by Lamar Giles
I fought the need to say something that might sound weird, like, How was it?, reminding me how little experience I had with my peers. I could trash talk the sheriff but couldn’t get into a conversation on teen sex.
Thankfully, Dustin changed the subject. Sort of. “So, you and Reya?”
There was a moment of panic when I thought he was asking if me and Reya had done it. But he showed me his phone, the screen filled with a photo of me and her arriving at the party, taken and sent by someone with too much time on their hands. Reya looked red-carpet worthy in the picture. I looked lost.
“Yeah, we came together.”
He examined the picture like a jeweler examines a diamond. “That ass is lookin’ fine, dude.”
“That ass” had a name, and I had a knee-jerk urge to break Dustin’s nose. Again, I reminded myself that this was normal guy talk. And he just saved me from Zach. Chill, Nick.
Lorenz powered on Dustin’s flat screen and popped in a Blu-ray. Carrey surfed the web on the opposite side of the room. While they were occupied, I said, “You want to talk in the hall or something? About Eli?”
“For what?” Lorenz said, fiddling with the media center controls. “His conspiracy theories are a rerun to us.”
I had no idea what that meant. I wasn’t in the dark for long.
Dustin said, “I told you I met him that Friday, right?”
I nodded.
“As soon as I got to his newspaper dungeon, Eli starts in on how my dad is a crooked politician and when he exposes him, it’s going to be the story of the century. Eli was all like, I shouldn’t have dissed him and I’ll remember all the f’ed up stuff I did when I’m on the streets and he’s living in a big house. It was crazy talk.”
I wanted to say that didn’t sound like Eli. But I couldn’t get over his attempt to plant me in Dustin’s last party as his inside man. Everything I learned since Eli died suggested he had dirt on the mayor then and was looking for more. If Whispertown was all about Mayor Burke’s shady crime stats, Eli planned to blow the whole thing up. He’d told me that himself.
Eli could be manipulative when he needed to be. Reya and Dustin confirmed he had no problem invading someone’s privacy.
I said, “What’d you do?”
Dustin looked away, ashamed. “I pushed him. Man, I was going to beat him down.”
I thought back to how I found Eli, the desk knocked off its book supports. Was that how it happened?
“You didn’t though?”
“No. I felt it building up in me and I backed off. I—I don’t like to use my hands like that.” Absently, he touched the darkening bruise around his eye. “I left.”
“Wait, so Eli was fine the last time you saw him?”
“The last time I saw him, sure.”
What did that mean? “You’re losing me. If Eli was alive the last time you saw him, what was the point of that story? Why the ‘Nick, you need to know’?”
“Because when I came home, I told my dad about what happened.” Dustin’s phone buzzed, and he checked an incoming text. With his eyes on the screen, he said, “I told my dad.”
No need to repeat. I got it the first time.
CHAPTER 30
WAS DUSTIN SAYING WHAT IT SOUNDED like he was saying? “You really think—?”
“He’s crazy, Nick,” said Lorenz. “Don’t listen to him.”
“Screw you,” Dustin barked. “I’m not crazy.”
“You do hate your dad,” Carrey added.
“That’s the thing about rich white boys,” Lorenz went on, “they love hating their parents. It’s true, I looked it up.”
Dustin walked over and unplugged the TV.
“Hey!” Lorenz whined.
Dustin stood in the center of the room, pointed at his eye. “What did you think this was about? This wasn’t me forgetting to dump the trash or turn on the dishwasher. He caught me going through his office. After Eli died I tried to see if any of the stuff he said was true. My dad lost it.”
“You think he had something to do with Eli’s suicide?” I used the s word on purpose, to get his reaction.
He glared. “You still calling it that?”
Lorenz rolled his eyes and plugged the TV back in. Carrey stayed glued to the screen. This made me question the dynamic here. Was Dustin prone to making up wild stories about his abusive father?
At your age, everything that pops in your head seems clever and important. It’s not.
