by Jessie Rosen
“Do you think?” Miller asked.
“Absolutely,” Amanda replied. “We’re attached at the hip—or we were. The cops will uncover that in a second.”
“Okay, okay,” Charlie said, trying to avoid a group fight. “We only have twenty more minutes to be off campus until lunch is over. I have to make this quick.”
“Yeah, about that, Carly,” Amanda said. “Think it’s maybe a little suspicious that the four of us are missing from school two hours before the cops are questioning you?”
Everyone was frustrated and Charlie couldn’t blame them. As of that morning, they didn’t even know that he’d given the police information. Now he had them gathered in Kit’s basement for an emergency meeting. It had taken fifteen minutes just to calm Amanda and Miller down, and the only thing that technically stopped their yelling was the fear of some neighbor hearing through the walls.
“Okay,” Charlie said. “My story is simple and it’s true. Before Sarah committed suicide, she pulled this sick prank on me by pretending to be Chelsea. It was sad and weird, but I didn’t do anything about it because I felt bad for her. I didn’t tell anyone about it when she died because I didn’t want to bring up something even more embarrassing about her after what she did to herself. It didn’t feel right. And that’s it.”
“Impressive,” Miller said grudgingly.
“It’s true,” Charlie said, “and it makes me a good guy who got email-attacked by Sarah, a deranged girl. Now I’m just trying to help.”
“Some of it is true,” said Amanda. “You didn’t exactly ignore her after those emails, and you didn’t exactly ignore ‘Chelsea’ before. I’m not sure I’d call you a good guy.”
“What do you mean he didn’t ignore her before? He had nothing to do with that freak,” Miller said.
Charlie shot Amanda the most vicious look he could without Miller or Kit noticing. That fact that he had actually fallen for Chelsea was still a secret from those two, and if it didn't stay that way, things were going to get even worse.
“Nothing,” Amanda said quickly. “I’m just mad.”
“I get that, but I’m trying to help all of us,” Charlie shot back.
“Then maybe you should have asked all of us before you did something that was going to affect all of us!” Amanda yelled.
“Please, please, please, please, please calm down, you guys,” Kit cried. Tears were streaming down her face. “I can’t do this anymore and—I just—please can we—”
Miller tried to hug Kit to stop her body from shaking so violently, but she slipped through his fingers before he could wrap his arms around her tiny body and ran up the stairs. Miller shot a crushing look over at Charlie. He didn’t know how to help Kit, and it was obviously killing him.
Charlie could relate. He’d felt the exact same way when Amanda came to him their freshman year and told him everything that was going on with her. He felt trapped in the situation—they both did—and so he did something extreme to help save her. Charlie wished he could tell Miller all about that experience to help him through things with Kit, but no one could know—not even to save Kit.
“Go to Kit,” Charlie finally said. “She needs you right now. Amanda and I will figure this out.”
Miller ran up the stairs to find Kit.
“Just us again,” Charlie said to Amanda after a pause. “Why it is always just us?”
“Because we’re the fighters, Charlie. We’re the team that gets it done when things get as bad as they can get. We’ve done it once, and we’ll do it again. You stood by me when I needed to lie, and I’ll stand by you now.”
“I don’t know if I can lie this time,” Charlie confessed. “It’s really getting to me.”
“You can because you have to,” Amanda said, “and I’m here to make sure you do.” Charlie had been tied to Amanda for so long that he didn’t know what life was like without her in the driver’s seat. Now, thanks to Laura, he knew what it was like to have a girlfriend without all that baggage. The question was: this time, did he have a choice? And after all the history between them, would he ever really be able to separate from Amanda?
In a way, he didn’t have a choice then, and he didn’t have a choice now. He had to do whatever it took to protect himself.
* * *
Charlie tried to stay calm as he sat in the waiting room at the police bureau, but it wasn’t exactly a relaxing environment. A homeless guy was screaming curses at a cop trying to get him out of the building and a young woman with a thick accent from what sounded like Russia was crying to another cop about her husband being a monster. Charlie stuck out like a sore thumb, so he was almost relieved to be taken into the interrogation room. Once inside, though, he had to use every ounce of his energy to fight against slipping into another panic attack.
It was a tiny room with a large, steel desk, two old chairs facing opposite each other and a two-way mirror on one wall—exactly the same as he’d seen in a thousand cop shows and movies. Nothing that happened inside rooms like that ever looked pleasant, nor did the guys who would come in, slam the door behind them, and start firing questions. Charlie was rehearsed, but right now he wasn’t ready. Before he could mentally run through his plan for the hundredth time, a detective entered the room.
“Charlie. Thanks for coming in. I’m Detective Pierson, but you can just call me Matt.” He was thinner and younger than Charlie expected, and looked like he was more likely to run a successful start-up than work a tiny town’s barely necessary police force.
Detective Pierson reached his hand across the table and gave Charlie’s an incredibly strong shake. It happened so fast that Charlie didn’t have a second to wipe the sweat off his palms. “Listen,” the detective said as their hands disconnected, “don’t be nervous about this interview. It’s going to be quick and easy. And I’m real sorry to pull you in here on Halloween. Talk about a trick, right?”
