The Prom Queen (5 page)

We all jumped, as if we had just gotten an electric shock. Mr. Perry bounded out of the room. He came back a moment later.

“Just my secretary,” he explained, grim faced.

“Okay,” Officer Barnett said, taking a large black notebook from her belt hook and flipping it open. “Let's get started. We need any information that might be helpful in finding Simone.
Anything
,” she added firmly.

“Everything is important. Understood?” her fellow officer added, his eyes surveying us one by one.

I nodded vigorously, as if it were really a question
that needed an answer. Then Officer Jackson said, “Who wants to start?”

They stared at us. We all shifted uncomfortably in our seats. This was worse than when a teacher asked a question and nobody raised a hand.

A lot worse.

“Okay, let's start with where you all were last night,” suggested Officer Barnett. She turned her eyes to the boy sitting closest to her—Justin.

Justin appeared very nervous, even more nervous than the rest of us. “I—uh—I was at—”

Why does he sound as if he's thinking up a lie? I wondered.

“I was at Elana's,” he finally said. “Studying. I mean, you know. We were doing our homework together.”

I stared at Elana. That was a shocker!

Elana caught my glance and blushed. She turned away.

Who asked who? I wondered. I bet it was Elana who asked Justin. She probably didn't like it that Justin had asked out Rachel and Dawn and passed her over.

I glanced at Mrs. Perry. But she didn't seem surprised. I guess she had a lot more on her mind right then than whether or not Justin was cheating on her daughter.

“I was working all afternoon,” Rachel said, “at the Seven-Eleven. Then I was at home.”

“I was playing tennis,” Dawn told the police. She
glanced at me. I remembered her bloody tennis whites. But she had explained that, the accident with the fence.

Officer Jackson was looking at me expectantly. “I was working on the set,” I began.

“The set?” he asked.

“Simone's school is putting on
The Sound of Music,”
Mr. Perry interjected.

The policeman nodded. “Go on.”

“I already told this stuff to the police last night,” I said.

“Tell us,” Officer Jackson said patiently.

I told the whole terrifying story again. How I had stopped to find Simone. How I had found her room all torn up. About the blood on the carpet. And how I had run to the window for air and had seen a man running away in the darkness.

“Now,” Officer Barnett said, “this is very important. Can you remember anything about what the man looked like? Anything at all?”

Everyone was staring at me. I felt myself begin to sweat. It suddenly seemed up to me, and me alone, to catch Simone's attacker.

I tried, in my mind, to stare out Simone's window again. But I couldn't picture the man.

He was a dark blur.

A dark, frightening blur.

I shook my head no.

“This sack he was carrying,” Officer Jackson asked. “How big was it?”

I knew the question he was really asking. “As big as a person,” I said.

Mrs. Perry gasped and raised her hand to her mouth.

“Robbie, what was wrong between you and Simone yesterday?” Elana asked tentatively. “I mean, it looked like the two of you were really having a big argument.”

All eyes turned to Elana, then Robbie, then back to Elana.

“It was nothing,” Robbie mumbled.

“It didn't sound like nothing,” Elana said. “You were really mad at her for always showing up late for rehearsals. You said she was wrecking the whole production with her lousy attitude. You said if she didn't start coming on time, you were going to stuff her nun's wimple down her throat and—”

“Of course I was arguing with her,” Robbie interrupted shrilly. “Who
didn't
argue with her! She was impossible!”

That word
was
made me wince. “Robbie!” I said.

We all stole glances at Mr. and Mrs. Perry.

Robbie blushed bright red. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to—I mean . . .”

“Let's keep going,” Mr. Perry said, stone faced.

After everyone had said where they had been the night before, Officer Barnett turned back to Justin.

“Did Simone have any enemies that you know of?” she asked. “Anyone who would want to cause her harm?”

“No,” he said.

“And the last time you saw her was—”

“At lunch, yesterday.”

“And she was—”

“Upset,” said Justin. “Very upset, thanks to—” He glared at Robbie, who said, “Oh, please!”

Finally, after an hour of questioning, the policewoman snapped her notebook shut. “Thank you, all of you. If you think of anything you want to add, call us at the Shadyside police station. If we're not there, leave a message and we'll get right back to you.”

Officer Jackson nodded to Mr. Perry as he and Officer Barnett headed for the door. Everyone in the room was standing up, ready to go. No one wanted to hang out a minute longer than they had to.

When I got outside, I was startled that the sun was still shining brightly. The Perrys' front lawn was green and cheerful. It seemed so strange after what we'd just been discussing. Everything
looked
fine.

I put my hands above my eyes to shield them from the glare. I watched Rachel head for her car. She was walking arm in arm with Gideon. Elana passed by me on my right.

“Horrible, huh?” I said. It was all I could think to say.

Elana barely looked at me before walking on.

“Wait a minute,” I said, hurrying to catch up with her.

There was a long line of cars in front of the
Perrys' house. Elana was parked near the end, and I was right behind her. I didn't say anything till we got near my car. “I just wish there was something we could do,” I said. “I mean, we were—are—some of her best friends and—”

“Listen,” Elana said brusquely, “I've had it up to here with this, okay? I can't talk about it anymore.”

