Relic (14 page)

 

***

 

I stopped twice because of cramps, and it was almost three o'clock in the morning when I made it back to my block. I slogged past the spot where I'd met Colin earlier, hoping he would be there. He wasn't. “I hope you got out of there, Colin,” I said under my breath. I considered going by his house and knocking on his bedroom window, but I was too exhausted, and I could just as easily send him an email when I got home.

The neighborhood was still asleep when I turned onto my street. Every thought imaginable had entered my head on the long walk home. I imagined the police somehow tracing my bike back to me, or fingerprinting the rock I'd thrown through the picture window, and coming to my house to arrest me. Or maybe Detective Peters would remember those three kids who said there was going to be a break-in at the museum and think we were responsible.

Yet the houses were still dark and the street was utterly deserted. No one jumped out of the bushes to arrest me. No patrol cars were in my driveway. Nothing. As I climbed the lattice back up to the roof and crept through my bedroom window, I tried to feel good about what had happened. Colin and I had stopped a robbery. The security guard and Sok were both alive. It was a success. Except that I could still hear the gunshot, and every time I closed my eyes, I imagined the homeless man collapsed against the fence, a bullet hole in his chest. In my experience, when people shoot guns, someone always dies.

 

I don't know how long it took me to get to sleep, but I woke up to someone poking me in the neck. I blinked twice and nearly peed my pants when I saw Becky's frizzy head a couple inches in front of my face. She clamped her hand over my mouth before I could yell and put a finger to her lips.

She took a couple deep breaths. “What are you into, Dean?” she whispered.

I rubbed my eyes and sat up. “What? Get out of my—”

“Shhhhh,” she said, pressing her finger to her lips. Then she shook her head. She seemed really worried. It wasn't a look I'd seen a lot on Becky and it had a silencing effect on me.

She slapped a newspaper onto my legs. It was opened to a middle section and near the bottom of the page there was a small article with the title:
Seeking Three Angels
.

I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and was about to read the article but Becky pulled it away. “It's about three kids who saved a guy at the mall.” Her voice was still a whisper. “The guy wants to thank them.”

I felt my eyes widen and I snatched the paper back and scanned the page. There wasn't any reference to me, Lisa, or Colin. Just some vague accounts by a couple people who thought they saw three kids helping a man with a peanut allergy.

I sighed and tossed the page back to Becky.

“It wasn't you?” she asked.

I swallowed. Last thing I needed was for Becky to run to my parents with this. I shook my head.

“Really? Because it happened the day Mom and I picked you and Lisa and Colin up from the mall.”

“Becky,” I said. “It wasn't me, okay? Now, why are you whispering?”

She nodded toward my bedroom door. “I don't know what you did. But there's a policewoman downstairs and she's talking to Mom and Dad about you.”

I jumped out of bed. “Now?” I asked, frantic. “She's down there right now?”

“Shut up, you idiot,” Becky whispered. “If they hear you, they'll call you downstairs. Mom or Dad will be up here any second. What the heck did you do anyway? Is it about what happened at the mall?”

“The mall? No…I, um, didn't do anything,” I said. “Nothing. Nothing at all. I didn't do anything.”

“Uh-huh,” Becky said. “If they ask what you did, you might want to just say ‘Nothing' once. When you say it a dozen times like that, you sound really guilty. And kind of crazy too.”

She raised an eyebrow, stepped closer, and plucked something from my hair. “A leaf.” She spun the stem between her fingers and waved her hand at me. “You look like you just went for a run in the woods.” Before I could ask Becky what she wanted in exchange for her silence, she said something that surprised me. “If I were you, I'd jump in the shower, fast. And stop looking so…guilty. Jeez.”

I grabbed clothes from the floor and sprinted, as silently as I could, for the bathroom. The whole time I was in the shower, all I could think was that maybe Colin had been captured, or maybe the homeless man had been killed. That, and my shoulder and back were killing me. I'd hit the pavement twice, and there was the beginning of a bruise on my arm and shoulder.

