadn’t made it worse this time. It had helped a little.

“Me, too,” he said. “At least, better in some ways.”

I knew what he meant, and we left it at that.

• • •

Kate Brauning

Saturday morning, the rumble and clang of the truck and trailer being loaded woke me. Marcus would be helping the parents load the produce.

I didn’t want to go to St. Joseph by myself, but I couldn’t take Marcus to go investigate his own girlfriend. Will would be sleeping still, since he worked nights, and it was too much to explain to Kelsey.

The parents wouldn’t let me go if I asked, but I had to. I couldn’t go to the police with suspicions about a girl who had a photo in her locker and had worn long sleeves. I couldn’t do anything more about the white truck, and the police were already doing what they could to find Ellie’s killer. Today, the parents would be gone ’til almost noon. I’d packed the night before, and as soon as Marcus went back upstairs, I’d leave.

I rolled over and dozed until someone knocked on my door.

Marcus poked his head in. “Your dad said we should go do chores now if we don’t want to do them in the storm.”

Dang it. I hadn’t planned on the rain. Leaving while all the kids were in bed would have been easiest. I sat up. “Okay.

Coming.”

“I’m going to try to get Chris out of bed.” He disappeared and feet pounded up the stairs.

I put on jeans and my boots in case it did start to rain while we were out. Out the kitchen window, the sky looked like a heavy iron lid set over the world. Updrafts and swirls in the clouds threatened a storm instead of just rain.

Marcus came back downstairs. “Chris will probably be a few minutes. We should just go.”

“Mom and Dad went to St. Joseph in this weather? There won’t even be a farmer’s market.”

He shrugged. “It’s clear there. Moving north.”

I texted Claire. Tornados were always a risk with temperature changes like this.

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Hey, check the weather before you drive. Looks stormy here.

We went outside and Marcus opened the garage door to let Heidi out. The humidity made walking around feel almost like swimming. Thunder sounded off towards Manson. Heidi ran around us in circles, jumping and whining. Storms always upset her.The streaks on the horizon meant rain was falling a few miles off. Chris showed up fifteen minutes later, lugging two bottles of milk replacer for the calves and followed by a sleepy-looking Candace. I was surprised she’d gotten out of bed, but Candace was loyal to her animals.

An hour later, a chill came through on the wind, starkly different from the water-laden heat. I filled Heidi’s bowls and left the garage door open for her. Marcus came up from feeding the chickens when I headed for the house. He stopped in the driveway, staring in his truck window. “Jackie.”

I came back, feeling the hairs on my neck prickle. “What?”

“Look.”

The driver’s seat was ripped open from top to bottom.

Foam swelled out of the gash. The edges were a ragged zig-zag.

He tried the door, but it was locked. He straightened up and looked at me just as thunder cracked overhead and rain fell.

Usually a warning sprinkle would come first, but water fell like someone had upended a bucket, pounding on the cement and bouncing back up. We were drenched in the seconds it took us to run for the garage. Candace and Chris burst in behind us. We peeled off as many layers as we could and left our shoes in the garage so we didn’t track mud into the kitchen.

Aunt Shelly would have made us mop the floor.

That maniac had been in our driveway. It was definitely time to go. It only took me a few minutes to get everything ready.

I even grabbed a hoodie so I’d have something dry to change into. After pulling on dry jeans and toweling off my hair, I 252

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came back to see Candace sitting at the kitchen table. The temperature had plummeted. She was still soaked and shivering, watching the rain out the big window.

The parents were gone, and I just had to get out of the house without anyone noticing.

“Go change, silly.” I sank onto the chair beside her.

“She’s waiting on hot chocolate.” Marcus was over at the stove, stirring a pan.

Candace nodded. “You can have some too if you want.”

“I’m okay.” I watched Marcus from the table. His face was tense.

“The truck is still locked, Jackie,” he said.

And someone had gotten into it. “Your keys.” That was why I had to leave. This wasn’t only about Ellie and Sylvia. This was Marcus, too.

“I thought I’d lost them. I don’t know. Maybe I dropped them at the carnival and someone picked them up.”

I walked over to him and leaned on the counter. “It couldn’t have been just anyone. Someone knifed your seat and relocked the door. Who does that?”

“Yeah.” He tapped the whisk on the edge of the pan and turned off the burner. He faced me, his eyes worried. “If someone has my keys, we need to get the locks changed.”

“Marcus, this is serious.” I was scared. Really scared. “It has to be the guy Sylvia saw at the carnival. Maybe she doesn’t know anything about Ellie, but this guy is after you for some reason.”

“I know.” He crossed his arms.

“She didn’t tell you anything else about him?” Sylvia had never said why she’d gotten upset when she saw the man in the white truck, not even to Marcus.

“She says she’s only dated one other guy and it wasn’t him.

I don’t know. She’s being weird about it. Maybe I should start carrying Dad’s gun.”

