Things We Didn't Say - By Kristina Riggle Page 0,32
this dance with her, this push-pull of too close, too far.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Fine.” She tries to say it forcefully, but her voice breaks.
“You can tell me.”
“If you can have secrets, so can I.”
The first time we’ve been alone since she read my diary. “It’s not what you think.”
“Oh? You lied in your own diary?”
“I mean, you read things out of context.”
“Yeah. Context makes it all better.”
“Why were you even in my desk?”
At this she flops herself back on the couch, folding her arms tight across her. “None of your fucking business. Now go run along and tattle to my dad about how I read your diary and said ‘fucking.’ ”
“I’m not going to tell him.”
“Oh, so he won’t ask me what’s in it?”
“That’s not why.” Because I’m leaving. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I was asking about Dylan, and about you.”
“He’s fine, isn’t he?”
“Probably.”
“Thanks for being so reassuring.”
“It won’t help him if you hide things from us.”
“Hypocrite.”
She stands up and whirls on me, and for a moment I think she might hit me, with her hands balled up into fists, the memory of Mallory grabbing me by the arms so fresh in my mind.
She stomps off to her room and slams the door in such a way that would normally earn at least a mild reproof from Michael, but today nothing is as it should be.
I venture upstairs to Michael’s room again. This time when I crack the door he’s alone.
He’s on the phone, clearly with the police. In one hand he’s clenching the receiver. The other hand is wrapped tightly around a piece of bedsheet, which he keeps unwinding and winding again as he talks.
“Look, I tell you, this isn’t like him. He’s a good kid, he’s hardly ever been in trouble before . . . What good will that do in the morning? Do you know how far away he could be by then? Dammit, he’s fourteen years old! . . . It just doesn’t feel right to me . . . What happens if you’re wrong, then, huh? What happens if—”
Michael’s voice cracks. He lets go of the sheet, cradles his head in that hand.
He nods a few times, and then punches the hang-up button without saying good-bye. He tosses the phone down, and it slides off the edge of the bed, landing with a plunk on the floor.
“All the times as a reporter I’ve spent on the phone with upset, grieving people, trying to be calm and professional. I never realized how much they must have hated me.”
I sit down on the bed and pick up the phone, putting it on the nightstand after checking for serious damage.
“What’s happening?” I prompt, as Michael remains silent, staring at the floor between his feet.
“They’ll put a report in some database. The desk lieutenant said he’d have an officer check the bus station if I e-mail him a picture of Dylan to show around. And if he still hasn’t checked in by morning, they will have a detective check it out. By morning!”
“What did you mean by ‘doesn’t feel right’?”
He raises his face to look at me. “I don’t think he’s meeting a girl at all.”
Chapter 11
Angel
Stupid Casey and her stupid questions.
I get a text from Hannah.
Dylan OK?
I hate how all these kids are making my drama into theirs to get attention. Like, if he totally disappeared for real, by next week they’d be on to the next thing, like that kid whose brother died of cancer and everyone was acting like their own brother died and then within a week it was all, whatever.
I don’t even think Hannah likes me. Last week, I came up to her and the girls at play practice, and the minute I walked up, everyone stopped talking and they all stared at me, and I swear Emma was smirking. So it’s not like she really cares. It’s not like any of them do.
I shut my phone off and put in my earbuds, cranking it up so loud that Dad would say I’m ruining my hearing.
Who gave Casey the right to come into my house and start acting like she knows so much? And getting on me for having secrets when she’s the one writing about Tony. Calling Tony. Tony said this, Tony said that.
And she used to drink herself stupid all the time, too. Bet Dad doesn’t know that. He thinks she doesn’t drink because she doesn’t like the taste.