The Escape (7 page)

Fletcher knew everyone was going to stare at him. He figured some would point and there would be whispers, but he never expected the greeting he got on campus the next day. Two girls smiled at him. A jock named Biff or Bill or Brian fist-bumped him. Mrs. Taylor hunched over his desk in biology, telling him, “If at any time you need a break or something gets too much for you, just raise your hand and go straight to the nurse. She’ll let you lie down.”

He could feel his cheeks burning and the sweat turning his palms slick as he gripped the sides of his desk. Mrs. Taylor was so close. He could taste the bitter alcohol in her rose-scented perfume. Fletcher didn’t know where to look. If he looked at her eyes, he would see her pity. He was too embarrassed to look at the soft crest of her ample cleavage as she leaned over to speak with him, so he stared at the back of Ford Winston’s head, at the gel-covered spikes of black hair cutting across his bone-white scalp.

The cops had picked up Jimmy Jerold sometime last night—or maybe sometime this morning. Fletcher had slept through his alarm and was late to homeroom, but the news had already torn through the entire school: Jimmy Jerold and Fletcher had a run-in, and Jimmy talked about that day in the woods. Jimmy killed Adam and he was going to kill Fletcher too.

Fletcher shifted in his seat, the weight of his classmates’ stares heavy on him. Maria Gray, perfect and perky in her tight jeans and shrink-wrapped T-shirt, smiled at him, batting her eyes. When Mrs. Taylor walked away, Maria leaned in, casually draping one slim, caramel-colored arm across his desk.

“So is it true? Jimmy Jerold came back for you last night and you escaped again?”

Fletcher blinked. “Uh…”

Maria grabbed his hand, her thumb stroking the back of his. “I didn’t know you were so brave,” she purred, “or so strong.”

Fletcher shifted. Maria Gray had never spoken to him before. Ever. She’d bump into him and say nothing, not even an apology. And suddenly, she was stroking Fletcher’s hand like a kitten and studying his face with her wide, cocoa-brown eyes.

“I-I’ve—” he stuttered, and then raised the hand that Maria was holding. Mrs. Taylor gave him a nod that he was excused.

“Hey, Fletch, way to go, man.” Ford clapped Fletcher on the back as he gathered up his backpack.

“Glad you’re safe,” a female voice said.

“You’re a hero, man. You caught Adam’s killer.”

There was a smattering of applause and agreement as Fletcher stood, but he stared at his shoes as he made his way out of the classroom. The stitches underneath the bandage on his forehead were starting to throb, and the edges of his peripheral vision were starting to fog and go black.

The last thing he saw before he left the room was the empty seat. It was right at the front of the class, first row for the star student. It was Adam’s desk.

• • •

Fletcher and Adam’s case was only getting bigger, and so was the attention focused on Avery in the school hallway. She tried to shrink into her black hoodie, hoping to draw attention away from herself.

“So, is it true that you were out with Fletcher last night?”

Avery wasn’t even sure who asked the question because when she looked around, everyone was facing her, every kid waiting for her to speak.

“I can’t really talk about it,” Avery said, turning on her heel in time to see two girls—seniors, probably—pointing and staring at her with narrowed eyes.

“Hey,” one of the girls said. “Are you Avery?”

The girl stood a whole head taller than Avery and had boobs that generously filled her black-and-red T-shirt. Avery shrank deeper into her sweatshirt, painfully aware that she had the body of a twelve-year-old boy.

“Yeah. Who are you?”

Avery wasn’t ready for the hands on her shoulders or the heaving push that knocked her off her feet and into the crowd that had assembled behind her. The girl in the tank top got in Avery’s face, her eyes sharp and dark, her red-lipsticked mouth pulled into a hideous snarl.

Avery instinctively put her hands up, defending her face, but the girl didn’t shove her again.

“You got my boyfriend put in jail, you little bitch! Jimmy wasn’t even in the woods that night!”

“I-I didn’t—” Someone pushed Avery forward, trying to stand her upright. Someone else yelled behind her, “Get away from her, Rachel! Your boyfriend is a murderer!”

