But now he’s gone, and I can’t make them anymore. “I needed him…”
“J-baby,” Struz whispers, reaching for me, but I take a step back and shake my head.
“I needed him to take care of her so that I didn’t have to do it.” The tears are completely out of my control now, pouring down my face in streams so powerful I can’t see more than a few inches in front of me.
This time, Struz is faster and more demanding. He pulls me into a hug. My whole body gives itself up to sorrow at that moment, and I’m shaking and trying to suck down too much air at one time. My whole body feels numb, to the point where I don’t feel like I have limbs anymore. I’m just a floating head, an outpouring of emotion, a heart that doesn’t seem to know how to beat regularly anymore.
10:05:48:45
Minutes pass, and I manage to swim out of the black hole of my grief, only to realize that Struz is still petting my hair and whispering that it will be okay.
I shake my head, gulp down a few swallows of air, wipe the tears and snot from my face, and ignore how pathetic my voice sounds. “I don’t think I can forgive him for leaving me here. How will anything ever be okay again?”
Struz doesn’t have an answer for me, though, so we head back to my house to eat the food everyone’s brought over and accept more condolences.
Never mind that everything in that house is a glaring beacon that my father is gone.
09:17:34:28
After the last well-wisher leaves, I really do have the desire to just forget this awful day.
So we go to Chad Brandel’s party.
“Don’t fidget so much,” I tell Alex as I hand him a beer. “Just relax. Try to enjoy yourself.”
He just shakes his head. His mom thinks we’re at the library doing the work we missed at school today. “I still don’t know why you even wanted to come. We could be watching The Mummy at my house right now.”
I shrug. “Maybe I think it would be a crime to let you graduate without going to one high school party. You know I’m charitable like that.”
“I don’t have much desire to be social,” he says, but I ignore him.
Chad Brandel doesn’t follow anyone’s schedule but his own, so I try not to be offended that he doesn’t cancel his annual back-to-school party when it ends up being the same night as my dad’s funeral.
After all, he’s throwing a party on a Monday night. Who knows where his parents are or if they’re even out of town? He’s a fifth-year senior and has only two classes—and one of them is ceramics.
The blaring techno hits its chorus and repeats, “This time, baby, I’ll be bulletproof” all around us. The truth is I don’t know why I wanted to come tonight. I hadn’t been planning on it, but I couldn’t spend another moment in my house watching my mother sleep and Struz play World of Warcraft with Jared. And maybe getting drunk, and forgetting how messed up everything is, is exactly what I need.
The first person to come up to me is Ben. He puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes lightly. “How are you?”
I desperately want to lean into him, but I know as soon as I do I’ll start to cry, and I need to be done with all the tears. “I think I could use a drink,” I say, and I feel bad, because from the look on his face that’s obviously not at all what he expected.
But he recovers easily and says, “Come on, I know where the beers are.”
A few days ago, he took me on a more-than-perfect date. We should be reveling in that—smiling and blushing, feeling like we have a secret because we’ve just shared something other people can’t be a part of.
But my dad is dead now.
As we’re walking, a hand grabs my arm. “Janelle, can I talk to you?”
“Nope,” I say without looking back. I don’t need to see her to recognize Kate’s voice.
“It’s important,” she calls after me.
“That’s shocking.” Everything Kate wants is important.
Of course the irony isn’t lost on me. It was, after all, Chad Brandel’s house where we had our falling-out. This time I don’t plan to end up in some unidentified car. That’s why I brought Alex to watch out for me.
I move through the throng of people, even though I don’t really know where I’m going anymore. I’ve lost Ben somehow, but it’s probably for the best. He might reconsider how he feels about me with the mood I’m in tonight. I ignore the murmurs of condolences, since they’re the last thing I want to hear right now.
At some point, after Alex has abandoned me for Kate, who’s talking his ear off somewhere else, I sit down on the sofa with another beer even though the first few haven’t done anything to make me forget, and I find myself next to Reid, who’s apparently drinking away a few sorrows of his own.
He’s sitting on the couch alone except for the slew of empty beer bottles in front of him, and I realize as I sit down next to him that it’s the first time I’ve ever seen him by himself. Unlike Elijah or Ben, he does have other friends. I think he even dated some girl for, like, all of last year or something.
“What’s up?” I ask.
He lifts his chin, which I think is a version of hello.
“Why’d you ever want to come back to this place?” he asks, slurring his words.
I look over at Reid, not sure I understand the hostility dripping off them. His Heineken is at his lips, and he’s not looking at me, even though I’m the only person he could have been talking to.
“What do you mean?”
“After what happened.”
My throat constricts, and I remember waking up in that old Honda Civic that smelled like gym socks. I’d never felt so dirty in my life.
Only that can’t be what he’s referring to, because no one knows that. No one.
Except whoever did it.
Reid was never in my pool of suspects—not even close. It’s like I’m about to overheat, my heart pumping overtime, while the rest of my body is just frozen.
