by daisy harris
Good. Because you’re my favorite person, she said. A lot of gay kids commit suicide. You know that, right? Their parents kick them out and they end up on the streets. Alone.
I swallowed past a lump in my throat. How dare she take most people’s worst nightmare and throw it in my face? And yet, I still wanted her to go back to being sweet and happy Zoe, the one who’d tell me I was great.
My mom is pretty cool, I texted, needlessly defending myself.
I hope so. You’re so sweet and awesome. You deserve the best.
My head spun from her rapid shift in gears.
I should get to class.
The letters sat on my screen, and I waited for a reply. But as long as I stared, nothing appeared. Not a good-bye. No smiley face. Nothing. It was as if because I needed to end the conversation, she’d cut me out.
I felt like my brain was mushy, and I didn’t know what just happened. Luckily, the bell rang. Class was starting, and there was no point in trying to figure out Zoe any longer.
After all, she was a loose cannon. The problem was, interacting with her was making me a little bit crazy too.
“You heard I broke up with Thea, right?” I’d met Julius after our last class that day, in the pickup area outside school. Sun slanted through the trees, making light dance on the first of the fallen leaves.
“Yes.” He dropped to a crouch next to his backpack.
“I bet you didn’t hear that I told her.”
Any other guy would have asked, Told her what? but Julius only peeked from between his curtains of hair. “Really?”
My palms sweated, and I wiped them on my jeans. “Yeah. Really. I mean, she deserved to know.” I carded a hand through my bangs.
“I agree.” He picked a book out of his backpack: Mania and Psychosis in the Adolescent Population.
I snickered. “Doing some light reading?”
“I’m studying for my assessment.” Julius looked up as Hal and his friends wandered past. They gathered at the yellow-painted section where the bus came to take them to swim practice, all of them thick and imposing in their letterman’s jackets. “Any news from our friend?” Julius asked.
“Unfortunately. And I’m starting to see the subtle insults you were talking about.” I rolled my shoulders back. I didn’t have to talk to her forever. Just until we figured out how to outsmart her. “What should I say to her? I need to get into her head so I can keep her out of mine.”
“I’ve been considering that.” Julius bent to get something out of his bag. “She seems to like dogs. Maybe that’s an in.” He shuffled his belongings, and pulled out three single-serving packs of lime Jell-O. “It’s not much to go on, but it’s a start. We should try to build trust.”
I wondered what the Jell-O was for, then remembered Hal’s hospital chart. Whatever lingering anxiety I had about Zoe’s barbs faded, and all I saw was the awesomeness that was Julius. “You’re disturbingly amazing. You know that, right?”
Julius pursed his lips, like his face wanted to smile, but he refused to let it. “Yes, I know. You can take your jaw off the floor now.”
I shoved him in the arm. “Conceited much?”
“Hey now,” he said playfully, and then wandered a few steps to where Hal was standing. “Hal! How are you?”
“What the fuck do you want, Drake?” Hal’s shoulders were bunched, hiding his neck. His friends backed away, leaving Hal alone to talk with us.
“I thought you guys might need a snack before practice.” Julius offered all three containers to Hal. “I figured you’d had a hard week.” Either Julius’s acting abilities had improved since the hospital, or he was genuinely sorry about Todd’s and Hal’s dramas. I guessed the latter.
“Uh . . . thanks.” Hal looked at the Jell-O, surprise making his beady eyes rounder. “That’s cool of you, Drake.”
Julius smiled enigmatically. “No problem.” He opened his giant book. “Oh, by the way, did Liz ever talk to you about that Instagram account? The Other Woman?”
Hal had bent to put the Jell-O packs into his bag, but he paused, jaw clenching. “Yeah. But she talked to a lot of guys, right?” His red cheeks turned a deeper pink.
“They didn’t ask me about her.” Julius cleared his throat. He shut his book with a definitive slap and tucked it under his arm. “I stopped by Liz’s office, though. Once I heard about Todd, I couldn’t keep quiet.”
