Page 38 of The Fall of Iris Henley
His expression doesn’t change when he sees me. He just holds my gaze with his flat blue eyes. He’s not very tall, but he is stocky and barrel-chested in his khaki uniform.
“What’re you doing here?” I say.
His face is motionless, but somehow his lips manage to hint at a smirk without even moving. “I think you meant ‘Good afternoon, Deputy Mays, how can I help you?’”
I swallow hard. Mom wants me to keep my head down, and I know that’s probably the best thing, but I can’t quite bring myself to kiss Holden Mays’s ass.
“Are you… Do I have to go back in to the station?” I ask.
The seconds drag out before he answers.
“Nah, not yet. Sheriff sent me over here just to keep an eye on things. You know, because there’s been some vandalism, some bullying. Some bad behavior.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “So Sheriff thought the principal could use a little help.”
“Oh.” It’s all I can think to say. My eyes drift to his belt. His cuffs. His gun. There’s a sick feeling low in my stomach.
It feels obvious he’s not here to helpme.
The final bell rings, and I realize I’m the only one still in the hallway. “Oh, I… I lost track of time. I have to…” I trail off, staggering a few steps away from him before I turn and jog away.
My class is in the other direction, but I can’t stop now. I want to get out of Mays’s sight as quickly as I can. I wheel blindly down the hall, looking for a place to go, to hide. Then I see the door to the art studio. There won’t be a class there—Mr. Dinello, the art teacher, only works in the mornings. I lunge for the door and it opens easily in my hand.
Inside, the overhead lights are off, but sunlight blazes through the windows. It’s a large crowded space, packed with supplies. The walls are covered with student art—paintings and drawings and etchings of half-familiar faces, crooked trees, beloved pets, a few abstract smears of color. In one corner there’s a still life display set up—a vase of fake flowers, a plastic skull, and an incongruous-looking teapot on a small table.
I step inside. In the dusty quiet, with its smells of paint thinner and wood, I lean back against the door. It takes me a moment to realize I’m not alone.
Kendra Koenig is there.
She’s stretching canvas, staple gun in hand. Her hair’s burgundy now—it’s been dyed so recently I can see purple marks along her scalp. Something about that detail—the glimpse I seebeneath her thick, bristling locks and the pale, raw look of her skin—makes me feel suddenly sad for her. It looks vulnerable. It looks bare.
Before I can even register her presence, she looks up at me and gives a hard laugh.
“Looking for a hiding place, huh?” She staples a corner of the canvas to the wooden frame. “This is a good one. Pretty sure we aren’t supposed to be in here, but Dinello never remembers to lock his door.”
“Yeah. I, uh, just needed a minute. I’m sorry to interrupt.”
She shrugs. “You’re not.” Staple. Staple. Staple.
I watch her, thinking about the time I used to spend at Rocky’s house. At her house. She and Rocky had actually gotten along, most of the time. It was always weird to me, because I couldn’t even remember a time when Noelle and I were that close. And if Noelle and I have an embattled relationship, you’d think the Football Hero Brother and the Gay Art Sister would be at each other’s throats.
But they weren’t. They liked each other. They sat on the couch in the immense Koenig game room, playingSuper Smash Bros. or watching old comedies. They had inside jokes.
Sometimes I was jealous of their connection.
Even before Rocky died she was a little prickly, a little more punk than the standard Varda girl, but I’d always liked her. Of course I haven’t really talked to her since April. I mean, what was I going to say to her? Sorry your brother turned out to be a secret monster? Sorry the entire town hates you and your family now? It was easier to avoid her gaze in the hallway.
“Kendra, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but the thing on Sekrit is totally made up,” I blurt out. “I didn’t… I…”
I trail off. She keeps stapling, letting the silence stretch out between us.
Finally she puts the staple gun down and looks up at me.
“Come on, Iris, I know you didn’t kill anyone,” she says, her face sour. “It’s absurd.”
“Oh.” I shift my weight. “But yesterday you said…”
She just shrugs. “You don’t have to have murdered someone to feel guilty.”
I’m not quite sure what to say to that, and she doesn’t seem to expect me to. She picks up the stapler again. The stack of canvases next to her is impossibly high. She must’ve been in here for a while.
