Deadly Cool

by Gemma Halliday

  “How does it feel to know that your boyfriend is in jail?”

  “Ex-boyfriend” I clarified, looking past her to see a crowd of people gathering in the hall. “And he’s innocent,” I added, as much for her benefit as theirs.

  “Of course he’s yet to be proven guilty in a court of law,” Diane conceded.

  I shook my head. “No, I mean he really is innocent. Everything we’ve uncovered so far points to the fact that someone is framing him.”

  Diane took a step forward. “So, you’re still investigating?”

  I nodded. “Yes. In fact, we’re very close to finding the real killer.”

  She grinned, giving me a patronizing look. “The police believe the real killer is already in custody.”

  “Well, they’re wrong,” I said. Then added, “And I can prove it.”

  “You can?”

  “Well . . . I will be able to. Soon. We have a very strong lead that we’re currently pursuing.”

  Diane nodded, though whether she actually believed me or not, I’d be hard-pressed to say. “Your loyalty to your boyfriend is very admirable.”

  “Ex-boyfriend,” I said again. Though the camera had already swiveled away from me and back to Diane, who was informing the viewing public they should watch at eleven for the latest updates on “the Herbert Hoover High killer awaiting the swift hand of justice” behind bars.

  Oh, brother.

  I quickly slipped past her and navigated the crowd of students suddenly all texting each other about crazy Hartley’s latest Nancy Drew moment. Not that I cared. At the moment, I had a one-track mind, and it was stuck on waiting for word from Chase.

  Which, by the way, did not come during third period, despite the fact that I checked my phone every five minutes. What was taking him so long? How hard was it to compare a few pictures and spot which one of these things didn’t belong? By the end of fourth, I was a wreck. I would have ditched school and driven to Chase’s house myself if I’d had a car. And wasn’t grounded for the rest of my natural life.

  Finally, five minutes before lunch, my phone buzzed to life in my pocket, the jolt making me jump in my seat. Luckily, Senorita Gonzalez didn’t notice as I slipped it out of my jeans and checked the readout.

  Unluckily, it was not from Chase.

  A number came up, but it wasn’t one I had programmed into my contacts, so I had no idea who it was. It was local, though, which made me check the text, despite the eagle eyes of Gonzalez roving the classroom.

  its andi b.

  I read the first line, eliminating that mystery.

  i know who killed cc.

  I raised an eyebrow. I’d heard this song and dance before. Shiloh had thought she knew who the killer was, too. I was about to discount it when the phone buzzed in my hand again.

  i have video. meet me at midnite. ftbal fld.

  What was it with people and midnight? Part of me wanted to text back and tell her to cut the drama and just spill who did it. I mean, if Andi really had video, why didn’t she show it to me before? Why hadn’t she said anything? Was this some sort of new blackmail attempt? If she thought I was willing to pay for info about who killed Courtney, she had clearly overestimated the amount of my allowance.

  On the other hand . . . on the other hand, I honestly felt this close to blowing this whole thing wide open. The killer couldn’t hide forever. Someone must have seen something. And if Andi had been blackmailing Courtney, maybe she was that someone. Maybe she’d caught something in her blackmail video that, like me with the cars, she hadn’t realized was relevant until now.

  So, even though I was so over the whole cloak-and-dagger thing, I texted back.

  i’ll b there.

  By the time Sam, Kyle, and I had finished our pizza sticks and wilted Caesar salads from the cafeteria, I still hadn’t heard from Chase. I couldn’t take the silence anymore, so I shot off a text.

  whats takin so long?

  Almost immediately, my phone rang in response, Chase’s name lighting up the screen.

  “Dude, where are you?” I asked.

  “Dude, I’m checking the pictures.”

  “For the last four hours?”

  He sighed. “I had to enlarge them all to see the details. Most of the pics only have a corner of the street visible here and there anyway. And I took like a hundred of them. It’s taking some time to compare them all.”

  I resisted the urge to whine like a two-year-old. “How much time?”

  “God, you sound like a whiny toddler.”

  Okay, I almost resisted.

