Page 61 of Poison Wood
I look at the clock. It’s four thirty.
“Sure,” I yell back.
I scroll through the numbers I’ve called recently and tap on Katrina’s.
“Hello?” she says.
“Is Summer with you?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you put me on speaker?”
“Hang on.” The sound changes. “Okay. We’re here.”
“Do you remember Johnny’s sister, Rosalie Adair?” I say.
“We remember her.” Kat answers for both of them. “She was around sometimes when I’d go to that cottage to ... borrow some party favors.”
“Did you ever talk to her?”
“Sure,” Kat says. “She was weird even back then.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know. I just felt like she was always watching us.”
“Yeah,” Summer says. “One time I caught her in the school, snooping around. And I asked her what she was doing, and shesaid she was looking for her brother, but the thing is ... she was in Crowley’s office.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” Summer says. “Creepy.”
“Wait,” I say. “What were you doing in Crowley’s office?”
“Oh boy,” Kat says.
“I was stealing the English midterm,” Summer says with an awkward laugh.
“Oh my God, I forgot about that,” I say. Our English teacher didn’t seem to notice or care that the three of us all made perfect scores on that test.
“Anyway,” Summer says. “Don’t you remember that time Rosalie showed up yelling at Crowley about money owed to her brother or something? We were all having lunch, and she was just screaming at him.”
“I don’t remember that.”
I start pacing and try to conjure up that memory, but nothing appears. I do recall seeing Rosalie around the school but only occasionally and never yelling.
“Do you know anything else about her?” I say.
“She became a nurse,” Summer says.
I stop mid-step. Was Rosalie at her brother’s old cottage recently?
“She’s not a nurse anymore,” Kat says.
“How do you know that?” I say.
“Because everybody knows Rosalie was fired for ...accidentally... killing one of her patients.”
