Ask Me (17 page)

“Are you doing okay?” she asked.

“I am well enough,” I said, my oracular voice strangely formal. I’d seen her in home ec, but we’d had a video today and there’d been no chance to talk. I had noticed her glancing my way, though.

“I saw you faint at Jade’s funeral,” she said.

“I know. Will told me. He said he’d tell you I was okay.” I paused. I could only hope that Alex hadn’t seen, too. He’d surely have something to say about me being carried out of the church by the boy he’d warned me to stay away from. But Will would have mentioned that to me, Alex’s watching. “I’m okay, really,” I added in the silence.
“Too much heat and not enough food or something, I guess.”

“I just wanted to make sure,” she said. She still didn’t look like herself. Her hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail. Without her makeup, she seemed both younger and more world-weary. Lost.

“Thanks,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.

“I guess … I guess I’ll see you later.” She left before I could say anything else.

I stayed by the door for a moment, not really wanting to go in. Art had always been my relatively safe class. I didn’t like this new situation. Shelley hadn’t said anything else to me on Friday either in home ec or art, after the scene in class on Thursday, but that was probably because Mrs. Rogers had actually been lecturing us on technique for once instead of letting us “explore” what we wanted. Alex had avoided me in that class as well, and I hadn’t seen him since spotting him at Jade’s funeral service.

Today I wanted to avoid him, but at the same time I kind of wanted to warn him. Should I? If the police actually paid any attention to the message I’d left, they were going to want to talk to Alex. I imagine they probably already had before, since he was dating Jade. But this was something more. Will seemed to think it gave Alex motive to have killed Jade. Like maybe he was driving or something and she was going to tell and he needed to shut her up.

I had trouble picturing it. I couldn’t imagine anyone I knew doing something so terrible, so cold-blooded. Even though I knew secrets about nearly everyone in school, none of them seemed like the kind of person who would
actually kill someone. Draw a fake mustache on you with a Sharpie when you were sleeping, yeah. Stomp on your MP3 player? Sure. But murder?

Then I remembered the look in Alex’s eyes while he was standing in my living room, warning me to stay away from Will. How he’d looked facing down Tank. The way he’d told me to run away in the woods, the sounds of bellowing bull gators behind him.

Maybe he’d been driven to drink that night by guilt.

Granddad had a tendency toward that himself. Absolution in a bottle, he called it, but Gran didn’t let him get away with it much. Alex didn’t have anyone looking over his shoulder. The family tragedy hadn’t straightened out his father; it had made him worse. The last time I had seen Frank Walker, he’d been so drunk he couldn’t walk down Main Street in a straight line at noon.

It didn’t matter. I had to face Alex if he was there, but not without my music. I put my earphones back in and pushed through the classroom door, walking straight towards my desk in the back, not looking at anyone.

Mrs. Rogers wasn’t there, which should have set off warning bells in my head after last week. I had almost made it halfway to my desk when Shelley slid her book bag right in front of me. Clutching Will’s iPod to my chest, I fell onto my side, hitting my shoulder on a desk on the way down. I wound up blinking at the ceiling with Fall Out Boy still playing in my ears. Someone had managed to splash red paint up there at some point. I’d never noticed it before. It looked like a bloodstain looming over me.

A part of me wanted to just lie there on the cold
linoleum floor, even though I could hear Shelley’s high-pitched laughter over the song’s refrain,
Oh Oh Oh Oh Whoa Oh Oh Oh
, but I rolled over and clambered up to my knees anyway. The sane part of me insisted I had to get up and keep going. I couldn’t stay on the floor forever, being laughed at. I rolled my shoulder back, testing it. It hurt like a son of a bitch. I’d probably be purple by dinnertime.

A rough hand grabbed my elbow and helped me up, nearly making me drop the iPod after all. Alex. A very pissed off Alex.

Of course. He didn’t have the gentle touch that Delilah had. The iPod eased into Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars,” and I could hear everyone clearly over the soothing sound of it. Some more Fall Out Boy would probably have been better. Noisier.

