Fade Out (15 page)

“Can I use your toothpaste?” I ask.

“You know where it is,” she says.

And that’s enough until morning.

14
Blackmailed

I
’ve been trapped in the newspaper office
for hours already, and there are still hours more to go until lunch. Here I am, helping Taylor with this movie review, wasting away in my windowless cell while the rest of the world goes on without me.

Okay, fine: The room does have windows. Only, I’m sitting at a desk so far away from them I can’t see even one tree. And I’m dying of thirst, and all my mom has here is water. And I want to confront Jackson. I want to check on Elissa. I want to
do something
. This internship is eating away at my life.

This is when the escape plan comes to me. “I have low blood sugar,” I tell Taylor. “I need juice. I’m going down to the Corner Cupboard to get some.”

“I’ll go with you,” she says.

“It’ll only take a minute,” I lie. “I’ll be right back,” I add, lying again.

She looks at me for a long moment—she knows—but all she says is “Okay.”

My mom, for her part, just asks if I could grab her a cranberry.

So this is how I end up out on the street, free at last. First stop: Taco Juan’s. But Elissa’s boss says she’s on break. So I set my sights on the Little Art. In the blink of an eye I’m inside the theater, crossing the velvet rope and stepping into Theater 1. It’s between shows, so the lights are on and the movie screen is blank—but the door to the projection booth is open and from in there I hear something.

Voices.

One belongs to Austin. “I swear, I won’t tell anyone, not anybody, I promise,” he whines. The door to the projection booth is open only a crack, so I can’t see for myself, but I’m willing to bet he is either crying, or
thisclose
to it, which is something I don’t want to see, not now and not ever.

The other voice belongs to Jackson. “I can’t believe you followed me,” he says. “You little snitch. How am I supposed to believe you’ll keep your mouth shut?”

“I
swear
,” Austin says. “I swear on Monster. I swear on Henry the Eighth.” (Monster is his cat. Henry the Eighth is the last of his cat’s kittens, the one they haven’t been successful in giving away yet.)

“You swear you were there by yourself? No one else was with you?”

“It was just me,” Austin says. “I was there alone.”

“Okay,” Jackson says, “if you say so, okay.” I’m not sure if he’s trying to convince himself or if he really believes Austin.

“Can I go now?” Austin squeaks.

“One more thing,” Jackson says. “Swear to me you won’t tell Dani.”

“Dani? Why would I tell her?”

“If you tell her she’ll tell Elissa, you know it, so swear to me. Say you swear.”

“I swear.”

“You swear what?”

“I swear I won’t tell Dani.”

“Or…”

“Or what?”

“Or
I
will,” Jackson says in this low, menacing voice.

A cloud of silence descends and swallows up the projection booth. Nothing’s coming out, not a word, not a mutter, not one more squeak. It’s like the sound cut off at the high point of a movie. Something essential is about to be let loose and
wham
—Some slob trips over the cord and the speaker goes out.

I hear nothing. With the door cracked like this, I see nothing.

Wait. They don’t know I’m here, do they?

Then Austin speaks up, so I guess not. “Okay,” he says at last. “I won’t tell her.”

And then it hits me, how little sense that whole exchange just made. Jackson doesn’t want Austin to tell me, so if Austin does tell me then Jackson will tell me too?

But I’ll already know.
Austin would’ve told me.

Hit pause and try to figure out
that
logic.

“Can I go now?” Austin says.

“Yeah, go,” Jackson says.

And then, before I can get a handle on the situation—namely that Austin is now leaving the projection booth, and if he takes the door on the side where I’m standing, he’ll step down and turn and see (um, hi) me—I realize I’ve got to get out of here.

The camera slips into slow motion, or time does, at least. My foot is lifting off the ground and then my knee is lifting and then my whole leg. My body pushes forward like trying to find footing in Marshmallow Fluff—and as this is happening time moves so slowly you could read a page in your social studies homework, go to the kitchen, make a Toaster Strudel, come back, eat it, realize you got crumbs all over your social studies homework, shake the homework over the garbage disposal to get the crumbs off, go back to the den, take a nap, finish your homework, paint your nails, and then at last my foot would have touched ground and I would have taken one step.

