The Key Chased the Blade

Simon took the twins in his car and I sat in my usual spot in the passenger's seat. Simon started to drive off. Tyler said, "I'm sorry I didn't try to contact you earlier. I wasn't really sure about all of this."

"I wasn't either," I muttered, but Tyler didn't catch my tone. Simon did and I saw him grin out of the corner of my eye.

"I should probably start on what happened," Tyler said as we drove. "Apparently you didn't know this, but John and I were pretty good friends this year. He's a pretty funny guy, I liked him. He and I would you know, mess with the freshman, but nothing really serious happened until he started dating Rhode. Do you know a guy named Bryce?"

Something struck a bell. "Bryce who?" I asked.

"Bryce Hensley. He's a junior."

"Wait, he's that guy who stole that kid's iPod freshman year," I realized.

"Yeah, that guy," Tyler said. "I heard Bryce did something nasty to Rhode, and I'm actually not sure what he actually did, but John was pissed. I didn't really think John would do anything, but it must've been serious."

"John told me about that." I craned my head around the seat to look at him. "He told me some guy at school sexually assaulted her."

"Hell, I guess I understand why he was so mad now." Tyler frowned. "I would've probably done the same thing."

"What did he do?" I asked.

"He apparently caught a bird outside and tied a noose around its neck, and then put it into Bryce's school locker while he'd left for a moment." Tyler paused for a moment. His brother seemed to sense something wrong. Then I realized he was getting uncomfortable. "Sadie saw it happening and tried to stop him. She didn't know what was going on. Bryce later came back hearing Sadie and John pulled out a pocketknife, yelled something at him, and ran off. Later Sadie came over and told me about it."

Tyler looked away. I thought I could almost feel his guilt with that look on his face. It made me nauseous, but at the same time, I wanted to know what had happened. Alex was concerned, but he couldn't do anything. Tyler continued, "At first I didn't believe her. Damn, now that I look back on it..."

He swore under his breath and swallowed a few times. Alex said, "There's nothing you could've done."

"I know." His muscles tensed. I thought he was going to punch through the window. "Sadie and I fought over that. She was just worried for me since she knew John and I hung out a lot. She stormed out and that was the last I saw her."

I remembered Tyler's Facebook post so long ago. It made me more sick than I already was. "What time did this happen?" Simon asked suddenly.

Alex answered. "The night before Sadie died," he said. "Sadie came over right after John pulled his prank."

"God, I can't believe it," I said. Then I turned back to face front because I couldn't look at either of them any longer. "I can't believe this happened and I didn't even know about it."

Whenever John stirred up trouble, he was bad at covering it up so Dad or Rico always found out. Something as serious as this would've bound to have caused alarm in my family. But John didn't act any different than he usually did and I didn't even expect it. God, I was stupid.

"Did the prank happen during school?" Simon asked. He kept his eyes on the road.

"No, it was after," Alex said. "I don't think anybody was around unless they had an extracurricular activity."

"Noah, looks like we've got it narrowed down," Simon said. "If John didn't kill her, then someone else around during that time did. What day was that? What clubs were going on?"

"It was Monday, I think," Alex said. "I think the Green Club is one of them."

He was right. The environment-crazed hippies were always putting up posters for the club. They met every Monday. Simon said, "The Writer's Club also meets then. I don't think there's any else though. Most of the clubs meet on Wednesday or Friday. Noah, will you write that down for me? The notebook's at your feet."

"Yeah, I will." I picked it up and scrawled down the information. "Looks like we have a lead, Simon."

"Yeah, a good one. And we're at our destination, too. Let's go."