“You didn’t see their face?”
“No. They had a gray school hoodie.”
Half the students at Westbrook seemed to own gray hoodies.
Daniels asked, “What were they doing?”
“I thought they dropped something.”
“Did you see anything in their hands?”
Julian became very still.
Then he whispered, “A little silver tool.”
The officers stopped treating the conversation like a courtesy visit.
Officer Daniels took out a notebook.
“What kind of tool?”
“I don’t know. Like…” Julian shaped something between his thumb and forefinger. “One of those folding things. A multitool, maybe.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“Because I didn’t think they were doing anything.”
That answer carried the unmistakable agony of a thirteen-year-old discovering that something ordinary in one moment can become important in the next.
I squeezed his shoulder.
“You couldn’t have known.”
Julian looked toward Officer Daniels.
“Did somebody try to hurt Maya?”