She opened her door, got in, and slammed it shut.

Wow, I thought. Talk about not sticking together in a crisis. I stared after her as she pulled out. She was staring straight ahead and didn't even wave goodbye. Her face was frozen.

Then it hit me. She was frozen with fear. Just like the rest of us. And Elana's way of controlling fear was to pretend that bad things didn't happen.

I pulled out my rabbit's-foot key ring and fumbled putting the key in the lock.

Then I heard footsteps behind me—footsteps pounding along the pavement, running toward me.

And then I heard a voice shouting.

“I killed her! I killed her!”

I
whirled around. Racing toward me was a stocky guy in a tan windbreaker that flapped behind him as he ran. His face was contorted in agony. His arms were outstretched, as if asking forgiveness.

“Very funny, Lucas,” I said.

Lucas Brown was one of the weirdest kids I'd ever known. Even his last name, which is about as normal as you can get, was weird if you thought about it. Lucas Brown had short brown hair and brown eyes to match. And he usually wore—you guessed it—brown.

His eyes were set a little close together, so he seemed a little cross-eyed. That wasn't the half of it. Lucas once told me that he kept a diary of gruesome
deaths he heard about on TV. “Falling Crane Chops Woman in Half”—that kind of thing. He thought stories like those were funny. He said they cheered him up.

Cheering up was something he usually needed—in a big way. He was almost always in a black depression. And why not? The guy had zero friends. None that I knew of, anyway.

Right then he was laughing so hard I thought he was going to fall over. “Gotcha!” he yelled.

What an unbelievable creep.

I turned back to my car door.

“Hey!” he went on. “I can't believe it. You really
believed
me!”

I spun around and faced him again. “You have a twisted sense of humor, you know that?”

“Oh, come on, Lizzy. It was a joke!”

“A joke? Simone has probably been murdered.”

“I know,” he said, his face darkening. I thought he was upset about Simone, but then he said, “Doesn't mean you have to give
me
a hard time if I make a stupid joke.”

I had trouble not screaming. “I don't believe you,” I said. “Can't you stop thinking about yourself? I mean, don't you feel even a little bit bad? You used to go out with her!”

Lucas raised his eyes to the treetops. “Yeah, I did,” he said bitterly. “Thanks for reminding me.”

He was standing really close to me. He grabbed my arm and started to pull on me.

“Let's go get a Coke,” he said. Lucas's magical
touch with girls: Don't ask—give orders. “I need to talk to you.”

“No way,” I told him.

He blinked. I could tell he was hurt. He said, “Okay, you're right. Now's not the time. Let's just go to my house and make out.”

I pulled away from him angrily. My upper arm was aching where he had squeezed it. It felt as if I had just been given a triple booster shot. I stared at him as icily as I could. Then I got into my car and slammed the door.

He tapped on the window. He was smiling at me. It was a wicked smile, as if he knew something I didn't. I pushed the window button, and the window rolled down an inch.

Lucas bent over so his dark eyes were in a line with the crack. “Was that a yes or a no?”

He cackled.

“You really crack yourself up, don't you?” I said.

“I'm just so funny, I can't help it.”

“About as funny as a rubber crutch.”

It was the only insult I could come up with. I think I heard it when I was in the third grade. Someday I'd like to gather a whole bunch of really great insults. I'd use them all on Lucas Brown.

Lucas jammed his hand in through the open window crack and wiggled his fingers near my head. I pressed the remote-control button and shot the window back up.

With an angry cry Lucas quickly yanked his hand back. Then I peeled out.

As I drove away, I could see him, still standing there, still staring after me.

What a sicko! He's so crazy. I couldn't imagine what Simone had ever seen in him.

Then I remembered that Lucas was on the Shadyside High baseball team. He was one of the pitchers, and he sometimes played first base.

When Simone dumped him, Lucas was pretty bummed. He went around saying Simone had used him to get to Justin.

Lucas wasn't the only one who said it. Most kids agreed that she had.

It was easy to see why. When Simone started dating Lucas, no one could believe that she really was interested in him.

She did show up at every baseball practice—supposedly to be with Lucas.

Meanwhile, her visits gave Justin a chance to check her out. Simone wasn't subtle. She always wore her sexiest outfits to every game.

The minute Justin asked her out, Simone dropped Lucas like
that.

I used to defend Simone when people said this stuff behind her back. But considering how messed up Lucas was, it made sense that she only went out with him to get to Justin.

I turned on the radio and searched for a soft, soothing song. Instead I heard “No break yet in the case, but the Shadyside police insist there is no reason to link the disappearance of seventeen-year-old
Simone Perry with the recent deaths of Stacy Alsop and Tina Wales.”

No reason? Sure. Except for the fact that it was obviously the work of the same psycho. I snapped the radio off.

Something was bothering me. Something stuck in my mind. Something I had begun to remember, but then forgot.

Lucas . . . Justin . . . Simone going to baseball practice.

Baseball! The team!

Yes.

The dark blur.

The running figure, carrying the gray sack.

The picture suddenly came a little clearer.

I pulled the car to the curb and tried to catch my breath.

I had just remembered something very important about the man I saw running away through Simone's backyard.

And what I remembered scared me to death.