Shatter Read online

  “No, no, no, no,” the Hispanic woman agreed. I found out later she was a journalist for one of the newspapers. “No one you know.”

  She was short with crisp, black hair. She put her hand on my arm and inadvertently brushed the inside of Dad’s wrist. Pausing, she tried on his touch like it was a dress in a shop window. She glanced at him and moved her hand away, though he didn’t appear to notice. I wondered how Dad knew her.

  A body? Like a dead body?

  “The police released a preliminary statement,” the journalist lady continued. “The corpse is in the morgue now, already identified. Hispanic, male. Maybe one of the laborers working here last spring. Or a gang member killed by a rival.”

  “The crew found some gang symbols around the site,” Dad explained.

  “Carrie’s car was tagged by gangs.” I glance again at the crew of workers. The union and growers and peach strike got all the press, but gangs sure seemed to be up to all kind of things around here lately.

  The officer who had called to me when I arrived in the field stepped closer to me. He had red hair and a boyish face. “Salem, I have a few questions about Carrie and her car, actually. Not now. Tomorrow. Could you answer some questions?”

  I looked at him. He was the same officer who had investigated Carrie’s death. He wore a nametag. J. B. Haynes.

  The encouragement of his phrasing didn’t mask the scrutiny he was giving me.

  “After Carrie died, you mentioned she’d had a secret,” Officer Haynes continued. “Could it have been tied to a crime she may have had information about? A murder?”

  PRESENT DAY

  Someone trips on the cord of a portable fan in the front of the classroom and it face-plants into the carpet, pulling me from my thoughts. I don’t know if minutes have passed or seconds. I only know reliving the scene from yesterday is awful.

  Murder.

  What does it mean to have information about a murder?

  Mr. White heads back to the front of the room while students and their partners pull their desks together. Cordero and I are the only ones who don’t. While the class digs into the assignment, Carrie’s two best friends, Envy and Kimi, stand and speak with the teacher for a moment. They come over and kneel next to me.

  “Girl, I’ma open Jeremy’s backpack and dump it over his head if he talks to you again,” Envy says, her lower lip trembling. Her pearl earrings dazzle against her dark skin.

  Kimi shakes her head, her almond-shaped eyes red from crying. Her cheerleader-ponytail sways, black, shiny, and straight. She’s a captain this year. “We tried to get Mr. White to let one of us work with Cordero instead of you. He won’t let us.”

  “Oh … thanks …”

  Kimi drops her voice. “I’ve never met him before, but that guy’s hardcore. This morning I heard him straight up tell the vice principal there’s nothing she can do about him being in a gang because it’s not illegal. He said it’s racist not to let bangers wear their numbers at school. He’s a senior. Transferred in from another school. I heard he got kicked out. Carrie would be furious at Mr. White for making you work with a guy like that.”

  How can I explain to them that Envy with her tears and Kimi rattling off Carrie’s name is worse than anything Cordero could do to me now? My chest aches. I can’t look up from the graffiti on the desk.

  “I … please, I … I’ll just work with him. It’s … just a few weeks.” My voice cracks, and I can’t get to Thank you, and I know you’re hurting too, and Forgive me.

  Envy squeezes my hand. She exchanges a look with Kimi, who motions for her to leave. They return to their desks.

  Leaving me alone with my sorrow.

  I make my mind focus on the black lettering of Cordero’s V tattoo, the one that seems so familiar to me. Other details won’t come. I don’t even know which gang he claims. The only things I know to look for are the Roman numerals and the colors. XII for the Primeros gang. XI for the Últimos. Blue. Green. Dumb as dead cats in a dryer, each of them. Violent as live ones in the same place.

  Stealthily wiping away a tear, I make myself as small as possible in my chair, hyperaware of air movement at the curve of my shoulders. My lower back is tense. I focus so I won’t cry.

  How did Cordero know my name?

