The Escape (12 page)

“I can’t see! I can’t—where are you?”

Whose
voice? Whose voice was that?

Blood
on
his
hands, blood gushing from his lip.

“Fletch!”

Adam. Where was Adam?

Swing. Hit. Connect.

Swing, hit, connect.

“Fletch…” a croaked whisper.

“What if I did it?”

Avery stepped back as if Fletcher’s admission had physically shoved her. “Fletch, what are you talking about?”

“I can’t remember. I’m trying, but…” He stared at his hands, clenching his fists, feeling the skin pull against the crisscross of scabs and stitches that remained. “What if I did it?”

Avery shook her head, a tremor going through her. “That’s stupid, Fletch. That’s just dumb. Adam was your friend. You wouldn’t do that. You wouldn’t! I know you.”

Fletcher wanted to agree, but he could feel the dark inside him. It sickened him. It scared him.

“Why would you do it? There’s no reason.” Avery crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Don’t be dumb.”

“I remember Adam saying, ‘Stop, stop.’” He shook his hands, which suddenly felt as if they were covered in the dirt and debris from the forest. “What if his blood was on me?”

Avery stood up straighter and gripped Fletcher by his forearms. “Listen to me, Fletch. You didn’t do this. Your memories are all jumbled up, and yeah, you had blood all over you. But you also had cuts all over you. The blood was yours.”

“No, Avery.”

“You’re a good guy. You probably were trying to help Adam. Or it could be survivor’s guilt. You read about that all the time.”

A knot formed in Fletcher’s chest. He didn’t want Avery to defend him. He didn’t want her to
want
to defend him. Somehow he felt like he didn’t deserve it.

Students streamed out of the building around them. Most walked straight past, but a few slowed and eyed Fletcher and Avery.

Kaylee and Stacey came out with Tim. Kaylee coughed the word “socio” into her hands. Stacey exploded into giggles. Tim laughed too but tried to turn his face away.

“Don’t make him mad,” one of the girls said. “We don’t know what he’s capable of.”

Fletcher gritted his teeth.

“Fletch.” Avery grabbed him by the arm again but he shook her off.

“Just stay away from me, okay?”

• • •

Avery yanked out her phone and dialed her father.

“What’s up, kiddo?”

“Dad, why is everyone accusing Fletch of murder?”

“Avery—”

“It’s all over school. Someone graffitied his locker, and people are calling him a sociopath. He’s not a real suspect, is he?”

There was a long, uncomfortable pause, and Avery knew exactly what her father wasn’t saying.

“I can’t believe you.”

“Avery, look. We have to examine—”

“I know, I know, all the angles,” she spat.

“For now, it’s probably a good idea for you to give Fletcher some space.”

Avery’s mouth dropped open. “Stay away from him? He’s my friend! He needs me!”

“Just for a—”

“Whatever, Dad.”

She hung up, knowing she was in for several choice evenings staring at her bedroom ceiling without her phone or computer, but she was miffed. How could her father believe that Fletcher could
kill
Adam? Or put her in danger?

Livid, her fingers flew over the lock combo on her bike. She shoved the lock in her backpack and started pedaling.

The sun was beginning to dip behind the trees, and the few weak, remaining beams of sunlight shaded and mottled a deep gray. It made the chill in the damp air heavy, and Avery shivered even as sweat beaded at her hairline. She pumped her legs harder.

This was one of the winding stretches of the Redwood Highway that lacked a bike lane. In the summer, it made for an agonizing, thigh-burning series of switchbacks. In the fall it was a beautiful, canopied ride, the lush trees keeping the road cool. With the roads slick and the weak streaks of light, all Avery wanted to do was get home and into a hot shower.

That was what she was thinking about when she heard the purr of the engine behind her, approaching from one of the switchbacks. She flicked on the bike’s front and back lights, her two wheels blinking like a beacon, the reflectors her father insisted she attach to her backpack bouncing back headlights as the car crawled up behind her.