The bobbing of Hal’s Adam’s apple showed the glitch in his nerves. “You told her? On purpose? Why?”
“The Other Woman had been leading me on for weeks. I’ll tell you, I was surprised to find it wasn’t a real girl.”
“You?” Hal darted a glance at his buddies. He lowered his voice. “What did she say?”
“A bunch of things, that she wanted to date me . . .” Julius kept his eyes downcast, but I knew he was listening intently. “It sounds like she was catfishing a bunch of us. I’m sure there were others besides me who aren’t on the swim team.”
Hal sucked his bottom lip into his mouth. “But she was really after you? I thought you were ga—”
Julius batted his long, black eyelashes. “You thought I was what?”
I tensed, wondering if Hal would say the word “gay” aloud.
“I thought you were supposed to be a genius or something.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Whatever. She was a trip. I talked to her a bunch.” Hal tucked his thumbs into his belt loops. “To be real—I’m still getting over how bad she messed with me. It was over months, man. And I never would have replied in the first place, but I thought she was this girl I met at a party.”
“I heard she used a picture of some local girl.” Julius’s foot tapped. “And whoever is behind this is a very skilled manipulator.”
“Yeah,” Hal chuckled. “If you fell for it . . . I mean, you’re like the smartest kid in school, right?”
Julius gave an enigmatic grin. “I just wished I knew what was true and what was lies. She never told me anything about her school or her family.” Julius paused. “Did she ever ask you to meet?”
Confusion dug crags into the space between Hal’s eyebrows. “Sort of. I mean, yeah. One time she asked me to meet her down by the Petco on Admiral Way.” He shrugged shyly. “She never showed. Shit, I don’t know what to believe. It was probably all bullshit.”
“Forget her.” I reached to touch his arm, but pulled away before I made contact. “She’s a bitch. She fucks with people.”
Hal nodded.
“She’s even texted me,” I blurted. I could tell from Julius’s tense expression that I should have kept that secret, but the truth was, I was worried about Hal. “She might change to a different account once she realizes we’re onto her.”
The swim bus pulled up to the yellow line, but Hal stayed where he was, arms crossed. “She’s still out there, man. That’s some scary shit.”
“Sadly, yes. She is.” Julius picked up his bag. “But hopefully we can—”
I coughed.
He changed tack. “Hopefully, the school will catch whoever’s been doing this.”
Hal chewed the inside of his cheek. “Wish there was something I could do.”
Julius shook his head, but I stepped in front of him. “Talk to your friends. Make sure they’re careful about anyone they talk to online. Anyone who seems too good to be true probably is.”
Exhaling slowly, Hal licked his lips. “Yeah. I should do that. Not everyone knows what she can make a guy—” Glancing up at us, his expression was grim. “Not everyone knows what she’s capable of.”
Hal’s friends got on the bus, and he followed. Julius cut in the other direction, toward the lineup of cars and SUVs. I wasn’t sure yet what he planned to do with Hal’s information, but we knew one thing—we had to bring this girl down before she hurt somebody else.
Cars drove along the front of the school in a slow parade. And soon Mrs. Hundstead pulled up to me and Julius.
“We should ask Bethany for help,” I said.
“Why
?” Julius opened the back door of the minivan. “We know where The Other Woman is. It’s only a matter of staking out the area for long enough to find her.”
“We know where The Other Woman is?” I spotted Bethany out of the corner of my eye. She’d come outside with Thea, and their heads were bent together in conversation. When I waved, she smiled knowingly. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what that was about. Of course Thea, as Bethany’s best friend, would have told her.
I might have been angry, or even embarrassed, but I wasn’t. Bethany’s face was bright and her shoulders back. Like she was proud on my behalf.
When she waved back, it seemed like a good-bye. Not from being her friend, but perhaps she realized that maybe me and Julius needed to be alone for a while. I didn’t know how to thank her, so I climbed into the minivan, vowing to fill her in via text message in the morning.
“So, how do you know where this person is?” I settled into the far bucket seat.
Julius climbed in after me. “Didn’t you hear what Hal said?”
