Until he realized Simon was just as pale, his breathing quick.
“Come on, Coach,” said Ryan. “We were just messing around.”
“You don’t mess around on my court. You’re out of the next two games.”
Ryan’s eyes just about bugged out of his head. “What? But that’s not—”
“Want to make it three?”
“Whatever.” Ryan turned away.
The coach called after him. “Stacey!”
Ryan looked like he was going to keep walking—but he must have wanted to stay on the team. He turned. “What?”
The coach raised an eyebrow.
Ryan sighed. “Yes. Sir.”
“See you on the bench at four.”
Ryan stormed through the doors into the locker room, shoving the door behind him to make the sound echo across the court. Gabriel would have mocked the dickhead, but he knew better. He was already on shaky ground with the coach. Instead, he put out a hand to pull Simon to his feet.
The coach looked at the younger boy. “You all right?”
Simon nodded. His face was red, his jaw clenched.
Gabriel felt for him. Simon could play—but he couldn’t play, for real, in a game. He was small, and though a few years would probably take care of that, a year was an eternity. Especially a year spent getting your ass kicked.
And all that was on top of not being able to hear.
The coach rubbed at the back of his neck. “I caught some of your playing earlier. You’ve been working hard.”
Simon nodded.
Then the coach gave Gabriel a good-natured shove in the arm. “Unless you’re just getting lazy.”
“Nah.” Gabriel smiled. He’d forgotten how much he missed the easy camaraderie of a sport. Had it really only been a couple weeks? “It’s all him.”
Coach Kanner looked back at Simon. “Think you can play like that this afternoon?”
Simon’s eyebrows went way up. He nodded vigorously.
“We’ll give it a try,” said the coach.
Simon nodded again.
The coach held up a finger. “One time.” Then he slung the bag of balls over his shoulder and turned for his office at the back of the gym.
Simon turned wide eyes to Gabriel. He gestured for the phone.
Holy crap.
For the first time since the weekend, Layne fired up her computer.
She didn’t even bother with her e-mail, rolling her eyes at the bolded number showing how many unread messages she had.
Seriously. Didn’t they have anything better to do?
She couldn’t stop thinking about fire. About arson. About Gabriel.
And her scars.
She’d stared at herself in the bathroom for what must have been a good twenty minutes. At first she’d wanted to yell for her father. She’d wanted someone else to see what she was seeing, to pinch her arm and prove she wasn’t dreaming.
But her father would want explanations, and she sure didn’t have one.
What had happened in that barn?
That night I drove you home was the first night—
A notebook sat open next to her laptop. She had to think back. The night her father had worked late. The night Gabriel had played basketball with Simon. Wednesday.
Wednesday, she wrote on the paper.
She went to the local news Web site and searched for the word arson.
Bingo. There’d been an article on Thursday about a fire Wednesday night. A family of four, though only three had gotten out. The reporter had interviewed the mother, a Mrs. Hulster, who said that the fire chief had declared the house too dangerous to search, that no one could be alive inside.
Yet somehow a firefighter had been in there. Somehow, her daughter had been pulled out.
Hulster. It sounded familiar.
Alan Hulster! Of course! Taylor had been talking about the fire the next day in class.
Had Gabriel seemed upset? Had he known about it?
Layne tapped her pencil on her paper. She couldn’t remember.
She skipped to the next article. Another fire, another suspected arson. The firefighters had been ordered out, but one fell through the floor. He should have been trapped—he should have been killed.
But again, someone dragged him out.
So Wednesday, Thursday . . .
Friday was the night of the party. Layne had been with Gabriel, until late.
No arson.
Saturday. A day full of highs and lows. A day that ended with her father being a jerk in the Merrick driveway.
She scrolled to the next arson article and clicked on the link.
A day that ended with a fire in a townhome community. She’d already seen this article—Ryan Stacey had forwarded it to her with mocking comments.
This time she actually read it. A four-alarm fire, an entire row of homes completely consumed.
No fatalities. Only one serious injury.
She stared at the timeline she’d drawn on her paper.
One of those articles quoted a fireman as saying “this guy has a hero complex.” That the arsonist was setting fires just so he could go in and save the victims.
That didn’t match Gabriel at all.
Or did it? Had he done that exact thing this morning?
She remembered her question from the hillside. Did you hurt someone?
And the haunted look in his eyes. No. Just the opposite.
That seemed to point in both directions.
Her head hurt.
A knock sounded at her door, and Layne turned off the monitor before her father could see what she was looking at.
He leaned into her room, looking frustrated. “What time is Simon supposed to be home?”
She glanced at the clock. It was after four. “His first game is today. The activities bus drops us off around five-thirty.”
“His first game?”
“Yeah. His first basketball game.” She folded her arms on the back of her chair. “Though he’s probably not playing.”
“He was serious about that whole basketball thing?”
“Yeah, Dad.” Layne stared at him, feeling sorry for him and wondering if he deserved it. She’d never sided with her mother, but maybe the woman was right about him working too much. He and Simon never talked, and she’d always thought it was because Simon resented his father.
She’d never really thought about her father making no effort to remedy the situation.
He came into the room and dropped onto the end of her bed. “Are you going to be all right?”
Layne thought about her scars disappearing. “Yes. I always am.”
“I’m sorry if I seemed insensitive this morning. After hearing you were in a fire . . . after everything we went through when you were little . . .” He ran a hand through his hair, and now she could hear the emotion in his voice. “And then with your mother . . . It was . . . a lot.”
Layne went and sat next to him. “It’s okay.”
“I never liked you going to that barn by yourself, but I always worried about you taking a fall—”
“Dad. It’s fine.”
He put an arm around her and kissed her on the top of the head. “I know it’s not perfect right now. But I’m trying.”
“I know.” And she did. He was trying to keep doing what he’d always done—working himself too hard, forgetting to eat, leaving it to someone else to keep dinner on the table and the family in order.
At one time it had been her mother.
Now it was Layne.
“Want to go watch Simon sit on the bench?” she said.
He kissed her on the head again, giving her another squeeze. For a moment, she actually thought he might say yes.