Found by Harlan Coben

nod slowly. “I think maybe I can. Let me work on it, okay?”
    “Okay.”
    Spoon put the photograph in the drawer next to his bed. “You better let Ema in now. What do you think I should tell her?”
    “The truth,” I said.
    I looked down at him, in that bed, paralyzed below the waist. I was blocking on that. It was the only way to stay upright. But suddenly I felt the tears building again. Spoon looked up at me and then turned away.
    “Arthur?” I said.
    “Don’t call me that,” he said.
    “Spoon?”
    “What?”
    I swallowed. “How are you? Really.”
    He gave me the big smile. “Terrific!”
    I just looked at him and waited. The smile faded away.
    “To tell the truth,” Spoon said, “I’m a little scared.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “I get that.”
    Silence.
    “Mickey?”
    “Yeah?”
    “After I talk to the girls, do you think you can hang in my room for a while?”
    I managed not to cry. “For as long as you’d like.”

CHAPTER 15
    Ema went in next, leaving Rachel and me alone for the first time since I knocked on the door and told her the truth about her mother’s death. For a few minutes we avoided each other’s gaze. I stood there feeling ridiculously awkward, shuffling my feet, casually fake whistling. I had no idea why I was fake whistling, but that’s what I was doing. I bounced on my toes. My hands felt really big and like I had no place to put them. I jammed them in my pockets.
    Rachel was beautiful. It was as simple as that. Physically she was the complete package. Everyone thought so. At our school, she was “that” girl, but I’ve often found that the “high school hot,” while obviously attractive, can often have looks that are somewhat blank or standard or like some kind of formula—that when you are universally considered hot, that hotness can also be bland.
    That wasn’t the case here. Rachel’s beauty was, well, interesting.
    I moved toward her hesitantly, half expecting her to shake her head for me to go away again. She smelled great, like honeysuckle and lilacs.
    “Hey,” I said, because I’m smooth like that.
    “Hey.”
    “Are you okay?” I asked.
    “Fine.”
    Silence.
    “I’m sorry,” I said.
    “It’s not your fault.”
    “Your father thought it’d be better if you didn’t know the truth. He didn’t want me to tell you what happened to your mom.”
    Rachel tilted her head. “So why did you?”
    I hadn’t expected her to ask that. I guess that I expected to get credit for being honest, but her eyes were pinning me down, wanting an answer.
    “It was something my uncle said.”
    “Your uncle Myron?”
    “Yes.”
    “What?”
    “It was about lies. Even when they’re for someone’s good.”
    “Go on.”
    “I don’t remember his exact words, but he said that it might be a good lie, it might be a bad lie, but either way, the lie would always be in the room with us.”
    Rachel nodded. I wanted to ask more. I wanted to know how her father had reacted, but it wasn’t my place to ask. We stood in silence for a few more seconds. I broke it:
    “I was surprised to see you here. Did Spoon call you?”
    “No,” she said.
    “So how did you know to come?”
    “This was in my locker.”
    Rachel handed me an essay she had written for Mrs. Friedman’s history class. She had gotten an A with a comment in Mrs. Friedman’s script saying, “Great job!” But that wasn’t the important thing. The important thing was the image someone had stamped onto the top right-hand corner of the first page.
    The Abeona butterfly.
    “Did you do this?” she asked.
    I sighed. “You know better.”
    “So who was it?”
    “I don’t know. And yet we all know.”
    Rachel shook her head. “You sound like a fortune cookie.” She looked toward Spoon’s door. “So there’s another kid who’s missing.”
    “Maybe. What did Spoon tell you before we got here?”
    “That Thomas Jefferson had a pet mockingbird and when he was alone in his study, he’d close the door and let