I heard a match light, and when I turned, she was huffing on a cigarette.
"When did you start smoking?" I asked, surprised.
She just shrugged like she wasn't interested in talking about that. "Don't tell. I'll get kicked off cheerleading if Miss Gibson finds out."
I nodded, looking her up and down, noticing little things for the first time about how Ali was changing. She used to pull her hair up in all these girly doodads like the other cheerleaders, but now she just let it hang. It fell in little strands around her shoulders, almost straight but not quite. She was real cute still, just not all dolled up the way the other cheerleaders were. And she wore army boots with her short skirt. Lots of other girls wore hiking boots or army boots, but the cheerleaders didn't seem to wear anything clunky. She was starting to look like somebody else, like one of the techies or the artists or something. Like she didn't relate to the girls she had always hung with anymore. I watched her blow smoke in a stream like some sort of a pro and felt bad that she had obviously changed a lot, almost right under my nose, and I hadn't noticed.
"So, what's up, Ali?"
"I just feel things," she said, staring at the woods. "I don't have any proof. I don't want to tell just anybody, because they'll use it to hurt Chris. You know, spread mean things about him."
I waited, seeing her take a long drag off the cigarette. She said, "So, you can't tell anyone."
"I won't."
"I think Chris snapped. I think he flipped out from a combo of everything. School, being lonely, but mostly because of his parents."
"You ... talked to him?" I asked.
"Yeah. I talked to him sometimes." She shrugged. "As much as you can talk to a kid who grabs on to you like a magnet if you so much as smile at him. Mostly he talked. I listened. I was afraid to say anything back very often, because one time in eighth grade I told him a bunch of garbage about my family. I don't know what came over me. He was there, out on his lawn, and I was, like, in desperate need of someone to talk to. I waved. That was all he needed. He came over, and after I dumped on him, he informs me the next day that he's all into Eastern religions. You know, reincarnation and all that stuff? He told me I was his long-lost brother from a past life."
Despite the disgusted tone, her cute little grin crept across her face. That was one thing about Ali. You could take away her hair doodads, all that cheerleader makeup, and dangle a cigarette from her mouth, and that cute little grin was still the best.
"Not his long-lost sister?" I smirked.
"No. His brother. You know, even a weirdo would settle on being your friend if you acted like a friend. Him? If you acted friendly to him, you were his long-lost brother from a past life."
I wondered what bothered Ali so much that she would dump on Creed. Her parents split up, but they both seemed okay to me. Her dad owned a restaurant, and her mom had helped out a lot. They did their share of driving Ali and her little brother to sports and school stuff. They helped out at PTA and threw Ali great birthday parties. I just figured they didn't get along. I wondered why she felt she couldn't dump on Alex or me or Renee or Ryan, whatever it was. I figured if I asked her, I would get the same ice-over as when I asked her about smoking.
"Did he tell you bad stuff about his parents?" I asked instead.
"No," she said. "I don't think he really ... understood that it was bad. It was mostly small talk. You know, 'I'm renting a movie tonight with my dad,' or, 'My mom's taking me to the mall when I get home.' Who could stand to rent a movie with their dad? Like, what movie could you agree on with your dad? And who goes to the mall with their mom?"
She shrugged like it wasn't that big a deal, but I could see where she was going.
"My mom gives me the money so I can go with you guys," I said.
"Exactly. His family's so up his butt." She shivered. "I think that if Chris's family was, like, totally off their gourd, he would be able to see it, to say, 'Wow, these people are totally abnormal, and therefore my life is not my fault.' But it never got that weird. Just chronically, slightly weird. Just enough to keep the kid off balance. Make him stress. Make him, you know, weird, but not insane."
"Hmm..." I tried to picture this. "You're making it sound like it's more dangerous to have a slightly weird family than a totally weird family." Interesting thought, but I didn't know if I believed it.
"It's mostly the stuff I saw. I have a great view of their windows from my bedroom." She shuffled around a little, like she wasn't comfortable with looking, but she had done it anyway. "You know how your room can get to be a complete disaster if you don't pick up for two or three days?"
