a single class since the day he arrived. I just thought maybe you knew something about his situation.”
“His situation?”
“I can’t get hold of his parents. The number he gave has been disconnected.”
“Oh, right.” I was trying desperately to stay one step ahead of him, but it was hard to outrun a bear, especially on uneven ground. I considered doing the fetal-position thing and playing like a rock, but he might think that odd. “From what I understand, his parents are having some problems.”
“What kind of problems?” he asked, clearly intrigued.
“Mr. Davis, I’m not sure I should be answering for Jared.”
“I can assure you, Ms. McAlister, anything you say will be held in the strictest confidence.”
“I understand, but I just don’t know that much. I mean, all he said was that his parents were having problems and—” I tried to think up an excuse for his absences, any excuse. “—and they were trying to work things out, and he just wanted to be with them. That’s probably why he’s been absent.”
I couldn’t tell if Mr. Davis was biting or not. He tapped a pen on his desk and sized me up with a hard stare. Without warning, he shot from his chair and held out a hand. “Thank you for coming in, Ms. McAlister.”
I stood and watched his huge hand swallow mine in a firm shake. “No problem.” With as much tact as I could muster, I looked down at the yearbook then back.
Got it. 1977.
“You can get a pass back to class from Connie.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”
His smile held more suspicion than sincerity. “You do that.”
As I left the office, I wondered how I was going to break the news to Glitch and Brooklyn that we would be skipping again today.
ELLIOT
“So this is the library.” Glitch turned in a full circle, taking in the Riley’s Switch Public Library, recently remodeled and modernized. Softly muted colors added to its quiet ambience. “Nice.”
“Yes,” Brooklyn said in a teasing tone, “and they have books, too. They’re made of paper with words inside and you read them.”
He turned to her in disbelief. “Surely you jest.”
She snorted and socked him on the arm for good measure. He rubbed his shoulder and smiled to himself, clearly enjoying the attention.
“Is it just me,” Brooklyn said, gazing thoughtfully out the glass doors, “or is that reporter guy following us?”
We turned back for a better look. Sure enough, a white van with the Tourist Channel’s blue logo sat idling out front.
“I’ve been seeing that van a lot lately,” I said, my suspicions growing.
Before we could discuss that fact further, my grandmother’s best friend, Betty Jo, spied us from behind the circulation desk and brightened.
“Okay, guys,” I said in a low tone as Betty Jo headed toward us, her large body lumbering across the thick carpet, “remember the plan.”
“Got it,” Glitch said, lowering his voice to match mine. “Should we synchronize our watches?”
“Hi, Betty Jo.” I couldn’t help a quick kick to Glitch’s ankle. He cursed under his breath as Betty Jo pulled me into a hug.
“How have you been, precious?” Before I could answer, she asked, “Are you out of school?”
“Well, not especially,” I hedged, uncomfortable with lying to my grandmother’s very best friend, the woman who helped both my grandparents through the roughest time in their lives, my parents’ disappearance. “We’re doing research for a school project.”
“Oh, wonderful. How can I help?” She clasped her hands in a prayer position, ever ready, willing, and able to help on school projects.
“Does the library keep old copies of the Riley High yearbooks?” Please, oh please, oh please, oh—
“Sure does.”
Yes!
“We have them all. They’re in the special collections area. I’ll get the key.”
“Thanks so much,” I said with an excited smile.
“Not at all, darling.” We looked on as Betty Jo circled the desk to retrieve the key.
“I wish I had someone who thought of me as a precious or a darling,” Glitch said almost dreamily.
Brooklyn snorted again. “There are just so many things I could say right now.”
Glitch’s mouth narrowed to a thin line of annoyance as Betty Jo hurried back with the key. “Okay, it’s right over here.” We followed her to a special room at the back of the library. “I’ve already signed you in. Let me know if you need any help.”
As Betty Jo left the room, I turned and spotted the yearbook. “There it is—” I pointed to the top shelf. “— 1977.”
“So, what are we looking for?” Glitch reached over Brooklyn, jumping to grasp the book she was struggling to reach. When he landed, he wrapped a hand nonchalantly around her waist as though to make sure she didn’t fall.
I’d started noticing all kinds of these little touches, details I always just dismissed as the everyday remnants of close friendship. After all, didn’t he do the same to me? But the more I thought about it, the more I realized his attention to me was just that: the everyday remnants of close friendship. His encounters with Brooke were much more deliberate and happened much more often. When on planet Earth did his feelings for her morph into downright infatuation? He’d had a bit of a crush on her since she moved here in the third grade, but it seemed to have evolved. I wondered if Brooke knew.
As soon as he landed, Brooke snatched the yearbook from him and sat at the round table that took up most of the space in the closetlike room. She seemed completely oblivious of Glitch’s advance. Probably a good thing at the moment.
With a mental shrug, I dropped my notebook and sat beside her as she thumbed through the pages. “I really don’t know for sure. But the way Mr. Davis was guarding it … wait.” She’d turned the page to find the words IN MEMORY OF ELLIOT BRENT DAVIS headlining a memorial layout for a Riley High student who had passed away. I quickly scanned the collage that had been put together to honor him. Both candid and professional shots bordered the main photograph of Elliot Davis. It was a studio shot of him holding a football, and I realized who Elliot Davis had to be. “This is Mr. Davis’s brother.”
“Oh, my gosh,” Brooke said, leaning in closer, “you’re right.”
“He looks just like him,” Glitch said, hovering over us from behind.
I tapped the page with my fingertips. “And this is the page Mr. Davis was looking at. I remember. He’d circled a face with a—”
“Lorelei,” Brooklyn interrupted in a hushed whisper. Her finger slid up to one of the photos bordering the main picture. In it, a crowd of students stood around the flagpole of the old high school. They were laughing, as though in disbelief, and I realized it was a shot of Mr. Davis’s brother. In what must have been some kind of a prank, he and some friends had chained themselves to the pole and were holding a sign I couldn’t quite make out.
But they were laughing, too. Every student in the photo was laughing, except one. A boy. He was standing closer to the camera yet apart from the rest, his stance guarded, his expression void, and then I saw the unmistakable face of our newest student.
Jared Kovach.
I felt the world tip beneath me, my head spin as I stared unblinking.
“It can’t be him,” she said.
But there was no mistaking the wide shoulders, the solid build, the dark glint in Jared’s eyes.
