Endangered

by Lamar Giles

  She lowers her head, thinking. She’s struggling to recall the moment. When our eyes meet again, I have a spark of intuition. I know what she’s going to say—some version of it anyway—before she says it, and I cringe before she speaks.

  Nina says, “I don’t know for sure. I’m happy about a lot of things, and I don’t keep score like you do.”

  If she’d breathed fire on me like a dragon, it would’ve burned less.

  Her dad parks the van, gets out, circles the vehicle to open her door for her. When she climbs into her seat, he asks, “Friend of yours?”

  “No way.” Nina doesn’t spare me another glance.

  My mom arrives as Nina’s dad seals her into their vehicle. Mr. Appleton climbs behind the wheel and pulls away. I only stop watching when my mom honks. Come, Panda, come.

  I strap myself into the passenger seat. Mom examines me, the frown lines around her mouth strained. “What is the matter?”

  “Nothing. Can we just go?”

  She’s not satisfied, but she honors my request and shifts to drive. I zone out, resting my head against the window, staring into the side mirror. I’m thinking of what Nina said, and trying not to think of it.

  I notice a car—an old, dark-green Jetta—parked behind my mom’s. A young guy’s driving it. Somebody’s brother or cousin, I figure. When Mom pulls off, so does he.

  Oddly, he doesn’t pick anyone up.

  CHAPTER 20

  MOM’S ERRANDS. I GO ALONG—GET DRAGGED along. It’s something I haven’t endured since I was too young to be trusted home alone. That I’m, again, not trusted to be home alone is an insult on par with Nina’s painful statements.

  How had it come to this?

  At the post office and Home Depot, I’m allowed to wait in the Honda, fiddling with radio stations, desperately missing my iPod and all the other modern tech I’ve been stripped of. It’s hard to get lost in music when you don’t pick the songs and mattress ads keep breaking in. I can’t get my confrontation with Nina off my mind.

  I don’t keep score like you do.

  I’m feeling a familiar regret, that sensation of coming up with perfect comebacks an hour after you need them.

  “It’s not about me,” I should’ve said. “The assholes I exposed, that’s not revenge. I could’ve easily done nothing, let them all keep tormenting their respective whipping boys and girls. I could’ve been a coward like everyone else. I could’ve—”

  She got killed. You know that, right?

  That is the ultimate comeback, isn’t it? The rebuttal nuke, destroying all others. Or am I just keeping score again?

  Mom exits the hardware store with . . . whatever. I don’t really care. I’m anxious to get home and sulk in the privacy of my room.

  “I must make one more stop,” Mom says. “Groceries.”

  I shrug, and Mom drives us a couple of blocks to the supermarket, which is located next door to my favorite bookstore/café. When she parks, I get out, too.

  “Where are you going?” Mom asks, though I get the sense she already knows the answer.

  “For coffee.” Not that I really have a taste for the caffeine; I just want a familiar distraction. “I can meet you back here when you’re done.”

  “Nein!”

  “Ich habe Geld!” I’ve got money!

  She stares at me over the roof of the car. “Es spielt keine Rolle, dass du dein eigenes Geld hast. Du kannst nicht einfach tun was willst. Zumindest nicht mehr.” So what if you have your own money. You do not get to do as you wish. At least, not anymore.

  This is my world now. Simply desiring a beverage incurs the wrath of others. I’m Panda the pariah.

  I switch back to English—quiet English—because she’s loud and people are watching. “Fine. I’ll wait in the car.”

  Mom checks her volume and language. “Did you not just hear me? Come on, the shopping will go faster.”

  I look anywhere but my mother’s face because it’s so crazy-making. To the sky for some divine intervention. Around the parking lot for some kind stranger with out-of-state plates who might take me away from here.

  It’s then that I notice the dark Jetta and its driver—the same from the school—on the row across from ours, parked a few spaces closer to the store. He does that thing guys do when they get caught staring at your butt or boobs, jerking his head in the opposite direction, as if that busted LeBaron he’s parked next to had his attention the whole time.

