Normally, I wouldn’t believe a word that comes out of Jason’s mouth. But he’s not his usual self. He’s scared. The puzzle pieces are changing, they’re forming a new picture.

“Okay, this is what happened,” Jason says in a low, flat voice, like a little kid telling us about a movie he saw. “Carter and me were smoking in the woods behind the trailer, waiting for Paul to come back and give us some pot to sell. We saw Ms. Sullivan. I don’t know what she was doing in the woods—she must have got lost or something—and I was about to say something to her, but Paul drove up and saw her behind the trailer. He must’ve been out of his mind on drugs. I don’t even know what he took, just something bad. He accused her of being after his drug money. He was swearing and shouting and then he hit her. And he hit her, and he hit her again, and he just kept hitting her. And she was yelling, fighting back, but, but—” Jason covers his face with his hands and starts crying, awful gulping sounds that come from his gut like nothing I ever heard before.

Skylar and I put our arms around each other tight, tight, and start crying too. I want the words Jason just said to go back into his mouth like a movie running backwards. I can’t stand knowing that Paul hurt Ms. Sullivan.

“I hate him. He’s a freaking crazy man. A psycho.” Jason snuffles snot back up his nose. He rubs his eyes with his fists like a child. “I swear there’s nothing Carter and me could’ve done to stop him. It was like he didn’t know what he was doing, like he couldn’t stop.”

While Jason is telling us this, I look at Skylar. Her head is down, her hair hiding her face. She’s still crying and so am I. She must be thinking what I’m thinking. Mr. Boyce didn’t do it. We were wrong. We made a terrible mistake.

Jason wipes his nose on the sleeve of his shirt. For a while no one says anything. The crows are silent. No gunshots. No barking dog. Just the cars going over the railroad tracks in town.

“I wish I never seen it,” Jason mutters. “I wish I never was there, never had nothing to do with Paul.”

Skylar looks at him with disgust. “How did you meet a lowlife like him anyway?”

“He’s Carter’s uncle,” Jason says. “Carter never told me nothing about him except he was a dealer and he wanted us to sell drugs at the high school. It sounded like a good deal.” He sighs and looks at me. “Remember that night at the DQ when your mom’s boyfriend kept Paul from beating me up?”