“Oh, hey, Penny,” he said, pretending to be surprised.
“Hey, Eric,” she said. He felt something twisting in his stomach, her presence washing away his anger like cool water over burning embers. He tried to force back a smile but failed.
“Well, look at that,” Penny said. “I was starting to wonder if you had teeth. You should smile more often.”
A witty reply did not come to him, so Eric just said, “Yeah.”
“You didn’t respond to my text last night.”
“I was asleep,” Eric lied. Keep her at arm’s length, he thought. For her own sake.
“No, you weren’t. I got a read receipt.”
He shrugged. “Caught.”
“So,” she repeated. “How are you?”
“OK, I guess.”
“OK, I guess,” Penny said. “The only time someone says they’re ‘OK’ is when they’re really not OK. Talk to me.”
“About what?”
“Come on, Eric. The last few months you’ve been . . . I don’t know, not there.”
“I’m right here.”
“You know what I mean. The last few times your family has come over for dinner, I don’t think you’ve said more than two words.”
“Were you counting?”
“Maybe,” she said, with a faint smile.
The first time his mother had told them they were having dinner with Detective Tally’s family, Eric had refused to go. “I don’t have to listen to you,” he’d shouted. “When has anything good ever come from me listening to you?” Then he’d stormed off to his room, leaving his mother and sister standing in the foyer, shocked.
A few minutes later, Eric had heard his mother quietly weeping in the hallway. When he opened his bedroom door, he saw her sitting on the floor, knees held to her chin, head in her arms. He could not recall ever seeing his mother look defeated before. Guilt sliced through him like a sharpened blade.
Eric knew the hell his mother had been through. And even though his brain had said, Fight, you idiot; you’ve got her on the ropes! his heart had reminded him that his mother would trade her life for his in an instant. And that he was at least partially responsible for her sadness.
And so he’d come out and told her he’d changed his mind, and they’d gone to the Wallace family’s home. To his surprise, it hadn’t been that bad. Tally’s wife, Claire, had cooked enough osso buco to feed an infantry division. And the Wallace kids were pretty cool. Penny especially. They talked about school and music and who had the best Instagram feeds. At the end of the night, they exchanged numbers. Before they went to bed, they followed each other on social media. They filled each other’s feeds with chaste “likes.” And every time Penny spoke to him unprovoked, Eric wondered—maybe even hoped—it might be something more.
“I know you want to talk,” she said. “Talk to me.”
“I didn’t realize you could read minds,” he said, more flirtatiously than he’d hoped.
“Actually, I can. One look at your hand, and I’ll be able to tell you what you’re going to get on Mr. Meador’s English exam next week.”
“Is that right?” Eric said, this time striking the right tone. He knew it because he could see the color rising in her cheeks.
She nodded and gently took his hand. Penny looked at it for a moment, then gently placed her right hand underneath his and ran her finger along the creases in his skin.
Eric felt strange. Warm. Like all the words he knew had been removed from his brain and replaced with mush. He wanted to tell her to stop, but his brain had ceased responding to instructions. Penny traced her finger from the tips of his fingers down to his wrist.
“What does my hand tell you?” Eric said.
“Shh,” Penny replied. Her eyes were shut tight as she concentrated. Or at least pretended to concentrate. “This line says you’re going to get an eighty-eight on your English test.”
“That’s a B plus,” Eric said. “Can my palm bump that to maybe a ninety or ninety-one?”
“I don’t make up what your lines say,” Penny replied. “This line says you’re a Placidochromis.”
“A what, now?”
“A Placidochromis. It’s a type of fish that comes from Lake Malawi in Mozambique.”
“And why would I be a . . .”
“Placidochromis. Actually its full name is Placidochromis phenochilus Mdoka.”
“Bless you.”
“It’s a fish with lips that look bizarrely human. That’s what you are. You have all these traits that appear human . . . but you don’t really use them.”
“That was quite a leap,” Eric said.
“Tell me I’m wrong. Because you want to say more than you actually do. Maybe you don’t think anyone wants to listen. But they will.”
“Like who?”
Penny took her hand from Eric’s. She toed the ground. “People.”
To Eric, the following moment of silence seemed to last forever. Then he said, “So did you learn anything else from my palm, Ichthyologist Wallace?”
She took his hand and said, “This line says . . .”
“That Eric Marin killed Mr. Linklater.”
Eric turned to see Cory Stuber standing there, a smirk on his face that practically begged to be punched away. Two girls stood on either side of him: Vanessa Jackson and Odette Meyers. They looked at Eric like he was a tetherball that would be fun to bat around.
“Go away, Cory,” Eric said.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” Cory said, mock-cupping his ear and leaning in. “Was that a confession? Did you just confess to cutting off Mr. Linklater’s head and making it into a fishbowl?”
“Stop it, Cory,” Penny said.
“Know what I just remembered? Penny’s mom is a cop. Wouldn’t that be embarrassing if you got arrested by your girlfriend’s dyke mom?”
Eric clenched his fists. He could envision swinging upward from his hip, smashing Cory’s smug chin, shattering all his teeth, splitting his lips into red worms, watching his body fly back like it had been spring loaded. But instead he stood there, watching Cory and the girls smile, hoping they would just all go away and leave him alone, like he wanted to be. Like he deserved to be.
Cory stepped forward, so close that Eric could smell his breath.
“Did you forget how to speak, Marin?” Cory said. “Let me help you.” Cory brought his fingers toward Eric’s lips, like a pair of pincers.
But before Cory could touch Eric, a hand grabbed Cory’s wrist, twisting it away, and an arm the size of a small tree trunk slammed into the middle of the boy’s back, driving him face first into the row of lockers with a whumpf. Cory gasped and tried to wriggle free, but the enormous arm held him in place with ease.
The arm was attached to a kid. Not a kid. A guy. A guy Eric only knew from the way other kids avoided him in the corridors. They swerved around him like you might avoid a rattlesnake in the grass. He was the kind of kid new students were warned to stay away from. Including Eric.
Benjamin Ruddock. A senior. He was eighteen but could have passed for thirty. He was a head taller than Cory and Eric and outweighed them each by about forty pounds. His sandy-brown hair fell across his forehead. He had the blue eyes of a calm lake, but there was a sparkle of menace behind them, as though a monster was hidden in the depths. Ruddock held Cory Stuber against the lockers almost effortlessly. Vanessa Jackson and Odette Meyers batted at Ruddock’s arm with the effectiveness of paper airplanes flitting against the side of a Sherman tank.