Silence.
It took all my strength to stand up and turn around.
The kitchen was empty. Mom’s dinner plate and the stuff from the fridge was on the counter. But she wasn’t there.
“Mom?” I called.
I heard clattering at the back door. The door slammed. Mom entered the kitchen, her arms filled with bottles of coconut water. “I went to the garage,” she said, setting them on the counter. “We’re running low.”
I stared at her. “You didn’t hear a word I said?”
“Sorry.” She carried three bottles to the fridge. “I thought you heard me go out.”
I don’t have the strength . . . I can’t tell the whole story again.
My phone buzzed. I grabbed it off the table. Jack?
No. I read the screen. Manny.
“Hello?” I walked with the phone to the front of the house.
“Poppy, it’s me.” He sounded frantic.
“Manny, what’s happening? Have you heard from Jack? Have you heard anything?”
“No. Listen to me. It’s all over the internet. We’re all going to be arrested.”
I gasped. My hand shook and I almost dropped the phone.
“We have to go to the police,” Manny said. “We can’t just sit at home and wait.”
“Okay,” I started, “but—”
“Benny is at the precinct house. You know. The one on Village Road near Parkview?”
“Yeah. Okay.” I wasn’t really hearing his words. I mean, I was hearing them but they weren’t really making sense, as if I was listening to a foreign language.
“Benny will listen to us,” Manny said. “He’ll understand. I mean, he’ll get it.”
“But . . . but, Manny,” I sputtered. “This is murder. How understanding will he be?”
“We just have to talk to him,” he replied, his voice pulsing in my ear. “He’ll treat us okay, Poppy. He’s my brother. It was an accident. Totally an accident. I know he’ll believe us.”
The living room lights were dancing in my head. I struggled to think straight. Was I really about to go to the police station and confess to killing someone?
“Should I bring my mom?” My voice broke as I asked the question. I had the sudden feeling she had followed me. I spun around. She wasn’t there.
“No. Just go to the station. Make an excuse and just go. Okay? I already told Benny we were coming.”
“But, Manny—”
“Hurry, Poppy. Benny is waiting. You don’t have a choice. You have to do this.”
I clicked off. My hand gripping the phone was shaking. I felt as if I had a bird batting its wings in my chest.
“Mom, I have to go out!” I shouted down the hall. I didn’t want to go back to the kitchen and face her.
“At this time of night?” she called back. “Where are you going?”
“To Ivy’s. She forgot the homework. I’ll be right back.” Amazing how my brain was frozen in panic but I could still come up with a lie.
She shouted something, but I didn’t hear her. I scooped the car keys from the bowl in the entryway and dove out the front door, stumbling onto the stoop, grabbing the metal rail to keep myself from falling.
Get it together, Poppy.
But—how?
I stuffed myself behind the wheel, started the car, and began to ease it down River Road. I gritted my jaw to stop from screaming. I kept having the feeling that I might go completely berserk, lose my mind and start wailing and shrieking and pounding my fists against the wheel.
“Whoa!” I cried out. Headlights in my windshield. I’d been driving on the wrong side of the road. I swerved to the right and nearly clipped the mirror off a parked SUV.
A few minutes later, I pulled into the narrow parking lot at the side of the precinct station. All the lights were on in the three-story brick building. But I was surprised to see few cars in the lot. I spotted two black-and-whites parked at the entrance and two or three other cars at the back. But where were my friends’ cars?
I switched off the engine and cut the lights. And sat there staring glassily out the window for a few minutes, not moving, just struggling to breathe normally and to force my heart from fluttering so hard in my chest.
Finally, I took a deep breath, pushed open the car door, and climbed out. The night air felt cool on my burning face. Low clouds covered the moon, but the tall halogen lights over the lot made everything glow nearly as bright as day.
My shoes crunching on the gravel, I made my way toward the entrance, double glass doors with a square of bright yellow light pouring out from inside. A car rolled by on Village Road, window open, hip-hop blasting through the air.
I gripped the door handle, pulled the door open, and stepped inside. Gazing around, I found myself in a waiting room. Wooden chairs and low round tables and a long bench against the wall. The room was empty and, turning, I saw that there was also no one at the high gray metal desk at the back.
I heard voices from the hall behind the desk. And a crackling police radio with a woman’s voice reading off numbers. A man’s voice shouted, “Where’s the coffee?”
I froze a few feet into the room. My eyes swept the chairs and the empty bench again. A folded-up newspaper on a table. Empty coffee cups. A sandwich wrapper.
But where is everyone? I thought.
Where are my friends? What’s going on?
How come I’m the only one here?
