Blood on My Hands

the reason he’d asked was that I was so small. “Beg your pardon,” Jeanie huffed with annoyance, and pointed at the brick high-school building. “We’ll be here next year.”
    “Oh, yeah?” The blond guy looked surprised, and I couldn’t help noticing that his gaze was mostly on me. “That really true?”
    I nodded.
    “Okay, Shrimp, see you next year.”
    I might have minded being called shrimp if I hadn’t been so used to it. Jeanie and I got our drinks at the snack bar, and to be honest, I didn’t give any more thought to the blond guy, who was obviously older and no doubt dated older girls.
    But later, after the game, my friends and I passed the EMS truck, and there he was. Our eyes met and I had the strangest feeling that he’d been waiting for me.
    “Enjoy the game?” he asked.
    “Not really,” I answered truthfully. Our eyes stayed on each other.
    “Hey,” he said, “you guys want to see what the inside of an EMS truck looks like?”
    My girlfriends and I shared curious looks. None of us cared about the truck, but we were all interested in attractive older boys, especially the ones who paid attention to us. The blond guy opened the back of the truck and pointed out the stretcher and medical kits and oxygen tanks.
    “What’s the oxygen for?” I asked.
    He seemed glad that I’d asked. “Smoke inhalation,” he said. “For people in fires. Firefighters, too. They get overcome by smoke.”
    “Have you ever saved anyone?” asked a girl named Mary.
    “I’m not old enough to be an EMT, but my dad’s the captain of the squad, so I get to hang around with them.”
    A moment later a man came around behind the truck. “Close it up, Slade, we’re leaving.”
    Slade said he had to go, and my friends and I headed home.
    “He likes you,” Jeanie said to me as soon as we were out of earshot.
    “How do you know?” I asked, even though inside I was thrilled, as this confirmed that it wasn’t all in my imagination. “You could tell,” she said.
    A few days later Slade was outside on the sidewalk after school. He asked if he could walk with me. Even though he was two years older, he had an easy, relaxed way that wasn’t threatening. He was there the next day and the next, and soon we were texting and calling and doing things together.
    A month later we were boyfriend and girlfriend. I was the only girl at Soundview Middle School who was seeing a sophomore from the high school. To me it didn’t matter how old Slade was, but a lot of my classmates were in awe.

Chapter 8
    Sunday 1:13 A.M.
    MY PHONE VIBRATES. It’s Slade. I leave the playhouse and sprint across the yard and to the street. A pair of headlights is rolling slowly toward me. I grab the passenger-side door and get in. Slade starts to drive. I’m too overwhelmed to speak. Overwhelmed by what’s happened, overwhelmed by suddenly being close to him, by again sitting in this seat where I spent so much time when we used to drive to parties and keggers and secret hiding places.
    “Thank you so much,” I manage to croak.
    “It’s okay.” He’s got alcohol on his breath. It’s not surprising for a Saturday night, but should he be driving? I’m in no position to ask. The memory of Katherine’s body keeps coming back. Knowing her, I’d suspect that it was a ruse, a nasty trick. But it wasn’t. I felt for her pulse; I saw those wounds and all that blood. Unless it’s some kind of crazy dream I’ll wake up from at any moment, it’s real. I take a deep breath and force myself back to Slade.
    “I … I meant everything I said on the phone.”
    He doesn’t respond. Doesn’t look at me. Just drives.
    So I tell him what happened tonight. How I found Katherine.
    “You picked up the knife?” he asks, surprised.
    “It was dark and I wasn’t sure what it was, and the next thing I knew, they were taking pictures.…”
    “Of you holding the knife?”
    “Uh-huh.” And I tell him how I thought of Sebastian and what everyone was bound to think and how Dakota said to call the police and I got scared and ran away. “That’s when I called you. I didn’t know what else to do. What do you think I should do?”
    He’s quiet for a moment, then says, “Go to the police, Cal. Tell them what happened.”
    “They’ll never believe me.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    “After what happened with my brother? And with my fingerprints on the knife? Are you serious?” I feel myself getting worked up.
    “Calm down,” Slade