The Escape. Part 16

Fletcher smiled. "So..."

Avery unscrewed the cap on her bottle and took a long sip. "So..."

"Why are you here?"

She felt as if she had just sucked down lighter fluid.

Fletcher's expression immediately changed to one of apology, and he held out his hands. "I didn't mean it like that, I swear! It's just no one-well, we've never really hung out together."

"We used to. A little bit at least."

"That was five years ago."

Avery wanted to say something meaningful, but all she could come up with was that she didn't have other friends either. As weird as it had been for Fletcher to want to talk to her after the incident, she found herself wanting to talk with him. He was nice. He understood her. He knew what it was like to have awful, haunting memories that never really left you.

She shrugged.

"There's nothing to do down here. Wanna go upstairs?"

Avery had never really been in a boy's room before. But it's Fletch, she told herself. No big deal. "Cool."

"I'm glad you stopped by. My brain is kind of crazy." He drew a circle around his temple with his finger.

"Believe me, I know the feeling."

Fletcher opened the door to his bedroom. Avery didn't know what she was expecting, but it was pretty normal: bed with navy-blue sheets. Desk with nothing on it. Alarm clock in the corner. It didn't look quite as spa.r.s.e as the rest of the house, but it still had that uncomfortable feeling that someone might have stayed there but no one really lived there.

Avery took a seat at the desk while Fletcher sank onto his bed, balancing his water bottle in his lap. His gaze connected with hers, and Avery realized she had never noticed how unusual his eyes were. They were a brown so golden and pale it bordered on amber.

"Is it just about what happened to your mom?" Fletcher asked.

"That makes me feel crazy?" Avery shook her head. "It's a combination of things. My mom's death, my preoccupied dad, being the daughter of the chief of police." She stopped, licked her lips, and smiled. "Am I boring you yet?"

"No," he said, wrapping his arms around his shins. "Not at all. I feel the same way. Sometimes my mind is all jumbled up but lately... I mean, after"-he rolled his eyes-"all this, it feels worse."

"Yeah."

Fletcher felt his pulse start to speed up. He wanted to talk to her. He wanted to tell her everything.

Everything that I think happened.

Fletcher was trying to stay calm. Avery's expression was hard to read, somewhere between blank neutrality and stark judgment.

"Do you remember everything about what happened?" he asked. "Are there gaps in your memory?"

"Gaps? Yeah, Fletch, we talked about this. The blackouts and-"

"No..."-he swung his head-"not just blackouts. Even now. There are...blank s.p.a.ces. Missing pieces. Like, you remember the walkway that leads to the door and you remember being in the house, but you can't remember how you got in."

Avery looked confused and Fletcher barreled on. "Like, was the door unlocked? Did you just walk in, or did you have a key? Did someone let you in?"

"I guess, but I don't think I forget anything really important..."

Fletcher grabbed Avery's hand. "But what if what was missing was the most important thing?"

There was a flash of panic in Avery's eyes.

"What if what I can't remember is-" He looked down at his own hands and let Avery go as if she'd burned him. "Never mind."

"No, Fletch, I get it. I do. You think that if you could fill in those gaps, you could help find the killer."

Fletcher stared at Avery for a long, hard moment. With her chin slightly hitched, her hair curling at her shoulders, she looked so innocent, almost angelic, like one of those marble statues in the cemetery. He could trust her. He could tell her.

"Fletch? Fletcher, honey, are you home?" His mother's voice trailed from downstairs. He wondered if Avery could also feel the change in the air between them.

"I'm here, Mom. Avery's with me."

"Come on down, please. Both of you," she replied.

Avery cleared her throat, her voice a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "Are we in trouble?"

Fletcher gave a noncommittal shrug and stood. "You should probably go."

She nodded and followed Fletcher down the stairs, smiling at Mrs. Carroll on the landing. "h.e.l.lo, Mrs. Carroll. I was just-" Avery looked from Mrs. Carroll to Fletcher and back again. "I was just dropping off some homework for Fletcher." She s.n.a.t.c.hed up her backpack. "I should go."

Mrs. Carroll's eyes didn't leave her son's face. "That's probably a good idea. Do you need a ride?"

"No, thank you." Avery stuck her thumb over her shoulder. "I live super close."

"Thanks a lot, Mom." Fletcher snorted. "Kick out the one person who doesn't think I'm a complete socio." He'd adopted the moniker they had used at school when he pa.s.sed by.

"You are not a sociopath."

"Whatever. I don't care what they think. I care what Avery thinks." The reality of what he had said hit him squarely in the chest. Did he really care what Avery thought about him?

"Fletcher, you know it's not a good time for you to get too wrapped up in your friends. Especially a girl like Avery Templeton."

