by Rebel Hart
“Well, what does it say?” I ask after a few minutes, checking the time on my phone.
“I guess Vivian was really angry at her for everything that happened between our families,” he explains. “She was mad that my mom and I made it out of everything unscathed, leaving both of her parents completely liable.”
“So, could Vivian be a suspect in all of this?” I offer eagerly, wishing Emmett would hate her as much as I do.
“Seems like they were still trying to be friends,” he continues. “And since Lily is sort of an outcast, too, I guess they wanted to take her back under their wing.”
“Does it say anything about me?” I accidentally blurt out, immediately realizing that shouldn’t be relevant. And judging by Emmett’s face, whatever it says about me is not surprisingly unkind. Enough that he’s not bothering to share, which is probably for the best. “It doesn’t matter,” I correct myself. “Anything else that might help us figure out where she went? What does the last entry say? Was she planning to meet up with Vivian or anything?”
He thumbs through to a middle passage that’s followed by blank pages and begins to read carefully. “There’s definitely nothing that sounds suicidal,” he says with a relieved sigh. “And nothing that hints at wanting to run away.”
“So, then we should question Vivian, right?” I suggest, clearing my throat and shifting uncomfortably across the plush carpet.
The last thing I want to do is encourage any interaction between Vivian and Emmett, but I can’t help thinking she has something to do with all of this. The police would probably assume the same, since Vivian was already angry with her. And maybe if I can get Emmett to see that, Vivian will finally be put out of our lives for good.
“I know you don’t like her,” he starts, prompting a sarcastic laugh to slip from my mouth.
“Dislike is an understatement,” I murmur under my breath.
“But it really doesn’t seem like her or Lily are involved in anyway,” he finishes, ignoring my remark.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I shake my head and feel an uncontrollable surge of jealousy bubbling up inside. “Does she talk about anyone else being angry with her in there? How do you not see she is the only feasible lead we have right now?”
“Read it for yourself,” he answers curtly, shoving the book into my hands. “I’m not trying to protect Vivian and Lily. I’m only telling you what it sounds like.”
“Well, she might not have known what Vivian was up to!” I insist. “Or Lily, for that matter. I mean, doesn’t it seem odd? Vivian is heartless and only cares about social status. Being mad at Bernadette over what happened to her parents…do you really think she’d still try to be friends with her after that?” My arms are flailing as I rant, and I can’t even bring myself to focus on the written words in my hands as he requested. “And taking in Lily all of a sudden. That doesn’t seem suspicious to you?”
“I guess you just don’t know them like I do,” he defends. “You don’t understand the dynamics of their friendships.”
I scoff and stew in my building rage, pretending to finally start reading the diary. But the words all blur together in my line of vision. All I can see or hear is Emmett’s misguided and blatant disregard for how guilty Vivian and Lily obviously look in all of this.
“You don’t think it’s at least worth it to talk to them about it?” I try again, my voice growing even more shrill.
“For what?” he grimaces. “They know Bernadette is missing. And if they did have anything to do with it, which I don’t think they do, they’re not going to just confess when we ask about it!”
Which is exactly why we should go to the police, I think to myself. But I don’t bother suggesting it to him again. He’s already refused the idea several times. I accept that it must be just another thing about their weird Elite world that I don’t understand, but the way he said the words still burns in my gut. As if I am some outsider who could never fully know his world. Not in the way Vivian does.
“I still think we should talk to them,” I persist fervently. “Even if they didn’t have anything to do with it, they’re our best possible place to start right now. And maybe it could lead to something else.”
“This isn’t some detective flick,” he snaps back callously. “They’re not going to have some magical piece of information that leads straight to her.”
“How the hell do you know?” I argue. “And how can you be so quick to rule them out when we have literally nothing else to go on?” He sits and stares off, completely unmoved by any of my arguments. “Let’s at least talk to Lily,” I add more softly, feeling like I’m only talking to myself at this point. “She hasn’t been over on the dark side for too long. Maybe I can get her to open up to me. Tell me anything she knows. Even if it’s just the last time they saw Bernadette.”
