The Incident on the Bridge Read online

  Also by Laura McNeal

  Dark Water

  You Can’t Leave Me Now: Three Stories of True Crime

  Also by Laura McNeal, writing with her husband, Tom McNeal

  Crooked

  Zipped

  Crushed

  The Decoding of Lana Morris

  By Tom McNeal

  Far Far Away

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Laura McNeal

  Cover photograph of bridge copyright © 2016 by Micha Pawlitzki/Getty Images

  Cover photograph of boat copyright © 2016 by Alison Langley/Getty Images

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouseteens.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: McNeal, Laura, author.

  Title: The incident on the bridge / Laura McNeal.

  Description: First Edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2016. | Summary: When Thisbe Locke is last seen standing on the edge of the Coronado Bridge, it looks like there is only one thing to call it. As the town prepares to mourn the loss, her sister Ted, and Fen, the new kid in town, are not convinced and they set out to figure out what happened on that bridge and find Thisbe.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015024304 | ISBN 978-0-375-87079-8 (hardback) | ISBN 978-0-375-97079-5 (lib. bdg.) | ISBN 978-0-307-97461-7 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Mystery and detective stories. | Sisters—Fiction. | Bridges—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Self-Esteem & Self-Reliance. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Emotions & Feelings. | JUVENILE FICTION / Family / Siblings.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.M47879365 Inc 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/​2015024304

  eBook ISBN 9780307974617

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Laura Mcneal

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Impulse

  Chapter 2: Tidelands

  Chapter 3: The Bridge

  Chapter 4: The Red Truck

  Chapter 5: The Malfunction

  Chapter 6: On the Water

  Chapter 7: Officer Lord on the Bridge

  Chapter 8: Looking

  Chapter 9: Frank Le Stang

  Chapter 10: Witness

  Chapter 11: Gretchen Ryman

  Chapter 12: Ted Locke

  Chapter 13: Clay Moorehead

  Chapter 14: Fen Harris

  Chapter 15: Jerome Betchman

  Chapter 16: Fen

  Chapter 17: Ted

  Chapter 18: Carl Harris

  Chapter 19: Fen

  Chapter 20: Known

  Chapter 21: Graycie Dunn

  Chapter 22: Thisbe Locke

  Chapter 23: Ted

  Chapter 24: Sun Salutations

  Chapter 25: Fen

  Chapter 26: Ted

  Chapter 27: Jerome

  Chapter 28: Thisbe

  Chapter 29: Jerome

  Chapter 30: Thisbe

  Chapter 31: Jerome

  Chapter 32: Clay

  Chapter 33: Gretchen

  Chapter 34: Carl

  Chapter 35: Graycie

  Chapter 36: Thisbe

  Chapter 37: Clay

  Chapter 38: Fen

  Chapter 39: Thisbe

  Chapter 40: Carl

  Chapter 41: Ted

  Chapter 42: Gretchen

  Chapter 43: Thisbe

  Chapter 44: Fen

  Chapter 45: Jerome

  Chapter 46: Fen

  Chapter 47: Carl

  Chapter 48: Frank

  Chapter 49: Thisbe

  Chapter 50: Fen

  Chapter 51: Thisbe

  Chapter 52: Frank

  Chapter 53: Hugh Locke

  Chapter 54: Frank

  Chapter 55: Thisbe

  Chapter 56: Jerome

  Chapter 57: Thisbe

  Chapter 58: Ted

  Chapter 59: Fen

  Chapter 60: Frank

  Chapter 61: Fen

  Chapter 62: Frank

  Chapter 63: Jerome

  Chapter 64: Frank

  Chapter 65: Clay

  Chapter 66: Gretchen

  Chapter 67: Fen

  Chapter 68: Graycie

  Chapter 69: Fen

  Chapter 70: R. P. Skelly

  Chapter 71: Thisbe

  Chapter 72: Frank

  Chapter 73: Thisbe

  Chapter 74: Finds

  Chapter 75: Skelly

  Chapter 76: Jerome

  Chapter 77: Frank

  Chapter 78: Thisbe

  Chapter 79: Ted

  Chapter 80: Thisbe

  Chapter 81: Frank

  Chapter 82: Thisbe

  Chapter 83: Fen

  Chapter 84: Carl

  Chapter 85: Frank

  Chapter 86: Thisbe

  Chapter 87: Two Weeks Later

  Acknowledgments

  FOR TOM

  Thisbe had to stop. She had to quit obsessing about Clay and Jerome and college and ride her bike down to Glorietta Bay, where she always felt better, where she had researched and written “The Effect of Pleasure Boating on the Mid-Intertidal Zone,” the best paper Ms. Berron had ever seen from a high school student. She should stare into the murky water until she saw the rippling edges of a stingray as it fluttered its way along the rocks. That was a reliable thrill: wild animal, you, chance. Contact with an alien world.

