Into the Deep (18 page)

I
t was lunch when I saw Brant next. I ran into him in the hallway on my way to the library. At first I felt my nerves winding and twisting together like vines working their way up a trellis. Then I took a deep breath and confronted him. I walked across the hall. He noticed me as I got close and slowed down. I took note that he seemed as nervous as I was.
    
Ivy
, he thought as he spotted me, the sound of his inner voice holding excitement and worry all within the short two syllables of my name.
     “Hey,” I said, “I think maybe we should talk.”
     His eyes darkened on my words and silently he nodded. I smiled softly then turned away from him without another word. He followed me as I weaved past the other students in the hall and went out onto the common. We sat down at our usual table. For a moment we were both silent. I felt nervous and twitchy and began fidgeting with my fingernails. Then finally my eyes met his.
     “Last night… When we…” I paused. My voice was caught, trapped by my nerves. “God, I don’t know how to say this.”
     The muscles in Brant’s jaw twitched. “Look, forget it, you were upset… if it didn’t mean anything to you, don’t worry about it. Just cold comfort, yeah?”
     After hearing those words, the feeling that came over me was that of being on some speedy, snaking and convulsing carnival ride after eating nothing but fried and sugary food.
    
I can deal
, he thought.
     “Is that how you feel? Did it not mean anything to you?” Every word was shaky, each sentence a step closer to bringing me to tears. My muscles tightened and I practically held my breath in anticipation for his response.
    
God no,
he thought. “I’m just saying, it doesn’t have to mean anything, not if you don’t want it to.”
     “Do
you
want it to? God, Brant, I am tired of defensiveness and mixed signals.” I took a breath and summoned the last of the courage I had. “I like you, I have feelings for you, and last night was… it meant something to me. I just don’t know if it meant anything to you.” My eyes were pleading with him, pleading for an answer no matter what it was. I needed to know, even if his answer wasn’t what I wanted it to be.
     “It meant something to me too, it meant a lot. I thought… it was just this morning you seemed… I thought you regretted it.”
     I shook my head, “I don’t regret it, I wanted to, I just… what does it mean, what does that mean for us now?”
     Brant smiled at me.
It means I like you too, Ivy, more than a lot
. He was leaning across the table. The skinny slab of stone between us was covered quickly as Brant reached a hand out to stroke my cheek. Then he kissed me. I leaned into him and laughed into the awkward angle of it all. I didn’t care that we were out on the common and that anyone could see us, didn’t care that people would stare, that they would talk. I wasn’t ashamed of him. He sat back down after that with a smile on his face.
     “So…” I began, but my words were cut off by a voice over the loud speaker.
     ‘Attention ALH students, the assembly that was scheduled for the twenty-fifth has been moved to this Friday. Please be prepared to meet in the gym during first hour in your spirit wear. Again the assembly will no longer be the Monday after next, it will be this Friday. All students are required to attend in school colors. Thank you.”
     This Friday was the fifteenth. The assembly would be for
The Play in the Park
. I remembered Christy talking to her mom on the phone about it.
     “School assembly, fun,” I said sarcastically.
     Brant, however, didn’t seem to hear me. His eyes were staring off into the distance but looking at nothing in particular. His mind was racing, mulling something over. I could almost picture his thoughts churning like cogs in a machine.
    
Monday after next, that’s it
, Brant thought.
     I looked at him confused. “What?”
     “The Monday after next, that’s when everything’s supposed to go down, yeah?”
     The bomber’s thoughts rang through my mind,
a month from now they’ll all be dead
, and the Monday after next would be that day. The same day we were supposed to have had an assembly.
     “You think whoever’s been planning this chose that Monday because of the assembly?”
     “Think about it, it makes perfect sense. The whole school together at the same time in the same place, if he wants to kill us all he’ll need us all together.”
     “Now that the assembly is moved you don’t think he’ll move his plans up too, do you?”
     “I’m thinking he’ll have to. We just had our time to find him cut in half.”
     It made sense, perfect sense, and that frightened me. Now instead of having two weeks to figure out who wanted us all dead, we had until Friday. As the day was already half way over and the assembly was first hour on Friday, that left us with three days. We only had three days. I felt the panic set in. My heartbeat picked up and I started to worry that it wouldn’t be enough time.
     “We have to find Charlie,” I said. “We need to figure this out now.”

