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  “Mrs. Barnes?”

  “Yeah. You know. Connor’s mom?”

  I know who Mrs. Barnes is, I thought.

  I just had no idea why she would be here to see me.

  Then, as I was flying down the stairs, I started to be able to think of some possible reasons. And, oh, they were not good.

  It was all my fault. I had that in my head already. Something had happened to Connor. He had done something terrible. And it was all because I hadn’t been a good enough friend to him. Mrs. Dinsmore had tried to tell me to be a good friend to him. And I’d gone and fallen down on the job.

  I should’ve gone to see him the minute I found out I had a date with Libby Weller. Told him the big news. I should have gone straight to his house this morning to tell him all the details of how it had gone.

  And now I could never change it. And I would have to live with it all my life.

  Now I was about to find out how it felt to be Zoe Dinsmore.

  I stepped into the living room and looked at Connor’s mom, and she looked back at me. She seemed concerned. Her lips were drawn into a tight line. But she was not crying. She didn’t look as though her whole world had come to an end.

  “Is Connor okay?” I asked, wondering why it was so hard for me to manage my own breath all of a sudden.

  “Why, yes,” she said. “He’s fine.”

  I just stood a minute, letting all the awful thoughts rush out of me. When they had gone, I was left with just one new thought.

  I have another chance and I’m not going to blow it this time.

  My mom stepped into the room behind me and invited Mrs. Barnes to sit down. I sat on the couch, and Connor’s mom perched next to me, holding her purse tightly in her lap.

  “I want to ask you a question,” Mrs. Barnes said. “And it’s very important that you give me an honest answer.”

  So already I was in a minefield. Because you never want to be in a position to have to give truthful answers to your best friend’s mom. There are sacred trusts involved.

  “What is it, ma’am? What do you need to know?”

  She sighed. Leaned back ever so slightly. I could hear my mom in the kitchen putting a kettle of water on the stove. Probably so she could offer our guest a cup of tea.

  “I think you probably know by now that Connor’s father has left our house.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, staring carefully at the carpet.

  “This morning he came by to get the rest of his things. But one of his belongings is missing. Do you know the belonging I’m referring to?”

  “No, ma’am. I have no idea.”

  “It’s the kind of belonging you wouldn’t want falling into the hands of young boys.”

  I was beginning to get a deeply sinking feeling in my gut. I thought the “belonging” in question might have something to do with relations between married people, though I couldn’t imagine what kind of “belonging” that would be. I thought “belonging” was a strange word to use when you could just say “thing.”

  I wasn’t answering. So she went on.

  “I can definitely see how it would hold a fascination. But maybe you boys don’t know how terribly dangerous an item like that can be. One of you could be hurt playing with a thing like that. Or even killed. Or a total stranger, a passerby, could be wounded. And I just know you wouldn’t want to have something like that on your conscience.”

  Speaking of fascinations, I had grown fascinated with a tiny spot on the Persian carpet, where one bit of nap seemed to have been forced in the wrong direction, altering the pattern. I couldn’t have looked at Mrs. Barnes if you’d paid me good money to do it.

  “With all due respect, ma’am,” I said, “I haven’t got the slightest idea what you’re asking me about.”

  “Then why won’t you look at me?”

  Oddly, I felt a little flash of anger at her. Mrs. Barnes, of all people? Acting like she didn’t know why it was hard to look somebody in the eye?

  “I think because you’re scaring me with this. Can’t you just tell me what this thing is that you think we took?”

  A long silence. I could feel how much she didn’t want to say.

  I looked up to see my mom leaning in the doorway. Listening to all that silence.

  “Connor’s father . . . ,” Mrs. Barnes began, and it startled me, “. . . kept a firearm in the house. For the purpose of home protection. I’m sure you understand.”

  I didn’t. I looked up at her. Just like she’d been wanting me to. I think I was blinking too much.

  “A firearm?”

  “A gun,” my mother said.

  “Oh. A gun.” I’d known what a firearm was. It just took time to absorb.

  “Did you and Connor take the gun, Lucas?” Mrs. Barnes asked.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Do you have any idea where it is? Did you ever see Connor with it?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “You better be telling the truth, Lucas,” my mother said. “Because this is a pretty serious situation.”

  “I swear. I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles if you want me to. I swear on Grandma’s grave. I had no idea there was a gun in Connor’s house. I never saw it. I never heard about it. This is all news to me.”

  I sat still a minute, feeling all four of their eyes burning into me. Then the feeling in the room seemed to lighten a tiny bit. As if they believed me, or some wild outcome like that.

  “Hmm,” Mrs. Barnes said. “Well, all I know is, it didn’t walk away on its own.”

  “Did you ask him about it?”

  “Of course I did. He denied taking it.”

  I was wondering if she went into his room and looked. But before I could wonder long, she answered my question. It felt as though she could read my mind.

  “I spent an hour searching his room, but I never found it. But it has to be somewhere.”

  I thought about Connor telling me his mother had insisted he go out and lie in the sun. It made more sense in light of this new information.

