Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy by Susan Vaught Page A

serial killers liked everything the same.
    Peavine sighed. “She never likes your papers, Footer, but it’s nothing personal. She hates my stuff too.”
    â€œYou always write about worms and fishing and baseball.” I batted at the branch closest to my face, then snapped it so I could see better, then I didn’t want to see better, because I was feeling guilty and I’d been feeling guilty for days and just couldn’t stand it anymore. “I think Angel found my mother’s barrette at the Abrams farm. I tried to ask Mom about it when I visited Wednesday, but she just talked about mice in the basement and got all weird about having a piano in her wrist and sang really loud.” I cleared my throat and made myself look in his general direction, even though I saw mostly bush instead of his face. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything before.”
    â€œI didn’t want to ask you about the barrette, but I’ve been worried about it,” Peavine admitted. His blue eyes seemed twice as big as usual, and he was whispering, even though nobody was close to us. There were hundreds of kids out messing around everywhere, but here between the bushes and a brick wall, it seemed like wewere alone in the universe. My eyes drifted to a rock on the ground, and I thought about Dad saying Mom was his star, but Mom calling Dad a rock and wanting to be his flower. Peavine was my strong, sturdy rock, right down here on the ground where I needed him. I didn’t know how he saw me. I hoped I was his rock, or maybe his flower beside the rock.
    â€œI’ve been worried too,” I whispered back. My throat felt a little dry. I wanted to tell him I didn’t think the barrette wasn’t any big deal, but I couldn’t look him straight in those sweet blue eyes and lie, and besides, I didn’t want to start feeling guilty all over again. “I guess Mom lost the barrette.”
    Peavine dug into the dirt with one hand, scooting little piles of dust forward, toward the bush’s gnarled trunk. “Do you think your mom was at the Abrams farm the night of the fire?”
    My stomach twisted up, but I made myself breathe in and out, really slow like it said to on this YouTube video I watched on my phone last night. It was about stopping flashbacks and relaxation and “centering,” whatever that meant. The breathing helped enough to let me talk.
    â€œMaybe she was there,” I said. Then before I could chicken out, I added, “Maybe I was there too.”
    So much for breathing. My whole chest hurt like a walrus might be sitting on me with its giant walrus butt right on my ribs. Had I said that? Had I really, really justtold Peavine I thought I was at the Abrams farm the night of the fire?
    I was going to die of not breathing and thinking about walrus butts.
    As I saw twinkly spots and tried not to think about walruses and opened my mouth to breathe, Peavine knocked his dust pile over.
    â€œSeriously? You think you were at the farm, Footer? You making that up?”
    I shook my head and made myself breathe, breathe, breathe. No walruses. No walrus butts. None. Absolutely no thinking about walrus butts.
    â€œI’ve been seeing things,” I told Peavine when I could talk. “You know, like Mom does? Hallucinations. Only, I don’t think they’re really hallucinations. I read about those, and other stuff, and I think I’m having flashbacks. I think maybe I’m remembering stuff, but when I try to really think about it, it disappears and I just feel crazy. It’s like I can’t look at what’s right in front of me.”
    Or right beside you , my mind whispered. In the dark, waiting to pounce. . . .
    I shook my head to make that stupid brain-voice shut its mouth. Would Peavine believe me about being at the Abrams farm the night of the fire? Did I even believe myself? I doubled both hands into fists and pressed them into the warm