"Yeah. My mom turns into a hag at that point," I admitted.
"Well, Chris's room was always neat as a pin," Ali went on. "His mom goes in there and, like, regiment-cleans it, as if she's running the Air Force in there. She folds his clothes in the drawers a certain way. Pulls out anything from under the bed. Takes things down off the closet shelf and refolds them. Dusts in the corners. I've seen her do it, like, when I'm home sick from school. What's wrong with this picture?"
I was catching on a little quicker by this point. "I would kill my mom for being in my stuff like that."
"Yeah. The kid had no privacy."
"Sounds like the type of mom who would, like, read your diary."
She nodded quickly. "I think he even had one. He used to hide some little book inside the back of this picture frame on his wall. Can you believe that? I guess he didn't feel he could stuff it in between his mattresses like most kids."
"He ever mention it to you?"
She shook her head. "He just seemed to accept everything ... He never said anything about it. But I'm pretty sure it was a diary because he pulled it out a few nights a week last summer, after he was in bed. He would lie there on his side and write things down in it. Then he would put it back behind the picture frame and go to sleep."
"Sounds like a diary," I muttered, but I was thinking of something else. "How come you see all this? You sound like a Peeping Tom."
Her face got hard again, and she just said, "Let's just say I spend a lot of time in my room, okay?"
"Whatever." I watched her, wishing she would tell me about herself rather than Chris. Truth, I was getting as worried about her as I was about him. There seemed to be so much stuff she would lay hints about but not say. But she just kept on going.
"And here's another one. He was very modest. I remember a bunch of times Renee slept over in eighth grade, and when we were looking out the bedroom window, we could see him come into his bedroom in only a towel. Now, how many kids would think to lower the shade just before they let go of the towel? Would you think to do that?"
Our house was on, like, three acres, so I didn't worry about the neighbors seeing that far. But I think I would have stood over toward the corner just long enough to throw on my gym trunks. She was grinning, and I smiled.
"Well, he never forgot," she said. "It was like a ritual. He would come in, in his towel. He would lower the shade. He would put on pajamas. He would raise the shade. In eighth grade, Renee and I almost made it a Friday-night game to see if we could catch him in the buff. And how about this? You know how you can see people's silhouettes when the shade is down?"
I nodded.
"One time this year, he lowers the shade. And I see another silhouette come into the room. The silhouette puts a stack of laundry in the drawers, then gets in a conversation with him. They exchange, like, three lines each, and the silhouette leaves. He pulls the shade up ten seconds later, and he's in his pajamas."
"Ew, shit," I breathed. That one was kind of nasty. His mom walks in on him when he's buck naked, and he looks like he just accepts it. "I would have been pissed."
"Your mom would have knocked," she said.
I watched Ali, thinking she had some kind of a hawk eye. I think I would have lived across the street from Creed for years and years and never noticed anything except that he was weird.
"At any rate, I hate that wom
an," Ali said. "I would love to prove that I only saw the tip of some enormous iceberg. Maybe she beat him. Or worse things."
"Like what?" I asked.
The look she passed me turned my blood cold. Some annoyed are-you-stupid? and don't-ask-questions look, like the one she cast me in the hall when I first asked about Mrs. Creed. She was thinking something gross, that's all I knew.
I went on, finally. "If Mrs. Creed caused this, she doesn't understand, doesn't want to. You should have seen her in church yesterday. Appealing to the people for any reason that Chris might have run away. Like she's so innocent."
Ali laughed in disgust. "She's not that dumb. She knows she's guilty."
It struck me that Mrs. Creed must have seen the note. The cops wouldn't keep it from her. It was full of stuff about his parents being too strict, yet she gave her little speech in church on Sunday. She had looked so sincere, asking if anyone knew any reason why Chris would run away. I couldn't understand how the woman could see that note and be able to push the idea out of her head that she was at least partly responsible.
I decided to trust Ali. "I've seen the note," I said quietly.
Her eyes rose to mine. She said, "Yeah, me, too."
