Dead Ends (14 page)

What was with the formal talk?

“Therefore, I have no other choice but to—”

“Wait!” I gasped the word, trying to think as fast as my mouth could move. “I had a reason … I can explain …”

The warden pressed his fingertips together, and his voice was almost hopeful. “I'm listening.”

Okay, so lies were out. I had to come up with another angle quick. Desperately, I latched on to something I'd heard in history or English or, hell, chemistry, for all I remember—
the truth shall set you free.

I pointed at the boy with the bloody nose. “He was drawing
a nasty cartoon of Billy D. Real nasty, making fun of his face and stuff.” I knew the warden didn't stand for violent reactions to
any
nonviolent offense, but I silently prayed he would make an exception, just this once.

“Yeah, I drew dat kid.” The boy next to me dropped his hand from his nose for the first time. A thin red bubble of snot ballooned under one of his nostrils, then disappeared as he took a breath. When he spoke again, I could hear him clearly for the first time. “I draw everybody.”

He pulled his sketch pad from his backpack, smudging a little blood from his thumb on the edge. He flipped fast through the notebook—page after page of faces I half recognized from the patio, the cafeteria, the hallways. Each one was as cartoonish as the next.

“I do caricatures.” He sounded almost apologetic. “I wasn't making fun of your friend.”

“He's not my friend,” I spat, my anger pulling away from the boy with the bloody nose and latching on to the backstabber waiting outside the warden's door.

But the itch in my palms faded. I'd hit the kid for no reason—or maybe just the wrong reason.
It really was an accident, in a way.

I looked up from the sketch pad to the boy's face. “I'm sorry.”

The words felt sort of bulky and foreign coming out of my mouth, but I meant them.

The boy mumbled something like “It's okay” and put his notebook away. His anger had disappeared, too. He looked as guilty as I felt.

The warden finally sent the poor guy to the nurse's office, and a silence fell between the two of us. I broke it first.

“So it
was
kind of an accident,” I said.

The warden just stared at me.

“And you heard the guy. He said it was okay. And Billy—”

“Billy,” the warden interrupted, “seemed very shaken by what he saw.”

“Nah, he just—”

“You promised to look out for him, and instead you exposed him to violence.”

“No, I—”

“If you ask me,” the warden pressed on, “you hurt two boys here today.”

I clenched my jaw. Anyone could see it was
Billy
who'd betrayed
me
. All he had to do was agree it was an accident, and this whole mess would have gone away. Sure, that guy's nose would still be jacked up, but what was done was done, right?

The warden spoke quickly, tugging open file cabinets and pulling out papers as he talked. “Dane, you are suspended, effective immediately and for the duration of the week.”

I sank back in my chair, speechless.

“This is a final offense before expulsion.” He slid one of the papers across the desk toward me. “This form states you cannot be on school property and outlines other rules of suspension.” He dropped another sheet on top of that one. “This one is for you to take home and have a parent sign, stating they understand you will be expelled for any further …”

The warden's voice turned into a low buzz as he kept pushing
papers at me—one form explaining how Mom could pick up my homework, one detailing how a suspension would be reported on my permanent school record. The pages blurred together just like the warden's words. This was exactly the moment I'd been trying to avoid when I'd made a deal with Billy. So why did it feel like his fault that I was here?

That's what you get for sticking up for people who don't return the favor.

Billy was sitting patiently in one of the outer office chairs when I opened the warden's door. He hopped up at the sight of me.

“Can we go back to class now?” he asked.

I waited for the door to click shut behind me and gripped the forms in my fist so tight they crumpled. I looked Billy dead in the eye and seethed. “You go back to class. I'm going home.”

“But—”

I raised my fist full of papers, silencing Billy. Then I shoved as much anger into my voice as would cover up the hurt.

“Deal's off.”

Suspension was a little like vacation—if that vacation involved the silent treatment from Mom and extra chores for me. After the initial screaming match, Mom had settled into using a new shorthand type of speech. “Homework assignments”—accompanied by the smack of papers and books on the kitchen table each afternoon. “Dishes”—as she passed me a rag and pointed at the sink. “TV off”—whenever she headed out the door to work.

Of course, that TV went on the moment she left, but when she was home, I was off the couch and on my feet constantly—cleaning my room or dusting her damn lottery tickets. Even after my suspension was technically over, by the weekend, she had me outside mowing the sorry patch of grass we called a front lawn.

That's where I was, pushing and sweating in the April humidity, when Seely rolled up in her dad's car Saturday morning. She threw it in park right in the middle of the street between my house and Billy's, then got out and leaned against the hood, facing me with her arms crossed.

I slowed the mower to a squeaky stop and stared back.

“What?”

“You avoiding me?” she asked.

I wiped a slick of sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand. “Been busy.”

“Busy being suspended,” Seely said, climbing the slight slope of the front yard to stand in front of me.

“So?”

“So, you embarrassed or something?”

I tried to press my eyebrows together—tried to look pissed—but it was hard to lie to Seely in any form, so I dropped the scowl and shrugged.

She put a hand on my arm, and it was like the sweat there conducted an electrical current from her fingertips all the way into my chest. “Don't be,” she said. “Billy told me what happened. It's not your fault—”

“No, it's
his
fault,” I snapped, pulling away from her.

Seely's eyes swung from me to Billy's house and back again. “You guys still aren't talking.”

“We aren't
anything
,” I said.

“Well, that's just not true and you know it.”

When I didn't respond, she gave an exaggerated sigh and strolled back toward the street. “Guess you don't want to come, then.”

“Come where?”

“Oh, nowhere. Just a little road trip.” She reached her car and stroked the hood dreamily. “Just thought you might like to drive.”

Damn it.

