In the Pines Read online

  I glanced over at Dare, who was smiling at me like a maniac. Mayhem, the orchestrator of madness.

  “Go on, Charlie,” he whispered in my ear. “Join us.”

  I took a shaky breath, tilted my head back, and howled.

  I DIDN’T expect to see Mason Chalmers again until that night for his surprise party. If I decided to go—it was still up in the air. But as I was getting ready to leave school, my passenger-side door opened and Mason slipped inside, shutting the door behind him with purpose. He still wore his green polyester warm-up suit, the jacket unzipped enough that I could see his sparse chest hair poking out the top. He’d been sweating too. I could smell his manly musk rising up in the shuttered cabin of my car.

  “Hey, Mason,” I said casually, while thinking This is it. Mason hadn’t retaliated since my SAT sting because he’d been saving it up for one last annihilation. He’d let me think I was safe all these months, only to spring on me when I was unaware and defenseless.

  “You and I need to have a little chat.” He pivoted in the passenger seat so he could properly stare me down. His eyes were stony, his shoulders tense. His short buzz cut gave his face a severe appearance, and there was none of the amusement in his expression I’d seen earlier that afternoon at the pep rally. “It’s been a long time coming, don’t you think, Schiffer?”

  “I guess it has.” I exhaled the breath I’d been holding on to and resigned myself to whatever fate was to befall me. Back before my GPA dropped, I used to have this prime parking spot close to the school because of my academic achievement, but since losing that privilege, I’ve had to park in one of the dirt lots at the fringes of the athletic fields used as overflow for the sophomores and latecomers. I glanced around the desolate lot to see if Mason had brought reinforcements. He appeared to have come alone, but that didn’t mean his burly gang of merry men weren’t lurking behind the athletic portables, preparing to pounce the moment Mason gave the word.

  “So, what do you have to say for yourself?” Mason crossed his arms so his biceps looked intimidatingly huge. He seemed to be fishing for an apology, but I wasn’t going to give it to him. It wasn’t fair to all those kids who put in the sweat and sacrifice and studied for the test. You shouldn’t be able to buy your SAT score and therefore your placement at a university. The world is unfair enough as it is. Mason had been wrong to try to cheat, even if I was the only one to believe it.

  “I’d say you got off pretty easy,” I said at last. Mason got an in-school suspension. The Geek Squad, including me, had their school rankings dinged—straight Fs in “school decorum.” The jocks also had to retake their tests and deal with their true aptitude. And I lost all my friends and severed any alliances I’d built over the years.

  He squinted at me, confused or perhaps displeased that I was so impertinent. “Not that. This is about Dare.”

  Dare? What does he have to do with anything?

  “I don’t usually get involved with this sort of thing,” Mason continued, “but Dare seems to be into you, and if you’re planning to do him the way you did me….” He let the threat trail off, perhaps letting me imagine my own demise. Meanwhile my brain was glitching over the information that Dare might be into me.

  “Well?” Mason growled.

  “I wouldn’t do that to Dare,” I said in earnest and shut my mouth before anything more incriminating could come out.

  “No?” His bullish face tilted. He didn’t sound convinced.

  “Absolutely not.”

  Mason scrutinized me. Despite his tough-guy persona, Mason was actually very smart. He was at the top of our class in middle school. It was only during high school that he’d traded his GPA for popularity and started hanging around a bunch of meatheads.

  “Why not?”

  I focused on my steering wheel, worried he’d see the full extent of my feelings. I could feel my face heating up, likely turning the tips of my ears a flaming pink. Luckily my complexion didn’t allow for my blushing to be too obvious. Just my ears.

  “I really like Dare. I’d never do anything to hurt him.” I didn’t elaborate as to how much or in what way—that might also be a trap. The seconds stretched on until finally Mason nodded as if satisfied.

  “All right, then.” He punched my shoulder a little too hard, like he didn’t know his own strength. “Before I go, though, let me make it clear. Messing with me is one thing, but if you mess with Dare, I will fucking destroy you, Schiffer. Got it?”