Avery edged herself as far to the right as she dared, casting a glance at the narrow shoulder and the slope of mountainside beyond. She hated this part of the ride and gripped one handlebar tightly, while using her other hand to wave the car around her.

It stayed a good thirty feet behind. The vibration from the motor wobbled her tires all the way through her feet. She pumped a little harder, trying to put some distance between herself and the car.

It caught up.

“Go around,” she said, waving. She craned her neck to see around the bank of the next switchback, then turned toward the car, yelling, “Clear!” The gray sky was settling in, the last of the sunlight bouncing off the windshield, obscuring the driver. “Clear!” she said again.

The driver maintained his speed behind her and Avery sighed, rolling her eyes. “If you want to go ten miles an hour behind me, suit yourself, dude.”

She continued pedaling, wishing she could pop in her earbuds and listen to anything other than the hum of the engine and the voices in her head. She was trying to focus on the list of phyla she was supposed to memorize for bio when the driver gunned the engine. Avery glanced over her shoulder just in time to see the car’s grill kissing her back tire.

“Hey!” she yelled, wobbling on the bike. “What the hell?”

The car sunk back, but her heart slammed against her rib cage. “Jerk!”

The thunk of a heavy bass blasted from the car. The music grew closer.

Avery edged toward the outside white line, a little closer to the edge of the road, keeping her focus directly in front of her rather than on the drop a few inches from her fat, hybrid tires. A bead of sweat trickled down her back as she lifted herself from the seat to pedal faster.

“Go around, jerk!”

The car didn’t pull back.

Avery cut hard to the left, whizzing over the double yellow line.

The oncoming headlights of another car nearly blinded her as it swung around the turn.

“Oh my God!”

Avery resisted the urge to let go of the handlebars and cover her face with her hands. Instead, she swerved. Her heart was ready to explode in her throat. She had no choice but to cut in front of the car that had been trailing her while the other one sped by. She prayed the driver of the car trailing was just some jerk trying to mess with her. She prayed that the long honk and the flood of headlights scared him too, and that he would hang back.

He didn’t.

The car tagged her bike’s back tire. Avery wobbled for what felt like an eternity, her whole body tense as she tried to keep her bike upright. If she fell or stopped, the psycho driver would surely run her over. She had to put distance between them. She sped up. So did the driver. The next sound was the crack of her wheel against the car’s fender as it folded in two and snapped free of the bike frame.

Pain exploded in her chin and palms as she scudded along the roadway. Her breath was gone. She was still sliding, still moving from the force of the hit when she saw the edge of the roadway coming up on her fast. She tried to kick out her legs, to grip the concrete to stop herself, but the remains of her bike hit her hard on the back of her head. She was airborne. She slid and rolled, then stopped a few yards down the incline.

Above her, there was a weighted silence that pricked at the back of her neck. A car door slammed, followed by the slow, loud sound of boots.

Avery tried to move her head but everything hurt. She had just enough energy to cut her eyes toward the roadway, toward the figure who rounded the car and stared down at her.

A tremor went through Avery. Would the figure approach her? There was no way she could defend herself.

Slowly the driver turned on his—or her—heel and got back in the car. Avery heard the car door slam, the rev of the engine, and the blaring radio fade as the car disappeared around the bend.

“Fletch, honey, you’re home.”

Fletcher’s mother sat at the kitchen table, her hands wrapped around a coffee mug. She took off her reading glasses and neatly folded them on top of a sudoku puzzle. “How was school? Let me fix you something to eat.”

Fletcher wanted the scene to be normal: a mom having an exchange with her son about school, pushing her chair back to pull some crackers out of the pantry. But there was something different about it. Maybe it was the way his mother’s hands shook when she pulled out the cracker box or how she kept looking over her shoulder while she dug through the refrigerator for a block of cheese—as if she was scared to turn her back to him.

