“See you around, Maribel,” I said, walking away. This time, she didn’t try to stop me.
* * *
Tabby waved me over to the table where she and Garrett were already seated. I sat down next to her, and she slid my lunch over. It was an à la carte buffet of awesomeness.
“Did you get what you needed?” she asked before taking a bite of her french fry.
“That and then some.” My dry response wasn’t lost on her or Garrett. Their silence demanded I explain. “I ran into Maribel Chavez.…” Garrett winced at the mention of her name.
“Not a warm welcome, huh?” Garrett asked.
“Nope. She told me to lay off her brother.”
Garrett scoffed. Tabby, however, looked confused as hell.
“Jaime seems like a nice enough kid. He’s always really quiet in the classes I have with him. Why would you mess with him?”
“Remember that thing about AJ we need to fill you in on that requires a lot of tequila?” Garrett asked. She nodded in response, straightening up like she was about to get the lowdown. “Jaime was involved, too.”
“Did Garrett tell you about the excitement we had last night?” I asked, hoping she’d take the bait. My photo scandal, or Boobgate, as I’d come to call the incident over the years— my attempt to deflect the seriousness of the situation in order to cope—was not something I really wanted to get into at school.
“He did! Right before you got here. How scary.…”
“But not entirely surprising. I mean, let’s face it. I’m not exactly welcome in this town. It was bound to happen eventually.”
“Do you think it was Donovan?”
I shrugged.
“Probably, but—”
Before I could say any more, an underclassman walked up with a note from the office.
“Oh, boy,” Garrett muttered to himself.
“I didn’t do anything! I swear!” I said.
“Better go see what you’re in for this time,” he replied, stealing a fry off my tray.
“Don’t let him eat all my food while I’m gone,” I told Tabby. She nodded, then slapped Garrett’s hand as he reached for another one. The intensity of the slap made me laugh. “Don’t break him, Tabby. We might need him one day.”
By the time I made it to Mrs. Baber’s desk, I was starting to wonder exactly what I’d been sent for. I hadn’t done anything wrong—at least not that day. Donovan wasn’t around, so it wasn’t likely related to him. My anxiety about it grew as I waited for her to get off the phone.
“Ms. Danners,” she said, not bothering to look up at me. “You’re needed up in Mr. Callahan’s office. Something about your homework.”
“Son of a bitch,” I mumbled to myself before snapping a smile onto my face. “I’ll head right up there. Thanks.”
I stormed up the stairs to room 333, ready for a war, but when I opened the door, I found the classroom empty—with the exception of someone, who was definitely not Mr. Callahan, sitting at the desk.
“Hey,” AJ said, standing to greet me like we were meeting for a date. Ambush would have been a far more appropriate description.
“Mrs. Baber said I needed to come up here.”
“Yeah … I needed to talk to you and figured you couldn’t refuse an invitation from the front office, so…”
“How’d you pull that off?” I asked.
“I’m Callahan’s teaching assistant this period. Instead of going to study hall, I hang out up here and do menial tasks for him. I may or may not have abused my position to get you up here.” Sneaky bastard. “Before you freak out, you should know I didn’t do it because I wanted to talk about us.”
“So, just to be clear, this summons has nothing to do with me needing to argue with Callahan right now?” He shook his head. “Great! Then I’m going back to lunch—”
“Ky!” AJ called. Against my better judgment, I hesitated. “Regardless of how you feel about me, you need to listen.” I turned to look at him, giving him my very best the fuck I do expression. He ignored it entirely. “I heard someone talking today about the window at Gramps’ house. It was fine when I left last night.… Tell me what happened.”
“Someone threw a brick through it with a welcome-back message attached.”
I swear the color drained from his face in an instant.
“Are you okay?”
I splayed my arms out to the side to show I was fine. “Never been better. Now, if we’re done here—”
“I know you’re starting shit with the others.” The way he said “others” made it clear who he meant. The other five.
“I didn’t start anything. They did—you all did—the second your camera started snapping photos. And I intend to prove what happened that night. If I were you, I’d be worried.”
“Worried?” he scoffed. “You proving who did it would be the best thing that ever happened to me!” His confidence gave me pause. “You go right ahead and figure out who took those pictures. The second you know, you can pass that information along. I’ve got a couple years’ worth of anger to let loose on him.”
I opened my mouth to cut him off at the knees, but the fire behind those green eyes stopped me. I’d never seen such thinly veiled rage from him. If I hadn’t seen it staring at me from across the room, I wouldn’t have believed it.
“I’ll keep you posted,” I said, turning to leave. I needed to get out of there before he saw my resolve falter. With every step I took, doubt started to creep into my mind, but I locked it away for another day. I needed to stay focused. I had too many things going on around me to let sentiment make me sloppy.
When I reached the cafeteria, I only had five minutes left to eat. I sat down and started to inhale my food as quickly as decent table manners would allow. Tabby looked horrified at my behavior, while Garrett just laughed.
“This reminds me of the eating competition you entered at Marco’s Pizzeria freshman year.…”
I shrugged.
