Impact Read Free

kitchen. I think she’d gone in there to start supper, but she wasn’t cooking. She was standing at the kitchen sink, looking out the window into the backyard. She didn’t seem to notice when my father and I came into the kitchen. She didn’t turn around until my father went to her and put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around. Neither of us was surprised when we saw how red her eyes were and how wet her cheeks were.
    My mother stared blankly at him. It washard to tell if she understood what he was saying.
    â€œI talked to that police detective today,” my father said quietly. “They’ve made some arrests, Sara. They’ve arrested four boys for what happened to Mark.”
    I felt my whole body tense up.
    â€œWas one of them Tony Lofredo?” I asked.
    My father nodded. “Tony Lofredo and two of his friends.”
    Tears were streaming down my mother’s face, but I couldn’t tell if she was crying because she was glad that, finally, the police had arrested someone or because what my father had just told her was making her remember all over again what had happened to Mark. She pressed up against my father, and he wrapped his arms around her.
    I thought about what my father had just said. “Tony Lofredo and
two
of his friends?” I said. “But you said the police arrested four people. Tony and his two friends—that only makes three.”
    My father turned to look at me. “The fourth boy,” he said in a quiet voice. “It’s Kyle Mercer.”
    I felt sicker inside than I had ever felt.

Chapter Four
    â€œWhen we heard that the police had arrested the people who killed our son, we thought it would ease our pain. But it didn’t,” my father says, reading. He looks up for the first time. He looks at my mother. I glance at her too. Her eyes are filled with tears, but she holds her head high.
    It was crazy at our house for the first day or two after the police arrested Tony Lofredo,his two friends—whose names were Joey Karagiannis and Robert Teale—and Kyle Mercer. The media phoned—newspaper, radio, tv—and showed up at our door. They wanted to know what my parents thought about the arrests. They even asked me what I thought. After the first two days, my father unplugged the phone. He said anyone who needed to get in touch with him could call him on his cell phone. My father only gives out his cell phone number to close friends and to relatives.
    Kyle Mercer went to the same school as me, so I couldn’t get away from it there. Everyone was talking about what had happened. But it died down again fast, because after Kyle was arrested, they kept him locked up until the trial. They kept all four of them locked up.
    Shannon disappeared from school. Someone said that her parents had decided to send her to a private school so she could get away from all the bad memories. At first that didn’t make sense to me. She hadn’t known Mark all that long. Then someone else toldme that she had transferred because she felt guilty. She thought that if she had never gone out with Mark, he would still be alive. Maybe that was true.
    After a week had passed, all the excitement died down. I thought the trial would happen a couple of weeks or maybe a couple of months later. Was I ever wrong!
    A date was set for a preliminary inquiry. It got pushed back and pushed back. In the meantime, we were supposed to get on with our lives.
    The worst Christmas of my life came and went. My father didn’t go out and buy a Christmas tree the way he usually did. My mother didn’t make batches and batches of Christmas cookies the way she usually did. Neither of them did any Christmas shopping. They gave me money and told me I should treat myself to whatever I wanted, but I couldn’t think of anything.
    The new year came, and still nothing happened. I had trouble concentrating on my schoolwork. Basically, I just didn’t care. I