  If his words weren’t convincing enough, the rumble in his voice definitely did it. I nodded and licked my lips. “Got it.”

  He pounded the dashboard lightly with his fist. “All right, then. Good talk.” He climbed out of my car and rounded the front of it, using the two finger I’m-watching-you hand gesture like some high school bully out of an eighties movie.

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “Good talk,” I said softly to no one at all.

  Chapter 2

  BOOTS GREETED me the next morning by cleaning his tongue on my face until my cheeks were thoroughly wet and slimy.

  “Boots, come on now,” I fussed and gently pushed him away. His droopy eyes and aw shucks smile made it impossible for me to be mad at him. Instead of licking, he buried his wet nose under my chin and laid his muzzle on my chest until I finished waking. Usually my mom let him out for me on the weekends so I could sleep in, but she must have forgotten. While I sat up and stretched, Boots, a definite morning person, clambered off the bed, nearly tripping over his big hound-dog ears, and waited by the open door for me to join him. Then he led me out to the kitchen, which was also where his food bowl lived. He wasn’t stupid.

  My mom glanced up from her cell phone and looked me over. I felt guilty without knowing why.

  “Did you go to the Chalmerses’ party last night?” she asked, eyes narrowing ever so slightly.

  “Morning, Mom.”

  Any other teen might wonder how the heck his mom knew about a high school party—a surprise one, no less—but not me. You can’t catch a cold in this town without Detective Rebekah Schiffer knowing about it.

  “Charlie?” she persisted. “The party?”

  “No,” I admitted. After a lengthy discussion of pro’s and con’s with Boots, I decided it was safer to refrain from attending the Chalmerses’ surprise birthday party. Taken in large doses, my compulsions inevitably drove people away. Right now Dare thought I was adorable. I didn’t want to prove him wrong.

  And there was the whole other matter of Mason Chalmers.

  “Why? What’s up?” I asked. Mom’s face had a pinched, worried look.

  My own phone buzzed in my hand. It was an older model and, like me, it took a minute to rouse in the morning. I turned it over and opened Snapchat to see a picture of Dare and Mason posted to Dare’s Story. It looked as though it was taken yesterday after the pep rally. Mason wore his green singlet and flexed his biceps, which were so stacked you could see the veins branching up his forearms like tree roots. He must have spent his summer in the gym. Dare was miming punching him in the gut, eyebrows slanted with devilish glee. Both of them looked cocky as hell, which stirred me up a bit. Daniela must have taken the picture with Dare’s phone. Or Joey. Then I read Dare’s message accompanying the photo:

  Mason didn’t come home last night. Anybody seen him? hmu

  A cold, wet something slithered down my throat and coiled itself in my stomach. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. “What’s going on?” I asked Mom.

  “The Chalmerses reported Mason as missing this morning.” She studied me a little too closely. “Do you know anything about that?”

  “No,” I said reflexively. “Why would I?” She had a tendency to treat me like a suspect at times. It was pretty insulting. It probably didn’t help that my mom got to know the Chalmerses a bit too well last year. After my SAT sting, there were some meetings with administration. I got in trouble for coercing Mason into telling the truth, if you can believe it. The Chalmerses u
sed their family name like a get-out-of-jail-free card. They even wanted me to recant my story. Instead I played the recording for them and suggested we take it to the school board. Needless to say, I didn’t leave the best impression on Dare and Mason’s parents or Principal Thornton.

  “I’m heading in now to speak with the parents,” Mom continued. “The Chalmerses were on a weekend trip but were called back this morning by the boy’s brother.”

  I thought of Dare making that call and posting the picture of him and Mason. He must be sick with worry.

  Mom was wearing her black pantsuit, gathering legal pads and shuffling papers into her briefcase. Her gold badge was fastened at her hip, right next to her holstered Glock. Usually she wore a collared shirt with the Gainesville Police Department insignia and slacks. The business attire meant it must be serious.