“I won, didn’t I?” I replied through a mouthful of food.
“What did you have to go to the office for?” Tabby asked.
“Callahan wanted to see me,” I said as I shoved another fry in. It helped cover up my lie.
“He’s such a dick,” Garrett replied.
“Whatever. I just have to survive a year of him. I’ll be fine.”
The two of them talked while I ate, until the bell broke us up.
* * *
I walked into Spanish on a clear mission. If I’d ruffled Jaime’s feathers the day before, then I would keep at it until he broke. Dad had warned me that there likely wouldn’t be much evidence in the sheriff’s file—that the statements all read the same—but since I wasn’t a cop and no lawyers were there for them to hide behind anymore, all I needed to do was break one of them. If their stories were built on a foundation of lies, one crack and their collective defenses would fall.
In the rubble, the truth would be found.
Jaime groaned when I walked in the room, then looked away, choosing to take a sudden interest in the weather outside. Cloudy with a chance of thunderstorm—kind of like my mood.
“Hey, Jaime,” I said, feigning happiness to see him. “I had the best talk with Maribel today. Any guess as to what it was about?” He didn’t bother to respond. Instead, he just stared out the window and ignored me entirely. “She seems to be pissed that I was all up in your face yesterday. What’s the matter? Was it easier to stand what you did to me when I wasn’t around—a walking reminder that I’m an actual person with feelings … well, arguably, anyway. Is that an inconvenience for you? Should I transfer out of here so you don’t have to suffer anymore? Would that make you and your sister happy?”
“You don’t know what you’re taking about,” he muttered, just as the final bell rang. Mrs. Stewart rushed in to start class, but, as far as I was concerned, Jaime and I were continuing our conversation.
“Okay. Maybe I don’t. Let’s pretend that I’m totally wrong about all of this. Care to
share some truth? Enlighten me, maybe?”
He turned to stare me down, but something was missing from his glare. Hatred, maybe? I’d expected to see it, but it wasn’t there. Instead, his eyes burned with a frustration I understood. One that ate you up from the inside out until you could barely contain it. One that kept you up in the dark of night, never letting sleep find you.
“You need to drop it, Ky,” he said under his breath.
“Ky? Are we back on that level?” I whispered as Mrs. Stewart rattled off verb conjugations.
He shrunk down in his seat and tapped his pen against his notebook.
“Just leave me alone.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Jaime. Not until I get what I want.”
“Then I hope what you want is trouble, because you’ll find it if you keep asking people about that night—starting shit with the others.”
“Great!” I whisper-shouted. “The threats just keep on coming.…”
He turned to look at me, concern burning in his warm brown eyes. It quickly became apparent that he really did think I was in trouble. That my threat comment had struck a nerve. It was then that I realized that, of all the guys involved, he would be the egg that cracked if I kept leaning on him. I’d have bet on it.
I damn near smiled with satisfaction.
He bolted from class when the bell rang, bumping into anyone in his way. I wondered if he was going to run off to the others and fill them in; if I was going to have more bricks thrown through my windows with love letters attached. Then I wondered if maybe Donovan hadn’t been the one to vandalize Gramps’ house at all. If I’d gotten to some of the others like I had with Jaime.
Getting to the bottom of my scandal would certainly give me peace of mind, but I wondered at what price. Losing any of those guys from the football team would do nothing for my reputation in the town’s eyes. They’d be the boys whose lives were ruined by an unfortunate event. And I’d be the meddlesome little slut who brought them down.
The hometown antihero.
I walked out to the parking lot, my steps uncertain. For the first time since I resolved to find the truth about what happened that night, I wondered if it would all be worth it in the end. But then I walked by two underclassman girls, who were staring and whispering as I passed them on the stairs, the judgment in their eyes plain, and I knew I had to bring The Six down. The town could hate me all they wanted for ruining their perfect football season. Those consequences I could take. The whore stares, I could not.
When I arrived at Garrett’s truck, he was leaning against the front of it, arms folded over his chest.
“Sorry I’m late, Dad,” I said with a wink.
“Don’t make a habit of it.”
We jumped into his truck and drove away, the wind whipping through the open windows. I cranked the radio and we sang cheesy eighties songs until our voices nearly gave out. It felt like old times in so many ways—carefree and simple. I wished it could have gone on forever. But eventually Gramps’ house came into view—the plywood bandage covering the front window—and my mind snapped back to reality.
The hits would just keep coming until I shut the fight down.
EIGHTEEN
I made my way over to Meg’s office to start my official first day. Even though it was only for a couple of hours, it was better than nothing. That was a shift’s worth of pay that my wallet desperately needed.
“Hi, Marcy,” I said as I walked in the front door. She raised a finger to me while she held the phone receiver in her other hand. Then she waved me past to Meg’s office. I read her loud and clear and made my way back there.
After I knocked on the door, Meg called me in. I found her poring over organized chaos, files strewn all about her desk and sideboard. I located a chair not covered in file boxes and took a seat.
“Tell me my first job isn’t to clean your office, because I might quit.”
She laughed.
