Made You Up(42)

I didn’t mind scouring old newspaper articles—they were still forms of history, just slightly more recent than I was used to. Twenty minutes later, I found the first clue, one that I’d already seen before.

“‘Scarlet Fletcher, captain of the East Shoal cheerleading squad, helps introduce “Scarlet’s Scoreboard,” a commemoration of the charity and goodwill her father, Randall Fletcher, has shown toward the school.’”

I turned my screen toward Tucker. He frowned. “I thought the scoreboard was older than that. This was twenty years ago.”

In the picture, Scarlet beamed and flashed a set of white teeth. Her face wasn’t obscured here; she looked vaguely familiar. There was another picture at the bottom of the article. Scarlet stood beneath the scoreboard with a boy with dark hair, wearing a football captain’s uniform. His smile was strained.

“He’s hot,” I said absentmindedly.

“Sure, if you like the classical look,” Tucker mumbled.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, nothing.”

“Are you jealous, Mr. Soggy Potato Salad?”

“Jealous? When I’ve got this?” Tucker whipped off his glasses, bit the tip of the earpiece, and squinted at me. I laughed.

The librarian sprang out from behind a bookcase and shushed me. I clapped a hand over my mouth.

We returned our attention to our search. “Hey, here’s something,” Tucker said. “Not about the scoreboard, but it mentions Scarlet again.” He turned his screen to me.

“‘Though only numbering 151, East Shoal’s graduating class of 1992 includes several remarkable names, including Scarlet Fletcher, daughter of politician Randall Fletcher, and the class valedictorian, Juniper Richter, who tested top in the nation in both math and language comprehension. . . .’” I let my voice fade away. “Is that . . . ?”

“It’s Miles’s mom, yeah.”

“They went to school together? That means she was there when the scoreboard went up—maybe she could tell you something about it.”

Tucker rubbed his neck. “That’s . . . probably not going to happen.”

“Why not?”

“She’s, ah, in a mental hospital up in Goshen.”

“A . . . a mental hospital?” I paused. “Why?”

Tucker shrugged. “I don’t know anything else. She calls Finnegan’s sometimes when he’s there. One time I redialed after he’d hung up, and an orderly answered.” He waved his hand around. “And now you see why I don’t mind eavesdropping on people’s personal lives.”

I sank back in my chair. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah. Are you okay?”

I nodded. That was why I’d trusted Miles when he’d said he wouldn’t tell anyone. He knew what it meant to hide a secret like that.

I dove back into the articles, trying to shove thoughts of Miles and his mother and Blue Eyes to the back of my mind. I had a strange, intense desire to see him.

My eyes began to glaze over and my legs went numb right about the same time I found it. I was well into ’97 when the headline reached right off the screen and smacked me in the face.

MEMORIAL SCOREBOARD FALLS, CRUSHES DONOR’S DAUGHTER

“You’re kidding me,” I whispered. “I think I just found your story, Tucker.”

“What?”

“Scarlet died in ninety-seven,” I said. “The scoreboard fell on her when she went back for the class reunion. And . . . Jesus, McCoy was the one who tried to lift it off of her. He was electrocuted. Scarlet died in the hospital a few hours later from sustained injuries, and they hung the scoreboard back up.”

I showed him the article. His eyes widened as he read.

“McCoy went to school with Scarlet,” Tucker said. “McCoy tried to save her and couldn’t. Now he worships the scoreboard because . . . why? It killed somebody.” He sat back, raked his hands through his neatly combed hair, and stared at me. “How messed up is this guy?”

“It didn’t just kill somebody,” I said. “It killed Scarlet. He’s made it like . . . like a monument. A memorial for her.”

A memorial for a dead woman.

There was definitely something strange going on. I just didn’t know what it was.





Chapter Twenty-two




I sat in the copse on the hill behind Red Witch Bridge that night, trying, for a little while, to forget what I’d learned in the library. Not the part about Scarlet, even though that was interesting. It was the information about Miles—about his mother—that had kept me from falling asleep.