Nightshade (20 page)

His eyes shifted from the building itself to a group of his friends who were clustered on the lawn — Eric Holmes was there, talking to Pete Arneson and Brett Haynes. When Eric glanced his way, Matt raised his arm to wave.

Eric turned away as if Matt had suddenly become invisible.

He won’t even wave to me. If Eric won’t even wave to me, what’s everyone else going to do?

The nervousness and apprehension that had been gnawing at Matt as he walked to school congealed into a nearly irresistible urge to turn away from the school, as Eric had turned away from him. If everyone treated him like Eric had —

The echo of his mother’s words broke through his thoughts: “Face them . . . show them you’re not afraid of anything they might say, because you didn’t do anything.”

Dropping the hand he’d raised to greet Eric Holmes, Matt stepped off the curb and crossed the street.

But it wasn’t just the facade of the building that had changed since Friday afternoon. Everything about the school now felt foreign, as if he’d wandered into a place he’d never seen been.

And a place where he wasn’t wanted.

It was worse than his stepfather’s funeral, for at the funeral he hadn’t felt as totally alone.

His mother had been beside him, and people — at least some people — had spoken to him.

This morning, though, as he made his way through the crowded halls to his locker, no one slapped him on the back, no one stopped him, no one asked him how he was. He told himself that they just didn’t know what to say, but he knew it was more than that. Wherever he went, the other kids fell silent, and though they were careful never to meet his eyes or even look directly at him, he could feel their eyes on his back, sense the whispered conversations he couldn’t quite hear.

When he entered a classroom, the hum of conversation instantly quieted, and when he took his seat, no one acknowledged his presence.

Even the teachers seemed no longer to see him. When he raised his hand three times in his advanced algebra class — twice to offer a solution to the equation scrawled on the old slate blackboard, once to ask a question — Mrs. Tokheim’s gaze passed right over him as if he didn’t exist.

At lunch he went through the cafeteria line and automatically headed toward the table he’d always shared with Eric Holmes, Pete Arneson, and — the last few months, anyway — Kelly Conroe. But today his usual seat between Eric and Kelly was already occupied by Mark Ryerson.

Nor had any of the other seats at the table been left empty.

He knew it wasn’t a coincidence — as long as he’d been in high school, one of the chairs at that table had always been his. So they’d done it deliberately. They’d shut him out. A wave of anger rose in him, and his jaw tightened. Maybe he should just go over and dump his tray on the whole bunch of them!

No — that was the last thing he should do. If they knew they’d gotten to him, it would just get worse. Struggling to keep his emotions from showing, he searched the cafeteria for someplace else to sit. Half a dozen tables had empty seats, but the people at every one of them looked away as soon as he turned in their direction. His appetite deserting him as the hard knot of fury expanded inside him, Matt finally dropped his tray — and everything on it — into one of the trash bins, and walked out of the cafeteria.

The rage building inside him kept him from noticing Becky Adams gesturing for him to come and sit at the table where she, on most days, sat feeling as alone as Matt felt today.

By quarter past two, when he was making his way toward the computer room for his last class, he knew what to expect, so he was almost able to ignore it when the low hum in the room died away as he entered.

He glanced around at the tables. They were all there. Eric Holmes and Pete Arneson were huddled with two other football players. And Mark Ryerson and Brett Haynes were pretending they were engrossed in a game on the screen in front of them.

But Matt had seen all of them look at him when he came in.

Well, the hell with all of them. He wouldn’t sit with them now even if they invited him!

He looked for an empty niche where he could be by himself and ignore all the people who were so carefully ignoring him. Spotting a vacant seat in front of one of the computer carrels, with empty chairs on either side, he sat down, tucked his book bag under the table, and logged onto the computer.

He’d start by searching for a site that might offer him the answer to the algebra question Mrs. Tokheim hadn’t let him ask. But a fraction of a second after the log-on screen disappeared and the navigation program booted, a message popped up on the screen:

The words slashed at Matt, and without thinking he began to type in a furious denial. But before he’d finished the first word, another message flashed onto the screen:

He could feel eyes watching him as he read the second message, and he spun around in time to catch Mark Ryerson and Brett Haynes signaling to someone else, whom he couldn’t see. Then another message jumped up on the screen in front of him:

Something inside Matt snapped, and he leaped to his feet, his chair crashing to the floor behind him. “I didn’t do it!” he shouted, the pent-up fury that had been building inside him all day suddenly erupting. “I didn’t do anything!” Grabbing his book bag, he stormed out of the classroom, racing down the corridor toward the front door. Bursting outside, he paused at the top of the steps and sucked air deep into his lungs, struggling to hold back the tears that seared his eyes. Then, behind him, he heard a voice.

