Finally it occurs to me to wonder, “What did your dad say?”
“Not much.” He shrugs again. “He never does.”
“So what’s he going to do?” Petra asks. “How’s he going to get started on whatever it is before we find whatever he’s hiding?”
“I don’t know. And I can’t ask him because then he’d know I was listening.”
But that’s not the right question. “Why?” I ask.
“Why what?”
“Why did you eavesdrop on your father and your grandfather?”
He slides his eyes away from mine. “Lots of reasons.”
“Enigmatical,” Petra says to me.
“Agreed,” I agree. “When last we spoke”—I turn back to River—“you said I was crazy.”
“Yeah. Hoped you were crazy is maybe a better way of putting it. You have to admit it’s a little far-fetched. My grandfather knew his chemical was going to poison the town but he made it anyway? My grandfather saw it was killing everyone but refused to stop? Crazy.”
“The story’s crazy,” I agree. “But I’m not.”
“I couldn’t get it out of my head. I thought there’s no way it could be true. But…”
“But?”
“But something’s going on here. Obviously.” He waves vaguely around the cafeteria. “There has to be some explanation. And I couldn’t think of one. Well, of another one.”
“Yeah,” I breathe. The fact of us. Our irrefutability.
“I wanted you to be wrong. I wanted to prove you were wrong. My dad can be a jerk, but mostly he’s okay. But my grandfather. I mean he is my grandfather, but he’s pretty mean. He’s kind of hostile. And … rude. But everyone always does what he says without asking any questions. That’s kind of his thing actually. Authority and respect and all that. Anyway, I couldn’t stop thinking about what you said.” He raises his eyes to meet mine. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
It’s such a cheesy line. I feel blood rushing to my face like I’ve been turned upside down, but I’m not embarrassed for me; I’m embarrassed for him. It’s not my fault I’m so jaded. (If she weren’t grinning like a demented clown and kicking me under the table, Petra would say “disentranced.”) It’s his fault. Or at least it’s his family’s fault. So I’ll be forgiven for being too worldly-wise to fall for his romantic-comedy schtick. I’ll be forgiven for being overly critical of his diction like what was important about his sentiment was word choice. I’ll even be forgiven for being kind of grossed out by his earnestness.
But in the high court of celestial judgment, when I go before whoever evaluates souls in the end, I’ll be condemned anyway for the thought that bubbles to the top of this stew of squeamishness: I can use this. I can use him. If he can’t stop thinking about me, if he wants me to know he can’t stop thinking about me, I can get him to do what I want. I can get him to find what we need.
“Prove it,” I say.
“That you’re on my mind?”
“That you’re on our side.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, but your grandfather being a jerk isn’t proof of anything. We already knew that. Get us something that matters, something we can use. Help us find whatever your dad and your grandfather don’t want us to find.”
I’m not proud of this willingness to manipulate him, but times were desperate, I will testify before the soul tribunal, and the lawsuit needed me, and being cruel doesn’t count if you’re the wronged party. I will introduce into evidence all my mother and Russell haven’t been allowed to and all they haven’t been able to find.
And even if the soul tribunal isn’t swayed by my logic, I still like my chances. I’ve learned not to have that much faith in the justice system anyway.
Two
Mirabel is having a good day today, so she came to school with us instead of studying at work with Mama. She meets me after the bell rings, and I say let us go home, and she says let us wait for Mab to be done with tutoring, and I say what if someone comes to the library, and she says we can do palm reading so I say okay because I like palm reading. She does not mean telling each other’s fortunes by looking at the lines on our hands because that is just pretend. She means a game we invented together when we were little. How it works is I close my eyes and hold out my palm, and Mirabel uses her finger to draw a picture on it, and I read what the picture is, and then she uses her finger to erase and draws another. Why I like this game is it is peaceful and soothing with only a little bit of touching, and Mirabel, unlike everyone else in the entire world, is always soft with her fingers. Why Mirabel likes this game is she is as good at it as anyone.
We play in the hallway outside the tutoring room. Mirabel starts easy. “Rainbow,” I guess, and I know I am right because she erases it to draw another.
She draws a face so I know it is a person, and then that person gets lots of hair so I know it is Mama even though the face is smiling and Mama usually is not.
She erases, and the next one is easy. Three lines straight up and down. “Us!” I say. Mirabel squeezes my finger. I squeeze her finger back.
She taps on my palm many times for rain which means green which is an adjective which is an advanced level of this game because most players can only do nouns. (It is more accurate to say most players would only be able to do nouns because there are no other players.) (That is just how it is when you invent your own game.)
Then I hear Mirabel gasp.
I look up from my palm to her face right away. “Why did you gasp, Three?”
She draws lots of squiggles.
“Snake, worm, string,” I guess. “The letter S,” I guess. “Skunk smell. Slippery road. Approximately. Sin x.”
She pulls on my finger so I will look at her face again, and she uses her eyes to signal a signal to mine. I look where she is looking. And then I see what she was drawing. A river.
He is running down the hall. At first I make an assumption he is running to us, and then I make an assumption he is running to the bathroom because he has blood dripping out of his nose and down his lip and chin and neck and onto his shirt. Then I realize he is not running to us or to the bathroom because the Kyles come around the corner and they are running too, so I make an assumption that River is being chased by the Kyles. It is possible they are all three being chased by someone else and River got a head start, but that is not the assumption I make because the Kyles do not have blood dripping out of their noses.
River is running fast, but I can still see that in addition to the nose blood there is a scratch on his forehead and a rip in his shirt and a scrape near his eyebrow. River is running fast, but he gives a little wave to me and Mirabel as he goes by which is very polite under the circumstances. Then he is gone.
Left behind is the memory of his face which was scared and hurt, the echo of his running feet, loud on the linoleum, a dotted line mapping his path, like in a cartoon, except it is drops of blood, and Mirabel’s facial expression, which is shocked like mine must be and upset like mine must be and something else too, but I cannot figure out what because there is a howl building up in my throat, and I know it will be loud and I will not be able to make it stop, but before it can arrive, a very surprising thing happens.