Page 51 of Reading Between the Lines
Noel and Londyn shrugged with uncertainty, and Atlas, the punk, didn’t respond.
Tallus returned and handed me the folder. I removed one of the stories we knew belonged to Weston and presented it in the middle of the table. Five heads leaned over to read it. Atlas showed no interest and continued to eat.
“See,” Noel said, stabbing a finger on the composition. “When Mr. Abercrombie told us to write a short story that was a race against the clock, I mentioned the antagonist could be seeking revenge against his math teacher, who made him look stupid in class. I said he would communicate through coded math problems about an explosion at the school that coming Friday. That’s exactly my story idea.” She stabbed the composition again.
“Are you on crack? This is chemistry-based,” Chett said.
“It’s the same thing,” she shrieked. “All the beats land the same. All he did was tweak it.”
“No, you talked about using a clock in the equations, and he used an actual clock, wired to explode when the time ticked down to the top of the hour.”
“It’s the same.”
“Stop fucking fighting,” I yelled. “Jesus fucking Christ. What the fuck? Why are you like this?”
Everyone in the diner turned to stare, and Tallus swung around on his chair. “Deep breaths, Guns. You’re going to get us kicked out.”
“I don’t fucking care. Deal with this shit… and tell them to never mention ticking clocks again.”
Poorly hiding his amusement, Tallus faced the table of teens. “Okay. Guys, gals, listen up. Tweety Bird upset Yogi this morning, so we have to exercise patience and talk with our inside voice, or it won’t be the school that blows up. It will be that man behind me, and he’ll take us all with him. We good?”
No one answered.
“Okay.” Tallus retrieved the story from the table. “I don’t care where the idea came from or who wrote it better, but can you all agree that Weston wrote this story?”
“Yes,” Chett said.
The other teens—apart from Atlas—nodded. As Tallus replaced it in the folder and was about to present the story that depicted Weston’s accident, a thought struck.
I scanned the faces around the table. Six teens who were all members of the writing club. If our goal was to prove that Weston didn’t write the story and didn’t have an accident, then we couldn’t show our trump card. They had already proven they couldn’t agree on anything, and our perpetrator, if he or she was among this group, wasn’t about to out themselves as the author. It would turn into finger-pointing and accusing, and we wouldn’t be any further ahead. For all we knew, this composition wasn’t common knowledge.
My gaze landed on Londyn. Nervous little Londyn, who seemed a few bricks short of a load and had upset the group not fifteen minutes ago when she’d slipped on the name of the club. The Murder Club. Had they not all reacted, I might have let it go.
But a chill had rippled through each and every one of them.
Also, not a single student at the table had shown any sign of grief. Not Weston’s supposed girlfriend. Not his best friend since forever. Not his classmates and club buddies. Something wasn’t right.
Before Tallus could lay the only piece of evidence we had in the center of the table, I snatched it from his hand. “We’re donehere. Let’s go. Sorry, children. I hope your day is as pleasant as you are.”
Tallus, not computing the shift in direction, shot me a look of confusion, and a slow smile crawled onto his lips. “Guuuns? Did you just kindly tell these lovely teens to fuck off?”
“Yes, I did. Now let’s go.”
“Hey,” Loyal said as Tallus and I headed to the door. “What about our free meal?”
“Fuck your free meal. You gave me nothing but a headache.”
It was a lie. In fact, they had given me every reason to doubt the police and keep looking into Delaney’s theory.
12
Tallus
An overcast sky pressed down on the town as I chased Diem across the semi-salted parking lot to the Jeep. My loafers weren’t doing me any favors, and I almost fell twice on black ice.
“Am I missing something? Why are we leaving?”
“We aren’t.”