When I walked into the kitchen, I tried to do it innocently, but I'm sure I didn't look innocent at all. Detective Peters sat at the kitchen table with my mom and dad. She smiled when I walked in, but my mom spoke first.

“Dean.” She looked like she was going to cry, and I wondered what they'd been talking about. “Apparently you know Detective Peters.” It was one of those statements that might be a question so I wasn't sure how to respond. My mom didn't look angry—she looked hurt. I think she was really asking me why I hadn't told her about my visit with Detective Peters.

I nodded, and when I spoke, I concentrated on keeping my voice even despite my heart hammering against my ribs. “Good morning, Detective Peters.”

“Good morning, Dean. I was just telling your mom and dad about our little meeting yesterday.”

I blinked several times while I struggled for an appropriate response, one that wouldn't incriminate me but was still something a normal fourteen-year-old boy would say. These days, it was increasingly difficult to figure out what was and was not normal. “Did something happen at the museum?” I asked.

“Some vandalism,” my dad said. Becky sidled into the kitchen and hovered by the sink. My dad cleared his throat and added, “Detective Peters said you might have overheard some people discussing a robbery.”

I swallowed back my guilt and my desire to just come out and ask if the homeless man was okay. Had he been shot? Was he dead? But of course, if I asked that, they'd know I'd been there, and then I'd have even more explaining to do. I'd seen those police shows; I knew cops had special interrogation techniques and lie detector machines. If I wasn't careful, I could end up exposing the entire Society. I couldn't let that happen. I forced a laugh, but it came out sounding like a strangled goat.

“That's what it sounded like anyway,” I managed. “But after talking to Detective Peters yesterday, well, um, we figured we just didn't hear properly. And since it was just some vandalism, I guess you were right. Did you at least catch them?”

The detective tapped her lips and looked like she was trying to translate what I'd just said. “No.” She shook her head. “There were some distractions. They got away.”

I wanted to shout and give someone a high five. No one caught? No one? That meant Colin had gotten away. It also meant that the homeless man wasn't dead…didn't it? “That's too bad,” I said, struggling to keep from smiling.

The detective cleared her throat. “Yesterday you said the people you heard sounded like adults?”

I nodded. “That's right.”

My dad leaned over the counter and looked at me carefully. “A witness saw a kid running away from the museum last night.”

I gasped. “What?” I shouldn't have been so surprised. It's not like I had tried to stay hidden. “Did they get a good look at him, um, or her?”

“No,” Detective Peters answered. “But one of the officers on the scene swears she heard a young boy yell out at her. Is there any chance you might have heard kids, not adults?”

I shook my head.

“Is there anything else you remember, Dean?” my dad asked. “Maybe you, um, recognized the voice or something? The witnesses didn't get a good look, but said it could have been a shorter adult or maybe a young boy.” His voice changed to what Becky and I called his
therapist tone
. “Sometimes, when someone's been in the spotlight a lot, it might feel really good, and they might do things to make sure it doesn't end. So if you know someone that might apply to…a friend perhaps?”

My dad was obviously talking about me. I wondered how close the description of the fleeing kid had been. Did they know it had been me for sure? No. I decided quickly. If Detective Peters knew for sure, she wouldn't mess around. She seemed too tough for that. “I didn't recognize the voices,” I said, working very hard not to sound guilty and resisting the urge to look at the floor. I read somewhere that liars always look at the floor.

My mom sobbed, and a tear rolled down her cheek.

“It wasn't me, Mom.” I didn't want to lie, especially when my mom was already so emotional, but what choice did I have? There'd be too much explaining to do if I just told them the truth. Plus, if you belong to a secret society, lying is something you just have to get used to…right?

“Dean, no one said it was you. But if you wanted attention,” my mom began, “or if you feel you need to act out to get some—”

“I don't want attention,” I snapped. I looked at Detective Peters. “I really don't want anything. I'm really sorry the place got vandalized. That's a real shame. But I've already told you everything.”

The detective tilted her head. “Then you didn't sneak out last night?”