  “I’ll keep looking,” Chase assured me, “and you’ll be the first to know when I find something.”

  “Fine,” I said, “but hurry!” Then I hung up.

  “No killer yet?” Sam asked, making slurping sounds as she sucked up the last of her grape juice.

  I shook my head. On the plus side, I had high hopes for my meeting with Andi later. One way or another, we were smoking this guy out tonight.

  The second school let out, I realized that my status as the HHH leper was becoming solidified for life. Mom was sitting at the curb in her beige minivan, waiting for me. Listening to Guns N’ Roses. At top volume.

  “Uh, is that your mom?” Cody Banks asked, coming up behind me.

  My face turned beet red, and I’m pretty sure I shrank at least two inches. “No.”

  “You sure?” he asked, grinning. “’Cause she’s waving you over.”

  “Must be some sort of twitch. I’ve never seen her before in my life.”

  I waited until Cody left, then quickly scuttled to the van before anyone else could see me. I pulled open the passenger-side door and slid down so that only the top of my hair was visible through the window.

  “Drive! Now!”

  Mom shot me a look. “Nice to see you, too, Hartley.”

  “Uh-huh. Nice. Totally nice. Now go!”

  Luckily, she might be dense, but she did have a heart. She drove. And even turned the radio down to a normal volume.

  Once we made it home (only three screeching songs later), Mom ushered me into the kitchen, where she proceeded to stir a large pot.

  “Set your backpack down. Food’s almost ready.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I protested, checking my cell readout for the umpteenth time. Nada.

  “You need food,” Mom said. “You need to keep your strength up during this trying time.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “And don’t roll your eyes,” Mom said, wagging a wooden spoon at me.

  “Fine. What are you cooking?”

  “Chili.”

  “It smells like dog food.”

  “Soy chili.”

  “Swell.”

  “Try it.” She shoved the spoon in my face.

  Reluctantly I nibbled a bite off the end.

  “It tastes like dog food.”

  “Well then, eat up, Fido, ’cause that’s what we’re having.”

  “Fine.” Geez, what was with the attitude? You’d think it was all my fault I was under police surveillance or something.

  I choked down a bowl of chili (which, if I held my breath, was almost palatable), then begged off more “strength” food with homework. Only Mom insisted I do it in the living room, where she could keep a close eye on me.

  “What, you don’t trust me?”

  “Not as far as I could throw you.”

  “You know, with all the Yogalates you’ve been doing, I bet you could actually throw me pretty far.”

  “Nice try. Homework in the living room.”

  It was almost dark before I was finally allowed to go to my room. And even then, I noticed that an alarm had been attached to my window.

  I had a feeling that I might actually be under more surveillance at the moment than Josh was.

  Which presented a small problem: How to get out to meet Andi?

  “How am I going to get out to meet Andi?” I asked Sam half an hour later after I’d run through every possible scenario of esc
ape. All of which ended with me getting caught.

  “You’re asking me?” Sam laughed. “Dude, if I ever tried to sneak out, you know my dad would kill me. Then ground me. Then maybe kill me again.”

  Good point. In the five years I’d known Sam, she’d never snuck out after dark. In fact, I was pretty sure she didn’t even leave the house after dark, her parents being afraid of what kind of non-Stanford-type behavior might go on among teenagers once the sun went down.

  “Maybe you could try the window?”

  “Locked. And fitted with an alarm.”

  “Dude.”

  “I know.”

  “Okay, how about this . . . wait until she goes to sleep, then just sneak out the front door.”

  “She doesn’t go to bed until after one. I need to meet Andi at midnight.”

  “So, sneak out the back door? She can’t watch both at once, can she?”

  “The backyard floodlights are on. I’d be a sitting duck as soon as I stepped outside.”

  I heard Sam sigh on the other end and pictured her bangs flying upward. “Sorry, that’s all I got. You’ve reached the limits of my sneakiness.”

  “Thanks anyway.”

  “Lemme know how it turns out, okay?”

  I nodded at my empty room. “Will do.” Then I hung up and dialed another number. While Sam might score a three on the sneaky scale, I had a pretty good idea that someone else I knew was at least an eleven.

