Collecting Cooper by Paul Cleave Page B

promise I’ll help you find Melissa.”
    He takes his hand off the file. “I don’t feel good about any of this,” he says.
    “This isn’t about feeling good,” I tell him. “It’s about getting Emma back. Her dad thinks she can talk her way out of anything. Seems to think she knows how people work, and if anybody could survive, it would be her.”
    “Any father would be saying the same thing.”
    I nod. It’s true. “She is a psychology student,” I point out.
    “Yeah, for barely two weeks. I doubt she’s learned enough to talk some lunatic who wants to probably rape and kill her into letting her go.”
    I keep nodding. That’s also true.
    “Just remember, Tate, when you find something, you come to me with it, okay? You’re helping me out now, not Donovan Green. You come to me first. You clear everything with me.”
    “Of course,” I tell him.
    He doesn’t believe me, but he doesn’t say anything. He stands up and I follow him to the front door.
    “Look, Tate, there’s some info in there that’s new. There was a search this afternoon in the parking lot behind Emma’s café.”
    “I know. I was there earlier.”
    “Yeah, well, I really hope her father is right about her being able to handle herself, because right now it isn’t looking good.”
    “Was it ever?”
    “Good luck, Tate,” he says. “And this time do me a favor.”
    “Yeah? What’s that?”
    “Try not to kill anybody.”

chapter twelve
     
    Adrian found happiness hard to find when he was a kid. He found it with his music and his comics, and he also had a collection of toy cars that he loved more than anything. They were all small-scale metal cars with moving parts, and each time he got one he’d dream that when he was older he’d be able to afford the real thing. No matter what happened to him at school, those cars would be waiting for him at home, so would his tapes and comics, and nobody could ever take that away from him. He would space his cars along a shelf he had in his bedroom, he would measure them so they were the same distance apart, and every week he would dust them. His music collection he would line up by color, so the spines of the tapes merged into each other. His comics he would never bend the covers, never. That made him happy.
    The other thing that made him happy was Katie. When he was thirteen years old he fell in love with the new girl in school with the green eyes and long red hair tied into a ponytail and frazzled on the ends. She was a little taller than him and a little heavier, but not by much, and it would have taken a day to count the freckles onher cheeks and each one of those freckles he wanted to collect. Her family had moved up from Dunedin, a city down south that made Christchurch look large. When he first saw her his stomach felt tight and his chest warm and his mouth went dry. She had a nervous smile that he took with him wherever he went and he dreamed of holding her hand and walking her home. She was put into his class and sat on the opposite side of the room, but forward a little from him, where he could steal glances at her all day long. He didn’t know what he’d do if she ever looked back and caught him, but she never looked back. As it was with every new student who came to the school, there was one of two ways things would go—the other kids would be interested and befriend them, or they would tease them. In Katie’s case, they teased her. Occasionally, on lunch and recess breaks, they would push her and try to make her cry, and sometimes she did.
    Adrian loved the idea of standing up for her as much as he loved her, but he was a coward and he knew it. The girls were stronger than him. The boys could crush him. One of the horrors of school was public speaking. He hated giving speeches. He had to stand up in front of the class in his secondhand uniform, the shorts too baggy on him, his arms and legs stick thin, and no matter how many times he rehearsed he could never remember the