Invitation Only (Private 2) - Page 34

I smiled at the de­tec­tive, who sat be­hind Dean Mar­cus's wide desk. Then I flashed the same grin at Chief Sheri­dan, who hov­ered in the cor­ner near one of the sky-?high book­shelves. Be­hind me, in a cushy chair, was my ad­vi­sor, Ms. Nay­lor. Ap­par­ent­ly she was there to act as a stu­dent ad­vo­cate, which meant, I sup­posed, that if they tried to beat me with a tele­phone book, she was re­quired to ask them po­lite­ly to stop.

Whether or not she would ac­tu­al­ly do that was an­oth­er sto­ry. I nev­er got the im­pres­sion that Ms. Nay­lor rel­ished my pres­ence at Eas­ton that much or her in­volve­ment in my life.

“So, we un­der­stand you and Mr. Pear­son have been dat­ing,” the de­tec­tive said, glanc­ing at a piece of pa­per in front of him.

'Yes." I sat up a lit­tle straighter, try­ing to see what the pa­per had to say.

“For how long?” the de­tec­tive asked. He pulled the page clos­er to him. The chief shift­ed, bring­ing one arm across his stom­ach and rest­ing his oth­er el­bow on it, hand un­der chin.

“Since the third week of school,” I said, en­deav­or­ing to swal­low. “So not long at all.”

“I see,” the de­tec­tive said. “Is it se­ri­ous?”

I cleared my throat. “De­pends on your def­ini­tion of se­ri­ous.”

The de­tec­tive smiled in­dul­gent­ly. “How well do you know him?”

“Pret­ty well, I guess,” I said. “But then, ev­ery­body has se­crets, right?”

His eye­brows popped up. “Do they?”

96

Oh, God. Why did I say that? Why, why, why?

“Did Thomas share any se­crets with you, Miss Bren­nan?” he asked. “Where he might be go­ing, for ex­am­ple?”

Yes. Yes, he did. He did, did, did.

“No,” I said. “No, he didn't.”

The de­tec­tive eyed me as if he was try­ing to see in­side my brain. It made me feel all hot and prick­ly. He looked down again.

“Is it true that last week the two of you fought out­side the cafe­te­ria?”

My face heat­ed up like a black slate in the sun. “How did you--”

“Sev­er­al wit­ness­es have men­tioned it,” the de­tec­tive said.

Nice. Re­al nice. Had ev­ery­one in school come in here and point­ed their fin­gers di­rect­ly at me?

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'Yes, we fought," I said.

“About what?”

About the fact that he's a drug deal­er and he sup­plies the whole school.

“Uh ... I'd rather not say,” I replied.

Both the chief and De­tec­tive Hauer blinked in the ex­act same in­cred­ulous way. So they'd nev­er heard of an eva­sive teenag­er be­fore?

“We'd rather you did, Miss Bren­nan,” the chief said, speak­ing for the first time. “All we're try­ing to do here is find out where Thomas might have gone. Some­times peo­ple miss the sig­nif­icance of small things. We're just try­ing to dis­cern whether you hap­pen to know some­thing that might help us. That's all.”

97

“Oh. Okay. Well, I... I found out he was ly­ing to me,” I said.

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