Free When by Victoria Laurie

couldn’t have been as bad as it felt.
    He laid a hand on my head. “Do me a favor, though, okay?”
    “What?”
    “No more readings.” I gulped and dropped my gaze to my hands. “I mean it, Maddie. Even if the president of the United States calls and says it’s a matter of national
security, you don’t give
anybody
their date.”
    All I could think was, what was Ma was going to say? Donny was asking us to give up a lot of extra cash, and no matter how many times he’d offered, Ma had never once accepted money from
Donny. I didn’t know how we were going to make it without the readings.
    When I hesitated, Donny added, “Listen, kiddo, if you happen to read someone new who’s about to die, and the feds get wind of it…Sweetheart, I don’t even want to think about
how bad that’s gonna make you look. You
can’t
do any more readings or tell anybody their date. Not a soul. Do you hear?”
    I finally nodded reluctantly. “Okay.”
    “Good girl.”
    And then I couldn’t help adding, “The president doesn’t need to worry though. His deathdate isn’t for, like, forty more years.”
    Donny ruffled my hair. “Smartass.” He chuckled. But then he nudged me in the shoulder, and when I looked up, he pointed to the cup holder between us. “Where’s your water
bottle?”
    I blinked. “The FBI lady who came into the restroom took it.”
    Donny let his head fall forward to the steering wheel. “Well, I guess giving them your fingerprints and a DNA sample was inevitable.”
    “Wait…what?”
    “They found cigarette butts at the crime scene. They’ll test your saliva from the bottle against the cigarette butts and keep searching the scene for anything that might give them a
usable print to compare to yours.” Donny shook his head as if he was ticked off at himself. “I didn’t think to tell you to bring the bottle with you, but it’s not a bad
thing. When the DNA comes back as not a match, I can use it in court if they decide charge you.”
    Donny started the car, and I felt a cold shiver snake up my spine. His words,
if they decide to charge you,
replayed over and over in my mind.
    Before we reached home I checked my phone. There were a dozen texts from Stubby. He’d heard about Tevon and he seemed really freaked out. I didn’t want to call him from the car, so I
waited until we got home when Donny was busy answering all of Ma’s questions and telling her that I wasn’t allowed to do readings anymore.
    Slipping away upstairs I called Stubs. “Ohmigod!” he said the minute he answered the phone. “He’s been murdered, Mads!
Murdered!
”
    “I know,” I told him.
    “Oh, man, oh, man, oh, man!” Stubs said, and I could imagine him pacing back and forth, running a nervous hand through his hair. “It’s all our fault, Maddie. We
should’ve done something.”
    I dropped my head and felt my shoulders slump. Stubs had said aloud exactly what I’d felt since hearing they’d discovered Tevon’s body. “It gets worse,” I
whispered.
    I heard Stubby’s sharp intake of breath, then, “What? What else?”
    I filled him in on all that’d happened that morning. Stubby reacted by freaking out a whole lot more. “But you had nothing to do with it!” he practically shouted. “Mads,
you have to tell them! You were trying to
help
Mrs. Tibbolt keep Tevon alive!”
    “I don’t think they believe me, Stubs.”
    Stubby was silent for a long time. “I should’ve talked to her at the diner,” he said. “Or you and I should’ve gone over to her house that night. We should’ve
tried harder to get her to listen.”
    “I know,” I agreed, sick with regret about not having done more to prevent Tevon’s death. “I didn’t know it would end like this. I didn’t know he’d be
tortured and murdered. I thought he’d die from some freak medical thing that nobody could’ve detected.”
    Again Stubby was silent for a long time. Then he said, “I’m sorry, Mads. I didn’t mean it when I said