And because sometimes the universe is cruel, the music overhead changed to a jazzy, coffee house rendition of the song “Say Something.”
I thought a few words in my head that the lady in the beachcomber hat wouldnothave liked. And then, with a quick prayer that the patron saint of little gay boys would understand my stretching the truth, I said, “Millie, you’re not loud. Well, I mean, sometimes you are. Like that time you wanted to show me something outside, and I was trying to read, and I’d already told you, like, eight times—”
A sugar packet hit me in the side of the head.
As though speaking to someone particularly dense, Millie said, “Keme and I found a four-leaf clover, and I wanted to show you.”
I still didn’t believe the four-leaf clover part, but the rest was definitely on brand—on separate occasions, I’d been dragged away from perfectly good naps, video games, and cupcakes to see, respectively, a rainbow that had conveniently disappeared by the time I got outside, and Millie’s favorite rock (she’d forgotten which one it was by the time we got out there), and the, quote, “cutest cricket.”
But I managed to say, “What I meant was, you’re enthusiastic. You get excited about things. And everyone who knows you loves that about you. We all love that about you.”
Millie didn’t say anything, but her expression remained clouded, and she touched the pink stripe of hair.
I thought I had a good idea of who had told her she was loud, and a wood chipper wasn’t good enough for him.
Finally, she seemed to rouse herself from her thoughts. She gave me a small, unhappy smile that was so un-Millie-like that the need to cry surged up inside me for a moment, and I had to take a deep breath. Then she said, “You didn’t come here to listen to me complain. What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Millie, if Louis is making you feel—”
She shook her head, and in a definitive end to the subject, said, “What’s up, Dash?”
I considered the best way to ask my question. Then I said, “Do you know where Keme is?”
Millie shook her head.
“Do you have any ideas?” I asked.
This time, she hesitated.
“Because I need to find him—”
“I don’t know. He won’t answer any of my messages. And I don’t think—I don’t think he wants me to tell people about the places he goes sometimes.” In that strangely forlorn voice, she said, “He’s mad enough at me already.”
I opened my mouth to jump on that, but some smarter part of me made me stop. Millie had been avoiding me when I’d come in. But, from what I could tell, it didn’t have anything to do with her new hair color, because she’d been more than happy to talk to me about that. She’d even answered my question about Keme, even if I would have appreciated her, well, telling me where Keme might have been hiding. So, the question remained: whyhad Millie been so determined not to talk to me when I’d shown up at Chipper?
“Millie,” I said, “what happened Sunday night?”
She froze in the act of brushing her hair back. Then she slid toward the edge of her seat. “It was nice chatting, Dash, but Tessa really needs me to—”
“No, she doesn’t. What happened?”
“Nothing happened.” Then her face lit up with wary optimism. “I mean, it doesn’t even matter anymore, does it? Because Keme’s innocent, and the sheriff knows he’s innocent, and she let him go.”
“It might matter,” I said, “considering someone might be trying to kill Keme.”
I filled her in on the events of the night before.
When I’d finished, Millie’s eyes were huge, and she said, “Dash, you have to HELP HIM!”
“Hey, I might have been the intended victim too. Did you miss that part? What about me?”
“Do you think that’s why he’s not answering my messages?” She looked on the brink of tears again. “Do you think he got hurt?”
A sugar packet hit me in the back of the head again.
“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s why I need your help. If someone is trying to hurt Keme, it’s because he knows something or saw something—or the killer thinks he did. That’s why you’re going to tell me what happened Sunday night.”
“But nothing happened!”
