0.5-Stone and Spark Read online

  "You pick your hypothesis," I say, "and you gather the evidence, and if that evidence makes your hypothesis look wrong, you change your hypothesis. Right?"

  "Right."

  "I've been praying my brains out, I prayed in church this morning. And what did it get me? Her shoe. Buried in a quarry."

  There is only more silence. So heavy DeMott cracks his window for fresh air. I feel the wind wash into the cab, and suddenly realize what this quiet feels like: a funeral.

  It feels like we just attended a funeral, without a body.

  DeMott pulls into Teddy's driveway. The neighbors are still toiling in their yards. The leaves are gathered into neat piles. Gathered so quickly the grass underneath is still green. In the fading sunlight, the whole thing looks like some bygone era where good and industrious citizens cheerfully completed their chores.

  Teddy glares at them. They look away.

  "You make up your own mind," he says. "But I'll give you one good reason why I don't believe in God. You want to hear it?"

  Desperately.

  So desperately I don't dare open my mouth.

  "Every Sunday morning, all of these neighbors of mine go to church. Then they come home, eat supper, and work on their yards. At Christmas they light up the trees and on Easter they gussy up and strut around like hens. But not one of them has ever walked up to my door and asked if I needed help. Not one. These good Christian folks, you know what they do? They call the city and complain about my yard. Say I'm ruining their property values. Now you tell me, why would I want to have anything to do with the God these people follow?”

  The three of us sit there, staring at the neighbors who continue to steal glances at DeMott's truck. But they never stop working.

  The funeral feeling gets worse. So bad my heart aches inside my chest.

  "You know what my dad says?" I ask. "He says, ‘If you think they're bad now, imagine if they weren't Christians.’"

  "Huh." Teddy says. "Judge's got a point. But I think I got one too."

  DeMott climbs heavily out of the truck and quietly closes his door. I stare straight ahead, at the hanging shutters. My heart feels so fragile right now, it's like if I turn my head, the whole thing will shatter. There's a long metal scrape in back as DeMott takes the wheelchair out of the truck.

  "Right nice dude," Teddy says. "You like him."

  "He belongs to Tinsley Teager."

  "Ain't no way on God's green earth that's right—not that I believe in God."

  The passenger door opens. Teddy turns to DeMott.

  "Son, I feel as beat as the lead dog after the fox hunt. You mind liftin' me?"

  There isn't one second of hesitation. DeMott reaches out, slipping his right arm under Teddy's limp legs. His left arm goes behind his back, and when his hand touches me by accident, a hot flash sears into me. My heart reacts like it got hit with those electric paddles they use to revive dead people.

  DeMott lifts Teddy, sets him in the chair.

  Just like that.

  Like he's done it a million times.

  I turn my head, glancing at the neighbors. Their heads are bowed over their duties, but they're stealing even more glances.

  At the top of the wheelchair ramp, Teddy fishes in his pocket for a key. It takes him a long time. In all the time he's been my teacher, Teddy's never really seemed handicapped. He barrels through life, hollering, bellowing, greeting every day with so much gusto he intimidates everyone.

  DeMott pushes the front door open. But when he comes back behind the chair, he pauses. I see him kneel down, looking up into Teddy's face. His voice, sliding through the truck's open window, sounds calm.

  "I believe in God," he says. "Someday I hope you will too."

  If Teddy replies, I don't hear it.

  DeMott stands, and pushes the chair though the door.

  I lean forward. I put my hand on my heart, trying to stop the pain. When I look up through the windshield, the sky is amethyst blue. The first whisper of dusk.

  ***

  With the light that remains and the flyers printed in Drew's bedroom, DeMott and I cover the entire neighborhood around St. Catherine's. I hold the paper, and DeMott slams his palm into a stapler borrowed from Teddy.

  Every telephone pole.

  Every sidewalk tree.

  Every bulletin board outside the cafes on Grove Avenue.

  We even walk into the Country Club of Virginia, down the block from St. Catherine’s. The receptionist at the front desk smiles at DeMott.

