Page 27 of Middle of the Night

I slip into the kitchen, grab the baseball, and give it to Ragesh. He turns it over in his hands and says, “It’s just a ball.”

“The same kind of ball Billy threw into my yard almost every day that summer before he—” I almost sayvanished, but catch myself, replacing it with something more accurate. “Died.”

Yet even that’s not quite right. Billy didn’t just die. He was murdered. Something I can’t yet bring myself to utter. Just thinking it causes another sickly twist in my stomach.

“Well, Billy didn’t put it there,” Ragesh says as he hands the ball back to me.

“I know that. Now. But I didn’t last night. Or this morning.That’swhy I called you.”

Ragesh looks like he believes me. Or maybe it’s all an act. Another thing he learned during his journey from teenage asshole to local cop. Make people think you’re on their side, keep them talking, wait until they trip up.

“Do you think someone is messing with you?” he says.

“It’s possible. But I don’t know why. Or who would even know to do it.”

No one else knew about the meaning behind the baseball. Just me and Billy, both of us pinkie swearing to keep it a secret.

“Maybe to remind you,” Ragesh says.

“I don’t need reminding. I remember enough about what happened.”

“But not everything.”

The smirk that follows makes it clear Ragesh knows all about the gaps in my memories from that night. Because of course he does. He’s probably read every interview and report about the case.

But the smirk is also a reminder that Ragesh and I are not friends. We never were. Far from it, in fact. Thirty years ago, the rest of us boys on Hemlock Circle went out of our way to avoid him. Unlike a lot of bullies, Ragesh never physically hurt us. He specialized in emotional torment. Insults. Name-calling. Learning the things we were most self-conscious about and bringing them up constantly. Like Billy’s eccentricities and Russ’s scrawniness. Back then, Ragesh could never peg my individual weakness. Now he knows.

“I remember what really happened that day,” I say.

“I already told you—”

“That your gut tells you it’s unrelated to Billy’s murder. Yeah, I know. And I think you’re wrong. And I think you know why.”

Like a spent candle, Ragesh’s smirk flickers and goes out.

“Listen, what went down that afternoon was unfortunate,” he says. “I’m not going to deny that. And I regret literally all of it. But it likely had nothing to do with what happened to Billy later that night.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“Because if it did, Billy never would have come home that afternoon,” Ragesh says. “But he did. He made it home later that day, completely unharmed and none the worse for wear. Hell, you were with him that night. Did he seem upset about it?”

Memories appear in my mind like Polaroid pictures coming into focus. The tension in the tent that night. The fight we’d had once it reached a breaking point. My immediate apology and Billy’s attempt at a smile that never quite took spark.

Hakuna matata, dude.

“No,” I say, because it’s easier than trying to explain all that transpired between the two of us that night. “He seemed fine.”

“See?” Ragesh says, his I-told-you-so glare softening into something that resembles pity. “I know this is harder on you than on the rest of us, Ethan. I know that for you it’s…complicated. But leave the investigation to the cops. Right now, you should just focus on mourning your friend.”

I stay on the couch after Ragesh leaves, held in place not by the seasick swaying of the living room, though that still remains, but by thoughts of that final night in the tent with Billy. I hadn’t lied to Ragesh. Not entirely. Billy really did seem fine with the behavior of the others at the institute that day. Russ and Ashley and Ragesh. It was only me he had issues with.

Because I was his best friend.

And I had run away like the others.

Leaving Billy alone to fend for himself.

I can still hear the echo of his voice as I fled with the others. How desperate he sounded. How lonely and sad and scared.

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