Summer grimaced as she rolled the make-up stick under her eyes again.
"You know if you would have slept last night, you wouldn't need that second layer." Lex commented from the doorway.
"If I could have slept last night, I would have." She replied dryly. "But since I couldn't, I didn't." Sighing loudly she added, "See how simple that is?"
Shrugging, Lex walked in and sat on the closed lid to the toilet. "You ever gonna talk about it? Or just let it eat at you like usual?"
"Eat at me like usual." Summer answered after a moment's worth of silence. She scrutinized her reflection in the bathroom mirror before sharply turning her head to her make-up bag. "Why should I change because everything else has?"
Giving a questioning look, Lex was about to comment on her reply when their dad knocked on the doorjamb.
"De Salbo's waiting."
She looked up at him, "Can I still go and check on Zac afterwards."
She waited a few seconds for him to nod in compliance.
Nodding back, she frowned down at the dark blue bag, "Be right there then." She bit her lip as she waited for him and her sister to leave her be.
It took five deep breaths and the nervous popping of her knuckles to make her feet leave the bathroom.
She sucked in another deep breath when she saw the heavyset detective sitting in her living room. Everything was made real now.
Trembling inside, she shook his head apprehensively. Sitting down, as far away form him as possible, her thumbnail was instantly set between her teeth.
The man drank deeply from the coffee cup that was dwarfed in his hands. "Sorry about having to come do this. But it is routine."
Summer nodded numbly, "I understand it's what you have to do."
She flinched at the curtness in her voice, and prayed nobody called her on it.
His beefy limbs lifted him up in the seat so he could shift positions. Picking up his notebook and pen he looked up at her over the rims of his thin wire-framed glasses then down at the white paper. "Where were you when the crash happened?"
Wiping her hand on her jeans she cleared her throat, "Which one?"
His pen had moved to write her answer, before he quickly looked up at her. "There was more than one?"
She nodded wearily, "At first it was just a scream, and I was in the locker room with Lex. Our last classes were just cancelled due to the weather. So we were getting ready to go home. Changing out of our," she stopped for a split second.
He looked back up and her and she finished quickly, "dance clothes."
Rubbing her hands she avoided his gaze and continued on looking at the blue carpeting. "Zac had come to check on us, and we called Doreen in the office to ask what had happened. She said she didn't know, but that Jakob and a custodian was going to go check on it."
She laughed shakily, "Of course Zac wouldn't let his friend be up there without him, so he followed." Her head shook and she shrugged her shoulders, "and Lex and I went with him. He teased us because we're afraid of lightning and thunder being that close and that loud."
Closing her eyes she kept on, "We were walking to the second story when the first crash happened. Running the rest of the way, Becky, a student of mine, was there in the middle of the hallway in broken glass. She was dancing…" She opened her eyes and looked at him, "Her feet were bleeding and Zac and I were trying to get her away from the broken glass and the window."
"But the next thing you know," Summer voiced bitterly, "Lex is screaming in my ear and when I turn to see what she's looking at, I get a face full of broken glass myself."
De Salbo tapped his mouth with the top of the pen. "Where was Jakob and the janitor during this?"
She shook her head, "I don't know. I didn't see them until after the second crash. He was with Zac when I first saw him."
"Do you know of anybody at Seymour who would have something against Zac?" He asked at the top of the pen scratched the corner of his mouth.
A hysterical laugh left her mouth before she thought to stop it. "He loves it there, and everyone there loves him." She added ruefully, "Funny how that's where this happened at."
Giving her a puzzling look, De Salbo hefted himself from the chair. "Thank you, I'll be talking to you later if I have anymore questions."
Nodding, Summer watched him leave from her seat. The blinding headache was back again and she longed to lay her head down on the soft pillow that was lying on her bed…
