Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy (3 page)

Me: I—

Ms. Davis: If you find a snake, you should shoot it and burn the pieces. That's the only way to be sure snakes are gone forever.

Footer: Mom, what does that mean?

Ms. Davis: Just what I said, sweetie. Just exactly what I said. [Suspect walks away from us, toward the kitchen.]

“
Dateline
figures it was a serial killer,” I said. We'd been at the crime scene for about two hours. Squinting through the sweat on my safety glasses, I shot at a dirt clod Peavine had balanced on a fence post outside what was left of the Abrams barn.

The BB hit the dirt clod and knocked it off beside Angel, who was digging in the ashes and somehow managing not to get any of the mess on her pink sundress. She picked up my phone and moved farther away, toward the house. The ashes of the house and barn met in the middle of a short walkway, smeared and mingled by fire hoses and wind. I wished we had some wind instead of the weak breeze. It was turning off hot, and there wasn't a cloud anywhere.

Peavine chose another clod, put it on the post, and
came to take his turn. “I saw that
Dateline
episode too. The guy said the killer probably murdered Mr. Abrams so he could steal Cissy and Doc and maybe torture them or put them in a basement somewhere, and they might get found alive when they're grown.”

“It wasn't a serial killer.” Angel stopped digging long enough to snap pictures of the dirt, then the woods, then the charred barn boards.

I pulled off my sweaty safety glasses and handed them to Peavine. After he got them on, I passed Louise to him and watched the dirt clod. “How do you know it wasn't a serial killer? You aren't psychic.”

“I read all your serial killer books and some other ones too.” Angel shrugged as she put down the phone and went back to poking at a charred rock. Her hands weren't even dirty. How did she
do
that? “It doesn't fit any of the what-they-call-its, right?”

“Profiles. And I don't know.” I sighed, because Angel was right again. “Probably not.”

Peavine shot the dirt clod. It didn't fall off the post. “Why not?” he asked.

“Serial killers usually kill kids
or
grown-ups.” I took Louise and the glasses back and wiped them on my shirt. Then I put the glasses on my face, pumped Louise's handle, aimed, and knocked the clod to the ground with one shot. “Not kids
and
grown-ups. They like keeping everything the same.”

I liked keeping everything the same too. I hoped that didn't give me too much in common with serial killers. I already had enough to worry about.

Peavine took the glasses and Louise, and I turned toward Angel and the burned boards of the Abrams house. Heat shimmered in the air, blurring everything, and I thought I saw the old farmhouse just like it used to be before it burned.

I turned back to Peavine, feeling jumpier than ever. I had only been to this farm a few times. Why was I thinking about it like I knew it better? And why did it look gray, like it was dark outside? The Abrams house had been white with a green roof, not gray. Peavine seemed wavy and thin in the hot air.

Cissy Abrams had black hair, and she was taller than Peavine.

The smell of smoke got so strong, I could taste it. My nose, the back of my throat—it almost choked me. My eyes watered from it, and my ears started to buzz. Something was happening. The world around me was changing, and I couldn't stop it, and I had no idea why, and my heart started beating so hard, I couldn't even talk.

Peavine lowered Louise after missing his dirt clod, and it got dark all of a sudden, and flames burst out around us. I sucked a breath of scorching air as heat seared my cheeks. Smoke clogged my nose, and my heart raced. Peavine disappeared, and Angel vanished as she dug in
the ashes with her hands.
The barn loomed beside me, burning.

Everything was on fire.

My whole body shook. Where was Peavine? And Angel—

C
issy Abrams walked out of the flames. She came and stood in front of me, silvery and pale in the moonlight. My mouth came open, but I didn't make any noise. I just stood there shaking. This wasn't real. It couldn't be real.

The buzz in my ears turned into a roar, then popping, then that weird sort of deafness I got when I jumped into the deep end of a pool and went down too far, too fast.

Cissy looked at me with blank eyes. Dark flecks covered her face and clothes, like soot, but it wasn't soot. I wanted to scream.

Mom appeared beside Cissy. She was talking, but I couldn't hear her. Then she said something a little louder. It sounded like
hurry.

Mom looked up and saw me.

I started to fall.

Right before I hit the ground, Peavine flashed into view in front of me, and he grabbed my arms, and it was daytime again, and all the noises and smells stopped, and we were standing in the ashes of the Abrams farm. Nothing was burning. Cissy was gone, and my mother was gone, and it was now again, but I was still shaking so hard that my teeth chattered.

Peavine's grip on my arms tightened, but it didn't hurt. His wide, worried eyes stared into mine as he pulled me closer to him. “You look as lost as last year's Easter egg.”

Click. Click.
Angel was taking pictures of me.

“Sorry,” I muttered as I turned my face away from the camera, glad Peavine was so close to me. He felt like a wall between me and Angel and everything in the whole world.

My brain turned circles in my skull until my whole head hurt.

“Did you get too hot or something?” Peavine asked.

