Ask Me (25 page)

“Will it be it over soon, Aria?”

“It will be over tonight,” I answered.

The hollow feeling inside me grew. Would the police arrest Alex tonight? Maybe a policeman was out in the woods right now digging up a dirty blue handkerchief.
Maybe my phone call had done some good. I searched for something more to reassure Delilah when I heard the creak of the front door opening.

“I saw Aria’s car outside. She’s here?” Granddad barked loudly enough for me to hear.

“Here for now,” I whispered.

“I don’t understand,” Delilah whispered back, not knowing that my inner oracle was responding to someone else.

“Hey, Delilah, I have to go. I’ll talk to you later, okay? Sorry.” I hung up while she was still saying goodbye. It was time to face the music.

I barely had time to stand up before Granddad crashed through my bedroom door, dripping water from the umbrella he still held in his hand. “Aria, what—”

“Granddad,” I interrupted, “I’m sorry.”

I grabbed him in a hug, and he crushed me to him. I had to keep him from asking any revealing questions, though I really
was
sorry. His face was creased with worry as he released me from the hug. He held me by the shoulders at arm’s length and looked me in the eye. I kept myself from wincing, barely, as he squeezed my shoulders and then finally let go. Gran stood behind him, watching us both.

“You scared me,” he said.

“I didn’t mean to.”

“I don’t know what’s going on around here anymore,” he said, turning from me to Gran and back again. “This whole place has gone crazy.”

“I know,” I said.

“I don’t like it,” said Granddad. “I don’t like any of this. I especially don’t like the thought of you being questioned by the police tomorrow.” He turned back to Gran. “I don’t think we should allow it.”

“We don’t have a choice,” said Gran. “I think they suspect Aria might be involved because of that fight she had in class with the murdered girl, Shelley Roman.”

“Wait, what?” I asked, panicking. “Why do they think that?”

Gran shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. You have to talk to them. If you don’t, they’re just going to think the worst. I don’t like it, but it’s time to go public, Aria. It’s time, and the sooner the better before anyone else dies.”

Alex
, I thought bitterly. He’d found a way to shift blame to someone else. Me. Had he come up with the idea in art class as soon as the police had arrived? Or had it come later, when they were questioning him?

“Gran,” I said, “I need the book.”

She nodded and went to get it while Granddad stood there unhappily, avoiding my eyes.

FOR A LONG TIME
, long after dusk settled into night, I sat against my closed door, sunk down to the floor, the book sitting heavy in my lap. I traced the embossing on the front with a finger, following a gold-dusted swirl around and around.
So much for eating
, I finally thought. That was when I reached for the phone. I needed to talk to Will. I dialed his number and waited impatiently while it rang.

“Hello, Aria,” he said, his voice warming me. “Miss me already?”

“Yes,” I breathed. I didn’t even care that he’d asked. I wasn’t going to have any secrets from Will. Life was too short for that. “I have to talk to you.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Not yet, maybe never, the future is not clear,” I said. What was that? No matter. “The police came by my house today while I was with you. They want me to go in tomorrow for questioning. Gran thinks they think I had something to do with Shelley’s death because of that thing in art class. You know, where she hurt my shoulder.”

“That’s not good,” he said. “That’s not good at all.”

“Well, you may be right,” I said.
And probably are
. “But Gran thinks maybe it could work out. She thinks it’s time I came clean about my gift, anyway. Besides, Delilah is going in for questioning, too, at ten tomorrow, and she’s going to tell them about me, too, so maybe they’ll believe me and not be completely freaked out when I go in. It could work. Maybe. Then when I talk to them, maybe they’ll believe me about Alex. Maybe they can even ask me questions, and I could help them find the truth.” That was a lot of maybes.

“Wait. Delilah knows, too?” He didn’t sound happy.

“She knows, she knows, she knows too much, she knows too little,” I said. I sighed. This conversation would go faster if he didn’t ask so many useless questions. “Yes, I told her yesterday. She believed me. Listen, Will. Why don’t you ask me more about Alex? It worked today in the woods, you know? I can handle—”

“Aria.” He blew out his breath and was quiet for a moment. “Why did you do that? Tell Delilah, I mean. That was stupid.”

I blinked, stung. “I wanted a friend,” I said. Ah, the truth laid bare.

“You shouldn’t have told anyone else,” he said softly. I could hardly hear him. “Especially not Delilah. They don’t call her the Mouth of the South for nothing. Here’s a question: Has she told anyone else yet?”

“No,” I said, a mercifully brief answer. Why was he so mad? “It could help, though, don’t you think? I can’t not go and talk to them, not when they suspect me. And if she tells them before I even get there, maybe they won’t freak out so bad.”

“I wish you’d told me about the fight in art class,” he said, changing the subject abruptly.

“It wasn’t a
fight
. Everyone keeps saying that. It was just Shelley being Shelley. She’s been saying all kinds of crap about me and Alex since this whole thing started—”

“What
has she been saying?”

I had no choice now that he’d asked. “That we were friends, that we were lovers, that I carried his baby.”

There was dead silence on the other end of the line.

“She was telling people you were pregnant with Alex’s baby.” At least he hadn’t asked it as a question, though the flat statement somehow made it sound even worse.

“Yes,” I said, cringing even though he couldn’t see me.

“Tell me what you did that would make her think that.”

