Stones and Spark (23 page)

So I run back to school, instead of getting a ride from DeMott.

I sneak around the back, because we're not supposed to go inside this late. I find the entrance to the Lower School unlocked, and wind my way through the empty halls. As I'm rounding the corner to the Upper School connection, I see John the janitor and his rolling cart. I try to jump back, but he sees me. I stand, frozen, waiting to get busted. But he gives me one hard look then goes back to his work.

I run for the lab.

Teddy's parked his wheelchair in the corner farthest from the door. His arms are raised as far as they go, his wrists are curled, his slanted hands gripping a wad of paper, poised for a three-point shot to the trashcan.

"What letter are you on?" I ask.

"Second A. Get out of the way, I haven't dropped one yet."

His slanted fingers release the ball of paper and my eyes follow. The paper backspins over the microscopes, sails across the desks, and slips into the trashcan with barely a whisper against the plastic liner.

"MAGMA!" he calls out.

Our version of HORSE. Teddy always wins. He's got an incredible shot from anywhere in the room.

I walk toward the microscopes, slip off my backpack, and tighten my ponytail, which has gone loose from the run back to school. I'm ready to check the soil but Teddy drops an atomic bomb.

"Your dad just called."

I hold my breath.

"He wanted to know where you were. He sounded a little . . . upset."

Sure, because Ellis called him when the detective showed up. So he must know about the quarry. Which means my dad also knows I didn't tell him about it, and there's no explanation for my silence—
You're too involved with Mom's problems?
Right.

"Now you owe me." Teddy rolls over to the scopes. "He says you need to get home. But I said you were in the middle of a very important geology project."

"That was true."

"Course it was true." He narrows his eyes. "You lying to your daddy?"

I shake my head, unzip my backpack, and set the canisters on the counter.

"He says you have to be home by six."

I say nothing.

"You be grateful," he says. "You got a dad who cares. Look what Drew got."

Sure, my dad cares—about my mom. He cares about her not hearing anything about Drew's disappearance. That's why he called. He cares that I don't come home late tonight because she's back in some paranoid cave.

"Yeah, he cares." I snap open the canisters.

"In West Virginia, we got a phrase for people like you."

"Just one?"

"We say: Nobody slides on barbed wire."

"Whatever that means."
I hold up the soil sample. "Can we please return to reality?"

I deposit the soil from each film canister onto the butcher paper, then circle each with a Sharpie, labeling them 1st, 2nd, 3rd and HOME. The last word brings up an image of Titus, brushing the plate marker. He was so abrupt with me. Just walked off. Maybe he's bothered about Drew. Or obsessive like Drew, and needs to see that plate really clean.

"Sure nice of DeMott to drive you over there," Teddy says.

I take a deep breath, tasting the Sharpie's ink and ether. I point at the soil. "First impressions?"

"You don't have much to work with."

"But you told me to leave most of the soil in her shoe."

"Oh, the soil? I was talking about DeMott."

I point, again. "I'm talking about the soil."

"You don't want to talk about DeMott?" He shrugs. "Your call. What's your first step?"

"Test the chemistry, looks can be deceiving."

He smiles. "Sure we're not talking about DeMott?"

"Yes. I'm talking about minerals."

"Okay, you want to test the chemistry. How?"

"First wash the samples. Like I did with the bike soil. It's from a baseball field. Who knows what's in there. So if I wash each sample, and remove the unnecessary debris, then I'll be—"

"Wrong," he says.

"Why?"

"Think."

"No, just tell me!"

"Use your noggin, Raleigh."

"But I don't see why I shouldn't wash the soil. How can I compare the chemistry if I don't clean the minerals first?"

"Good question. But not for your first step."

I glare at him. Then glare at the soils. My Sharpie marks on the white butcher paper look urgent, frantic. And the feeling is increasing. My jaw tightens. "Tell. Me."

"But then you won't remember it later."

We are still locked in an aggressive silence when John the janitor steps into the room. He gives Teddy a nod; Teddy nods back. When John sees me, the recognition is palpable:
Not you again
.

"Don't worry," Teddy says, picking up on it. "She's doing some extra credit. She'll be out of here before six."

"You cleared it with Mr. Ellis?" John asks.

"Actually, I cleared it with three people. Me. Myself. And me-self."

John lifts the garbage can and pours Teddy's paper basketballs into a larger can on his janitor's cart. "Just don't bring me into it."

"You have my word." Teddy turns back to me. "Figure it out yet?"

I shake my head, too angry to speak. It's almost five o'clock and I have to be home by six. I don't have time for games.

"I'll give you one clue," he says. "Clay dissolves in water."

"I know that."

"No more clues."

John calls out, pointing to the white board. "You finished?" he asks.

"Scottish, actually." Teddy laughs at his own joke.

I'm not amused. And John stares at him like he's got something wrong with him.

"Sorry," Teddy says, not sounding sorry at all. "Yes, I'm finished with the white board. Wipe away."

John lifts a spray bottle and squirts. The words on the board bleed—
migmatite
into
foliated
. The sharp scent of alcohol cuts the air, clears my head. I glance down, searching the piles of soil. The red icicles freckle each sample.
They're in each pile so I need . . .

"Proportions."

"Getting warm," Teddy says.

"Relative proportions."

It must be the correct answer because Teddy rolls away.

"So sieve it?" I call out. "Like I was already doing before?"

