Page 40 of The Bright Lands

“Then why not all go together in Dylan’s truck?”

Bethany chuckled. “Because it doesn’t have a back seat. Can you imagine one of those guys riding bitch for three hours?”

“But, Bethany,whydid Dylan make all these trips in the first place?” Clark said, waving this away. “You must have been curious.”

She didn’t answer immediately. She returned her phone to her bag, pushed back a strand of hair, regarded Clark and Mayfield with a piteous frown.

“Being quarterback is very stressful, you know.” The girl spoke as if she were explaining this to a child. “People around hereworshipDylan—they stop him at the gas station and the Egg House, they always want something from him. After we made it to the semifinals it was batshit around here. Hehadto get away. To clear his head. He said he’d forget who he was otherwise.”

Clark opened her mouth, hesitated. Kimbra Lott had given her basically the same answer to the same question. And, unless Clark were much mistaken, her brother, Troy, had once told her the same thing about being a successful running back, long before the neck injury in his senior year had brought out an uglier side of the town’s devotion. She supposed, in some strange way, it was a blessing to Dylan that he’d died beloved.

Clark noticed, also, that Bethany was speaking about Dylan as if he were still alive.

“I think I understand,” Clark said. “But, Bethany—why wouldn’t Dylan take you with him?”

“My dad would never let me.”

“You must have missed your boy, though.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Not like what?”

The briefest glimpse of a scowl crossed Bethany’s face. “Dylan didn’t have anything to hide from me.”

Clark frowned. That wasn’t what she’d asked.

Mayfield cleared his throat. “Dylan never went alone?”

“No. He and KT are good friends.”

“But this was the first weekend all three of the boys went together,” Clark said. “Dylan, KT and Jamal?”

It was, Bethany said.

“And whose idea was it to bring Jamal?” Clark asked.

“It was Dylan’s. They’d always wanted to bring him but Jamal’s dad is real strict. It took some convincing him.”

“And what did Jamal do on those weekends over the summer when his friends left him here?”

Bethany shrugged. He spent the time with his family, she guessed. Jamal was single, Bethany said, and had been so since spring. Past that, she swore she didn’t know a great deal about him. “Dylan has his friends,” Bethany said. “And I have mine.”

“Be that as it may—” Clark made a show of turning over a page in her notebook. “You must be worried about KT Staler. We hear he never made it to class today.”

At that, Bethany very clearly frowned. “You should ask Kimbra about him. Staler and I were never close.”

“Was there any particular reason for that?”

Bethany shrugged, glanced at the blinded window. “His family’s garbage.”

“They’ve had their troubles.” Clark arched an eyebrow. “Did you ever get the impression KT took after his siblings?”

“You mean did I think he was on drugs?” Bethany said, meeting Clark’s eye. “No.”

Clark’s mind returned to KT’s insistence yesterday that Dylan had had a girl on the side. Clark wondered how Bethany would react to such a claim. Did this girl with the perfect skin and the sheet of golden hair have it in her to kill her boyfriend and dump his body in a creek?

Watching the way Bethany smoothed the hem of her sleeve with a muted precision, the same precision with which she appeared to smooth down every inch of herself, Clark’s answer was obvious.