  “Lauren! I do not have all day.”

  Following Mom into the supermarket, my eyes stay on that car. The driver resorts to gazing at his lap. He reminds me of someone.

  Me.

  I’ve been in similar situations when tracking Gray targets. Suddenly, the offender is looking in my direction, and I’m willing him or her not to notice me. I was certainly smoother than this guy, never getting caught until recently. But that’s the rub.

  Who is he? And why is he following me?

  The last person to tail me was my Admirer.

  Marcos.

  I’m 99 percent sure they are one and the same. But 99 percent sure isn’t sure at all, is it?

  Suddenly, the grocery store—with its bright lights and crowds of afternoon shoppers—doesn’t seem so bad.

  Tearing her shopping list in half, Mom gives me my own cart and tells me to find her when I’ve gotten everything. I seek the sundry items, but I’m also noting every single face I come in contact with, glancing over my shoulder every few seconds. Is he in here? Watching me now?

  I get my answer in the detergent aisle, when I’m alone, grabbing a gallon of Tide, and he comes straight at me, the man from the Jetta. No stealth, no hesitation. Just a tall, brown-haired guy in wrinkled khakis.

  Hit him with the jug of soap. Run him over with my cart. Scream. All options scroll through my mind, and I don’t know which I’ll settle on. A few feet from me he extends his hand like I’m the store manager and he’s here to interview for a bag boy position.

  “Hi, I’m Quinn Beck. Lauren Daniels, right?” He checks something on the phone in his other hand. “You go by ‘Panda,’ though.”

  Um, what?

  My silence seems to fluster him. He retracts the hand he offered and pulls some sort of laminated card from his breast pocket, holds it out for me to see. “Sorry. I’m from channel nine news.”

  I look at the card—an ID badge actually—and see the station’s logo. Next to it is the name he gave me and a pasty, overbright picture of his face. He’s pastier in person, like he hasn’t seen the sun in about a year, but it’s definitely him. “You’re a reporter?”

  “An intern, actually. I’m a sophomore at Commonwealth University, the Broadcast Journalism program.”

  That information answers none of the billion questions I have. “How do you know my name? And my nickname? Why have you been following me? Why are you talking to me now?”

  “Gray Scales, the website where the Keachin Myer sex scandal originated, right? I was hoping to reach you first. I want to discuss the genesis of the site. What prompted you to become this sort of school yard whistle-blower, revealing the secrets of your classmates to the world?”

  His phone is now held between us, at chin level. Recording our conversation. The wrongness of this all sets off alarms in my brain, yet I can’t bring myself to walk away.

  I don’t say a word while his phone’s in my face. Terms like “self-incrimination”—something I heard on some cop or lawyer show—float to the surface of my mind, and it’s terrifying that my thoughts are going there.

  Now I’m certain this guy is not my Admirer. He might be worse.

  He sees me eyeing his phone, lowers it. “Okay, off the record, then.”

  “How do you know anything about me?”

  He blushes, two red blossoms on his sun-deprived cheeks. “I’m a fan. A bunch of people in my program are. The way you get scoops, we all thought you had to be some PI’s kid, like Veronica Mars, or something. I thought for sure you’d be a guy”—he shr
ugs off his own sexist assumption—“when you revealed your identity today. It sort of blew my mind.”

  I shake my head. “No, not me.”

  “You didn’t—?”

  More vigorous head-shaking on my part. “You said you want to talk to me because you were hoping to be the first. The first what?”

  “The first reporter to get an interview.”

  “I thought you were an intern.” I’m missing the point here. My mind is protecting me from what he’s actually saying.

  “Well, yeah. But if I land some time with you, it could mean big things.”

  I’m looking around, willing my mother to become impatient and find me. “I’m not eighteen, can you even be talking to me?”

  “Sure, there’s no rule against interviewing minors, unless this thing becomes a criminal or civil matter.”

  “What thing?”

  “Your involvement in the Myer girl’s murder.”