  “I agree it has to be somewhere, ma’am, but I swear, if Connor took it, he kept it as much a secret from me as from you.”

  It was a strange thing to say, I thought, as I listened to the echo of it. Because I’d accidentally let on that I did think it was possible Connor had taken it.

  “Let me ask you another question, then, Lucas. Are you at all concerned about Connor?”

  “Concerned, ma’am?”

  “Has he been seeming down to you?”

  “Down? Well . . . maybe. Maybe some, yeah. But I guess in some ways he’s always seemed a little down to me.”

  “And you don’t think it’s gotten worse lately?”

  “I don’t know what to say about that, ma’am. I don’t know. Maybe. But then sometimes I think I’m not a very good judge.”

  “Well, I thank you for your honesty, Lucas.” She stood, and straightened out her skirt. Fiddled with her belt for a second. “You’ve been such a good friend to my son. I believe you, what you say. I’ll just go leave you to your day.”

  My mother said, “Won’t you stay and have a cup of tea, Pauline?”

  But Connor’s mom said, “No. No, thank you, Ellie. I don’t want to leave my boy alone too long.”

  And with that, my mother saw her to the door.

  Part of me was so happy to have the ordeal be over. But another part of me said it wasn’t over and I knew it. It was my job to be a good friend to Connor. And I had withheld a piece of important information. And I had a sudden bad feeling that too much withholding could be the end of my friend.

  My mother walked upstairs, and I sprinted to the door. Slipped out of the house.

  I caught up to Mrs. Barnes from behind as she walked down the street. It seemed to alarm her. At least until she saw it was only me.

  “One more thing I have to tell you,” I said.

  We stopped, and she turned to face me on the sidewalk. And she wouldn’t look at me. The old Mrs. Barnes had returned. Sh
e had screwed up her courage to come into my house and be a new and improved Pauline Barnes, but now that was over. Whatever she had gathered together, she’d run out of it by then.

  Either that or she had some idea what I was going to say.

  “You asked me if I was concerned about him. He did say something that worried me. But I’d really appreciate it if I didn’t have to say word for word what it was. Because there’s an honor with guys. He tells me things he wouldn’t tell anybody else, and I’m supposed to keep it to myself. That’s what best friends do, right? But I have been worried about him lately. So if you were thinking it was a good idea to get him some kind of help or keep an extra-close eye on him, well . . . I guess I’d say I think that’s a good idea, too.”

  She smiled the saddest smile I’d ever seen in my days. The saddest I’ve seen even up until now. She reached out and held one warm hand to my cheek.

  Then, without a word, she walked away.

  Chapter Ten

  Pebbles and Contempt

  I didn’t sleep well.

  It had been all I could do to stop myself from going over to Connor’s, and I mean right up until bedtime. But I knew his mom would’ve been the one to let me in. And she would’ve immediately known that I’d come to tell him what she’d done—coming to my house, and all. Telling me everything she’d told me.

  So I just stayed home and let it ruin my sleep.

  I dozed off at about three a.m. and popped awake an hour later. I tossed and turned for what felt like a long time, then got up and got dressed without turning on any lights.

  I slipped out of the house and walked over to Connor’s without a flashlight. There was a moon, and that helped. But mostly it was just a walk I could have done in my sleep. That is, if I could have gotten any sleep.

  I slipped across his front yard, cutting over the grass. His next-door neighbor’s big German shepherd, Ajax, heard me and barked a few times. But Ajax barked at everything, so I didn’t figure he’d draw much attention.

  There was a ring of gravel around a little seedling apple tree near the front stoop. I picked up a couple of the smallest pebbles I could find, working almost entirely by feel.

  Then I positioned myself under Connor’s window and bounced three pebbles off the window frame. I purposely avoided the glass, because maybe even a small pebble could break a window if you threw it hard enough. Fortunately I was a pretty good shot.

  He came to the window and stared down at me, and I stared up at him. It was too dark to see the expressions on each other’s faces, but the way he just froze there with his hands on the glass seemed to be a thing that spoke loudly enough.

  Then he disappeared again.

  I stood still for a minute or two, feeling stupid. Not knowing if I was waiting for anything or not. If he planned to come down, or if he’d just thought, “The hell with Lucas,” and gone back to bed.

  Then I heard Ajax barking again. A movement caught my eye, and I looked over to see Connor standing in his driveway in the dark, his old threadbare blue robe tied over his pajamas. He tossed his head toward the backyard and we walked down the driveway together.

  We pulled two webbed chairs off the back patio and sat next to each other in the grass. Still without saying a word.

  I had my head dropped back, staring up at the sky. Man, there were a lot of stars! This was back before the town had much outdoor lighting to pollute the dark sky at night. I saw more stars than I might’ve thought existed for me to see. I saw the Big Dipper, Ursa Major and Minor, Cassiopeia. I heard crickets for the first time, even though they’d probably been playing their strange music all along.

  “Sorry to wake you up,” I said. Barely over a whisper.

  “I wasn’t sleeping,” he said.

  “Got it. Guess there’s a lot of that going around.”

