Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway by Wendelin Van Draanen Page B

a sudden I just can't take it. I don't know
what
to do. Inside it feels like I'm imploding.
Ex
ploding. Coming apart in every direction. And before I can find a way to hold it all together, I buckle up and fall to my knees, crying,
“Aarrghh.”
    Marissa grabs my arm, saying, “Sammy! Sammy, what's wrong?”
    I'm all folded up, holding my head, rocking back and forth. I can't seem to stop rocking back and forth. I feel angry. Helpless.
Possessed.
    And that's when it flashes through my mind that there's the me I'd always been, and the me I was turning into. They were both afraid, but of completely different things.
    One was afraid of what I was becoming.
    The other was afraid of what I'd done.
    And I could feel that this was it—this was the point where I had to choose.
    The truth—or the lie.
    My head felt heavy. My whole body was shaky. My stomach felt like it was ready to hurl.
    “Sammy?” Marissa whispered. She shook me a little. “Sammy!”
    “I killed him,” I choked out, but it was so quiet that I almost couldn't hear it myself.
    “What?” She shook me harder. “Sammy, look at me!”
    It was strange. Even though she hadn't heard me, saying the words out loud had caused a little jolt inside me. A rumble in the distance, a flash of light through a pitch-black sky. And the words …the rumble …had been quiet, way off in the distance, so the light felt distant, too. But inside me, in my heart, I could
feel
the light. And all of a sudden I wanted the rumble to be louder. Stronger. I wanted lightning to strike hard and bright inside me.
    I looked up at Marissa and said, “I killed him!”
    “What?”
    “I killed him!” I wailed. “I … killed…Tango!”
    And with that the skies inside me opened up, and tears flooded onto the outfield grass.
    We sat there cross-legged, facing each other, for at least an hour. And after we'd finally hashed the whole thing out, Marissa shook her head and said, “You are so hard on yourself, Sammy.” She held my forearms. “It was an accident.”
    “I know, but now Heather's on the hook for what I've done—”
    “And this
bothers
you? You don't think Heather would be in total revenge heaven right now if the roles were reversed?”
    “Yeah, but don't you get it? It seems like I'm
trying
to frame her. So it seems like it
wasn't
an accident.”
    “Look,” she said all conspiratorially, “she deserves it.What we've got to do, though, is tell Mrs. Ambler about the Class Personality ballots.”
    “No!”
    “No? You're saying you want Heather to be Most Popular Seventh Grader?”
    “Most
popular
? She wasn't even on the ballot for Most Popular!”
    “Like that's going to stop her from writing her own name in? Come on!”
    I frowned. “I hadn't even thought about that.”
    Marissa rolled her eyes. “It's been a whole year of her, Sammy. How come I've caught on and you, of all people, haven't?”
    “ 'Cause I don't think like that, that's why. Who's ever won from a write-in? That's like throwing away your vote.”
    Marissa just shrugged.
    “And you know what? I don't care. If she wants to be Most Popular Seventh Grader that bad, let her.”
    “You have got to be kidding.”
    I shook my head. “I'm not.”
    “Man,” she said with a snort, “this keeping-a-corpse-in-a-closet thing has really done a number on you.” She looked me square in the eye. “We can't let her get away with it!”
    I shrugged. “Is it as bad as getting away with murder?”
    “You didn't murder the bird! You accidentally killed the bird.” She shrugged. “And hid it. And framed Heather for it …” She laughed. “But you didn't murder the bird!”
    I laughed, too, then took a deep breath and said, “I have to tell Mrs. Ambler.”
    “About the bird? Are you crazy?”
    I shrugged. “As Hudson says, the truth has an interesting habit of finding its way to the surface. I'd rather she heard it from me than some other way.”
    “Wait a minute. Wait just a minute! Who's going to tell her?