Keaton School 01: Escape Theory (12 page)

She moved closer to him. “I know he was here that day. He stole something and you helped him.”

He shook his head. “That didn’t happen,” he said. She was now close enough she could see where the tan line started at the base of his throat.

“Was he here with anyone that day?” she pressed.

“Why are you digging all this up?” Bodhi demanded.

She held his steely gaze. “Hutch is going to be remembered as the boy who killed himself. The troubled teen that OD’d. And I don’t think he did it. Don’t you think we owe it to him to dig a little deeper? He’d do it for you.”

Bodhi looked at his watch again and drummed his hands against his thighs. “I can tell you this; he didn’t get it from me. That’s a controlled substance; I wouldn’t be handing it out. And besides,
Hutch hated that shit. Wouldn’t even take cough medicine anymore because he didn’t trust it. If he really wanted to kill himself, it wouldn’t have been with pills, let alone Oxy. But judging from the look on your face, you’ve figured that out already. Now I gotta go.” Bodhi started for the back door, then hesitated. “You know, the coroner is in town from Santa Cruz. He surfs. Maybe I’ll see him on the water.”

Devon smiled. “And maybe you’ll let me know if you find anything out?”

“Maybe,” Bodhi said back. “Yeah. Maybe I will.”

B
Y THE TIME
D
EVON
finished her shopping, the Keaton Van was pulling out of the pharmacy parking lot. She waved after it, but the van didn’t stop.
Great, I’ve got an hour to kill
. She let her canvas shopping bags slip onto the ground. Maya’s Sprite cans clinked against each other.

Spotting a shady corner across the parking lot, she set up camp. She pulled a copy of
Chekhov: The Essential Plays
out of one of her bags. At least she could catch up on some homework while she waited. She’d only read a few lines when a car honked.

“Get in,” a hoarse voice commanded.

Devon looked up to see the beat-up red Volvo from earlier. The black-haired girl was smoking a rolled cigarette, her hand dangling out the window. She was still wearing her red bikini.

“You’re Raven, right?” Devon asked.

“Yeah, duh. Get in. My brother said I should give you a ride back up the hill. Saw you miss the van.” The girl started scrolling through an iPod.

Better than sitting on this curb for the next hour
, Devon thought. “Cool, thanks. A ride would be great.” She stuffed herself and the bags into the passenger seat.

“Nice to meet you officially,” the girl said. She held out a hand for Devon to shake. A thick row of hemp bracelets dangled from her wrist.

“You, too. I’m Devon.”

“I wasn’t stalking you, I swear. Or was I?” Raven gave Devon a wide-eyed crazy look and then laughed. “I’m just screwing with you. Bodhi said you were a little uptight.” She plugged the iPod into a mini set of speakers precariously perched on either side of the dashboard. There seemed to be a thin layer of sand over everything in the car. Devon saw a pile of beach towels in the back seat. “You got the right one.”

“The right what?”

Raven pressed on the gas. The right speaker slid forward. Devon caught it just before it fell into her lap. She wedged it back in place onto a sticky spot on the dashboard.
Ah, the right one
.

She suddenly noticed Raven’s iPod sitting in a homemade-looking dock, with a tangle of wires attached to an outdated tape deck.

“You, ah, make your own iPod adapter thing?” Devon asked, amazed.

“Yeah, it’s easier than you think. Pretty basic wiring.” Raven kept driving.

Yeah, basic wiring for you
, Devon thought. The most sophisticated wiring Devon had accomplished was a second-grade science experiment involving a battery and an anemic light bulb.

Raven turned onto Via Montana Road. Devon counted the bracelets on Raven’s right arm. One, two, three, four, five … hand-woven, wet, with frayed edges. One of them had a small shell looped through the string. It reminded Devon of the necklace Hutch had made for Isla. Guess hemp was the cool thing these days. She must have missed the memo, as Isla would have said. Raven’s hair was still wet, but the sticky smell of saltwater was inescapable.

“Bodhi said you wanted to know about Hutch,” Raven said. She kept her eyes on the road ahead.

“So, Bodhi’s your brother? Sorry, I didn’t see the family resemblance.” Devon tried to avert her eyes from the rat nest of hair. She saw that Raven was driving barefoot. At least she was wearing jean shorts.

“The black hair did it? Yeah, the whole family is scarily blond, had to rebel somehow, ya know.” She shrugged. But she did have the same piercing green eyes as Bodhi, and a batch of freckles dusted her cheeks and nose. “So, what’d you talk about?”

“I was asking if Bodhi had seen Hutch before he died. Sorry, this all must be a lot of boring talk about someone you didn’t even know. Crappy way to start your freshman year I’ll bet.…” Devon’s voice trailed off.

Raven was crying. A tear dripped from her lashes

“We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to,” Devon said gently.

