I shifted in my seat. “I’m just going to repeat the same thing a dozen times because it’s the truth.”
“I’ve been doing this job for ten years, and one thing is always true. Eventually the fantasy washes away and people tell the truth. All of the things you’ve told us mean something, but until you stop living in your head and give us the cold hard facts of the case, you aren’t going anywhere.”
“Are you going to arrest me?” I asked. “For making up a story?”
“No, but I could for impeding a police investigation.”
I crossed my arms. “Then do it already. I watch enough cop shows to know that you can’t hold me more than forty-eight hours without charging me with a crime.”
Officer Krupke scoffed. That wasn’t his name. His name was Knutsen, but I couldn’t remember that, and that song from West Side Story had been playing through my head ever since he introduced himself to me. He wasn’t one to believe magic existed in the world, clearly. If he did, I would have gotten through to him by now.
“Just lie,” Katie said, next to me. She had come with her mother to the police station. It didn’t matter that Joanne couldn’t see her. What mattered was that Katie watched over her.
“If I lie then it’s not the truth,” I thought to Katie. I agreed to let her in my head when they loaded me into the car. “If they find Samantha, they’ll know I’m lying and then I’ll be in trouble.”
“They’ll never find Samantha, Banana. We have to do that, and we can’t do it if you’re locked in a police station.”
“We’re going over this again,” Officer Krupke said to me. “Start at the beginning.”
I looked over at Katie, and she nodded at me. “Samantha and I went into the woods near my house to catch a goblin.”
“And you’re sure it was a goblin?”
I looked over at Katie again and she mouthed the word “LIE” as overexaggerated as she could with her lips.
My head dropped. “No, sir. It wasn’t a goblin.”
Officer Krupke leaned forward. “Now we’re getting somewhere. What was it then?”
I hesitated. It made it seem dramatic but really, I was trying to come up with something feasible. “We were chasing badgers.”
“Badgers are dangerous, you know? And they’re not even native to this part of the country. Why would you go chasing them?”
“Samantha had a pellet gun. We wanted to hunt one down.”
“Do you have a license for that?”
“No, sir. That’s why I was lying. Neither of us have licenses.”
“I see. Hunting without a license could be a hefty fine. You know that, right?”
“Yes, sir, but we were only playing. And we didn’t find one, anyway, but we got lost deep in the woods, and that’s when we saw her.”
“This…Hilda person?”
“She was hideous and screaming at us. Samantha tried to defend us, but Hilda was too quick. Samantha told me to run, and I did. I’m sorry to say I ran all the way home. That is my great shame.”
“Well, I have to say, that is a lot more believable than your last story, and it gives us something to go on at least.”
I looked down at the floor. “Can I go now?”
The officer looked at me for a few moments. “I suppose so. Don’t go far though. These missing person’s cases sometimes take a while to solve, and we have a pretty terrible head start thanks to you.”
“I was just trying to protect myself, and my friend.”
“Well, you didn’t do either very well, now did you?”
“I guess not.”
Mom met me at the entrance to the police station with Joanne. Their worry for me had subsided, and now they just looked tired.
“What did they say?” Mom asked.
“They told me not to go far in case they need my help again.”
“Well, that shouldn’t be hard, since you’re grounded for the rest of eternity.”
“Can we just go home now, please?”
I felt betrayed by my mother in a way I never had before. All I wanted was to tell her the truth and have her believe me. Now, I had lied to the police and made my mother believe I was crazy. I could never trust anybody ever again, at least not until I found Samantha and put this whole matter behind us.
Chapter 34
“Why do you think Mom couldn’t see the rift?” I asked, sitting on my bed after Mom brought me home from the police station.
“I don’t know,” Katie said. “Why did you tell her? Why did you upset my mom like that?”
“I thought they should know, Katie. I mean, I’ve been acting really strange, and I thought they would like to know that I wasn’t crazy.”
“There’s a reason that I didn’t show myself to my mother, or yours. I didn’t think they could handle it.”
“And now we know you were right.”
“I guess so,” Katie said. “I kind of hoped I was wrong. I really wanted Mom to see me so I could tell her that I was okay, and that I still loved her. I guess we can’t do that now.”
I stood up and looked out the window. “The sun’s down. We promised the troll we would bring him back a dragon’s heart by now, and we haven’t even started.”
“You can’t still be talking about that with everything that happened today.”
I looked over at the woods, where the rift was growing bigger with every second. “It doesn’t matter what happens to me. If we don’t close the puncture, then the whole world is in trouble.”
“What are you going to do? You don’t have a car.”
I looked down at Joanne’s house. Her Ford Focus was parked in the driveway. “I’m going to steal your mom’s keys, I guess, since the police impounded Samantha’s car.”
“My mom’s going to hate you for that,” I said.
“Hopefully she’ll understand one day. The fate of
