One of Us Is Next

by McManus, Karen M.

  “What?” Maeve follows my eyes, and I hear her breath catch. She pales and goes so still that she looks like a statue. Then she pushes her sleeve down as far as it can go, until the bruise is completely covered. “I don’t know. Just—banged something, I guess.”

  “You guess?” Her eyes are on the floor, and unease stirs in my gut. “When?”

  “I don’t remember,” she says.

  I run my tongue over dry lips. “Maeve, did…did somebody do that to you?”

  Maeve’s head snaps up, and she lets out a startled, humorless laugh. “What? Oh my God, Knox, no. I promise, nothing like that happened.” She looks me straight in the eye, and I relax a little. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Maeve, it’s that she’s incapable of maintaining eye contact when telling even the whitest of lies. You should never, for example, ask what she thinks of your new haircut if you’re not fully prepared to handle the truth. I learned that the hard way when I decided to go a little shorter last week.

  “Okay, so…” I pause, because now I can’t remember what we were talking about, and Maeve’s gaze wanders over my shoulder. She waves, and I turn around to see a thin boy with strawberry-blond hair and glasses hovering a few feet away from us.

  “Hi, Owen,” Maeve calls. “Phoebe’s not working today.”

  “I know. I’m picking up takeout.”

  Maeve lowers her voice as Owen approaches the counter. “That’s Phoebe’s little brother. He comes here a lot after school, even when he’s not getting food. Just to hang out and talk with Phoebe or Mr. Santos when they’re not busy. I think he’s kind of lonely.”

  Somehow, this whole texting game mess turned Maeve and Phoebe into friends, which is the only silver lining so far. Maeve’s been kind of lost since Bronwyn graduated, and Phoebe could use somebody on her side. Slut-shamey crap about her is still flying around school, and her friend Jules eats lunch with Monica Hill’s clique now. I guess Jules found her own silver lining: social climbing via Truth or Dare success.

  Mr. Santos appears from the back and hands Owen a large brown paper bag, then waves away the bill Owen tries to give him. “No, mijo, put that away,” he says. “Your money’s no good here. How is school? Phoebe tells me you have a big spelling bee coming up.”

  Owen starts talking a mile a minute, but I’m not really paying attention because I’m still thinking about the relieved look on his face when he put the money away. My mom was an insurance adjuster on Mr. Lawton’s worker’s comp settlement after he died. I remember her telling my dad, when she didn’t know I was listening, that she thought the company’s payout for the accident was a lot less than it should have been. I don’t think Melissa Lawton realizes how quickly that money will go when nothing’s coming in, she’d said.

  When Owen finally turns away from the counter, he has a big smile on his face. He needed that, I think. Some kind of dad figure, or a big brother, maybe. I get it. I know what it’s like to grow up surrounded by older sisters who might be great but can’t tell you how you’re supposed to function as a guy in the twenty-first century. When Owen passes by our table I find myself saying, “Hey, do you like Bounty Wars?”

  Owen pauses and gestures to his T-shirt with his free hand. “Um, yeah.”

  “Me too. I’m Knox, by the way. I go to school with Phoebe.” Maeve nods and smiles, like she’s confirming my trustworthiness. “Who’s your avatar?” I ask.

  Owen looks a little cautious, but answers me readily enough. “Dax Reaper.”

  “Mine too. What level are you on?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Damn, really? I can’t get past twelve.”

  Owen’s entire face lights up. “It’s all about weapon choice,” he says earnestly, and then bam, he’s off. The two of us talk Bounty Wars strategy until I notice the bag he’s holding is starting to soak through with grease from whatever’s inside. “You should probably get that home, huh?” I say. “People must be waiting for dinner.”

  “I guess.” Owen shifts from one foot to the other. “Are you and Phoebe friends?”

  Good question. Not exactly, although now that Phoebe is spending more time with Maeve at school she is also, by default, spending more time with me. In the snake pit that Bayview High has turned into lately, that’s probably close enough. “Yeah, sure.”