W
e raced to the library, knowing that our conversation over personal matters had taken up valuable time. The lunch hour was winding down and we couldn’t afford to waste another second. Charlie spotted us right away when we walked through the glass doors. She seemed excited and as we approached, I hoped that she had gotten to the information that we so desperately needed.
     “I got it,” she said as we approached the desk. She picked up a stack of papers that she had sitting on the desk and held it up with enthusiasm. “Book rentals, website searches, it’s all here.”
     “Good,” I said, “’Cause we’ve only got ‘til Friday now.”
     Charlie’s eyes went wide with alarm. “What, why?”
     “The assembly,” Brant said.
     Charlie’s expression lit up. I could see all the pieces come together behind her eyes. “The assembly, right… They moved it up because they had to move the date of the
Play in the Park
. Mrs. Emmeric had a note about it in her calendar. They’re doing it almost a month sooner, and they’ll be gathering all the students in the gym to talk to us about it. Oh God.”
     “Yeah, so we have to figure this out fast.”
     Charlie nodded in agreement. It was then, however, that the bell rang, signaling the end of the lunch hour.
     “We’ll have to look through all of this later though.”
     “You guys want to come over to my place after school?” Brant suggested.
     “I can’t, I have to be home for when my little sister gets there. You guys could come to my place though.”
     “Yeah, no problem,” Charlie said and Brant nodded in agreement. As we all parted and went off toward our separate classes, I hoped that we would find what we needed quickly and easily.

