Somewhere Over the Freaking Rainbow (A Young Adult Paranormal Romance) (The Secrets of Somerled) (6 page)

“We had a little going-away party for him last night,” offered Jonathan. “Perhaps the boy thought his friends came here for that. Although I didn't know Marcus knew the other two.”

Jamison heard a voice in his head pleading with him to let it go, but he couldn't. Not this time. He wasn't going to allow his home to become like Texas; he wouldn't hide anymore.

“They're not telling you the whole thing, sheriff. They killed someone last night. My bet is, it was Marcus. Ray and Burke saw it happen.”

Lucas laughed. “And did you witness this murder too, young Jamison?”

Jamison looked first at Lucas, then at the sheriff. Here was his last chance to save himself, but he tossed the chance over his shoulder, like a pinch of salt, for luck.

Boy witnesses a murder. Boy reports the murder. There is no body. Soon...there is no boy.

Screw it.

“Yeah, I saw it too.”

***

Ten minutes later, Jamison fidgeted while he, the sheriff and Jonathan watched Lucas maneuver his big shoulders up through the drop door of the clubhouse.

“This is dangerous. We should tear this thing down.” The sheriff pushed on a beam that held up the roof; it didn't give an inch.

Jamison grinned. “A Scotsman built it. It won’t budge unless God blows the tree down. Sir.” It was his now. Okay, if Granddad never came home again, it was his.

“Your grandpa’s said that a hundred times. But any of us could have been killed climbing up here. One day some little kid—”

“—little kids can't even reach the second rung. Sir.”

The sheriff huffed and stepped over to the window. He'd called for a deputy to pick up Mom. She was going to freak out when the guy got to her, thinking instantly that her son was either not safe, not warm, not fed, or not happy. When they told her he was fine, she wasn't going to be too happy herself, but he'd deal with it when she got there. Right then, he had some confessing to do.

“Okay, let's hear it.” The sheriff moved to the picture window.

Lucas and Jonathan stood back. They looked only mildly curious.

“Well, Ray heard Skye talking to another Somerled about how she wasn't looking forward to the three a.m. gathering.” Jamison looked at Lucas. “It wasn't Skye's fault. Ray likes to pretend he's listening to his music, with his earphones on, so he can eavesdrop.”

No one interrupted, so he turned back to the window and went on.

“So we came up here to see what might happen. It was cold.” He shivered with the memory of the temperature alone. “At three we heard their screen door open, so we knew something was up. But then Ray and Burke had to pee and climbed down. That's when I saw them.”

“Who?”

“Somerleds, I guess. Lots of people dressed in white robes. Moving through the field, to the circle...over...”

Damn.

It was gone! The crop circle was gone.
Holy
crap,
how
did
they
do
it?

Lucas cleared his throat, probably to cover his laughter. He knew what Jamison was going to say, knew he’d look like an idiot if he said it.

Crop circles and conspiracy? He'd be headed for his first drug test if he opened his mouth.

Not this time. He wasn't going to cave now.

“They all had little flashlights or something, because I could see what was going on. They...made a big circle in the field, and I know this is going to sound stupid, but someone walked into the center of the circle and then...there was an explosion. The guy in the center just exploded. There weren't even any chunks left of him I don't think.”

“Woah. Hold it.” The sheriff looked not out the window, but at the two men behind him. “I don't suppose you want to confirm anything he's said so far.”

“No. No. Let him keep talking.”

Jamison could feel himself blushing hot in the cool air. Dusk was coming fast. If they were going to find traces of anything in the field, they had to move quickly.

“The field. We should look before it gets any later.” Jamison waited for the Somerleds to move away from the hole before he started climbing down. He chose his grip carefully, in case he got shoved from behind. His hands were shaking, and that pissed him off.

It didn't matter. The sheriff would be able to tell where the stalks had been bent over. There had to be char marks from the explosion. There had to be something. What he really needed was a couple of friends to back him up, but they'd already been eliminated. So if he was going to be vindicated, they had to get to the field. Who knew how well the Somerleds could clean a field in the middle of the night, if given the chance? They'd already managed to un-circle a freaking crop!