“What the hell is your problem?” he barked at Shelley.

My inner oracle didn’t care that the question wasn’t directed at me. “The truth is slippery.” But it didn’t matter. Everyone ignored me anyway. I pulled my arm, but Alex didn’t let go, his fingertips biting into my skin.

“Fuck off,” said Shelley. “You and her both. You’re both freaks. Everyone knows you killed Jade. Your preggie girlfriend here probably helped.”

“Shelley,” said another girl, looking alarmed, “calm down.”

Everyone was staring at Alex. His face was blank, like a mask. No one was laughing now. I pulled at my arm again, but he still wasn’t letting go. I didn’t want to be here in the middle of this. I had to get out.

“Why?” she taunted. “He’s not denying it. Look at him. He looks guilty to me.”

“You’ll regret that,” I said in answer to her question, softly this time.

Alex heard me. He took his steely gaze off of Shelley just long enough to glance down at me. Hopefully no one else had noticed what I said.

“I don’t owe
you
any explanations,” he growled back at Shelley. He took a step towards her, dragging me along. I almost tripped over her backpack again.

“What’s going on in here?” Everyone in the class turned to the door. Mrs. Rogers was standing there, her features twisted in disgust or alarm. I wasn’t sure which.

No one said a word, except me, since I couldn’t help it. “Trouble,” I answered quietly.

A girl towards the front let out a nervous giggle but cut it off short when Mrs. Rogers waved at someone in the hall. A uniformed policeman stepped into the room. Trouble indeed.

“Is there a problem here?” the cop asked. He was short and stocky, not very old, maybe in his late twenties, and solidly built. He shoved past Mrs. Rogers and stepped purposefully toward Alex and me. Everyone but Shelley seemed to melt away into the edges of the room. She stood up instead, tossing back her dark hair.

“Problems, problems,” I sing-songed under my breath. “Here, there, everywhere. Answers, answers, soon enough.” Only Alex heard me. He finally let go of my arm, and I stumbled back, catching myself on a desk again. I massaged my elbow. It hurt almost as much as my shoulder.

“No problem at all, officer,” Shelley said sweetly. “Aria here just tripped, and we were helping her up. She’s a little clumsy, if you know what I mean.” I was surprised she didn’t bat her eyelashes.

I didn’t say anything to confirm or deny. The police officer was still walking toward us. “Alex Walker?” he asked, one hand over his holster.

“Yes,” Alex and I both said at the same time. The cop stopped, confused. Alex gently pushed me back with one hand. The same girl who had giggled a moment ago let out another snort now.

“I am Alex Walker,” he said.

“I was waiting to meet you after class,” the cop said, “but looks like we might as well get on with it now.” He looked back and forth from me to Shelley. She smiled, all holier than thou. I didn’t say anything. The cop looked back at Alex. “We have some more questions for you. I’d like you to come down to the station with me.”

“I’ve already told you everything,” said Alex. He didn’t move. His back was ramrod straight.

“Some new information has come up. Look, I’d rather not do this here, and I doubt if you do either. So why don’t you come with me?”

“Go, don’t go,” I whispered. “This doesn’t matter in the long run.”

Alex turned to me, his eyes crinkled at the corners. Confused. I shrugged, barely, my shoulder screaming, and looked down at the floor. I held my breath.
Please let him never figure out it had been me that had provided the new information to the police. Please
.

After Alex left with the cop, I told Mrs. Rogers I needed to go see the school nurse because of my shoulder. And my elbow. She didn’t argue. I think she wanted me out of the room. No one would look at me, except for Shelley, with her insinuating smirk.

I didn’t bother going to the nurse, though. I left campus and drove aimlessly around in circles around town until school was over. It was a waste of gas that I couldn’t really afford, but I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t stay there, and I couldn’t go home. Being alone was the only way to keep clear of questions.

