Bad Blood by Carly Anne West

Author:Carly Anne West
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2019-02-16T16:00:00+00:00

A weather station. Okay, so that makes sense, I guess. Mr. Donaldson had said my grandparents were famous for their work in geology and meteorology. What doesn’t make sense is why everyone is acting like that’s some sort of crime.

“Sounds kinda boring,” I say to Mr. Gershowitz, prodding for more information.

He seems to understand because he says, “In any other town, maybe.”

“You knew them, right?”

Mr. Gershowitz slows his pace so we can walk side by side, and I catch him eyeing me before he turns his gaze ahead to the trail, the light from his flashlight bobbing.

“Your grandparents? A little. Only enough to thank them when they had me over for dinner, which was more often than it should have been. My parents worked long hours … couldn’t always put food on the table at a normal hour.”

He’s trying to say a nice thing about my grandparents, but I can tell he’s starting to get uncomfortable. I guess that’s why I push a little harder. I’m getting tired of secrets.

“I think people were afraid of them.”

Mr. Gershowitz loses his footing, and I catch his elbow before he goes down on the slick path.

He mutters a thank-you before righting himself. He’s quiet for another minute before he starts walking.

Then he says, “You ever seen a meteor shower?”

It’s possibly the most random question anyone has ever asked me.

“Um, no?”

“It’s magnificent,” he says. “And it’s terrifying. The light is so bright, you think it’s going to scatter across the whole sky. Then the dark just … swallows it up. Just like that, it’s gone.”

I get the sense he’s trying to tell me something meaningful, but unless my grandparents were astronomers and meteorologists, I’m clueless.

Mr. Gershowitz must sense this on some level because he goes on to say, “Sometimes the things that burn the brightest are the scariest right before they flame out. Your grandparents … they were the type of people who burned bright.”

Clarity drops on me like a house.

They burned bright, just like my dad. And when they were at their brightest—their most genius—they scared him.

They scared everyone.

Mr. Gershowitz has known my dad for a long time. It’s impossible to believe he hasn’t seen that same spark in him.

“Your grandparents wanted to put Raven Brooks on the map. In a lot of ways, they did. And in a lot of ways, it was good for the town,” he says, tiptoeing around the topic the same way he sidesteps the uneven ground.

“But?” I say. Because there’s obviously a “but.”

“Some people weren’t looking for that sort of attention.”

“Like who?”

I’ve crossed into forbidden territory. I can tell by the way he pinches his mouth shut now. Mr. Gershowitz is done talking. It makes me wonder if he was one of the ones who didn’t want that sort of attention. It makes me wonder if maybe taking him up on his offer to walk me home was more dangerous than I’d realized.

Then, as fast as the thought comes to mind, it leaves, because he says, “Your dad isn’t like them.

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