“It’s all in her diary,” he tells me, sounding frustrated.
“Unless they were the ones who kidnapped her. That entry wouldn’t have made it into her journal, obviously.” I roll my eyes and sink down onto the opposite edge of the bed, knowing it’s a useless argument. His mind is made up and he’s not budging no matter what I say, which only makes me more jealous of whatever his weird, lingering deal with Vivian is.
He disliked her enough to break up with her and seems to want to be with me instead, but he won’t tell her off when she gives me shit and he wouldn’t even dream of the possibility that she could have harmed his sister, even though he knows how brutal she can be! Suddenly, Vivian is some golden child who can do no wrong, and I’m becoming the monster for insisting anything different.
“I just don’t think we should rule them out,” I conclude quietly. “That’s all I’ll say about it for now.”
“Fine,” he grunts half-heartedly, just trying to appease me.
Bernadette’s room is feeling creepier by the minute. It’s too clean. Too still, quiet, and empty. And we’re still no closer to finding out what could have happened to her. I realize part of me thought she’d turn up again after a couple of days. Probably returning from some wild bender like the one Emmett and I claimed I was on when I disappeared. But the more time that passes, the less likely of a possibility that becomes.
Even if Emmett doesn’t want to go to the police, I wish I could bring myself to. She could be hurt or dead. And his fears are starting to feel heavier. We don’t know who’s behind this or why, so we have no way of knowing if they’re coming after him next. Our fathers have left a big target on our backs, especially Emmett’s. Nothing feels safe.
“Okay, okay,” he repeats urgently. “Let’s think. Let’s really think about this. What are the possibilities of what could have happened to her?”
My mind immediately goes to the worst conclusions, none of which seem like good ideas to mention. She could have been kidnapped, murdered, or any number of other things. Terrible things happen to people every day. But welcome to Jameson, where any time someone is hurt or killed, everyone knows it was calculated with a very clear motive.
“Well, obviously…Vivian has a motive,” I suggest lightly.
“Vivian was mad at Bernadette, but she was still trying to be her friend,” he repeats dismissively.
“Right…but why? Does that sound like Vivian to you?” I question. “Maybe she was just pretending to be her friend so she could pull something over on her.”
“You don’t know Vivian like I do,” he insists. “You’re just going to have to trust me.”
I seethe inside at the paradox of that. Statements like that about Vivian are exactly what makes me distrust him.
“What about your father?” he asks suddenly, sending chills down my spine. I was already feeling uneasy. My father is the last person I want to think about.
“I told you I haven’t talked to him,” I remind him.
“But don’t you think we should?” he suggests in a hopeful tone.
“Why?” I cross my arms and look away, wishing this wasn’t his grand solution. I’d much
rather go after Vivian and Lily.
“Maybe he never intended on stopping after he took my father down,” Emmett explains with a furrowed brow. “Maybe he wants to take over Jameson Automobiles for himself.”
“Then why wouldn’t he have just come straight for you?” I wonder out loud. “You’re the one in control of it all now, right? Bernadette doesn’t have rights to any of it unless you give them to her.”
“I know, but it’s not completely unbelievable,” he continues to my dismay. “I don’t know what exactly he’d be up to with Bernadette, but there is a motive there.”
“There’s a motive for Vivian and Lily, too,” I remind him bitterly. I can’t believe he’d rather go accuse my father than the two of them. “Lily did say my father was back.”
“What? What do you mean?” his tone grows urgent.
“Before you found me and told me about Bernadette,” I explain. “She was angry with me. She said everyone knew my father was back around.”
“What do you think that means?” he pushes, but I only reply with a flustered groan. If I had known what that meant, maybe I wouldn’t have rushed off and accidentally landed right back in Emmett’s arms.