“Leave her alone!” someone else screeched before the din of voices blurred into one and Avery rode the crowd, being shoved backward, then forward. She howled when someone grabbed her hair, tugging until her scalp burned. Someone else pulled on her sweatshirt, and when she looked to see who it was, she only got punched in the nose. Arms flew, fingers clawed, and you couldn’t tell who was fighting whom. It was an all-out melee in the junior hallway of Dan River Falls High, and Avery Templeton was in the middle of it.

“Stop! Stop!”

The shrill sound of a whistle cut through the yelling, and there was a brief pause in the fight—long enough for Avery to slip through the crowd and press her shoulders against the wall, doing her best to make herself flat and invisible.

“Come on!”

Principal Corben was suddenly in the middle of everything, pushing kids apart. Coach Krail and Mr. Parsons stepped in too, screaming something about suspension.

The crowd quickly thinned. Avery breathed hard, the panic humming through her body. Fevered images slashed through her mind at nauseating speeds: the crushed car at the edge of the woods. The spinning lights from the police cruisers. The sound of the officers yelling, warning her to stay back. The blood. Her mother’s blood.

“Avery?” Principal Corben appeared in front of her. “You’re bleeding. Let’s get you to the nurse’s office.”

Avery nodded numbly and followed him. “What happened here, Ms. Templeton?”

Her nerves buzzed like bees in her head. “I really don’t know. Someone—I guess Jimmy Jerold’s girlfriend—shoved me. She thinks I put Jimmy in jail.” Avery felt briefly guilty, as though she had been the one to do something wrong. But then she thought of Jimmy Jerold and the blade of that knife resting against Fletcher’s skin. The anger crashed over her. “Jimmy deserves to go to jail.”

• • •

It was cool and dark in the nurse’s office. Nurse Katie was a heavyset older woman who looked like a grandmother on a greeting card. She smiled at Fletcher, directed him to a cot, and handed him a blanket.

“Your parents didn’t register any pain medication with me. Would you like me to call home for you?”

“My mom.”

“What’s that now?”

Fletcher bit his bottom lip, then touched the bandage on his head. It was becoming almost a security thing, touching the bandage as if to make sure that everything that had happened to him, to Adam, had been real and not some sick and twisted dream.

“My dad’s gone. It’s just my mom. And no, I don’t need any pain medication.”

Nurse Katie stood at the edge of the bed, wringing her hands. Fletcher could tell that she wanted to pat him—his leg or his shoulder. She looked like a patter, one of those old-school ladies who liked to hug and pinch cheeks and pat.

“You’re very brave,” she said finally. “What happened to Adam was tragic, but bless God, you escaped. Very frightening that something like that could happen in a little town like ours.”

Fletcher didn’t know how he was supposed to respond. Say thank you? Agree? He said nothing but turned onto his side and stared at the wall, waiting until he heard the squeak of Nurse Katie’s shoes on the linoleum.

He was tired but he couldn’t rest. He had barely slept last night, his eyes opening every hour or so as foggy dreams turned into lucid ones, ones where he was in the forest and rage was consuming him as he struck out, bone thwacking against bone. Sometimes he saw Adam in his dream; other times his father towered over him. Each time he awoke, he was sweating and the sheets were twisted around his legs. Each time he could faintly smell the trailing scent of pine intermixed with the acrid smell of blood.

Then the murmurings would start again.

Hushed. Wordless. Like a staticky chorus. Fletcher was motionless in the darkness, straining to decipher the whispers over the beating of his heart. Then he heard footsteps. Breathing.

The
man
who
killed
Adam
is
back
. Fletcher could feel him hiding in the shadows of his bedroom. Or maybe he was waiting outside the door. Fletcher started to pace his house, searching, daring to sneak glances through the windows, both sure and not sure of what he would see. Would he look into the eyes of a killer lurking there or his own reflection?

He had never found any intruders.

A triangle of fluorescent light cut into the darkened nurse’s office, and Fletcher could hear low voices. Both were female. He recognized one as Nurse Katie’s.

