He reads the words, and there’s a moment of silence. I stare tensely at the green carpet, at the dark burn hole next to ClarkDavenport’s highly polished crocodile leather shoes. I feel his cold gaze piercing my heart.
“Tanner is a threat to himself and society. He needs to be taken to a clinic immediately and given medication,” I hear him reply coldly. I carefully raise my head to look at him. His facial expressions don’t reflect any emotion. Only his watery eyes glitter coolly and distantly. He looks at Dad again. “If something happens to someone, your daughter is complicit.”
“You have to tell us what you know,” Dad urges, and James adds something. Suddenly, they both start talking.
“I’m sure he’s waiting for her at an agreed meeting point.”
“Did he suspect we would be here?”
“Which hotel is he hiding in?”
“Why did she come back here without him?” That comes from Arizona, who, like Clark Davenport, is still ignoring me, but I’m too confused for it to matter at the moment. I realize something else. Apparently, they haven’t heard the news yet and don’t know what happened at the opening; otherwise, they would know that River was there.
I don’t know where he is now. Honestly, I type into my phone after everyone looks at me impatiently. It’s not even a lie.
I’ll find you!
Dad reads what I wrote. “She says she doesn’t know where he is,” he hesitantly passes on to the others. His voice doesn’t reveal whether he believes me or not.
Clark Davenport merely shakes his head reluctantly. “She’s lying, George. She always lies as soon as she—”Opens her mouth, I’m sure that’s what he wanted to say but stopped himself in time.
It must have been terrible for River to grow up under the same roof as this cold, emotionless man.
Stiffly, I stand and press my nails into my palm. I just want to get out of here and find River. I need to talk to him. Alone.However, how am I supposed to explain this to Dad? He won’t let me go.
Maybe I could climb out of our hotel room via the fire escape.
I need to change, I type into my phone and want to hold it out to Dad, but at that moment, Chester blocks my way.
“Are you seriously saying you have no idea where Tanner is? After traveling with him for the summer...?” He’s blocking me so that I can’t get by him, trapping me between him and the chair. “Kansas. Kans!” He sounds so gentle and kind, I could puke. “Tanner told you he was River McFarley; it’s what he does during these phases. Maybe it’s a delusion. You’re not the first girl he’s told that to!”
My heart skips a beat. I look past Chester to Dad.
He sighs. “I’m afraid it’s true.”
I just shake my head as if I could fend off his words.
“I know you wanted to get back at me with Tanner,” Chester says now, an unspoken threat flickering in his eyes. “First, it was my friends you were with... and then... even my brother, Kansas.” He truly tries to sound concerned. For a few seconds, it’s so quiet again, I don’t dare breathe.Say something, Dad! Defend me!I think, but he remains silent.
“We talked to his bandmates. You may not know this, but when he was nineteen, in one of his rapidly changing phases, he jumped off a bridge into the river. He believed he could fly. Ever since, they’ve called him River.”
So his name is River—even if the reason behind it is even more serious than I thought. F-L-Y-I-N-G. Was he reluctant to say it because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to resist the urge?
“Whenever he goes through phases, he feels guilty about that one girl.” Chester is now completely blocking me so that I can’t even see Dad, James, or Clark Davenport. “Every time, he triesto save a girl because he abandoned his girlfriend. It’s a delusion, a fixation.”
I want him to stop saying these things, but by the looks of his triumphant expression, he’s only just getting started.
You’re lying, I mouth, knowing only he can see.
For a moment, his gaze rests on me, and he shakes his head. “Zozoo told me. There have been three in total.”
Zozoo. He knows that name, so he’s probably telling the truth after all. I push by him, and he allows it because the others are there.June, I type into my phone.His girlfriend’s name was June, and I love River.
From three feet away, I hold this message out to Chester. His watery eyes become dark springs in which something evil bubbles. He stares at me as if he wants to grab me by the neck and push me against the wall.
“He snuck out of boarding school for a year to sleep in the cemetery on her grave. That’s sick!”
That’s love, I think. And whatever River does, he does it passionately and intensely.