  You can’t be Carrie Jefferson’s little sister without certain people knowing your name. Kids on the A-list like Envy and Kimi, for sure. A gang banger rockin’ colors, though—why? I think of his baseball cap, a sissy hat that no athlete on earth would use for sporting equipment. I can’t remember what color it is. He’s a gang member, but which color does he claim? Blue for XII, like the Primeros who targeted Carrie? All I can picture are his dark eyes blinking lazily, as if advertising his indifference to the world. All I can picture is a tire iron clenched in his fingers, his gold chains swinging as he windmills the weapon down onto the hood of Carrie’s yellow VW bug. I see Carrie terrified.

  I tell myself not to be fooled by his beautiful accent and physical confidence. Cordero might know exactly why my preppy sister was a beep on the radar of a hardcore gang. He might even have clues that suggest her death was more than an accident.

  Yesterday, nobody let themselves think such wild thoughts. Yesterday, nobody said a word about how a corpse had shown up not a quarter mile from where Carrie got toasted to charcoal. Just what kind of coincidence was that?

  It’s like Mr. White said. Nothing is more impossible to accept than a random event with large consequences.

  “Assignments are due tomorrow.” With Mr. White’s reminder comes an awareness of the classroom around me.

  The bell rings.

  In a swish of noise, I whirl to look behind me, determined to find out which gang he claims.

  The cap on top of Cordero’s tall frame has a stiff bill pointing just askew of straight backward.

  Blue. Primero XII blue. So he is in the gang that targeted Carrie.

  Salem Jefferson, he’d said earlier.

  My scattered thoughts solidify into a question. A question I know I have to answer.

  What if everything I’ve been told for twelve days about Carrie, everything I’ve been told about the day she died, everything I’ve been told about her supposedly accidental death in our supposedly empty orchard … was wrong?

  CHAPTER TWO

  DAY ONE, MORNING

  What’s going on?” I begged Carrie. My track bag was open at my feet inside our bedroom. Carrie was supposed to take me to the summer conditioning cross-country practice. Dad had left for his business trip that morning.

  Seated on my bed, Carrie stared in my direction as if she saw nothing at all. Brown hair fell in heavy curls past her shoulders, wispy at her temples. I didn’t know what had come over her this summer. Nervous fidgeting and long, whispered conversations with her boyfriend over the phone—Carrie had been keeping something hush-hush for months.

  I felt a chill. “Carrie?”

  She startled and looked at me. “What?”

  “Something’s wrong,” I said.

  She walked to her closet. “You’ve been saying that all summer,” she said in a harsh tone, maybe because she hated lying. She dealt in capital letter Truth. She stared at clothes hanging on the rod, but didn’t rifle through any.

  Leaving them, she came across the room to me.

  “Salem, the Farm Workers Union is on strike. It’s not like the other times. If they keep the media’s sympathy, they’re going to win. A full one dollar-an-hour increase in wages. Do you understand?”

  “You’re freaking me out.” Before this summer, I’d never seen Carrie frightened before. I didn’t even think she could be frightened.

  She sat on the bed. “I’m going to talk to someone important today … about righting a terrible wrong.” She looked like she might cry.

  “Who? What terrible wrong?” I asked gently, sitting next to her.

  She shook her head.

  I put my hand on her arm. “Do you mean when the growers hired someone to beat up those
union guys?”

  The incident was months ago, but Carrie still mentioned it often. Three union members were sent to the hospital with knife wounds after carrying a pro-strike sign in a vegetable field. I wondered if Carrie would break the law to fight back. A plan like that could be why she was so worried. For her sake, I should tell Dad on her. For her sake, I could never tell Dad on her. Carrie had to trust me. I needed her. She knew I needed her.

  I bit my lip. “Are you planning to do something that’s … I don’t know … illegal? I won’t tell Dad. I promise.”

  “Hurting people is wrong, but not everybody believes that,” she whispered. She was always saying stuff like that.

  “I told you I wouldn’t tell Dad,” I begged. “Why does everything have to be secret?”

  “Salem, just stop asking me questions. Please?” She stood and walked to the bedroom door, motioning for me to follow. “We need to get you to practice anyway.”

