The Escape (4 page)

“Avery,” her father said quietly, “we found Adam.” He pushed the button for the parking level, and the car started moving.

Fear fluttered in Avery’s chest. “Is he okay? Does he remember anything? Are you going to tell Fletcher?” She paused. “The last two nights were freezing. How long was he out there? He must have hypothermia. Why are we leaving if he’s here? I want to see him. You know, to say hey.”

A long silence followed. Avery could tell her father was taking his time, letting her get out all of her questions. But the silence stretched too long.

“Dad?”

Her father reached out and squeezed her hand. “Avy, honey,” he said quietly. “One of the search teams found Adam in the woods. He’s dead. They found his body.”

“What?”

The elevator doors slid open to the parking garage, and her father guided her toward his black SUV. He must have helped her into the car and buckled her seat belt, because Avery couldn’t remember doing it herself. All she could think about was the empty ache that pulsed through her body.

“Adam’s dead?” Images flashed in her mind: Adam in his letterman’s jacket. Adam walking through the library, a grin like sunshine, and Avery’s heart melting into her shoes. Adam was a boy she had a crush on. Adam was a boy she wanted to kiss. Now Adam was dead. “What—what happened?”

“We’re not sure yet. The ME’s report isn’t ready, and of course the—”

She pressed her fingers on her dad’s arm. “In civilian, Dad. Did you see him? What happened?”

His voice was gentle. “I didn’t see him personally, Avy. And we’re still waiting on a positive ID from his mother.”

“But they know it’s him.”

“They’re pretty sure it’s him. The sex and height are right.”

“Dad, Adam’s and Fletcher’s faces have been posted all over the news. You know what he looks like. I know you can’t make an official statement, but I’m your daughter, not CNN.”

The chief ran his hands through his graying crew cut. “Honey, the body was in pretty bad shape.”

Avery’s stomach rolled and she felt tears prick at the backs of her eyes. Déjà vu pelted her. She and her father had been sitting in this same car two years earlier when her father had said the same words:
The
body
was
in
pretty
bad
shape.
At the time, “the body” was her mother. She had hated him for calling her mother “the body.” She had hated him for making her mother generic.
She
wasn’t a body
, Avery had wanted to scream.
She
was
my
mother!

“W-what happened to him?”

Adam had been missing for almost two days, and Avery braced herself for the worst. Her father always grunted through crime shows when TV cops stumbled on a so-called corpse that still looked pristine four or five days after death. From his place on the couch, he would explain in clinical—and often gross—detail that “decomp begins four minutes after death.”

Avery knew that rigor mortis set in after just a few hours and that Adam’s skin would have paled as blood pooled in the lowest points of his body. She knew that if the body had been left unattended in the woods, there would be blowflies and maggots and any other manner of scavenging insects or animals. She tried to shake the images out of her head, but she still needed to know.

“Avy…” Her dad cocked his head, and Avery knew he was trying to placate her.

It was bad.

“Please, Dad?”

The chief gripped the wheel and squinted as he guided the car out of the garage and into the startlingly bright daylight. “He was beaten, and quite a ways away from where they found Fletcher.”

Fletcher’s voice thrummed in Avery’s ears:
They
didn’t find me, Avery. You did.

“It sounds as if the blows he sustained killed him. His head—his face… He was barely—” The chief grimaced and shifted in his seat, not bothering to finish his sentence.

Avery had never seen her father, a seasoned police officer, look so saddened and disgusted by a crime. She knew it had to be worse than he was letting on.

“Do you know who did it? Was there any evidence to—”

He held up a silencing hand. “It’s an ongoing investigation.”

Avery bristled. “I went to school with Adam. We played baseball when we were kids.”

Her father let out a small, mirthless laugh. “You guys are still kids.”

• • •

Two hundred forty-two.

There were two hundred forty-two tiles on the ceiling of Fletcher’s hospital room. He’d counted them. Twice. It felt like forever since Avery had left, and he was bored.

Well, if he was being honest with himself, he was scared. Whoever had done this to him and Adam was out there, waiting. What was to guarantee that the sneakers squeaking up and down the hallway were nurses’ shoes and not the footsteps of his attacker coming for him? It was just a matter of time.

