Authors: Nancy Springer
Blood Trail (10 page)
I looked into the river some more. In my nightmare it had turned to blood, but it would never really do that. It just kept on flowing. A kingfisher flew upriver in a blur of neon blue, made a noise like a ratchet, and snagged a minnow out of the shallows with its bayonet beak. It all happened so fast that if I'd blinked, I would have missed it.
The angle of the sun had changed, and in my sweaty clothes I was starting to get cold.
I still sat there. Didn't want to go home.
I'm afraid to go home, he had said.
Footsteps scrunched on the shale and gravel of the trail.
I looked up, and for a freaky second I expected it to be Aaron, his hair shining reddish in the sun, like maybe he'd been out on his bike or out running and I was in my blue jeans instead of in my good suit with sweat and dirt all over it, and Aaron was meeting me at the swimming hole, saying “Hey, Booger, what's up, man?”
Actually, it was my mom and my sister. Jamy yelled, “Booger! See, Mom, I told you!”
“May we join you?” Still in her heels and dress, Mom perched on the other boulder.
“You're going to get your skirt dirty,” I told her.
“So what is this, role reversal?”
Damn, she made me smile. “How was it?” I asked.
“Lots of speeches that didn't say anything.”
“Awful,” Jamy summarized, sitting on my rock beside me. “Hey, tadpoles!”
We all looked at the tadpoles like we'd never seen any before.
I said to the river, “I'm never going to understand.”
Jamy said, “I wish he'd just confess and go to jail. Then maybe Aardy could come home.”
Mom shook her head like it would never happen. “That poor girlâif she saw him with blood on his clothes, on his hands.⦔
Aardy was never going to be the same.
Neither was I.
“Even if he did confess, I still wouldn't get it,” I said. “Or even if they find him guilty ⦠I just don't damn understand. How. Why. I mean, I knew him and Aaron practically my whole life.”
“That's what I keep thinking,” Mom said quietly. “How you can know somebody for years, and just not know them at all.” The way her eyes darkened, I knew she was thinking about Dad. She had thought she knew him, and he had turned out to be a different person.
“I don't have any answer for you, honey,” Mom said. “I'm sorry.”
“But that's kind of an answer,” I said. I mean, she was there. My brat sister was there. Two out of three ain't bad. And the blood trail ⦠the blood trail ended at Pinto River.
We all sat looking at the river like we'd never seen running water before. Sunlight on the ripples. Tadpoles. A butterfly the color of Aaron's hair landed on the moist gravel at the edge and posed there a second, fanning its wings, before it lifted off again. The way it flew, it was like swimming in the sunlight.
“Pretty,” Jamy said.
I let out some sort of grunt or snort or something. Mom looked at me. “What was that about?”
I couldn't have explained in a million years. I just stood up. “Come on. I'm hungry.”
Time to go home.
About the Author
Nancy Springer has passed the fifty-book milestone with novels for adults, young adults, and children, in genres including mythic fantasy, contemporary fiction, magic realism, horror, and mysteryâalthough she did not realize she wrote mystery until she won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America two years in succession. Born in Montclair, New Jersey, Springer moved with her family to Gettysburg, of Civil War fame, when she was thirteen. She spent the next forty-six years in Pennsylvania, raising two children (Jonathan and Nora), writing, horseback riding, fishing, and bird-watching. In 2007 she surprised her friends and herself by moving with her second husband to an isolated area of the Florida Panhandle where the bird-watching is spectacular, and where, when fishing, she occasionally catches an alligator.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2003 by Nancy Springer
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
ISBN: 978-1-4976-8871-1
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
EBOOKS BY NANCY SPRINGER
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