Charlie smiled, though he was sure it was awkward. This didn’t feel like a moment to be joking, but he wanted to follow the lead.
“It’s fine, Detective—”
“Matt. Please.”
“Sorry. Matt,” Charlie said. “Whenever you need me is fine.”
“Thanks. This is going to be really brief. We looked over what you sent and have most of everything we need. I just had one follow-up question.”
Charlie couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Only one question? How could that be possible? He had a whole explanation that went behind the emails: who he thought Sarah was, why she did it, and, most importantly, why he didn’t tell anyone until now. Unless this guy’s one question was a huge one, Charlie was confused.
“Is it okay if we just get right into it?” Detective Pierson asked.
“Absolutely,” Charlie said as calmly as he could.
“Great. So Sarah does this thing to you. It’s obviously strange and creepy and evidence of some serious issues she was going through. But afterward, did you ignore her?”
“What do you mean?” Charlie asked, mostly because the question came so quickly that he didn’t get the chance to fully process the words.
“Did you just never speak to her again? Never address her in school? Never answer that last email about her wanting to meet up and be with you?”
Charlie’s mind immediately flipped to the picture in the homecoming slideshow. “No,” he said. “One time after the emails, she came over to my locker and I asked her to go away.”
“Right,” the detective said, “that makes sense. But otherwise you pretended like she didn’t exist?”
“Yes,” Charlie said. The shorter the response, the better, he figured, especially if what he was saying already made sense.
“Thanks, buddy. That’s all I’ve got. What are you going as for Halloween tonight?”
“Danny Zucco. Wait. That’s really it? Why?” Charlie was shocked. How could that possibly be it?
Detective Pierson look equally surprised by his follow-up. “Because you answered my question, and I’m
satisfied with the response right now. People don’t usually want to know why it’s over, Charlie; they just want it to be over.”
“Yeah,” Charlie said, “Of course. I get that. I just figured you’d want to know more about why I think Sarah did what she did.”
“Ah. We’ve got a junior detective on our hands here,” he said. Charlie couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not, but there was a little edge to his tone this time. “Here’s the thing, kid. I don’t care why Sarah sent you those letters. I care why she killed herself. And your answer helps me figure that out.”
“How?” Charlie asked. Now he was legitimately interested.
“Because it provides me with a motive. Every move we make in life comes from a motive: the bottom-line reason that we do it. There’s a reason I woke up at five thirty and went to the gym: so I can look good for the ladies. There’s a reason Sarah Castro-Tanner killed herself: maybe she felt alone and unloved in this world. And there’s a reason you sent us those emails last week: to help us out.”
Detective Pierson’s voice was back to that friendly, just-two-guys-talking tone, but Charlie still didn’t like where this line of thinking was headed. He needed to stop asking questions and end this meeting.
“That’s really interesting,” Charlie said. “Thanks for taking the time to explain it to me.”
“Any time. Let me show you out.”
Charlie tried not to breathe a massive sigh of relief as he stood up from the table and followed the detective toward the door.
“Oh, hey. I just realized that I put words in your mouth back there about why you sent the emails. I assumed it was to help us out, but I probably should have asked you.” Detective Pierson had positioned himself so that he was staring straight into Charlie’s eyes. His face registered a pleasant smile, but Charlie didn’t feel like they were friends in this moment. “Why did you send us those emails now?” he finally asked.
“For why you said,” Charlie sputtered. “To be helpful because Sarah was…I knew her forever. I wanted to help the Castro-Tanner family understand that maybe she was having some, I don’t know, mental problems maybe, for awhile.”
“That’s what I thought,” Detective Pierson said, cutting him off. Then he looked into the distance, as if he was considering whether or not to say what was on his mind. After an incredibly awkward pause, he finally spoke. “Okay,” he said. “Back to your real life.”
Charlie followed him out of the room, silently. If only this guy knew how much worse my real life is, Charlie thought as he walked down the hall and out of the police station for what he feared would not be the last time.
Sasha
Halloween was a particularly treat-filled holiday for Sasha this year. The first sweet little discovery came in the form of a new audio file that appeared by surprise on her computer some time around one o’clock that afternoon. It was the latest downloaded recording of a conversation caught by the tap still attached to Kit’s basement window. Charlie and the crew decided to have yet another critical conversation in that space.
Within the first five minutes of their little chat, Sasha learned something that made her realize the foursome was not as tightly knit a group as she originally thought. Amanda, Kit, and Sean had no idea about what really went on between Charlie and “Chelsea.” They knew that Sarah had tricked Charlie as a girl named Chelsea, but they had no idea that Charlie went along with the entire thing for months and months before he knew the truth. They did not know that Charlie was in love with “Chelsea.” That meant that whatever the group did to Sarah, they did for Charlie, but with only half of the story as their motivation.
Sasha wondered how they would feel about whatever happened if they knew the whole truth, and, more importantly, if they might be willing to turn on Charlie as a result? The fact that the police were talking to Charlie meant they would eventually question the rest of the group. It was too known among the whole Englewood community that they were a set.
