Event: Interrogation
Date: Sept. 7 (Thurs.)
Chief Kaufman was sharp. Too sharp.
Father had been friends with her since their junior year of high school, when she’d petitioned to join the boy’s baseball team—he was one of the few players who supported her. The petition failed, and some people say Kaufman’s revenge for the slight was becoming the highest-ranking law enforcement official in town. Revenge or not, the job wasn’t given to her unjustly. Since she’d become chief, Lansburg had the third-lowest crime rate of any town in Pennsylvania. (It should be noted that the top two towns were Amish communities.)
While Father took the chief aside to speak privately, Ishmael and I retreated to our house. We waited in the living room, slumped on opposite ends of the floral-patterned sofa that had probably been in our family for as many decades as the farm itself.
Ishmael’s eyes were fixed on the flat-screen television that hung above the fireplace—the only sign of modern life in the room. The sound had been muted, but the TV was still tuned to Pitch, Please, where a couple pitched a competition involving kittens and an obstacle course.
“This is bad,” I announced.
“I know,” Ishmael agreed. “It has to be animal cruelty or something.”
“Not the show, Ishmael. Our current situation. Remember? The explosion?”
Ishmael waved off my concern. “It’s fine, dude.”
“Nothing is fine right now. Who knows what repercussions this might—”
I stopped abruptly when Mother burst into the living room, holding damp washcloths and a small pill bottle.
“Let’s get you two cleaned up,” she said.
She passed me a cloth and began wiping soot off Ishmael’s face with the other.
“Mom, stop. I can do it myself,” Ishmael said, pulling away.
“Take one of these at least,” she replied, passing the pill bottle to him. “You need to recharge your electrolytes.”
Ishmael rolled his eyes.
“You too, Gideon,” she added.
“Mother. We’ve discussed this. I won’t take those.”
She ignored me and continued to move around the room, smoothing our hair and forcing glasses of water on us. When Ishmael tossed the bottle of myTality™ Recharge to me, I caught it because the other option was getting hit in the face. But I was not going to take any supplements.
After what felt like an eternity but must have been closer to thirty minutes, Father and Chief Kaufman entered the living room with Maggie in tow. My sister practically bounced up and down with joy over what was sure to be my and Ishmael’s undoing.
“This is quite a mess,” Kaufman said, giving me a discerning look.
She and Father sat in armchairs opposite the couch while Mother perched on the edge of the piano bench that, in my lifetime, had never been used for its intended purpose. Maggie hovered near the doorway to the kitchen.
“It’s terrible, isn’t it?” Mother said. “The state of the field. When I think of what could have happened…”
“Yes, Jane. Your boys are very lucky they’re not in the hospital right now.”
I liked nothing about how seriously she was taking the situation.
“Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened?” Kaufman said, directing her shrewd gaze at Ishmael and me.
Though everyone knew Ishmael was the talker, the people person, Kaufman focused on me. I swallowed hard. I’d never done well in high-pressure situations. Nor did I excel at reading people. Perhaps the chief was merely being inquisitive. On the other hand, she could be building a case against me.
“Chief Kaufman…would you say that right now you’re acting more as an officer of the law or Father’s friend?”
She stared at me for a long beat. “Why would you ask me that?”
Why would I ask her that? I had quite possibly chosen the worst thing to say. I began to sweat.
“So, we were in the lab,” Ishmael cut in, saving me, “working on an experiment.”
Kaufman turned to my brother while pulling a pen and notebook from her pocket. “What kind of experiment?”
My heart sank. As soon as she heard about the seismograph, she’d guess the truth.
Luckily, Ishmael realized this as well. He leaned forward and smiled conspiratorially at Kaufman. “Okay, you caught us. There wasn’t really an experiment. Gideon and I have been really busy lately. You know, it’s my senior year, and both of us have jobs now. And Gideon’s taking these online classes, like, for fun. We hardly have time to spend together. We were actually just hanging out in the lab. Bonding.”
Maggie snorted and Mother shot her a sharp look.
“Bonding,” Kaufman repeated.
Ishmael nodded and smiled again. The chief seemed to thaw a bit. It never ceased to amaze me, Ishmael’s ability to charm anyone and everyone.
But then she said, “Is there a reason this bonding had to take place in a makeshift lab?”
I bristled at the word makeshift.
“Well, you know,” Ishmael said, “sometimes we talk about things we don’t want our parents to hear.”
“Like what?”
Ishmael glanced at Mother and Father. “Well, like…Gideon was asking for relationship advice.”
I was going to kill him.
“Gideon, do you have a boyfriend?” Mother asked eagerly, as if there weren’t more important matters at hand, as if I wasn’t currently the subject of a police investigation.
“Yeah, Gideon,” Maggie said, her face glowing. “Do you have a boyfriend? Because I heard that you and Owen Campbell—”
“Must we discuss my love life right now?” I snapped. At the time, I was blissfully unaware of how much my love life would become intertwined with what eventually befell Lansburg.
Chief Kaufman said, “Right, let’s move on. You were in the shed talking, and you heard an explosion.”
Ishmael nodded. “So we ran outside and, well, you saw what it’s like out there.”
“Why don’t you tell me what you saw,” Kaufman replied.
“Well, there’s a crater, you know? It’s pretty obvious something fell from the sky.”
“A meteor,” I offered. “Or, technically, a meteoroid.”
“You saw evidence of this meteoroid?”
I hesitated long enough for Ishmael to jump in. “Well, not saw, exactly. But there was a sound right before the explosion.”