“Nothing!” It hurt that he would say that, especially in that cold, level voice. “I never even kissed a boy until today, and you were there for that.” My attempt at humor fell flat. “You know how Shelley is … was. She just saw that my stomach was upset and that Alex was standing up for
me, and so she came up with the worst possible story to explain it.”

“This is bad,” he said. “Very bad.”

“I don’t have a choice,” I said. “I can’t
not
talk to the police now. They’re going to think I had something to do with it unless they finally figure out it was Alex between now and then.”

The more I thought about it, the more I thought it could work. Will had believed me. Delilah had believed me. If the police kept an open mind, they might believe me, too.

“Aria—promise me you’ll never keep things like this from me again,” he said at last.

“I won’t,” I said. “Of course not.” Couldn’t he tell I was hiding nothing from him? Nothing at all? “I wasn’t
trying
to keep it from you. It just hadn’t come up.” It wasn’t exactly a good conversation starter.

“Okay,” he said, and I could almost hear the smile coming back into his voice. “I’ve got an idea. We’ll talk tomorrow first thing. Don’t go in to talk to the police until you talk to me.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll call you.”

I hung up the phone. Maybe I hadn’t gotten him to ask me any questions about Alex, but that was a bit of a relief. I needed to save myself for tomorrow, anyway. It would be so nice when all of this was behind us somehow. When we could talk to each other about something other than murder and the police. Someday.

I picked up the book. There was no table of contents. There weren’t even page numbers. I flipped it open to a random page, somewhere past the long list of names.

The word
Choices
was inscribed across the top of the page in large, fancy letters.

There was something in another language as well, but I had no idea what it said. Half the page looked Greek or Cyrillic or something unrecognizable with what I presumed was a translation going down the other side in English.

Most of the handwriting was spidery and faded. There was no telling how long ago the page had been written, either the first time or the translation. I traced my finger under the lines as I read them. It was weird to think that someone in my family had written all of this down, so many years ago.

Well. That wasn’t helpful. I flipped forward a few more pages.

I called out to Gran and Granddad, who were in the living room watching TV. “Can one of you ask me what page I should look at?”

“What page would be best for Aria to turn to?” asked Gran loudly in response.

“In the beginning, in the middle, the end. What you seek cannot be found where you are looking.” I groaned. I should have known better. “Thanks anyway, Gran,” I called back.

“What does Aria need?” asked Granddad.

“To leave fear behind and embrace her own strength.” Where was a real answer when I needed one? I hated sounding like a stupid fortune cookie. I slammed the book shut and counted to ten with my eyes closed.

Gran tried one more time. “Will anything in the book help Aria?” she asked hopefully.

“Everything. Nothing. Strength, determination, and will come from inside.” I shook my head, even though they couldn’t see me. “That’s enough, thanks. It’s not helping. I’ll just have to do things the hard way.” Like always.

I took a deep breath and flipped open the cover. There had to be something in here. Why else would all my ancestors have bothered to write all this stuff down? Why else did Gran haul it out in the first place? I started reading from the very first page, determine to scour every word.

GRAN BROUGHT MY DINNER
to my room on a tray. I kept reading while I ate. I read about the purification steps used by various oracles. I read about the rituals they used to delay supplicants or the people who wanted to ask questions. I read about how water often strengthens the gift, though no one really knew why. I took extra care reading through the notes on how the Sybils dealt with prophesying. But the few who managed to develop any kind of control over their gift had done it in completely different ways. One had found that she could guide her answers by keeping her eyes closed. Another had removed all meat from her diet; another fasted three days before allowing herself to come in contact with questioners. One bathed
in rainwater, while another only answered naked. I’m sure she was quite popular with the supplicants.

Just as I’d feared: the book was of no help. There was no rhyme or reason to it. Basically, it was trial and error. I shut the book and rubbed my eyes. My head ached from trying to decipher all the handwriting, a lot of which was faded or too shaky to be legible.

I looked at the clock. It was after ten. Gran and Granddad would either be asleep or on their way to bed. They were both firm believers in that early-to-bed, early-to-rise thing.

I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. There was only one solution: I was going to have to practice. If I could figure one trick out before I talked to the police tomorrow, things would go at least a little smoother. I didn’t want to bother my grandparents, so I’d have to use the TV and hope I could find a program where someone was asking questions. It wasn’t ideal, but it would be something.

I gathered up some of the herbs that had been mentioned in the book just in case. Who knew? Maybe the key was something as silly as breathing in the scent of rosemary. (Talking to the police naked wasn’t an option, I guessed.) If I could find something that would actually keep me from
having
to answer a question it would be even better. Something not as drastic as dying, like that girl Serin. I was willing to eat or drink or smell just about anything for that.

Once I turned on the TV, I didn’t have to wait long. Commercials were full of rhetorical questions. I tried smelling whatever I could think of between each one. The
questions were all pretty mundane, though, and not much of a challenge. I found the scent of citrus actually seemed to make me answer more strongly and not in a good way. Maybe I’d been right to swear off Gran’s juice.

I was trying out thyme when the news came on.

The sports report, always first in Florida after the weather, did nothing for me—though I did find out who was going to win the World Series, even though it was still months away. I’d have to tell Granddad on the sly, and maybe he could place a bet. At least
he
could be happy.

Then came the local news. “Our top story tonight is the string of murders occurring in and around Lake Mariah. The question topmost on everyone’s mind, of course, is why?”

I took a deep cleansing breath, just like a few of my ancestors had recommended, closed my eyes, and tried to relax and let the answer come out slowly. “Some people are only alive in the midst of death.” I breathed out.