I blink a few times and realize Sheriff Staake is talking about me. My back is drenched with sweat and I can barely see. Everything’s so fuzzy. “How did you even get here so quickly?” I hear myself ask. Someone is pressing an ice pack against my forehead. “Hold this,” they say. “It’ll help with the swelling.”
“What were you doing hanging around here in the first place?” Staake shouts back. “With bear spray to boot—and for your information we got an anonymous tip that some girl with white-blond hair was wandering around town with Ursidae gas. We put two and two together pretty quick and put a patrol on you. Followed you all the way from the high school.” His face is blurry and his voice sounds far away, but if I tilt my face toward the sky, I can tell he’s looking at me. “Where’d you even get that kind of weapon, I’d like to know?”
“Um.” I don’t want to get Ralph in trouble. “We had it laying around, I guess, like most people.” Who would have seen me with it? “You never know with bears.”
Staake sighs. “You look like crap, Bushman.”
I start pointing to the mailbox, where the bullet holes should be. But as the world comes into focus I realize it’s gone. There’s just a wooden post with nothing on it. Someone took the frigging mailbox. “Whoa.”
Sheriff Staake tilts his head at me. “Hello?” He grumbles something underneath his breath. “Hey you, ambulance driver lady, get her a blanket. The kid’s stupid from shock and looks like an Oompa Loompa.” He snaps his finger and someone puts a blanket around my shoulders. A radio crackles somewhere. “Patrol units, lost dog on Elm Street. Repeat.” Staake sighs and shuffles toward the noise. “Duty calls.”
“You know, Bushman,” he says over his shoulder. “My daughter’s on RFFB, and I heard about that little email notification. I’d suggest you keep your nose where it belongs—last warning.”
“Was Libby the one who saw me with the gas?” I clench my teeth—she’s such a nosy jerk, and I wasn’t exactly careful about hiding it—but right away my mind wanders: What if this is a double homicide? So many people probably read Ralph’s email. The killer would have known that Mrs. Klitch could clear Colt’s name and probably came lickety-split to wipe her out. “Hey Sheriff Staake, you should check the autopsy and make sure she actually killed herself. Ruth got hanged, too, you know—we could have a serial—”
“Oh, get off my butt about it,” Staake snaps.
“Seriously?” There’s a light in my eyes and the ambulance driver takes me by the chin, peering at me from the other end of a flashlight. My whole face feels like it’s sunburned shut.
“Who knew this spray stuff came out so orange,” she says kindly. “Now where’s your cell phone, missy? It’s time we better call you a ride, don’tcha know.”
Yeah, because there’s a riled-up murderer on the loose. I root around in my back pocket for my cell and hand it to her.
“What’s the name I’m looking for?” she asks.
There’s only one person who I know for sure will believe me. “It’s under Davey,” I say.
MOUSE HOUSES
Davey arrives in less than ten minutes. Friendship is pretty small, but I’m pretty sure that getting across it that fast is some kind of record.
The whole thing is sort of a blur. I know that when Davey shows up, he puts his arm around me and he doesn’t stare at my orange, inflamed face like I thought he might. He talks to the ambulance driver, then Staake, and by the end of it Staake sounds less stuffy. Then Davey leads me to his car and buckles me into his passenger seat. After that, things slow down and settle into focus. As we drive away I tell him everything: about school, and the armbands; how Ralph posted my business to the whole world; my conversations with Sheriff Staake and Mrs. Klitch.
“I think something bad happened to her,” I say, holding an ice pack over my eyes. “The autopsy report is coming back in a week—not that Sheriff Staake will want to tell me anything specific. But I’m going to follow up.” I tell him about the missing mailbox. “Do you think Libby Quinn would have had time after school to get there before me—like in a car?” I suddenly imagine her snarling and wrestling the mailbox off the post. “I mean, she was angry about Ralph’s email. Also, she gripped my arm in the hallway and she is incredibly brawny.”
“No offense, but I don’t think a girl could have tackled either of these jobs. Physically overpowering someone is hard work.”
“How do you know? Oh right. Anyway.” I explain that whoever killed Ruth might have easily seen or heard about Ralph’s email. They discovered this loose thread, this possible tattler, and got to Mrs. Klitch before I could. There were ways, probably, to make it look like a suicide.
Davey tells me to slow down, breathe. But he doesn’t question any of it—which feels new, and like such a relief I might cry. “Why didn’t you tell me you figured all this out?” he asks. “You should have called me right away, you know.”
I shrug. “It sounded crazy.”
“But I believe you,” Davey insists.
“The thing is there’s nobody to help—the police are basically stalking me—and the whole town is starting to feel weird and creepy.”
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
I can barely hear him, his voice sounds so far away. Outside, the sun is setting in the trees. “So we’re doing this,” I whisper.
“I guess,” he says.
“A real investigation.” I feel for the vanity mirror on the sun visor and stare at myself. My eyes and nose are all swollen and sunburned-looking from the bear spray, and there’s still some orange in my hair. The ice pack starts to leak on my lap.
I hear him take a deep breath beside me. “Hey, remember when you and Ruth used to make forts when you were like eight? You’d pull apart the whole couch for cushions and all the blankets would be missing from our beds. What did you call them?”
I smile. “Mouse Houses.”
“Right. You were hilarious. I’d come in and knock them over with you guys in them and you would scream and scream.”
“The sneaking up part was the best.”
“You guys were inseparable. My parents used to think maybe it was unhealthy, how you couldn’t be apart.”
“I know.” It’s been hard to remember in the midst of all this but it’s true—how before she started dating boys and had so many secrets, Ruth and I were pretty much attached at the hip. I mean, even as recently as last year we’d literally link ankles while doing homework at the kitchen table. Then Colt decided he’d hooked up with everyone else worth doing and sauntered over to us in the hallway. “What’s your name again?” Colt asked. And after that it was all Colt this and Colt that, and get off my nuts, and why haven’t you had sex yet, Kippy? Even though a few months earlier we had both been virgins.
“Hey . . . quick question,” Davey says. “This sounds so gutless.” He licks his lips. “Fuck it, listen, how soon does this get easier? Like how long does it take?”
“Dude, I’ve never done a murder investigation before.” He doesn’t say anything and my heart starts racing. “Wait, you mean with Ruth? Are you asking me about grief?”
He still doesn’t say anything, and part of me feels like I shouldn’t have said Ruth’s name. Like we can only talk about her so much. “Shoot, Davey, I don’t know. Just because my mom died doesn’t mean I’m some kind of expert. I mean, you were the one in the war, right? People died over there, too, didn’t they?”