“Watch your mouth, Tearney.”
A rumble of whispers, a few giggles, and one “Oh shit” come from the teenagers behind him.
“Garrett, it’s fine.”
He shakes his head, jaw clenched and eyes on fire.
“Nope, not fine. Not even a little.”
“Do we have a problem?” Tearney asks, puffing out his chest like a meathead monkey.
Oh, for Christ sakes.
“Yeah—you talking to her like that is a major problem for me.”
And out come the kids’ phones. A cacophony of clicking shutters and pinging recording buttons echo through the hall. It’s possible we’re on Facebook Live.
“Stop it.” I glare at them. “Put your phones away!”
Tearney steps towards Garrett. “I don’t like your tone. You threatening a police officer?”
Garrett doesn’t have it in him to back down—it’s not how he’s made. “Only if you want to hide behind your badge. Otherwise . . . I’m just threatening you.”
“What in the holy hell is happening around here?” Miss McCarthy yells, marching up to us, slicing through the tension with her presence alone.
Tearney steps back from Garrett, his shoulders falling just a bit.
“I want to question David Burke about the Baygrove Park fire. Miss Carpenter is taking issue with me pulling him out of her class.”
“He doesn’t have a warrant,” I explain. “He doesn’t have permission from David’s guardian.”
Miss McCarthy nods. “I’ll bring David to my office. We’ll talk there.” She looks hard at Tearney. “All of us.”
“But, Miss McCarthy—”
“Callie,” she cuts me off. “In all the years you’ve known me, have I ever given you the impression that I’m a pushover?”
“No. No, you haven’t.”
“Do you honestly think I would let one of my kids be mistreated? By anyone?” Her gaze drifts around the hallway, then comes back to me. “These little shitheads are my whole life.”
I take a breath and let it out slowly. “Okay.”
I open the auditorium door and the group of us walk down the aisle. I scan up and down the seats.
“Where’s David?”
Layla’s eyes are wide and worried.
“He . . . he left.”
~ ~ ~
And so begins the manhunt for David Burke—Lakeside’s very own Billy the Kid. Parents are called, a search warrant is issued for David’s grandmother’s house, even though he doesn’t live there anymore. More officers show up at the school, pulling David’s friends down to the office to question them. Rumors flare, and spread and grow—like the fire itself.
There’s posts on social media that say David was spotted in New York City, pretending to be a homeless man. Another says he killed someone in the park and started the fire to burn the body. There are subtweets and retweets, suspicion about police stakeouts and undercover cops infiltrating the school. But for days . . . there’s no David.
The following Saturday, I stay over at Garrett’s and in the morning we go to breakfast at his parents’ house. All three of Garrett’s brothers are there.
“Have you heard anything, Callie? David’s in your class, right—do you know where he is?” Ryan asks me across the kitchen table.
“She hasn’t heard anything,” Garrett answers for me.
“Callie?” Ryan nudges—seeming less like Garrett’s older brother at the moment and more like a cop than ever before.
Ryan’s wife, Angela, feels it too. “You’re not on the clock, babe.”
“Leave her alone, Ry,” Garrett answers again, holding my hand under the table. “She cares about the kid. She’s upset.”
“If she cares about him, she needs to tell me where he is,” Ryan shoots back. “This is serious shit. The whole street could’ve burned down . . . homes . . . people could’ve gotten hurt.”
“I don’t know where he is, Ryan,” I tell him simply, because it’s the truth. “I haven’t heard anything.”
Ryan takes a bite of his bagel and turns his brown eyes on Garrett. “Do your players know where he’s at?”
Garrett shrugs. “Probably. But I’m not going to ask them.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not going to make them lie to me.”
Garrett leans forward over the table. “You can’t be that old Ryan—you have to remember what it was like in high school. It’s them against us. Deny until death, teenage honor code. I guarantee you every kid in that school knows where David Burke is right now . . . and I can also guarantee not a single one of them is going to tell us. Period.”
~ ~ ~
That night, after my parents have gone to bed and the dishes are done, around ten o’clock, I get a text. I’d given all the kids my cell, because they’re my performers—I told them to text me if something came up, if they couldn’t make rehearsals or needed a ride.
It’s David. I’m in the backyard. Come outside?
I’m not shocked that he knows my parents’ address. I’ve been back long enough to remember that everyone knows where everyone lives in small towns. I go out the sliding glass doors, onto the patio, and David emerges from the darkness of the bushes that line the yard. He looks tired, his dirty-blond hair lying limp and too much tension for someone his age tightening his eyes.