That’s how slow of slow motion I mean.

I’m one inch closer to the door when Austin emerges and sees me. With a flying leap—I didn’t know Austin had it in him—he grabs me and pushes me out through the exit into the lobby. We land, panting for breath, at the popcorn stand.

“Quick! Get busy,” Austin hisses, and we launch into a serious operation involving one bag of day-old popcorn, three shakes of cinnamon, four of cayenne, a flurry of coconut flakes, and Parmesan galore, until Jackson comes out and sees us.

“You’re here early again, Dani,” he says, looking at me sideways. By that I mean he’s looking at me and he’s also
looking
at
me. He’s trying to see if I’ll stop shaking the Parmesan and break.

“I wanted popcorn for breakfast,” I lie. “Austin just came out, and I was like, Austin, don’t
you
want popcorn for breakfast? And he was like, Totally. And I was like, So help me make it! So that’s what we’re doing now.”

“Butter,” Austin says.

“What?” I say, breaking out from my sea of lies.

“We forgot the butter.” He gets out a gelatinous mound of something that may be butter—I’m not positive. He pours it with abandon over the concoction of popcorn, and it slides there, shifting around, until it settles, like liquid soap. The what-we-assume-is-butter sinks down into the lower reaches of the popcorn slowly, like ear wax coming alive and spreading down your body to your feet. I glance away, try not to gag.

“So how is it?” Jackson asks. A look of amusement is perched on his face. Also a look of challenge.

Austin peeks down at the waxy, spotty concoction with alarm. “I don’t know yet.”

Jackson stands there, waiting.

I do the brave thing, the thing one of us has to do to get out of this: I eat some popcorn. Then I go, “It’s different.” My voice
rises a few notches as I say that. The word
different
is really all I can manage for the roadkill I just put in my mouth.

Austin’s eyes bug out. Then he takes some too. And puts it in his mouth. Chews it. Turns paler than a turnip. Seems about to choke. But, to his credit, does not.

“It looks disgusting,” Jackson says cheerfully. Then he heads out of the lobby.

As soon as Jackson’s out of sight, Austin starts spitting.

I cry out for water.

We’re in great agony over what we’ve just swallowed for a good five minutes before we can even speak to each other.

“I heard you guys talking,” I say at last.

“I figured,” he says.

“Why’d you lie?”

He shrugs.

“So what did he say about Bella? I got there too late, and I didn’t hear everything.”

“I can’t say.”

I stop. Step back. Go,
Huh?

“He made me promise not to say.” Austin mumbles these words while staring with deep concentration at the black-painted floorboards, unable to look up and meet my eyes.

“Did he blackmail you or something?” I ask. At first I’m joking. I’ve got noir movies on the brain, that’s all. Except now I see Austin twitch, see his eyes hop and jitter across the black expanse of the floor to get away from me.

So it
is
true. I push him to say more. “What will happen if you tell me? Will Jackson like…
do
something to you?”

My mind reels out possibilities: baseball bat to the knee, pee in the soup, snake in the bed. No, Jackson wouldn’t do any of those things, not to his own cousin (except, maybe, the snake). More likely Jackson has something on Austin, a deep, dark, dirty secret. They’re family—they’ve got to know things about each other that others don’t. Like, does Austin suck his thumb when he sleeps? Was he born with a tail and the doctors chopped it off before his parents brought him home? It could be anything.

Instead of answering, Austin pretends to be very interested in housecleaning. He bends down to pick up a lone popcorn kernel from off the floor. Who knows how long it’s been there, maybe since last summer, the summer of slapstick comedy. A funnier, happier time, I’ve heard.

“Well?” I say.

“Well, what?” he says back.

We’ve come to a roadblock. I’m getting nothing out of Austin today.

“I should go,” I say. Before I make it out the door, a hand grabs me.

“Listen, just don’t tell him you know, okay?” Panic in his face, a grip stronger than expected on my arm.