"Really? How did you see it?"
She pulled another cigarette out of her blouse pocket and lit it. She didn't answer me. She just stared into the woods, looking sad. She hung with all sorts of different people these days, and I didn't even take a stab at who she did different things with. But I guessed maybe we weren't the only people hacking into the school's e-mail.
"Parents can be vicious, don't kid yourself," she murmured. "Just because you live in Steepleton. Just because you have the perfect life."
"Look." I squirmed around, not wanting to get on that sore subject again. "I don't have a perfect life. And whatever it is that's bothering you lately, I wish you could just tell me. Instead of taking it out on me."
She looked at me like she was sorry, maybe, but then her eyes hardened. "You wouldn't understand."
"Thanks a lot." Maybe I did have the perfect life, next to hers. I didn't have a clue. But I couldn't get past this feeling that she really wanted to tell me what had come down on her. She was leaving these bloody little hints all over the place. It was almost like she was using Mrs. Creed to show me how bad her own life could get.
She drew up half her grin again and let out an awkward laugh. "If people wouldn't take it all wrong, I'd ask you to come over some night this week. We could have a powwow and spy out the window."
"Well ... why would people take that wrong?" I muttered. But I knew what she meant. Ali had this slut thing hanging over her head. It could look really bad because of Leandra. But I figured Ali needed me.
"I have to go talk to Leandra now," I said, staring down at my sneakers. Then I sighed. "So ... what night?"
"Mm. Tomorrow night would be cool. Besides, my boyfriend is coming over tomorrow night. So no one will suspect you and me of doing the slut routine with my boyfriend there. My reputation's not that gross yet."
She grinned at me triumphantly, and I tried to laugh. It didn't really strike me that she said she had a boyfriend. I didn't even know she had gotten one steady person. And I was kind of shocked at her remark about her reputation, like she knew and wasn't letting it bother her.
"I'll come over after dinner," I said, and just shuffled out of there, moving back toward the cafeteria in a haze. She didn't follow me.
Five
I got into the cafeteria and spotted Alex, Renee, and Leandra waving me over. Leandra had the kind of face that lit up when she smiled, all framed with long, shiny red hair. She could spin heads. I smiled back. Alex and Renee looked mad.
"Did you forget what you have in your pocket?" Alex demanded as I plopped down beside Leandra. "Where have you been?"
My hand went to my sweater pocket, and I felt a piece of paper folded in there. The note from Creed. We had decided we were going to show it to Leandra and Renee. I guessed Alex figured this was the most important thing in the universe.
"Your favorite breakfast." Leandra handed me a bag of french fries, bouncing a little in her seat. She was always thinking up nice things to do like that.
"Thanks." I took the fries gladly and decided to let fly with the truth, because some gossip hag would probably tell one of them they saw us. "AIL She's having a problem. She just needed to dump."
"Boy problems?" Renee said with a grin, and I thought that was mean. It must have shown in my face, because she said, "I'm sorry for her, okay? I know her folks are going through a divorce and all, but nobody told her to handle her life the way she's handling her life."
"Yeah. Not our problem." I shrugged.
She came back at me with equal sarcasm. "Once in a while, if you didn't see everybody's side in everything, it would be okay, Victor. I promise."
Victor is my real name, and Renee is the only person who ever called me that, and only when I was pissing her off.
"I don't see everybody's side in everything," I argued. "Didn't I agree with you on everything you said about Nathan Leeds last week, at this very table?"
"I just broke up with Nathan Leeds three weeks ago." She smirked. "To not agree with a girl about someone she's just broken up with is totally heartless. Besides, all I said was that he was a dip-shitz, dork-faced liar who cheated on me, smells, and will never break a thousand on his SAT. What's not to agree with?"
"Whatever. Remind me never to get on your bad side." I laughed. Just a few weeks earlier Nathan Leeds had been her swoonbag love machine. She just got this twitch that she wanted Alex instead. I thought of mentioning to Renee that Alex needed to come to band practice more often but decided I didn't feel like tangling with her.