He glanced over his shoulder toward the living room where the plank of plywood was still bolted to the broken window and shifted his weight. “Did the police say anything about the other night?” The hair along his arms pricked up as he asked the question.

His mother shook her head. “No, nothing.”

A palpable silence hung in the air, and Fletcher knew he should sit down or click on the TV or flip through one of the comic books stashed in his backpack. If he was occupied, maybe his mom would relax.

“Have you heard from Dad?”

His mother looked nervous and knocked over the box of crackers on the counter with her jitters. “He’s fine,” she said quickly. “And Susan’s fine. She likes her school.”

Mrs. Carroll arranged the crackers and cheese slices on a plate. She pulled a paring knife from the drawer and palmed a red apple. The sound of the knife slicing through the apple seemed deafening. Fletcher stared as the knife worked through the fruit’s glossy red skin.

KILLER. He saw the word on his locker again.

Am
I
a
killer?

His mother pulled the knife through the apple again, exposing its white flesh.

Fletcher felt his temples pulsing.

His blood rushing through his veins.

“Fletch, Fletch, man, what the hell?”

“Mom—”

She turned. “What is it, honey?”

Heart
racing. Flesh meeting flesh. Pain searing in his gut. The smell of pine trees, dirt, blood.

“I think we should call Dr. Palmer.”

• • •

Avery sat in her father’s GMC, her bent and broken bicycle in the back. She had taken out her ponytail, picked out pieces of twigs and debris, and slicked her hair back three separate times before Chief Templeton cast her an exasperated glance.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?”

“I fell.” Avery shrugged, uncertain why she felt the need to lie to her dad. She knew in her gut that the car’s driver had meant to harm her. It wasn’t just some guy driving around. He was after
her
—but why? Because she’d been talking to Fletcher? If she told her father, he’d overreact and never let her talk to Fletcher again. Avery was surprised at how much she didn’t want that.

She had cried after the car drove off and the fear eased out of her. She had pushed herself up from the bush that had broken her fall and examined herself. Her palms were cut from skidding down the bank, but she wasn’t seriously injured. Her lip felt swollen, and her left knee was skinned and visible through the new hole in her jeans.

“It was awful at school today, Dad. Everyone thinks that Fletcher killed Adam.” She watched her father’s profile for a reaction.

“How do you feel about that?”

Avery gawked. “How do I feel about that? You sound—you sound like—” A sob lodged in Avery’s throat and the road in front of them went blurry with her tears.

He sounded like he used to after Avery’s mother died, always asking psychologist-constructed questions that required more than yes or no answers, designed to “get kids talking about their feelings.” She knew her father had pulled these questions word-for-word from a pamphlet that he picked up at the grief center where he forced her to see a counselor.

“I feel like that’s shit, and I feel like you know it.”

“Avery!”

“You have to give me some information, Dad. This is my friend—don’t just tell me to stay away from him. Don’t do that to me!” She was crying—great, racking sobs that made her shoulders shake and her lungs spasm.

“Avery.” Her father spoke in a slow, controlled manner that only made Avery feel that much more alone.

“Someone ran me off the road today, Dad! I didn’t just fall off my bike. Someone was trying to kill me, and it wasn’t Fletcher! It was probably the guy who killed Adam. What if he knows I’m helping Fletch?” She heaved, hiccuped. “Why won’t you tell me what’s happening?”

The chief pulled the car over to the side of the road. “Avery, what are you talking about?”

The more Avery tried to calm down, the more she hiccuped-cried. “I was riding my bike and a car came up behind me, and—and—” Her body replayed the whole scenario, the way she gripped her handlebars, the way her heart raced.

“What kind of car was it?”

Avery shook her head, feeling dumb. “I don’t even remember. I was too scared to get a good look. A truck maybe? No, no, like a regular car.”

“A sedan?”

A car zipped past them and Avery started. That was the car! Then another car came speeding the other direction, and she was sure
that
was the one. “I don’t know,” she said, defeated.

