Read If the Witness Lied for Free Online Page B

“Secret,” whispers Jack loudly, so Tris is in on it.
    Brianna is smiling. People love it that Jack stayed with Tris. It’s weird to be popular just because he lives in his own house. Of course, his sisters partly bailed because of Aunt Cheryl, but the world doesn’t know that. And they partly bailed because people made offers—you can stay with us; you can live here. Nobody made such an offer to Jack.
    He gallops to the front door, but not fast enough. The day-care director is hurrying toward him. “Hey, Mrs. Griz,” he says, aiming for casual. Her last name has more syllables, but nobody uses them.
    Mrs. Griz bobs down the hall. “Your aunt just called!”
    *   *   *
    Smithy has no way to get home from this isolated boarding school. It’s about an hour and a half to Boston, where she could get a train or a plane. There are no taxis in the nearby village, and hitchhiking is against the law. She doesn’t have a car. Nostudent has a car. No teacher will give her a ride. They’ll give her counseling.
    More counseling—can you imagine? “Have you come to terms with the accident?” they like to say.
    Smithy no longer cares about the accident. She cares about going home.
    She could ask Mrs. Murray to drive up and get her. But Diana’s mother would probably say “Finish the semester, dear, and then come home.”
    Smith Fountain has finished the semester. She’s finished mourning. She’s finished being furious.
    It’s time.
    She leaves the cafeteria and enters the big front hall, where her coat hangs on a hook, her book bag under it. Most of the school year in the hills of Massachusetts is during cold weather. Taking off and putting on coats, hats, scarves, mittens and boots are constants. Some kids deal by wearing nothing. They race from building to building in shirtsleeves, taunting the cold. Others wrap themselves like packages, blocking out every wisp of wind. This morning is very chilly, but nobody’s in full winter gear yet. Smithy is wearing jeans, a long-sleeved white cotton shirt and a tangerine zip-up sweatjacket with a hood. She bought the jacket when she was staying with Kate and Kate’s mother took them to the mall. Smithy loves using her own credit card. The card has a limit, but this person Wade just pays the bill, so it doesn’t feel like a limit.
    Idling on the pavement in front of her is a yellow school bus, like the one Smithy and Jack and Madison used to take backhome. Smithy is calling it home again. Is it? Can she walk back in that door and be home? What will Jack and Madison say? Will they still like her?
    Around her swarm kids who are in a great mood. It seems that two art classes are taking this bus to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. There’s nothing like a field trip to make kids laugh. Smithy bathes in their exuberance, as if she could rub it in like lotion.
    The art teachers talk so intently to one another they could be plotting a murder. They climb onto the bus, leave their purses on the double front seat close to the driver and hop back out. One has a clipboard on which she checks off names.
    There are not enough kids to fill the bus. Most kids prefer the back. Those seats fill immediately. Others scatter according to whatever friendships or lack of friendships they have in art class.
    Smithy hangs her book bag back up. She fishes out her little purse, slides her cell phone into her jeans pocket and pulls the hood of her sweatshirt over her head. Not that tangerine is camouflage.
    One teacher returns to the building for a last stop in the ladies’ room. The other teacher and the driver stand on the sidewalk, studying a map.
    Smithy boards the bus.
    *   *   *
    Madison turns left on Chesmore Road.
    Connecticut is tree-covered. There are no long views. Evenin fall, when the bare branches of maples are like ink drawings against the sky, the thick green hemlocks and pines keep each house a secret from the next.
    She can’t see her house yet. She isn’t ready to see it,