Reid glances over at me. “Elijah and Chad aren’t friends by any stretch, but he was here. Elijah pretty much goes where he wants to, invite or not. Ben and I didn’t come. I mean, who’d invite us, you know? But Elijah called Ben when you showed up. Janelle Tenner at a party like that—he had to rub it in. Ben came to my house and we ‘borrowed’ my dad’s car. We had to come.”
My heart feels like it’s sinking, bottoming out, and I’m going numb and cold. This is the moment I’ve been waiting two years for, and now I don’t feel ready.
He pauses to gulp down the rest of his beer, then reaches for another one and twists off the top. “You’re like gravity to Ben—his own personal gravitational force. He revolves around you. It’s been that way ever since we got here.”
I’m about to ask him what the hell he’s talking about, but Reid keeps going. “Only when we got to the party, we couldn’t find you anywhere. We were about to leave when we heard Chris Santios spouting off about how Sam Hines had you in the back room.”
My mouth dries out, the noise of the party—the voices, the music, everything—all falls away, and every beat of my heart is a drum pounding in my ear.
“We didn’t know what was really going on, but it didn’t matter to Ben. It was like he knew—he just fucking knew—something wasn’t right, and Elijah tried to stop him, but he just shot through the party to that back room, tackled Sam, and started beating the shit out of him.”
Sam Hines.
“Elijah tried to grab Ben and pull him back,” Reid continues. “We were sure Ben’d kill him—and then all Sam’s friends jumped in, and it was Elijah and Ben against half the fucking football team. I grabbed you and went out the window and stuck you in the backseat of my dad’s car—because Ben would have wanted that—and then I went back to help them.”
Reid’s dad’s car.
My stomach twists into a knot. I press the palm of my hand to my chest to keep myself from gagging, as my insides turn themselves inside out and upside down. The black hole I’d shoved deep into a cold corner of my heart feels li
ke it’s suddenly eating its way out, and if I don’t get up, it might explode.
“You were gone when we got out....” Reid seems to realize I’ve stood up, and he reaches for me. “You didn’t know?”
I can’t even be bothered to shake my head in response, but it looks like the question was rhetorical anyway. “Elijah and Ben put three of them in the hospital,” Reid says. “If the cops hadn’t showed up, Ben probably would have killed Sam.”
Something behind my eyes is burning, and I’m struggling to remember to keep breathing.
I vaguely remember hearing something during my post-party depression about a fight that got Elijah Palma, Ben Michaels, and Reid Suitor suspended for ten days. Something about Sam Hines, Brian Svetter, and Chris Santios getting beat up badly enough that they ended up in the hospital.
Every kickboxing class, every stroke during an ocean swim, every time my feet hit the sand when I was running, all those moments well up inside me, and I straighten my back and take a long, ragged inhale, trying to steady myself.
I turn away. Walking with purpose. Heading straight for the beer pong tables.
“Janelle, you okay?”
I walk right past Alex, ignoring the way he calls after me.
My fingernails are biting into the palms of my hands, and I only have eyes for the beer pong tables, which means I almost run straight into Brooke, who says, “Go home, bitch, no one invited you,” but I’m past the point of caring. When I go to move around her, she steps in my way, and I just push her hard enough that she loses her balance and backsteps into Lesley. I don’t even slow down when I plow past Kate—Kate, without whom I never would have been at that party. With my right hand, I swipe a half-empty bottle of Bud Light that’s been abandoned on a table, and then I’m standing right in front of Sam Hines.
Sam Hines, backup quarterback of the football team, senior class vice president, Lesley Brandon’s boyfriend, and would-be rapist.
Nick is on the other side of him, and when he sees me, that smile that used to make me smile back lights up his face. Now it makes me feel sick to my stomach, like bugs are crawling all over me, like I want to vomit all over myself. I can’t help hating that he can be friends with these guys.
“J!” he shouts, and moves as if he’s going to give me a hug.
But Sam is in his way, and he turns to me, his eyes raking up my body, lingering on my chest. “Hey, Janelle,” he slurs.
And he’s so preoccupied with checking me out, he doesn’t have a chance to see the beer bottle slam into the side of his face until it’s far too late. He loses his balance immediately, and as he falls, I wind up and slam my foot into his balls.
Nick just stands there, staring at me, with his mouth hanging open and his eyes wide.
I want to slap him, to scream at him, to ask how the hell he could be friends with someone like Sam. And I know he couldn’t know what Sam did to me—I know he’s better than that—but I think I’ll still always look at him differently now. Because he’ll forever be connected to one of the worst moments of my life.
I open my mouth to say something to him when a strong hand grips my arm and pulls me backward.
I struggle for a second as I’m pulled into someone’s arms, until I feel the warmth of his chest behind me and the faint underlying smell of motor oil. I relax, but the venom doesn’t leave my voice when I look down at Sam. “If you ever come near me again, so help me God, I’ll kill you.”
And then Ben is turning me in his arms, and just as I’m sagging and my legs are about to give out, he’s lifting me off the ground, curling me into his chest, and carrying me. Elijah and Reid are on either side of him, and I can hear Alex talking to one of them, demanding to know what the hell is going on.
09:15:41:29
“How could you not have told me!” I scream at Ben when the five of us are alone and cutting through the soccer fields on the way back to my house.
