Spontaneous (9 page)

T
en minutes after Dylan dropped me off at my house, Tess was picking me up and I was giving her a rundown of the date.

“So many red flags,” she said as she drove us in the direction of the police station. “So, so many.”

“I know, I know.”

“Let's forget all the Jane Rolling stuff and focus on the whole ‘burn all you fuckers to the ground' Facebook post
,
why don't we?”

I smiled sheepishly, and said, “He was a child. Twelve.”

“Psychopaths have childhoods too. Full of fire and dissected roadkill. And he let his brother take the blame for him? What's that all about?”

“His brother wanted to take the blame. Warren wanted out of Connecticut and this gave him an out. Dylan was helping him. Or at least he thought he was.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

I would. I would keep telling myself that, because that's what
Dylan told me before he dropped me off. It won't surprise you to hear that I'm a skeptical person. I don't even believe half the garbage that tumbles from my own mouth. So putting my faith in Dylan was a big deal.

“Dylan hasn't lied to me,” I said. “Not yet.”

“How do you know?”

“Because this is precisely the stuff he should be lying about.”

“So he's a fountain of honesty. And yet here you are, secretly stalking him.”

We were now parked alongside the road, between two news vans, a half block from the police station. Dylan's ice-cream truck was in the station's parking lot. We hadn't arrived in time to see him go inside, but where else could he be?

“If Dylan asks me, ‘Did you follow me to my rendezvous with Special Agent Carla Rosetti of the FBI?' then I will say, ‘I understand that Tess might have driven me near the vicinity of the police station while you were inside with aforementioned government employee.'”

“Oh, honey,” Tess said. “You're in deep, aren't you?”

“Hit the deck,” I shouted, and I grabbed Tess by the shirt and pulled her below the horizon of the dash.

“Whoa,” she howled. “A simple ‘slide down, please' would have worked fine. I'm guessing you spotted them?”

Head poking up and on a swivel, I checked the windows. “They're getting in her car. She drives a Tesla.”

“She's so rad,” Tess said. “I bet she plays poker. Hangs out at high roller tables wearing aviators and chewing a toothpick. I bet they call her Lady Nightshade.”

“No doubt,” I said, and I sat up. “They're pulling away. We're gonna have to tail 'em.”

Tess checked her mirrors, pushed the bangs out of her eyes, checked her mirrors again, slipped the car in reverse.

“Come on, come on,” I said. “Haven't you ever tailed anyone before? Step on it!”

Ever since forever, Tess could scold me with nothing more than a sigh. She sighed long and deep and said, “We will follow them. But we will be safe. A car chase is not how I plan to go out.”

“Fine,” I replied with a groan. “You know that I love you, right? Bunches and bunches.”

“You better,” she said as she pulled into traffic. “Bunches and bunches and bunches and bunches.”

We were four cars behind Carla and Dylan. If a couple of stoplights didn't go our way, we'd lose them. Which wouldn't be the end of the world, considering that Dylan said he'd fill me in on everything, but that was the equivalent of reading a recap of a TV show instead of watching it. When it's information versus experience, you always choose experience.

As we tailed them around the corner, past the Wawa and the Little League field, a text from Dylan lit up my phone.

Why are you following us?

“Dammit! They made us,” I said.

“That's Lady Nightshade for you,” Tess replied. “Can't get anything past her.”

I started to type a response:

We're out for a drive. You just happened . . .

Then I thought better of it. Deleted and retyped.

Me: Busted! Sorry. Curiosity.

Dylan: It's cool. Carla wants you to join us. She'll drive slow.

Tess must have seen my eyes go googly. “What's up?” she asked.

“Double date.”

T
he parking lot next to the long-abandoned factory off Wooderson Road was thick with weeds. And the weeds themselves were thick. Like, celery thick. The sound of them smacking the undercarriage of Tess's Honda was a jungle sound. Why the hell were we out here?

Because Special Agent Carla Rosetti was calling the shots, that's why. As we pulled in, she was already parked, out of her car, and putting up a hand like a traffic cop. Something that looked like a DustBuster dangled from her other hand.

“Reach for the sky,” she hollered as we exited the vehicle.

We did our best, tippy-toeing and stretching out as Rosetti waved the device over Tess's body. The thing was connected by a cable to her phone, where an app flashed and blipped.

“Metal detector?” Tess asked. “Because I have a tin of Altoids in my pocket.”

