Chapter 3: Games in the Greenhouse

Officer Grant was still young. After hearing all this, he couldn’t sit still and left the interrogation room.

A few minutes later, a middle-aged officer came in, the type with worry lines and slow, measured steps. His badge read TURNER. He set down a thick manila folder—his boots squeaked on the linoleum, the sound weirdly loud in the stale air—unscrewed the lid from his oversized Yeti tumbler, and took a long, noisy sip of what smelled like strong black coffee. He let out a sigh—heavy and weary—like he’d been carrying the town’s secrets on his shoulders for years.

Only then did he speak, his voice slow and deliberate, with a hint of a Southern twang: "Your name’s Dylan, right? My last name’s Turner. You can call me Officer Turner—or Uncle Turner, if you’re feeling neighborly."

He paused, waiting, maybe hoping I’d look up. I didn’t.

"I know they did a lot of terrible things to you, but you have to understand, you were the last one with them. We have to clear things up to clear your name." He said it like he meant it, not just as an interrogation tactic.

I didn’t answer. So he filled the silence: "There were several big bags of cornstarch in that greenhouse. You weren’t planning to cook in there, were you?"

Still, I kept my eyes on the table, fingers tracing invisible lines.

But Officer Turner wasn’t in a hurry. He took another slow sip, the slurp echoing off the cinderblock walls. The moment stretched out, just the two of us and the hum of cheap fluorescent lights.

Finally, the pressure of his quiet patience wore me down. I broke, my voice almost a whisper: "Not cooking—they wanted to play a non-Newtonian fluid game."

"Oh." Officer Turner stopped drinking, mug poised midair.

I let it all spill out, words tumbling in a rush: "You should’ve seen from the surveillance, we went to that greenhouse the day before too. That day we also played the digging tunnels game, which was really just them making me dig while they stood behind, sometimes kicking me for fun. They laughed the hardest when I got kicked into the pit.

After digging the pit, Rachel King suddenly said she saw a non-Newtonian fluid pool online—she showed us a TikTok—some kid running across a pool of cornstarch and water like it was magic. The pit we dug was just the right size for that." I drew a shape in the air, the motion automatic, like I was back there with them, dirt under my fingernails.

Officer Turner suddenly said, "The three of them didn’t have much money. It was you who told them the raw material was starch, wasn’t it?"

My hands clenched tight, knuckles going white, but I nodded. "Yeah, the book said the raw material for a non-Newtonian fluid is starch and water, so they went to a noodle shop in the next block and stole three big bags of cornstarch.

The next day, we made the pit a bit bigger for easier play, and brought three big buckets of water from Benji’s house a hundred yards away.

Originally, we planned to pour the starch in first, then add water, so the ratio would be easier to control and we wouldn’t add too much water and mess it up." I mimed kneading dough, the motion calming me a bit.

Officer Turner grunted. "Then what?"

"There was a strong wind that day. The abandoned greenhouse had holes in it. As soon as we poured in one bag of starch, the wind blew it everywhere, so we decided to change plans and pour in the water first, then the starch.

But we forgot the dirt pit absorbs water. As soon as we poured in one bucket, it quickly seeped away.

So they told me to go to Benji’s house and get a big plastic sheet used for drying stuff in the yard to line the pit."

"But there was no plastic sheet at the scene," Officer Turner pressed. I felt the weight of his gaze, even if I couldn’t see it.

I nodded. "Right, because I didn’t go. On the way, I checked the time and realized it was time for grandma to pack up her stand. She’d be exhausted doing it alone, so I went straight home.

And... the rest you all know." My throat was tight, but the words came easier now, like a confession I’d rehearsed too many times in my head.