“No. Marcy is going to go over the file room and teach you how to answer the phone, which is an art form in and of itself.”
“Whatever, politely brushing people off is totally in my skill set.”
She shot me a dubious look over the reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose. “I’m sure. Now, before you get started, I obtained the information you texted me about.” She pulled a manila folder from the clutter on her desk and handed it to me. “I gave it a look through, but there’s really not much in there, Ky. And, I’m worried that your reading it is only going to pick at an old wound.”
“You’re right. It will, but no more so than going to school every day does.”
She nodded. “Point taken. So, tell me how I can help.”
“You can’t. Not yet, anyway. There’s this kid at school—one of the boys. I think seeing me is really getting to him.”
“You think you can break him.…”
“Yep.”
“Well, if you can, that would be amazing, but make sure you get any confession recorded on your phone somehow so he can’t recant later.”
“Way ahead of you.”
She smiled with pride.
“You sure you don’t want to go to law school? You always turned your nose up at the idea, but you’d make a damn fine lawyer.”
I shook my head dramatically.
“Nope. Hard pass. Too many rules.”
“Well, yes. There are those.”
I stood up to leave, tucking the file under my arm.
“I’m going to go see if Marcy is ready for me now.”
“Okay.” When I reached for the doorknob, Meg stopped me. “Ky, I need to tell you something else—something I just learned.” I turned to face her. “Luke represented a couple of those boys.…”
“I know,” I said, cringing a little. “Dad told me.”
She let out a loud exhale.
“Is that going to be a problem for you? I totally understand if it is.”
“I don’t think so,” I replied, doing my best to sound convincing. “My mind understands that it’s his job. The rest of me is trying to settle with that fact.”
“If it makes you at all uncomfortable—”
“Meg, if he thought what happened that night was my fault, we’d have a problem, but…”
She cracked a wry smile.
“He wouldn’t work here if he thought it was. And you’d have to get in line to punch him in the face.”
“Then I think we’re good.”
I returned her smile, then opened the door and made my way back to the front of the office. It was time to get to work. Right after I had a peek at that file.
* * *
By five o’clock, I finally had the hang of the file room. Marcy left me alone to practice sorting through various case boxes and would be back later to check on how I did. The second I heard her footsteps disappear down the hall, I pulled out the folder Meg had given me and opened it.
Because there were never official charges pressed against any of The Six, I knew the file would consist primarily of interviews and copies of the photos from the internet. I found transcripts of interviews in there, including mine. I set it aside, not wanting to see it. Instead, I grabbed Eric Stanton’s and started scanning through his account of that night.
At first, it read like a play-by-play of the evening. He’d been drinking, partying, and was in the hot tub with me and a bunch of others that night. He meticulously named every single person there. Somehow he managed to sound superior even through a piece of paper.
The interview eventually turned toward his whereabouts at the time the photos were taken. The story I expected to read was there. He was in the basement playing cards with Scooter, Donovan, and Mark, while Jaime and AJ were hanging out over near the booze. I rolled my eyes and pressed forward to material I hadn’t expected to see. I don’t know why I didn’t expect to read how my character came into question—how the sheriff got their take on my behavior that night—but seeing it spelled out before me was a whole new level of violation that
I wasn’t prepared for.
I read on as bile rose in my throat and a cold sweat rolled down my back. Account after account all said the same thing. That I was flirting with everyone that night. Throwing myself on anyone in a five-foot radius. That I was drunk, but not pass-out drunk. That when they left me alone in the hot tub, that I was totally coherent. Eric, Scooter … Donovan. They all said the same. It made me start to question my account of that night.
Maybe it wasn’t as accurate as I had thought.
With that possibility racking my body with a numbing sensation I hadn’t felt since the morning I woke up to find my boobs all over social media, I grabbed the next interview from the pile and read the name at the top: AJ MILLER. I swallowed hard and tried to calm my shaky hands. Fear that I couldn’t fully explain coursed through me, tightening my chest. There was something terrifying about reading his story. Something paralyzing about reading his account of what happened that night. A part of my mind begged me not to read it—to just cling to my belief of his guilt.
The other told that part to suck it up.
I scanned through the sheriff’s comments about him. How distraught he looked. How he seemed unfocused and easily distracted—all signs of guilt. But then I continued on, and the part of my mind that had wanted to leave well enough alone cringed. For the better part of AJ’s interview, he kept saying the same thing over and over again, until the sheriff put the interview on hold until his mother could get there. I read those two lines until I couldn’t see straight any longer, my vision slowly blurring. Whether they were tears of anger or frustration or something else I didn’t want to contemplate, I didn’t know. What I did know was I never wanted to read those lines again.
I threw the file across the room, breathing hard as I worked to contain the scream that wanted to escape. I couldn’t unsee what I’d seen, nor could I shake it from my mind: “I should have been with her. I never should have left her alone.…” I’d been right about his feeling guilty, but not the why behind it.
A knock on the open door ripped me from my downward spiral. I turned to find Luke standing there, a tentative smile on his face. His timing really could have been better.
Dare You to Lie Page 13