“W—What?” My voice squeaked, and I think I sounded like I was
trying
to sound shocked, rather than actually being shocked. My dad raised an eyebrow.

“Dean? Sneak out? Ha! Yeah, right.” Becky laughed. She had her hands on her hips and scrunched her face. Detective Peters gave her a double look, which I wasn't sure if she did because of what my sister had said or because she noticed Becky's frizzy mop of hair. That hair is enough to make anyone do a double take—or triple for that matter.

“Sweetie,” my dad said, “now's not the time to make fun of your brother.”

Detective Peters nodded at Becky. “You don't think your brother would sneak out?”

“She doesn't think anything,” I said. “She's allergic to thinking.”

Becky's face flushed, and she glared at me for a few seconds and then turned back to the detective. “What I mean is that Dean's too much of a chicken to sneak out at night. Just the other day he was so afraid of the dark that he asked my parents if he could sleep in their room.”

“Oh,” Detective Peters said. The way she said it made me think she didn't believe Becky, which was good, but it still stopped her from following that line of questioning.

Any other time, I'd defend myself, but my sister's little gibe actually seemed to make me look innocent, so I decided to keep quiet. I gave Becky a sideways glance and wondered if she had seen me sneak out, or maybe she'd heard me sneak back in. I couldn't tell if she was helping me or teasing me. It didn't matter.

“Okay, kids,” my dad said. “That's enough.” He turned back to the detective. “Do you have any other questions for my son?”

“No,” she said, standing up from the table. “I think I got what I came for. There were a lot of angry protestors at the museum yesterday, and several of them were kids. The vandals could be any of them.”

Or none of them
, I thought. I considered the gunshot again, and the homeless man. Would Detective Peters be so calm if someone had been shot? I was so full of nerves, it felt like someone was taking a blender to my insides.

My parents walked her out, and as soon as the door was closed, they turned and faced me.

“Dean,” my dad said, “is there anything you want to say to us?”

My mom grabbed a tissue from a table in the entrance and blew her nose. “It wasn't you, was it, Dean? You wouldn't do that, would you? And you're not protecting anyone, are you?”

I had a long morning ahead of me.

 

It took another two hours of insisting I wasn't some out-of-control attention-seeker before my parents let me leave the house. “It's just an odd coincidence, Dean,” my dad had said, “that, not long after you get kicked out of the museum, it gets vandalized.”

In the end, they agreed with Detective Peters that it could have been any of the protestors. My mom kept asking me if I wanted a hug, and Becky kept sniggering from the back of the kitchen and mouthing the word “baby” over and over. I couldn't bring myself to get mad at her, though. Whether Becky had meant to or not, she'd helped convince the cop that I wasn't the culprit, even if Detective Peters now thought I was some blubbering wimp who slept with his mommy and daddy. I shuddered at that thought as I walked down the block.

Colin's house was huge—at least twice as big as my house, probably three times. It even had an iron gate at the front of the driveway, though I'd never actually seen it closed—not even at night. Colin didn't brag, or even talk about being rich, but he was.

“About time you got here!” Colin said when he came to the door. “Lisa's been here for half an hour already. What took you so long?” He grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me into the house before I could answer and then shoved me across his tiled foyer and up the staircase.

“That detective came to my house first,” Lisa said. “I tried to call you, but your mom said you were still sleeping.”

“It's okay,” I said. “It wasn't a big deal.”

“Then they don't suspect us?” Colin asked.

I shook my head. “But what the heck happened to you last night? Why did it take you so long to call the cops?”

“My walkie-talkie wasn't working,” he said. “Then as soon as the cops showed up, I took off. I figured you did the same. Except…”

“What?” I asked.

Lisa pursed her lips. “Colin said he heard a gunshot. I knew it wasn't true.”

“I know what I heard,” Colin said. He turned to me. “I actually thought I heard you shouting just before the shot. I thought you'd been killed, man. I even waited by the meeting place for an hour, hoping you'd stop by, but you never showed.”