Follow Me Back

by Nicci Cloke

AIDEN

  I DRIVE WITHOUT really seeing, without caring. I drive too fast and brake too slowly, forgetting to indicate, not bothering to give way. I see my mum’s face in the police station lobby: pale, tear-stained, afraid. Disgusted. I see Hunter and Mahama looking at me from across a desk: cold, practical. Assessing. And I see Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie. I see her name in my inbox – Hal’s inbox. I remember how excited I felt each time a new message came through, each time I made her type ‘lol’ and each time she added a kiss. Everything was okay again.

  And now everything is falling apart.

  ‘How could you do it?’ Scobie says, and I glance at him. His face is furious, the beams of the streetlights passing across the lenses of his glasses and hiding his eyes from me again.

  ‘I missed her,’ I say, and I hate myself. ‘I needed her.’

  ‘So you tricked her.’ His voice is flat, emotionless.

  And I can’t argue. I did deceive her – I won back her trust by lying to her. I want to tell him that I’m sorry, I want to tell her that I’m sorry. But above it all, beating through me in an insistent, deafening pulse, is anger. Panic. And that’s what keeps my foot on the accelerator, that’s what drives me forward.

  Deacon Honeycutt’s house is tall and pale, with long, narrow windows like a church’s. There are fake pillars outside the door and a swooping gravel drive leading up to it. I’m going so fast down it that when I stop, the car skids slightly, gravel spraying up like a wave.

  ‘Really?’ Scobie looks at me in disgust. ‘After everything, all you care about is Round Two?’

  I ignore him and head for the Honeycutts’ front door and start hammering the big iron doorknocker, banging on the glass panel with my hand at the same time. I don’t care that I look like a maniac. I don’t care any more. I don’t care.

  All the way here, I’ve been envisaging Deacon’s face; imagining landing a fist right in the middle of it. But when he opens the door, I don’t do anything. I just stare at him. And he stares at me.

  ‘You went to the police?’ I say, and it’s almost funny, how betrayed I sound.

  He shakes his head. ‘Look, I’m not pressing charges. My dad made me report it. I’ll get kicked off the team if I’ve been in another fight. That’s all.’

  It should make me feel better somehow, but it doesn’t. Because I want to argue with him. I want to fight. I want something, anything, to take out all these feelings on.

  ‘Look, relax,’ he says. ‘I’m not gonna do anything. It’s over. We’re good.’

  He’s being nice to me and I hate it. And by the look on his face, he hates it too. It’s like every word tastes sour in his mouth, but he has to keep on spitting them out anyway.

  ‘“We’re good”?’ I sneer. ‘Right. Were we “good” when you and your mates attacked me the night of the ball? Were we “good” when you called me a rapist?’

  He stares right back at me and his mouth moves like a robot’s. ‘It’s all done now. We’re good.’

  A wild sort of idea flashes in front of me. ‘Did Cheska put you up to this?’

  He pulls a face, a WTF, but before he does, I see his mouth twitch. ‘Cheska? Cheska Summersall?’

  I pull my ace with glee, jabbing his buttons at random. ‘I know you’re shagging her. I saw you. Maybe I should call Lauren and fill her in.’

  Finally the fake calm on his face breaks just enough for me to see the panic beginning to surface. ‘It’s just sex,’ he says, like he doesn’t care, but his hands have come up into a kind of defensive gesture, an I didn’t mean to. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Shame it’s not on camera,’ I say. ‘Imagine the ratings. Poor new girl Lauren gets her boyfriend stolen by poor, grief-stricken Cheska.’

  ‘How’d you think Lauren got on the show in the first place?’ he snaps.

  ‘That’s how she got on?’ Scobie says from behind me, in disbelief. ‘Because you gave Cheska sexual favours? That is all kinds of distasteful.’

  ‘No,’ Deacon says hotly. Backtracking. ‘Nah, I never said that. Forget I said that.’

  But I’ve suddenly remembered the email Marnie showed me. ‘Cheska knew that Lizzie would go missing,’ I say. ‘She promised the producers she had a big storyline coming up, and they gave her more airtime. That’s how sick she is. But maybe you knew about that, right? Maybe you were in on it too?’

  He glares at me, horrified. ‘Cheska wouldn’t do that,’ he says.

