Ask Me (6 page)

His rheumy eyes locked on my own. I sat up, scrunching myself against the wall and drawing my legs up under me. I pictured Jade’s mom and how lost she had looked, staring into Jade’s locker. Like she was looking through a window into a stranger’s room.

“But we don’t really know where she is,” I said, trying to keep the whine out of my voice.

“True,” he said.

“We could try again,” called Gran from the other room, “with different questions.”

With his back safely to the door, Granddad gave a barely perceptible shake of his head. I didn’t like the idea either. I felt like I was insubstantial enough as it was. More questions were the last thing I wanted.

“I already told Delilah, Jade’s friend, that I overheard Jade saying she was going into the woods near the creek. She’s already talked to the police once. Maybe she’ll tell them.”

Granddad reached out to take my hand. I hadn’t realized I was squeezing my pillow. He pulled me into a hug, and for a minute I closed my eyes against his shirt, breathing in the soothing scent of his Old Spice cologne. “Let’s leave it at that for now and see what happens,” he said loudly for Gran’s benefit. Gran snorted from the other room again, and Granddad spoke more quietly this time, for my ears only. “There’s no need to invite trouble we don’t need.”

Gran didn’t like hiding or sneaking around, but I agreed with Granddad. There was no harm in letting things take their natural course. It’s not like I could do anything for Jade now anyway. My shoulders shook as a sob escaped. Granddad patted my back, murmuring comforting words that did nothing to make me feel any better.

The next morning came too soon. I pulled into the school parking lot to find teachers directing students to go directly to the gymnasium rather than to class. The sign pleading for Jade to “come home soon” had been partially ripped down, like someone had been stopped in the middle of the removal or had thought better of it. Even more flowers were piled around it, along with teddy bears. The police must have discovered Jade’s body. Of course the news had spread across town like wildfire. I wondered if Delilah had told them what I’d said or if they had figured it out on their own.

Gran had very obviously wanted to ask me more questions about Jade’s death this morning, but I had refused. I still felt a strangeness about myself from the day before, like I wasn’t quite all there.
What’s done is done
. Jade was gone, and that was it. There was nothing I could have done then, and nothing I could do now.

Girls were crying, mascara tracks marking faces every direction I looked, even those who’d been eaten up with jealousy when Jade was alive. I drove around them, parked, and followed the line of students snaking into the gym.

It was the first time I had been in there outside of gym class for a long time. Needless to say, I avoided pep rallies and basketball games. The place always smelled of mildew, sweat, and defeat. Today it was buzzing with whispers and muffled sobs as the students quietly took their seats. I climbed to the top of the visitors’ side and sat back against the cool, concrete-block wall painted with a giant constipated-looking Florida panther: our school mascot.

Lake Mariah High School had almost seven hundred students from around the entire county, but the gym seemed at least half empty with everyone clustered together on the lower bleachers. Jade’s closest friends were huddled in a weeping mass toward the center of the home side. Delilah was the most vocal, practically wailing. There were no mascara tracks on her pale and shiny face. It was probably the first time she had set foot outside of her home without any makeup since the seventh grade. Usually I was the only girl in school without any war paint. I almost felt sorry for her, as if she were stripped bare and I was seeing her core, the lost girl on the inside.

Even Shelley was putting on a show nearby. Considering what I knew about her and how she had really felt about Jade—an all-consuming jealousy darkly tinged with hate—her misery was obviously a show put on for the rest of the world. I doubted if anyone was buying her performance. She dripped venom, and most people had been
stung by it at one time or another. But Shelley wasn’t the only one around with wicked secrets. The town was full of them. All places were. I’d learned that lesson before I’d moved here.

Principal James entered the gym and walked to the center of the court. He cleared his throat and tapped the microphone, sending a small boom echoing off the walls. “Good morning, students,” he said and then stopped. He wiped at his forehead with the back of his hand. “As you all have heard by now, we’ve had some tragic news. Before anything else, why don’t we have a moment of silence for our fellow student, Jade Price.” He bowed his head, and the gym quieted until all you could hear were Delilah’s shaking sobs.

I don’t pray, but I closed my eyes for a minute. I tried to picture Jade as I was used to seeing her, laughing and smiling.

Principal James cleared his throat again and explained, with a lot of pauses and forehead wiping, that we were all welcome to attend free counseling sessions. In fact, he encouraged us to do so. There would also be a funeral service for Jade in a few days. She was to be buried in the local Lake Mariah cemetery, and everyone was invited to pay his or her respects. There would be classes the rest of the week, but attendance would not be taken, given the circumstances. (It was already Thursday, anyway.) His shoulders sagged. By the end of his speech, he looked wrung out and half the size he’d seemed when he walked into the gym.

“Please don’t worry if you see some police around as
they investigate,” he concluded. “I trust that you will all be cooperative.”

That caught my attention. What if Delilah had told the police what I’d told her? Would they want to question me? The chances of that going well were slim. It would likely be a total disaster. I needed to find out from Delilah what, if anything, she had told them.

Mrs. Elmore, the senior English teacher, came out and took the microphone from him.