“You just go on in there and lie down, hon. And keep that ice pack over your nose. Doesn’t look too bad, but it could swell. Your father is on his way.”

He could hear the other student settle on the bed across from him, the plasticky vinyl groaning as the kid got comfortable. He heard the unmistakable crunch of an instant cold pack—he had been covered in them in the hospital. Fletcher cut his eyes over his shoulder.

“Avery?”

Half her face was covered by the ice pack and her hair looked like she had brushed it with a blender, but it was definitely Avery Templeton.

She turned her head toward him. “Hey, Fletcher.”

Fletcher sat up. “What happened to you?”

Avery stared at the ceiling again, moving the ice pack aside and touching the bridge of her nose gingerly. She winced and pressed the ice pack back against her face.

“Some senior happened to me. She said Jimmy was in jail and that he was innocent, and somehow the whole thing was all my fault.”

“Then she slugged you?”

Avery shrugged. “Someone did. It was like a riot.”

Fletcher let out something between a sigh and a laugh. “A riot? That kind of stuff doesn’t happen here.”

“Neither do murders.”

There was a moment of awkward silence. Fletcher’s mind spun, thinking of something to say. But Avery started talking.

“Do you think he told anyone?”

“Who? Jimmy?”

Avery shifted, the ice pack crinkling as she did. “Yeah. Do you think he told anyone what he did to…”—her voice dropped to a choked, low whisper—“what he did to you guys?”

Now Fletcher lay back and stared at the pockmarked ceiling above him. “I-I don’t know. If you kill someone, who would you tell?”

He could hear the release of Avery’s breath in the darkness. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t think a guy who would kill someone could have any friends.”

“Two people,” Avery said.

“What?”

“He tried to kill two people, Fletch. He killed Adam and he meant to kill you.”

Fletcher thought of Jimmy Jerold, of the way he’d bitten off his words when he had Fletcher by the shirtfront, little flecks of spittle flying from the corners of his mouth. He could still feel the hate that had rolled off Jimmy and the look of his cold, black eyes.

Was
he
there
that
day?

Calling up the memories, Fletcher felt the pain in his skull intensify and he started to salivate, certain he was going to throw up. He swallowed back bile and tried to remember Jimmy’s boots stomping across the forest clearing, the sound they made when they crunched over curls of bark and broken leaves. But the memory always disintegrated like an old-fashioned film catching fire—little spots of black marring the images here and there, until the spots ran together and the whole picture disappeared.

Fletcher heard Adam’s voice though, loud and distinctive:
Hey—hey, man. What the—what the fuck do you think you’re
doing?

• • •

Fletcher’s house was dark when he let himself in. It was still light outside—school had only let out a few hours ago—but all the curtains were drawn, casting eerie shadows. His mother said she was protecting the furniture from fading in the summer sun, but the curtains didn’t open in winter either.

He rummaged through the fridge for something to eat and a Coke, then dropped his sweatshirt and backpack on his bedroom floor before flopping down on the bed. His head had been throbbing since he saw Avery in the nurse’s office. The idea that someone had slugged her needled at him. Why would someone attack Avery? She had nothing to do with the situation at all.

They
didn’t find me, Avery. You did.

His own voice floated back to him, and his mind returned to the forest once more. He blinked in the semidarkness, smelling that fresh-turned earth as Avery slid toward him.

His
stomach
quivered. Was he back? The guy who did this to him—to Adam? Fletcher swore he could hear everything—the pat, pat, pat of the fire ant’s footsteps. The crackling sound tree bark made as it started to dry and curl. The short, ragged breaths of someone closing in on him.

He
knew
he
should
move
,
but
everything
hurt. If the guy was coming back, Fletcher really hoped he would finish him off this time, just like he did Adam.

And
then
he
saw
Avery.

Not
a
savior. Not an angel. Just a girl. Her brown hair was pulled into a ponytail. She leaned in to him, and Fletcher could smell her, something faint and fruity—coconut or lime…