Death and the Girl Next Door
Page 31Brooklyn snorted again. “There are just so many things I could say right now.”
Glitch’s mouth narrowed to a thin line of annoyance as Betty Jo hurried back with the key. “Okay, it’s right over here.” We followed her to a special room at the back of the library. “I’ve already signed you in. Let me know if you need any help.”
As Betty Jo left the room, I turned and spotted the yearbook. “There it is—” I pointed to the top shelf. “—1977.”
“So, what are we looking for?” Glitch reached over Brooklyn, jumping to grasp the book she was struggling to reach. When he landed, he wrapped a hand nonchalantly around her waist as though to make sure she didn’t fall.
I’d started noticing all kinds of these little touches, details I always just dismissed as the everyday remnants of close friendship. After all, didn’t he do the same to me? But the more I thought about it, the more I realized his attention to me was just that: the everyday remnants of close friendship. His encounters with Brooke were much more deliberate and happened much more often. When on planet Earth did his feelings for her morph into downright infatuation? He’d had a bit of a crush on her since she moved here in the third grade, but it seemed to have evolved. I wondered if Brooke knew.
As soon as he landed, Brooke snatched the yearbook from him and sat at the round table that took up most of the space in the closetlike room. She seemed completely oblivious of Glitch’s advance. Probably a good thing at the moment.
With a mental shrug, I dropped my notebook and sat beside her as she thumbed through the pages. “I really don’t know for sure. But the way Mr. Davis was guarding it … wait.” She’d turned the page to find the words IN MEMORY OF ELLIOT BRENT DAVIS headlining a memorial layout for a Riley High student who had passed away. I quickly scanned the collage that had been put together to honor him. Both candid and professional shots bordered the main photograph of Elliot Davis. It was a studio shot of him holding a football, and I realized who Elliot Davis had to be. “This is Mr. Davis’s brother.”
“Oh, my gosh,” Brooke said, leaning in closer, “you’re right.”
I tapped the page with my fingertips. “And this is the page Mr. Davis was looking at. I remember. He’d circled a face with a—”
“Lorelei,” Brooklyn interrupted in a hushed whisper. Her finger slid up to one of the photos bordering the main picture. In it, a crowd of students stood around the flagpole of the old high school. They were laughing, as though in disbelief, and I realized it was a shot of Mr. Davis’s brother. In what must have been some kind of a prank, he and some friends had chained themselves to the pole and were holding a sign I couldn’t quite make out.
But they were laughing, too. Every student in the photo was laughing, except one. A boy. He was standing closer to the camera yet apart from the rest, his stance guarded, his expression void, and then I saw the unmistakable face of our newest student.
Jared Kovach.
I felt the world tip beneath me, my head spin as I stared unblinking.
“It can’t be him,” she said.
But there was no mistaking the wide shoulders, the solid build, the dark glint in Jared’s eyes.
He had the same mussed hair, the same T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, the same arms, long and sculpted like a swimmer’s. The only difference I could see in this picture was the tattoo. Two, actually. Wide bands of what looked like a row of ancient symbols encircled each of his biceps.
“It just can’t be, right, Lorelei?”
He was just as breathtaking, just as surreal. And somehow, it made perfect sense. I swallowed hard and asked, “What if it is him?”
“Lor,” Glitch said, shaking his head, “that’s impossible.”
“Maybe it’s his father, or even his grandfather.” Brooklyn glanced up. “Lots of kids look like their grandparents.”
“Think about it,” I said. “Think about all the things he can do.” I studied the photo again. The caption below it read, Taken the day we lost our beloved brother and friend.
“What if it is him and he was there the day Mr. Davis’s brother died.” I thought back to what Cameron’s father had said. “Cameron calls him the reaper. Maybe he really is.”
In hesitation, I pursed my lips. Then I said it, what we were all thinking. “What if he really is the grim reaper?”
“Then wouldn’t you be dead?” Glitch asked, suddenly angry. He’d set his jaw, and I could tell he’d slipped into a state of denial. Heck, I’d considered moving to that state myself, but the facts were hard to dismiss.
First the vision, then the accident, the fight, the gunshot wounds that didn’t faze him, didn’t leave a scratch, and the way he’d rolled out of the bed of Cameron’s truck and landed solidly on his feet when he escaped. And just the way he walked, the way he moved. So ethereal. So dangerous.
“Nothing about Jared is normal,” I said. I looked up at Glitch. “Or Cameron, for that matter. He’s different. You said so yourself. Always has been.”
Glitch offered me a sardonic smile. “Okay, so if Kovach is the freaking grim reaper, then what the heck is Cameron?”
I certainly didn’t have the answer to that. “I just think we should at least consider this a possibility.”