Vengeance (7 page)

“No,” my mom said.

Delaney used that key all the time. “No,” I said. “No one,” I added. Just anyone who ever dropped me off at home. Probably all my friends by now.

“I did,” Delaney said. She kept her eyes on the cop, but she must’ve felt everyone else’s on her. “I’ve used it,” she added. Then she looked at me, like she could feel me staring at the side of her face. “What?” she asked. “It’s true. My fingerprints would be all over that.”

Before Delaney could say any more, before Delaney’s parents could ask anything at all, my mom said, “She and Decker grew up together.” And then there was this perfectly awkward gap of silence where none of us knew what to say after that.

The cop shifted on the sofa, positioning himself toward Delaney. He turned the key over in his hand. “Okay. But just to cross you off the list, is there any reason … that
anyone else
…,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “might think you had a motive to target the Phillips’s house?”

“No,” I said. And I said it fast.

I was lying. Other than the cop, the whole room knew I was lying. And the entire room stayed silent for my lie.

“All right,” he said as he moved the gum from one side of his mouth to the other. He held the bag with the spare key in his hand, narrowing his eyes at it, like he could almost see the answer. “Such an odd thing to do, is all. What’s the point?”

I caught Delaney’s eye from across the room. Looked away. Hard to put that into words without sounding ridiculous. But apparently he didn’t expect us to answer, because he was talking to my mom again. “Mrs. Phillips,” he said, even though they were probably the same age.

“Allison,” she corrected. I didn’t like the way she relaxed against the wall as she said it, or the way he nodded at her when she did.

“Allison,” he repeated. He put the key on the coffee table, rested his elbows on his knees. “We’ll be looking into your late husband’s cases,” he said.
Late husband
. “Like you suggested. But I’m not sure we’ll find a connection.”

My dad was a lifelong public defender. He had wanted to be a prosecutor, but my mom convinced him otherwise. Said it wasn’t safe for our family, which was kind of funny. He still got hate mail, occasionally a threatening visit. Ironically, not from the criminals. From the victims. From the victims’ families.

My mom cleared her throat. “Any timeline you can give us?” she asked. “It’s just that the insurance company won’t pay until they hear from you.”

“Why not?” I asked, wondering how long I’d be stuck sleeping on the floor of Ron’s office.

My mom didn’t respond, so the cop spoke instead. “Just that, given the recent changes in your life …” Meaning
death. “Your insurance company is going to take a hard look at you.”

“I was out,” my mom said, pushing off the wall, her eyes wide. “Since this morning. Everything was fine when I left. You can check.”

“I know,” he said, holding out his hands like he was showing us
he
didn’t think she had anything to do with it. “I meant the both of you.” It took a second for his words to sink in. Me. They’d be looking at me.

“I was out with friends. I was walking home.”

“Could’ve done it before,” he said. I could’ve. It’s true. Then, to my mother, “Not that that’s what I think happened here. But …”

“But my dad’s work …,” I said, much louder than I meant to.

“We know,” he said.

“Maybe someone didn’t know he died.” The cop nodded. Gave me a tight smile. But all I was doing was deflecting accusations with new accusations.

The rain was still falling when the cop put on his hat, shook my mom’s hand, and left. I went into the downstairs office so I wouldn’t have to sit across the room from Delaney while my mom made phone calls and Delaney’s parents shot each other looks across the room, like they were communicating telepathically.

There was a mattress next to the desk in the office, and
someone had tucked the sheets up around it like it was a real bed. My mom had packed a suitcase of my clothes—I wasn’t sure how it was safe for her to go upstairs in our house and not me, but I figured this wasn’t the best time to argue. They were the clothes I never wore, too. The ones hanging in my closet that I mostly ignored. But I guess it was better than her searching through my drawers.

I didn’t sleep that night, staying in someone else’s house, in someone else’s bed. I was thinking of Delaney sleeping peacefully upstairs, with her intact family and her intact house.

I was thinking of the sound of the water dripping down the steps, sliding down the walls, spilling over the tub. Coming for me.

I felt fingers circling my wrist. Kept picturing the way 2B turned to face me, gripping so tightly, like I could keep her here. The way she looked at me, looked into me, as she said,
“Listen.”