For a second I thought he was going to hug me, and I wanted him to, and then I didn't. “I—um, yeah.” I pulled away from him and tried to smile, but I don't think I made it, because I had never seen anything that wasn't there before, and I still wanted to scream. Mom heard things and saw things and laughed at nothing when she got sick, and I wasn't like her.

Click.

“Stop it,” I told Angel. All of a sudden, I felt like somebody was watching us. My eyes darted to the woods around the barn, to the trees covered with patches of soot and ash, their burned branches dry and crumbling from the fire.

Click. Click. Click.

Was that a shadow there, under the brush beside that big oak?

No. I needed to stop. I turned my back on the tree. Peavine was looking at me like I'd gone totally insane. Angel was taking pictures of the edge of the path, near the oak.

There wasn't anything there but brush and leaves and grass. I
knew
that, but . . .

I'm not crazy. I'm not my mother.

Angel snapped another picture.

“Cut it out,” Peavine told her.

She glared at me and then dropped the phone on the grass beside her. It snapped another picture by itself as she turned her attention back to the pile of ashes. My crumpled brain thought she was moving in slow motion as she pushed a rock aside, then picked something up and dusted it off.

My shaking got worse.

She rubbed more dirt and ash off her find, then laid it beside her along with a partly melted set of dice, a scorched piece of a little kid's tennis shoe, and a warped piece of plastic she'd already found. It was a pretzel-shaped barrette, just like my mother always wore.

Proof I'm Probably Going Crazy Like Mom

I look like Mom, so I probably have more of her genes than Dad's.

I say stupid stuff when I don't want to.

I make a lot of people mad, and sometimes not on purpose.

I am willful. Just ask Peavine's mom and my teachers.

I saw things at the Abrams farm that weren't real.

Proof I'm Probably Not Going Crazy Like Mom

Just because you look like a sick person doesn't mean you'll get sick.

Angel says stupider things than me, lots of times.

Some people need to get mad. Maybe I'm helping them talk about their problems.

“Willful” is another word for “determined,” and “determined” sounds a lot better.

Maybe the Abrams farm is haunted and I saw ghosts.

I snuggled into Dad in his recliner and tried not to think about the Crazy List lying on my desk in my bedroom, or Crazy Mom, a quadrillion miles away in Memphis, locked away in the hospital again. The
other
kind of hospital.

We had the lights off, and we were supposed to be
settling down for bed
. Dad was big on early bedtimes when he had to run the show. He pulled up my Superman blanket until it covered my shoulders, then flicked on the DVR and punched the local news. It droned in the background. I yawned and stretched.

“Careful, there.” Dad kissed the top of my head. “This old chair won't hold us both forever.”

I put my face in Dad's chest and burped applesauce and hamburgers. The applesauce was because it counted as fruits or vegetables, and Dad tried to keep us healthy, at least a little bit. Plus, if Mom got home from the hospital and found out we had eaten nothing but junk food while she was gone, she'd throw a total fit.

Dad smelled like pine needles and his blue cotton pajamas. That sort of made me relax and sort of didn't, and the news talked about rain or not rain, and I said, “I miss her already.”

“I do too.” Dad kept his eyes on the news when I glanced up at him. TV shadows played and flickered across his face, but I could tell he was frowning.

“Are you going to look sad the whole time she's gone
this time?” I poked his chin with my fingertip.

“I don't know.” He crossed his eyes as he looked down at me. “Are you?”

“Probably.”

“Okay, then. We'll look sad together.”

He uncrossed his eyes and went back to paying attention to the news, which had moved on to sports, which was even more boring than bake sales and weather.

I sighed. “Good dads would try to cheer up their daughters and pretend everything was going to be perfect.”

“Good dads tell the truth and face it with their daughters.” He put his hand on my head and stroked my hair. That usually made me sleepy, but tonight it just made me sigh all over again.

“So, what's the truth about Mom?” I asked him.

A few seconds went by before he answered. “The truth about Adele is, she'll come back to us as soon as she's able. And the truth about us is, we'll be waiting.”

I picked at the corner of my blanket and didn't say anything. That was what I had wanted to hear, so why didn't it make me feel any better?

“Are you and Peavine still investigating the Abrams fire, Footer?”

“Since we're talking about truth and everything, I guess I have to tell it, so yes, sir.”

It was Dad's turn to sigh. I rose up and down as his
chest heaved, then heard the rumble of his voice through his chest as he said, “You know I don't want you to do that. I don't think you should spend your energy on sad, terrible things.”

“It keeps my mind off other sad, terrible things.”

I went up and down again as Dad took a really deep breath. He rubbed my hair some more as he said, “Okay. But if I tell you to stop, I'll mean it.”

“Yes, sir.”

I wished I could get sleepy, but I just pretended. I had to do that when Mom was gone, because I didn't sleep much, but if Dad found out I was awake, he'd try to stay up with me. Then he'd get all tired and grumpy and I'd feel guilty.

So I pretended until he carried me to bed and tucked me in. Then I waited until I heard his door close, and waited a little longer, until I saw his light click off and the hallway go dark. Then I got up and pushed my own door closed, snuck back across my bedroom, turned on my little desk lamp, picked up my Crazy List, and opened up my laptop.