  “You should come over and play Bounty Wars with us sometime. I’ll tell Phoebe to invite you. See ya.” Owen waves as he turns away. Maeve, who’d been scrolling through her phone the whole time, nudges my knee with hers.

  “That was really nice,” she says.

  “Stop calling me that,” I grumble, and she smiles.

  A tall kid with shaggy brown hair comes through the door, holding it open for Owen to slip out under his arm. He scans the room, his eyes flicking past me and Maeve without much interest and pausing on a waitress arranging condiment baskets in the back. He looks like he’s only a year or two older than I am, but there’s something a little too intense about his gaze. Mr. Santos, counting receipts at the register, glances up and seems to notice it too. “Good evening,” he calls.

  The guy crosses half the dining room with his eyes still on the waitress’s back. She turns, displaying a middle-aged face that doesn’t match her bouncy ponytail. Intense Guy shifts his attention to Mr. Santos. “Yo, Phoebe here?” His voice is too loud for the small space.

  Mr. Santos leans on the counter, arms folded. “I can help you with whatever you need, son,” he says. No mijo for this kid.

  “I’m looking for Phoebe. She works here, right?” Mr. Santos doesn’t answer right away, and the guy’s jaw gets tense. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his green hunting jacket. “You understand English or what, señor?” he asks in a mocking Spanish accent.

  Maeve sucks in a sharp breath between her teeth, but Mr. Santos’s pleasant expression doesn’t change. “I understand you perfectly.”

  “Then answer my question,” the kid says.

  “If you have a food order, I am happy to take it,” Mr. Santos says in the same even tone.

  “Look, old man—” The kid strides forward, then stops short when Luis and Manny emerge from the kitchen one after the other. Luis pulls a towel from his shoulder and snaps it hard between his hands, making every muscle in his arms stand out. It’s probably the wrong time to wish I had another guy’s moves, but damn, Luis is smooth. Somehow, he manages to come across like Captain America while wearing a grease-spattered T-shirt and a bandana.

  Maeve notices, too. She’s practically fanning herself across the table.

  Manny’s not as athletic as his brother, but he’s big and burly and plenty intimidating when he crosses his arms and scowls. Like he’s doing now. “They need you in the kitchen, Pa,” he says, his eyes locked on Intense Guy. “We’ll take over out here for a while.”

  Intense Guy might be an ass, but he’s not stupid. He turns right around and leaves.

  Maeve’s eyes linger on the counter until Luis goes back into the kitchen, and then she turns toward me. “What the hell was that about?” she says. Her phone vibrates again, and she makes a frustrated sound in her throat. “God, Bronwyn, give it a rest. I don’t care about set design nearly as much as you think I do.” She picks up her phone and angles it so she can see the screen clearly, then pales. “Oh no.”

  “What?” I ask.

  She holds her phone toward me, amber eyes wide. Maeve Rojas, you’re up next! Text back your choice: Should I reveal a Truth, or will you take a Dare?

  CHAPTER TEN

  Maeve

  Tuesday, March 3

  If I text you a Truth or Dare prompt, you have 24 hours to make a choice.

  I’m at Café Contigo with a full cup of coffee that’s gone ice cold because I keep rereading the About That post with the Truth or Dare rules. It’s three fifteen on Tuesday, which means I have a little less than three
hours before the “deadline.” Not that I care. I’m not doing it, obviously. I was in the middle of the whole Simon mess, and I refuse to take part in anything that makes light of what happened. It was a tragedy, not a joke, and it’s sick that someone is trying to spin it into a fun game. I won’t be Unknown’s pawn, and they can do whatever they want in return because I don’t have anything to hide.

  Plus, in the grand scheme of things: who cares about Unknown.

  I toggle away from About That to Key Contacts in my list of phone numbers. There are five: my parents, Bronwyn, Knox, and my oncologist. I press my fingertips against the large purple bruise on my forearm and can almost hear Dr. Gutierrez’s voice: Early treatment is absolutely critical. It’s why you’re still here.

  I dial his number before I can think too much about it. A woman picks up almost instantly. “Ramon Gutierrez’s office.”

  “Hi. I have a question about, um, diagnostics.”