I spread the note out on the table. Then Leandra and Renee were whispering, their lips moving, like they were trying to absorb every word. I watched Leandra's long reddish hair shine as it fell over one shoulder and dangled almost to her lap. She kind of gasped and looked at me for a moment as my own name came out of her mouth. She had reached the part where he said he was jealous of me. I laced my fingers through hers, knowing she would understand how that hit me. If he had anything to be jealous about really, it was her, I thought.
When we walked down the halls together, people would stare at Leandra, and then at me like I was the luckiest person in the world. And people really liked her, even if she wasn't a huge brain like Renee. I think Renee had read the letter twice by the time Leandra got to the bottom.
"Funny..." Leandra murmured finally. "It sure looks like he was thinking about suicide. But it never actually says he's going to commit suicide."
I looked at how Creed had put it: I only wish to be gone. Therefore, I AM.
"But look at this." Renee pointed to the earlier part of the note, before our names were listed. I know that people wish I were dead, and at this moment in time I see no alternative but to accommodate them in this wish.
"That's suicide," Renee said flatly. "That's definitely suicide."
"Yeah, but where is he?" Alex asked nervously, looking over his shoulder to see if anyone might put their eyes on this note. He turned back and almost whispered, "Where's the body?"
"I don't know," Renee mumbled. "But he was still trying to get attention, like always. Look at the things he's saying ...life and luck and liberty?" She curled her lip in disgust. "What a crock. I'm surprised he saw himself with so much truth. He always wore that grin from hell. I would have bet he grinned when he slept."
"He probably did," Alex said with a smirk. "I always figured he never was able to face up to how bad his life really was. Denial, my dad calls it. He lived in a state of chronic denial."
Even if you were yelling at Creed, that grin stayed plastered from ear to ear. It was like he refused to believe you were yelling. He wouldn't stop grinning until somebody hit him. Then he went totally depressive. I had seen him in a heap on the floor, wailing, after one of the boons hit him. I thought denial was an okay word.
; "Are we positive he wrote this?" Leandra stared at the paper, looking confused.
Alex shrugged. "Mr. Ames gets the note, and boom, the kid is missing. Who else would have written it?"
Leandra's accent came on very thick when she was thinking too hard to cover it up, and it was thick right then. "It does sound just like him. But like y'all just said, Chris never saw the truth about himself. It almost sounds like ... the way somebody else would describe his life."
"You're saying that somebody else killed him and wrote the note to make it look like a suicide," Renee said, to clear us up. She spat it out like she was reciting a weather report. She folded her arms across her chest coolly and looked around the cafeteria. "So, who's your suspect? I'd say there're a few in here."
I thought that was vicious but watched as Leandra rolled her eyes sideways jn a suspicious way. We followed them and then looked back at the center of the table. A group of boons was sitting where she had just looked. Bo Richardson was right in the middle of them.
"Bo Richardson?" The words came out of Alex's mouth like he were a ventriloquist. The only time his lips moved was on the B. He did a whole line of ventriloquism, grinning like a jack-o'-lantern. "I don't vant to look like I'n saying his nane, cuz he's at the next tavle."
Bo Richardson was a big tough boon, with enormous brown eyes that made him look insane. If he caught you staring at him, he would mouth off at you sometimes, depending on his mood.
He bragged into the gossip channels that he had slashed more than a thousand tires last year, though we figured it was probably about twenty, because he was also known for lying—exaggerating his conquests. Also, he would fight people, which is why he showed up in the principal's office a lot.
"Well, yeah," Leandra breathed while we all just sat there dumbfounded. "Maybe one of those guys could have done it."
"They could use some scrubbing up." Alex smirked.
A couple of them—but Shawn Mathers especially—really did have bad skin. And they dressed way different than us. Our clothes were kind of loose, and theirs were all skintight, like they had to show off their muscles. All these little differences used to seem so important, but now I wanted to figure out this note. I could see I wasn't about to get a word in edgewise by the way Alex was leaning forward and putting his hands up, like stop.