Conviction Read Online Free

It’s
exhausting putting on a polite smile and telling everyone
Thank you for the casserole
and
Thank you for praying
and
Yes, I’m fine
and
No, I haven’t heard from
him
; it makes me feel more alone, not less.
    Three days after his arrest, someone spray-paints KILLER on a billboard advertising his show, right across his face. Chase Singer goes off about how it’s going to
be a bloodbath when we play La Abra this year, how I’ll need a bodyguard, and my catcher, Colin Sykes, smacks him and snaps, “Real sensitive. Maybe try shutting up,” and tells me
I have nothing to worry about, that I know they’re all behind me. Dutch Hammell tacks the schedule up in our dugout and circles the La Abra game—May 12—in red.
    Five days after his arrest, when I’ve still heard nothing from him and I’m starting to wonder if they aren’t allowing him any contact, I go to the airport with Kevin Cortland
to pick up Trey. Kevin’s Trey’s best friend from way back, and also my Civics teacher at school and—Pastor Stan is his dad—one of the youth group leaders at church. Kevin
called as he was leaving to say I should come with him to the airport. One person, he said, wasn’t much of a homecoming brigade.
    It’s nine at night and mostly empty in the baggage claim. There’s some TVs mounted on the walls, and every one of them seems to have the news on, so I don’t look. There’s
a college-age girl wearing this tight black shirt and nothing underneath who I’m ignoring because I want Trey to land safely and to not hate me for having to come here, and averting my eyes
is my tacit bargain with God. And, even though I’m trying not to see, there are three cops in tan-colored uniforms pacing by the security line.
    “So,” Kevin says, deliberately casually, “some rough news about the proceedings this week, huh?”
    He’s lasted longer than I expected, actually; the whole two hours here we talked mostly about baseball and some about school, and even though I could tell it was killing him, he
didn’t ask me a thing about my dad. I arrange my expression into something as neutral as possible and say, mildly, “Mm.”
    “How have you been feeling about everything going on?”
    I say, “Fine.” Which isn’t exactly accurate, obviously. What I’ve been feeling is a low-grade terror, like kindling, ready to leap into flame. Although one good thing did
happen yesterday: Maddie Stern, whose family moved here from Bakersfield over the summer, came up to me when I was at my locker. Right on cue, in spite of all the ways my mind was frayed and
short-circuiting, I got that tingling feeling I always do when I pass her in the halls or when I see her at church. We talk sometimes in youth group and in class, and, if I’m being honest,
I’ve been pretty into her since the first day I saw her at school. She stood out in the classroom like she was backlit, not just because she was the new girl or the only Asian person in it or
whatever, but because she’s beautiful in a way that makes you want to keep staring, a way where, before you even know it, you’re picturing what it would be like to kiss her. I
wouldn’t quite call us friends, though, and so I was surprised yesterday when she asked me for my e-mail. When I got home after school, she’d sent a message:
Dear Braden, I’m
sorry about the accident you were in. This is a song that made me think of you. Sincerely, Maddie Stern.
Underneath she’d typed her phone number. When I hit play, Maddie’s voice
filled the room. It was a song I didn’t know, but something about the way the notes rose and fell and hovered, the way they kept ratcheting up like they were leading somewhere and then just
hung in the air, made me think she knows something about what it’s like to miss someone, and what it’s like when your world bottoms out.
    Not that I told her that, because it’s not the kind of thing I’d normally say to someone, and it’s possible she just felt bad