  “Are you a patient of Dr. Gutierrez?”

  “Yes. I was wondering if…” I scrunch down in my seat and lower my voice. “Theoretically, if I wanted to get some tests run to…sort of check my remission status, is that the kind of thing that I could do without my parents being involved? If I’m not eighteen.”

  There’s a moment of silence on the other end. “Could you tell me your name and your date of birth, please?”

  I grip the phone more tightly in my suddenly sweaty palm. “Can you answer my question first?”

  “Parental consent is required for treatment of minors, but if you could—”

  I hang up. That’s what I figured. I turn my arm so I can’t see the bruise anymore. Last night I found one on my upper thigh, too. Just looking at them fills me with dread.

  A shadow falls across my table, and I look up to see Luis standing there. “I’m staging an intervention,” he says.

  I blink, confused. Luis is entirely out of context in my mental space right now, and I have to forcibly shove away thoughts of cancer wards and anonymous texting before I can focus on him. Even then, I’m not sure I heard right. “What?”

  “Remember that outdoors you don’t believe in? I’m going to prove you wrong. Let’s go.” He gestures toward the door, then folds his arms. After the scene with Mr. Santos and the rude kid yesterday, I kind of can’t stop looking at them. Maybe Luis could do that towel snap another two or three or twenty times.

  He waits for a response, then sighs. “Conversations usually involve more than one person, Maeve.”

  I manage to unfreeze my tongue. “Go where?”

  “Outside,” Luis says patiently. As though he’s speaking to a small and not particularly smart child.

  “Don’t you have to work?”

  “Not till five.”

  My phone sits on the table in front of me, mocking me with its silence. Maybe if I call again, I’ll get a different person and a different answer. “I don’t know…”

  “Come on. What do you have to lose?”

  Luis gives one of his megawatt smiles, and what do you know, I’m on my feet. Like I said: I have no defense against his particular demographic. “What did you have in mind, in this alleged outdoors?”

  “I’ll show you,” Luis says, holding open the door. I look left and right when we hit the sidewalk, wondering which way we’re going to walk, but Luis pauses at a parking meter and starts unchaining a bicycle leaning against it.

  “Um. Is that yours?” I ask.

  “No. I pick locks on random bikes for fun,” Luis says, detaching the chain and looping it beneath the bike’s seat. He flashes me a grin when he’s finished. “Of course it’s mine. We’re about a mile from where I want to take you.”

  “Okay, but—” I gesture at the empty space around us. “I don’t have a bike. I drove here.”

  “You can ride with me.” He straddles the bike so he’s standing in front of the seat, hands on the outer edge of the bars to hold the frame steady. “Hop on.”

  “Hop—where?” He just looks at me, expectant. “You mean the handlebars?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t you do that when you were a kid?” Luis asks. Like he’s not talking to somebody who spent most of their childhood in and out of hospitals. It’s sort of refreshing, especially now, but the fact remains that I don’t even know how to ride a bike the normal way.

  “We’re not kids,” I hedge. “I won’t fit.”

  “Sure you will. I do this all the time with my brothers, and they’re bigger than you are.”

  “With Manny?” I ask, unable to keep a straight face at the mental image.

  Luis laughs, too. “I meant the younger ones, but sure. I could haul Manny’s ass if I had to.” I keep hesitating, unable to picture how any of this is supposed to work, and his confident smile fades a little. “Or we could just walk somewhere.”

  “No, this is great,” I say, because Luis with a disappointed face is just too weird. People who never get told no are so bad at hearing it. Anyway, how hard can it be, right? The saying It’s as easy as riding a bike must exist for a reason. “I’ll just…hop on.” I gaze uneasily at the handlebars, which don’t strike me as having any seatlike properties, and decide there’s no way I can bluff my way through this. “How do I do that, exactly?”

  Luis slips into coaching mode without missing a beat. “Face away from me and step over the front wheel, with one leg on either side,” he instructs. It’s a little awkward, but I do it. “Put your hands behind you and grab hold of the handlebars. Brace yourself, like this.” His hands, warm and rough, close briefly over mine. “Now push down to lift yourself up and—yeah!” He laughs, startled, when I rise in one fluid motion to perch on the handlebars. Even I’m not sure how I did that. “You got it. Pro skills.”

