‘Well, she gave me a note from her mother saying that she was volunteering on a church project in Nebraska, but to be honest—’ She stopped.
‘What?’
‘To tell you the truth, I thought the note was forged.’
‘Did you talk to Florian or Julia?’
‘No. In retrospect I wish I had, but I didn’t want Ashlynn to feel that I didn’t trust her. For all I knew, the story was perfectly legitimate.’
Ashlynn told Olivia she’d been driving for hours, and she arrived in the ghost town from the south, which was the route she would have taken back from Nebraska. So maybe it was true.
Or maybe, like Olivia, Ashlynn was keeping secrets.
‘Do you know—’ he began, but he couldn’t finish his question.
Footsteps boomed on the cafeteria floor. A gangly teenager sprinted toward them and skidded to a stop, almost falling. He had a pile of schoolbooks under his arm, and two of them spilled to the ground. The boy struggled to catch his breath. The cafeteria guard, seeing the commotion, jogged in their direction.
Maxine Valma stood up. ‘David,’ she said to the boy. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
The teenager gestured toward the rear of the school. ‘There’s trouble outside.’
Thirty students gathered in a mean circle in the mud of the football field.
As Chris and the principal neared the crowd, with two security guards beside them, he heard shouted expletives hurled between teenage boys. Pushing and shoving erupted, throwing several boys to the wet ground. Others began throwing wild punches. A handful of girls watched in twos and threes from around the lawn. Some screamed encouragement, and others chewed their nails and stared nervously at the principal as she came closer.
One girl stood off by herself. She had a round face, with a mess of red curls on her head. She watched the fight from the shelter of a large oak tree, and she eyed the streets of Barron behind her, as if weighing whether she should run.
Through the tumult of bodies, they could see inside the circle, where two teenage boys confronted each other in a mess of blood and fists. The one with long hair tied in a ponytail was a stranger to Chris, but he recognized the other. It was Johan Magnus, the son of the minister in St. Croix, the boy he’d met at the motel. Johan, whose sister Kimberly was part of the cancer cluster and Olivia’s best friend.
He heard Maxine Valma mutter in dismay, spotting the other boy in the fight. ‘Kirk Watson.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘A Barron boy,’ she snapped. ‘One of the worst.’
They descended on the feuding pack, and Valma shouted at the students with a crisp air of anger and authority. ‘
Seeing them, several boys broke from the circle and escaped toward the school building. Many of the girls joined them. The others were still caught up in the fight, wrestling and exchanging blows. One by one, Chris and the security guards waded between the boys, shoving them aside and re-establishing a safe ground. The violence quieted, until only Kirk Watson and Johan Magnus were still entangled. Blood trickled from Johan’s nose. Kirk had a burgundy welt on his cheek bone. Their clothes and faces were black with dirt.
Chris took Kirk, and the larger of the security guards took Johan, and together they grabbed each boy by the shoulders and yanked them apart. Kirk shrugged off Chris’s grip and bolted toward Johan, but as he did, the other guard stepped in front of Johan and fired a blast of pepper spray toward Kirk’s face. The guard’s aim was bad, but even as Kirk twisted from the path of the spray, some of the fog seared his cheek and neck. He screamed and jerked backward, tumbling into Chris and taking them both to the ground.
Kirk clawed at his burning skin. His elbow landed hard on Chris’s chin, dizzying him and knocking his teeth together. The older boy was heavy on top of Chris’s body, and he fought unsuccessfully to dislodge him. Kirk’s breath was sour as he gagged from the pepper spray, and he stank of cigarettes. He swung, hammering the side of Chris’s skull and blinding him with an electric jolt of pain. As the guards closed in, Kirk blinked at Chris through tearing, bloodshot eyes.
‘D’you get my message, fucker?’ he hissed.
Chris knew what message Kirk meant. It had been scrawled on the wall of his motel room.
The guards laid their hands on Kirk’s shoulders and dragged him off Chris, but with the strength of a bear, Kirk kicked free of the guards. Before anyone could hold him, he broke through the line-up of teenagers. No one reacted; no one chased him. He sprinted toward a black pick-up parked on the border of the athletic field. When he was safely inside, the engine growled, and he sped away.
Chris stood up slowly. The ringing in his ears was as loud as a symphony. His neck and jaw felt stiff. His new dress shirt and pants were wet and torn. He felt someone put an arm around his waist and realized it was Maxine Valma.
‘Are you all right?’ the principal asked.
‘I’ve been better,’ Chris admitted, tasting blood in his mouth.
Valma snapped her fingers at the minister’s son, who stood on the edge of the circle with his hands in his jean pockets. Despite the smears of blood on his face and the mud in his blond hair, he looked in better shape than Chris.
‘
The boy inched closer. He began to make excuses, but the principal silenced him.
‘Quiet! Listen to me. I’m very disappointed in you. You’re the one person in this school who has tried to
‘It’s not what it looks like,’ Johan insisted.
‘Then what is it?’
‘I saw Kirk’s brother Lenny going outside with Tanya Swenson. I didn’t like it. I followed them, and I saw Kirk out here waiting for her.’
Valma took a long breath. ‘I see.’
‘Kirk and I got into it, and everyone else started piling in.’
‘Where is Lenny?’ she asked.
‘He bailed and ran when everything started.’
‘All right. Go back to my office, Johan. We need to share this with the police.’ Her soft voice turned sharp again. ‘The rest of you, I want you in the gymnasium with the guards. Right now. No talking. No fighting. You sit there and stare at your feet, is that understood? We’re all going to have a chat with you
The crowd of teenagers shuffled toward the school building. Chris remembered the girl who had stood off by herself near the trees, and he realized she wasn’t part of the group returning to the school. When he looked in the direction where he’d first seen her, he saw the girl running toward the residential neighborhood.
‘Who is that?’ he asked Valma.
The principal frowned. ‘It’s Tanya Swenson.’ She shouted after the girl. ‘Tanya! Come back!’
Tanya stopped long enough to look back over her shoulder, but then she turned and ran even faster, losing herself among the streets of Barron.
8
Chris found Tanya on a side-street twelve blocks from the school. She sat on the top step of a box-like yellow house, with her fleshy forearms wrapped around her knees and iPod earphones shoved in her ears. When she saw his car stop, she scrambled to her feet with her red curls bouncing, and he was afraid she would run. He got out quickly and held up his hands.
‘Tanya, it’s okay. I want to help.’
The girl regarded him suspiciously. She unplugged the headphones and shoved them in her pocket.
‘I’m Olivia’s father,’ he added.
‘I know who you are.’