When Dad said that, I blew it off because he’s Dad. Now that I wasn’t the only one with the Mayor-Murder Theory, it felt silly somehow, like when you hear a little kid say they’re afraid of something under their bed, and you’re embarrassed that you used to be afraid of the same stupid thing. This was how it would sound to objective people. Far-fetched.
Lorenz lost interest in the movie and began rooting through Dustin’s closet like some fashion archaeologist. “You still got that beast leather jacket, D?”
Dustin groaned. “Dude, stay out of my stuff.”
My phone shook. I read the incoming text.
Reya: Where r u?
Me: Meet @ car n 5
“Reya?” Dustin said, not waiting for a confirmation. “Does she think her brother killed himself?”
“She’s just grieving.” I needed to be guarded about how much I said until I processed all I’d heard. “And she’s ready to go.”
Lorenz said, “You still here? I would’ve dived through the window to get to that girl tonight.”
Chill, Nick. I focused on Dustin. “What now? Did you find any, like, evidence? To back you up?”
“No. He’s got it all locked down with passwords.”
I was at a loss. “Why tell me then?”
He shrugged. “Things have been getting tense around here. More than ever. I’ve got a bad feeling and I wanted someone other than the dumbass twins over there to know. Someone who was also Eli’s friend.”
This guy, who beamed confidence since the first time I met him, now looked unsure. Frightened. “Dustin—”
“Don’t keep your girl waiting, Nick. Nothing left for me to do but clean up and get these jokers home. I’d rather be in your shoes.”
I didn’t take offense this time, had a feeling he wasn’t talking about how fine Reya was.
We slapped palms, and he said, “Watch your back. Zach’s gunning for you bad.”
“I kind of got that impression.”
He laughed a humorless laugh. “Trust me, there are worse people to have after you in this town.”
Reya didn’t ask me what Dustin said, or if I’d found him. Something was wrong. She drove us away from North End, but not toward either of our homes. She seemed . . . faded somehow, despite the lingering body glitter.
“Are you okay?” I said.
“Super.”
No one knew sarcasm better than me. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened. Not other than being around friends again and seeing people getting on with their lives.”
“Are your friends the Dementors from Harry Potter? Did they drain all your happiness with their Dementor’s Kiss?”
A small smile. “I didn’t take you for a Potterhead.”
“I read a lot growing up.” Another lesson learned during my time in WitSec: want to avoid kids who’d like to assault you . . . check out the library.
“Eli always used to bring up stuff in books and on TV like that. Only it would be things no one had ever heard of.”
“I know. Sometimes I’d google stuff he said hours after I talked to him.”
“Me too!” She beamed, for a second. “If I’m loco, tell me now. Don’t let me keep making a fool of myself.”
“Reya, where’s this coming from?”
She slouched in her seat, driving us in circles. “I cooked and cleaned and played hostess at my house this week because Mami couldn’t do it. At the mortuary, I picked my brother’s casket because Mami couldn’t do it. I talked to this insurance guy about an old policy my pa
pi had on Eli because Mami couldn’t do it.”
“That’s a lot to ask of anyone. Not criticizing your mom, just sayin’.”
“I know, and I was pissed. I kept thinking, ‘Eli didn’t kill himself. He wouldn’t do this to us. This is somebody else’s fault.’ You know? But tonight, when the music was playing and I saw my old friends, I forgot all that. I wasn’t obsessed about what ‘really’ happened to him. Just for a second. When I remembered, and the ‘Eli wouldn’t do this’ thought snapped back in my head, this other voice was like, ‘That’s so stupid.’”
She swiped at her eyes, doubting herself. Possibly ready to let this go. I couldn’t keep her in the dark any longer. “I need to tell you what Dustin said. Let’s go somewhere, though. You probably shouldn’t be in motion when you hear this. You know the lake at Monitor Park?”
She drove us there. And after I told her Dustin’s suspicions about the mayor, she perked, regaining some of her previous drive.
