Free A Brilliant Death by Robin Yocum Page B

information, which was difficult with Travis’s continual bantering about the mystery man, who interested him far more than any lecture on the Bill of Rights.
    One of the things you should know about Travis is that he was smart. I mean, really smart. Off-the-charts smart. His intelligence was intimidating. There wasn’t a mathematical concept that he couldn’t grasp in seconds. He would do crossword puzzles in English class, read the paper during biology lectures, pester me about Operation Amanda in American Government, never take home a book, and ace every test. We were studying the human anatomy in biology class and Travis was reading the sports page, making no attempt to hide it, when Mrs. Fristick said, “Travis, would you identify this organ, please?” She whacked at a spot on the human diagram on the pull-down screen.
    Travis looked up and said, “It’s not an organ. It’s an adrenal gland.”
    He went back to his paper and she smirked. “Wrong. It’s the pancreas.”
    Travis jerked his head up, squinted, and said, “No ma’am, the pancreas is down and to your right a smidge. That’s an adrenal gland.”
    That was another thing about Travis. Even if he was wrong, he made statements with such conviction that you started questioning yourself. In this case, however, he was right. It was an adrenal gland, which Mrs. Fristick was forced to concede after further inspection. However, it so infuriated her that she made a show of walking to the back of the room and snatching away the newspaper.
    There was a certain danger in being close friends with Travis. Teachers can be vindictive, and I couldn’t afford to lose guilt-by-association points simply for being his friend. In American Government, however, I was safe, as Mr. Hamrock had grown to appreciate Travis’s knowledge of national and world affairs. Most of us never read anything in the paper except the sports section and the comics. But Travis read the newspaper front to back. This allowed him to engage Mr. Hamrock in lively debate, which they both relished.
    We were in Mr. Hamrock’s class the winter of our sophomore year when Travis decided to expand Operation Amanda beyond his attic and the cemetery. Mr. Hamrock paced the front of the class, shaking a piece of chalk between cupped hands, and said, “Today, we’re going to discuss the importance of public documentation, open meetings, and Ohio’s open-records law. Most citizens would be astonished to learn that information they believe to be private is actually quite public. Anyone can go look at them: tax records, voter registration, police and fire reports, land records, birth certificates, death certificates, and autopsy reports, just to name a few.”
    I could feel Travis’s eyes boring in on me.
    “How about that?” he whispered. “I’ll bet there’s some kind of police report about my mom’s drowning.”
    I shrugged, and whispered, “So, what’s the big deal? If there is a report, it isn’t going to tell you anything about your mother. The only thing in that report will be about the accident.”
    “Let’s find out.”

CHAPTER NINE
    Although my bedroom was infinitely safer than Travis’s as the headquarters for Operation Amanda, it could still be a dangerous location, as my mother never knocked before entering. I was sprawled across my bed, propping up my head on my left palm; Travis sat at my desk chair, sideways from the desk, with Mr. Hamrock’s book on public records on his lap. My mom had already made one trip into the room with a load of clean clothes, but Travis paid her little mind. When she asked what we were doing, he told my mother that we were working on a project for American Government. Actually, the question had been directed at me, but Travis answered before I lied and my Adam’s apple started its frantic dance.
    After she set the basket on the floor with instructions for me to put away the contents and left, Travis licked his fingers and flipped through the book to a