I dropped the iPod down into the depths of my backpack before I went inside, unwilling to explain away such an expensive gift to Gran. And somehow I didn’t think she’d appreciate it the way I did. She’d never understood why I brought my MP3 player to school every day.

“Be brave,” she was always telling me. “Don’t hide!”

Like that was possible. She had either forgotten what school was like, or once upon a time it had actually been a kinder and gentler place, like something out of a fairy tale. Of course, her school had been about a tenth the size of mine. It was easier to hide from a few than from many.

“You got a phone call already, Aria,” said Granddad to me as I came in the door, a smile on his face, his tone light. “Guess that Will boy isn’t so strange after all, if he couldn’t even wait half an hour after school to call you.” He had his shotgun across his lap, cleaning it with great show, though I wasn’t the one I imagined he intended the display for. “So I got this out, just in case.”

“You old coot,” said Gran from the kitchen. “Don’t pay him any mind, Aria. I’ll make sure he puts it away before Will comes over again.” She stuck her head in the door. “He is going to come again, I’m assuming. Porter wrote his number down for you. It’s on the fridge.”

“Thanks, Gran,” I said, pointedly ignoring Granddad. I put my things away in my bedroom and then went into the kitchen to grab the slip of paper Granddad had written Will’s number on. He’d doodled a shaky heart in the corner. I couldn’t help but smile, just for a second. He might actually be happier about a boy calling on me than I was. I went in the living room and picked up the phone. Granddad had set the shotgun against the wall, the display over for now. But I knew he’d find a way to have it out if he was home the next time Will came to visit, no matter what Gran might say. That was the kind of thing he loved to do. Gran always said that if there were a chain to pull, Granddad would pull it.

He grinned at me.

“Just being polite,” I said. That wasn’t entirely true. I wished I had a cell phone for the first time in my life. I’d never really needed one before. I considered my options, and finally took the phone into my bedroom, the cord stretching down the hall far enough that I made it through my bedroom door. Maybe I could talk them into at least buying a cordless phone with some of the money I’d helped win. After all, I didn’t usually ask for much. And it wasn’t like I’d ever had a boy call me before. Clearly.

I closed my door and sat down, my back against it. It was as far away as I could get, tethered as I was to the phone. I dialed the number, committing it to memory.

“Hello,” answered Will.

“It’s Aria,” I said. “Granddad said you called?”

“Hey! Heard it was quite a scene in art class today. Someone said the cops dragged Alex out of there.”

“They didn’t drag him,” I said. “He left with them. One of them. I mean, there was only one cop. Not like a brigade or anything.” My hand clenched the curly plastic cord, straightening out a few loops.

He laughed. “I thought that was too good to be true. Anyway, I wanted to tell you that the police towed away Jade’s car earlier. So they obviously believed you.”

“Oh.” I don’t know why my mind always seemed to go into full panic mode whenever I talked to Will. Even when I wasn’t answering questions I still babbled like an idiot.

“I hope you’re liking the playlist,” he said.

The abrupt change of subject startled me, and I let the
cord go. It sprang back into shape. “Yes, very much. Thank you again.”

“I put a few special songs on there for you. Let me know what you think.”

I didn’t need a prophecy to tell me I was going to fall asleep that night listening to the music, trying to decipher the meaning behind every song I heard and wondering which one was one of the special songs. I was pretty sure it wasn’t the one from Fall Out Boy.

There was a knock on the door, and Granddad’s muffled voice came through. “Aria, you’ve got a visitor,” he said gruffly. “Another boy.”

My heart froze. Alex? Why? Would the police have told him a girl tipped them off? They couldn’t know it was me. I’d been so careful. Would they have told him?

“Will, I have to go,” I stammered. “There’s—I just have to go. Talk to you tomorrow?”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll see you at lunch, if not before.”

I hung up the phone and opened the door. I knew it was him, but still my breath caught, seeing Alex again, sitting on our couch, making it look impossibly small. Granddad was back in his chair, cleaning his shotgun. I should have known. Alex was studiously not looking at him.