“Won't matter,” Rosetti said. “This detects radiation. Explosives. The nasty stuff. It's what the Secret Service uses. Top of the line.”

Rosetti moved on to me, leaning in as she swept my body for . . . who knows what? Spontaneous combustion juice? As she bent over and her hair brushed my face, I gave her a good sniff.

A little weird, I admit. But also informative.

Rosetti wore perfume. Nice perfume. Not that I expected her to smell like coffee and gunpowder, but it was surprising how subtle and soft her scent was. Undergarments were now something to wonder about. What manner of lace was rubbing up against her holsters?

“Both clean,” she said as she moved the device past my ankles and stood up. Man, did I want her to spin the thing in her hand and blow on it like the smoking barrel of a pistol, but all she did was slap it to her hip and carry it back to the Tesla.

Dylan had joined us at this point, hands in pockets, looking adorable and a tad nervous.

“Nice to see you again, Dylan,” Tess said.

“And you,” Dylan said, and he did a little bow. Which ignited the polite young lady in Tess and she responded with a little curtsy. I joined in by dancing little pirouettes, because . . . well, because I'm odd.

“Enjoying ourselves?” Rosetti asked when she returned from her car.

Pirouettes are usually best not left unfinished, but Rosetti deserved my respect, so I stopped one halfway through, planted
my feet, threw my arms to the side, and said, “Sorry. I get carried away.”

Rosetti waved a dismissive hand and said, “You're a child.”

So harsh, but at that moment, unfortunately true. I didn't say another word.

“And who are you?” she then asked Tess. “Friend?”

“Um . . . I'm Tess McNulty and I like to think of myself as more than—”

“What's your deal, Tess McNulty?” Rosetti asked. “Give it to me quick.”

The poise that had guided Tess through so many math olympiad victories and slam-dunk babysitting interviews leaked from her body like the whites from a cracked egg. “Well,” she said. “I'm, well, I told you my name and I guess I'd say . . . well, I'm hoping to go to RIT in the fall. Oh, and I was on the field hockey team but, you know, the season was canceled and . . . I like music and movies and . . . stuff?”

Rosetti did her shittiest to feign interest, stare-squinting, and clearly waiting for Tess to shut up. When she was finally given an opening, she said, “Tell me this, Miss McNulty. Do you blow people up?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Good to know. Moving on.”

“Why are we here?” I asked. It was the middle of the day, sunny and perfectly pleasant, but the place was giving me the creeps. It wasn't the weeds or the cracked bricks of the building, or even the overall hauntedness of the place. It was the odor: metallic and animal at the same time, a rusty rot.

“Glad you asked,” Rosetti said, and she pointed at the building. “Do you know what this used to be?”

“My dad always told me they made fertilizer,” Dylan said.

Rosetti smiled and said, “Dad was a good liar. Or maybe he never knew the truth. Truth is, this place was into far dirtier things than that. And when you're located on a river and you do dirty things, well, I don't know all the details, but let's just say there was a time in the fifties when kids downstream were born with their organs on the outside.”

I couldn't see it, but I could hear the rush of the Patchcong River through the trees. We were at the bottom of the gorge on the edge of town, not far from the reservoir where all the county's water originated.

“Shit,” I said. “So you think we're all drinking tainted water and that's why—”

“No,” Rosetti said. “They dealt with all that years ago. Cleaned up and covered up. But this place
is
a symbol. Something is tainted in your town. But it's something new. Even nastier than what came before.”

It made me think of that novel I had been working on. You know,
All the Feels
? It was set in the town of Cloverton, New Jersey, where seedy secrets are the stock in trade, and the seediest secret is the one kept by the protagonist—the intrepid and smoking-hot Xavier Rothman. I decided that if I was going to write more of it, then I should add a character with Rosettiesque qualities. A scenery-chomping detective with supersleuth abilities.

“Okay, so then why are
we
here?” Dylan asked.

“Because I wanted a moment in private, away from the media,
the police, my partner. I wanted to talk to my favorite pyromaniac, his always-in-the-wrong-place-at-the-right-time girlfriend, and our resident . . . field hockey star.”

Tess looked away and whispered, “
I wasn't technically a star
.”

“So what do you think is tainting us?” I asked.

“Don't know yet,” Rosetti asked. “But I have my suspicions. We can rule out chemtrails and other broad factors. But something has gotten into your bodies.”

A pickup truck rumbled past, and a guy stuck his head out the passenger-side window and yelled something. Vulgar by inflection, though I couldn't make out the words.