My car was still in my driveway the next morning, and I paused for a second as I backed out. I’d always driven Delaney to school. Who would take her? My mom was in their driveway, and she had her phone pressed between her ear and her shoulder as she got into her car. She raised her hand at me in a wave, or like she wanted me to wait.

Delaney wasn’t my problem.

I sped down the street without another glance at their house.

The thing about living in a small town is that there are
very few—if any—secrets. Everyone knew that Janna was back. And everyone knew that my house was flooded, that it was now, as declared,
uninhabitable
. And they knew where I was staying.

“Dude,” Kevin said. “You can stay with me.”

“I know. Thanks. My mom wants me to stay with her. So, I’m stuck.”

Kevin looked somewhere beyond my shoulder. I turned to see Delaney walking by, walking down the hall next to Maya, like she wasn’t annoyed about her attempt to reunite us. She had to be annoyed at her. I knew Delaney. Of course she was annoyed.

“Maya’s mad at me,” Kevin said. Because obviously that was more interesting than someone flooding my house. “I think. I’m not sure.”

“So go find out.”

“Not my style.” He shook his head. “I mean, I’m not a goddamn bus. So I pick her up after getting Justin, who first of all was eating in my car, so I’m already not in a great mood. And I’m not a morning person, which everyone else knows. And she says, ‘Aren’t you getting Delaney?’ No, I don’t get Delaney. Decker gets Delaney. And if Decker doesn’t want to get Delaney, that’s his business. She really doesn’t get how things work here. At all.”

I took it that this was his apology for yesterday, for setting us up in the same house together. But all I could picture was Delaney alone. I left her alone. Again. “I don’t care if you get Delaney,” I said.

“Dude. Not a bus. Like I said.” He shook his head at me, like I was being ridiculous. “Anyway, I called her, just to check, you know? I mean, could you imagine if she got an unexcused tardy?” He smiled, then saw that I wasn’t, and stopped. “She was already on the bus. So the whole argument was a freaking waste. Maya doesn’t get to be pissed.” Then he looked down at the creased paper in his hand. “Who do you have for English?” he asked. And just like that, school had begun. The summer, and everything that had happened in it, was gone.

“Home sweet home,” Janna said, stepping between me and Kevin.

“Little Levine!” some guy called as he walked down the hall. Janna frowned. “
Dead there, too
,” she had said. But at least
there
, people didn’t see her first as an extension of someone else. Someone gone.

I closed my eyes and felt the hands of ice reaching for my neck.

And then the weight of solid hands on my shoulders. “Please,” Janna whispered, her minty breath in my face, her fingers pressing down to my bones. “For the love of God. Get me the hell out of this place.”

“Dead everywhere.”

We skipped first period of the first day of our last year. We were in the woods behind the school—past the sports fields but still in view of the field house. “Okay,” Kevin said, crouched down beside me, “Ready?”

“Please explain to me once again why I’m the one who has to do this?”

“You won’t get in trouble,” Janna said. “Dead dad.” She said it so matter-of-factly, it actually didn’t sting. “Dead brother got me fifteen unexcused absences before they started calling my parents.” She looked at me from the corner of her eye. “I wouldn’t push it that far if I were you, though.”

“Brother trumps dad?”

“Every time,” she said.

The twigs snapped behind us, and I jumped. I think I even gasped. Justin swung his pocket knife back and forth as he walked toward us. “Jumpy much?”

“Excuse me for being on edge. Someone flooded my house.
Yesterday
. Not that anyone seems to care.”

There was a moment of silence, and I realized people hadn’t processed the fact that someone did it. It was just a thing that happened, part of the curse. My house, drenched with water, uninhabitable, while Delaney’s was perfect next door. A trade.

“What do you mean
someone
,” Justin said.

“I
mean
someone broke into my house and flooded it.”

“A pipe burst in our basement once,” Justin said. “Nobody’s fault.”

A chill ran down my neck. They had no idea. Only got half the rumor, I guess. “No,
someone
turned on all the faucets. Blocked the drains.
On purpose
.”

“That is seriously creepy,” Kevin said.

Justin cleared his throat. Nobody wanted to talk about this. Not the curse.

“Am I the only one wondering why?” I looked from Kevin to Justin and realized that, yes, I was definitely the only one wondering why.