  “Not done yet” was the greeting Chase gave as he picked up the phone. “Sorry, I had to go back to school to meet with the paper’s adviser, then had to edit tomorrow’s copy, then there was dinner with the fam. But I’m almost there now. Just going through the last few pics.”

  Good to know.

  “Actually I need your help with something else,” I said. Then I told him about my meeting with Andi.

  “I’m going with you,” Chase said when I was done.

  “No!”

  “Remember what happened last time?”

  All too well.

  “Look, Andi is harmless. And no one else knows I’m meeting her. It’s perfectly safe.”

  He paused. “I’m almost done here. I’ll follow you and hide. She won’t even know I’m there.”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “Too late. It’s a done deal. I’ll follow you with or without your permission.”

  I bit my lip. If Andi was going to all this trouble to meet privately, I was pretty sure she wouldn’t appreciate an audience. “Fine,” I said. “I’m meeting her at one a.m.” I held my breath, closed my eyes, and crossed my fingers.

  “Great. I’ll be there at one.”

  I let out a silent breath, thanking the gods of lies that for once I’d been able to pull one over on him. If I were lucky, by one a.m., I’d be safely tucked in my bed and the killer would be on his way to Raley’s jail.

  “Fine. Now, how am I going to get out of here?” I asked.

  He was quiet on the other end for a moment, contemplating his options.

  “Your mom is downstairs?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Okay, if she’s down, you should go up.”

  I looked up at my ceiling. “Meaning . . . ?”

  “You have an attic?”

  I shrugged. “I guess so,” I answered. “There’s a hole in the ceiling in the laundry room.”

  “Okay, so climb into the attic, then find the vent, and get out that way.”

  “Out onto . . . ?”

  “I dunno. The roof? You figure it out. I gotta go so I can finish checking the photos.”

  And he hung up on me.

  I stared at the silent phone. He made it sound so easy. Just climb out onto the roof. Clearly he’d never been a girl with a precarious sense of balance and a slight fear of heights.

  However, he had a point. Mom would not be expecting me to go out that way.

  I spent the next two hours trying to come up with another way. Unfortunately by 11:15, no lightning bolt of genius had struck me. Up and out it was.

  I threw on a pair of old jeans, a black hoodie, and some sneakers, and made for the bedroom door. I cracked it open and stuck my head out.

  I could hear Mom watching TV, strains of her DVR’d The Biggest Loser filtering up the stairs. I glanced down the hallway. At the very end, near her bedroom, sat the laundry room.

  I quickly scuttled from my room, half expecting laser alarms to trip as I passed her bedroom. Luckily, Mom hadn’t gone that far (yet), and I made it to the laundry room without incident. I carefully slid in and closed the door behind me.

  So far so good.

  I looked up at the rectangular cutout in the ceiling above the washing machine. I’d never been up there. Call me crazy, but I wasn’t a particularly big fan of dark, creepy places. I hopped on top of the washing machine, cringing at the sound of the metal creaking, and stretched up, pushing the rectangle, sorta expecting nothing to happen.

  It gave way easily, sliding up and over to reveal a big black hole.

  I stood up straight, my head poking into the attic. More blackness. I took out my phone and opened it. The display cast a bluish glow, allowing me to see wooden beams stretched out over a sea of pink insulation. To the right sat a collection of boxes labeled “Christmas Decorations.” To the left, a couple of broken chairs and a dresser missing three drawers. And straight ahead was a metal vent, just a hair larger than I was, a thin strip of moonlight visible through the slats telling me that Chase was indeed correct about it offering a way out.

  I should never have doubted his nefarious nature.

  I set my phone down on the nearest beam, letting the blue light fill the room as I balanced my hands on the lip of the ceiling for leverage and jumped. Two tries later I had enough upper arm strength to pull myself up into the attic. Once there, I carefully replaced the rectangle of ceiling below me, covering any evidence of my escape route.

  It also served to effectively cut my visibility in half, forcing me to completely rely on my cell to light the beam in front of me, though it didn’t quite afford enough light to hit the corners of the attic.