Chief Templeton clicked off his seat belt and turned sideways to face his daughter. “Are you okay? Do we need to take you to the hospital?” His cheeks had an unnatural flush in them, and his eyes were concerned, like a father who thought of her before suspects and criminals.

“It was the same person who hurt Adam and Fletcher. It had to have been. Fletch said he remembered a car in the park’s parking lot that day. Did he tell you that?”

• • •

Fletcher didn’t remember falling asleep. He was still fully dressed and the lights in his bedroom were on, his classroom-issued copy of
A
Separate
Peace
looking rather dog-eared and pitiful as he rolled off it.

He yawned, wondering what woke him, when he heard his mother’s voice. “Fletcher?” She sounded somewhat distant, as if she was on the landing.

“Yeah?”

“Come down here, please.”

He rolled his eyes but got up anyway, trudging into the semi-dark hallway. He straightened when he saw that his mother wasn’t alone on the landing. “Ma?”

His mother had changed out of her bathrobe—something she rarely did lately—and was wearing lipstick. Her hair was brushed and pinched at the nape of her neck. Two uniformed officers stood next to her.

“Hello,” Fletcher said, more question than greeting.

“Fletcher, honey.” His mother glided up the stairs to him and laced her arm through his, so he’d walk with her. “These are Officers Hobbs and Dawes from the police department.”

“Am I in some kind of trouble?”

One of the officers shook his head. “No, son,” Officer Dawes said. “This is just routine.”

Fletcher slid his arm from his mother’s and took a tentative step back up the stairs. “What is routine?”

Hobbs, the other cop, stepped forward and handed Fletcher’s mother a piece of paper folded in thirds. She opened it and Fletcher could see the words “Search Warrant” written in fancy diploma-type scroll at the top.

“What is this?”

“It’s a search warrant.”

Fletcher fought down the urge to curse at the smug officer. “I know, but why?”

“It’s just routine, honey.” His mother parroted Officer Dawes.

“Yeah, but I already handed over my clothes and shoes and my backpack and everything I had with me that day. What else do you guys need?”

“We just need to cover all our bases, son.”

Anger pinballed through Fletcher at Dawes’s use of the term “son,” but he kept his expression bland.

“We’re going to need to search your room, the garage, and your vehicle.”

“I wasn’t even driving my car—” Hobbs passed Fletcher as he made his way to the bedroom. “Mom, are you going to let this happen?”

“Do you have something to hide, Mr. Carroll?”

“Fletch,” he corrected. “And no. I was a victim here.” He yanked up his shirtsleeve, thrusting his arm at the cop. His scar was healing pink and silvery, a zigzag across his flesh.

“It’s routine so that we can be sure we have all of the details we need for our investigation.” Officer Dawes held Fletcher’s eye, which immediately made him feel guilty for no real reason.

He threw an angry glance at his mother, who now seemed like the cops’ accomplice. “Sure. Whatever.”

Officer Dawes nodded and turned toward the garage. Mrs. Carroll flashed Fletcher a smile that was meant to be apologetic or reassuring but failed on both counts. “How about I fix you some tea?”

He followed his mother to the kitchen and slumped at the dining table while she filled the teapot.

“This is lame.”

“It’s just—”

“Don’t tell me it’s routine, Ma. I have ears. I just mean, why are they wasting their time here when they should be out looking for Adam’s killer?”

His mother was silent, as though setting a teapot on a burner took all her concentration. Fletcher couldn’t look at her.

“Do you think they think I did this?”

She shot a look over her shoulder, her smile tight. “No, honey, of course not. They probably just need to rule you out as a suspect. Like on television.”

Fletcher wanted to feel comforted, but the way his mother flittered around lately—nervously and always watching him—gave him pause. “Do
you
think I had something to do with Adam’s death?”

It could have been his imagination, but Fletcher thought she paused before she answered, “Of course not, Fletcher!”