  She changed into shorts and found her notebook, but she couldn’t help it: she lay back down. She knew what she should have done, but she couldn’t go back to February and do it. That was the problem.

  Take, for instance, the morning the doorbell rang. A Saturday. Bright and beautiful.

  —

  She’d still been asleep, which was why she hadn’t answered the door right away. She’d called out several times in a not very patient voice, “Could someone please answer the door?” No one had answered her, and the bell rang again. The sofas were empty when she huffed herself out of bed and down the stairs. Sections of the New York Times flung over the kitchen island. Coffee cups drained. A single pancake dry at the edges on a sticky plate. Finally she remembered her sister Ted’s regatta in Alamitos Bay. That was where everyone had gone.

  She opened the front door, and there it was: A fortune cookie on a paper plate. Not in a wrapper but under plastic wrap like when you made cookies yourself and gave them to somebody. When she pulled the plastic off, the cookie smelled of almonds. She scanned the giant hedge between her house and Mrs. J’s: nobody there. The Greenbaughs’ magnolia trees: nobody. Nothing but lawns, parked cars, and flickering sun.

  A gift or a prank? She didn’t want someone to drive by and see her in her pajamas, so she bent down (careful not to show cleavage), grabbed the plate, and paused. It might be one of those things she heard about all the time but had never personally experienced, proposal bombs; no, it was some made-up w
ord—promposals. Like when the guys from the water polo team had painted one letter per bare chest to spell P-R-O-M-? to ask Emily Jenks to go with…was it Bruce Greckenthaler? Thisbe forgot which guy, but maybe this was like that. And the cookie could be for Ted. That was a depressing thought. Ted was only fourteen, and guys hit on her all the time. On Valentine’s Day, Mike Rounderman had left roses for her. Red ones. And he was a junior.

  Thisbe wanted the fortune cookie to be from Jerome, but that was crazy. Jerome didn’t like her. If he did, he would have smiled back at Thisbe in the quad and picked her to be in his small group when Mr. Shao had asked for volunteers to take the pro-Shylock side.

  Thisbe stood there holding the plate. Should she set it back down or take it inside? Say something ironic to the empty street? No, that would be dumb. It was normal to take the plate inside even if it wasn’t for her. She shut the door behind her and then spied through the peephole in case someone made a run for it, but no one did.

  The fortune was actually sticking out. Just a bit. And the seam of the cookie was pretty wide. Thisbe could push the fortune back in if it was meant for Ted, and who could blame her for looking, anyway? The plate had no name on it.

  She tugged, and the paper slipped free.

  TRUST ME, THISBE, it said.

  Thisbe, not Ted. The good feeling started small and flared to every corner of the room. It had to be Jerome, because who else would even be worried about whether she trusted him? Two nights earlier, he had come over to study. They had stood together right here, on this very rug. She’d felt bad because of the way the night had ended, with him thinking she thought he was a stoner when she didn’t. She’d smiled at him in the quad the next day and he hadn’t smiled. Or maybe he hadn’t seen her?

  TRUST ME.

  She’d had no conversations with other guys. Only Jerome.

  On the back, under Lucky Numbers, it said: 25 29 66.

  The date for prom? Not unless she was going to the prom in the twenty-fifth month of 1966. Maybe they were just random numbers. They probably didn’t mean anything at all.

  Awesome, she thought. She took pride in never saying that word, but she thought it now. Because really it was awesome: Jerome Betchman, who was more interesting than Mike Rounderman on every level, was (1) romantic, (2) creative, (3) not mad at her. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to show her that.

  She stuck her eye to the peephole again and saw a white car. The sun falling slantwise through the window on her bare feet was even brighter now, and she broke off a tiny piece of cookie to eat. Fortune cookies were the worst dessert in the world, to be honest, worse even than pecan sandies, but this one was sort of buttery, like a crepe, and she had to make herself stop nibbling because she wanted to keep it forever. She took the broken cookie to her room and wrapped it in a tissue and set it in a yellow tin box that said Sunshine State. Then she sat down on her bed to tell Jerome that she got the fortune cookie and she loved it so much and she did trust him. Of course she did! She was sorry she’d ever worried what her mother thought of him. But what should she do? Call him?

  No. Her voice would sound too excited. Quavery. She would talk too fast and say too much. If she texted him, though, she could compose it all first. Think it through. Write and revise. Then send.

  Thanks for the cookie, she typed.

  Did it need an exclamation point? Thanks for the cookie!

  Still not that impressive. Thanks for the amazing cookie!!!!!!!

  No. Too delirious. Just: Thanks for the cookie!

  Should she add an emoji? She didn’t normally use emojis, but Ted said that was why Thisbe always sounded like a cranky old hagball.

  Just one. A heart, maybe. Not a red one but a blue one. Or was there a fortune cookie emoji somewhere in her phone? She looked at all the tiny pictures, and although there were a whole bunch of cute ones and a lot of truly weird ones, none of them made sense in this context.

