“I do this with my parents all the time,” Spoon said. “It’s great, right?”
We all took this as a cue to let go. We sat down on a curb.
“How come you’re not at tryouts?” Spoon asked.
Ema shushed him, but I quickly explained. First I told him about the photograph of the Butcher of Lodz being Photoshopped. Spoon’s reaction:
“Well, duh. I mean, did we really think he was some weird Nazi who never aged?”
Then I told him about getting thrown off the team. Spoon’s reaction to this news was interesting. Rather than commiserating, Spoon just got red-faced angry at the injustice of it all. It was like the sweet, naïve kid was suddenly going to a dark place. Ema changed subjects.
“So did you visit Rachel?” Ema asked.
“Yes.”
“Is she okay?” Spoon asked.
“The wounds were only superficial. She has a bandage on her head.”
“But not on her face?” Spoon looked relieved. “Thank goodness.”
Ema punched him in the arm. Then we got serious. I told them all about my visit with Rachel, every detail. When I finished, Ema asked, “So what do you make of it?”
“I’m not sure. Here her mother makes these crazy accusations against her father…”
“And she ends up dead,” Spoon said.
Silence.
Ema stood and started pacing. “You said that Rachel started to believe her mother-about her father, I mean?”
I thought about that. “I don’t know if it was that strong. I think at some point Rachel decided that if she wasn’t on her mother’s side, who would be?”
“Okay, so let’s follow that. Rachel’s mom says the dad is a horrible man who locked her up because she knew bad stuff about him or whatever. Right?”
“I guess.”
Ema kept pacing. “Then Rachel wants to give her mother the benefit of the doubt. So what would she naturally do?”
“Look into her mother’s accusation,” I said.
“How?”
“By looking into her father…”
My voice faded. And that was when I saw it.
Both Ema and Spoon spotted the look on my face. “What?”
I tried to sort through the thoughts even as I spoke. “Rachel had the Abeona butterfly on her hospital door,” I said.
“So?”
“So she was working with them somehow.”
“Okay,” Ema said. “We sort of knew that. What’s the big deal?”
“When that guy with the shaved head came by the morning after Rachel was shot, the first thing he asked me was so weird.”
“What was it?”
“He said that he knew that Rachel and I had gotten close…”
Ema squirmed a little when I said that.
“But right away, he started asking if Rachel had given me anything.”
“Like what?” Spoon said.
“That’s what I asked. Like what. He said like a gift or package. I mean, here Rachel has just been shot. Her mother is dead. I’ve just finished talking to the police-and the first thing Shaved Head asks about is if Rachel gave me a gift or package? Don’t you think that’s weird?”
We all agreed that it was.
“So what’s your theory?” Ema asked.
“Suppose Rachel found something,” I said. “I don’t know what. Something that proves her mother was telling the truth. Suppose she found something bad about her father and then she wrapped it up in a package or something-and maybe she was supposed to pass it on to the Abeona Shelter.”
“But she ends up shot before she can,” Ema added.
“And her mother, the woman who first made the accusation, ends up dead,” Spoon finished for us.
Silence.
“We may be reaching,” Ema said. “On one level, this all makes sense. On another, it doesn’t. Rachel is still alive. Even if she doesn’t still have this gift or package, I mean, she has to know what it was.”
“Which may mean she’s still in danger,” Spoon added.
I thought about it. “We are missing something,” I said.
“What?”
“I don’t know. But something. Her father wouldn’t shoot her. I mean, come on. He just wouldn’t, even to protect himself.”
We mulled that over for a few seconds.
“Maybe it was an accident,” Ema said.
“How?”
“Maybe he shot at the mother and accidentally hit Rachel.”
That made more sense, I guess, but it still didn’t feel right. We were missing something. I just couldn’t put my finger on what. We talked some more as the skies started to darken. At some point, I realized that tryouts would be coming to an end and all the varsity guys would be walking out the door. I didn’t want to be here for that. I suggested that we break this up for the night.
Spoon glanced at his watch. “My dad will be done with work in another half an hour. I think I’ll hang with him and catch a ride.”
Ema and I walked alone down Kasselton Avenue. Behind us, the gym’s heavy doors slammed open as the varsity players started pouring out. They were laughing and smiling and had wet hair from showering and they walked a little stooped, happily tired from the workout. Seeing them made the pit in my stomach grow tenfold.
Ema said, “Come on, let’s hurry up.”
We did. I let her lead the way. She took a right and then a left, and I knew where she was headed. A few minutes later, we were at the end of Bat Lady’s street. The house was gone, burned to the ground. Only a few beams remained upright. After all these years, after all the stories to frighten children, the legendary haunted abode of the Bat Lady had been reduced to ashes. Fire marshals stood in the front yard, jotting notes on clipboards. I thought about that old record player, the old vinyls by the Who and HorsePower and the Beatles. I thought about all those photographs-the ones of Bat Lady as a hippie in the sixties, of Ashley at Kasselton High, of the sad-eyed boy with the curly hair, of all the rest of those rescued children.
All gone up in flames.
So where was Lizzy Sobek, aka the Bat Lady? Where was Shaved Head, aka I Have No Idea What His Name Is? For that matter, where was the phony Butcher of Lodz, aka the San Diego Paramedic/Arsonist?
Ema stood next to me. “Do you think it’s over?”
“What?”
“The Abeona Shelter. Did the Butcher destroy it?”
I thought about that. “I don’t know. I don’t think it’s that easy to destroy a group that’s been around so long.” I moved a little to the left, so that I could look into the woods in the back.
“What are you doing?” Ema asked.
“The garage in the back. Remember?”
“Oh, right,” she said. “That’s how Shaved Head would enter.”
“And that’s how he brought me into the house to see her-through a tunnel running underground. There were corridors and other doors.”
The woods were too thick to see the garage, especially from this distance. That, I had figured, was intentional. It was supposed to be hidden.
“We need to check it out,” I said.
“What? The garage and the tunnels?”
I nodded. “We obviously can’t do it now. Maybe tonight-when the fire marshal isn’t here and no one can see us.”
I looked at her and again something started to bother me.
“What?” she asked.
“There’s something different about you.”
I spotted a dark smudge on her arm. She saw me staring and pulled down her sleeve.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
But I kept thinking about the rumors Spoon had told me, about her living in the woods, about her father being a possible abuser. “Was that… was that a bruise?”
“What? No.” She stepped away, grabbing at her sleeve again. “I gotta go.”
“Don’t do this again, Ema.”
“I’m fine, Mickey. Really.”
“Then how come you never invite me over?”
Her eyes, usually meeting mine, found a tree in the distance. “My parents aren’t big on company.”
“I don’t even know where you live.”
“What difference does it make? Look, really, I have to get home. Let’s text later. If we can both get out, we can come back here and try to find those tunnels.”