The Grove Read Online Free

were kids, Greg fell out of an oak tree we’d been climbing in front of his house and snapped his leg in two places. I remember seeing the bone sticking through the skin and knowing I had to do something. His parents weren’t home at the time, so I ended up carrying him for two miles on my back to Dr. Whitfield’s house for help.
    When we finally got there, Dr. Whitfield braced Greg’s leg and drove us both down to the hospital. I stayed in the waiting room until Greg’s parents arrived. When they did, I told them what’d happened.
    I exaggerated Greg’s injury and the difficulty of carrying him all that way to make myself sound more heroic. When I finished the story, I was beaming.
    Greg’s father looked down at me, frowning. “Why the hell didn’t you call from the house? Why do all that for no reason?”
    I didn’t have an answer.
    When we got to see Greg, his parents commended him on his bravery and told him how proud they were of him for enduring the pain of being carried so far with a broken leg.
    I kept quiet.
    Later, back at his house and alone, Greg thanked me.
    “I would’ve done the same thing,” he’d said. “I didn’t think of the phone either. Don’t let it bother you.”
    I didn’t believe him. Greg was always good under pressure. Greg was always good at everything. That’s just the way things were.
    Me? I was the crazy one with the alcoholic father. It wasn’t until high school, when I’d learned I could hit a baseball better than anyone else, that people began to notice me for something positive, and eventually things got better.
    I met Liz, I had scholarship offers from several schools, but best of all, I stopped being Donald McCray’s messed-up kid for a while.
    Then everything crumbled.
    And now it was all crumbling again.
    No, I couldn’t call Greg, and yes, investigating the girl’s death was a bad decision, but it was the only one I could see.
    I capped the bottle of Scotch and slid it into my pocket then started for the break in the rows of corn that led out to the grove.
    I thought again about my new plan and wondered if going off my pills might be affecting my judgment.
    I didn’t like the answer that came to me, but in the end, I decided it really didn’t matter.

CHAPTER 6
     
    The girl was on her side, facing the corn. Her hair, falling over her face like a veil, shimmered with movement. As I got closer I saw the flies, thick and black, covering the ground by her head.
    I stepped over her and the flies scattered, revealing a dried yellow trail of vomit running into the dirt. There was no blood that I could see, and her uniform looked clean, no rips or stains.
    I waved more flies away, then bent over and ran a finger along the girl’s forehead. I wanted to push her hair back from her face, but it was stuck to the dried vomit on her skin. The sound of it tearing free made my throat clench.
    The flies gathered around my feet as I knelt over the girl. Her lips were purple and cracked. One of her eyes was half-closed; the other, milky and gray, stared toward the sky. The black makeup under her eyes had clumped into the lashes and smeared against her pale blue skin, making her look as though she’d been crying.
    Once again, I slid a finger along her forehead, looping her hair behind her ear. There were three small silver rings in her earlobe and another through the cartilage at the top.
    When I pulled my hand away, the back of my fingers brushed across her cheek. I’d expected her skin to be cold, but it wasn’t. The sun, which had now dropped just below the horizon, had kept her warm, but with night coming, that would change.
    I balanced on the balls of my feet and looked over the ground around her. Nothing stood out.
    There was a red ant crawling in the upturned palm of her right hand. I reached down and squeezed it between my fingers, then tossed it aside. When I did, I noticed a class ring on the middle finger of her right hand. It was too big for her, and she’d