“Did you do the dishes yet?” Tina asked, her eyes still closed.
“I’ll finish them when I get back. This could be a breaking story.”
“Seriously, Chrissie?” Tina cracked one eye open. “Give the reporter shit a rest. It’s barely seven in the morning.” She rolled onto her side away from Crystal, sending waves rippling through the mattress. Mr. Tibbs meowed and irritably flicked his tail.
Crystal dropped the sheet and left the room. Despite her mother’s stinging words, she went back downstairs and slipped on a pair of flip-flops. She wasn’t going to miss this chance to chase a story. And, she guiltily checked herself, to find her brother.
In the carport, she mounted her red Schwinn bicycle and pedaled down their uneven driveway to Cutler Avenue, past the police barricade, where she turned onto Tenth. She stopped one block away from Hillcrest where a large group of people milled about the corner. No sign of Sammy yet.
Crystal straddled her bike and pulled out her notebook and pen to write down a few notes about the scene. She even attempted to ask a passing police officer what was going on, but he blew her off, telling her to go home and stay out of the way. She ignored the order and kept writing. Good reporters weren’t scared off that easy.
“Hello, Cree-stahl Cox.”
Her heart instantly pulsed at the familiar accented voice behind her. She twisted around to see Mr. Kovacs, or Mr. K they called him, Sammy’s weekly math tutor, walking up the Tenth Street sidewalk. She’d been so focused on getting a piece of the action that she hadn’t realized she was sitting on the corner of Tenth and Southlawn right in front of his house.
She instinctively touched her short, bobbed hair to make sure it was smooth and that no childish cowlicks were sticking up anywhere.
“Hi, Mr. K.” She pulled her shoulders back to make herself look taller and, hopefully, to make her breasts look bigger.
He stopped in front of her bike and touched the handles. “What are you doing out here so early in the morning?”
“I’m looking for Sammy,” Crystal said. “Have you seen him?”
Mr. K gestured to the fat roll lying on his front stoop. “No. But I see he already delivered my paper.” He wore dark jogging pants, a dark hooded sweat shirt, and, Crystal now noticed in the rising sunlight, a pair of binoculars hung around his neck. Strapped over his shoulders was a black backpack.
“What are you doing out here so early in the morning?” she asked, trying to make her voice sound playful, but it only came out weird and awkward.
Mr. K swiped the back of his hand over his perspiring brow. “Oh, I, uh, walk the neighborhood every morning, for the exercise. And I like to bird-watch.” He lifted the binoculars. “At the park.”
“Bird-watching. That’s cool.” Crystal nodded and touched her own forehead to make sure it wasn’t sweaty and shiny.
While Crystal would rather die before admitting her crush out loud, she privately thought Sebastian Kovacs was the smartest, most interesting man she’d ever met. He was only twenty-four, so he wasn’t that much older than her. She’d been eighteen since the first of August, as she’d pointed out to him a few weeks ago.
A trio of paperboys passed, talking excitedly, but no Sammy.
Mr. K’s gaze continually darted to the corner a block away, and he shifted from one foot to another, seeming fidgety.
“What’s going on up there?” he asked.
“A paperboy went missing this morning,” Crystal said. “From that corner, I think.”
He wiped his brown again, still perspiring, and Crystal wondered why he’d worn heavy sweats in the humidity. “What’s the boy’s name?”
“Christopher Stewart. Do you know him?”
Mr. K shook his head. “That’s terrible,” he said quietly.
“I know.” Crystal rolled her bike a few inches closer. “I’m trying to find Sammy, but I’m also trying to get some information for a possible story. You know, taking notes and stuff.” She held out her notebook.
“Mm-hmm.” Mr. K’s eyes drifted over her head to the corner again. He didn’t appear to be listening, and didn’t even glance at the notebook.
Crystal tucked it back into her pocket, grappling for another topic to keep him talking to her a while longer.
“Are—are you going to the State Fair next weekend?” she asked. “Because we’re going. On Saturday. Well, Saturday night. After my mom gets off work at the restaurant. She has to work the day shift.” She dug her nails into her palm. She hated it when she babbled.
“I don’t know yet,” Mr. K said. “I might go to the concert on Saturday.”
“Maybe we’ll see you there!” She dug her nails in harder. She’d sounded too excited.
As a police cruiser approached the corner, Mr. K abruptly turned and hurried toward his house.
“I have to go,” he said, jogging across the lawn. “See you later.”
“Oh, okay,” Crystal said. “See you tomorrow for Sammy’s tutoring!” But he’d already gone inside and closed the door.
Crystal wanted to kick herself. She’d sounded like a desperate idiot.
The police cruiser bleeped its siren, and the cop gestured for her to keep moving away from the corner. Officers were now staking out yellow crime-scene tape. They weren’t going to let her get any closer.
Disappointed that she hadn’t gotten anything significant on the missing paperboy, Crystal mounted her bike to look for Sammy. She pushed off in the opposite direction, pedaling faster toward Clark Avenue. Sammy always walked home from Clark to Tenth to Cutler, so they should cross paths at any moment. As she coasted down the hill, warm wind caught her hair and lifted it off her neck, cooling her flushed skin.
At the corner of Clark, she squeezed the brake handles and did a quick glance in both directions without stopping. Just as her front tire rolled onto the street, car tires squealed behind her on the right and a horn blared, startling her. She wobbled and nearly lost her balance.
“Hey! Pay attention, kid! I damn near hit you!” the driver shouted at her.
Safely across on the other side, she stopped and planted her feet on the ground, her heart racing. She hadn’t seen the car, even though she’d looked. She removed her large, clear, square-framed eyeglasses—her expensive new ones with the gold, low-temple earpieces—and cleaned the lenses with shaking hands on the hem of her shirt.
She should’ve come to a full stop and looked more carefully. She knew better.
Crystal had been born with colobomas in each eye, a condition that caused small sections of her pupils to leak downward into her irises, giving them a tadpole shape and seriously impairing her vision. Legally, she was considered blind and couldn’t even pass the eye exam to get a driver’s license. Her only means of transportation was her bicycle, and even that was dangerous sometimes.
Crystal slipped her glasses back on and caught a flutter of movement on Clark Street in her peripheral vision. She squinted harder, and the flutter came into focus. A short, round figure, running west on the sidewalk. It was Sammy, going in the opposite direction of home. She frowned.
“Sammy!” she called. “Hey! Sammy!”
He kept running.
She pedaled after him, yelling, “Sammy! Stop, you dumbass!”