Don't Stay Up Late by R. L. Stine

Author:R. L. Stine
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781466866744
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

PART FOUR

32.

The walls of the little square room were a sick vomit green and the paint was peeling near the ceiling. Two lights hung from the ceiling inside gray cones. One of the bulbs was out.

It was Tuesday morning, the morning after we found Summer’s body. We sat on folding chairs around a long table, the top covered in names and initials that people had carved into the wood. The room smelled of stale cigarette smoke despite the stenciled NO SMOKING sign tacked to the wall.

Of course, I was tense. I’d never been interviewed by a police officer before. I kept clasping and unclasping my soggy hands under the tabletop and clearing my throat.

My mother sat a little behind me to my right and kept petting my shoulder with her good hand. Guess she was tense, too.

Nate sat across from us. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt over dark khakis. First time I’d ever seen him not in jeans.

“Are those your dress-up clothes?” I asked, my voice sounding too loud in the tiny, windowless room.

He nodded. He kept his eyes down. He kept scratching his hair, brushing it back, then forward.

Sam Goodman, Nate’s father wore a navy blue suit, a pale blue shirt, and a dark bow tie. His head is shaved. He’s very pale. And he wears thick black plastic-framed glasses that slide halfway down his nose. I think he looks like a lightbulb with glasses, but he’s very nice. He was busily texting on his phone as we waited for someone to come in and talk to us.

“Hot in here,” Mom murmured. She shifted her cast uncomfortably.

“There’s no ventilation at all,” Mr. Goodman said, raising his eyes from his phone.

“The police like to sweat confessions out of people,” I said. I was trying to make a joke, but no one laughed.

Finally, the door swung open and a tall officer in a starched black uniform, gold badge tilted on his shirt pocket, stepped in. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said in a hoarse, gravelly voice. “I’m Captain Rivera.”

Rivera was in his thirties, probably. He was tall and wiry except for his belly, which stretched the front of his uniform shirt. His black hair was shaved close to his head. His face was tanned. He had a broad forehead, tiny, serious black eyes set deep, and a carefully brushed black mustache that curved down the sides of his mouth.

He pulled a folding chair up to the end of the table and dropped into it. He placed an iPad on the tabletop and tapped a few things on the screen. “I’m going to record this meeting,” he explained. “You know. So we can all be sure of what was said.”

The four of us watched him without saying a word. Mom stopped petting my shoulder and settled back on her chair. Mr. Goodman slipped his phone into his suit jacket pocket.

“Let’s go around the table and say your name and age,” Rivera said. “For the record.” His eyes were on me. He chuckled.

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