  It’s not the most comfortable thing I’ve ever done, and it feels more than a little precarious. Especially when Luis starts pedaling. “Oh my God, we’re going to die,” I gasp involuntarily, squeezing my eyes shut. But then Luis’s chin is on my shoulder as a cool breeze hits my face and honestly, there are much worse ways to go.

  He’s a fast and assured cyclist, navigating a nonstop route to the bike path behind Bayview Center. The path is wide and almost empty, but every once in a while a speck appears ahead of us and then, before I know it, Luis has passed whoever it is. When he finally slows and says “Hang on tight, we’re about to stop,” I see a wrought-iron gate and a wooden sign beside it that reads BAYVIEW ARBORETUM.

  My descent is a lot less graceful, but Luis doesn’t seem to notice as he chains the bike to a post. “This okay?” he asks, pulling a water bottle from the bike’s holder and drinking half of it in a few gulps. “I thought we could walk around for a while.”

  “It’s perfect. I don’t come here often enough.”

  We start down a smooth gravel path lined with cherry blossom trees that are just starting to bloom. “I love it here,” Luis says, shading his eyes against the afternoon sun. “It’s so peaceful. I come here whenever I need to think.”

  I sneak a glance at him, all bronzed skin and broad shoulders and that quick, easy smile. I never imagined that Luis was the sort of person who would go somewhere because he wanted a quiet place to think. “What do you think about?”

  “Oh, you know,” Luis says seriously. “Deep, profound things about humanity and the state of the universe. I have those kind of thoughts all the time.” I tilt my head at him, eyebrows raised in a go on gesture, and he meets my eyes with a grin. “I’m not having any right now, though. Give me a minute.”

  I smile back. It’s impossible not to. “How about when you’re not pondering existential crises? What sort of ordinary things do you worry about?”

  “Staying on top of everything,” he says instantly. “Like, I have a full load of classes this semester plus extra practicum because I’m trying to graduate early. I work twenty to thirty hours a week at Contigo, depe
nding on how much my parents need me. And I still play baseball every once in a while. Just pickup games with guys from school, nothing like the schedule I was on when I played at Bayview with Cooper, but we’re trying to get a league together. Oh, and I help out with my brothers’ Little League team sometimes. It’s all good, but it’s a lot. Sometimes I forget where I’m supposed to be, you know?”

  I don’t know. When Luis was at Bayview, I thought all he did was play sports and go to parties. “I had no idea how much you have going on,” I say.

  He glances toward me as we approach a rose garden. It’s early in the season and most buds are just starting to open, but a few show-offs are in full bloom. “Is that a polite way of saying you thought I was a dumb jock?”

  “Of course not!” I stare at the roses so I don’t have to meet his eyes, because I totally did. I always thought Luis was a nice enough guy by Bayview athlete standards—especially when he stood by Cooper when the rest of Cooper’s friends turned on him their senior year—but not much else.

  Except gorgeous, obviously. He’s always been that. Now he’s tossing out all these hidden depths and making himself even more appealing, which is frankly a little unfair. It’s not like my crush needs more encouragement. “I just didn’t realize you had your life figured out already,” I tell him. “I’m impressed.”

  “I don’t, really. I just do stuff I like and see how it goes.”

  “You make it sound so easy.” I can’t keep the wistful tone out of my voice.

  “What about you?” Luis asks. “What do you spend your time thinking about?”

  Lately? You. “The philosophical underpinnings of Western civilization. Obviously.”

  “Obviously. That goes without saying. What else?”

  Dying. I catch myself before it slips out. Try to keep the conversation a little less morbid, Maeve. Whether something horrifying is going to be texted to hundreds of my classmates in, oh, about two point five hours. God. It hits me, all of a sudden, that Luis has been nothing but straightforward with me, and I can’t manage to tell him a single true thing. I’m too wrapped up in self-doubt and secrets.