That information alone would have given Sasha plenty to work on for the next few days, but something popped up on the master tracking feed that sent her off in yet another direction, and from a very fascinating source.
Sasha had been tracking the computers inside the Englewood school newspaper office since the beginning of her search. It was a choice she made early on in her hacking plan, figuring that places like the newspaper might be as fruitful as the school yearbook. They were spaces where students spent a lot of time and might unknowingly drop clues. Once again, Sasha’s instincts were right. Around four o’clock on Halloween day—one hour after the rest of the school went home—someone made a move that was very helpful to Sasha’s cause.
At first Sasha wasn’t sure who was using the device, but they started by opening and closing a series of folders containing photos—all candid shots from the yearbook committee that the newspaper computer had access to. That didn’t last long before the person switched tasks to painstakingly searching the “downloads” folder, opening and closing dozens of images that had been newly added to the hard drive. Again, they were images of random Englewood students, probably taken for various Chronicle articles. Sasha couldn’t make sense of it at first, but then the searching mysteriously stopped, halfway through the folder. The person was only interested in photos downloaded the week before October 24. That’s when it finally clicked in Sasha’s mind: they were looking for the image of Charlie and Sarah that she had slipped into the homecoming slideshow. At that realization Sasha crossed all her fingers and toes hoping that the person would do something more specific to reveal him or herself. It could have been anyone who had a legitimate reason to be inside that room…or anyone who found their way in for the purpose of searching this computer. Obviously Sasha suspected Charlie or one of his friends, but, from their conversation in Kit’s basement, she knew that they were supposed to be getting ready for Halloween so they could all meet at the diner around five o’clock.
Sasha quickly opened a new window to do a search on the location of Charlie and his friends based on their cellphones’ GPS tracking. Charlie was home. Amanda was at Kit’s house, and Sean appeared to be at some strip mall on Route 9. They all had an alibi. Then Sasha went the opposite route. She reverse-searched the location of Englewood High against all the cellphones she was tracking. About a hundred pings came back, but only one made sense in relation to the bigger picture: a cellphone belonging to Laura Rivers.
It was the first time since the beginning of the school year that Laura had done anything worthy of Sasha’s attention. She emailed back and forth with Charlie a ton, but it was always goofy love notes or random lines from movies. Her lack of online social activity had always struck Sasha as slightly odd, but she chalked it up to the fact that people said Laura was a hippie from California. With that in mind, it made sense that Laura might not be attached to her devices 24/7.
Apparently now she had something worth digging for, and the fact that it was happening at four o’clock inside what was probably an empty office felt telling. Of course nothing came up on the computer in reference to the photo, so Laura moved on to her final search, the one that gave Sasha a pretty clear picture of what was going on. She double-clicked on the folder marked “Becca Private” and started guessing at passwords that might make it open.
It was still technically a guess, but Sasha was pretty sure it was a smart one: Laura Rivers thought that Becca Adams knew something about Charlie’s relationship with Sarah. That made sense. Laura was dating Charlie from all the information Sasha had gathered, so she wanted to know more about all the mystery surrounding him. Sasha seriously considered sending Laura a personal note telling her to steer clear of this guy, but then again, curious Laura was already proving helpful.
Sasha stared at Becca’s name, thinking. It wasn’t a name she’d necessarily expected to see in this search process and it made her incredibly worried. What did Becca know? Sasha realized that she had found one more person to help with her cause. It was time to become more c
losely acquainted with Laura Rivers.
Chapter 11
Laura
It took a lot of confidence for Laura to walk into a diner full of her classmates wearing skin-tight, latex pants and an itty-bitty crop top with a pair of her mom’s old, red pumps, but she did it in the name of Halloween. A year or so ago she would have copped out and gone as “Sweet Sandy,” but now it was “Sexy Sandy” all the way. She’d even found a box of those vintage candy cigarettes that actually smoked. She and Charlie were going to look incredibly hot together, and she was hoping that would all lead to some equally hot alone time at her house later that night.
But the first thing Laura noticed when she approached the table where Amanda, Kit, and Miller were sitting was—no Charlie. It took her another second to see that something else was missing: their costumes.
“Please don’t tell me this is some really cruel prank,” Laura said as she slinked into the booth. Charlie was still her buffer when it came to spending time with the group, and Laura was nervous about how they would treat her without him present.
“No,” Amanda said. “Sorry. Charlie should have texted you. He’s probably not going to make it for dinner, but he’ll be at Jeff’s party later.”
“Yeah,” Laura said, swallowing. “He should have texted me. Where is he?”
Amanda didn’t skip a beat, making it hard to tell if she was lying. “He’s with his mom. She spiked a fever so he stayed to make sure the medicine he gave her helps it go down before he leaves.”
“Okay,” Laura said. It didn’t seem worth getting into an argument with any of them about Charlie’s whereabouts. They would obviously take his side. “But why aren’t you guys in costumes?”
“Didn’t feel like it,” Miller said.
“I have cat ears in my car,” Amanda said.
