“Of course.” He turns off the engine, and I feel a surge of gratitude until he has to get one last jab in. “Wouldn’t want you to think I’m not brave.”
The street is perfectly quiet and peaceful, the only sound around us the occasional chirp of a bird. Charlie lives in the kind of neighborhood that requires dual incomes, so nobody’s home in the middle of the day. The only car within sight is his Jeep.
“Hold on a sec,” Cal says. He pops his trunk and, to my surprise, pulls out a baseball bat. “Let’s bring this along just in case.” He holds it carefully, at an angle that makes me think he’s never tried to actually hit a ball with it.
“Why do you have that?” I ask as we start toward Charlie’s house. I can’t picture Cal playing pickup games in his downtime.
“Prop for a new web comic I’m working on,” he says. “About a spider who finds a bat left behind in a field and decides to start his own league.”
“So it’s like Spider-Man but with baseball?”
“No.” Cal looks annoyed. “It’s nothing like Spider-Man. The spider isn’t radioactive, or a superhero, and there aren’t any humans. Just different kinds of bugs. Playing baseball.”
We step onto the perfect smoothness of the St. Clairs’ driveway, which is a welcome change from the cobblestone sidewalks I’ve been tripping over all day. “How do they lift the bat?” I ask. Cal raises his eyebrows questioningly, and I add, “The bugs. If they don’t have superstrength. It would crush them.”
“Well, obviously there’s a fantasy element,” Cal replies.
“Hmm,” I say, my eyes scanning the picture-perfect suburban home in front of us. It feels deceptively quiet.
“What do you mean, hmm?” Cal asks.
“I don’t know. When I think about what you were creating a few years ago, it sounds kind of…” I was about to say basic, but then we pass Charlie’s Jeep, and its windows are so spotless that I can see our reflections in them—including Cal’s hurt expression.
Oh no. I’ve been so busy trying to distract myself from the twin stresses of what Mateo told us about his mom, and whatever might be waiting in Charlie’s house, that I almost forgot how nobody needs my unfiltered opinions. “I guess I just really like your older stuff,” I finish hastily. “I’m probably biased.”
“You sound exactly like Lara,” Cal mutters.
I point a warning finger at him. “Do not disrespect me like that.”
“Well, she said…” Cal trails off as Charlie’s front door looms in front of us. “Hold on a sec. Let’s think this through. Are we breaking and entering?”
“No. Just entering.”
“Still. Do you think this is a good idea? Walking into someone’s house?”
The bat dangles in Cal’s grip, as though he’s about to drop it, so I grab it from him and hold it firmly in one hand. “We have to,” I say, and push the door open.
MATEO
Charlie can’t be all that scared for his life if he doesn’t even bother locking his door.
I step into a spacious, empty foyer and close the door behind me. “Charlie? You there?” I call, moving farther into the house. “It’s Mateo Wojcik. I need to talk to you.” Then I catch sight of the St. Clairs’ kitchen through the doorway ahead of me, and freeze in my tracks.
All the cabinets are wide open. The counters and floor are strewn with boxes, bags, and broken dishes. I creep farther into the foyer, every muscle tense, and stop at a set of French doors that lead into what looks like the St. Clairs’ living room. It’s a chaotic mess: tables upended, cushions pulled apart and tossed onto the floor, lamps and vases smashed. The built-in bookshelves at one end of the room are completely empty. Even the curtains have been torn off the picture window, the rod dangling haphazardly to one side.
The entire place has been ransacked. And if whoever did it is still around, I just announced myself to them.
Obviously, the smart thing to do would be to backtrack out the door and directly into Cal’s car. But I can’t. Because now I really, really need to find out whether Charlie St. Clair—the guy whose name was circled on a list with me and a dead kid, and who just called that kid in a panic—is the same Charlie who popped up on Autumn’s phone this morning.
The less you know, the better, she’d said. Not anymore.
I move back toward the kitchen, ears straining. The house is silent except for the quiet hum of central air-conditioning. Up close, the kitchen is an even bigger disaster. There’s so much crap on the floor that I’m about to give up on going any farther when I notice a door across from the pantry that’s slightly ajar. I pick my way toward it and ease it open, and I catch a faint rustling sound from somewhere below.