  I spin my cart away, nearly taking a couple of his toes with me. He leaps back. “Hey!”

  “I don’t want to talk to you. I have to go.” I’m rolling away, but he jogs ahead and cuts me off. As I reconsider running him over, he shoves a card at me. It’s so sudden, I raise my hands defensively, and end up with it in my palm though I never intended to take it.

  It’s somebody else’s business card, but with the name and number scribbled over and replaced with Quinn’s contact info. They really don’t pay interns anything.

  “Look,” he says, “I get what you were doing with your site. When you want to get in front of this, you’ll want a friendly telling your story. Trust me.”

  Get in front of this.

  There it is again, the implication that there’s something more going on than this weird meeting in the soap aisle. I stuff his card into my pants pocket and swerve my cart around him. I zoom past aisles, catching glimpses of lightbulbs and dog food and breakfast cereal, until I spot my mom. She’s on the coffee aisle, grabbing a bag of Dad’s favorite blend.

  “Mom, can we go? Please?”

  She’s not looking at me, she’s looking in my cart, taking inventory. “Where is the rest of my list?”

  “Mom, I’m sorry, it’s just—”

  She gives me the look, the one children have feared since the dawn of time. Despite being on the verge of a total anxiety attack, I turn my cart around and return to the other side of the store to finish Mom’s shopping.

  When I pass the soap aisle, Quinn Beck is gone.

  We ride home listening to Mom’s classic rock and I don’t mind because the guitar riffs and synth-keyboard solos of her eighties metal bands provide sufficient distraction from the weirdness of having my biggest secret in life exposed for all to see. I want to tell her about the reporter—the intern—from the store, but I’m drained from, well, all of it. I stay quiet, and it’s a bad call, because talking about it might’ve meant a tiny bit of mental prep for what awaited when she made the turn onto our street.

  The curbs by our house are crowded with at least three numbered vans. A dozen people mill about our lawn like we’re hosting a yard sale. Reporters and their respective crews, cameras ready. Seeking today’s juicy news story.

  Me.

  CHAPTER 21

  WE DON’T TALK TO THE REPORTERS. To their credit, they aren’t rude and don’t block our way as we run for our front door, abandoning the groceries in the trunk. They shout their questions, though, and those questions prick.

  Why were you stalking Keachin?

  Do you think she’d still be alive if you hadn’t posted those photos?

  Do you regret what you’ve done?

  Mom slams the door, then presses her back against it like the reporters are a zombie horde attempting to break it down and she must protect me with her body. We stare at each other, and there’s no anger in her gaze. I almost wish there was.

  She peels herself from the door and goes to the nearest cordless phone. Calls Dad.

  She says, “We have a big problem.”

  The reporters wait for my dad to arrive, and hit him with a similar batch of questions. He doesn’t answer them, but politely requests that they stay off the lawn. They continue their barrage until he’s inside, then they shuffle to the concrete driveway.

  All of it is visible from my window. The neighbors are on their porches and lawns. More than a few provide additional coverage by recording the chaos with their cell phones. In that moment, I hate them. The reporters are doing their jobs, the people I’ve grown up around are just being nosy jerks.

  “Lauren!” Dad shouts. “Get down here.”

  I go. Mom’s beside him, hugging herself. I shouldn’t be getting used to seeing this kind of tension in them, but I am.

  “What the hell is going on?” he asks.

  I tell him what the Admirer did, about how everyone knows I’m Gray. He starts pacing about halfway through my explanation, running his hands through his thinning hair.

  The next hour consists of a repetitive Q&A session with my dad asking me over and over what “I did” and how “I let this happen.”

  My interrogation only ends when Mom puts dinner on the table. Big hunks of sourdough, deli meat, and leftover potato salad. Our newly purchased food is still in the car. When she spreads mustard on Dad’s bread, her hands shake.

  After dinner I’m banished to my room, and with no connection to the outside world—not even a TV—I sit at my windowsill and watch the reporters like they’re my ant farm.

