Abandon - Meg Cabot [94]
“Hey,” I said to him. “What did my mom want?”
“She was calling from the police station. They just took my dad there for questioning,” he said. He looked sick, as if someone had punched him in the gut. “For Jade’s murder.”
I felt the ground shift beneath my feet. At first I thought it was thunder.
But there hadn’t been any thunder. Not then.
“What?” I said, my mind whirling. “But how is that even —”
“A witness phoned in an anonymous tip,” Alex said. “They said they saw Dad driving around near the cemetery last night, in Grandma’s car. They just came over and impounded it. They’re testing it for trace evidence.” He let out a laugh that sounded nothing like his normal one. “Grandma’s car. They just took Grandma’s car. I wonder what they’ll find in it. A lot of yarn, that’s for sure.”
“Alex,” I said uneasily.
This couldn’t be happening. Not so many terrible things at once. How could they?
Something was wrong. Not just wrong but planets-out-of-alignment wrong.
Check yourself before you wreck yourself.
As soon as I thought it, a gust of wind swept through the courtyard, so strong everyone still sitting at the many lunch tables had to grab their food wrappers to keep them from blowing away. Farah and Nicole let out good-natured shrieks and clung to their skirts. Every guy in the Quad but Alex noticed.
“He didn’t even go out last night,” he was saying angrily about Uncle Chris. “You know him. He never goes out, except for his meetings with his parole officer. He just sits in front of that TV, watching the Weather Channel, drinking —”
“Mountain Dew,” I finished for him. “I know.”
I looked around. Lightning was beginning to flash out at sea.
No. This could not be happening.
But at the same time, the sinking feeling I’d been experiencing since I’d seen the police in the New Pathways office told me that it most definitely was happening.
No. Not ever since I’d seen the police in the New Pathways office. Ever since I’d come back from the dead.
If I really wanted to be honest with myself, though, I had to admit it had all started long before that:
“Did you like him?” Grandma had asked.
“I don’t know,” I’d replied.
Grandma had smiled.
“You will,” she’d said.
And tucked a scarf around my neck. A scarf she’d knitted herself, just for me.
A red one. With tassels.
Wait. That wasn’t how it had happened. What was I thinking? Grandma was right: I really did have an overactive imagination.
“Is this just a case of rounding up the usual suspects?” Kayla asked. “I saw that in a movie once. Maybe just because your dad went to jail once, they’re questioning everyone who —”
“No,” Alex said bitterly, looking as if he wanted to punch something. But there was nothing nearby soft enough to hit without injuring himself, except possibly some A-Wingers who were scattering because it was about to pour and the warning bell had just rung for class. “I told you. Someone says they saw him. A witness. Some witness, if he managed to see my dad somewhere he wasn’t, driving a car he was never in.”
“Oh, Alex,” Kayla said, and put her hand on his shoulder. Her expression was softer than I’d ever seen it. “I’m so, so sorry.”
My mind flashed back to Uncle Chris from the day before, when he’d urged me never to let anyone tell me I couldn’t do something I’d set my mind to.
That wasn’t going to be a problem anymore, I didn’t think.
“Give me your phone, Alex,” I said, holding out my hand.
“Why?” he asked, instantly suspicious even in his despair.
“Because,” I said, “I’m going to call my dad.”
Alex shook his head at me. “Pierce. Your dad hates my dad. Remember?”
“No, he doesn’t,” I lied. “Just hand it over.”
“Pierce,” Alex said. “It’s nice of you to offer. Really, it is. But you do not want to get involved in this. It’s not something you can really handle.”
I had to laugh. Although the truth was, I didn’t feel like it.
“Oh, Alex,” I said to him. “Trust me. What I handle on a daily basis makes this look like cake.”
This statement was followed by a crack of thunder so loud, it sent the rest of the few students who were still standing