Page 116 of Middle of the Night

So he snuck outside and crossed through the hedge from one lawn to another. Andy didn’t plan to be there long. Even though his father was away and his mother asleep, he knew he could get in big trouble if he were caught outside this late. He simply wanted a glimpse of Billy’s life. Ethan’s, too. The life of any boy older than him felt both huge and limitless.

But as he tiptoed closer to the tent, Andy started to suspect he was wrong about that. Because Billy and Ethan were arguing, and their voices sounded small and scared. Especially Ethan’s, as he said things that shocked Andy.

Bullshit.

Weirdo.

Freak.

It wasn’t the words themselves that were shocking. Even at age seven, Andy’s heard plenty of curse words. It was the way Ethan said them that rattled him. There was a meanness to them that Andy had never associated with Ethan before. And he didn’t like it one bit. Especially the last part.

“If you like ghosts so much, why don’t you just die and become one?”

As he turned away from the tent and began to run toward home,Andy heard his brother’s voice, not knowing it would be for the last time.

“Hakuna matata, dude,” Billy said.

No worries.

But Andy can’t help but worry as he tosses and turns in his bed. Is this what being older is like? Is this how best friends talk to each other? Above all, did Ethan really mean what he said?

That last question lingers in his mind as he falls asleep, and will remain with him for a very long time. It will be there in the morning, when his parents sit him down and tell him that Billy has been taken. It will be there when detectives with interchangeable names and faces and badges ask him if he saw anything suspicious that night, anything at all.

Andy will remain silent about what he heard Ethan say because he’s been told by everyone that Billy had been taken, most likely by a stranger who grabbed him after slashing the tent.

It will be years before Andy begins to doubt this theory, and years more until he forms one of his own. By then his father will be dead, his mother will be institutionalized, and Andy Barringer, long past the age his brother got to reach, will have no one left to tell it to.

THIRTY-FOUR

I stagger backward as Andy’s words hit me like a haymaker. Harder than Russ’s blow to my face. That I remain standing is a minor miracle. When I speak, my shell-shocked voice sounds foreign to me.

“You heard what I said?”

“Every word,” Andy says. “And I’ve spent most of my life wondering if you meant it. I think you did. I think you meant it so much that you tried to make it come true, even if you can’t remember doing it.”

I reach out, grasping at the air, wishing it were something tangible with which I could steady myself. Because now I understand everything. Andy wants me to remember, yes. But there’s something else he’s after.

He wants me to confess.

“You think I’m the one who killed Billy?”

“You’re the only person it could have been,” Andy says.

“I never would have hurt Billy. I loved him.”

“But Iheardyou!” Andy yells, spittle flying from his lips. “I was in your yard that night. Right outside that tent. I heard the things yousaid. How he was a freak. How you told him to die. That didn’t sound like love, Ethan. It was hatred, pure and simple.”

“No, it was—”

Frustration. Immaturity. Cruelty.

That’s what I want to say. But there’s no point. Because the things I told Billy that night were horrible. Even worse, they were unforgivable. Knowing that someone else heard them causes guilt to press against my chest, so heavy I think my rib cage is going to collapse from the strain.

“I shouldn’t have said those things. I know that. And I’ve spent thirty years wishing I could take it all back.” I step closer to Andy, hand outstretched, hoping he’ll take it, hoping even more that he’ll believe me. “But I didn’t mean any of it. And I absolutely didn’t kill Billy.”

Andy thinks it over, the mental wheels turning inside those big, spooky eyes. Then he nods and says, “Maybe this will get you to tell the truth.”

He wraps an arm around Henry’s waist and, in one smooth, shockingly fast motion, hoists him off his feet and holds him off the outcropping’s edge.

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