Death and the Girl Next Door

“My mom said it’s okay with her if it’s okay with you,” Brooklyn added. Man we were getting good with the lying.

“Science fair, huh?” Grandma said as she hurried to clean the kitchen before they set out for a wild night of legalized gambling. Bingo players were hilarious. “I guess if it’s for science. Just be home before dark.”

Grandpa winked at me behind her back and whispered, “She’s so easy.”

I had to agree. My grandmother would let me rob a bank if it was in the name of science.

* * *

“I’ve always wanted a peek inside this house.” Brooklyn bounced in the front seat of Glitch’s car, giddy with excitement.

Glitch looked at me in the rearview mirror as we wove through the menagerie of ponderosa pine and alligator juniper. “So, no one has lived there since the Davises?”

“According to my grandma. After Elliot Davis died, his parents closed up their business, boarded up their house, threw the kids in the car, and moved to South Texas. They didn’t sell it or anything. I think Mr. Davis was a freshman at the time.”

“I wonder if they still own it,” Brooklyn said.

“I wish we knew,” I agreed before explaining more of what we’d learned to Glitch. “Elliot Davis was younger than my grandma, but she remembers him, remembers what happened. She said the Davises were devastated. It broke her heart.”

As much as we’d found out about the Davises and the incident, we still had nothing to tie Jared to Elliot Davis’s death. We’d asked my grandparents what they remembered. I thought they might know something, might have heard something that wasn’t in the papers. I was surprised at how much she remembered, but just as the paper reported, it was a medical condition. Nothing suspicious.

“If they do own it, why wouldn’t Mr. Davis have moved into it when he came back?” Glitch asked. “It just seems odd.”

Mr. Davis had moved back to take the principal job when it opened up a few years ago. Apparently, the whole town was surprised when he moved back.

“Grandpa said it’s in shambles now and would cost more to repair than it would to just tear it down and start over.”

Brooklyn turned and peered around the passenger’s seat at me. “And why do we think the boys might be here?”

I shrugged. “Just a hunch. It’s a straight shot from where Jared jumped out of Cameron’s truck to here. And it’s abandoned. What better place to take refuge?”

“That’s true, I guess. If I were seeking refuge, I’d want to hole up in a cool old mansion.”

“Can you believe this?” I asked, my mind wandering back to Jared, to everything we’d learned so far. “The first guy I’ve ever really liked, and he could be some supernatural bringer of death. I should just give up.”

“Give up on boys?” Brooklyn said. “That’ll be the day.”

“I should. I should just quit while I’m ahead.”

“Lor,” she said, crinkling her nose with skepticism, “you have to actually be ahead to quit while you’re ahead. Besides, they’re boys. They’re big and clumsy. They’re in a constant state of flux that makes them almost interesting. Why quit now?”

“Because she’s tired of unrealized expectations and fruitless endeavors?” Glitch said, wriggling his brows.

I pretended to be appalled. “What are you talking about? My endeavors are totally fruity.”

Glitch chuckled, and I wondered why he was helping me if he didn’t believe a word I’d said. He even left football practice early for me. He had never done that before. I wasn’t sure how the team would manage without him. How would they carry on? Of course, with the lot of us being grounded, the only way he could go with us was to pretend he was at football practice and skip out.

His ancient Subaru groaned in protest when we hit a pothole. Poor thing. Its maroon paint had long since faded to a brownish gray, and its rattles and squeaks made it impossible to hear the radio. But it got us where we needed to go.

He looked at me in the rearview mirror again. “Do you really think he’ll be here?”

I gave a halfhearted shrug. “I have no idea. I just don’t know where else to look.”

“I’m game either way,” he said in an obvious attempt to reassert his support. I loved him for it.

I was just about to tell them I’d remembered something else from the vision—Jared’s name, his real name—but Brooklyn sucked in an awestruck breath.

“Here it is,” she said.

Tucking the info away for future reference, I looked up at the huge Spanish ranch house looming before us. The earthy tones of the two stories had faded with time. Thick adobe walls crumbled to expose interior blocks mixed from mud and red native clay. Mammoth wood pillars supported the second-floor balcony from where it was said Mrs. Davis would sit for hours to paint the landscape.

“Wow,” Glitch said, agreeing with Brooklyn’s awe. “It’s beautiful.”

“Yeah. Grandma said Mr. Davis’s grandfather built it in the forties.”

The car crawled to a stop before two twelve-foot wooden doors. We piled out and stepped through the massive portal onto a veranda long overtaken by brush and vines.

“We should have brought another flashlight.” Brooklyn staggered to my side and took hold of my arm as I was holding the only flashlight we’d brought. “I can’t see a thing.”