  Another minute of silent stargazing. Then I figured I’d better get it off my chest, what I’d come to say. Sooner or later I had to.

  “Your mom came by to talk to me yesterday.”

  I didn’t look over at him. But from the corner of my eye I saw him drop his face into his hands. I waited. Then he rubbed his face briskly and turned his head toward me. Like he wanted to look at me. But it was a little too dark for that.

  “So that’s where she went,” he whispered.

  “Yeah. That’s where she went.”

  “I didn’t take the damn gun.”

  I let out a long breath that I must have been holding.

  “Well, I’m awful glad to hear it. Because that would be a pretty scary thing, you know.”

  “What do you think I’m going to do?”

  “Well, after that time you said—”

  “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t even bring that up again.”

  We gazed at the sky for a minute more. Or, anyway, I did. I didn’t look over at him. I have no idea what he was looking at.

  “So here’s the thing,” I said after a time. “Here’s the way it’s going to be. I’m just sort of . . . here now. I’m just here with you. If I can’t get you to go places with me, I’ll just sort of be here.”

  “Twenty-four hours a day?”

  “Not sure yet. I don’t have the thing all worked out in my head.”

  “What if I don’t want you here that much?”

  “Not really sure you get a vote,” I said. I was half kidding. I think that came through in my voice. But only half kidding.

  Silence while he digested that.

  “What about running?” he asked.

  “Not going to run on an hour’s sleep anyway.”

  “What about tomorrow’s running?”

  “I’ll worry about that tomorrow.”

  “What about your girlfriend?”

  Yeah, I thought. What about her? What about calling and inviting her out to eat, then surprising her with a picnic because it’s more romantic? What about that?

  “Here’s the thing,” I said. Then I stopped, and sighed. Because I was letting some pretty important things slip away. Slide out of me. “We’ve been friends since we were three.”

  “I know it.”

  “I just think that counts for something.”

  “More than a girlfriend?”

  “If you’re in any kind of trouble . . . then . . . yeah. I’m putting you first. And there’s not a whole hell of a lot you can do about it.”

  We sat there together until the sun came up. Without ever saying another word.

  It was about three thirty in the afternoon. We were upstairs in his room, playing cards. We were on something upwards of our hundredth game. I’m not exaggerating. I had won about sixty, and he’d won maybe fifty or more.

  He looked up at me over his hand of cards and narrowed his eyes.

  “Seriously, Lucas,” he said. “You need to get your butt out of here and go have that picnic.”

  Obviously, I had told him a little bit about Libby over the course of the day. Libby past and Libby future.

  “Maybe some other day,” I said.

  “My mom is here. I’ll be right here. When you get back, everything will be just the way it is now.”

  It sounded like a promise. But I was not about to leave a thing like that to guesswork or chance.

  “Promise?”

  “Yeah. Promise.”

  I looked at the clock radio beside his bed.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think it’s too late for today.”

  “How is it too late?”

  “Well, it’s supposed to be a picnic lunch. Lunch. By the time I put the whole thing together and got over there, it would be time for dinner.”

  “So? Who says it can’t be a picnic dinner?”

  “It’s sandwiches.”

  “You can eat sandwiches for dinner.”

  I looked over at his phone. He had a phone in his room, the lucky dog. The fact that I looked at it meant I was considering it.

  He noticed.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Call.”

  I just sat a
minute. The tips of my fingers were tingling, but I had no idea why.

  Then I got up and walked to the phone.

  I knew her number by heart. But I had never called it before. Which means I had memorized it, but not the cool way—by using it. The pathetic way. By staring at it until the numbers were permanently etched into my brain.

  “She might have plans,” I said. “Kind of short notice.”

  “One way to find out,” Connor said.

  “Maybe her parents want her home for dinner.”

  “One way to find out.”

  I picked up the phone and dialed.

  Mrs. Weller picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Hi. Mrs. Weller?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Lucas Painter. Is Libby in, please?”

  “She is, Lucas. And you have very polite phone manners. Just hold the line a minute, and I’ll go tell her you’re calling.”

  I shifted from foot to foot. Caught Connor’s eye. Nodded.

  Then Libby was on the line.

  “Lucas?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s me.”

  “About time you called.”

  “It’s only been a couple of days.”

  “Oh. Well, it seemed longer.”

  It made my face hot when she said that. Or maybe it was the way she said it. I turned my face slightly away from Connor, hoping he wouldn’t see it redden.

  “I was just wondering . . .” Then I stalled, and realized I had no idea how to phrase my request. I hadn’t rehearsed this part at all. Which, considering how obsessed I’d been with every other aspect of the thing, seemed strange. “Do you have to be home for dinner?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I don’t know. What did you have in mind?”

  “I thought maybe I could come get you and take you someplace.”

  “I’ll ask my mom,” she said.

  I tapped my foot and waited, and then she was back on the line, her words all in a rush.

  “She says it’s okay and I accept, what time do you want to pick me up?”

  I showed up at her house promptly at five, the carefully prepared picnic basket dangling from my hand.

  Libby answered the door.

  She looked at me. Then down at the basket.