Ben sticks his hands in his pockets and shrugs, eyes looking down.
“Do you realize I’ve had no idea what happened that night—for years!”
“Give it a rest, Janelle,” Elijah says, grabbing my arm and turning me around. Ben takes a step toward him, but Elijah just laughs. “Dude, I think she can take care of herself.” Then he looks at me. “What did you want Ben or any of us to say to you?”
“What’s wrong with the truth?”
“Okay,” Elijah says. “How about this? Hey, Girl I’ve Never Met or Talked To, my friend Ben has a thing for you, so he went apeshit when he heard Sam Hines might be having sex with you, and he beat the shit out of him, we all got into a fight, and the cops came and broke shit up, and you weren’t where we left you, so we weren’t really sure what that meant.” He spreads his arms out wide. “How’s that? Feel fucking better?”
“You could probably soften that a little,” Alex says.
No one says anything, then Reid starts laughing.
Ben pushes him, and he says, “What? He’s right.”
They’re both right, I guess. But I am too. I needed to know what happened. I shouldn’t have had to wait like this. Of course, things could have been worse.
Alex looks at me and tilts his head in the direction of my house, and I turn to Elijah and offer him my hand. “Thanks.”
His eyes narrow. “For what?”
“For beating the shit out of them for me.”
“I aim to please.” He snorts as a smile breaks across his face, and he reaches out and shakes my hand. “You know, Tenner, I might not like you that much, but I sure as hell respect you after that number you did on Hines tonight.”
I turn to Reid, but he’s so drunk he’s looking a little like he might hurl, and I doubt he’s going to remember much from tonight. Then I turn to Ben.
“Janelle, I’m sorry, I—”
I shake my head. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”
And as Alex and I move to walk away, Ben reaches out and squeezes my hand, and neither one of us lets go as we move in opposite directions, until the last possible moment.
That’s one mystery solved. The mystery I never told my dad about. Guilt squeezes its way inside my chest and just throbs there. It was the only secret I ever kept from him. At least, the only important one.
“You okay?” Alex asks.
I glance over at him. He’s flushed, but he looks relieved. This secret was a weight on him. And he bore it for me, because I needed him to.
I nod, even though things are far from okay. Because this time Alex needs me to. I can’t keep asking him to pull me back from the cliff, and he shouldn’t have to keep worrying that I’m going to fall.
09:07:18:35
I wake up hung over and a little depressed and decide I deserve a day off from school. Jared isn’t hung over, but he decides to follow my lead and I let him. We lie on the couch most of the morning, watching the first season of The X-Files.
Which is exactly where I am when the doorbell rings.
I look at Jared and he looks at me. “I think the older sibling has to get the door,” he says.
“Shocking,” I say as I get up off the couch and go to the front door.
It’s Kate.
By the way she’s dressed, she’s obviously just cutting class and not taking the day off, and even though I’m tempted to shut the door in her face and go back to the couch, I lean into the doorway and ask, “Are you lost?”
“No,” she says, shaking her head, and despite how put together she looks, underneath all the makeup, I can see how glassy her eyes are. “J, I’m so sorry about your dad.”
“I am too, but you’re the last person I want to talk about him with,” I say.
She opens her mouth to respond and then closes it. “Look, I had to talk to you,” she says, and I must be in a charitable mood because I wave a hand for her to continue. “I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?”
“I didn’t know the beer had been roofied until after the party,” she says. “Brooke gave it to me to g
ive to you and said it would liven you up, and—”
“And what? Kate, even if you didn’t know before, you knew after.” I shake my head. “Sorry, you’re not going to get absolution from me. You chose your friends, you have to live with it.”
She opens her mouth and looks like she might start pleading with me, but then her face changes. It sets, and I see the hard line of her jaw. “Fine. How long are you going to be keeping shit at my pool house?”
“I’ll have my shit out of there by the end of the day,” I say, this time not holding back when I want to slam the door in her face.
I grab my cell phone and call Alex. He’s in class, so it goes to voice mail, but he calls me back a few minutes later.
“Meet me at the UCSD library after school again?” I say when I answer. I have a renewed sense of purpose now.
“Why, what’s up?” he asks.
“Because if we were right about the bioterrorism angle, we have nine days before our own faces might be melting off.”
09:01:29:50
We sit in our soundproof cube, poring over my dad’s hard-copy files and his laptop for two hours. I try not to think about Ben, about last night, or about anything but this case. I need to figure it out, for my dad. But we’re ready to give up.
And then I find something.
It’s pure luck, but while I’m trying to root through my dad’s email, someone replies to him. And it’s exactly what I need to see.
“Alex…,” I breathe.
He leans over to look at the laptop and the brand-new email. It’s from a G. Lickenbrock with the Department of Homeland Security.
James,
After we spoke last Friday, I put a trace on all the credit cards we had associated with Mike Cooper. This morning we got a hit on one of them. Two charges—at Unique Pawnbrokers (3039 University Ave.) and Mira Mesa Pool (8251 Mira Mesa Blvd.). When you bring the bastard in, call me.
Unraveling Page 17
