Killman Creek (Stillhouse Lake #2)(10)

“Yeah, well, he’s always ready to run. I like to feel like I’m not.” Even though I am. Even though I know exactly where everything I have is, and I can have my bag packed in less than a minute in an emergency.

I take the rest of the shirts out of the bag and refold the wrinkles out, then put them away.

“I thought you’d gotten rid of all of those,” she says, and I realize she’s talking about the faded Strawberry Shortcake T-shirt that I’m putting away. It looks weird, I admit, in my gloomy drawer full of blacks and reds and navy blues. I’m not a Strawberry Shortcake kid anymore. I’m wearing loose cargo pants with zippers and flapping rings, a big bowling shirt, black, with a giant embroidered sugar skull on the back. My hair is dyed the color of midnight, and worn long and straight. I didn’t put on any eyeliner today. I miss it.

“Yeah, well, I like the way the shirt feels,” I tell her, then shut the drawer on the girl I used to be. “There. Home sweet home. You’re dumping us here for how long?”

There are spikes in it, but she doesn’t flinch. “I don’t know. I know it’s going to be hard, but I need you not to contact your friends in Norton. All right?”

Yeah, right, like any of my friends would want to talk to me now. I’m not just the Town Weirdo. I’m evil by association. Besides, they’re all in school. “What are we supposed to do about classes?”

“I’m sorry,” Mom says. “I know how much this hurts. But it’s temporary. Javier and Kezia will make sure you get lessons while I’m gone. I’m hoping it’ll be a week, maybe two at the most. But I need you to—”

“Be responsible, take care of Connor, yeah, yeah, I know.” I roll my eyes, because we’re clearly at that part of the conversation. “Hey, maybe we can hunt our own food. That’ll be fun. Squirrel soup. Yummy.”

I dig into the bag. On top is a picture of the three of us, laughing, standing in front of the cabin on Stillhouse Lake. Sam took it. It was a good day. I set it on top of the dresser and stand there, fidgeting with it, trying this angle and that. My mom hasn’t taken my bait. I’m not surprised. I finally say, “You told us you weren’t going to shoot Dad.”

“I’m not setting out to do that,” she says, which is pretty honest, all things considered.

“I wish you would,” I say. “I wish he was dead already. They should have killed him back in Kansas. That’s why they call it death row, right?” I try hard to keep my voice even and my shoulders from hunching in. “He’s going to murder somebody else, isn’t he? And maybe us, if he can.”

“That’s not going to happen.” Mom says it gently. I can tell she wants to give me a hug, but she’s become an expert at Lanny Language, and she stays at arm’s length. I don’t want a hug. I want a fight. She’s not going to give it to me, which sucks. “He’s going to be caught, and he’s going back to jail. And when it’s time, then the state will carry out his sentence. That’s the right way to do it. Otherwise it’s just revenge.”

“What’s wrong with revenge? Didn’t you see the pictures of the bodies? If that was me hanging in that noose, Mom, wouldn’t you want revenge?”

She freezes. Just . . . shuts down. I think because she doesn’t want me to know how much revenge she’d want to get. Then she blinks, and she says, “Did Connor see those pictures?”

“What? No! Of course not, I’m not stupid. I wouldn’t show those to him, and not the point, Mom. The point is, Dad doesn’t deserve to live, does he?”

“I’m emotional about him. So are you. That’s why it shouldn’t be us who decides what happens to him.” She’s talking the talk, but I can tell she’s not feeling it. She wants him super dead, so much that it makes her shake. But she’s making an effort not to raise me that way. I guess that’s good.

I dump the bag upside down, and stuff rains out on the bed. Makeup, mostly. A scrapbook that comes with an ostentatious, probably easy-to-open lock on it that Connor said he could jimmy with a paper clip. A diary, also locked. I like to write longhand, on paper. I like to think it survives, when stuff on the Internet is just pixels that can disappear in a second. Gone like it never existed.

“Lanny. My job is to get between your dad and you. So that’s why I’m going. You understand that?”

I fiddle with a tube of lipstick—Crimson Shadow—and set it on the dresser. “And I’m the one who stands between him and Connor,” I tell her. “I get it. I just hate it, that’s all. I hate that no matter what we do, how hard we try, it’s always all about him.”

Mom puts her arms around me this time and hugs. Hard. “No. It’s about making him meaningless, finally. We are not his. We are ours.”

I hug her back, but fast, and then I’m out. I flop down on the bed and put my headphones around my neck. “And when do I get my laptop back, Warden?”

“When this is done.”

“I know what not to do. You could put parental controls on it, even.”

She smiles. “And you’re a smart kid who can crack those two seconds after I’m out the door, so no. I’m sorry, but not until this is over.”

I give her The Look. It bounces off without effect.