Free Change of Heart by Norah McClintock Page B

Morgan hated me for it or not.
    â€œThanks,” I said.
    â€œHey, Robyn? If there’s anything I can do...”
    But there wasn’t.
    He tugged gently on Orion’s leash and headed for the door to my father’s building. I opened my mouth. I came close to calling him back and telling him that I wasn’t with Ben anymore, that I wanted to be with him instead, that I wanted us to be together again. But in the end, what was the point? If he was interested in being with me, he would have said something by now. Maybe he wouldn’t have come right out and told me, but he would have given me some clue.
    I turned and walked away, and as I walked I thought about Sean Sloane. There were only two ways to look at his death: either Billy had killed him or he hadn’t. If he hadn’t, then someone else had. The question was, who?

L
    ater that night I was sitting in the room in my mother’s house that my father used to call his den but that my mother calls the family room. I was half-studying and half-watching TV, something that I could get away with only because my mom had stayed late at the office again. But my mind kept drifting to Billy and how scared he had looked the last time I’d seen him. I also thought about what Nick had said—how tough it could be, being locked up, and what some of the kids were like.
    I thought about something else Nick had said—that Billy needed someone to believe in him, no matter how bad things looked. It was obvious Morgan wasn’t going to be that person, so that left me. I decided that I was going to believe Billy, even if, in some deep corner of my mind, I could see how maybe he could have done it—not intentionally, but in the heat of the moment. I was going to believe him because he was my friend, because he’s one of the most decent people I know, and because I wanted to think that if I ever found myself in a similar situation, someone would believe me.
    Okay then.
    Billy hadn’t done it.
    So who had?
    I picked up the TV remote and started surfing through channels,
click, click, click
, rhythmically, while I pondered the question.
    Sean’s face flashed before my eyes for a second and then was gone.
    I blinked. Was I seeing things?
    I clicked back couple of channels and there he was again—Sean Sloane, on TV, looking handsome and very much alive. It was some old postgame footage. Sean had been good-looking in real life, but he was movie-star gorgeous on the TV screen. No wonder Morgan had fallen for him. His interviewer was an equally attractive young woman—Tamara Sanders, Sean’s ex-girlfriend.
    Tamara had been at the arena the night of Sean’s accident. I had heard her talking to him outside the players’ entrance. It sounded as if she were begging him to do something that was important to her—probably the documentary that Morgan had said Tamara wanted to do on Sean—but he had told her no. Just how important was that project to Tamara? Important enough that his refusal had made her want to get even? I made up my mind to find out.

    Going to school the next day was torture. I spotted Morgan at the end of the hall while I was on my way to my first class. She looked directly at me before turning and disappearing around the corner. When I got to French class, she had traded places with someone else and was sitting up front. When Madame Leclos asked Morgan why she had moved, she said she was having trouble seeing the chalkboard.
    Right.
    Morgan was also in my math class. There, she sat two rows behind me on the opposite side of the room. But if she got to class before me, she usually waved at me on my way in. Not today. She didn’t even look in my direction. As soon as the bell rang, she scurried out of class and disappeared in the crowded hall.
    Fine.
    At lunchtime I made my way to the cafeteria and stood near the door, scanning faces, searching for Tamara.
    I didn’t see her. But I did spot a girl