Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls by Mary Downing Hahn Page B

mockingbird keeps singing and my room is hot. I kick off my sheets but then I feel so unprotected lying there and I pull the sheet over my head and curl up small and close my eyes and think of darkness, unending darkness, of rocks and stones and trees, of being caught in the roots, roots holding me tight, rocks and stones pressing against me, and I can't sleep, can't sleep, I think I'm going crazy, I think I
am
crazy, and I start crying and I cry so hard my pillow is wet, and I stop crying and throw the pillow on the floor and the mockingbird keeps singing.
    I lie on my back again and stare at the shadows on the ceiling, I lie on my side and stare at the Virgin Mary on my bureau, she stands there, her head down, her arms by her sides. My mother gave her to me one Christmas. I used to pray to her for all sorts of things—Hail, Mary, full of grace, don't let me have impure thoughts, don't let me flunk chemistry, let Don ask me to the junior prom. I passed chemistry but I think that was because Mr. Haskins thought I couldn't help being dumb. The other two prayers she didn't answer.
    I can also see the photos I keep in the frame of my mirror, mostly Ellie and me acting silly, some I took at parties at Paul's house, down in the rec room. There's one of Buddy and Cheryl grinning at me, their arms around each other. I should burn that one, I don't want to see it. I should put all the pictures in a shoebox and hide it on a shelf in my closet. They belong to a time that doesn't exist anymore.
    Will I ever sleep, will I ever forget the blood, will life ever be the same as before...?

Part Four
What If He Didn't?

Just Suppose
Monday, June 18
Nora
    T WO days before the funeral, the police release Buddy. They held him for forty-eight hours. They gave him two lie detector tests. They questioned him, but he said he didn't do it, he was looking for the girls, that's why he was at the bridge. And he kept on looking for them, driving up and down Forty-Third Street, back and forth between Eastern and the park, looking looking looking.
    "And all along, all the time he was
looking,
" Ellie says, "he knew exactly where they were. He shot them, he hid them in the bushes, he left them there. How could he do that?"
    "How could
anyone?
" I ask. I'm wondering if I should say What if it wasn't Buddy, what if it was somebody else?
    We're sitting on my back porch, drinking cherry Kool-Aid and eating Oreos. It's more hot and humid than yesterday—if that's possible. Insects buzz in the maple tree. Mom has gone to the store. Billy is playing with his friends. We're all alone. Just us and our ghosts.
    "I can't believe the police let him go," Ellie says. "We saw him on the bridge, he has a gun, he was mad at Cheryl. What more do they need to charge him?" Her voice is bitter.
    I wrap my arms around my knees and draw them close to my chest. "Buddy's gun wasn't the same as the murder weapon," I say. "The
Sun
said it was just an air rifle."
    Ellie narrows her eyes. She's getting mad, I can tell. "Are you on his side or something?"
    "No, of course not." I stumble over my words. "I just don't understand it. No one in his right mind could do something like that and then sit there on the bridge in plain sight, drive us to school—"
    "He's crazy," Ellie interrupts. Her mind is made up: Buddy did it, he did it, he killed them. "He should be locked up forever."
    I hug my knees tighter. "But he was in my photography class. He signed my yearbook." I lift my head and stare at her so hard, everything behind her goes out of focus, just a green blur of grass and leaves. "What if he didn't do it?"
    Just asking the question makes me dizzy. Everyone believes Buddy did it. They want him in jail so they don't have to be scared someone's still out there with a gun. Solve the case, get the killer off the streets, make us safe.
I
want to believe Buddy's guilty for exactly that reason. But he says he didn't do it. What if he's not lying? What if he really was looking for