Chapter 27

I slip inside the locker room, hiding behind rows of lockers until I’m sure the coast is clear. My back scrapes the peeling maroon team-color paint on the walls.

As I walk around the corner, something catches my eye and I jump.

Rhett, leaning against the far lockers, smirks.

“Not funny.”

“Sure. Present for you,” he says, handing me a sandwich bag.

I take it and smile at the two hairs inside. “Best gift I’ve ever received.”

“Which locker is Ruthie’s?” he asks. “And Luce’s?”

I walk past him and point to Ruthie’s locker. “Do you know her code?”

“My birthday.”

“Are you serious?”

He shrugs. “She was obsessed with me.”

“Right.”

“You remember my birthday,” he says as I open the locker.

“We were friends for years and I’m not an idiot.”

“Smells better in the girls’ locker room,” he says as I rifle through Ruthie’s things. It doesn’t feel good now that she’s dead, but I can’t afford to let a little thing like human decency get in the way right now.

“I can imagine.”

“It’s like old sweaty socks in there, and you never get used to the smell.”

“Great. I’ll check Luce’s for her brush. You find that phone,” I tell him, and move across the room.

“Yes, boss.”

I open Luce’s locker and start looking. One thing that’s still on my mind a lot is the pain meds found in Arthur’s tox report.

Something flashes across my mind as I spot a sling piled at the bottom of Luce’s locker, from an injury at Christmas.

George’s shoulder.

I’ve seen him rubbing it a few times. George told me Arthur was having mobility issues, and he never came back to me about getting my parents to visit.

The day the house burned down, I thought it might be George sending the messages because he walked past my house.

My mouth falls open as I move things out of the way in Luce’s locker. George wasn’t coming to see me that day…. He was visiting Malcolm at the end of the cul-de-sac to buy pain meds.

It was George who was taking the pills and slipped Arthur some.

“How’s it going?” Rhett calls.

“Oh, still looking.”

“Same. She has so much crap in here. It’s supposed to just be gym stuff.”

George encouraged Arthur to sell the house, but he wouldn’t…so he dosed him and let him wander off. Plenty of places he could get hurt with the sheer drops and winding roads.

That was risky because it wasn’t guaranteed to work, but maybe that wasn’t the first time. The night of the accident, George was out at the end of the property. Maybe he was waiting until late before he sent Arthur out. Maybe that’s why he was surprised to see me.

I don’t know. But I need to.

I have to get into George’s room and find those pills. The house is still standing. An actual miracle. But no one’s been inside yet because the authorities are waiting for it to be deemed safe to enter.

Moving a hoodie, I find Luce’s hairbrush and pull a strand out. I drop it in the bag, leaving out the part that I touched. I squeeze the hair between my index finger and thumb on the outside of the bag and snap off the part I’ve touched.

“Got a hair,” I say.

“Couple more places to look for the phone.”

I close the locker, my mind still on what I need to do with George. Step one would be finding proof to support my theory.

If I’m right, I can use this.

“Got it,” Rhett says, holding up the phone. “You’re the only contact. What a surprise there….”

“Oh my god, thank you!” I say, spinning around and taking it from him. I shove it in my back pocket. “I’m going to go check in with George.”

“Why?”

“Because I haven’t since he woke up, and I said I would. I don’t want to give my mom an excuse to ask questions.”

“So we’re splitting up again.”

“I’ll see you this afternoon. Just do something normal for a while, and we’ll meet later.”

He nods. “Call me.”

We split ways. I’m not at all comfortable telling him what I suspect, because I don’t fully trust him, even now. He’s proving himself, but he’s ditched me before, so what’s to stop him doing that again?

At one point I trusted Atlas, Luce, and Jesse too.

I go to my car, keeping myself out of view. This afternoon’s classes are the only ones I won’t have with any of my ex-friends. No usual schedule. We’re being split between different movies and group games.

They won’t know I’m gone. I’ll be back before the end of school, pretending that I watched Avengers: Endgame. I’ve seen it, so I can answer questions if Jesse asks. I don’t think he’s smart enough to see what I’m doing. He believes I’m too scared of him.

Their worry is that I’ll break and go to the cops. They have noidea.

I pull up near the creek and park in a turnout. The sky looks as angry as I am. Thick, dark clouds steal the light. It’ll probably pour soon.

I walk through the edge of the trees, keeping a little bit of cover in case anyone drives past. The plan is to access the house the same way we did when we broke in to get the watch.

Moving past the trees with Arthur’s house directly in front of me, I keep low and out of view of the road. I’m facing the back door.

Crouching down, I run awkwardly and slip through the open back door, ducking between the tape.

I look around at the black, singed wood in the kitchen. Half of the cabinets are missing; the ones farthest from the door are still intact, though covered in soot. The fire department did a good job of putting the fire out, but I can’t see this being repaired.

I walk into the hallway and grimace at the charred staircase. It was a miracle that George got out.

Well, it’s now or never.

I place my foot on the step, and it creaks beneath me, moving more than it did the first time I came up here.

Groaning, I take another step. Please don’t fall through these.

I take the next few steps slower, gently placing my weight, breathing shallowly, as if I’ll be lighter without so much air in my lungs. Or maybe it’d work the other way around.

Nothing in this house looked solid before the fire.

I reach the top and tiptoe toward the room George was in the other night. His door is wide open, everything damaged from the smoke but otherwise still in place.

I pull my hand into my sleeve and use my covered hand to open a drawer in his desk. The room is bare, but he only visits once a year, so I didn’t expect a lot of stuff.

The thick smell of smoke hangs heavily in the air. Embers sit all over the floor, leaving my footprints. I have generic Converse, so I think I can wash these and it’ll be fine.

I close the empty drawer and move to the closet. In the corner, just like where I hid my stuff that I needed to ditch, is a gym bag. I unzip the top and shake my head. A bottle of oxycodone is lying at the bottom.

George was drugging his grandad.

Who the hell does that to their grandpa?

I pad back over the smoke-damaged floor and am at the top of the stairs when I get a call.

Rhett.

“Hey,” I say.

“Marley, we have another problem,” he says.

“What?” I ask, pocketing the small bottle of pills, needing somewhere else to put these things. I’m full of evidence, but I don’t want to carry a bag, or it’ll be obvious where I’m hiding things.

“There’s a lot of talk about Ruthie being involved in Arthur’s death. The new rumor is that someone killed her because of it.”

“Who do they think did it?”

“No one’s offering a decent explanation for that…but apparently the cops are interviewing students. That means we’ll both be questioned, me especially, I guess.”

As Ruthie’s not-quite boyfriend, the cops will definitely want to talk to him.

“Are you nervous about that?” I ask, descending the stairs slowly so he doesn’t hear.

“No, it was always coming. What are you going to say?”

I carefully reach the bottom, sighing a breath of relief that I didn’t fall. “Nothing right now. You can’t mention Jesse.”

“Wasn’t planning to.”

My heart thuds and my hand itches to touch the small tube in my pocket. “I’m going to the hospital. I’ll check in after.”

“Okay, speak later.”

He hangs up, and I sneak out of the house, heading for my car and the hospital.