No Saving Throw by Kristin McFarland

Author:Kristin McFarland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2019-03-15T04:00:00+00:00

13

THE NEXT NIGHT, MUSIC blared from the stereo Bay had set up in the back corner of the store. Her partner, Allison, was DJ, and Wes’s parents, a quiet, shell-shocked looking couple, had brought a selection of their son’s music. The gentle, loving memorial should have suited Wes. We had his music, his friends, his favorite games, his favorite foods. We tried to throw a party he would want to go to, not a party that would have bummed him out.

But in spite of our forced cheer, it wasn’t a very good party. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a very good memorial, either. Paige lurked, red-eyed, in one corner while everyone else avoided her. Bay had actually persuaded Cody to show his grumpy face at the gathering, and he and Hector glowered at each other over a plate of cupcakes decorated with paper TARDISes on sticks. Nick had not shown, which must have contributed to Paige’s woeful mien.

Wes’s death was the elephant in the room. Everyone wondered if someone present had killed him. No one wanted to discuss the things he loved, because he had loved Ten Again and gaming with his friends, and, to all appearances, those were the very things that had gotten him killed. Add to the mix the fact that this might be the store’s last hurrah, and you had the world’s saddest party.

“I wish Nick had come,” I muttered to Jordan over the bowl of potato chips I was painstakingly arranging.

She took a chip and crunched it in my ear. “Why? Isn’t this weird enough? We’ve got a bunch of sad, socially awkward people with nothing to say to one another standing around a doomed venue on a Tuesday night. We’re one disco ball and some balloons away from a sixth-grade mixer in hell.”

“Not helping,” I said. “It doesn’t look good, him skipping out on this. Like he’s guilty or something.”

“He probably is guilty.” She took another chip. “And believe me, you don’t need that hanging around, especially when you’re already going to piss off half the town leadership by throwing this party.”

I rotated the bowl of chips another six degrees. “You guys aren’t going to arrest me, are you?”

“Nah.” She didn’t elaborate.

“What about our plans to investigate?”

Jordan rolled her eyes and gave me a sideways glance. “What plans?”

“Right.”

She took a fistful of chips and sidled toward the dip. She had made it clear as a broken window: no more amateur sleuthing for her. She couldn’t know about it, couldn’t help, couldn’t even acknowledge that I’d spoken about it. I let her off the hook and moved toward Hector and Cody, still eye-wrestling over the desserts.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Cody said. He tossed back the dregs of a can of soda, refusing to meet my eyes when I joined them.

“No?” Hector said. “You can ask around—no one saw you that night. No one but Max, downstairs. You left the release party. Where were you?”

“I went to talk to Paige and Nick. Ask her.”

“Yeah, but that didn’t take the whole time.

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