“Ignore them,” Rosetti said. “Ignore all of them. This town is full of people who think they know why this is happening. But all we really know is that this is happening to
you
. All four incidents have involved students in your senior class. The odds that this is random aren't even odds at all.”

“So you're saying we're fucked?” I asked.

“I'm asking for your help. I want you to come to me with all the rumors, all the gossip, all the things you know and hear about your peers. I want to feel like I'm undercover among your classmates, something I am obviously not equipped to do.”

Rosetti pulled at her suit jacket to straighten it. She was thirty-six years old—or at least that's what my research had told me—and she had been something of a prodigy, having graduated at sixteen. Which meant she hadn't been a high school student in twenty years.

“So we're tattletales?” I asked.

“Volunteers,” she said.

“So we're not suspects?” Dylan asked.

“Everyone is a suspect,” Rosetti said. “However, I don't think the three of you have been plotting together to take down the senior class if that's what you mean.”

“Give us some credit,” Tess said. “We can plot. We're clever.”

“Not that clever,” Rosetti responded. “What you are is scared. And scared people all want the same thing.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“To survive,” she said. “So bring me something. Whatever it is that's finding its way into your bodies. And we'll get rid of that fear.”

My mom's voice whined its way into my head and I blurted out, “Drugs. Maybe it's drugs.”

“Okay then,” Rosetti said. “Bring me drugs.”

B
uying drugs is the easiest thing in the world. At least for me. Parents of the world don't want to hear this, but it's true. All I had to do was send a text to one of the Dalton twins. Nothing more than a single letter usually did the trick.
P
for pot.
M
for mushrooms.
E
for ecstasy.
O
for oxy.
S
for surprise me.

They would then text back a time and place.
4 Chipotle
for instance. I'd show up, they'd hand me something inconspicuous, like a bag with a burrito and the stuff tucked beneath the foil. Then we'd chat a bit and go our separate ways. They always operated on credit and I evened up with them in the cafeteria, slipping them cash long after the transactions took place.

It served them well. No parents, teachers, or, most importantly, cops ever caught wind. Regulars knew the drill and newbies were vetted and referred by those regulars. People got their jollies and the Daltons got richer. Free enterprise won the day, like every other day in history.

Two days after Cranberry died and I was deputized (my word, not hers) by Special Agent Carla Rosetti, it was poised to be another winner for free enterprise. I texted Jenna Dalton.

Me:
A.

Her: A? What's A?

Me: All of it.

Her: All of it? Like everything?

Me: Yep. Make me a sampler. Like a gift basket.

Her: Tough week, right?

Me: Perry. Then Cranberry. FUCK!

Her: Fuckin fuck. At least there's no school. Can you do noon? Dunkin.

Me: I'm so there.

I would go alone. Both Tess and Dylan were with me during the texts, but it made no sense for them to come to the handoff, because I always met the Daltons alone. Not that the Daltons would be all “I smell a rat” or “pat her down for a wire” or anything, but they might notice something was off. They might not give me what I needed.

I needed all of it. Rosetti assured us that she wasn't going to arrest anyone. She didn't even care who was supplying the drugs. Not yet, at least. For now, she only wanted samples of the drugs most likely to be consumed by our peers.

It's no exaggeration to say that the Daltons were the primary drug source for our school. As I've already pointed out, Katelyn was a loyal customer. I couldn't tell you about Brian, Perry, or Cranberry, but if they had taken a hit off a joint in the last two years or popped a pill so they could stay up all night to dance or study—or dance while studying, for that matter—then chances are the original source was the Daltons.

The plan was that I would procure every drug they had and, if one of those substances proved to be volatile, then Rosetti would go after their supplier. “I don't care about a couple of schoolyard hustlers,” she had told us. “I'm after big fish. Because the big fish is often bigger than you might ever suspect.”

As much as I wanted to think of the Daltons as big fish, I had to admit that big fish don't do deals in doughnut shops with girls who show up on pink bikes. That's right, I rolled up to the big drug deal on the beach cruiser my grandparents bought me for our annual trips down the shore. Because, again, that's what I always did. I didn't want to arouse suspicions.

Joe was waiting in the parking lot when I arrived, fastening a bike rack to the back of their RAV4. “Slap that bad boy on here,” he said. “We've got your stuff, but we're getting the fuck outta Dodge. Cool?”

“The coolest,” I said.