  My story isn’t big enough for them to camp out, not yet anyway. They pack their vans as the sun sets. By the time the moon rises, my street’s empty. You can almost believe what just happened, didn’t. Almost.

  Sleep doesn’t come easy. My parents’ tense conversation quiets long before the noise in my head does, but sometime after midnight, my brain shuts down, too. It’s a restless slumber. No dreams I can remember. When I open my eyes again, the sun is back, and it feels like I blinked instead of slept. I lie in bed staring at the pandas on my wall; they seem sadder today.

  I shower, dress, and get downstairs before Dad, wanting the morning to go as smoothly as possible for my parents’ sake as much as my own. When I pass the kitchen, I’m grabbed and nearly scream.

  Mom tugs me close, and speaks in a whisper. “I do not want you to go to school today, but your father insists.”

  She presses a familiar rectangle into my palm, and I have to suppress a smile at the return of my cell phone.

  “Do not let him see,” she says. “With those reporters and your angry friend who told your secret around, I want you able to contact me if you need to.”

  I nod, and drop the phone into my bag. Dad’s heavy steps thud down the stairs a moment later.

  He gives me a strange look before his gaze floats to Mom. “I’m going.”

  She says, “You are.”

  My breath should be visible in this climate.

  The ride to school isn’t much warmer, but we don’t run into reporters. Since the whole school already knows the secret, maybe things can get back to normal.

  Or maybe I’m an absolute dumbass.

  Yeah, definitely the latter.

  CHAPTER 22

  OUT OF MY FATHER’S LINE OF sight, I power up my phone. Texting Ocie is my first intent, let her know I’m back on the grid and we need to talk. Before I do, I’m overwhelmed by the number of missed texts that are waiting for me. More than thirty taunts, all from the Admirer.

  How’s it feel to be tattled on?

  This is a hard lesson, but you will thank me for it someday.

  Are you ignoring me?

  Answer me!!!

  That one stops me dead in the middle of the crowded hall, and I get bumped by passersby. Hard.

  It happens a couple of times, like it’s a game I don’t know about. Jostle the Panda. The last collision is hard enough to knock my phone from my hand and send it sliding like a hockey puck. Taylor plays goalie and stops it with his foot.

  He says something that I
miss because, um, what the hell? How many times is he going to beam in like that?

  When he scoops up my phone, I snatch it back. “What are you doing?”

  “Me?” he says. “What about you? Why did you come today?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  He leans in close. “Because people are saying you got Keachin killed.”

  “I . . . got . . . ?”

  “Come on.” He grabs me by the hand and I have a flash of awkward memory. A lingering fleck of fondness staining my disgust for this boy.

  Taylor leads me through the halls, beyond the dirty looks that have multiplied exponentially since yesterday’s Gray reveal. We leave Junior Lane, navigate Sophomore Row and the Freshmen Slums until we reach the library. Only a pair of early-morning study hogs are present. He sits me down at a corner table as the warning bell rings.

  He takes the seat across from me, then scans the room like he’s my bodyguard assessing threats. I nearly laugh because he’s so tall and skinny, a stickman in baggy clothes. He couldn’t protect me from a breeze.

  However, that I’ve treated him like crap and he still feels this need to do whatever it is he’s doing saps some of the humor. What’s going on here?

  When he’s satisfied with our seclusion, he stares me down. “It would’ve been best if you stayed home.”

  “You know what’s best for me now?”

  “I’m trying to help you. Chill, for once.”

  “Don’t tell me to—”

  “Haven’t you seen what they’re saying about you on the news?”

  That shuts me up. Because I haven’t seen. Other than the reporters mobbing us on my front lawn yesterday, I don’t know what they’re doing, or saying, or showing.

  You’ll want a friendly telling your story. Trust me.

  Taylor’s examining me, his mouth pinched. “So, you don’t know.”

  “How about you tell me, Taylor.”

  “The local stations started talking about your website in their broadcasts last night. They didn’t say Gray Scales, but everyone knows. Then someone posted a link to one of the segments on the memorial page—”