Raven kept her eyes on the road. Her lips pressed tightly together. The surfboards rattling in their rack overhead. Neighborhood streets were getting farther and farther apart the closer they got to the mountain, replaced with pine trees and boulders. The carved wooden The Keaton School sign loomed ahead. Devon glanced at Raven again, but she seemed oblivious to the approaching turn.

“You can drop me at the bottom of the hill if that’s easier?” Devon tried. Raven didn’t acknowledge her or the sign. The Volvo sped right past where Devon needed to go. Raven used her bracelet-laden hand to wipe the tears off her cheeks.

“Or, if you want to take me back to Monte Vista? I can wait for the next bus.” Devon realized she didn’t know this girl at all. Really, Raven could be anyone: a crazy girl scooping up stray Keaton students and taking them on joyrides. Bodhi could have turned this lunatic onto Devon out of spite. Had she pissed him off enough to deserve this? “Raven?”

“Hang on,” Raven said.

She turned a quick left onto a dirt road. Once again, Devon caught her speaker as it slid across the dashboard. Once that was back in place she gripped the sides of her seat. The Volvo kicked up a cloud of dust and the decade-old shocks lurched at every bump as they climbed up the gravely hillside. The dense trees gave way to grapevines tied to stakes. Row after row, the grapevines stood
tall in perfect precision. Devon felt the cans of Sprite jostle around her feet; she’d have to remember to tell Maya not to open those immediately. If she ever got them to Maya. Where the hell were they going?

Out the window the vines seemed endless, stitched across the hillside. To her left a row of pines seemed to demarcate the property line. Devon caught a glimpse of the Keaton flag waving proud at the top of the hill in the distance; they were on the mountainside behind school. The car took a right turn and suddenly Devon was sitting in a circular driveway in front of a small craftsman house. They lurched to a stop.

Raven killed the engine.

“This property belongs to Reed Hutchins, Hutch’s grandfather. This is the Athena Vineyard, named after Reed’s wife. Reed hired Bodhi and me to work here over the summer. Hutch came down in July and lived here in the guest house.”

Reed Hutchins
. The name rattled in her head. He’d gone to Devon’s dorm room and now here she was on his property. What was the connection?

Raven nodded toward the battered wooden door. She turned to Devon, fresh tears brimming from her eyes. “Every day Hutch.…” She exhaled slowly, collecting herself. “Every day he brought me lunch. No matter where I was on the property, he made sure I didn’t work through lunch. It was just a stupid peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but he never missed a day.” Raven looked out the window toward the vines.

She’s looking for him
, Devon thought. She recognized that look, that searching, like Hutch could still be hanging out where you last left him.

“You know, he said there were two kinds of people in this world.” Raven said.

“Those that like peanut butter and those that don’t,” Devon responded without thinking. She could almost see Hutch in the vineyard, walking through the dirt in his hiking boots, bringing
Raven a sandwich on the vineyard. He probably made a game out of it.

Raven’s mouth fell open.

“I heard him say that once, too,” Devon said. “He was a peanut butter person.”

“Yeah, he was.” Raven smiled, but her chin quivered. She leaned across Devon and flipped open the glove compartment. She pulled out a small pouch of tobacco and rolled herself a cigarette. “Want one?”

“Um, no thanks. I don’t smoke.”

“Of course you don’t.” Raven licked her cigarette and lit it. After a long smoky exhale, “It wasn’t suicide, Devon.”

“You and I are the only ones that seem to think so,” Devon said. She found herself heaving a shaky sigh of relief. Raven was no psychopath. Raven was a girl in pain, just like she was. True: No matter what she thought, Hutch was still gone. But here was Raven, fighting just as hard as Devon to keep her memories of Hutch fresh. Devon wasn’t alone in her beliefs anymore. “Maybe, it’s up to us to prove it.”

September 10, 2010

Freshman Year

The lock clicked into place. Devon flinched at the sound. Hutch grinned like a little boy about to open his Christmas presents.

“That was exciting, wasn’t it?” he said. Hutch crawled out from underneath the table and extended a hand toward Devon, but she stayed on the ground.

“We’re officially screwed, aren’t we?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t say ‘officially.’ ” Hutch used both hands to pull Devon to her feet. “More like a temporary forced relocation.”

“You make us sound like refugees,” Devon said.

“Aren’t we? I mean out there,” Hutch pointed to the door. “Out there is kind of like war. Every day we gotta fight to keep up appearances, grades, athletic ability, but in here … in here it’s just you and me and Nutter Butter pancakes.” Hutch cracked an egg into the mixing bowl of batter. “Come on, you gotta crumble up the cookies.”

Devon pulled a cookie from the container and crunched it in her hand. Her over-analytical brain was working overtime on other matters.
Were they stuck in here for the night? Had Hutch known this would happen?
She thought he seemed disturbingly not disturbed by their situation. As far as she could track it, this night had gone from boring
exciting
romantic
nerve-racking, all in a matter of fifteen minutes. Devon stayed frozen with her hand clenched above the bowl. Hutch tossed an eggshell into the trash at the end of the counter and noticed Devon’s pensive stare.