  PRESENT DAY

  “Ever had a friend betray you? Happened to me once. A girl told everyone my secrets,” Coach Johnny says.

  I hear his question and reality rushes at me, replacing my memories. I’m not at home with Carrie. Home is uninhabitable, half-burned to the ground. Carrie is dead. Seventh period ended fifteen minutes ago, bringing the first day of classes to a close.

  I’m standing in bright green shoes on Verona High’s track alongside my closest cross-country friends and the rest of the team. The shoes are new. So are my shorts and shirt. After searching the smoke-blackened house for treasures like Carrie’s nearly undamaged jewelry box, Dad and I shopped for essentials—clothes, a men’s electric razor, office supplies—until literal exhaustion set in.

  At practice, everyone has been really nice—offering to grab me a water bottle or politely smiling. The whole team is doing stuff like that, all without talking much to me, like maybe Envy and Kimi spoke personally to every student at Verona High with instructions that I be given space or else. I want to show that I’m grateful, but I want more to disappear into my team, the way I used to.

  My cross-country coach’s white hair nearly glows, reflecting sunlight. In this type of weather, your mouth is dry one minute after you polish off a water bottle.

  “That’s what a six-mile run is for,” he continues as we stretch. The green of Verona High’s gym glares in the distance, and the campus looks like a heat-shimmer behind it. “You’re about to get that pain out of your system. Time to shut that girl up for good, huh?”

  I wince and turn away. Whatever—or whoever—killed Carrie obliterated her secret right along with her. What if it was just like Coach Johnny said? What if someone thought it was time to shut that girl up for good?

  “Today, we’re going to do a nice long run at a target heart rate of 140. Salem.” Coach Johnny tosses me a wristwatch with a heart rate monitor on it.

  I catch it in one hand. He’s got a whole box of them at his feet.

  “Veterans, help show the newbies how they work,” he instructs, waving me toward two sets of pigtails.

  I walk over to the girls, showing them the watch. “See, you just, um, program in a target rate of 140.”

  “Oh, I get it,” one of the girls says. She pushes the buttons and then turns to the other. “You want to hit the mall after practice?”

  The second girl shakes her head. “You know I have to pick peaches until dark.”

  “Why don’t your parents just hire workers who are willing to break the strike?”

  “We can’t find any.”

  The girls glance at me out of the corners of their eyes. They seem cool. I could talk to them if I were sure they wouldn’t bring up the issue of the corpse found in our orchard. Or how the peach strike is all because of Carrie and her Students for Strike club.

  Carrie put together a fundraiser with the Portland rock band Pawnbrokers that raised thirty thousand dollars for the Farm Workers Union. She was quoted in local newspapers saying that peach pickers needed higher wages. As the higher wages mantra went viral, a union worker named Juan Herrera went missing. Some say he returned to his native Mexico. Some say he was murdered. The union blamed his disappearance on the growers, but the growers said the union accused them with no evidence. Within a month, the union voted to go on strike.

  Today, the earliest crops are already rotten and gone. California peaches start ripening in late June. It’s still mid-August—Verona High is on a semester system—but every day, more of the two hundred million dollar crop falls to the ground and decays.

  Coach Johnny comes back from the other group. “Salem, I’ve got a challenge for you.”

  A guy stands next to Coach Johnny. Black hair swept sideways over deep blue eyes. A smirky mouth. He has the olive skin and high cheekbones of an Eastern European.

  Slate Panakhov.

  At the sight of him, a memory of Carrie’s voice plays inside my head. “Slate Panakhov, that’s who. We’re going out Friday night, can you believe it?”

  I don’t remember when the conversation took place exactly. Sometime last year when they started dating, I guess. By summer, I’m pretty sure they shared Carrie’s secret—a weight they frowned over and wouldn’t tell.

  “Salem.” Slate runs his hand over his bangs to keep them back. He watches me, like maybe he’ll see some sign that I’m okay.

  “Hi,” I say, fidgeting.

  So far I haven’t been able to talk about Carrie without crying, so I say nothing at all to the people who knew her. Slate doesn’t like that, I know it.

