6 #2
Bram gives a headshake. “I mean more than the physical stuff. He was in a bad space…mentally.”
My heart wrenches. Adam, always the toughest guy on the football field, hurting like that. It makes sense though. His former friends not only turned on him but used the worst thing he’d ever experienced to humiliate him.
“I wanted to get him away from the school before he did something.”
“Did something?” I ask.
Bram lifts a hand. “Don’t forget this is Adam. He’s been like a lobotomy patient ever since the accident, but somewhere in there is the guy who would’ve marched right into Neil and Todd’s classes and dragged them out of there by their shirt collars.”
Another fair point. In fourth grade, Adam punched a kid in the face for joking that Henry wore girl glasses. “Anyway,” Bram continues, “I told Henry to take him home. He handles Adam better than I do. You know that.”
And I do. I’ve seen the brotherly dynamics unfold countless times.
Bram isn’t patient like Henry, who is careful and tactful as a crisis negotiator.
Despite how close Bram and Adam are when it comes to managing conflict, Bram’s methods resemble using kerosene to douse a fire.
“And where did you go when you were supposed to be in class?”
His eyes lower. “I can’t tell you that, Hayden.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I don’t want to lie to you again.”
My jaw clamps. “Henry and Adam never went home,” I say. “They were there in the parking lot, waiting for me.”
“Henry said it was easier to wait out the bell than to go home and come back later for you and me.” Bram sighs. “It’s complicated.”
“Is it?” I ask. My frustration rises like a river and I’m a dam about to burst. “You really won’t tell me what you did during all of sixth period? You claim that you weren’t the person shown with Kennedy in that video, and yet, you were in the woods! You were the one who found her body!”
He flinches at this accusation. “I see those detectives are really keeping key details under wraps.”
I shrug. “They told me. You didn’t. Even though I was there with you yesterday. That’s the real reason you didn’t want to be at school when the cops showed up. Because you had no excuse whatsoever to be there in the woods with Kennedy’s body.”
“I just—it was a lot yesterday.” He rubs at his face, and I notice a long scratch on the back of his hand. “I didn’t think I had to go around telling everyone I was the first person to find her.”
“What happened there?” I ask, pointing to the scratch. Was that what the cops were looking for when they examined my hands? Maybe this is just another reason why they’ve set their sights on Bram.
He frowns, lowering his hand to look. Then he shrugs and tucks it down at his side, in between his body and the armrest. “Mom fired the gardener, so I was trimming that obnoxious magnolia out back. You know, the one that’s always blocking the path.
It’s not life or death, Phil.” He uses his old nickname for me, the shortened version of my surname that used to drive me crazy at the same time it made me feel like one of the boys.
I’ve started to feel different about the name over the last couple of years—this term of endearment meant for only me.
But right now, there’s no warm, comforting feeling about it, since his tone is patronizing and he isn’t making eye contact.
“Bram, yesterday afternoon you weren’t wearing your sweatshirt, and I sort of…told the cops.”
He squints, not following. Before he can say anything, I blurt, “I thought I was helping you! The guy on the surveillance footage was wearing a sweatshirt like the one I gave you. So I thought it was proof that he couldn’t be you.
” I dig my fingertips into both temples.
“Only now, I think they’re going to try to use that sweatshirt as evidence. ”
“I see,” Bram says, the words measured. But his face is stormy, his quiet fury sending an unsettling spike of fear through me. “And why are you telling me this?”
“In case you have it and want to…I don’t know, get rid of it.”
His eyes lock on to mine. “Get rid of it. Because I killed Kennedy, and then”—he tilts his head—“what exactly? Used the sweatshirt to clean her blood off my hands?”
Yes, exactly that. Maybe that. “No, Bram—I don’t know! The cops have ways of twisting everything. If they get ahold of that sweatshirt, they could use it against you.”
He’s silent a moment, this logic seemingly having dulled his rage. Taking up the remote again, he turns to the television. “I can’t get rid of it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have no idea where it is,” he says in a clipped tone. “Yesterday afternoon in the cafeteria with Henry, I took it off and set it down on a bench. With everything going on, I forgot it. And when I went back a few minutes later, it was gone.”
My insides go cold. “Someone stole it?”
If this is true, whoever stole Bram’s sweatshirt could be the person on the footage. Someone impersonating him, maybe even framing him.
Only there’s a flaw in this reasoning. If someone were trying to make it look like Bram killed Kennedy, it would make more sense to plant the sweatshirt somewhere—make sure it would be found covered in Kennedy’s blood, ready for traces of Bram’s DNA to turn up when tested.
So far, though, that sweatshirt is still missing, and things aren’t adding up.
I have no idea why neither Bram nor Henry will be forthcoming with me—aside from the obvious implications.
The bad ones.
When I check my phone, Adam has left my text message on read. A lot of help he’ll be. And Bram made it sound like Adam couldn’t even help me if he wanted to, since he was in the car with Henry the entire time. All signs point to Bram, who swears he wasn’t the guy caught on camera with Kennedy.
And the thing is—despite his shaky story and the fact that he lied to me yesterday—I believe him now. I want to help prove to those detectives that he didn’t do it.
I try to rack my brain for who might’ve hated Kennedy—or even Bram—enough to do this, but the problem is that no one hated Kennedy Russo.
And everyone hates the Abbott brothers.