Page 33 of The Sister's Curse

“Boba,” the boy said distantly. “Boba Fett.”

“Your name is Boba Fett?”

“Yeah.” He sounded very unsteady.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” the paramedic asked.

“Three, I think.”

The paramedic put his index finger in front of Boba Fett’s face. “I want you to follow my finger with your eyes…Good.”

I scooched closer to Fett as the paramedics applied pressure to the wounds on his chest. Nothing looked life-threatening, but even small amounts of blood could be serious.

“Am I gonna die?” he squeaked, staring down at the blood.

“No. Just look at the ceiling,” the paramedic ordered.

I seized the opportunity to ask questions. “What happened out there?”

He gazed at me with glassy eyes. “There was a girl.”

“What girl?” I hoped to hell someone hadn’t drowned without my noticing.

“I heard a girl singing. She sounded hot,” he mumbled. “So I swam over there.”

“Did you see this girl?”

“Yeah. She was smokin’…Goth girl.”

“What did she look like?”

“Pretty.”

I figured I wasn’t going to get a better description. “Was she in trouble?”

“Nuh-uh. She was singing, calling me…I thought I might get her number…”

“Then what happened?”

Fett glared up at the ambulance ceiling. “She…she grabbed me. At first, I thought she was playing. She grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me down.”

I inhaled sharply. “And then…?”

“That’s…that’s all I remember…her pulling me down.”

9

Small-town Secrets

The ambulance swerved on backcountry roads. Boba Fett turned his head and puked. A paramedic caught the vomit in a bucket, and I leaned back against the wall.

A girl. A girl had tried to drown Boba Fett. Well, the kid was pretty out of it. Probably hypoxic. That might be total bullshit, but I dug in my bag for my cell phone and called Dispatch.

“This is Lt. Koray. I’ve got a message for the deputies on the scene at Sandpiper Run.”

“Let me patch you through Bluetooth,” Dispatch said.

I didn’t know they could do that. Must have something to do with Chief’s new radios. After a moment of static, I heard aBEEP, and then Deputy Detwiler’s voice: “This is D6.”