FutureImperfect Read Free

wiped away. She smelled of soot and smoke. Her brunette hair, mussed, had gray bits of ash woven into it. She’d been in the fire that had almost wiped out Robert A. Wilson High School’s entire senior class. That was just last night, but here she was, in school, in Emeril Tippicks’s tiny office, sitting in a small blue plastic chair, her lean form folded fetally.
    Why? What had possessed her to come to school today? Moreover, what had possessed her, as Tippicks had been told, to run into the blazing warehouse and save Harry Keller’s life?
    Tippicks didn’t ask out loud, but he didn’t have to. She coughed, scrunched her face, swiped a dry, plumdyed clump of hair from her forehead, and said, “I have to talk to you about Harry.”
    Tippicks had been up since three because of the fire, fielding calls, filling out forms. Now he was in a death match with a vengeful headache. Sleepless and disheveled, he knew he looked more like a balding, gray-haired turkey than a role model, but he wanted to help.
    So he leaned forward and immediately knocked over a mug crammed with pens and pencils. Some flew into his lap, others rolled helter-skelter across the desk, while a few clattered to the linoleum floor. The thin plastic sounds echoed in his head like slamming doors.
    â€œIt must be hard,” Tippicks said hoarsely as he scrambled to scoop up the rolling pens within his reach. He stuffed a handful back in the mug, leaving little blue and red marks on his palm. “We’re all very worried and disappointed about what happened to Harry. The trauma of the fire must have tipped him over the edge.”
    Not only that, but Tippicks knew he’d been personally stupid about the whole thing. He’d protected Keller too much, ignored obvious signs, made a mistake in helping him stay off the antipsychotic meds. He had actually covered for the boy as he hid in a locker in the girls’ gym.
    Why?
    An image of Tippicks’s father in a padded cell in Windfree flashed into his mind, making his head pound all the more. He tried to distract himself by scooping more pens into his hands.
    The girl crossed her arms and buried her hands between her knees. “It’s not that. Not just that, anyway.”
    Tippicks lowered more pens into the mug. “Well, what then?”
    Disdain wrinkled her young face. “Don’t you want to ask if I knew whether or not he was taking any drugs?”
    Tippicks clamped his eyes shut. As if he wasn’t feeling guilty enough, he remembered he’d rifled through this girl’s book-bag yesterday, found a stash of K, then doubted her story—which turned out to be true—that it had been planted on her.
    He shrugged. “No. I just want to know whatever it is you want to tell me.”
    â€œWell, he wasn’t. Harry never used any drugs. Not one. Do you believe me?”
    Tippicks’s brow furrowed. “Yes.”
    She fell into a troubled silence, so he reached for his phone.
    â€œYou might find it easier talking to another counselor.”
    â€œNo,” she said. “It has to be you. Harry trusted you .”
    â€œBut clearly you don’t. I understand. It’s okay, but—”
    â€œI…I have to try.”
    Tippicks withdrew his hand from the phone and leaned back in his chair. It creaked as it tilted back, and a pencil on his lap rolled off onto the floor. When he winced, Siara stifled a snicker.
    He smiled. He opened up his hands. “I’m all ears.”
    â€œYou won’t tell his doctors? Is anything I say here…you know, private?”
    â€œI won’t tell anyone,” Tippicks said. “As long as it doesn’t involve murder.”
    â€œAnd if it does?”
    His smile faded. Out of the corner of his eye he saw another pencil rolling. He could have caught it easily, but let it drop.
    â€œWhat are you talking about?”
    â€œHarry thought someone was trying to drive him