I could smell a pretty girl setting a trap from a mile away, but she'd found my bait. Hell yes, I wanted to drive that car—
any
car—if it would get me out of town and away from Mom.

I sucked my teeth for a second. “Who else is going on this road trip?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

Seely didn't have to respond, though, because just then Billy's front door burst open, and he came slapping down the steps in a rush. He looked up when he hit the street and stopped in his tracks. One corner of his mouth crooked up, like he wasn't sure whether to smile or run away.

Seely caught my eye. “I'm taking Billy to Mexico, Missouri.”

I felt a twinge of jealousy. Sure, I'd told Billy the deal was off, but I didn't think he and Seely would keep up the search
without me
. And even though I was pissed at him and shouldn't care
who
he dragged to Mexico, I couldn't help but wish it was me giving him the ride instead of her.

“What do you think you're going to find there?” I asked.

“Oh, we already found something,” Seely said in that tantalizing voice. “And we'll tell you all about it on the way to Mexico.”

Damn, she was good. And Billy was smart to be keeping his mouth shut, standing there still as a statue with that stupid half grin on his face. I held my hand out for the keys, but Seely snatched them back at the last second.

“Tell you what. You play nice on our little outing, and I'll let you drive home.”

Snake.
I was on the hook, and she knew it.

I thought fast, my eyes flipping from Seely to the lawn mower to the house, where Mom would be waiting inside with more chores for me. Finally, my gaze landed on Billy. I heaved a sigh and growled at him.

“I call shotgun.”

• • • X • • •

Mexico, Missouri, was an even bigger shithole than Columbia. Well, a smaller shithole, technically, since it was barely big enough to be called a town.

I'd spent the whole ride there staring at Seely's legs flowing out from short shorts and trying not to catch Billy's eyes in the rearview mirror. The tense silence in the car had broken only once, when I'd called Mom to tell her where I was. She'd actually sounded relieved. I think she was running out of shit for me to do.

Now we were crawling along the dusty gray streets of Mexico, and I had to know what we were looking for or lose my mind from boredom.

“Fine,” I said, as if responding to something in the silence. “What did you figure out?”

“Billy found something,” Seely said. She craned her neck to look at Billy in the backseat. “Tell him, Billy D.,” she prompted.

I set my jaw to keep myself from making a smart-ass remark. I didn't want to hear a word from Billy, but Seely was obviously hatching a plot to get us talking. Billy knew better, though. Instead of opening his mouth, he took something from his backpack and slid it up to me in the front seat.

It was a stack of envelopes and postcards bound by rubber bands. I snapped off the bands and flipped through the pile. The messages were bland, but they all had two things in common—a return address in Mexico, Missouri, and the same weird signature:
June Bug.

“These are old,” I said, scanning the dates on the letters. “How do you know this ‘June Bug' still lives here?”

“We looked up the address,” Seely said. “It matches a listing for a June Budger in Mexico. No phone number, though—just the address.”

“Where?” I asked, strapping the cards back into the rubber bands.

“Here.”

Seely pressed the brakes, and I looked up to see we were parked outside a little blue house on a great big lot.

Billy pressed his face against the back window glass.

“You want us to come with you?” Seely asked.

“No.” Billy opened the car door, never taking his eyes off the house. “I can go by myself.”

“He's really sorry, you know,” Seely said the second the door had shut.

“Whatever.”

“He didn't realize—”

“New subject,” I snapped, my eyes following Billy up the sidewalk.

Seely let out a breath. “Okay, we figured out the rest of the clues.”

I whipped my head around so fast my neck cracked. “What?”

“Well, most of them.” Seely reached into the backseat and
yanked the atlas from Billy's bag. Little blue sticky notes sliced through the smooth edges of the pages—just as they had in the yearbook—except each of the notes in the atlas was marked with two letters, representing a different state. The handwriting was Billy's, but I was sure Seely had helped him with the abbreviations.

Seely opened the atlas to New York. “You were right. The clues are an unbroken line. Every one leads to another state with a clue, which leads to another and another.”

I read the note from Billy's dad at the bottom of the page.

What's needed for a duel.

It was the clue that cost me a week of school. Apparently Seely had been more helpful. The sticky note at the top of the page was marked
AZ.

I looked up toward the house, where Billy was pounding on the front door. Maybe if I'd just worked with him on the clue, I wouldn't have ended up in the warden's office at all.

“Two Guns, Arizona,” Seely said. “What's needed for a duel.” She talked as she turned the pages, showing me how Arizona's clue then led to Indiana, Indiana's to Colorado, Colorado's to Texas. “It's a lot easier to solve the riddles if you only look for the answers on other maps with clues. So we marked off states where Billy had already found answers, and it narrowed the field.”

“And you figured them all out?”

“All but two,” Seely admitted.

My eyes flicked back to Billy, who had stopped knocking on the door and started peeking into windows. “Let me guess. You can't solve the clue after Mexico, Missouri.”

“Right.” Seely sighed. “Billy thinks that means it's the end of the trail.”

“He thinks the clue leads to his dad.”

She nodded. “And we won't be able to talk him out of it until we solve it.”

I took the atlas from Seely and opened it to the map of Missouri.

This is what happens when you don't give up.

Outside, Billy was now knocking on a side door. I shook my head. “Is there a town called Bloody Knuckles?”

Seely shifted in her seat. “Should we go get him?”

“Give him a few minutes.”

“Okay.” She tucked the atlas back into Billy's bag and fiddled with the radio, turning up the volume to fill the awkward silence. After a moment, she spun the dial down again. “So you want to drive home?”

“You sure it's okay?”

“Yeah, my dad won't mind.”

“Which dad?”

Seely tensed and gripped the steering wheel. “Very funny.”