  ‘Wouldn’t she?’

  ‘It certainly has benefited her,’ Scobie says, considering.

  Deacon looks at both of us and then away. ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘That’s not it.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ I smack the doorframe with the palm of my hand. Hard. The sound reverberates around us. ‘So why would she say that then? A week before Lizzie disappeared. If she didn’t know, why would she say that?’

  I stop yelling, because I’ve suddenly seen an emotion I’ve never seen on Deacon Honeycutt’s face before. He looks embarrassed. Ashamed.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  He huffs. ‘You were right, okay? “Poor new girl Lauren gets her boyfriend stolen by Cheska?” That’s the storyline she meant.’

  I gape at him. ‘It’s a set-up? It’s for the show?’

  He looks away. ‘Yeah. Sort of. I mean, Cheska, she’s fun. And me and Lauren, we’re done.’

  ‘So you didn’t cheat on Lauren?’

  ‘Well, yeah, at first.’ He shrugs. ‘She was mad when she found out, but then we figured it could work for everyone.’

  Scobie screws his face up. ‘How? I don’t understand.’

  I do, though. ‘Lauren gets a part on the show,’ I explain. ‘After a couple of episodes, they bring in Deacon, Lauren’s lovely boyfriend, and a couple of episodes after that, oh, surprise, Deacon and Cheska hook up. Cheska’s got her big storyline, Lauren gets all the sympathy and she’s on Spoilt in the Suburbs, her number one ambition, so everyone’s happy.’

  Deacon shrugs again. ‘Pretty much, yeah. That’s how it was supposed to go, anyway.’

  ‘Except then Lizzie goes missing,’ I say, and I feel more than a small need to punch him again. ‘And the producers decide that’s a better storyline.’

  ‘Probably not the best time to introduce a love triangle,’ Scobie muses.

  ‘Exactly. But Lauren’s already under contract, so they wheel her out as Lizzie’s “best friend”.’

  Deacon rolls his eyes. ‘Whatever. I’m just saying – Cheska didn’t know nothing about Lizzie. You’re way off with that.’ His eyes narrow. ‘And you can’t tell anyone any of that stuff.’

  I start to answer but his hand shoots out and he gets a fistful of my t-shirt. ‘Listen, Kendrick. I’m doing you a favour by dropping this police thing. You and me both know, I press charges, you’re done for. So you do me a favour back and keep your mouth shut about this, yeah?’

  My lip curls and my hands bunch into fists, but I know he’s right. ‘Fine,’ I say, and it comes out as a snarl.

  ‘Good.’ But he doesn’t let go. Instead, he pulls me closer, so we’re eye to eye. ‘You might have everyone else fooled,’ he says, ‘but I know you’re not the nice guy you want everyone to think you are. I’ve seen the way you look when you don’t know anyone’s watching. You’re shady, and I don’t like you. And if Lizzie figured that out too, well good for her.’

  It takes everything I have not to spit in his face. But I don’t. Because he’s doing me a favour. Because he’s right. We watch each other for a second, and then he releases me. ‘And I’m telling you – Cheska didn’t have anything to do with Lizzie going. She’s proper cut-up about it. Leave her alone.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘And don’t you be sending your step-daddy round here like last time. Making threats like some kind of big man. This is between me and you, Kendrick.’

  And he shuts the door in my face.

  WE GET BACK in the car, but we don’t drive. We just sit and watch as rain starts to spatter the windscreen, the sky grow
ing dark over the tall trees that line the Honeycutts’ drive.

  ‘You didn’t honestly think Cheska Summersall was behind it, did you?’ Scobie asks.

  I don’t say anything.

  ‘Come on,’ he scoffs. ‘Can you really imagine Cheska coming up with a scheme that big, tricking Lizzie or convincing Lizzie to help her?’

  ‘Yeah, but she might have known –’

  ‘You really think Lizzie would have trusted Cheska, of all people? Not Marnie? Not, I don’t know, anyone else?’

  ‘Yeah, okay, Scobie, I get it. It was stupid.’

  He shrugs. ‘No crazier than some of the things I’ve been thinking. No crazier than some of the things you’ve done.’

  I lean forward slowly and rest my head on the steering wheel, ignoring that. I deserved it. ‘Maybe we’re thinking too much into it. Maybe she did go to meet some random guy, some other guy she met online…’ I don’t finish that sentence. I can’t finish that sentence.

