I look wildly down at my pajama pants, wondering if I’m allowed to go back and change or if they’ll make me go like this, when Ramsay clears his throat.
“Good morning, Miss Blackwood.” His tone is a lot more polite with my dad standing right there. “We have a warrant to search your room. Would you please step aside?”
A warrant.
Not an arrest.
But still: a warrant.
“Why do you think I had anything to do with this?” I blurt out. “Seth told you we were together the whole time.”
“We can’t discuss that right now,” Ramsay says, in that same weirdly polite tone.
My hand goes straight to my pocket.
Ramsay notices. “And yes, we’ll need to borrow your phone as well as your laptop.”
Behind Ramsay are two more police officers, a younger Latina woman and a freckly-faced blond guy I might have seen at the police station before. The woman gives me a curt nod while the man steps toward us.
Sadie barks again, louder this time. Her ears flatten back, and she emits a growl.
“Sadie, down.” I put a hand on her neck, calming her, even as my own heart races. The blond officer steps around me and into my bedroom.
My dad puts his hand on my shoulder. I clutch Fiona’s necklace as the officer starts through my room, picking up things, putting them back down. He has gloves on. Ramsay also goes past me, calling out behind him, “You don’t have to stay and watch. Please hand your phone over to Officer Cortez before you go.”
I blink up at the woman officer. “Um. Sure.”
I hand her my real phone, praying she won’t notice the sag in my pocket on the other side of my pants. She takes it from me with gloved hands and immediately places it in a plastic bag, then gives me another curt nod before following the others into my bedroom.
“Is this really necessary?” my dad asks.
“Just exploring all angles,” Ramsay says, not even looking back.
I want to scream at him that he’s wasting time. But I don’t.
“It’s fine, Dad.” I tug Sadie past him toward the kitchen. “Let’s just…go have breakfast.”
Breakfast is tense, to say the least. Davy is already at the table, mussy-haired and wide-eyed. I switch on the coffeemaker and get out the bowls and cereal and milk, but no one’s eating.
I itch to take out my secret phone and tell Seth what’s happening, but no way am I risking getting that taken away, too. Instead, I pull a long zip-up on over my PJs, hiding my pajama pants pockets more.
“Why are they doing this?” Davy blurts out at one point.
“I don’t know.” I try and sound like I don’t care, but from the look on Davy’s face, I don’t think I succeed.
“Probably just covering all their bases,” Dad says. But the worried look hasn’t left his face, either.
We sit there in silence. I tell Dad he can leave for work, but he insists on staying.
“Davy, why don’t you go get ready for soccer?” Dad suggests.
Davy looks about to protest but then slinks away from the table, head bent over his phone, leaving me and Dad alone.
“Addie.” Dad’s keeping his voice low. “If there’s anything you want to tell me—anything at all—you know I’m always on your side. No matter what.”
I look at him warily. “Thanks?”
He waits. I don’t speak.
“You were so certain it was Thatcher last summer.” Another pause.
“Yeah, and obviously I don’t think that anymore.”
Dad lowers his voice. “If you saw him that night—if you had an argument, or an accident happened—just tell me, Addie. Tell me why they’re searching your room.”
I stare.
Does my own father really think I killed Thatcher? For revenge?
Suddenly, those threads on Citizen Sleuths about me feel much more real.
Who’s going to believe I’m not a murderer when my own dad isn’t even sure?
“I didn’t see Thatcher that night.” I try to tamp down the anger rising in me. “Not until after he was already dead. Seth and I were together the whole time. I have no idea why they’re searching my room.”
I want to leave. Run out the door and not come back. But that probably wouldn’t look good in front of the cops. Dad doesn’t say anything else, and neither do I. I sit there with my hands balled into fists, cereal getting soggy, until Ramsay comes into the kitchen five minutes later, announcing they’re finished, they’ve put everything away “as best we could,” and telling me I’ll have my things back “most likely by the end of the week.”
“Thank you for your cooperation,” he adds. “We’ll let you know if we need to speak with you about any of our findings.”