23

Start Looking

A
fter class, we met up at my house and spread out in the living room to look over the papers that Charlie had printed earlier that day. Sitting on the floor, we started with the book rental records and divvied up the pages. The lists were organized by book title, so it was our job to find people that rented multiple books. Highlighter in hand, I scrolled down the page, grateful that Charlie had at least been able to get a print up of only the books related to bombings and not the entire school library. Still, it was a tedious task. I highlighted any name I saw twice, trying to do each name in a different color. Finally I reached the last name on the last page of my section and I sighed in relief.
     “How are you guys doing?” I asked setting down my papers.
     “Think I’ve got three names here that stand out,” Brant said.
     “I’ve got about the same,” Charlie agreed.
     I flipped through my pages. “I probably have like four, but some of those should overlap with what you guys have too, so that’s not so bad.”
     Brant set down his papers, finished with his share. “So what now?”
     “Oh, um,” Charlie started shifting through her bag and pulled out more papers, “I have a list of names here of anyone who looked up anything bomb-related on a campus computer this year.” The list was at least three pages long. “Guess now we should compare.”
     “See who’s got check marks in multiple columns,” Brant said, “Oh, and we have our list of ten names from the hardware store to look at as well.”
     “Hopefully this narrows us down to one name,” I said with a sigh.
     Charlie and Brant nodded in agreement and we continued on with our research.
     I guessed that it was about five-thirty when we finished. The sun had yet to set but sat low on the horizon. The living room grew darker and I had turned on the lamp that sat on the end table behind me. Names were written down, rewritten, crossed out. We compared all the lists, did our best to narrow our leads. Who was searching bombings, checking out books on them, and buying ingredients? In the end, it came down to one name, one person. It seemed too perfect to be a coincidence. But there was one problem with what we concluded, and that was the name that we narrowed it down to. It was Eric Thompson.
     I shook my head, this couldn’t be right. “I don’t get it. We ruled him out.”
     “Yeah, but you did say he gave you a weird feeling.” Brant said.
     “Still though, his voice wasn’t the same, and he wasn’t at school on Thursday when I heard the second voice.”
It won’t be a big enough explosion, we need more
. I heard in my head again.
     “He might have lied about not being at school,” Charlie suggested, “I could check the attendance records and double check… Maybe he thought you were on to him.”
     I began to second guess myself. “I guess, and you’re right, he did give me a weird vibe.”
     “It’s got to be him, Ivy,” Brant said. “He’s the only one on all three lists. No one else was researching bombs, and extensively I might add, and bought supplies for them with his mother’s credit card.”
     I nodded, “You’re right, I guess it’s just blowing my mind a bit. We had him, you know.”
     Before anyone could say another word, the front door opened and my mom walked in. She looked frazzled from a long day at work but smiled as she saw us sitting in the living room. I said hello as she set her briefcase down and took her jacket off to hang on the coat rack. She smiled as she greeted Charlie and looked Brant up and down with a quick scanning of her eyes.
     “You guys working on homework?” she asked and we were quick to agree. “Well, I won’t keep you then. If you kids get hungry, just holler, I can throw a pizza in.”
     “Thanks, Mom,” I said as she made her way up the stairs.
     We all waited until she was out of sight to begin talking again. However, before I could get a full sentence out, she reappeared on the stairs.
     “Ivy, where’s Sadie?”
     My eyes went wide and I felt all the color drain from my face. I quickly grabbed my phone and saw how late it was. Sadie should have come home from her after-school program more than a half hour ago. I hadn’t even noticed that she hadn’t walked through the door. I had been too wrapped up in my own things to even realize that she was missing. As I looked back up at my mom, I knew she could read the worry on my face.
     “She never came home,” I said.
     Mom was at the foot of the stairs in a second. She rounded the corner in one fluid motion, making her way into the kitchen and then I could hear her dialing the phone. After that, I couldn’t concentrate on anything but my little sister. I focused my ability on my mom in the kitchen. She was in another room and out of sight, which made it hard to tune in to her thoughts, but I needed to know what she was thinking. I needed to know what was going on. Then finally I was able to hear her in my head.
     Mom was on the phone with Sadie’s school. As she listened to the woman on the other line, I found that I could hear both their voices in my head. Charlie said something to me, but I wasn’t paying her any attention. It felt like ice was flowing through my veins and my stomach was doing flips. I needed to know what was going on.
     Mom was asking if Sadie had gotten on the bus to come home after her after-school program. The woman on the phone assured her that she did. Her words, however, didn’t calm my mother. She was anxious and worried and growing livid with every moment that passed. She insisted that they talk to the bus driver. She knew that Sadie got on the bus, but did she get off it?
     The woman on the other line shuffled around, I heard papers ruffling. Then she told my mother to wait for a moment and she put her on hold. Minutes passed by, two, five, ten, thirteen. Mom was watching the clock. Then finally there was a click on the other line and the woman’s voice returned. She said that she had just gotten off the phone with the bus driver and he had told her that Sadie got off at her usual spot. Mom thanked the woman and hung up the phone, but her time talking to her had done nothing to reassure her. Mom paused for a moment, possibly frozen in shock and fear. Then she walked back out into the living room. Her eyes were distant as she looked at me.
     “I don’t know where she is,” Mom said. “They said she got off the bus, I don’t know…”
     “We’ll go out and look for her,” Brant said and my eyes shot to him. He stood up and Charlie and I followed.
     “Yeah, we can go drive around,” I said and watched as my mom nodded in agreement. “And if we don’t come back soon then call the police, or call them now if it makes you feel better. We’ll go find her.” I walked up to my mom and gave her a hug.
     All Mom could do was nod as we pulled apart, and I left with Brant and Charlie. We walked outside and I noticed a chill to the air. The wind brushed by my face and sent my hair spiraling out around me. I looked down at the car keys in my hand then down to the end of the block. I could see her bus stop from here. I closed my fingers around the keys, feeling their jagged edges and hearing the muffled sound of metal clanking against metal.
     “Maybe we should walk. I’m thinking we might have better luck on foot… if she just wandered off that is.” The other option was that someone grabbed her and I couldn’t think about that, because if that was the case then there was nothing I could do.
     Brant rubbed my back, “We’ll find her,” he assured me, and he sounded so confident about it. It was hard not to believe him.
     “Where should we start?” Charlie asked and I pointed to the end of the block.
     “Her bus stop is down there.”
     “Seems as good a place as any,” Brant said and we all started to walk down the block.