A guard was posted outside his room, but fear crashed through Fletcher in waves, making him sweat.

The door opened and a nurse and an orderly walked in, shuffling papers and massaging IV bags while talking. Fletcher pretended to sleep. He hoped that the heart-rate monitor clamped to his finger wouldn’t give his ruse away.

He watched them though slit lids. They were the same two who had been in earlier that morning.

“I heard he was barely recognizable,” the nurse said, her voice hushed and anxious. “They could barely tell it was him.”

Fletcher’s heartbeat raced. He strained to listen as blood pulsed in his ears.
Who
are
they
talking
about?

“That’s terrible. I guess this kid was lucky.”

“Such a shame. It’s a real tragedy. Who would do such a thing to children?” There was a tremor in the nurse’s voice. “This town has always been so friendly, so safe. Now I’m afraid to walk to my car at night.”

“The police’ll catch ’em,” the orderly responded. “That Chief Templeton is all over it. They’ll find the guy.”

Fletcher opened his eyes with the click of the door closing. He let out the breath he didn’t know he had been holding.

Did
they
find
Adam?
Something twitched in Fletcher’s stomach and he wanted to sit up, to get the orderly and nurse back, but something—maybe whatever it was that was slipping through the needle in his arm—weighed him down and kept him quiet. He sank back into his bed, his mind wandering.

The
light
was
starting
to
change
around
him, the tops of the pine trees fading into the darkness. They looked like big paintbrushes. Somewhere far away were the rush of water and the gentle rustle of dry leaves. Closer to him was a gurgling sound, occasionally punctuated by a raspy attempt at breath.

He
knew
he
should
turn
and
look
at
Adam. He knew he should move and get his friend help, but his body wasn’t his anymore. It was heavy and useless. The soft earth cradled him like a coffin. His breathing was shallow and sent a thousand burning spikes into his lungs.

Fletcher
heard
the
sound
of
gravel
crunching, of twigs breaking. He strained to see, but it was becoming more difficult to stay awake. And then—there was nothing.

Fletcher half expected the machines attached to him to go haywire with chirps and beeps, signaling that his pounding heart was going to give out, but the machines made no sound. He tried to blink away the memory, but his fingers twitched just the way they had out there in the woods when Adam was close enough to touch—close enough to help.

Fletcher tried to swallow the lump in his throat. The sound of Adam’s raspy breath was heavy in his ears. He should have helped. He should have
done
something.

“Fletcher, honey?” His mother knocked while opening the door—just as she had his whole life. She never waited to be invited in.

Her voice was cheerful and light, but she wore a sad smile. Her ashy-blond hair was combed in its usual neat bob, and her milky-blue eyes peered at Fletcher, as if she could take his vital signs just by looking at him. “I brought you some real food.”

Fletcher didn’t feel hungry, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. His stomach growled, the sound making his mother smile. She held out a brown cardboard box and opened the top. The aroma of burgers and fries immediately overtook the sanitized odor of the hospital room.

“That smells amazing,” Fletcher said. He sat up. “Is Dad coming?”

His mother fixed an apologetic smile on her face. “Oh, he wanted to be here for you. He really did.”

Fletcher nodded as grief welled in his chest. They had all been one big, happy family once—Fletcher; his sister, Susan; and their parents. But Fletcher and his mother had moved out and into the house in Avery’s neighborhood. It was just across town from his sister and father, but far enough away. Right now, Fletcher couldn’t remember why they had moved.

“Burger?” His mother was holding up a sandwich wrapped in yellow paper.

He smiled. “Yeah.”

Fletcher was halfway through the burger and a quarter of the way through his chocolate shake when he stopped chewing. “Is it true they found Adam? I heard one of the orderlies talking with a nurse. Can I go see him?”

Mrs. Carroll stiffened, the shock evident on her face.

Fletcher popped a few fries into his mouth. “Didn’t they tell you? I thought it would be all over the news.”

She cleared her throat. “It has been, honey. Have you seen the news?”

Fletcher shook his head and continued eating. “No. No TV in this room.”

His mother smoothed the pleats of her skirt. “Fletcher, honey, you can’t see Adam.”

Fletcher looked up and furrowed his brow. “Why? Is he in ICU or something? I know I’m not family, but I bet the nurses would still let me in.”