“Okay…” I say, snatching my arm back.

It’s clear Jackson does have a secret on Austin… but what? Something that would land him in juvie, maybe, like those eighth-graders who defaced the school auditorium and were never seen again and I can’t even remember their names now. It could be something just as shocking but without the shaving cream or Silly String. Or it could be even worse. Wow, maybe Austin did something really bad, like ran someone over with his bike.

“What happened, Austin? What does he know? You can tell me.”

There’s a beat as he considers how much to say. A long, gaping, auditorium-wide beat. But then he just shakes his head.

“Fine, don’t tell me. And don’t freak out—I won’t tell Jackson.”

“Thanks,” he mumbles. He seems about to say something
else. It’s about the hit-and-run, I’m thinking, it’s about the cover-up. But all he says is, “I didn’t see you come in. Did you buy a ticket today?”

I give the door a great big slam as I stomp out to the street.

I’m on the sidewalk, heading back for the newspaper office, when my cell phone decides to start working again. I swear, the thing’s possessed. Now I get the following text message:

U FORGOT UR JUICE

The text is from a number I don’t recognize. No name shows up in my Caller ID. But it’s this area code, so it’s someone from the county, it could be someone from this very town. And if that someone knows I didn’t get juice, they’re nearby. Watching…

I look around wildly.

Then my eyes shoot up—straight into the windows of the newspaper office. I catch sight of Taylor, her shadow looking down on me, almost ominous. I guess she saw me go into the Little Art instead of the Corner Cupboard. I guess she knows I had other, more important things to do than write that review with her.

Last we were friends, she didn’t have a cell phone. I guess I never programmed in her new number.

I text back:
K THNX

Let’s pretend she’s not mad at me, that she was just sending me a helpful reminder. I wave to her and run over to the Corner Cupboard to get some juice, an orange for me, and for my mom a cranberry. At the last second, I grab one for Taylor, too: a cranberry-raspberry twist.

15
Seeing Spots

I
t’s a new day and today’s plan is to confront Jackson
at long last, to trap and tangle him in his own lies. I can do it without even having to tell him what I saw.

A good detective, one trained in the art of catching criminals, is like a walking, talking lie detector. The way to get a confession is to be tough—hard as nails, they call it. Just an hour alone in a room with the perp, lightbulb aimed square at his face, and all will be revealed.

Thirsty? No water for you—not till you tell me everything.

Sleepy? You’ll stay awake till you tell me what I want to hear.

I know you did it. We have witnesses. You can’t hide it from me, so spill.

At least, that’s the kind of junk they say in the movies. And when your perp looks like he’s about to crack, you just keep throwing questions at him, blinding him with the hot, bright light until he can barely remember his own name.

Where were you on the night of July thirtieth?

At home, you say? No alibi, you say? What size shoe do you wear, an eight-and-a-half? Aha! Gotcha.

Soon enough, the perp starts talking. You don’t even need to match his shoeprint. Soon, he’s signing the confession, and you’re walking out saying you saved the day.

I guess.

I mean, maybe all that would work if the crime were something more obvious, something that would send you to jail. With a thing as delicate as this, when someone’s heart is on the line, and she’s someone you know and like, such as your old babysitter, a girl who’s calmed you after you had a coat-zombie-in-the-closet nightmare (yes,
again
), who’s bandaged up your scraped knee, then you have to be more careful.

Besides, Jackson might not respond to me shoving a table lamp in his face.

Just imagine if my mom had someone who cared this much about digging up the truth back when my dad was sneaking around. It might not have been too late. Things could have been fixed, and turned good again, and my parents might still be married today.

I’m not deluding myself. It’s possible. Admit it’s
possible
.

So the plan is simple: Wait for Jackson to come downstairs, tackle him at the door, and then pull out, strand by incriminating strand, the truth. All I need is a little help from Austin.

And for Taylor to look the other way when I skip out on the internship again. And for my mom not to ask where I am. And for it not to be raining because I forgot an umbrella and I’m getting soaked.