“You think this Whispertown thing is what Eli pulled off the mayor’s computer? And the mayor faked his suicide to cover it up?”
“Maybe? We can’t tell unless we know exactly what Whispertown is. Did you ever find his laptop?”
She shook her head. “I called the school myself on Thursday, and they didn’t have it.”
“Damn it.”
If—and it was a big if—we were onto something, and the mayor, or most likely someone working for him, did this to Eli, they would’ve taken any evidence that was lying around. Nothing’s easier to carry than a laptop.
“If it’s gone,” I said, “then that’s a wrap. That data is lost.”
Reya sat up and gripped the wheel like she’d been zapped with electricity. “Nick, Eli would never risk his data being completely lost. He was too type A for that.”
I caught on immediately. “Backups. But where?”
“I didn’t see any flash drives or anything in his room when I checked. He was hardly there anyway. Always holed up in—”
“—the J-Room.”
Maybe we were doubling down on our delusions, but I couldn’t lie about how right this part of our “investigation” felt.
“It’s sealed off,” I said, recalling the padlock I’d spotted. “We can beat that, though. It’s too exposed to risk a pick set, even between classes. If I can get a look at the brand of lock, we can get in fast with a bump key. And—”
She tilted her head. “A what?”
“A bump key. It’s a special key with the teeth filed down. You stick it in a lock, give it a little bump, and it shifts all the tumblers inside, unlocking it.”
“You can get something like that?”
“Well, I can make one. I think.”
“You can? You’d do that, break into school property?”
I mistook the tone of her voice for shock, discomfort at how easily I’d brought up breaking rules—laws—and I backpedaled. “It’s just something dumb I saw on TV, we can—”
She leaned into me, pressed her mouth against mine, slid her tongue between my lips. It tasted like cinnamon gum, a flavor I was not a fan of before but could learn to love. Definitely not a Dementor’s Kiss.
My hands found her hips, grazing the skin just above the waistline of her shorts, and I pulled her into my seat, on top of me. She reached down and jerked a lever; we fell back into a near-horizontal recline. I felt fingernails on my shirt, under it, lightly scraping my stomach and chest. I revenge fondled her back and thighs, our mouths sloppy on each other’s faces and necks.
I didn’t know how much further this would go—nowhere, everywhere—but some treasonous voice of reason suggested that to do more than kiss Reya, after all she’d been through, was taking advantage.
She licked my earlobe and my hormones dissolved that traitor like a baby tooth dropped in acid.
It was what it was. . . .
The initial heat cooled after a few minutes, saving me from any crisis of conscience I might’ve felt tomorrow. I convinced myself that guilt played third base, and I hadn’t hit a triple. We stayed there for an hour, our rabid pawing becoming light kisses and conversation. She thanked me, verbally, for being there for her (“You know, after those kisses, saying the actual words seems kind of redundant”), I told about how her psycho ex got some girl to set me up (“Zachary’s an ass and Callie’s always been a tawdry whore”), and we agreed to scope the J-Room and work on a bump key (“I’ll try to think of a better way, but that seems like our best shot”).
Reya shifted back to the driver’s seat, holding my hand instead of starting the engine. “You ever get homesick?”
“Huh?”
“You moved here from Detroit. Do you miss it?”
“Naw. Not really.” I’d never even been to the place. Gotta love the legend. “Eli told you where I’m from?”
“No. Got it from the GAP.”
Completely confused, “The place where you buy khakis?”
She giggled. “Girls’ Associated Press, Stepton High’s gossip wire service. That’s what I call it anyway—you can’t be in the Cruz house and not pick up some journalism talk. You had the female pop all chatty as soon as you touched ground.”
Flattery and embarrassment rubbed together, started a fire in my cheeks. “No way.”
“Your humility is really getting on my nerves.”
“We can’t all be movie star fabulous like you.”