“So, we should talk to him,” he persists, this time standing to look deep into my eyes as he caresses my arms. “I know it’s scary for you. But I promise if we talk to him and nothing comes out of it, we can try with Vivian and Lily.”
I collapse against him, pushing my forehead to his strong chest. The idea of talking to my father again terrifies me. He may have looked harmless the last time we parted ways, but the cops let me know he is definitely not some innocent guy to feel sorry for.
“What if it’s dangerous?” I ask against his shoulder, feeling suddenly exhausted. “You said you offered to take me captive because you were afraid of what he might do to me. You made it sound like he’d sooner kill me than let the Elites use me to get an advantage over him.”
His initial silence only makes me feel worse. He knows what I’m saying is true.
“I’ll protect you,” he promises in a deep rasp, brushing his hands along my hair.
“I know you’d try, but…I don’t think any of us stand a chance against my father,” I reply bleakly. “Your father didn’t. None of the Elites did…except for you. And if this is just his way of coming back for you, I think we should stay far away. Or go to the police. They told me they were looking for him anyway.”
“And why didn’t you tell them how to find him?” he asks in a leading tone. “You may not have known exactly where he was, but you could have found out if you tried.”
“Because I was worried I couldn’t trust the police,” I sigh, hating that he has to be right. Hating even more that this town has to be so fucked up.
He kisses my forehead, as if to apologize for making me eat my own words. “It’s okay,” he says softly. “I’ll help you track him down. We’ll figure out where he is during lunch and try to go see him after school if he’s nearby.”
Regardless of what Lily tried to say about my father being back, I have been clinging to this blissful notion that he had run back off to California or Spain or any other far corner of the earth that is nowhere near here. I swallow hard as I try to wrap my head around him lingering so close that we could pop by after school. I hope Emmett is wrong. I hope we can’t find him at all, or that he’s much too far away to be implicated in any of this.
“We better get going,” he nudges me, giving one more soft kiss before we make our way out of Bernadette’s room.
It feels wrong to be walking away from it, as if we’re walking away from her. Her disappearance has apparently softened my feelings towards her, and I can’t help but feel incredibly sorry for her. I stop and look back over the empty room once more. “Wherever she is, I hope she’s okay,” I pray out loud, grazing my fingers across her open bedroom door.
“You hate my sister,” he shoots back with a cold smirk.
“That doesn’t mean she deserves for anything bad to happen to her,” I defend. Suddenly I feel tears welling up. “I’m sorry, Emmett. You were right. I was so wrapped up in my jealousy of Vivian and feeling hurt by Lily that I let it distract us from finding your sister. I shouldn’t have been so selfish.”
His hand reaches for mine with a tight squeeze. “I’ve been just as selfish,” he confesses. “Probably much more so than you.”
I want to stay in this moment with him, where we are both humbled enough to just be sad and afraid together without all of our fucked-up defense mechanisms getting in the way. But the sunlight sprinting across the empty room beckons us to get moving. Standing around won’t do anything for Bernadette.
We go to school and spend lunchtime on the computers in the library, hunting down my father just as Emmett said we would. We don’t find any clues, so I reluctantly sneak off and call Malcolm. He is able to give me a cell number to reach him, but I don’t tell Emmett how I got it.
I ask him to call my father, not having the nerve to do it myself. He gets off the phone and gives me a nod and sympathetic grin, signaling that my father is close enough for us to make the visit that afternoon.
Chapter Eight
BOOK 2
I can barely sit still in my next class, feeling overwhelmed by the looming meeting with my father after school. It is a small relief to know Emmett will be with me, but it doesn’t stop my leg from bouncing rapidly under my desk no matter how hard I try to stop. I fidget and chew on the eraser on my pencil, unable to hear anything the teacher is saying.
My nerves build to a rising sickness in my stomach until I finally decide to go throw some cold water on my face in the bathroom, hoping it relieves my anxiety. I shoot my hand up and request a hall pass and march towards the bathroom, trying to outrun the twisting sensation in my gut.