  ‘Maybe,’ Scobie says. ‘But I don’t think so. Internet perverts don’t fold someone’s clothes when they accidentally leave them at a crime scene.’

  The clothes. I’d forgotten about the clothes.

  ‘You think it’s a set-up,’ I say, and I can hear myself clinging to the words as they hang between us.

  ‘I think it’s meant to look like something it isn’t,’ he replies, and then, in the same breath, he says, ‘An unprovoked attack?’

  It takes me a minute to realise that these sentences are independent, and that he was listening back at my house. ‘No,’ I say. ‘It wasn’t unprovoked.’

  ‘What did the guy do? Why’d you beat him up?’

  I chew my lip. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to remember. ‘He hurt a friend of mine,’ I say.

  I glance at Scobie, who’s staring at me in his unrelenting, all-seeing sort of way, and I know I’m not going to get away without telling the story. I lean my head back against the seat rest and I close my eyes.

  ‘At my old school, there was a group of us, right? Me, Ali, Will and Millie. We all lived on the same street, and when we were kids we’d play out together, you know? And then when we went up to secondary school, we still hung out, went to town together on the weekends, that kind of stuff.’

  I open an eye and glance at him again, but he’s looking out of the window.

  ‘There was this party one night. We were Year 9, it was near the end of the year. Some guy I knew from football had a free house because his parents were out of town, and it got a bit out of control. Furniture getting trashed, people puking on the walls, that kind of thing. But it was funny, you know, because we were all together. We hung out with some other guys from my team, kind of tucked ourselves away in the kitchen, away from all the craziness, and we just sat round playing drinking games, having a laugh.’

  I can feel the anger start to throb through me, tightening my temples. I tap my fingers against the steering wheel, trying to focus on the beat instead.

  ‘So you got drunk?’ Scobie says.

  ‘Yeah. And the guy – Mikey – he was there. I knew him from football too, not like good mates, but he was alright, you know, funny. He was into Millie, he was pretty obvious about it, but I thought that was cool. I knew him and he always seemed a pretty sound guy. I got chatting to some of the others and I left them to it.’

  I squeeze my eyes shut and say the rest in a rush, trying to get it out before I have time to remember.

  ‘She was drunk. She said she needed to lie down. He took her to a bedroom and when she was passed out, he had sex with her.’

  ‘He raped her.’ Scobie says it slowly, like he’s checking he’s understood. Or checking I have. I nod.

  ‘So you went after him.’

  Again, I nod.

  ‘That’s not what I’d call unprovoked. Surely the police were involved?’

  This time, I shake my head. ‘She wouldn’t tell them.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I slam my hand against the wheel. ‘She didn’t want anyone to know! She was embarrassed. She was so mad at me and the way I handled it.’

  Scobie’s face creases in confusion. ‘But that – but he –’

  ‘I know, okay. I know.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ Scobie says. ‘How could she think that was her fault? She can’t still think that, surely?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say, yanking my seatbelt on. ‘She wouldn’t speak to me after. Ever.’ The sour taste is back in my mouth. Berries. The strawberry sweet smell. I turn to Scobie. ‘So you have to see that it’s not what they’re making out. Yeah, I’ve got a temper, and I hate that about myself. But I would never do what they’re implying. I would never have hurt Lizzie.’

  He nods. ‘I know that.’

  ‘Okay. Good.’

  He gets out his phone again and looks at Facebook. Another 1,000 likes on our page; our message spreading out across the internet. I take out mine and look at Lizzie’s AskMe.

  ‘This means something,’ I say. ‘She left this for me, I know it.’

  Scobie glances up. ‘Why would she?’

  Those three words hurt more than they should. Scobie shows me his Facebook inbox. There are about thirty unread messages.

  ‘More people who’ve seen her?’ I ask, my hands feeling damp and shaky.

  ‘Yeah.’ Scobie’s phone bleeps plaintively and then the screen goes dark. Battery dead.

  ‘We need to start answering them,’ he says, throwing his now-useless phone into the cupholder in disgust. ‘We need to start getting answers.’

  I start up the car, making an untidy three-point turn in the gravel, and as I drive away, I glance in the rearview mirror and see Deacon Honeycutt in the window, watching us.