She grinned, more used to compliments than me. But was the truth really a compliment? She was fabulous. More so by the minute. I mean, anybody with eyes could see she was beautiful. What she’d done for her mother this week, though, and what she did for Eli tonight . . . I’d never met anyone like her.
I’ve also never tried to solve a possible murder, either. A lot of firsts this year.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” she asked.
“About the GAP. I’d really, really like to. No one said anything.”
She snatched her hand away, planted it on her hip. “Like you’d notice. You move in a bubble, Nick. I practically threw myself at you.” She scratched her temple, rephrased. “Or into you.”
“What do you mean?”
“The day we met—”
“When I bumped into you?”
She fidgeted. “I maybe could’ve sidestepped you, if I’d tried.”
“But you acted so irritated.”
“You’ve never heard of ‘playing hard to get’?” Her expression changed into something less proud after she said that. “Then the thing with Zach happened. And I backed off. I thought you thought I wasn’t worth the trouble.”
I thought it. A few times. Being in the Program did have some benefits. “I’m used to trouble.”
The kissing continued.
I could’ve stayed with her all night, but we both had creeping curfews.
She drove me home with one hand interlocked with mine. In front of my house, I leaned in for one last kiss, which might’ve been better than the first. It was a To Be Continued kiss, the one that left you thinking about the next.
She saw me zoning. “Something on your mind?”
“Got a sudden craving for vanilla ice cream.”
Smirking, “Do I even want to know what that means?”
“Good night, Reya.”
She motored down the block. The driveway was empty—Dad gone as usual—and I slid past Mom’s open bedroom door, saw her buried under the covers. Soon, I was, too. I fell asleep thinking of vanilla and cinnamon, and missed Reya’s 2:00 a.m. text about the car accident.
The one that claimed the life of another classmate.
The one that may not have been an accident at all.
CHAPTER 31
I FOLLOWED THE SCENT OF MAPLE bacon to the kitchen, where Mom had three skillets resting on blue flames. I said, “Smells good, Mom.”
“Thank you. Set the table for the three of us.”
Three? I knew me and her were better after our talk yesterday, but she’d called a truce with Dad, too? “Where is h
e?”
“Showering. I told him we’re having a good family breakfast today. Even if it kills us.”
A thirteen-inch TV sat on our counter. Mom kept it on the news while she cooked. I arranged the place settings in a foggy daydream state while Mom chatted and the anchor ran down the morning’s top stories.
(Reya, Reya, Reya.)
“These have been tough years for us, Tony—”
“Gas prices hit a record high . . .”
(Reya, Reya, Reya.)
“—only given so much time on earth, and you end up regretting the things you don’t—”
“. . . tensions in Iran escalate, necessitating a trip by Secretary of State . . .” (Reya, Reya, Reya.)
“—cherish the time we have, but it has to be ours, not the made-up people we pretend—”
“. . . In local news, three Stepton High School students were involved in a fatal car crash late last night. . .”
The silverware I’d been holding rattled to the floor, my focus shifting to the news. Mom went mute and increased the TV’s volume.
“. . . the teens were rushed to Stepton General, where one was pronounced dead on arrival.” The broadcast cut from the anchorman at his desk to nighttime footage of emergency lights flashing over a familiar dark blue BMW hooked around a tree like a boomerang. “The remaining passengers were treated for injuries, but we’ve received conflicting reports of their status at this time. No one witnessed the accident but one of the survivors alleges their vehicle was run off the road by an aggressive driver in a dark, late-model truck or SUV. Police are searching for the vehicle.”
“Good Lord,” Mom said. “Do you think you know those boys?”
Before I could answer, Dad entered with a damp towel around his neck. “Sure smells good. Let’s eat.” Something on our faces must’ve told him he was the only one who still had an appetite. “What? What’d I say?”
I ran upstairs and powered on my half-charged phone. The display blazed with like ten text messages. All from Reya. And I asked the question.
Me: I saw the news. Do you know who died?
Reya: Carrey. Everyone is saying it’s him.