“Matt? What’s going on? What happened?” Matt spun around to see Jack Carruthers, the computer teacher, looking worriedly at him. As the teacher moved closer, Matt backed away. “Tell me what’s wrong, Matt,” Carruthers went on. “Tell me what I can do to help.”

“What’s wrong?” Matt echoed, his voice rising sharply. “What’s wrong? My dad’s dead, and my grandmother’s missing, and everyone thinks I did it! That’s what’s wrong!”

Spinning away from the teacher, he charged down the steps and away from the school, but even as he sprinted down Prospect Street, the words he’d seen on the computer screen taunted him.

What does it feel like to kill someone?

Did you shoot the deer first, or your dad?

What does it feel like to kill someone?

What does it feel like?

He kept running until he could go no farther, but there was no escape from the terrible words, and deep in his heart he knew there never would be.

But even worse than that was the fear that kept growing inside him.

The fear that maybe — just maybe — everyone was right.

*                                     *                                     *

NO MORE,
JOAN prayed silently.
Please, god, no more.

But as she watched Matt coming up the driveway, she knew that her silent prayer was not going to be answered, for on any other day Matt wouldn’t have been home from school before five.

Today it wasn’t even quarter past three, though from the way she felt, it should have been later. Much, much later.

All day long she’d moved back and forth between the house and the pool at the foot of the falls. She’d barely even felt the chill of the steady drizzle as she waited while a diver searched the depths of the pool, then began working his way downstream until the river widened out a mile below the falls and became so shallow that there was no possibility of the water hiding —

Joan had shuddered at the image that had risen in her mind of her mother’s lifeless body caught in a crevice under a boulder, her hands reaching toward the surface as if seeking help.

She had only been able to escape the vision by returning home, but a few minutes later she was drawn back to the bank of the stream again. One of Dan Pullman’s deputies had brought his dog — a gentle German shepherd named Sheba — but the dog had been unable to pick up a trail. “Not surprising, with this rain and all,” Pullman told her. Sometime in the middle of the morning they’d brought the dog to the house, but the animal was no more successful picking up a scent there than on the paths by the stream.

As the hours passed, Joan felt the hope of finding her mother slipping away, and knew that soon — if not today, then tomorrow or the day after — the men Dan Pullman had sent into the forest would have to stop looking, just as the shallows had stopped the diver. But not yet. She wouldn’t give up yet.

Nancy Conroe had come over around noon, but Joan was unable to eat more than a bite of the salad Nancy brought, and in less than an hour Joan had sent her away, saying, “You have better things to do than sit and watch me worry.”

“But you shouldn’t be alone,” Nancy replied. “With everything that’s happened, just the idea of you being in this house all by yourself makes me shudder. Maybe you and Matt ought to go somewhere else, even if it’s just for a little while.”

Joan shook her head. “I can’t. Not until we find Mother.” She turned to gaze out the rain-streaked window. “If she’s out there somewhere . . . if she somehow finds her way back . . .” Her voice trailed off, and neither woman was willing to voice what they both knew: if the temperature should suddenly drop — if the rain should suddenly turn to sleet or snow — Emily Moore couldn’t possibly survive more than a few hours in nothing more substantial than a thin nightgown.

“I’ll call you,” Joan promised as she walked Nancy out to her car, wrapping herself against the rain in one of Bill’s parkas. “And thanks for coming out. I really do appreciate it. But right now, I think I just need to be by myself.”

Three times she’d gone back to the stream, each time allowing herself to hope that some trace of her mother would have turned up.

Three times she’d come home, her hopes momentarily dashed.

It was as she was leaving the house for the fourth time that she saw Matt walking up the driveway. Even if he hadn’t been getting home far too early, everything about him — his posture, the shuffle in his step, the way his hands were shoved deep in his pockets — told her that something had gone terribly wrong at school.

Ten minutes later, after she dragged the truth out of him about what had happened, he at last looked directly into her eyes. “What if it’s true?” he whispered. “What if what they’re saying is true?” Joan reached for his hands, but he pulled away from her. “I had a dream last night, Mom,” he said.

Slowly, his tone reflecting the pain and fear it had caused him, he told her about the terrible vision that had come to him in the night. “And Aunt Cynthia was there,” he finished, at last lifting his eyes to meet hers. “She kept telling me to do it. To do what I wanted to do.” Even as he spoke the words, Joan could see the terror coming into his eyes once again. “I was pissed off at Dad on my birthday,” he went on. “And I was mad at Gram night before last. What if it’s true? What if I — ”

Joan clamped her hand over his mouth, refusing to let him even utter the terrible words. “You didn’t,” she said. “You didn’t do anything.” Recalling the accusations that Matt had told her he’d seen on the computer monitor, her sympathy for her son hardened into anger toward his tormentors. “Go up and change your clothes,” she told him. “I’ll fix you something to eat. You hardly touched your breakfast, and without lunch you must be starving.”