The burst of water from the faucet sends droplets of water splattering across the plastic countertops. In moments like these, WJ Prep feels cursed. I have to wonder how many times I have leaned over this bathroom sink, desperate for some kind of escape from outside. But the threat of my father feels even greater than anything in this school.
As I close my eyes and splash another wave of water across my face, I hear the bathroom door swing open followed by a string of familiar cackles. I know those laughs all too well, except one of them didn’t have much to laugh about not long ago. When she was on the other side of Vivian’s wrath.
Vivian and Lily. Nothing good ever comes out of running into either of them in this bathroom. And the click of the lock on the main door tells me this time won’t be any different.
I quickly realize they’re standing on either side of me before I have a chance to wipe my face and look. I can feel them looming over my shoulders. My gut tells me this is going to be bad. This is the first time they’ve managed to corner me alone since Vivian returned to school and the two paired up.
“Things still going rough with Emmett?” Vivian whines in a mocking voice against my ear, crouching dangerously close.
“No, actually,” I answer coldly, trying my best not to let her get to me. Maybe if I just give short answers and ignore them the best I can, they’ll go away. I know that never works, but it’s all I know to try. They’ve cornered me, after all. “Things are going just fine,” I add.
“Just fine,” Lily calls back to me. “Sounds…passionate.” She smirks.
“Don’t worry about us,” I murmur with a shake of my head, reaching out for a paper towel to dry off with. “It’s none of your business anyway.”
But as my arm reaches out across the counter, Lily’s hand tightens around it, holding it firmly in place. Vivian slides behind me, pinning my other arm down as she goes. I let out a scream and struggle to get free, but I’m stopped by a sharp stinging sensation digging into the veins in the middle of my arm, opposite my elbow. My teeth grind against the pain as my eyes strain and tighten, filling with tears.
“What the fuck!?” I shriek, still unable to get loose from their hands. The pain is qui
ckly followed by several more stabs, then it switches to the other arm.
“Don’t bother fighting it,” Vivian hums.
I ignore her and continue flailing my arms, trying to get free. I want to punch them both when they finally let go, but I am overcome by a sudden rushing surge. My stomach flips as I lean against the counter and lose myself in a swelling daze. I have to assume they’ve left the bathroom because everything around me grows quiet and still again.
My breath slows and my ears pound with a popping feeling. I sway and look up into the mirror, noting my shrunken pupils. They’ve obviously drugged me with something, but I have no idea what.
“Emmett,” I mouth to my reflection in a whisper. I want to go find him, but my motivation to move or go anywhere shrinks away.
I know I should be panicking over whatever they’ve done to me, but I can’t seem to feel anything bad. I am suspended in a strange euphoria, even though I know in my brain that I should be terrified. I look at myself in the mirror once more and know I can’t face anyone like this. I’m too out of it.
I slink into the nearest stall and lock the door behind me. I want to move fast, but everything goes by in slow motion. My skin is heated and flushed as I smack my dry lips across my tongue. My arms and legs are so heavy I don’t even know if I am sitting up straight. As afraid as I am, I can’t deny how elated I feel. Even as Vivian and Lily’s cackling voices linger in my brain, I feel nothing bad towards them. I feel nothing bad at all.
“What a strange punishment,” I laugh softly to myself under my breath.
After a while, I’m unsure of how long I’ve been locked away on my own. Clusters of shoes beneath the stall door come and go in crowds, accompanied by the sounds of distant voices I have no interest in making out. I sit huddled up on the toilet, relishing the feeling against my will, until finally it feels like it has passed enough for me to face the world again.
But the moment I peel myself up, sickness rises with my body. I turn quickly and buckle over the toilet. Again, I have no idea how long I am stuck like that. Once my stomach has calmed enough for movement, I try to make my way out into the halls.
