The Dead Student Read Online Free PDF Page A

Or that’s what everyone thinks. Like my whole tight-ass family and the damn cops.”
    Andy Candy said nothing.
    “I don’t think he killed himself.”
    “You don’t?”
    “No.”
    “Then how …”
    “Only one other possibility: I think he was murdered.”
    She was silent for a moment.
    “Why do you think that?”
    “He wouldn’t kill himself. That wasn’t him. He’d overcome so many problems, something new—if there was something—wouldn’t faze him. And he wouldn’t have left me all alone. Not now, no way. So, if he didn’t do it, someone else had to.”
    This wasn’t really an explanation, Andy Candy realized. It was more a conclusion based on the flimsiest of ideas.
    “It’s up to me to find the person who killed him.” Moth’s voice had grown rigid, cold, and tough, barely recognizable. “No one else will look. Just me.”
    She paused again. The conversation wasn’t at all what she’d expected, though she didn’t know what she had expected in the first place.
    “Why, how …” she started, not really expecting answers.
    “And when I find him, I have to kill him. Whoever he is,” Moth said. Unexpected ferocity. Not call the cops or even just do something about it, something vague and indistinct and actually appropriate. Andy Candy was shocked, astonished, instantly scared. But she didn’t hang up.
    “I need your help,” Moth said.
    Help could mean many things. But Andy Candy rocked back on her bed, as if she’d been pushed hard and slammed down. She wasn’t sure she could breathe.
    Killer.
    Don’t make a promise you can’t keep.

 
     
    3
     
    He picked a place to meet that seemed benign.
    Or, at the minimum, wouldn’t evoke something from their past or say something about what he anticipated for their future—if there was any to be had. He rode a bus and fingered a picture he had: Andy at seventeen. Happy, looking up from a burger and fries. But this memory was crowded aside.
    “Hello. My name is Timothy. I’m an alcoholic. I have three days sober.”
    “Hi Timothy!” from the gathering at Redeemer One. He thought the entire group appeared subdued but genuinely glad he was back amidst them. When he had sidled awkwardly into the room at the start of the meeting, more than one of the regulars had risen from their chairs and eagerly embraced him, and several had wrapped him in condolences that he knew were sincere. He was sure that they all knew about his uncle’s death and could easily imagine what it had pushed him into. When called upon to testify, for the first time he had the odd thought that perhaps he meant more to all of them than they did to him, but he did not know exactly why.
    “Three whole damn days,” he repeated, before sitting down.
    Moth put his ninety hours of recent sobriety into a mental calendar:
    Day One: He woke up at dawn collapsed on the red-dirt infield of a Little League diamond. He had no recollection of where he’d spent the greater part of the night. His wallet was gone, as was one of his shoes. The stench of vomit overcame everything else. He was unsure where he found the strength to unevenly stagger the twenty-seven blocks back to his apartment, once he’d figured out where he was. He limped the last blocks on a sole torn raw by the sidewalks. Once inside, he stripped off his clothes like a snake shedding a worthless skin and cleaned up—hot shower, comb, and toothbrush. He tossed everything he’d been wearing into the trash and realized that it was two weeks since his uncle died and he had not been home in all that time. He was mildly grateful for the blackout that prevented him from realizing what other baseball diamonds he’d slept on.
    He told himself to climb back onto the wagon, but spent the entire day in his darkened apartment hiding, physically sick, stomach twisted, day sweats turning to night sweats, afraid to go outside. It was as if some sultry, seductive siren was awaiting him, right past his front door, and she would lure him