  "Hello, Mr. Fielding."

  Mr.?

  "Hi, Mary," DeMott says. He hands her a flyer.

  She looks at it, then looks up. There is so much sadness on her tan face.

  "I'll have to ask the manager," she says. "He'll be in tomorrow."

  She sets the flyer aside. I stare down at the page. Drew grins up from it. She's pretty in a bookish way. Big brown eyes, so bright that it seems the headline reads like a joke: HAVE YOU SEEN HER?

  I want to grab this woman Mary and scream, "Don't wait for management—hang the thing up!"

  It's our last flyer.

  But instead of screaming, I turn away, walking beside DeMott to the Country Club's parking lot.

  "I've got a flashlight," he says. "We could print some more, go hang them."

  Dusk is gone. The night is so chilly that his words ride on a silver cloud of condensation. I shake my head. Maybe I even shivered, because when I get in the truck he offers me his Carhart jacket. And I accept it. The rough material still smells like clean laundry. But there's another part, too. The sweaty boy part. And it smells fine.

  "What time is it?" I ask.

  "Close to seven."

  "I need to get home."

  There is more silence in the truck. But it's different now. Tense. Anxious. I'm thinking about tomorrow, and about what the chances are my mom will see one of those flyers. Maybe there's one good thing about her going into another episode: she won't leave the house. The voices in her head keep her inside, scared.

  When I glance up, DeMott's driving around the Robert E. Lee rotary. Standing in the floodlights, the general and his horse Traveler shine.

  "Raleigh."

  I'm staring at our huge house. Through the magnolia leaves I can see lights inside. I am dreading going in there, dreading telling my dad this new development with Drew, dreading the maneuvers we'll have to devise to keep my mom from knowing.

  Maybe this is why, as a kid, I never liked playing hide-and-seek. That never seemed like a game to me. It was my life.

  “Raleigh?”

  He's stopped at the curb outside our front entrance. The grand entryway facing the even grander avenue.

  Once again, it feels like I can't turn my head. My heart is hurting more. But I force myself.

  The glow from his dashboard, the soft light of the streetlights, they make his features look even more like a sculptor's version of the perfect face for a young man.

  "If you need anything," he says, "and I mean anything, don't hesitate."

  I nod and open the truck's passenger door. The dome light comes on. His eyes, they're dark again. Like all this hard reality—evidence and police and missing-person flyers—settled into him.

  A thought, a memory slips through my mind. Something my sister Helen once said. She was classmates with DeMott's older sister, Jillian. One day her art class toured the Fieldings' plantation house, Weyanoke. Helen came home and said, "Those Fieldings live completely insulated from reality."

  Not anymore.

  "Thanks," I tell him, wishing I could dredge up more warmth in my voice. But I can only maneuver out of his jacket, offer it back him.

  He doesn't take it. "You want to get some dinner?"

  "Now?"

  "Or whenever," he adds quickly. "And we don't have to talk about . . . you know. Unless you want to."

  I lay the jacket on the seat between us. When I grab the door, not opening it further and not closing it, I can feel the night air. It brushes into the wa
rm cab and I wonder if maybe this moment will be Before. Before I hear something really awful from the police. And then everything will be After. After life is never the same again. And what's even weirder is, I can feel this moment, another real-but-invisible thing, like what my dad tells me about an invisible stitching that holds the world together.

  "Thanks," I glance over at DeMott again. "Thanks for the offer, but I don't think I'll be very good company tonight."

  "Maybe another time."

  "Maybe." I take my backpack from the floor and step out on the sidewalk.

  "Hey," he says, leaning to speak through the open door. "I hope this doesn't sound wrong, but in spite of everything bad that happened today, I liked hanging out with you."

  It does sound wrong. But the odd thing is, I actually enjoyed having him around. And that's totally not like me. I like solitude, especially if I'm upset. And yet, my back still feels warm from where he put his hand when I had to talk to Jayne. And I can still feel the warmth from his jacket, like a blanket over my shoulders.

