Todd Strasser - Blood on my hands

He scowls, says nothing, and stares.

“Do you know who I am?” I ask, trembling.

His eyes narrow.

“I’m… the girl everyone’s looking for. I… I need to talk to you.”

He doesn’t react. This is completely unnerving. Shouldn’t he be just a tad bit freaked? Everyone thinks I’m a killer. No doubt I’m the first in that category he’s ever encountered.

“I didn’t kill Katherine.” I feel like I’m wound tight, close to snapping and unwinding into a frayed mess. “I know you have no reason to believe me, but it’s true.”

He blinks and takes a step backward.

“Don’t go!” I beg. “Please! I just want to talk. I swear. I just want to ask you some questions.”

But he’s backing up, turning as if he’s about to sprint away. Only that heavy, book-filled pack on his back shifts from one side to the other, and the next thing I know, Griffen Clemment trips on his own feet, topples over, and lands hard on his side in the street.

“Unnnhhhh.” A long slow groan slips out through his lips and he lies on the asphalt as if stunned.

“Oh my God!” I kneel beside him. “Are you okay?”

“I… I don’t know.” His voice is higher than you’d expect, and he seems really out of it.

“Come on.” I help him slide his arms out of the pack. “You can’t just lie here in the middle of the street.” I get him to his feet and walk him to the curb. Then I go back and get the backpack. A moment later we’re sitting side by side on the curb and I’m brushing the sand and dirt off his blazer. One of his pant knees is torn and the scraped skin under it oozes dozens of little beads of blood. I pull a napkin from my jeans and dab the red away. “Does it hurt?”

“Yes.”

“See if you can straighten it.”

He does what I tell him. His leg goes straight and then he bends it back up without complaining or grimacing.

“Listen, Griffen, I can’t sit here out in the open like this. Everyone can see us.” I jerk my head back toward the hedge. “Can we go back in there? I don’t think they’re home.”

He gives me a searching look. “You’re not planning on doing anything bad to me, are you?”

It seems like a strange question from a guy who’s nearly a foot taller than me, but I’ve begun to perceive a softness and a frailty in him. It’s hard to imagine how he could have been mixed up with the likes of Dakota and Katherine. “No. I was just hoping to find out some things.”

He tilts his head curiously. I get up quickly, but he takes longer, groaning and rising slowly and stiffly. We each take a strap of the backpack and lug it behind the hedge. Griffen sits down on it and dabs his knee with the napkin. I sit cross-legged on the grass and look up at him. Again I have that feeling I’ve seen him someplace before. I just can’t figure out where.

“Last spring something happened between Katherine and Dakota and I heard you were involved,” I tell him.

Big frown. “Look, no offense, but you’re wanted by the police. This is a mistake. I shouldn’t be talking to you.” He presses his hands against the backpack as if to rise.

Desperate, I grab the sleeve of his blazer. “Have you ever been blamed for something you didn’t do?” I ask, holding on. “Try magnifying that feeling about a hundred thousand times. Then add a life sentence to it.”

He stares at me.

“I swear I’ll never tell anyone we met,” I say.

He thinks it over. I let go of his sleeve.

“So you want to know what happened with me and Dakota and Katherine?” he says. “I met Dakota at a cotillion and she seemed really interested. I mean, it was kind of weird. Like, I’m not the type who has a steady stream of girls trying to knock down the door, you know? But she was just really, like, insistent. So we started to hang out. And then somewhere along the way, she introduced me to Katherine.” Griffen pauses and winces slightly. “And I mean, she… I mean, Katherine…” He shakes his head and seems to shiver. “She told me all kinds of things about Dakota that… sounded really bad.”

“Like what?”

“Like that she was a total slut and had even been treated for an STD and that if I went out with her, I might catch something.” He pauses to bend his knee and winces again.

“So what happened next?” I ask, trying to keep him on track.

“Then Katherine made this big play for me. And like I said, I’m not exactly used to that kind of attention. And she swore she’d never tell Dakota. And”-he shrugs-“I fell for it. And the next thing I knew, Dakota knew all about it, and she just went totally bonkers.”

“So you think Katherine told Dakota?”

“Or she told someone else, who told Dakota. Doesn’t really matter.” Is that a trace of remorse in his voice? He can’t enjoy admitting that he was duped. Still, it’s incredibly helpful news, because if Katherine stole him, it gives Dakota a motive for wanting revenge. And I’m wondering about something else. “I guess the thing I don’t understand is how Katherine could do that to Dakota and then two weeks later they were acting like best friends again.”

“That’s what happened?”

“You didn’t know?”

He shakes his head. “I haven’t talked to either of them. To tell you the truth, I’m totally fine with that. I mean, at first I felt pretty bad about Dakota. It was probably stupid of me to believe all that stuff about her being a slut and having STDs and all. But…” His voice trails off.

“But?”

He seems reluctant to say more.

“Please, if there’s something I should know…,” I say, urging him. “Something that would help prove that I didn’t kill Katherine.”

“Well… I don’t know what this’ll prove, but when that whole thing happened, when Dakota found out about me and Katherine… I started getting some really freaky texts. The callback number was blocked, so I could never completely be sure who they were from, but I’m almost positive they were from Dakota.”

“What did they say?”

“Really bizarre threatening stuff. But the thing is, like I just said, I can’t swear they came from her. I mean, it makes sense that she’s the one who sent them, and it wasn’t like anyone else had a reason to send me things like that, but the police said-”

“The police? How did the police know?”

Griffen looks surprised. “We told them. I mean, the texts were totally threatening. As soon as I got them, I told my parents and they went to the police. But the cops said there was nothing they could do. They couldn’t track the texts and that was that.”

“That’s all they said?”

“Well, they said I shouldn’t tell anyone or spread any rumors, because there was no way to prove who really sent them and, you know, like, Dakota’s mother is a congresswoman and people might get the wrong idea.”

“Would you tell me what they said?”

He grimaces, as if reluctant to disobey police orders. I give him a pleading look, trying to remind him of what’s at stake.

He nods. “Whoever sent the texts said they wanted to kill me. One even threatened to kill me and Katherine.”

The news goes through me like an electric current. Maybe there’s no way to prove that the texts came from Dakota. But like Griffen said, who else would have sent them?

“I don’t understand why the police didn’t do more to follow up on them,” I tell him.

Griffen raises his eyebrows and gives me a look as if the answer is obvious. Then it hits me: Dakota’s uncle, Samuel Jenkins, is the chief of police. She’s his niece. Of course he wouldn’t want rumors spread about her.

“Do you still have them?” I ask.

“The text messages?” Griffen shakes his head. “I mean, the police probably have the copies I printed out. But I erased them from my phone.”