  I DRIVE BACK to mine as quickly but not quite as carelessly as I drove us away. I’m expecting Kevin and Mum to come running out the second my car turns into the drive, but they don’t. Even when I let myself in – nothing. The house is cold and silent, and in the living room the three half-empty cups of coffee from Hunter and Mahama’s visit are still on the table.

  ‘They must have gone out looking for you,’ Scobie says. ‘Where’s your laptop?’

  ‘In my room,’ I say, but when we get up there, it’s nowhere to be seen. ‘That’s weird,’ I say, looking around, pulling back the duvet. I go out into the hall, ready to check downstairs, and see that Kevin’s study door is open, his Mac on. This is extremely unusual. ‘Come in here,’ I call to Scobie.

  He follows me into the room, which is large and bright; white desk, white shelves, a big bay window overlooking the garden. It’s the one room in the house I’m not supposed to be in, but right now I don’t have time to care. ‘You get started on here,’ I say, pulling out Kevin’s huge, black leather desk chair for him – the only thing in here that’s not white – ‘and I’ll go grab my laptop.’

  I jog downstairs and take a quick scout around. I can’t see it anywhere, but I figure it doesn’t matter, because I can use my phone while Scobie uses the Mac. I pull my phone out of my pocket to check the battery, and it’s only then that I notice the little icon at the top of the screen that means a missed call. I swipe down to check it. Mum. I hit the Call icon and wait for it to connect. It starts to ring, and an anxious feeling seeps through me.

  It’s ringing from somewhere beside me. I glance down and see it, halfway under the stairs. My own name flashing back at me. Aiden.

  I hang up and pick it up. Weird. I guess she could have dropped it if she was in a hurry; she has a habit of leaving it in random places at the best of times.

  Where were they hurrying to? The answer is obvious: after me. But then surely they would have caught up to us at Deacon’s, or at least passed us on our way back. A strange, loose fear thuds through me, though I don’t know where it’s coming from. I slide Mum’s phone into my pocket along with mine, and jog back upstairs where Scobie is clicking at about three different windows on Kevin’s Mac.

  ‘Did the police take my
laptop?’ I ask.

  ‘Don’t think so,’ he says, distracted. ‘But, Aiden, something weird’s going on here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The computer. Kevin was totally wiping its memory.’

  I look over his shoulder at the screen. The front-most window says ‘Full System Reset’ above a progress bar. Currently, it’s at 64% and is ‘Paused’. In another window, Scobie is furiously typing code that might as well be Klingon to me.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Did you tell him?’ he asks, his voice icy. ‘Did you tell him before today about being Hal?’

  ‘No! Wait, you think –’

  ‘I think he’s got something on here, yeah. I think he caught you out and now he’s trying to cover for you.’ He hits the return key a little too hard and turns to look at me. ‘Question is, what else do you need covering?’

  ‘Nothing! I swear, Scobie, I didn’t tell him anything.’

  But he’s already returned his attention to the files he’s clawing back from the hard drive. I watch as he pulls them up, one after another, spreadsheets and tax returns and photographs.

  And then a series of screenshots.

  Screenshots of a Facebook inbox. My Facebook inbox.

  Except not mine. It’s the inbox for my ‘Hal’ profile.

  I lean forward, my hands gripping the edge of the desk, my stomach turning somersaults. ‘I don’t – How…? Where did he get these?’

  Scobie looks at me, his eyes hard, but he must decide I’m telling the truth. ‘You really didn’t know?’

  ‘No!’ My mind’s racing, trying to understand, trying to make sense of it.

  Scobie’s clicking through more files, and my heart sinks as I recognise each one – my email account. My bank account. The old photo of Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy that I have bookmarked.

  And there’s Mum’s stuff too: her work email, her personal one. A Twitter account I didn’t even know she had. Her LinkedIn profile.

  ‘Whoa…’ Scobie trails off. ‘What the –’

  ‘How did he get these?’ I ask, my voice flat.

  ‘I mean, it’s easy,’ Scobie says. ‘He’s got a master account. He gave you your laptops, right? He must have just logged into both of them remotely. Looking at how many of these there are, he probably had some kind of software running on your computers the whole time, recording what you were doing.’