Mr. Holmes shakes his head in amusement, genuinely impressed for once, it seems.
“Won’t say you were my best student over all these years,”
he tells her, measuring his words. “But you are the one I’m going to remember.”
“Voted most likely to die in a horror movie, right?”
“And I apologize for not—for not realizing what you were really saying, Jennifer.”
“Jade.”
“I should have, I mean. I could have helped stop all this from—”
“History needs documentation to be history,” Jade cites back at him, her eyes flashing. “Documents, testimony, artifacts—the holy trinity. Otherwise it’s just a pretty story.
Compelling but empty, that’s what you said, isn’t it?”
“We haven’t questioned him yet,” Mr. Holmes says right back, licking his lips at the end in what Jade thinks could be anticipation, which she reads as him wanting to protect her from the “him” in question: her dad. It almost makes her feel something, but she can’t allow that.
Instead she breathes in, says, “You haven’t asked why this princess of Terra Nova is all bent out of shape by the possibility of a father going Chester the Molester over here in Proofrock. Or, in our case, all Rexall the… the—”
“Guinea pig,” Mr. Holmes fills in. “It’s an Italian slur. What they used to call him in high school, because of his weight.”
“It’s not his Italian-ness that makes my skin crawl. It’s his Krug ness.”
“Are you talking your Nightmare on Elm Street or that one, the… Last House on the Left?”
“Good old Springfield Slasher his wisecracking self,” Jade says, surprised Mr. Holmes has kept all those titles in his head.
“Fred, Freddy, the Mr. Rogers of Elm Street. He was the one into kids.”
“But the other one was a rapist, right?”
“Not a lot of nice bad guys in horror, no.”
“And you say you recognize Rexall for being like that,” Mr.
Holmes says with a shrug. “Must we then ask why your senses are dialed in in that particular way?”
“I can’t say anything to make you believe, can I?”
“To get me to dis believe?” Mr. Holmes asks back. “Ms.
Mondragon in there makes a good case, a strong and telling textual analysis. All the symptoms and characteristics are there, Jennifer.”
“Not everything with spots is a leopard,” Jade says. “Now where did I hear that particular nugget?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care.”
“Rather be flying,” Jade says. “I understand.”
Mr. Holmes snickers, caught. Says, like finally giving up, giving in, “When I was a kid, we had a fort over there.”
He tosses his chin across Indian Lake, to Terra Nova.
Jade takes another drag and holds it, not wanting to wreck this moment.
“We built this raft, had a pirate flag and everything,” Mr.
Holmes goes on. “We’d meet on this side at the new pier—it was new then—we’d meet at midnight, have candles and everything, our parents asleep, and we’d paddle across to our secret clubhouse.”
“So they’re messing with your childhood by building their fancy houses, that’s it?” Jade says, turning her head again to exhale.
“Clubhouse was long gone by the time Theo Mondragon and his… his lords of what counts as industry got there,” Mr.
Holmes says. “I mean, childhood, sure, that’s gone before you even realize it’s slipping away, blink and you’ve got a mortgage. But the fort was long gone as well. Burned.”
“The fire,” Jade says, ashing between them discreetly, just tapping the cigarette with her index finger the way people in movies do. And in real life.
“How about this?” Mr. Holmes says, looking up to catch her eye, let her know this is for-real, not just their usual parrying and thrusting. “I’ll trade you. Honesty for honesty. Nobody knows this anymore except—”
He hooks his head behind them again, meaning Family Dollar. Meaning Sheriff Hardy.
“He was in your pirate club?” Jade asks.
“That fire was…” Mr. Holmes says, his mouth and neck contorting to finally be saying this out loud after all these years, “it was us. Our campfire that night. Burned for nine days. Two campers from Kansas died. One firefighter from here—his uncle.”
Jade widens her eyes, seriously impressed.