Tell (7 page)

“I ran over to where Phil was,” I said. “He was breathing, but he was also making a sort of gurgling sound. He looked at me. But I just stood there. I couldn't move. He had his keys in his hands, and I saw that picture of my brother and thought about Phil, with his display case full of swimming medals and ribbons, just sitting in that boat while Jamie drowned.” I also thought about his face when he told my mother that he
had frozen. I thought about him licking his lips when he told the paramedics and the cops the same thing. I thought about him waving that key chain under everyone's nose and telling them his son had drowned. I remembered all the free beers he got when he told people about Jamie. “Then Phil stopped making that noise. He stopped everything. I grabbed his keys and I ran. I broke the chain and took Jamie's picture, and I threw the keys away. Then I went home.”

Detective Antonelli was quiet for a minute. Then he said, “The pathologist said he was shot through the heart, David, and that he died within a minute or two. He said that even if the paramedics had arrived in three minutes, they wouldn't have been able to do anything. He would have been dead already.”

It took them nearly a month, but they finally caught the guy who shot Phil. They did it based on my description, and when
they brought him in, they asked me to identify him. I don't have to go to court because the guy made a deal with the prosecutor. He got life for second-degree murder but is eligible for parole in fifteen years, which means he could get out in eight. My mother cried when she heard that.

Jack doesn't come around as much as he used to, and my mother doesn't talk about him. I think she's mad at him for telling me about my dad. I still haven't decided what to do about him. I'm curious, but not that curious. After all, it's not like he ever came looking for me.

And about Phil—I tell myself I didn't do anything wrong. Phil would have died anyway. But I didn't know that at the time. At the time, I just looked at him and remembered him licking his lips and remembered his face going blank when he told my mother there was nothing he could have done about Jamie. That's why I didn't call an ambulance for him. That's why I didn't do anything except stand
there. In those few minutes, I did what Phil had done. I
became
Phil. I hate myself for that. But I know that I will never be Phil again. Not in a million years.

My mother still doesn't know what she's going to do without him—or
with
me.

Norah McClintock
has been writing compelling fiction for years.
Tell
is her second Orca Soundings novel.
Snitch
, an ALA Popular Paperback, was published in 2005.

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K.L. Denman

Blue Moon

Marilyn Halvorso

Breathless

Pam Withers

Bull Rider

Marilyn Halvorson

Charmed

Carrie Mac

Chill

Colin Frizzell

Crush

Carrie Mac

Dead-End Job

Vicki Grant

Death Wind

William Bell
Exit Point

Laura Langston

Exposure

Patricia Murdoch

Fastback Beach

Shirlee Smith Matheson

Grind

Eric Walters

The Hemingway Tradition

Kristin Butcher

Hit Squad

James Heneghan

Home Invasion

Monique Polak

Juice

Eric Walters

Kicked Out

Beth Goobie

My Time as Caz Hazard

Tanya Lloyd Kyi

No More Pranks

Monique Polak

No Problem

Dayle Campbell Gaetz

One More Step

Sheree Fitch

Overdrive

Eric Walters

Refuge Cove

Lesley Choyce

Saving Grace

Darlene Ryan

Snitch

Norah McClintock

Something Girl

Beth Goobie

Sticks and Stones

Beth Goobie

Stuffed

Eric Walters

Thunderbowl

Lesley Choyce

Tough Trails

Irene Morck

The Trouble with Liberty

Kristin Butcher

Truth

Tanya Lloyd Kyi

Who Owns Kelly Paddik?

Beth Goobie

Yellow Line

Sylvia Olsen

Zee's Way

Kristin Butcher

Visit
www.orcabook.com
for more information.

“I'm not dead. I'm still me. I still have a body and everything.”

“You are still you, but you don't have a body. What you're seeing is a thought form.” He points to a tall gold urn up by the minister. “Your body is in there. You were cremated.”

Thunk thunk, thunk thunk. My heart pounds in my chest. Dread mushrooms in my stomach. Sweat beads on my forehead.“But everybody knows death is the end. That there's nothing left but matter.”

“Death is only the beginning, Logan. Hannah knows that. Lots of people do.”

Logan always takes the easy way out. After a night of drinking and driving, he wakes up to find he has been involved in a car accident and is dead. With the help of his guide, Wade, and the spirit of his grandmother, he realizes he has taken the wrong exit. He wasn't meant to die. His life had a purpose—to save his sister!

I was happier than I had been for a long time. Everything was crashing down around Dana. Finally I was getting some justice. But I wanted a bigger helping. This wasn't enough. I had to do something.

I went into the washroom and dug a marker out of my pencil case. I drew a box and a couple of circles, with lines for a flash going off, on the outer wall of the first cubicle. No one would be able to miss it. It didn't look exactly like a camera, but it would do. And for the finishing touch I wrote SMILE DANA, with a happy face right beside it.

“So, do we have a deal?” Mr. Evans asked.

“Unbelievable,” I muttered under my breath.

“I don't understand,” Mr. Evans said.

“The whole thing is unbelievable. First you try to threaten me. Then you try to bribe me. And now you do the two together, trying to bribe me and threatening me if I don't take the bribe.”

“I don't like to think of it in those terms,” he said.

When Ian and his classmates watch a documentary about the health concerns of eating fast food, Ian decides to start a boycott against a multinational food chain. Can Ian stand up for what he believes in? Can he take on a corporate behemoth and win?