Free Half In Love With Death by Emily Ross Page B

spoke to them again. But none of this was as bad as May telling on me for going with Tony.
    I hadn’t told on Jess for going off with Tony the night she disappeared. I thought I was doing the right thing—what anyone I knew would have done. It was so hard to know what the right thing to do was.
    As I sat and thought, a poem for the assignment came to me and I hurried to write it down before I lost the inspiration. After a few tries I had this:
    Death and the Buttercup
    Death flash smash the buttercup
    In a moment
    Brief as yellow pollen FLOWERBLOOD
    Under your chin,
    Death steps in,
    And she is you are magicanddisappearing
    Gone!
    I went over to the window and peered down at the street. There were streets running parallel to ours, and more streets beyond those. All over the world there were streets and Jess might be on any one of them, reaching down to buckle her shoe, pushing her hair behind her ear, smiling at a stranger. She was somewhere , and if she was somewhere she could be found. I’d always assumed that even if no one else could, Dad would find her. But Dad had given up. Everyone had.
    A red car stopped in front of Billy’s house. My hand went to my throat, but it was just Linda again. May came outside with Sheila and Billy. They whispered to each other. Sheila glanced my way but didn’t see me. I pushed up the window, but I still couldn’t hear them. What were they talking about? Geraldine? About something Billy remembered from the party? My stomach twisted as they drove away. Dad had said we had to wait for a decent kid to come forward. But kids didn’t talk to parents—they talked to other kids.
    I felt something soft as I pressed my hands down on the sill. It was a dead moth, all gray and powdery. I screamed, frantically brushing it off my palm.
    I took slow, deep breaths. They were going somewhere now, laughing at jokes I couldn’t hear. But soon I would hear. I would listen to everything they said, and make them tell me their secrets. I turned away from the window. Maybe it was up to me to find my sister.

CHAPTER 11
    The next day at lunch, I sat down at a table with May, Sheila, and Billy. They all stared at me as I took a bite of my tuna salad roll.
    â€œI’m going to look for Jess myself and I’m going to find her. If anyone wants to help that would be . . . .” I paused. “Fantastic.”
    Sheila crunched on a chip.
    I went on, “It’s time to get to the bottom of all these rumors.” May dropped her fork, and Sheila scurried to pick it up for her. As May stared at it skeptically, I forced myself to continue. “We need to listen and look for things we might not have noticed.” I cleared my throat. “Like I just realized that Linda drives a red car.”
    May leaned across the table. “Excuse me?”
    â€œIt’s just that everyone’s talking about a red car,” I said.
    Sheila smirked. “Jesus, Caroline. They’re looking for someone driving a red car to California, not Linda’s car that is parked in the school lot right now. I thought you were supposed to be smart.”
    I glanced around the table. May had ratted me out about Tony. Sheila was awfully quick to put me down, and Billy looked like he was in a fog. Could I trust any of them? But I had to try. “I was just using it as an example. All I’m saying is we could start by asking kids we know if they’ve heard anything. We could listen in on conversations in the halls but pretend we’re not listening. We might learn something important.” Sheila tugged on her hoop earring. May nibbled on a carrot stick.
    Billy started to speak, but May cut him off saying, “That sounds like a good idea, really. Of course we’ll help. It’s just so hard to know what to do.” She looked up at the clock as if she was bored.
    Sheila leaned close to her and said in a baby voice, “So a little birdy told me you and Billy are back