  I had given up believing in the boogeyman when I was seven. But, if he really did exist and all Mom’s lies about him being imaginary were for naught, I had a feeling he probably lived in one of the corners of our attic. They were dark, full of cobwebs, and totally creepy. I put mental blinders on, focusing on the round vent on the far wall gable.

  Praying I didn’t disturb a nest of spiders (which was right next to heights on the list of things I loved), I hopped from beam to beam, avoiding stepping in the squishy pink insulation. One painstaking step at a time, I finally made it across the room to the vent. I could feel cool air coming in from the outside. A good sign.

  I pushed, testing just how sturdy it was. It wiggled. I shoved. It wiggled again but didn’t budge. I balanced on one foot on the wooden beam and kicked. This time a corner came loose. I repeated the procedure, hoping that Mom didn’t hear the noise. Or just figured we had very big rats. On my second try the vent tilted outward, making a clanging sound that echoed through the attic. I froze, holding my breath, praying the next sound I heard wasn’t Mom, investigating.

  One second.

  Two.

  By four Mississippi, I decided she hadn’t heard it, and I was safe.

  I peeked out the vent opening. Below me was the roof of the garage.

  I pushed my head and shoulders through the vent hole, the splintered wood scraping off against my hoodie as I squeezed through. I hunched my shoulders as much as I could, finally getting one arm out to brace myself on the roof below as I wriggled out the other arm, a hip, and one leg. Finally both feet slid out, hitting the shingles.

  I took a deep breath, again freezing for the requisite four Mississippi to make sure Mom hadn’t heard.

  So far so good.

  As long as I didn’t look down.

  Which, of course, was the first thing I did.

  Holy effing . . .

&nb
sp; That was a long way to fall. I watched the ground kind of sway in front of my eyes, the asphalt of my driveway looking particularly hard and bone breaky from this vantage point. I took a deep breath, told myself to really not look down this time, and carefully replaced the vent.

  Or tried to. It kinda hung askew, but I figured Mom wasn’t about to come inspect the roofline tonight. I turned.

  And felt my foot slip on the shingles.

  I quickly sat down on my butt, adrenaline rushing through me. I took a couple more deep breaths, then scooted to the edge of the roof. The top of Mom’s minivan was two feet below me.

  I slid until I was as close as I could get, said a silent prayer, willing all my worldly possessions to Sam if I didn’t make it, and jumped.

  I landed with a thud on the top of the mom mobile, grateful for once for its big, blocky shape.

  I slid on my belly to the back of the car and climbed down feetfirst over the spare tire, never having been so grateful in my life to feel my feet hit the ground. I took a moment to catch my breath, looking around the empty street as I crouched behind the car.

  For once, Raley was not parked by our front curb. In fact, the entire street was eerily deserted. The lone window lit up was our living room’s, where Mom was keeping vigil over her stumbling-upon-dead-bodies-prone daughter, or so she thought.

  As I looked back at the house, I had a moment of guilt for sneaking out on her. But just a moment. Hey, she’d made me eat dog-food chili. I think we were even.

  I turned my back on the window, ducking my head and setting off down the street.

  It was time to see a blackmailer about a video.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I JOG WALKED THE ENTIRE WAY TO SCHOOL, A STRONG sense of déjà vu washing over me as I passed one empty shop after another, dark storefronts and vacant parking lots signaling that all good people were home in bed at this hour. Part of me wished I was, too, but unless I wanted to spend the rest of my life under house arrest, “good” was something I couldn’t afford to be tonight. Instead, I slunk through the night, going over my plan once more.

  It was simple: I would look at the video Andi had. If it was any good, I’d call Sam, who, after much pleading, had already convinced Kevin to come pick me and Andi up, and we’d all go straight to the police station, where someone would drag Raley out of bed. (Hey, it was the least I could do, considering he’d burst into my bedroom, gun drawn—dramatic much?—Saturday night.) Then he’d arrest the bad guy, and Kevin would drive me back home before Mom even knew I was gone.