  “It’s only been a few hours, hasn’t it?” I asked with a sour taste in my mouth.

  “Given the family’s influence in the community, GPD wants this treated sensitively and expeditiously.”

  “And justice for all,” I muttered. Her lips retreated into a grim line. I wished every missing teen were treated as sensitively and expeditiously. I looked again at the picture on my phone, the brothers’ unbridled happiness. I’d always envied their freedom and arrogance at being rich, beautiful, and adored in a small town. Nothing bad could possibly happen to either of them. I’d have an easier time believing it was one of the twins pulling a prank, like Tom Sawyer spying on his own funeral to see what people were saying about him.

  “You want me to come with you?” I asked. I’d often accompanied my mom as her assistant—taking notes and typing up reports; I even had my own GPD ID card.

  “I don’t think so, Charlie.”

  “I could ask Dare some questions. See what he knows?”

  “I’m afraid not. This one has to be strictly by the book.”

  “I’m a professional,” I reminded her, more than a little offended.

  She came over and laid her hands on my shoulders.

  “I know you are, sweetie. But this one… this family. You have history with them.”

  Mom stared at me until I reluctantly nodded. “I need to establish trust,” she said, “and I’m afraid having you there might exacerbate an already delicate situation.” She kissed my cheek. “This could take a while. You know what that means, don’t you?”

  “I’m making dinner,” I said glumly. I hated being left out.

  She smiled and patted my messy mop of bedhead hair. “I’m thinking Italian.”

  She downed the last of her coffee and placed the mug in the sink, gathered up her briefcase, and tucked her phone into her purse.

  “He’s probably just passed out somewhere, sleeping off a hangover.”

  She offered me a tight smile. “Let’s hope so.”

  After my mom left, I poured myself a cup of coffee and stared at the picture of Dare and Mason on my phone, looking for any clues that might be hidden there, but I found nothing—just two unruly brothers horsing around for the camera. Bad things happened to good people, I knew that, but I couldn’t imagine anyone harming Mason Chalmers.

  The ill feeling in my stomach stuck with me for the rest of the morning, even after I’d eaten. Even though it was completely illogical, I couldn’t help but feel guilty.

  THAT EVENING, after running Boots in the woods behind our house, finishing up a paper for English, and throwing a pot of spaghetti on the stove, I mined my mom for information about Mason’s whereabouts.

  “Did you talk to Daniela?” I asked. If anyone knew where Mason was, it had to be her. She probably had multiple GPS trackers on him.

  “The girlfriend? Yes, I did. According to her, the last time she saw Mason was at the pep rally. They each had athletic practice after school. She anticipated seeing him again later for this surprise party, but he never showed.”

  “What about his brother?”

  “Darren Chalmers said he—”

  “Dare,” I corrected her. Her forehead wrinkled, probably because I’d interrupted her. She hated that. “No one calls him Darren,” I reiterated. “It’s Dare.”

  “O-kay.” She started again. “Dare said he and his brother were supposed to meet at Waffle Kingdom and then arrive at the house together, but Mason never showed.”

  “Have you found his truck?”

  “We’re running the vehicle’s tags. Hopefully we’ll know something by tomorrow morning.”

  “Did they issue an Amber Alert?”

  “No, Mason doesn’t fit the criteria.” She studied her plate of spaghetti. I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t.

  “The Chalmerses must not like that,” I prodded.

  “He’s eighteen, and there’s no proof of a struggle.” Her face was placid, and I wondered if it was a point of contention between her and the Chalmerses.

  “Are you leading up the investigation?”

  “No, Hartsfield is.” She was careful to keep her expression neutral. Hartsfield and my mom were the same rank, but Hartsfield was often appointed to take the lead on investigations, not because he was a better detective, but because he fit in better with the rest of GPD, meaning he was a man on a force that was 90 percent male.