Just as he touched ground and backed away from the mighty tree's roots, however, a sheriff's truck pulled up and his mother jumped out. She hurried toward the tree and frowned as she watched the three men carefully make their way down the widespread rungs.

“What's going on?” She turned to Jamison and raised the famous eyebrow.

***

Skye didn’t know what she’d expected, but when she’d told Lucas of the connection between herself and their mortal neighbor, he’d said, “Interesting,” and walked away. As he’d passed Jonathan, however, the two had exchanged a look that led Skye to believe the pair weren’t telling her something.

It wouldn’t be appropriate to demand to know their secrets—but she was determined to work it out of Jonathan later.

Skye stood at her bedroom window looking out on the cornfield. She stayed out of sight, as Jonathan had suggested; if someone looked her way, they’d only see curtains.

Sheriff Cooke, a pleasant and patient man for the most part, was proving even more patient than usual, going back over rows that had already been examined and listening to Jamison’s story over and over. Every once in a while, he’d take off his cowboy hat, rub the back of his neck, then pull the hat down tight and start looking again.

Lori Shaw, Jamison’s mother, searched the field too, showing complete trust in her son. When sunlight could no longer illuminate anything more than the tassels, it was Jamison who finally gave up. He must have realized they were all waiting for him to cry uncle.

As his mother followed him inside the house and Lucas walked the sheriff and his deputy back to their vehicles, Skye again wished she could have wept. Jamison had done an incredibly brave thing.

And
no
one
would
be
allowed
to
remember
any
of
it
in
the
morning
.

She prayed he would at least be able to remember her.

Jamison woke up the next morning in a fine mood. Today was the day. The moving company had left a message on the machine; his car and the rest of their belongings would be there by five pm.

As he headed down the stairs he paused and looked down. Pants on. Zipper up. What was he forgetting?

Mom was humming. She hadn't done that for a while. Maybe she was going to get over herself and go visit Granddad. He wouldn't bring it up, though. He wanted that humming to last for as long as possible.

Just as he suspected, a cooked breakfast was waiting for him—not something bacon-smelling and micro-waved, but actual
bacon
. She'd made a greasy mess of the kitchen, and she didn't seem to mind.

“Surprise!” She lifted a pan lid from a plate on the table. Bacon, eggs, and silver-dollar pancakes, like Grandma used to make. “Don't even say how long it's been.”

“I won't look a gift breakfast in the mouth.”

“Good boy.” Mom looked around the table. “What did I forget, butter?”

“Right here.” Jamison pointed to the butter next to his glass.

“Orange juice?”

“Mom! It's in the glass, next to the butter.”

“Sorry, I just feel like I'm forgetting something.”

“Are you wearing pants?”

She looked down. “Yep. Oh well. I guess I'll figure it out the hard way.”

“I'm having that feeling too, like I've forgotten something.”

“Homework?”

“Nothing but a test on
Lost
Horizon
.”

“
Lost
Horizon
! Oh, I haven't read that forever. I wonder how long it will take to dig out that box of books?”

“First thing out is my car.”

“Yep. Last in, first out.”

They had a great morning, smiling and talking about where things would need to go. It was rare; usually they were screaming 'I love you' or 'have a good day' as they ran around the kitchen once and headed for the door. Waking up early was something he'd have to try more often.

They didn't even have to run for the car.

As Jamison pulled up on the door handle, he glanced at the tree house and something nudged his brain.

“How much time have we got?” he asked.

“We're about ten minutes early. Why?”

“I was thinking maybe the thing I forgot is up in the tree house.”

“Well, hurry if you're going. And be careful.” She climbed in the car, then climbed out again. “You know, we might want to think about tearing that thing down.”

“No!” It was his tree house. “Let God blow it over, if he can.”