Mrs. Carroll didn’t respond.

“Ma?” Fletcher said impatiently. “Mom?”

She grimaced. “Fletcher, honey, they found Adam.” She cleared her throat. “They found Adam’s body.”

The news about Adam’s death spread like a stain through the school. Students with puffy eyes huddled together, talking in hushed tones. It could have been Avery’s imagination, but they all seemed to be looking over their shoulders, even with the addition of two police officers walking the perimeter of the high school. A killer was on the loose, and though one student had escaped, another hadn’t. Any one of them could be next.

Avery closed her locker and started when Ellison Rose smiled at her. “Hey, Avery. How you doing?”

Avery counted Ellison as one of her only friends at Dan River Falls High. She was the kind of friend who was close enough to call up, so Avery’s father wouldn’t think she was a poorly adjusted social outcast, but kept her distance enough to not ask about Avery’s mother or anything deep.

“Okay, I guess.”

“I was going to—”

“Hey, E.” Ellison’s boyfriend, a bulky football player named Tim, slung an arm around Ellison and gave her a loud, smacking kiss on the cheek. “I’m missing my girl.”

Ellison looked momentarily torn between Avery and Tim, then tossed a “We’ll talk later, okay?” over her shoulder as Tim guided her down the hall.

Avery watched them disappear into the crowded hall but couldn’t understand it—the numbing aftermath of death yet the way the world just went on. There were grief counselors but she avoided them, walking down the hallway to her next class. In front of her, a blond with a shoulder-skimming ponytail leaned in to her friend. “I was supposed to babysit my little sister tonight, but now I’m, like, no way. The guy may have been in the woods but he’s probably down here in town now, right?”

Avery slipped into her classroom before the other girl could answer, relieved to be away from the chatter. The classroom desks had been rearranged into a loose circle, and Ms. Holly leaned against her desk. Avery prayed they were going to have a flippant conversation about
Huckleberry
Finn
or the latest drinking scandal, but when she saw the box of Kleenex going around the room, she knew the conversation would be about Fletcher and Adam. She sat at one of the desks just as the bell rang. Tim sauntered in a moment later.

Ms. Holly stood up. “All of you probably know by now that Adam Marshall’s body was found early this morning in the woods. He was deceased. Fletcher Carroll remains in the hospital and is very lucky to be alive. There is no news on exactly what happened or who is responsible.” Her eyes flicked to Avery. “Is that correct, Avery?”

Avery shrugged, unwilling to add to the conversation.

“It’s terrifying,” Kaylee said, pressing a tissue to her perfect little ski-jump nose. “I was out with the search-and-rescue team looking for Adam. I was walking out in the forest while a killer and a dead body were out there. The killer could have seen me.” She splayed a perfectly manicured hand against her chest and sniffed into her Kleenex.

Avery laid her head on her desk, trying to block out Kaylee’s center-of-the-universe voice.

“There’s a murderer out there,” Kaylee went on, “a serial killer.” She looked around, her flat, blue eyes glossy from the tears. “He could be after any one of us.”

Tim leaned forward. “Don’t serial killers always have a type though? Adam and Fletcher didn’t look that much alike, but they were both boys, both the same age.” He pressed a hand against his chest, and Avery couldn’t tell if he was serious or joking. “Dude, I could be next.”

“Is it true? Do serial killers have a type?” The kid next to Avery poked her with the eraser end of his pencil.

Avery pulled the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her hands, using her thumb and forefinger to roll the fabric back and forth. “How should I know?”

“Your dad’s the chief of police,” the kid said, as if the connection was obvious.

Avery shrugged.

She
did
know that most serial killers had a type. She also knew that no one in the news or on the police force had mentioned the words “serial killer,” and even if they had, the term would be a misnomer. Killers didn’t become “serial killers” until they had at least three victims. Whoever did this was just a killer. Yet Avery’s spine stiffened at the thought of another kid as bruised and battered as Fletcher, hooked up to hospital monitors.

“What are we supposed to do?” Kaylee asked, tears rolling over her cheeks. “The police are supposed to keep us safe. Why haven’t they found this guy?”

Avery felt her nostrils flare and kept rolling the sweatshirt fabric between her fingers to calm herself.