  Then I wondered if it might be my past confrontation with the Chalmerses that steered the appointment away from my mother. I hoped that wasn’t the case. My mother wouldn’t tell me either way, though. She took the department’s snubs with a stiff upper lip.

  “They’re lucky to have you on the case,” I told her. “If anyone can find Mason, it’s you.”

  She smiled and flicked a loose curl that had fallen over my forehead. “Thanks, buddy.”

  I pushed my spaghetti around the plate with my fork, making little gullies in the sauce. I wasn’t hungry. Usually I had no trouble discussing cases over dinner, but this time it was someone I knew. And the idea of Mason running away just didn’t sit right with me. I worried they were wasting precious time.

  “It just doesn’t wash,” I said at last, dropping my fork and sitting back from the table with my arms crossed.

  “Why not?” She wasn’t doubting me, necessarily; she was asking for me to back up my theory with evidence.

  “If Mason were off on an adventure, it seems only natural that he’d take his partner-in-crime.”

  “That’d be his brother, Dare?” She paused, then seemed to have a moment of clarity. I’d seen this expression on her face many times before, whenever she connected the dots on a case. I waited for her revelation.

  “Wait a minute. Was he… was Dare Chalmers the Phantom of the Opera?”

  I swallowed tightly, feeling a familiar burning sensation in my ears and loop-de-loop in my gut. I’d tried to keep my crush under wraps, but she caught me a few times humming the music. It wasn’t easy hiding your obsessions when your mother was a detective.

  “Immaterial,” I told her.

  She folded up her smile and packed it away before the tension in the room became too great.

  “Perhaps this is a means of separation and individuation common among adolescent twins,” she posited, all business again. “Do you suppose this might be Mason’s way of establishing his personhood, by physically running away from his brother?”

  “That seems more likely if the brothers were identical or constantly being compared to one another, but they’re so… different.” They were both shining stars, each in their own right.

  “I think there was a bit of comparison happening in the household,” she said. I waited for her to continue.

  “Are you going to elaborate on that?” I asked impatiently.

  “I’m not.”

  I scowled at her, frustrated at her unusual caginess. I felt a little guilty too. Was it just the case, or was I looking for clues into Dare’s personal life?

  “How can you expect me to work with only half the information?” I fussed. She cleared her throat louder than necessary. My mother was all about boundaries. I went back to my
original argument. “Even if that’s what this is, Mason wouldn’t let Dare worry. He’d at least tell him he was leaving or let him know he was safe.”

  “Perhaps he did, and Dare is only covering for him by acting desperate.”

  I thought again of the picture Dare posted that morning. “Did he seem desperate at the station?”

  “Downright distraught,” my mother answered simply.

  “Anecdotal evidence?”

  She motioned to her face. “He had bags under his eyes, said that he hadn’t slept the night before. His clothes were rumpled. His parents found him searching the house and then the surrounding property with their four-wheeler. He kept drifting off midsentence and telling me we had to find him. He said….” She stopped and chewed on her lower lip.

  “He said?” I prompted.

  She shook her head. “You know how I hate relying on intuition.”

  “I won’t let it influence me.”

  She sighed and rubbed her eyes. It had been a long day for her, I could tell. “He said he had a bad feeling that something terrible had happened to Mason. He related a story from a few years back. Mason fell off his dirt bike, and when Dare went into the woods behind their house, he found Mason with a broken leg. Do you remember that?”

  “Yeah, it happened in middle school. Around the time when Dad….” I studied my plate. “You know.” Neither of us liked to talk about my dad’s death. Those conversations could quickly turn into therapy sessions, and we’d both been to our respective therapists already that week.

  Mom picked up the conversation again. “Like I said, he seemed desperate for me to find him. Maybe he’s a good actor—”

  “He’s a better singer,” I said, somewhat randomly.

  “The point is….” She looked at me. She really hated being interrupted. “He seemed genuinely concerned.”

  “Some kind of twin sense?” I asked.