  But I have no idea how to say any of that.

  "Okay," he says, glancing away. "Guess I'll see you around, somewhere."

  I nod, close the door, stand on the sidewalk as his truck rumbles down Monument Avenue. At the JEB Stuart rotary, his taillights flash red, shimmering in the dark. The truck circles the rearing horse, and then it is gone.

  "Yeah," I whisper. "See you around. Somewhere."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  My one hope—my last hope on this awful day—is to reach the back stairs without being seen so I can run to my bedroom and check my email, find some message from Drew.

  But the kitchen tonight smells of beef and salt and my mother's frantic attempts to pretend she's normal.

  "Your jeans are dirty," she says the second I step through the back door.

  I look down. I've left my All Stars outside, as a precaution, but now I see the quarry dirt is smeared into my jeans, where I kneeled down to take soil samples, photographs. The image of Drew's purple Converse flashes through my mind.

  When I look up, my dad is wearing that expression which says Blessed Are The Peacemakers.

  "Hiking," I say.

  "Hiking?" she repeats. "You went hiking?"

  It doesn't matter how much heat is radiating from the oven, or how much our old windows are sweating from her domestic efforts--the whole room freezes. Nobody breathes, each of us waiting for the very next words that will determine whether this night goes up or down, light or dark, forward or back.

  "DeMott."

  That's all I come up with.

  Her eyes are moving quickly, her mind adding everything up and two plus two will never equal four.

  And my own mind is scrambling, ransacking for one full sentence that isn't also a lie. "DeMott," I repeat. "He wanted to show me around Weyanoke."

  It's true: he wanted to; I just didn’t go.

  In the next frozen silence, I walk across the room and set my pack down on the bottom of the back stairs. I am too tired, too distressed, too defeated to make another attempt at explaining what can't be explained. I want to run upstairs, slam my bedroom door, and lock it forever. I saw the look on my dad's face. No way can I talk to him tonight about Drew. He's got his hands full.

  Without replying, my mom turns and opens the oven door. My stomach growls but my head overrides it, wondering what she's cooking.

  "DeMott seems like a good guy," my dad says.

  I don't say anything.

  "Do you like him?" he asks.

  She answers for me: "He's going to marry Raleigh."

  I look at my dad, horrified. He laughs.

  "Does Raleigh have any say in this?" he asks.

  "Yes." She pulls the casserole dish from the oven. "God told me she's going to say yes."

  I feel sick. My dad laughs again, so relieved that she's taken this new track with the conversation. But she doesn't get that. She looks over at him, confusion clouding her face. Somehow it hits her that she's apparently made a joke. She laughs, tentatively. But it's enough to get them chattering. I push a smile on my face and take my place at the table. That familiar lump camps in my throat. It won't help me choke down whatever is under the muddy-brown casserole sauce.

  She serves us. We pray. My dad takes a bite, tells her it's delicious. She tells us—happily—that it's meatless meatloaf.

  My first bite tastes like somebody made a brick out of oatmeal then coated it with burnt ketchup.

  I try to swallow that bite, pushing the food around my plate. Suddenly I miss Drew so much my eyes sting. She's the only one I could describe this meal to, then laugh.

  And even though he's sitting right across the table, I also miss my dad. Somehow I was stupid enough to expect I could come home and tell him what happened today.

  "Raleigh."

  I push back the burn in my eyes. Then look up.

  His gaze is locked on me. "You're awfully quiet."

  I drop my eyes. His is clean. He's eaten every bite of the oat-brick.

  "Just tired," I tell him. "May I be excused?"

  "You're not hungry?"

  "No, sir."

  He frowns. "Hope you're not getting sick."

  Normally, if my mom hears we're coming down with an illness, she leaps up to make herbal concoctions that supposedly boost our immune systems. And my dad and I both look at her, waiting for her reaction.

  She remains silent.

  And why not?

  If I'm not her real daughter, my health is my problem.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Monday morning makes me wonder if I'm turning into my mom.