“Everyone, go on to class. Sign-up sheets for counseling will be on the wall by the cafeteria.” She put an arm around Principal James’s shoulders and pulled him away. He was obviously crying. That was when I remembered: he was related to Jade somehow. An uncle twice removed maybe? In a town as small as ours, there was a good chance you were related to someone else, except to me. Gran and Granddad had moved here when I came to live with them during middle school, after Mom said I couldn’t stay with her and Dad had chosen his new wife over me. My grandparents had come to Florida to retire in Tarpon Springs, but when it became obvious having less people around would be far easier on me, we had moved here to the middle of nowhere.

I waited until the gym was almost empty before getting up. My dress caught on the corner of the last bleacher seat and yanked me back. I heard the thin cotton rip, and I swore under my breath at it. Hopefully it was mendable. If money was tight enough for Granddad to risk Gran’s wrath over gambling, I didn’t want to have to ask her to go out shopping, even if most of the dresses she bought me
were from Goodwill. I didn’t want them to use our windfall for something as mundane as clothing.

I unhooked myself from the bench and turned this way and that trying to figure out where the tear was. As I looked back over my shoulder, I caught a glimpse of Will Raffles standing in the open door of the gym.

For a moment, I thought he was staring at me and I felt the heat rise in my cheeks, but it seemed more like he was looking off into space, lost in his own world. I watched as some of the last stragglers walked toward his exit. They stopped when they saw him, ducked their heads, and turned to go out another door instead. He didn’t seem to notice.

It was odd. Will had always been the golden boy. He hadn’t needed Jade to boost his popularity, like Alex. He moved through the school like a panther or like a lion in the middle of his pride. He was universally admired without exception: the boys wanting to be him, the girls wanting to be with him. Even the teachers extolled his virtues in both public and private. Ms. Timmons, the American history teacher, had a very unhealthy crush on him. Someone had teasingly asked her whom she liked. Not that she would ever admit it out loud. She was as prim and proper as they came, at least on the outside.

I would have expected the group of girls to comfort him in his loss instead of avoiding him, but maybe they didn’t want to intrude. As far as I knew, he and Jade had still been going out, Alex notwithstanding.

Then his jaw clenched. His steel grey eyes found mine for only a second, but it felt like much longer. I couldn’t
move. He turned and shoved through the door, slamming it behind him with a loud clank. My blush rose again in full bloom.

I stood there, willing my heartbeat to slow. What was I, some kind of silly girl unable to control herself in the presence of loss? I was no stranger to it, after all. I let out a bark of a laugh and went back to my dress, finding the rip along the waistband. Luckily it was a small one and definitely fixable once I got home. I shifted my backpack to cover the hole and left the gym through the same door Will had. Less than half a minute had passed, but he was long gone.

I figured out why the girls had avoided Will as soon as I got to home ec. No one was making even the pretense of settling down, and Mrs. Pratt was fiddling with ingredients like nothing unusual was going on. It was her normal denial of anything unhappy, though it was hard to see how she could ignore the fact that Jade was, in fact, dead. Everyone was gathered around Delilah. As I squeezed past them to get to a seat in the back, she slammed a book on a table with theatrical flair.

Her tears were gone now, and only anger was left. “I’m telling you, there’s no way this was an accident! She told me something happened last weekend, but she wouldn’t tell me what. It had to be
him
. I know he’s involved somehow.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Shelley.
“Him
. I heard she went out with Alex
and
Will last weekend.” The way she said it made it clear what she thought of any girl who would go on dates with two boys in one weekend, though I was sure she
would do the same, given the opportunity. “So, why are you pointing a finger at Alex? It could have been Will.”

“Jealousy,” I whispered under my breath. Delilah’s jealousy of Jade? Or Alex? Or, more likely, of Jade dating Alex? I wondered if I should put my earphones back in before someone else asked a question. I held them in my hand, out and ready. I could barely make out the jingle jangly sound of Boys Like Girls. Mrs. Pratt wasn’t paying much attention. I could probably get away with keeping my ears open a little longer.

“I just
know,”
said Delilah. “Alex lives right near the lake, out that way. It was
him
. I know it.”

“Shhhhh!” said Catherine Stevens. She was one of those girls who always strives to be part of the popular crowd but never quite makes it all the way in. “You don’t know that for sure. Jade wasn’t even found all that close to the lake. She was found south of the creek.”

That checked out with what I’d told Delilah. I scrunched down in my seat in case she turned to look at me, but she was on a roll.

“I watch
CSI,”
said Delilah. “He could have moved the body.”

I could see some of the other girls nodding, like what Delilah had said was sage and true. But why
would
Alex have killed Jade? Who said anyone had? Maybe she’d had an accident.

“Okay. But there was that hit-and-run, too. I think there’s a serial killer out there! Any of us could be next!” Catherine put a hand to her throat, like one was after her neck right now. Everyone ignored her.

“It wasn’t Alex
or
Will,” said Shelley, stepping closer to Delilah’s desk. “She probably just went out in the woods and did something stupid. It happens. Stop being all dramatic and trying to pin it on one of her boyfriends.” She stressed the plurality of the boyfriends again, in case anyone had missed it before.

Delilah threw a vicious look at her and stood up to poke a finger at Shelley’s chest. “You’re only saying that because you want to do Will.”