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“Uncle Ward has a gun?” My eyebrows went up.

“Yeah. Locked in the top of his closet.”

Thunder cracked outside and a shiver trickled across my skin. Marcus handed Candace her hot chocolate as lightning ruptured the sky.

My phone buzzed with a text from Claire.

Yeah, I’m not coming. Starting to look stormy here and Will says
it’s nasty there.

Claire had been talking to Will. That didn’t surprise me.

“Call the parents and tell them. They need to know. Maybe with this, they can convince the police to do something.”

Chris came downstairs holding his phone. “Mom said they’re going to wait for the storm to die down. It’s windy enough they don’t want to drive with that trailer.”

My sheet of notes was tucked into my purse, and both it and an extra bag were hidden in the car in the driveway. The keys were in the pocket of my jacket. All I had to do was get away from my cousins.

“Marcus.” I paused. “Tell the parents, and call Sheriff Whitley, and ask Sylvia what’s going on. Make her tell you. Really.”

Marcus looked up from his phone, already calling the parents. He could work on that, and I’d work on my list. He nodded, and when the parents answered, he started telling them about the truck. I could hear him talking as I walked through the living room and back to the hall. My door was closed, and it would stay that way. I went into Dad’s office, closed the door behind me, and hit the thumb lock on the doorknob. My jacket was waiting on his chair. I slid it on and used the elastic on my wrist to pull my hair back in a ponytail. I climbed up on his desk.

Since he worked in here all day, his office had a window dug out of the side of the hill. The window didn’t slide up, but it did have a hand crank that would open it far enough. I popped 254

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the screen off and cranked the window open.

Getting enough leverage to pull myself up and out was dif-ficult, but I did it.

The unnaturally dark morning meant I could sneak around to the car easily. I kept the lights off and put the car in neutral.

Since our driveway had an incline, the car rolled backwards to the gravel road. I backed it down the road as far as I could, and when it came to a stop, I waited for a rumble of thunder to start the car. With the lights still off, I made a cautious three-point turn in the narrow gravel road. Heading away from the house, without ever having to drive past it, I finally turned on the lights.

For months, I’d told Ellie I’d come visit again. Now, almost a year too late, I was finally going.

The rain would slow me down, but I’d be driving out of the storm. Really, I’d be in no danger. I could stay with Claire if the storm got worse before I came back.

Rain beat on my windshield. My headlights lit up the whirls of rain being whipped by the wind. The wipers sloshed water off the windshield, and I tried to tune in to the steady swish-slap to keep my heart from racing.

I had a hard time believing Sylvia had anything to do with Ellie’s death. After getting to know her a little, it didn’t make sense. Ellie had been killed, and one of her friends was being harassed. It made the most sense that both girls had gotten involved in something bad.

But what? And if both girls had seen something, why would someone kill Ellie, but only scare Sylvia?

And why would he be after Marcus? Sure, he was dating her, but this had started before Marcus asked her out, and making violent threats like this seemed more likely to draw attention than cover tracks.

None of the articles I read on Ellie’s disappearance, nothing I found on the internet or saw on the news, mentioned Sylvia.

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She hadn’t been interviewed or given a statement of any kind.

Maybe Sylvia was what the police were missing.

Thirty miles out, the rain lessened and I could finally drive the speed limit. The rain was only a steady dripping there, the storm mostly wind. The hour drive to St. Joseph took me an hour and a half.

By the time I got off the highway, my hands hurt from gripping the steering wheel. I pulled into the driveway of the address from my sheet of notes, but couldn’t get out of the car.

She’d lived here. I sat in the driveway of Ellie’s parents’

home, the house I should have visited more often, and my throat went tight. I touched my charm bracelet. The edge of the bird’s wing pressed into my finger.

The windows of the house were dark, the shades still pulled.

It was barely eight-thirty on a Saturday morning. I’d come back after my other errands were done and convince her parents to let me in. Search her room for a journal, find out if they’d kept her car.

The school was my next stop. I just had to hope it was open.

I parked on a side of the school away from the street and had to try three doors before I found one open. Ducking inside, I glanced around. The muted roar of the giant floor cleaners whirred from somewhere down the hallway to the left.

I went right. Only a few lights were on. From the staff list-ing on the school website, I’d found the office number, and from the school PR photos, I thought I could figure out where it was. Coach Stevenson, Ellie’s emails had said.

My footsteps echoed down the long halls. This place was much, much bigger than Manson High. It smelled cool and clean in the way only an empty school could smell. I found the gym, but was on the wrong side of it. It was locked, so I had to circle around through the halls.

G104. That was the office number I was looking for. I 256

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passed a trophy case and stopped. Inside was a framed photo of the volleyball team with the coach; it wasn’t a great photo, but I could make out Sylvia and Ellie. It had to have been taken at the beginning of the fall semester last year.