out after school today, Hank.”
She seems serious. I honestly don’t know what to say. Until this morning, I’d never seen Peyton Breedlove, and now here she is again, sitting next to me with some serious blackmail material, and I’m wondering what would happen if I said no. I’m too scared to find out. “Sure.”
“Perfect. I’ll meet you at my house.”
Nick is full-on staring at me now because he’s never seen me with a girl before, and naturally the one he sees now bears a strong resemblance to a walking Chia head. He wiggles his eyebrows. It looks like two fuzzy black caterpillars are doing push-ups.
“Um…I don’t know where you live,” I say with a nervous laugh, then shrug at Nick, as if to say, “This girl is mad as a hatter.” His eyes shift to her like he’s watching a tennis match.
“I can’t eat this.” She drops her fork and sighs, then stands up holding her tray, stepping over the sides of the metal lunch-table seats and angling toward the trash can to dump the contents. “I’ll see you around three thirtyish.” Her mouth curls into a smile, and her ice-blue eyes lock with mine. “I have faith in you.”
Nick watches her walk off, shaking his head and muttering, “Interesting, interesting.”
He doesn’t know the half of it.
4
It's a lot of responsibility when someone puts faith in you.
Looking for Peyton’s house is like trying to find a straight guy at a Lady Gaga concert. I pretty much zigzag my way through every street in a five-block radius of where Amanda lives, hoping there’s a house with a sign that says “Crazy lives here.” It’s not like I can ask anyone, because I’m pretty sure no one knows who the hell she is. It’s like she appeared out of nowhere. In fact, if Nick hadn’t been sitting across from me today and witnessed the whole lunch episode, I would wonder if anyone else could see her.
I decide my best bet is to retrace my steps from early this morning, so I start to pedal to Amanda Carlisle’s house. Everything appears pretty normal—people out walking their dogs, mowing the lawn. No sign of Peyton. As I get within a couple of blocks of Amanda’s house, I notice the damnedest thing on the side of the road: matchsticks. Not the kind that come in a little book. I’m talking about the matches that are about two inches long, made of tan-colored wood with a red tip, and come in a box. The tips are spent though, so whoever left them lit them first. There’s one about every ten feet, like a trail of bread crumbs.
I follow the trail, and as I do, the matchsticks get closer and closer together. They appear to be leading to Amanda Carlisle’s house. Is this someone’s idea of a sick joke? The smell of burned tree still lingers in the air and grows more pronounced as I draw closer. Then, just before I reach Amanda’s house, the matchsticks form a figure-eight pattern in the middle of the road and cross the street toward a giant bush, where they end abruptly.
It’s the bush I hid behind the night of the fire. I skid my bike to a stop.
Hidden by the overgrown bush and set back from the road is a house that seems to fit the neighborhood well enough, though the yard is not tended with the same care. The patchy crabgrass is only partially mowed in an erratic zigzag pattern, like someone got bored and gave up midway. The only real greenery is weeds that have stubbornly sprung up between the rocks in the planter beds. The dusty-blue ranch-style house is still sporting Christmas lights despite it being mid-April, and the blinds are all closed. An old beater sits in the oil-stained driveway, and to the side of it, a wooden fence bows forward, looking like one good windstorm could bring it down.
Apparently, the Breedloves are those neighbors. Everything about this place needs a hug, and that’s how I know—even before I see her—that I’ve found the right house.
“Nice job, Sherlock. I told you I had faith in you,” Peyton says, stepping out from behind the bush.
“What’s with the matchsticks? You probably shouldn’t leave them lying around here. Just a hunch, but someone might think you’re responsible for what happened across the street.” I lean down and collect a few, then hold them out to her like a bouquet.
“Well, we both know that I’m not, don’t we? Though I