“He said he was supposed to meet her at Petco. But if she didn’t show, we can assume—”
“She probably works there.” Julius crossed one leg over the other.
“Did you boys have a nice day at school?” Mrs. Hundstead called.
“Yes. It was wonderful.” Julius’s eyes sparkled.
As usual, Mrs. Hundstead drove us over the hill to Julius’s house and dropped us off at his back door. We went inside in silence. Climbing the stairs seemed to take forever.
“You and your boyfriend have made up, I see,” Natasha shouted when we passed her door.
“Better than the losers you date,” Julius quipped as we went into his room.
I snorted a laugh, and dropped into my usual beanbag chair. “Why would you think she works at Petco? I’d have thought she’d tell Hal a bogus place.”
Julius slapped his hands together, sitting in front of his computer. “She loves dogs. We know that from her feed. There’s no way her naming that as a meeting place was random.” He tapped his keyboard to activate the screen and pulled up a map. “Either she works at the store or she volunteers at Seattle Animal Shelter. They’re within a block of one another. Some of the pictures on her feed were candids. I bet she took them herself.”
I took out my phone, and started scrolling through Zoe_2.0’s pictures. She didn’t have many, but what she’d posted was of dogs. Though the background was hard to make out, I recognized a wall of collars behind a big-eyed bullmastiff.
“Fuck.” I gasped. “You’re right. That picture’s from a pet store.”
Julius climbed off his chair and came to crouch next to me. “If someone other than Zoe went to meet Hal, he wouldn’t have recognized her.”
“True.” I ran through all the girls I’d seen surround Zoe, wondering which of them might have had access to Zoe’s pictures. “If it was one of Zoe’s cheerleader friends, I’d have thought Hal would recognize them.”
“It’s hard to say. Other than that single party, I don’t get the sense that Hal has spent much time with people from Nathan Hale.” Julius stood. “You should text the account back; tell her you’re thinking about adopting a dog. The shelter is open until eight most nights, that gives us plenty of time to check there and Petco. And plenty of time for her to find us.”
I climbed from the beanbag chair. Once again, Julius was moving too fast for me to keep up. “Why would she come looking?” The fake account holder’s power was in her anonymity. It didn’t seem like she’d want to meet us, even if given the chance.
“She’d be curious.” Julius walked the length of his room. “She may not want to talk to us, but I’m sure she’d lurk long enough to watch what we were doing.”
“Yeah. That makes sense.” I pulled out my phone. “When should we plan to go down there?” I stared at my screen, trying to formulate a text.
“As soon as possible.” Julius sat in his desk chair and flicked on his computer screen. “You probably can’t get away tonight, can you?”
I thought about Mom, and the tentative peace we had. Since I was technically still grounded, I needed to get home. “No. But she’s at work Thursday night. She has a late shift, and won’t be home until 2 a.m.”
Julius frowned, clicking around on his computer screen. “Thursday, it’ll have to be. My parents are in St. Thomas for a week, so—”
“Good.” I typed a quick hello into my phone. “Let’s get this set up so we can catch this girl.”
I’m thinking of adopting a dog.
I let the text linger, lying in bed late that night. My ceiling was a pockmarked beige, and moonlight filtered in between the shades.
Part of me hoped Zoe wouldn’t answer until morning. After the stress of the day, I didn’t know if I could handle Zoe’s particular brand of slap and tickle.
Still, when she didn’t answer, I texted the next thing that came to mind. I love dogs.
Me too.
I smiled, despite myself. Yeah, she’d seen my first text. She just hadn’t answered. She was training me to say what she wanted to hear.
What kind do you think I should get? Since I had her hooked, I may as well keep her on the line.
Something big. You don’t want people to think you’re . . . Well. You know. :)
Her smiley face did little to mask the fact that she was essentially trying to dissuade me from getting a dog that seemed gay.
I’ll see what they have at the Seattle Animal Shelter.
She didn’t reply. Maybe I should have done more to drag her in.
When? she finally answered.
Thursday.
