Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy by Susan Vaught

yelled, and I wanted to bang my head on the conference table. “And no, I didn’t have brothers. It was just my mother and me, but I don’t see how that matters.”
    â€œSure you could shoot your eye out with a BB gun,” I said. “If you were stupid enough not to wear your safety glasses and stare into the barrel while you were shooting it, which would be hard, because it’s kind of long, and ifI put my eye on the barrel, I probably couldn’t reach the trigger. Are you going to tell Dad you came to talk to me? Because I’m calling him about it the second you leave.”
    Stephanie Bridges looked back at her papers and made a few more notes, letting the room get quiet around the air-conditioner hum. Then she said, “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to have guns in the house with children and a person who has mental illness.”
    I sighed. “I told you, they’re locked.”
    â€œYour mother opened the case,” she said. “How?”
    The dull beat-beat of my heart made me bite my bottom lip. I so wanted this to be over, and I so didn’t want to answer this question. I thought about the gun case down in our big basement. There was a pool table down there too, and a television, and Dad’s weights, and a little bedroom with a bathroom and shower but no windows. I wanted to be down there right at that moment, watching movies and lifting Dad’s hand weights instead of talking to this woman.
    â€œHow did your mother open the gun case, Footer?” Stephanie Bridges asked again.
    â€œShe bent the lock. Look, I have to go to the restroom,” I said. “And it’s almost lunchtime. Are we done?”
    Stephanie Bridges shifted her gaze to Ms. Malone, then seemed to process the title of the serial-killer book Ms. Malone was holding. “Are you teaching that in the classroom?”
    â€œI took it up from a student,” Ms. Malone said.
    â€œWhich student?”
    Ms. Malone gave her the best smile I had ever seen. “Footer asked if you were finished.”
    Stephanie Bridges eyed her and the book, and then she eyed me. “For now,” she finally said. “But I may have more questions later.”

CHAPTER
7

Still Eleven Days After the Fire, but a Lot Happened, So It Feels Like Months. I Really Hate Days Like This.
    I’d probably be a good journalist, because when I can’t stand stuff anymore and my brain does its freeze-frames, nothing matters more than the words. Like the conversation with Ms. Malone, after Stephanie Bridges finally went away:
    Ms. Malone: I’ll take the serial-killer book back to the public library. Why were you reading it?
    Me: Because Dateline said maybe a serial killer kidnapped Cissy and Doc Abrams. I wanted to see if any of the guys in that book kidnapped kids.
    Ms. Malone: This is where I’m supposed to lecture you about not messing around theAbrams farm because it could be dangerous, then get annoyed because you’re saying “Yes, ma’am” but really ignoring me.
    Me: Yes, ma’am
    Ms. Malone: Footer, while Ms. Bridges is involved with your family, I wouldn’t light any fires with magnifying glasses or poke around those ashes or check out any more books about serial killers. She might get the wrong idea.
    Me: Yes, ma’am.
    I remembered it all, but it was snips and snaps, with words in the picture instead of faces. No other sights, no other sounds, no other feelings. Snip, snap.
    â€œWhat’d your dad say when you called?” Peavine asked me a few hours later, at recess.
    â€œHe was ticked.” I wiped sweat off my forehead with my arm, then scrubbed my arm on my shirt. “He’s checking with people. He said we’d talk when he gets home tonight.”
    We were standing under the maple tree near the back of the sixth-grade wing. We could see Angel’s class out behind their wing, and across the street from the third graders a bunch