Half-way up the trunk he had a strong sense of deja vu, like he'd had that thought before, but he was remembering all kinds of things since coming back to Colorado. He’d probably talked it over with Granddad while his mom was packing their things, to leave her home and her father behind.

Jamison had never asked what had happened, why she suddenly hated her dad. He hadn't wanted to hear anything negative about the closest thing to a father he'd ever had. Kenneth Jamison was a great man and his grandson, at the age of eleven, had decided to pretend his mom hated someone else in Flat Springs.

Little did he know it would be the first of many things he would pretend in his life.

Jamison worked his shoulders through the drop door and pulled his legs up into the clubhouse. Magazines littered the floor, their pages warped and yellowed with time and whatever weather made it through the big picture window. He'd climbed up three days before, on the day they'd arrived, more interested in the memories he'd find there than in the ones he'd find in the house. But his mom had called him down, in no mood to unload the car alone. He'd been dying to get back up that ladder ever since.

Of course there was nothing there. He'd left nothing behind three days before. Only looking out that window, over the dry-edged stalks of corn, he felt very close to whatever it was he was forgetting.

“Gimme a break,” he muttered.

As he was about to turn away his eye was caught by something waving at him from the field, just on the other side of the fence, wedged high on one of thousands of cornstalks. It was a paper airplane, made from the page of a weather-warped magazine about the same shade as the drying tassels.

For a second he imagined it was one of the airplanes he and Ray, his boyhood friend, had launched out of that window over five years before, but the second passed and he considered how many times the field had been plowed, planted and plowed under again since the last time they'd ripped and folded those pages.

Someone had been up here, recently. Maybe Ray? Had his friend heard he was returning? Had he come up for old time's sake? Who else would remember about the airplanes?

The neighboring property was now owned by a group of Somerleds, not the Parkers who’d grumbled for years over how many magazines had cluttered their field.

One year they'd spent days getting paper cuts and covering the young corn with a blanket of brightly colored planes, only to be grounded from the tree house for a month, after they'd cleaned up the mess.

Mom honked the car horn and Jamison shook off the memory and the odd feeling of forgetfulness as he scurried down the tree.

What he couldn't forget was to go see his granddad. The old man was more important than the moving van and the things in it, including his ancient Honda.

***

“James! I mean Jamison!” The kid from English waved him down before he made it to the main doors. “Hold up, man. We need to talk before we go in.”

Two other classmates joined them.

“’S up?”

“’S up?” The second kid tried to casually lift his droopy jeans with his wrists. What a dork.

Jamison gave them a quick chin lift.

“Hey, uh, you know how Mr. Evans enjoyed your conversation yesterday?”

Jamison frowned. Enjoyed? He doubted it.

“We were thinking, that if you got the old man talking, he might just forget about giving that test, you know?”

“I don't think a teacher would just forget about a test.” Jamison started to walk around the kid.

“No, dude, he totally would.” One of the others, a Latino, moved to cut him off. “He does it all the time. Mr. Evans likes to talk. If you get him going it will buy us another day.”

Jamison doubted these guys would get any more studying done with another day, but said nothing.

“Fine. I'll try, if I get a chance.”

Satisfied, the three hurried into the building ahead of him.

He hated that; people coming to him for help, probably because he was taller than most. He couldn't complain that he was built like his granddad, but that didn't mean he wanted to be a leader. What he did want was to be left alone—for him and his mom to just be left alone.

Jamison wasn't the only one holding his ears when Announcements came over the PA. Perky voices, from overly dramatic cheerleaders standing too close to the microphone, made everyone wince.

Mr. Evans didn't seem to notice; he was texting. When the bombardment stopped, and hands came away from ears, he looked over his bifocals and jumped, as if he'd been caught doing something wrong. Jamison wondered if anyone ever thought to snag his cell to read those messages.

“Mr. Shaw, I believe you decided we should have a test today on
Lost
Horizon
.”

Jamison suspected the groans around him were designed to stall things. No one really expected to get out of the test, did they?

One look around and he realized that more than just the original three classmates were waiting for him to save their butts.