  “You two are going to do a stress test to find your max heart rate,” Coach Johnny says to Slate and me. “You’re my best athletes, so your max could be higher than average.”

  Slate catches my eye and gives me a cautious smile. His skin is darker than mine, but it looks medium-toned compared to his black hair and the traces of dense stubble that would only need a few days to become a full beard.

  I step back, and my running shoes catch on each other. I feel guilty because I need to beat that smile off his face. Why did she tell him her secret when she wouldn’t tell me?

  “Okay, get ready,” Coach says.

  I head to my track bag while Slate talks to a few girls. Does he think about Carrie when those girls throw their hair over their shoulders and meet his gaze?

  Slate hadn’t been Carrie’s first kiss. He’d been her first love.

  I’m angry and emotional and feel stupid for feeling anything at all. I grab a water bottle. Spilled liquid traces down my neck as I gulp. Heat like this can never be beaten.

  I throw the bottle into my bag and head for the track.

  Our teammates cheer as we line up, separated by six empty lanes. Slate will have to travel considerably more distance than me, being so far from the center lane. He runs cross-country to stay in shape, but he’s a sprinter at heart—Verona High’s best. No way can I stay with him. He bounces on his toes to get his blood pumping.

  I lean over my watch and set it to a rate of 180. Carrie’s secret is gone now.

  Or is it?

  CHAPTER THREE

  DAY ONE, MORNING

  My memories of the day Carrie died center on the thunderstorm. I was just finishing a four-mile run, watching Slate Panakhov stretch his quad while clouds churned above him. Coach planned to have us record our goals for the season and then sprint five sets of one hundred meters as a final hurrah. That’s when Carrie called and told me a gang had spray painted her car after she got back from dropping me off.

  “What?” I asked her. “A gang?”

  “Everything is under control.” She didn’t sound in control. She sounded terrified and breathless. “Hold on, the police are here.”

  The call ended.

  Frantic, I dialed Dad, but didn’t leave a voicemail. He was on his way to Reno for work and there’s no cell coverage during much of the drive. Coach started us on our goals, which included me taking first in every meet. As soon as we finished, I called Carrie back.

  “Carrie?”


  “The officers just left. I’m fine,” she said, still sounding otherwise.

  “Did you call Dad?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

  “I texted Slate.”

  I looked for Slate. His friends were hanging out near the long-jump pit. He was nearby, gazing unsmiling at the horizon. His black hair looked darker in the shadow of the gathering clouds. I wondered what Carrie had told him.

  “I don’t know. They went after my car,” Carrie continued, her statements scattered.

  On Carrie’s end of the phone line, a door shut with a whoosh. I could hear her sniffing.

  “That smell is getting worse,” she said under her breath.

  “The manure?” I asked. All the growers fertilize with manure.

  “No, I’m in the kitchen. I have to talk to the police again. I have to. I have to tell them. Only … I just don’t know if I can.”

  “Are you okay? Carrie?”

  “Salem?” she asked, as if confused I was still on the line. It’s like she was in shock or something.

  “Carrie, I’m skipping the sprints and coming home. I’ll hitch a ride with someone right now.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. I can be home in ten minutes.”

  She paused. I could hear her breathing, like collecting herself. “Whatever. There you go again. Always trying to prove you’re the strong one.”

  “You’re such a liar,” I said, smiling despite my worry. Carrie was the strong one. But I loved her for letting me see moments when she wasn’t so confident. When she wasn’t announcing her thoughts like they were speeches for posterity.

  Carrie’s voice became more coherent. “You are strong. But you need to get out there more. Talk. Kiss a guy. Salem, you cannot get rid of those virgin lips if you never talk.” This was one of her favorite subjects.

  I didn’t see Carrie as we spoke. I didn’t smell the odor she’d noticed—the natural gas.

  Instead, I paced under the darkening clouds. Carrie was scared, but she was okay. And if Carrie was okay, everything was okay. I actually had that exact thought.

  “Yes, I can,” I said.