"What's that supposed to mean? I've known Avery since we moved here. She's the only kid who's ever been nice to me except for Adam. What do you have against her?"

His mother wouldn't meet his eyes. "It's just not a great idea right now. You need to distance yourself from everything that happened in the woods. And frankly, Avery is a big part of that. I'm just thinking about you, honey." She brushed the side of his face tenderly. "I want you to be okay. Dr. Palmer is going to see you tomorrow afternoon, and he and I think-"

Again, Fletcher shrugged off his mother and her concern. "I'm fine, Mom. You have no idea what I need."

Avery peeled the crusts off her sandwich, piling them at the side of her plate.

Chief Templeton gestured at the discards. "Dinner not to your liking, Princess Avy?"

She overlooked his barb. "Do you like Mrs. Carroll, Dad?"

"Mrs. Carroll? Sure, why not?" He paused and narrowed his eyes. "Wait, this isn't a fix-up, right? You're not trying to-"

Avery shrugged and picked up her sandwich. "She's super-protective of Fletch. A million more times than normal."

"Her son was beaten to within an inch of his life, Avy. I think a little overprotection is warranted."

"I don't know. It's more than that. I was over there today, and we were up in Fletch's room when she came home-"

Chief Templeton held up a silencing hand, his eyebrow arching. "You were in a boy's room without any parents in the house?"

Avery rolled her eyes. "It's Fletch, Dad. Get a grip."

The chief gave her a stern look. "'Get a grip'? Did you really just tell me to 'get a grip'?"

Normally, Avery would have flushed red to the scalp and waited for her father to read her the riot act, but this was bigger than a conversation about boys.

"I really think there's something wrong with her. I think maybe she could have had something to do with what happened."

The chief closed his mouth, then pointed a finger at his daughter before starting in. "First of all, you're not out of the hole for shooting off your mouth. Second of all, are you really accusing a mother of killing her son's friend and beating her own child to cover it up?"

"Fletcher can't remember the face of his attacker. What if it's because his brain can't handle it? What if his brain is trying to protect him from knowing that his mother is a murderer?"

"Motive?"

Avery bit her lip. "None, but-"

"This conversation is over, Avery. Go to your room."

Avery gaped, feeling betrayed. "I was just thinking out loud."

"First you were 'just in a fight,' then you were just shooting off your mouth. Now you're 'just thinking.' You're like a different kid lately, Avy, and frankly, one I don't like very much. Your mother and I raised you to behave better than this."

Her father's soft, gray-blue eyes had turned cold and hard. His jaw was set and Avery could see the pulse of his muscle along his jawbone. Avery's eyes started to burn, her lower lip trembling.

"I just want to help my friend."

"And I want you to be the kid you were two weeks ago. We can't always get what we want. Now go to your room."

Avery stomped up the stairs, unsure whether she was hurt or angry or both. Her father had always been on her side and would always listen to her theories on cases, no matter how far-fetched.

You're like a different kid...

She slammed her bedroom door.

And frankly, one I don't think I like very much.

Twenty-two.

The next day, Fletcher waited for Avery at her locker. There were the usual after-school sounds: people talking, papers shuffling, lockers slamming. But every few seconds he heard it-"socio" coughed into someone's hand, followed by t.i.ttering laughter.

Socio, murderer, killer-Dr. Palmer said that Fletcher couldn't control other people's perceptions of him so he should let those remarks roll off his back. What Fletcher could control, according to his shrink, was how he let others make him feel. And he wasn't supposed to let their nasty comments bother him. But he couldn't shake off the stares.

He was going to tell Avery how one of the memories had clicked into place last night, like one of those games where the squares drop down to plug up the empty holes.

He remembered Adam beckoning him over, and the two of them standing at the edge of a wide gully. Adam was pointing to a crisscross of bleached, white bones.

The memory made all the hairs on the back of Fletcher's neck stand up.

"Whose bones do you suppose...?"

The voice was indistinct-either Adam's or Fletcher's and foggy, just like the rest of what he remembered from that afternoon.

But what happened next? Who else was there?

"Hey, Fletch."

Avery looked cute in her enormous sweatshirt. Her light-brown hair spilling out of the hood, which hung down her back. She smiled.

Fletcher smiled back. "Hey. Got a second?"

They slid to sit across from each other at a picnic table at the back of the school. Fletcher seemed distracted when they sat down, and Avery really wanted to tell him to get on with it. The wooden bench was only semi-dry, and the moisture was seeping into her jeans and making her shiver.

Fletcher gnawed his lower lip, then swatted at his ear like there was a gnat.

"You okay?" she asked.

He blinked at her, as though just realizing she was there.

He started to sweat. His stomach started to roil.

Tell her about the dream.