Aftermath(74)

I stand and motion for him to shift over in the armchair. It’s wide, but not wide enough for two. I still squeeze in beside him, partly on his lap.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

Jesse puts his arm around my shoulders. I lean against him.

“I still have the tickets,” he says. “For All-Time Five.”

“Jesse Mandal, are you asking me to go to the concert with you?”

He finds a weak smile. “I don’t think they’d take those tickets. And, confession? I’m a little over ATF.”

“Ditto.” I lie against him for a minute, listening to his breathing, and then say, “I still have the bear you won for me at the fair.”

He pauses. “Bear? I thought it was a dog.”

“I went with bear. It didn’t complain.”

“Either way, it was ugly. I think I spent twenty bucks winning it, when I could have bought it at the dollar store.”

“Nah. They have better ones at the dollar store.”

He laughs. “You actually kept it?”

“I felt obligated. You worked so hard to win it.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m kidding. You know why I kept it? ’Cause I really kinda liked the boy who won it for me.”

He goes silent, and my heart’s pounding, waiting for him to say something, anything. Finally, his voice low, he says, “And if that boy doesn’t exist anymore?”

“He does. All the parts that matter, anyway.”

I twist to look at him, and I move forward, just a fraction, testing whether he’ll pull away, turn aside, flash a subtle stop sign.

Jesse shifts forward, but no more than I did, just closing the gap a little.

He grins and says, “I dare you,” and I can’t resist that, obviously, so I press my lips to his and —

“Oh!” a voice says behind us, and we jump apart, me scrambling off his lap like we’d been caught doing a whole lot more than kissing.

“Sorry,” I say. “We were just —”

“I could see what you were doing.” It’s not a librarian, but one of the elderly volunteers. She’s smiling and shaking her head.

“Sorry,” Jesse says. “We really have been working.”

“I see that, too.” She nods at the terminal, the last article still displayed. Her gaze moves to my pages of notes, and she takes a closer look at the terminal. “Is one of the high schools doing a project on the shooting?”

“Project?” I say.

“You’re the second student digging through those recently. I suppose a teacher has decided it’s been long enough to assign it as a research project, but I’m not sure I’d agree. There are still children at school who were affected by it.”

I nod, expressionless. “I know. It did seem weird that it was on the list of topics. I’m surprised anyone else dug this deep. We thought we’d ace the assignment if we came here. Seems we have competition.”

I glance at Jesse. “I bet it was Brittany.”

“No, sorry,” the volunteer says. “I haven’t been volunteering here long, and I don’t know as many students as I’d like, but this particular boy goes to my church. I was surprised to see him printing out those files last week. I should have known it was for a project. He’s not likely to go looking otherwise. His family was one of the ones affected. His cousin was killed.”

My heart starts thumping. I say, “It wasn’t Tim Locklear, was it?”

I’m hoping she’ll say yes, that’s exactly who it was, but I know better. I just do.

“No,” she says. “It was Chris Landry.”

Jesse

Skye looks like she’s going to be sick. She’s had that same look on her face for the past ten minutes. After the volunteer left, Skye took the chair beside him, pulled up her knees and disappeared into her thoughts.

“He told me I should investigate,” she says finally.

When Jesse turns to look at her, she says, “Chris was there when I got the pages. The ones the police found in my locker. He asked me about them, and I told him, and he said maybe there was something to it and I should investigate. He practically told me he was the one who left them, and I still never suspected him.”

Jesse could point out that Chris’s suggesting she follow up hardly proved he’d left the pages. She doesn’t want to hear that, though. Doesn’t want to hear anything right now. She’s just thinking out loud.

As he watches her, he remembers the kiss. He shouldn’t, not at a time like this. But it would be weird, too, if he finally kissed Skye and then promptly forgot it. That door has been opened and all he really wants to do is walk through it. And… yeah, so not happening right now.

Chris Landry.

When the library volunteer first said that Chris had been looking into the shooting, Jesse’s honest reaction was “Huh, that’s odd.” It was only when he saw Skye’s face fall that he made the connection. Then there was a little spark of…

Relief. Admit it. One spark of relief at seeing a potential competitor thrown off the field. Of course, that lasted only a split second, before the full weight of it hit him.

“We were going to talk to him about the tech.” She shakes her head. “He was the first person we thought of to ask, and I never even considered the possibility he could have done it. I know his cousin died. I know he has the skills for the videos and the speakers. I still never suspected him.”