  Okay. Just, Thanks for the cookie! and heart picture. Deep breath. Send.

  There it went.

  She sat expectantly for five minutes. Nothing happened. The sun shone. Wind clattered through a palm frond. A bird sang.

  She would take a shower and then see if she got a message.

  Nothing. Not at 12:30, 1:30, 2:30, 3.

  As the hours passed, she did an outline for history, a Spanish assignment, and all of her calc. Practiced the piano. Ate not one but two muffins. The only message she received was from Ted. Bullet in the third race!

  Bullet as in first place.

  Congrats! She typed. The day was eight million years long. All the sunshine was going to waste, but she couldn’t think what to do with it. If Jerome had left the cookie for her—if anyone had, really!—he or the random stranger would be wondering if she got it, right? Wondering what she thought. Waiting to hear back from her. But clearly Jerome wasn’t.

  The answer she was waiting for finally came after dark. Two stony words.

  All that Jerome said was, What cookie?

  She waited a few minutes so it wouldn’t seem like she was one of those people who constantly checked their phone. She felt so confused and deflated now. Prickly all over her skin and in her stomach. Something was wrong, obviously. She typed: The fortune cookie.

  Sorry. Wasn’t me.

  It wasn’t? Oh. Okay! My mistake. No heart shape or koala bear or smiley face. There was no emoji for this.

  The conversation ended. Sat there like a dead thing. No matter how many times she reread it, she couldn’t find any desire on Jerome’s part to talk with her. She’d gotten a cookie from someone, and the cookie wasn’t from him. Of course he would be terse.

  But who had sent the cookie? And why? She opened the tin box and picked up the curved shards she hadn’t eaten. She bit off another piece and tasted it as if the flavor might provide a clue. It wasn’t quite as delicious now. She turned the message over again and read Lucky Numbers 25 29 66. There was nothing lucky about them, as far as she could see.

  The next fortune cookie appeared in her backpack after lunch on Monday, in the front pocket where she kept her pencils. Jerome was in class as usual, sitting slightly behind her and far to the right. Thisbe stared at the cookie briefly and left it there, straightening herself in the chair. If she unwrapped the cookie on her desk or even in her lap, everyone near her was going to notice, including Jerome and Mr. Shao. She glanced around to see if anyone was watching her lean back down for the second time to take a pencil out of her bag. Jerome wasn’t looking right at her, but he seemed to be aware of her self-consciousness, so she turned back to Mr. Shao and listened to the difference between metonymy and synecdoche.

  She would have to wait. All through class. She waited and she thought about the cookie wrapped in plastic.

  It seemed weird to go to a bathroom stall to unwrap something you might eat, but that’s what she did after the bell. Peeled the plastic, broke the cookie open, and slid the paper out. It had the exact same lucky numbers on the back—25 29 66—so they must mean something. And this time the fortune said: YOU ARE SO MYSTERIOUS.

  What was she supposed to make of that?

  She didn’t eat any of it. She was in the bathroom, first of all, and that would be gross. She wrapped the broken halves and tucked them in her backpack and felt distracted the whole rest of the school day, wondering if she was missing something, if someone was watching her.

  She stayed after school to make up a physics lab, so it was nearly 3:30 when she went to her bike. Only a few people were walking around when she reached for her helmet and saw it, another cookie, right there in her basket. She froze. A girl in a purple jacket, Wendy something, was walking slowly, so slowly to the gym. Thisbe waited, fiddling with her lock. No one else was nearby. The windows of the classrooms were tinted, so she couldn’t see anything in them but reflected palm trees and brick walls. Finally she just picked up the cookie like it was a normal thing and untwisted the plastic and pulled out the fortune.

  PLEASURE AWAITS YOU BY THE SEA, it
said. Same lucky numbers.

  Corny, but in a good way?

  No one appeared at a school window. No one stood by a car in the parking lot, waiting for her. The two boys walking with their lacrosse sticks barely noticed her. And yet, riding away from the school, she felt strangely good, as if the messages meant something had changed about her.

  Every day that week she reached into her backpack with a little knot of hope in her stomach and looked into her bicycle basket the way you looked under bushes during an Easter egg hunt. Nothing on Tuesday. Nothing on Wednesday. Nothing on Thursday. On Friday she went to her bike at the usual time after school, in a crush of people, and finally, finally there it was: a pale, curved cookie in plastic. She blushed. She couldn’t help looking around. People were talking to one another in the usual way. Didn’t they see it? A girl from Spanish said hello, but Thisbe didn’t move to point out or pick up the cookie because they didn’t know each other all that well. She extracted her bicycle in a haze, waited for more space to open up behind her, rolled backward and then forward. She couldn’t wait any more, so she picked up the cookie, studied it self-consciously, and stuck it in her pocket. No one said, What’s that?