But he's already chatting away with John, getting into a discussion of the playoffs. I glance back at the soil. The key is in the percentages. How much red clay is in each sample?

"That pitcher," Teddy says. "Guy gives me a heart attack every time he takes the mound."

I scoop up the soil from Drew’s shoe, still waiting for me, and deposit the grains on the standing scale, cataloguing its total weight. I return the soil to the paper, clean the scale for the next sample and weight it. I weigh every sample.

"Maybe the Braves should lose," Teddy says. "Winning thirteen titles, that's unlucky."

"Luck doesn't exist," I call out.

"Then again," Teddy says to John, as if he's heard nothing, "winning thirteen titles would prove luck exists."

I grab the sieves and clank them—hard—on the counter. Outfielders, they're discussing outfielders now.

For a guy who can't run, Teddy sure is obsessed with sports.

I unsnap the sieves' brass buckles, making sure to be extra noisy. But neither of them even glances over.

Geology sieves are made of brass. They're round and this set is four
inches in diameter. When they're all buckled together, they look like a bronzed wedding cake, tall and regal. Inside each one is a screen, and they run in descending sizes—largest screen at the top of the tower, smallest at the bottom.

I begin pouring the first sample into the top of the sieve. I buckle the lid, pick up the entire two-foot tower and shake the thing. Shake and shake and shake. The janitor leaves and Teddy goes to work at his desk. I keep shaking, relishing the sound of soil sluicing against the brass like a percussion instrument.

Teddy rolls out of the room.

I unbuckle the top pan. It's empty. The second pan holds the red icicles, which have slipped through the opening in that first filter. I place those grains on the scale, record their weight and repeat the same procedure for each filter. The bottom pan holds the very finest particulates of soil, dust that is almost weightless.

I repeat this same process for each sample. It's tedious work and the weights come to decimals points in the hundreds of thousands. Fractions of fractions. Thirty minutes later I've got a headache, and Teddy rolls back into the lab.

"Can I round off these numbers?" I ask.

"You plan to work for the government?"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"Bureaucrats might be fine with rounding off. But trust me, Raleigh, you ain't no government bureaucrat."

"That's a double negative."

"Maybe I'm wrong about you."

I don't round off, and it makes for difficult mathematics. Finally, when I've calculated each sample's relative percentage of clay, sand, silt and dust, Teddy comes over.

"Lemme see."

I've subtract each individual pan's weight from the total weight, converted that fraction into a percentage. As Teddy reads over the numbers, I realize how deliriously happy this math would make Drew.

Math—plus baseball.

My eyes burn.
Where is she?

"Sedimentary, my dear Watson."

I bend down, pretending to search for something in my backpack. Anything. I can't bear any humor right now.

"Hey, I'm making a Sherlock Holmes pun," he says.

I nod, so vigorously my ponytail bounces.

"Did you know Sherlock Holmes is the father of forensic geology?"

"He's fictional."

"Don't get biggity with me, I know he ain't real. But go read
A Study in Scarlet
. It'll show you—"

"No!" I spin on him. "I'm not reading anything. She's gone, I need help, I don't need more breadcrumb clues or jokes—I need help! Can't you just help?"

He stares at the page with my calculations.

I can hear my breathing. I'm almost panting. I close my mouth, holding my breath, feeling my heart pound against my chest. I focus my eyes on his strange fingers--he's running them up and down the numbers, muttering under his breath. Then he sets the paper on the counter.

"Third base," he says.

I pick up the paper, reading my numbers for third base. That soil contained twenty-nine percent red icicles.

"Now check the shoe sample," he says quietly.

The shoe sample had thirty percent red shards.

"That's your closest match," he continues. "Next is the pitching mound but that's got forty-five percent. Quite a jump. Second base is only eleven percent, and home plate is near sixty percent. So let's go out on a limb. Drew was near third base."

I nod. But I can't look at him.

"What's with the tears?" he says.

I lift my hand, covering my face.

"Well," he says after a long moment. "At least you didn't say you're fine."

I wait for the burn in my eyes to recede. Wait for my throat to open. I take a deep breath, stilling myself. My voice is still wobbly.

"I still don't know why she was there. Or why she was at the quarry."

I pause, wondering about telling him my theory. That Drew went to the quarry for me, for geology. How guilty I feel. But he nods at the clock.

"We'll try again tomorrow," he says. "I gotta get you home or the judge will hold me in contempt."

***

I climb into his stinking van, listening to him muttering about my dad throwing him in the "hoosegow," whatever that is, if we're late. But when he turns the ignition, the radio drowns out his mutterings. He's got the thing turned up full blast and some woman's reading the news, which means we're in trouble because the news is always only read at the top of the hour. Six o'clock.

Teddy drives quickly out of the parking lot, but we get stuck at the extra-long stop light at Libbie and Patterson.

"The judge," he hollers over the news reader, not even considering turning it down. "Is he the forgiving type?"

My dad says mercy triumphs over justice. But mostly that's true for my mom and Helen. Not so much for me. But maybe Teddy can charm him, let him know we tried to be on time. I look over, about to ask him to remove the bandana he's tied over his red hair, when the lady on the radio says: "Breaking news tonight regarding a missing West End girl."

Our heads swivel toward each other.

"Drew Levinson, a tenth-grade student at Saint Catherine's School hasn't been seen since—"