She makes me promise I’ll update her if Carly responds, and we end the call. Ginny makes the idea of telling the truth sound so easy. Just tell her the real reason.
I think of the reactions Rachel and Tom had to my questioning the deaths. For a few moments, I stare at the empty Facebook message draft addressed to Carly before I start to type.
I slip my thumbnail between my teeth, reading the last sentence over and over. Such a brazen lie could backfire. Everyone who went to Sunnybrook High knows Mrs. Coughlin is a demon; my mentioning her name might make Carly send my message straight to the trash.
I delete the last line, replacing it with just I was wondering if you and I could talk.
* * *
—
When I wake up, I check my inbox. It’s empty; but there’s a check mark next to my message to Carly Amato.
She read it six hours ago.
* * *
—
Tom doesn’t have Saturday off, and my mother has to work at the playhouse, so I’m watching Petey, noise-canceling headphones on to drown out the sounds of him practicing his trumpet in the living room.
I’m slathering peanut butter on a slice of toast for his lunch when my phone starts shimmying across the counter, Ginny’s name lighting up the screen. I tug my headphones off and accept the call.
“Hey.” I try and fail not to sound too eager. But something about Ginny’s investment in all this has reinvigorated me, given me purpose. Not only have I told someone everything, but she believes me too.
Ginny’s response is drowned out by the sound of “La Cucaracha.”
“Hold on a sec,” I tell her. I duck out the door connecting the kitchen to the garage, shutting myself in. “Okay. What’s up?”
“I’ve been watching Carly’s Facebook page.” Ginny’s voice is barely a murmur, as if there’s someone near her, listening in. “She just checked into the library at Orange County Community College.”
I stand up straighter, my back against the door. “How far is Orange County Community College?”
“Twenty minutes.” A pause. “My mom doesn’t need the car until seven.”
“You have your license?” I ask. “I didn’t even know you were seventeen already.”
“Since last Monday.” Ginny almost sounds embarrassed.
Monday was the day I met her in the yearbook office to look at the pictures. We talked for over an hour and Ginny never mentioned it was her birthday. Sadness slices through me; I wonder how many other things I don’t know about Ginny just because I never bothered to ask. She speaks before I can work out what to say next.
“We don’t have to go if you don’t want. I just thought since Carly’s there, and she hasn’t responded to you…”
My mom isn’t going to be back from the playhouse for another couple of hours, and I can’t leave Petey here alone. Carly will probably have left the library by the time my mom gets home. “I’m stuck watching my brother.”
A faint tapping, as if Ginny’s drumming her fingers against her phone. “Can you bring him?”
I hadn’t thought of that, but…“It’ll take some bargaining. Can you be here in fifteen minutes?”
“See you then,” Ginny chirps.
I end the call and let myself back into the kitchen. In the living room, Petey has given up on “La Cucaracha” and splayed himself out on the sectional. I come up behind him and rest my hands on the back of the couch.
“I have to go somewhere quick,” I say, treading carefully. “I need you to come with me.”
Petey turns his head up at me. Blinks. “Why can’t I stay here?”
“Because Mom will kill me. You can wait in the car.”
“What car?” Petey says. “You can’t drive.”
“My friend is coming to get me.”
Petey’s eyes light up. “Rachel?”
“No,” I say. “But this friend is nice too.”
Petey thinks for a minute. Shakes his head. “I just found something to watch.”
I grit my teeth. “You can download Clan Wars on my phone and play in the car.”
“Mom said no Clan Wars today.”
“Yeah, well, I won’t tell her if you won’t.”
Petey watches me, calculating. He may be a fifth grader, but he knows a raw deal when he sees one. I sigh. “I’ll give you twenty dollars if you come and don’t tell Mom where we went.”
Ten minutes later, I’m shooing Petey out of the house and locking the front door behind us as Ginny rolls into the driveway. She’s wearing her Jessie’s Gym warm-up jacket, her hair coiled in a bun.
I climb into the front, Petey into the back. He takes a long look at Ginny. “Who are you?”
“Don’t be rude,” I say. “This is Ginny.”
Petey settles back in his seat. Meets Ginny’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Do you play Clan Wars?”
Ginny smiles and shakes her head. “I don’t know what that is.”
I try to be patient as Petey explains the nuances of village building and pillaging to Ginny. Once he falls silent, legs drawn up to his chest, my phone balancing sideways on his knees, I turn to Ginny and speak softly. “Seriously, thanks for doing this.”
She shrugs. “It was my idea.”
I realize that it’s part of the reason I like her so much: Whenever Ginny says something, it sounds like she means it. It’s enough to ease my worry that she doesn’t really want to be doing this—that I’ve somehow roped her into a mess she feels like she can’t get out of.
We listen to the radio and steer the conversation toward dance team, just in case Petey is eavesdropping from the backseat. When the exit for Orange County Community College appears, we make a right onto campus and follow the signs to the library.
As Ginny is parking, Petey pipes up: “Why are we here, anyway?”
It takes me a beat to come up with something. “I need a book for school. Our library didn’t have it.”
“Do I have to come in?” Petey asks.
I hesitate; I want Ginny with me, but I can’t leave Petey in the car by himself.
Ginny’s voice is barely above a whisper when she says, “Maybe your brother and I should wait out here. So Carly doesn’t feel ambushed.”
I nod. Once, twice, three times like a bobblehead. “Yeah. Okay. You’re right.”
I climb out of the car and head for the library entrance. Paranoia hits me as the automatic doors open for me. What if the librarian asks me for my college ID? What if Carly left already?
The library is one floor. I do a lap, heading past the circulation desk and a café. At the far end of the library are several long tables, peppered with people slumped over laptops or open textbooks. A sign on the wall overhead says STUDY AREA ONLY.
I wend my way through the tables, spotting a girl with a long raven-black bob that grazes her bare shoulders. My pulse quickens. Carly Amato turns her head toward me. She yawns and picks up her phone. From where I’m standing, I can see that the screen is full of cracks.
A textbook is open on the table in front of her, displaying a gruesome two-page diagram of the human digestive system. She’s not reading, though. She’s on her cell phone, playing some sort of bubble-breaking game.
I want to bolt, but Ginny and I didn’t come all the way here for me to bitch out at the last minute. I inch toward Carly’s table. Rest a hand on the back of the chair across from her, and say, “Hi. Can I sit here?”
She looks up at me. Blinks. Carly Amato looks about twenty years older than her yearbook and profile pictures, even though she’s only twenty-two, if I’m counting right.
Carly nods at the chair, as if to confirm it’s free. Not looking at me, she leans back and yawns so loudly that the guy next to her sets his book down and gives her a nasty stare.
“Are you Carly?”
Carly Amato looks like the type of girl who would answer that type of question in a smoker’s growl: Who’s askin’? Maybe I watch too many movies, because instead, Carly stops playing her game. Gives me a head tilt. The voice that comes out of her is husky. “Yeah. Do I know you?”
“I’m Jennifer Rayburn’s sister.”