was pulled up in a high ponytail and she wore her old Converse sneakers—with fresh scorch marks—along with ripped-up jeans and a sweatshirt with an image of the galaxy and the words You Are Here with an arrow on it.
Collin wanted to shake her. She was here, in a police station, when she could be home with her family. All she had to do was stop whatever crazy train she’d jumped on.
Amanda chewed on her bottom lip and wrapped and unwrapped the string from her hoodie around her finger. She was just a kid. A lost, hurt kid, and he was doing a crap job of making her feel safe.
“Collin’s here,” James said as they neared the cubicle.
Amanda straightened in her chair, put her feet on the floor and folded her arms over her chest. “I didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t have to bother him.”
“How else were you going to get home, kid? You’re grounded from the car, remember?” James backed away, leaving them to sort this out without him.
Amanda eyed him for a long minute. “I’ve got two legs.”
“You’d rather walk the ten miles back to the orchard than spend fifteen minutes in the truck with me, huh?” Collin asked, leaned a shoulder against the cubicle wall.
Amanda twisted her mouth to the side. “I didn’t want you to be bothered.”
And just like that, Collin wanted to shake her again. She wasn’t a bother to him, she was his sister. But no matter what he did, he just seemed to mess things up between them. After speeding ticket number four, he’d taken her car keys. After the laundry soap incident, he’d banned her from being out after five.
He wasn’t sure what he could take away from her for this latest stunt.
Hell, maybe he should give something back. After all, she’d helped to put out the fire the other teens had set. A fire that could have decimated the courthouse square or that might have killed or seriously injured someone.
Maybe even Amanda.
“You’re not a bother, kid.”
She mumbled something he didn’t quite hear. He waited, but she didn’t say anything else.
Collin shoved his hands into his pockets, unsure what to do next. He needed her to know she wasn’t a nuisance to him. But her actions lately were a nuisance to him. A nuisance and a worry. He was doing his best to keep the orchard profitable, to keep Amanda comfortable, to ensure their grandmother’s recovery. His job was to keep everything and everyone in their little circle together, and he felt as if he was losing his grip on every single aspect.
He hooked his thumb toward the front door. “How about we get out of here?”
Amanda shrugged but she stood quickly and slung her backpack over her shoulder. “I’m free to go?”
“Unless you’re changing your story about the fire,” James said. He stood near the wall.
“I just tried to help put it out. I didn’t even know they were in that alley until I smelled the smoke.” She shot James a look from the corner of her eye, and Collin fisted his hands. She knew more than she was letting on.
“That’s good enough for me, then,” James said, using his cop voice.
“If it’s good enough for the law...” Collin teased, but he wasn’t rewarded with one of Amanda’s reluctant smiles. Her shoulders stiffened and her mouth turned down at the corners. “Just a joke, kiddo. You said you weren’t involved in the setting, just the dousing. That’s all that matters.”
She mumbled something else under her breath and didn’t meet his eyes.
“Amanda—” he began, but she interrupted.
“Can we just go home?”
“Sure.”
Once they were in the truck and clear of the sheriff’s office, Collin said, “You want to talk about it?”
“About what?”
“About why you were still in town when you know you (a) don’t have a car, and (b) still have a curfew, and I’m going to add a C to it—why did you lie to James about your involvement?” She pressed her lips together. “Fine, we’ll start with the easy one. Why didn’t you ride the bus home after school?”
Amanda crossed her arms over her chest, a move Collin was all too familiar with. He’d done the same too many times to count when he was a teenager, but their sister, Mara, had made the gesture a near art form. “I’m seventeen years old. The bus is vile,” Amanda declared.
“So you were...what? Going to walk the ten miles out to the orchard and you just happened to come across a few pyromaniacs who were trying to set the courthouse on fire?”
“They were just testing the combustion rates of visco fuses and spolettes. After the fire marshal did his talk about fireworks safety leading up to the Memorial Day Kick Off the Summer celebration, they got the idea that they’d mess with the fuses for the big fireworks show. Trick the workers into thinking they’d bought a bunch of duds, and then scare the crap out of them when everything started going off at once.”
Collin gripped the steering wheel harder. That could have gotten someone seriously hurt. “And you know this how?”
Amanda blew out a breath. “I was hiding out under the bleachers in the gym during health class, and I heard them planning it all out.”
“You skipped class—”
“For the five millionth time, Mr. Acres is doing the unit on intercourse. I couldn’t face another hour of bananas and condom demonstrations. I swear he gets off on lubing up the fruits.” She shivered with disgust.
Collin blinked and squeezed the steering wheel. “We’ll get back to that in a minute. You skipped class, you overheard them talking about this prank and you...what, wanted to join in?”
“No, I was going to show them that what they were planning wouldn’t work. And then I was going to show them what would work, but Courtney Gains is an idiot and instead of setting up the fuses on something nonflammable and using slow-burning punks to light them, he used his dad’s grill lighter and stuck all the fuses on top of his backpack.”
Collin wasn’t sure where to begin. The skipping of class or the destruction of public property that Amanda nearly took part in because she’d wanted to see it done correctly. He was so in over his head here.
“And what would you have done differently?”
“Replaced all the usual fuses with fast-burning but connected fuses. Instead of delaying the explosions, which could get someone hurt, everything would just go off at once and without the delay. Simple. Added benefit? It would be prettier than a usual ‘light one rocket, wait five minutes, light another, wait another five minutes’ show.”
Collin made the turn from the highway onto the gravel road leading to the orchard.
“Why?” It was the only question he thought he could ask without getting pseudo-parent-y and...angry.
“Why