“How was this guy even able to attack Adam and Fletcher in the first place?”

Kaylee stared at Avery. They all did, expecting an answer because she was the police chief’s daughter. But she had wondered the same thing.

“Class, we know how to keep ourselves safe. Lock your doors, use the buddy system—”

“The buddy system didn’t work out so well for Adam and that other kid,” Tim said bitterly.

“Fletcher,” Avery said under her breath.

“Avery?” Ms. Holly asked. “Did you say something?”

“The other kid. His name is Fletcher.”

“Right. Does anyone feel like they need to talk about Adam, grief, or even death?”

Avery felt like everyone was looking at her again.
Ask
Avery. She’s the one who went crazy when her mom died
, she imagined them saying. If Ms. Holly asked her to share how it felt to lose someone you love, Avery was going to scream. She clenched her fists.

Kaylee spoke up. “I can’t believe I’m never going to see Adam again.”

The girl next to her rubbed her back, and Kaylee exploded in delicate tears that wouldn’t smudge her makeup. Avery wondered if she had selected her outfit—light-pink top, dark-pink skirt—to accentuate her red cheeks and pink, puffy eyes.

They went around the circle sharing their feelings and memories of Adam, but it was mostly Kaylee talking about loss and prom. Avery simmered in her seat. When Ms. Holly talked about grief counselors and journaling as a way to deal with feelings about loss and death, Avery almost spit out an incredulous laugh. She knew better than any of them. She wanted to tell them what she had learned in the last year: You can’t deal with death. It deals with you.

• • •

There
was
blood
all
over
him. It had dried and made his skin feel so tight that every movement felt like opening a new wound. He’d never thought there would be this much blood. He turned around in a circle, surveying the trees. His heart rate had slowed from its terrified, frenetic pace, but he braced for the moment that his attacker would come back to finish him off.

He
didn’t know where Adam was. He couldn’t remember if Adam ran or was taken, or if he’d escaped. When he saw the streaks across the trail—like from dragging feet—his saliva turned bitter and acrid while the bile filled his mouth.

Fletcher’s eyes flew open, and he clawed at the neck of the hospital-issued pajamas he was wearing. He was panting, desperate to breathe, desperate for his body to feel something other than dizzying stress.
What
had
he
dreamed?
He slowly closed his eyes as if doing so would make the memory gentler, but it was the same. He was alone in the forest, covered in blood and left to die.

• • •

Fletcher hadn’t had much to say to her when she’d visited, but being at school where he was referred to as “that kid,” as in “Adam and
that
kid
,” bothered Avery. She stepped out of the elevator on Fletcher’s floor just as Officer Blount stepped in.

“Hey, Vince. Are you on duty?”

The officer wasn’t in uniform, but he wore a black Dan River Falls Police Department T-shirt tucked into black pants, and duty boots laced halfway up his calves. He looked startled to see her.

“Hey, Avery. No, I was just checking in on Fletcher.”

“That’s really nice of you. Me too.” She held up the only thing in the hospital gift shop that wasn’t either a fuzzy teddy bear or something decorated with hearts or roses of some sort: a one-pound bag of peanut M&M’s. “I brought chocolate.”

Blount smiled as he held the elevator door. “I’m sure he’ll like ’em. See you later.”

Avery’s stomach fluttered as she walked toward Fletcher’s room. She had no idea what to say to him, and suddenly, a strange girl toting a pound of chocolate for someone she hardly knew seemed ridiculous. She recognized the guard on duty—another of her father’s officers—and nodded before knocking on Fletcher’s door.

“Avery. Hi.” Fletcher moved slowly, his smile crooked due to his swollen bottom lip.

“Wow, Fletch.” Dozens of flower bouquets adorned every flat surface in the room. “You’re popular.”

Fletcher shrugged, his smile fading. “I don’t even know most of those people.”

Avery wasn’t sure how to respond. Then, “I brought you M&M’s.”

“Thanks.”

Avery tucked herself into a chair while Fletcher tore open the M&M’s and poured them each a handful.

“I guess you heard about Adam,” Fletcher said.

Avery toed the linoleum. “Yeah, I did. Are you okay?”

Fletcher picked out a blue M&M and studied it. “Not really.”

“Me neither. But you’re alive. That’s a good thing.”

