The Edge of Everything (Untitled #1)(53)

WhY was DaddY Man sad?



Money stuff maybe. NOT because of you or me or Mom. He LOVED us. LOVED LOVED.



There was no answer. Zoe couldn’t tell if the conversation was over. There was a jittery, unresolved feeling, like a field of static, in her chest.

The paper finally came back. Jonah had folded it a zillion times again. The sight of it made Zoe’s heart fold in on itself, too.



WhY did we leave him DOWN THERE? I hate it & worrY he is cold.



Zoe turned the paper over. The other side was blank, though creased a dozen times and starting to tear. She wrote another message. It was a promise to Jonah and a promise to herself. She didn’t pause to think about it. It just spilled out of her.

Bug, she wrote,



I will MAKE the police go find Dad’s body—or I will go in that cave and find it myself. I swear to god. I always wanted to prove I could. And if I can’t get Dad out of there myself, I will at least make sure he isn’t cold. I WILL BRING HIM A BLANKET.



She’d written the message in huge letters and even signed it, dated it, and drawn a small picture of herself as a superhero wearing a cape and flexing her biceps.

Jonah opened his door, looking happy and shy. Behind him, Zoe could see that he’d jumped so hard on the ladybug that the bed had drifted away from the wall.



Downstairs, Zoe asked Rufus if he could babysit a couple more hours—she was so ashamed of how she’d behaved that she could barely make eye contact—and then went outside, where Val was doing a handstand in the snow. (Val did not believe in being bored for even one second.) After Val had tumbled back onto her feet and wiped her hands on her jeans, Zoe handed her the paper that she and Jonah had scribbled on. Val pored over it, turning it this way and that as necessary.

“Jonah is so awesome,” said Val. “I mean it. I just want to squeeze him till he pops.”

Zoe nodded, and walked past her to the car.

“I’m going to the police station,” she said. “I’m going to tell them they have to get my dad’s body. You wanna come?”

“Is there gonna be a big confrontation?” said Val.

“Probably,” said Zoe.

“Then I absolutely want to come,” said Val.

They didn’t talk in the car. They just took turns fiddling with the radio. Zoe was deep in a country music phase, and Val liked a station that played the same four pop hits over and over and over, like a psychology experiment. The landscape that had seemed so bright and hopeful on the drive home from school now drifted by the windows looking hopeless and dead.

Zoe parked outside the police station, and took one of those “deep, cleansing breaths” her mother was always talking about.

“What do you want me to do in there?” said Val. “Can I play a character? Can I improv?”

“Just be my friend—and don’t let me get arrested,” said Zoe.

Val made a pouty face.

“What if I want to get arrested?” she said.

“We’ll come back another time for that,” said Zoe. “With costumes and stuff. Cool?”

“Very.”

She and Val high-fived. They pretended to do it ironically, but the truth was that they just liked high-fiving. The only time they had ever tried fist-bumping neither of them wanted to make the stupid explosion sound.

The station was bustling, but the one cop Zoe liked, Brian Vilkomerson, stood up behind his desk when he saw the girls enter. He must have seen the tension pouring off them, like a vapor trail.

“Is this about Stan Manggold?” he said, before Zoe and Val even reached his desk. “Because—”

Stan Manggold! Zoe hadn’t thought about that psycho in days, and hearing his name threw her off balance.

“No,” said Zoe. “Stan’s been taken care of.”

Fortunately, Brian didn’t ask what she meant. What could she have said? You guys had your chance. Now my boyfriend’s taking him to hell.

“This is more important,” Zoe said quickly. “This is about my father.”

She told Brian she didn’t want to talk to Chief Baldino. She referred to him as “the mean one—the one who looks pregnant.”

Brian pursed his lips to kill a smile.

“Why don’t you and your friend sit with me for a minute?” he said.

He gestured to two green chairs by his desk. Zoe could hear Baldino back in his office, noisily unwrapping a sandwich and laughing on the phone about something that probably had nothing to do with police work.

Brian reached out to shake Val’s hand. Not everybody was that respectful to teenagers. Also, Brian didn’t do the patronizing triple take that virtually all adults did when they met Val. First, they’d see the half-shaved hair with orange streaks, and grimace as if they were passing a wreck on the highway. Next they’d notice how hot Val was. Finally, their brow would furrow, and they’d wonder why on earth a girl that pretty would blah yadda blah. It never bothered Val. She had the same opinion of people that Zoe had of trophies: that they were both ridiculous and awesome and all you could do was collect the coolest ones.

Zoe was grateful that Brian just stuck out his hand and said hello and didn’t treat her friend as if she were some Object of Interest. There was already a star next to his name in her head, so she added a second one, along with an exclamation point.