I rise slowly the next day, feeling as though I’ve been hit by a truck. My legs have scrapes on them. My hair’s a tangled mess. I can’t stop thinking about what Gen told me. There are still no texts from Seth on my secret phone, and I don’t know how to feel about that.
I find Dad at the kitchen table, newspaper in hand. He clears his throat. “How are you?”
“Fine,” I say automatically.
Dad and I have barely seen each other since the morning the cops confiscated my stuff.
Since he basically accused me of killing Thatcher.
“You look like…you haven’t been getting enough sleep.”
“Just last night,” I say with my back to him. “I think I ate something weird.”
Dad doesn’t say anything for a long moment, so I think he’s bought it.
And then he says, “I called a lawyer.”
I turn. “Dad. We can’t afford that.”
“Don’t worry.” He’s set his newspaper down and is looking at me seriously over his glasses. “I spoke with him at length yesterday, and he thinks it’s in your best interests that I employ him immediately.”
“Of course he’s going to say that. He wants to get paid.”
“Addie. They had a warrant to search your room. He told me that even just being caught up in something like this could affect your college acceptance. If you could just talk to him—tell him the truth—”
Part of me wants to yell at him that I’m innocent. That I didn’t kill Thatcher. That if my own father doesn’t believe me, there’s no hope for me anywhere.
But then I think—could a lawyer really help me? If I tell him everything I know? The shooting, the car, my suspicions about Seth’s dad, about Mrs. Rodriguez?
Or would he be like the cops—not believing anything I have to say without proof?
The cops are incompetent, I remind myself. That’s one of the reasons Seth and I teamed up in the first place. Because they were looking in all the wrong places. He even told me that they were looking at him.
But why didn’t they search his room instead of mine?
What did they have on Thatcher?
Why didn’t Seth tell me about that? He must know, right?
“He’s coming out from the city next week,” Dad says, interrupting my thoughts. “I want you to meet with him. And—be honest.”
I turn away. I can’t take that look in Dad’s eyes.
“Okay?” he asks from behind me.
“Okay.”
I eat as fast as I can, then toss my bowl in the dishwasher, throw on my running clothes, and take off.
Two, three, five, seven, eleven—
I run straight west along the side of the road, wishing with every thud that Fiona were here.
I wish she could tell me what to do.
I imagine going up to her room. The way we’d talk, curled up on her bed, her dance posters looking down on us. I think of walking into the kitchen, seeing the angle of her shoulders under her pale pink leotard, her leg up on the counter, head bent over it, the tight perfection of her blond bun. The fire in her eyes when she was dancing.
Twenty-nine, thirty-one, thirty-seven, forty-one—
The way her eyes skittered away from mine anytime I walked in last summer. How she was always on her way out the door. Need to practice or have a lesson or need to get to work.
Except there was no work. She was lying. The whole time, she was lying.
I’ve run toward the center of town for once. I wasn’t consciously heading here. But now I know what I want to see.
The memorial bench they dedicated to her in the town square. There are people out and about today; they could be looking at me, whispering about me. But I don’t look up. I run to the bench and stop.
In loving memory of Fiona Josephine Blackwood. Sister, daughter, friend.
They put sister first. I don’t even remember being asked about it. Whoever decided on these words—Dad, I’m sure—knew.
My big sister. My best friend. She let me crawl into bed with her when I was afraid of the monsters in my closet. Held my hand on the first day of kindergarten and offered to fail first grade so I didn’t have to be alone. Threatened to beat up Seth when he pushed me off the lower platform of the tree house. She had my back. Always.
And then Mom left us. And suddenly dance got more intense. It was like Mom leaving made her think she couldn’t count on anyone. So she attached herself to the one thing she could count on.
But she was still there for me. For us. Patiently helping Davy with his history paper. Opening the jar of tomato sauce when I couldn’t manage it. Teasing me when I came home from the clearing after kissing Seth for the first time. I knew it. There’s a thin line between love and hate. Listening to me agonize over Jeremy and Gen. Your real friends don’t leave you. The people who really love you don’t do that.
But she did.