“Asking why doesn’t help anything,” Janna said, in this monotone voice. “So says the Arizona shrink.” She stood up straight, like she was pretending to be someone else. “Look forward. Move forward,” she recited, pointing her arm in front of her like an arrow. Then she broke down in laughter.

Justin pulled her down and put a hand over her mouth. “How about not drawing more attention to ourselves, huh?”

She shrugged but crouched back down with the rest of us.

“Maybe because of your dad?” Kevin asked.

I nodded, because he was doing the same thing I was doing. Trying to make sense of it. Make it fit. Take away its power. “Maybe,” I said.

Justin handed me the pocketknife. “We should really come back and do this at night,” I said. “You know, when there’s not five hundred people in the giant brick building with windows across the field.”

“A premeditated act will carry more punishment,” Kevin said, his hand on the nearest trunk, scanning the fields. And suddenly I was back in my house, sneaking out the back door, barefoot, so it wouldn’t seem premeditated, while my dad was dying a few rooms away.

“Godspeed,” Justin said as he pushed me forward, into the clearing.

Janna was smiling—the first time I’d seen a real smile on her since she came back. She had Carson’s smile, only there
was a gap between her front teeth. But if you didn’t look closely, you could see him there.

“Screw you all,” I said, and I took off running across the baseball field.

The field house was painted gold and blue, but the gold had faded in the sun to kind of a sad yellow. And the blue had gotten grayish. Weathered. I was hoping if anyone from the science wing looked out the window, they’d think I was maintenance or something, just doing work on the long wall. I hoped they wouldn’t look for too long, or too closely. I hoped they didn’t see the sun catch off the blade in my hand as I carved the giant letters into the paint.

It took much longer than I’d thought, and the adrenaline wore off when I was on the third letter. I jerked my hand down, cutting boxy lines into the wood, thinking of Janna and Justin and Kevin watching me. Thinking there was no way Delaney would be out here watching me. No way she’d skip class or sneak around campus or vandalize school property. Even for this.

I didn’t stop to admire my work when I finished, just took off across the fields again, toward the woods.

Kevin patted my back. Janna had that same smile—part mischief, part happiness. I passed the knife to her and said, “You’re welcome,” as my palm connected with hers.

Her smile disappeared. “It’s not for
me
, Decker.”

I rolled my eyes before I could stop myself. Of course it was. Carson was gone. And it sure as hell wasn’t for
me
.

It wasn’t until fourth period, in science class, that I risked
a look out the window. Smiled to myself as I saw the words: CARSON WAS HERE.

Janna wanted to do something for Carson. Like a memorial or something. A reminder. This was Kevin’s idea. He thought it would adequately freak people out. Janna agreed. She said if people were going to talk about him, might as well make it big. And it was so perfectly literal as well—Carson had been in that field house. Many times. With many different girls.

It was perfect.

I walked into my house after school. It was instinct, and I was already inside before I realized I wasn’t supposed to be here. Cleanup definitely hadn’t started, despite what my mom had said. Nobody had changed anything.

The wood floor throughout was dark, soaked. Stained by water. And the walls were streaked, so the paint was bubbling in sections. It felt humid inside. Stifling.

I tested the first step. It creaked but seemed solid. My mom said the drywall was damaged, that the flooring had to be assessed, but everything seemed fine. It’s just water, anyway.

Just water.

I tiptoed up the rest of the steps. The hall seemed fine. My room seemed fine, everything exactly as I’d left it. Everything was just damp and streaked with water. I took a bag out of the top of my closet and started emptying drawers into it.

I scanned the surfaces of my desk, my dresser. After losing people, I didn’t care so much about things. But I couldn’t
stop myself from pulling out the top drawer, seeing Delaney’s notebook wedged under a bunch of school crap I never used. She kept it here because she thought it was safer in the mess of my room. She’d kept it since January, trying to find the patterns. Each page had a name. Or an address. Or a location—maybe a description. What she felt and when she felt it. And then … the obituary. Like she could quantify it. Find an answer in the passage of time. There was math in the margins. Her trying to assign what she felt on a scale of one to ten. Her comparing it to the time until death. It didn’t belong here anymore. I grabbed it before closing the drawer again.