Understatement of the year, but Trip didn’t know how much I really hated Galen Riddock. I’d never told him about the day in eighth grade when I’d overheard them by the lockers. My parents had had a humongous blowout fight over the weekend, and when I’d gotten up Sunday morning, it had been just me and my dad, one of the last times we were together, I realized later.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked softly.
“Beats me,” he said, barely stirring on the couch.
“Did she go to the store?” I knew she hadn’t.
“No,” he said, not looking at me.
She still wasn’t back Monday, and I needed to find Trip. Maybe she’d gone to his house. Or told his mom where she was. I heard Galen’s voice just before I rounded the corner.
“. . . follows you around. Tell us the truth, Trip. Is he your boyfriend?”
I froze, heard Trip say, “C’mon, guys—”
“No, really,” Galen persisted. “I think there’s something going on. Do you guys have sleepovers? Stay up late reading, like, science magazines and shit? Share a sleeping bag, maybe?”
Then I heard Trip, angry, “Look, it’s not like I have a choice. Our parents are friends, so I have to be nice to him or my mom’ll flip out.”
I turned, walked quickly and quietly away, the sting of his words sharp. They weren’t true, I knew. Galen had backed Trip into a corner. Hadn’t he?
It had been football and high school and my dad’s death and our parents’ drifting apart that had made Trip and me drift apart too. But in my mind Galen Riddock had always been wrapped up in it.
Now Trip considered what I’d said about us confronting him. “Yeah, okay,” he agreed. “But come anyhow. Wait in the car.”
“In case he admits it and whacks you, too?”
“Something like that,” Trip said, only half-kidding.
***
The Riddocks lived in an old clapboard house about a mile from school. I saw Galen’s blue Toyota parked in the gravel driveway but no other cars. There was an assortment of crap on the porch. A spare tire, an old high chair, a few boxes. It was a bad habit shared by a lot of people in Buford, the public display of accumulated junk, half hoarding, half laziness.
Trip pulled up across from the house. “Get down,” he instructed, “just in case he looks out the window.”
“This is ridiculous,” I told him, scooting down in my seat.
“It’s almost dark,” Trip said, shutting off the car. “He won’t notice you unless you’re obvious.”
“Yeah. Until you open the car door and I’m spotlighted by the overhead.”
Trip reached up and clicked the light off. “Better?”
“No,” I said, feeling completely stupid. Trip slammed the door, and I heard his boots crunch up the gravel driveway. He’d left his window cracked a tiny bit. Like you do when you leave your dog in the car, I thought. How long was I going to have to sit like this?
I heard a screen door slam shut across the street a minute or so later and lifted my head a bit, figuring Trip had gone inside. Instead I saw the shapes of them, sitting on the front stoop of Galen’s porch. I wished I’d had the sense to at least adjust the mirrors before Trip had gone over there. I could have watched them if I’d gotten the angles right. As it was, I could only catch a hum of voices every now and then. A bark of laughter.
Being there, waiting helplessly, reminded me eerily of that night I’d met Natalie’s dad. Thankfully, I didn’t have to retrieve Trip.
After about fifteen minutes the screen door slammed again, something I’m sure the Riddocks’ neighbors loved, and I heard Trip’s boots coming closer. He slid into the car and puffed on his hands as the engine warmed back up.
“So?” I was still slumped beside him, just in case Riddock looked out the window.
“He says he didn’t go up there,” Trip said.
“At all?”
“Not that night.” Trip shook his head, pulling away from the curb. “Said he thought about it but ended up driving Warrick and Douglass home and didn’t feel like going back across town and up the mountain afterward.”
“Well, so there it is.” Trip turned the corner, and I pushed back up to a normal position. “I guess you got bad info. Who’d you hear it from?”
Trip hesitated. “An unnamed source.”
“What?” I looked at him. “You’re not going to tell me?”
“He didn’t want word getting around.”
“Trip. For God’s sake, who am I going to tell?”
He shot me an appraising look. “You better not, Ri. If word gets back to Galen—”
“I’m not going to,” I said, exasperated. “Who was it?”
“Richie.”
“Milosevich?”
“Yeah,” Trip said, and then added, “and he’s not the type to make shit up.”
Especially not something like that. Richie Milosevich was a quiet mousy kid who’d somehow scored the spot of kicker on the football team. It’d be a big risk for him to rat out someone like Galen Riddock. But even bigger to do it if it weren’t true. “You think Riddock’s lying?”
“Definitely possible,” Trip said.
“How’d it even come up?” I asked.
“Richie pulled me aside,” Trip said. “Knew I was friends with Nat.”
“But how’d he know Galen was up there?”
Trip thought for a second. “He didn’t say. I guess I assumed he’d overheard someone talking about it. I think he lives up that way. Maybe he saw him?”
“At, like, two in the morning?” I asked. “His sister’s the one who—”
“Overdosed last year,” Trip finished. “Yeah.”
I remembered what my mom had said, about Richie’s dad flipping out after his daughter had died. But how did all that fit with Galen and Nat’s dad?
“Why’d he tell you?” I asked finally. “Why not go to the police?”
Trip cocked his head. “That’s a good question,” he said thoughtfully. “Maybe he’s over them, after the stuff with his sister last year?”
“Or maybe he saw your heroics at the Dash—with Nat’s dad—and figured it was right up your alley.”
“Maybe,” Trip agreed. He turned toward town. “Let’s keep it to ourselves for now. I don’t want people talking or Nat getting all tweaked up about nothing. Want to go grab a bite at the Hull?”