He looked at her. “I guess. Except Adam was the one everyone loved. He was good at everything.”

“Being good at stuff doesn’t make one person better than another.”

“Still, I’m pretty sure everyone wishes he were the one who had survived.”

Avery felt a stab of pain in her chest. “I don’t think anyone thinks that, Fletch.”

He palmed another fistful of the M&M’s, chewing thoughtfully. “Everyone loved Adam. Every teacher, every parent, every student. Even you.” His dark eyes settled on Avery’s blue ones, and she could feel the heat race to her cheeks.

“We were friends, Adam and me,” Avery said. “Like you and me are. Nobody wishes that it had been you. Look at all these flowers.”

“No one else has come to visit me. Well, except my mom.”

A nurse poked her head in the door. “Visiting hours are over, hon. You’re going to have to get going.”

Avery waited for the nurse to shut the door. “They probably want to give you your space to rest and feel better. But I’m not the only one who came to visit you. So did Officer Blount. People care about you, Fletcher.”

Fletcher blinked, confusion clouding his eyes. “Who’s Officer Blount?”

• • •

When Avery rode her bike through town, she noticed ribbon after ribbon in the Dan River Falls High School colors tied around tree trunks, Adam’s jersey number puff-painted in glittery silver on the ribbon tails.

There was a makeshift memorial outside the baseball store where Adam worked too. Flowers wrapped in cellophane, teddy bears, handwritten notes, and Kit Kat bars—which Avery guessed must have been Adam’s favorite—all held vigil with a number of tall, glass votive candles with Jesus or angels on them.

Avery rode back to the high school and locked her bike in the front rack. Even though the front lot was full of cars and people were milling about, it felt weird to be at school in the evening. Ominous, even.

“Aves!” Ellison was sitting on the stone wall in front of the science building, Tim next to her, thunking his heels on the concrete.

“Hey,” Avery said. “I didn’t know you guys were going to be here.”

Tim unrolled the tube that he was holding. It was a flier. He jabbed a finger at the text. “It’s a meeting for the whole town. We”—he gestured to himself and Ellison—“are townsfolk.”

“People. We’re townspeople, Tim. ‘Townsfolk’ sounds like we have to be gnomes or something.” She turned her attention to Avery. “Did your dad tell you what he would be talking about?”

Avery shifted her weight, suddenly uncomfortable. Ellison looked genuinely curious, but something in Tim’s eyes made the hairs on the back of Avery’s neck prick. His eyes were clouded, dark—menacing, maybe? Or was he just considering the meeting topic?

“Your guess is really as good as mine. I’m thinking its just details of the case or whatever.”

Tim’s jaw tightened. “Does your dad have a lead? I mean, they’re going to find this guy, right?”

When Avery, Tim, and Ellison walked into the gym, nearly every one of the metal folding chairs was occupied. A few stragglers were leaning against the walls, and a handful of adults stood in front of a folding table where students and the PTA were filling Styrofoam cups with steaming coffee.

Tim and Ellison shimmied through a crowded row and plopped into two seats. Avery remained standing, scanning the crowd.

“We want to assure you that we are doing everything possible to find the person responsible,” Chief Templeton said.

Avery headed toward the PTA table and ordered herself a coffee while her father told the community they were in no immediate danger.

She jostled toward the front of the table to pay, bumping into the woolen sleeve of the woman next to her. “Oh, excuse me.”

Avery looked up to see Mrs. Marshall with a cup of coffee clutched tightly in both hands, the dazzling blue of her eyes offset by the bags underneath them. Her expression didn’t change when she looked Avery up and down. “Hello, Avery.”

“Hi, Mrs. Marshall.”

They stared at each other for a beat of awkward silence before the chief broke in again, addressing the crowd.

“We have all available officers on high alert, and we assure you that you are safe here in Dan River Falls.”

Her father looked confident and professional in his pressed uniform, but an uneasy chatter buzzed through the school gym. Avery cut her eyes toward Mrs. Marshall, who had disappeared into the crowd.

“Can you believe that?” The girl manning the PTA table took Avery’s dollar and handed her a steaming coffee. “Just thinking there is a murderer in town scares me to death.” The girl shuddered, rubbing her arms as if the cold went all the way through her.