  I can feel people watching me, looking at me. All through my first three classes—History, Latin, Biology—their eyes are on me. But whenever I turn around, nobody's looking. But still some invisible hand keeps tapping me on the shoulder.

  By lunch I feel rattled walking into the cafeteria, tossing my sack lunch in the garbage because—in yet another med-induced mania of domesticity—my mom has packed me a sandwich made of meatless meatloaf, slapped together from last night's leftovers. When my dad saw it, he slipped me money for lunch. I buy a grilled cheese sandwich from the cafeteria and carry it across the lunchroom, sitting at our usual spot by the back windows.

  I can't taste the food.

  Loneliness. Worry. Fear. It's all there.

  But there's this other thing, a feeling in the air. Even if I can't name it, couldn't describe it if a knife was held to my throat, it's here—in the atmosphere.

  And it scares the crap out of me, because I'm pretty sure this is how life feels for my mom all the time.

  I want to leave the cafeteria but lunch isn't over, and Tinsley's table of rich girls camps right by the exit, to check out everyone coming and going. There's no way around them.

  Tossing my lunch in the trash, then taking a deep breath, I walk toward the exit. Suddenly they stop talking. And just as suddenly I can feel every pleat in my plaid skirt, every seam in the white blouse. Like my skin's too alive.

  "Don't forget your promise, Raleigh," says Tinsley.

  I bite down on my tongue, shove open the door.

  The hall is empty.

  At my locker, I stare at Drew's combination lock. That white arrow isn't pointed at zero. It makes me feel ashamed, how petty I was being Friday night. I turn the dial, slowly ticking past each number.

  What about a message, I wonder.

  A note.

  What if Drew did run away, but snuck back into school? Took her books? My fingers start to shake, twisting the dial back and forth, clicking through her combination. A note that will explain the missing shoe, apologize for not telling me about the move, reveal where she's hiding—I yank open the locker.

  The textbooks stand at attention, each one waiting alphabetically for her return. Inside the door, Richard P. Feynman grins at me.

  I slam the locker and spin the dial. My eyes burn so hot it's difficult to see that white arrow. I replace it the way D
rew would want it, straight up. When I paw through my locker, three words hammer through my head: Do Not Cry. I have Lit next, and Tinsley's in there, and if she sees one trace of a tear, it'll be the end.

  I grab Rossetti's poetry and hold the book to my chest like a shield, work my way down the now-crowded hallway. I feel eyes again and the bitter memories leap up, begging to be recognized. It feels like first day of school. No, worse. It feels like the day in second grade when I overheard some other mothers talking about "Nadine." We were backstage at a Thanksgiving play. I was waiting in the wings, unrecognizable in my costume. One of the moms said Nadine "wasn't all there, bless her heart." And they talked about how we'd been "dirt poor" until David Harmon came along.

  Drew is the one girl who has never judged me for anything that wasn't my fault. I stare at the floor. My shoes. Do. Not. Cry. When I reach the corner, I look up to avoid bumping into anyone.

  That's when I see the tall man.

  He's way over six feet tall, towering over this sea of girls. Also he has a face that looks like a wooden mask carved by angry natives.

  But it's his eyes that stop me. Pin me to the floor. Most people haven't spent their formative years in criminal court listening to police testimony, so most people would miss his eyes. This guy's got the scan, the veteran cop look-around. The way cops barely move their heads but their eyes are seeing everything.

  He walks right up to me. My pulse thuds.

  "Would you happen to be Raleigh Harmon?" he asks.

  He wears sport coat with jeans. Probably to cover a gun.

  "I'm Detective Mike Holmgren," he continues, knowing full well who I am. "I'm with the Richmond Police."

  The crowd swims around us, but it's lost the usual frantic commotion of fourth hour. When I glance over my shoulder, Tinsley's group is standing in a half circle, gaping at us. I can't really blame them. He's a Big Scary Dude.

  The good news, I decide, is that I'm not paranoid like my mom. People really are watching me.