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“All right, Baines, that’s enough questions,” the officer says.
“Can I leave?” I ask him. He nods his head. I walk away with my phone in my hand, dialing Henri’s number with Sarah at my side.
“Hello,” answers Henri.
“I’m ready to be picked up,” I say. “There’s been a terrible fire here.”
“What?”
“Can you just pick us up?”
“Yes. I’ll be right there.”
“So how do you explain the cut on the top of your head?” Baines asks from behind me. He had been following me, listening to my call to Henri.
“I cut it on a branch in the woods.”
“How convenient,” he says, and again writes something in his notebook. “You know I can tell when I’m being lied to, right?”
I ignore him, keep walking away with Sarah’s hand in mine. We head over to Sam.
“I’ll find the truth, Mr. Smith. I always do,” Baines yells behind me.
“Henri is on the way,” I say to Sam and Sarah.
“What the hell was that all about?” Sam asks.
“Who knows? Somebody thinks they saw me run in, probably somebody who drank too much,” I say more at Baines than Sam.
We stand at the end of the driveway until Henri arrives. When he pulls up he steps out of the truck and looks at the smoldering house far off in the distance.
“Ah, hell. Promise me you weren’t a part of this,” he says.
“I wasn’t,” I say.
We get into the truck. He pulls away while looking at the smoking rubble.
“You guys smell like smoke,” Henri says.
None of us reply, making the drive in silence. Sarah sits on my lap. We drop Sam off first, then Henri pulls out of the driveway and points the truck towards Sarah’s home.
“I don’t want to leave you tonight,” Sarah says to me.
“I don’t want to leave you either.”
When we arrive at her house I get out with her and walk her to the door. She won’t let go of me when I hug her good night.
“Will you call me when you get home?”
“Of course.”
“I love you.”
I smile. “I love you too.”
She goes inside. I walk back to the truck, where Henri is waiting. I have to figure out a way to keep him from finding out the truth about tonight, from making us leave Paradise. Henri pulls out and drives home.
“So what happened to your jacket?” he asks.
“It was in Mark’s closet.”
“What happened to your head?”
“I hit it trying to get out when the fire first started.”
He looks over at me doubtfully. “You’re the one who smells like smoke.”
I shrug. “There was a lot of it.”
“So what started it?”
“Drunke
Henri nods and turns down our road.
“Well,” he says. “It will be interesting to see what’s in the papers on Monday.” He turns and looks at me, studying my reaction.
I keep silent.
Yes,I think,it most certainly will be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I CAN’T SLEEP. I LIE IN BED STARING THROUGHthe darkness at the ceiling. I call Sarah and we talk until three; I hang up and lie there with my eyes wide-open. At four I crawl out of bed and walk out of the room. Henri sits at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. He looks up at me, bags beneath his eyes, hair tousled.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I couldn’t sleep either,” he says. “Scouring the news.”
“Find anything?”
“Yes, but I’m not sure what it means to us yet. The men who wrote and publishedThey Walk Among Us
, the men we met, were tortured and killed.”
I sit across from him. “What?”
“Police found them when the neighbors called after hearing screams coming from the house.”
“They didn’t know where we lived.”
“No, they didn’t. Thankfully. But it means the Mogadorians are getting bolder. And they’re close. If we see or hear anything else out of the ordinary, we’re going to need to leave immediately, no questions asked, no discussion.”
“Okay.”
“How’s your head?”
“Sore,” I say. It took seven stitches to close the cut. Henri did it himself. I’m wearing a baggy sweatshirt.
I’m certain one of the cuts on my back needs stitches as well, but that would require me to take my shirt off, and how would I explain the other cuts and scrapes to Henri? He’ll know for sure what has happened. My lungs still burn. If anything, the pain has grown worse.
“So, the fire started in the basement?”
“Yes.”
“And you were in the living room?”
“Yes.”
“How did you know it started in the basement?”
“Because all the guys came ru
“And you knew everyone was out of the house by the time you went outside?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
I can tell he’s trying to get me to contradict myself, that he’s skeptical of my story. I’m certain he doesn’t believe that I merely stood out front watching like everyone else.
“I didn’t go in,” I say. It pains me to do so, but I look him in the eye and I lie.
“I believe you,” he says.
I wake close to noon. Birds are chirping beyond the window, and sunlight is pouring in. I breathe a sigh of relief. The fact that I was allowed to sleep this late means that there was no news to incriminate me. If there had been, I would have been pulled from bed and told to pack.
I roll off my back and that’s when the pain hits. My chest feels as though somebody is pushing down on it, squeezing me. I can’t take full breaths. When I try there is a sharp pain. It scares me.
Bernie Kosar is snoring in a ball at my side. I wake him by wrestling with him. He groans at first, then wrestles back. That is the begi
Henri’s truck is gone. On the table is a note that reads: “Ran to the store. Be back at one.” I walk outside. I have a headache and my arms are red and splotchy, the cuts slightly raised as though I’ve been scratched by a cat. I don’t care about the cuts, or my headache, or the burning in my chest. What I care about is that I’m still here, in Ohio, that tomorrow I’ll be going back to the same school I’ve gone to for three months now, and that I will see Sarah tonight.
Henri gets home at one. There is a haggard look in his eyes that tells me he still hasn’t slept. After he unloads the groceries he goes into his bedroom and closes the door. Bernie Kosar and I go for a walk in the woods. I try to run, and I’m able to for a little while, but after a half mile or so the pain is too great and I have to stop. We walk on for what must be five miles. The woods end at another country road that looks similar to ours. I turn around and walk back. Henri is still in his room with the door closed when I return. I sit on the porch. I tense every time a car passes. I keep thinking one of them will stop, but none of them do.
The confidence I felt when I woke up is slowly chipped away as the day wanes. TheParadise Gazette isn’t printed on Sunday. Will there be a story tomorrow? I suppose I expected a call to arrive, or the same reporter to show up at our doorstep, or one of the officers to ask more questions. I don’t know why I’m so worried about a small-time reporter, but he’d been persistent—too persistent. And I know he didn’t believe my story.
But nobody comes to our house. No one calls. I expected something, and when that something doesn’t come, a dread creeps in that I’m about to be exposed. “I’ll find the truth, Mr. Smith. I always do,” Baines said. I consider ru
I wasn’t in that house.
I have nothing to hide.
Sarah comes over that night. We go to my room and I hold her in my arms, lying on my back on the bed. Her head is against my chest and her leg is draped over me. She asks me questions about who I am, my past, about Lorien, about the Mogadorians. I’m still amazed at how quickly, and easily, Sarah believed everything, and how she’s accepted it. I answer everything truthfully, which feels good after all the lies I’ve told over the last few days. But when we talk about the Mogadorians, I start to get scared.