She didn’t answer. But then again, I hadn’t expected her to.
We wandered through Petco, surveying cat food and animal carriers. Bright halogen light rained down on our heads. There was no sign of anyone we knew, much less Zoe Ward.
Julius frowned. “We should try the animal shelter.”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “We said we’d be there.” I opened the door, a light misty drizzle meeting us outside. We jogged to the sidewalk, then across the street and the wide parking lot that led to the building marked Seattle Animal Shelter.
“Are we actually going to ask to look at dogs?” I asked when we were in front. The slick asphalt reflected glints of the parking lot lights.
“Damn.” Julius tucked his hair behind his ear, peering at the schedule. “They closed at seven thirty tonight.” A few people were milling around inside, but when I tried the door, it was locked.
I snarled, tucking my hands deep in my pockets. The last thing I wanted to do was come back. The bus ride had taken an hour. “Is it worth waiting to see if she comes out?”
“I don’t know.” Julius scanned our surroundings. A few cars filled the shelter’s ten-car lot, and a few more were parked in a deserted pad of dirt across the street. Nothing seemed unusual until a tan sedan turned down the block. “There!” Julius pointed, suddenly alert. “Look.”
Blood kicked faster in my veins, and I squinted to see the driver. “You think that’s the same car?” We eased along the front of the animal shelter, wanting to be out of sight in case this truly was The Other Woman. Finding her had seemed like a good idea in my head, but facing her in reality? I wasn’t sure I was ready.
“Hey there.” A light, high-pitched voice behind me cut my concentration, and I spun.
Zoe Ward had wandered out the front door of the animal shelter, pristine in a green sweater and checkered skirt. “What are you doing here? Are you following me? Because this is getting really weird.”
“No. We were just . . .” My mind rushed through everything I thought I knew about Zoe Ward—her smiles and her friends, her altercation with the boy at the dance. “What are you doing here?”
“What do you mean?” She blinked, her little nose wrinkling. “I volunteer here. I’m waiting for my ride.”
Julius looked over his shoulder. “Henry.” He touched my arm and jerked his chin. “You’re tal
king to the wrong sister.”
In the damp, dirt lot, a tan sedan had parked, and Maude Ward was climbing out. She stood, arms crossed, wearing a sweater with sweatpants and her hair in a severe bun.
“God, you guys are so stupid.” She glared at me and Julius. “Why the hell did you come here?” Before I could come up with an answer, she yelled at her sister. “Zoe, get in the car.”
“Okay.” Zoe’s ponytail swung as she jogged over. “Thanks for the ride.”
Maude watched us for the space of a few quick breaths. Then her eyes narrowed, and she began walking toward us.
To my horror, Julius marched to meet her halfway. I followed because I had no other choice, but every fiber of my being screamed at me to run.
In the damp, dirt lot we were alone, the three of us. I could have caught an electric current from the anger zinging between Maude and Julius.
“I thought he was the animal lover.” Maude glanced at me, talking to Julius. “But I see you’re the one who brought his pet dog.”
I stepped forward, but Julius stopped me with a hand to my chest. “Henry and I are friends.” His voice was light and conversational. “And you’ve been using your sister’s face to seduce boys. I’d think a girl as smart as you could come up with something better.”
Maude lifted her jaw, sneering. “What makes you think I haven’t?”
“You’re too invested in The Other Woman’s persona. I doubt you have the energy for multiple personalities.”
“I could if I wanted to.” Maude pulled her phone from of her pocket and shook it in our faces. “And in case you’re wondering, I didn’t set out to make those boys do anything stupid.” She clicked around on her phone, as if we were too boring to hold her attention. “They made their own choices. I didn’t have to say a word. Hal was the one to suggest a suicide pact. And Todd? He said we should run away to the East Coast. All I had to say was ‘Okay.’” She smirked. “Idiots.”
Julius and I shared a horrified glance. Over the last couple of months, I’d seen guys texting Maude, their eyes glazed like she was the sun, moon, and stars. Knowing she replied with grim glee written on her face was enough to make my fists clench.
