“You know. That whole Addy-you’re-such-a-doormat look.”
“I don’t think that,” Ashton says quietly. A fat tear rolls down my cheek, and she reaches over to brush it away.
“You should. I am.”
“Not anymore,” Ashton says, and that does it. I start flat-out bawling, curled in the fetal position in a corner of the couch with Ashton’s arms around me. I don’t even know who or what I’m crying for: Jake, Simon, my friends, my mother, my sister, myself. All of the above, I guess.
When the tears finally stop I’m raw and exhausted, my eyelids hot and my shoulders sore from shaking for so long. But I feel lighter and cleaner too, like I’ve purged something that’s been making me sick. Ashton gets me a pile of Kleenex and gives me a minute to wipe my eyes and blow my nose. When I’ve finally wadded up all the damp tissues and tossed them into a corner wastebasket, she takes a small sip of her beer and wrinkles her nose. “This doesn’t taste as good as I thought it would. Come on, let’s ride bikes.”
I can’t say no to her now. So I trail after her to the park a half mile from our house, where there’s a whole row of rental bikes. Ashton figures out the sign-up deal, swiping her credit card to release two bikes. We don’t have helmets, but we’re just going around the park so it doesn’t really matter.
I haven’t ridden a bike in years but I guess it’s true what they say: you don’t forget how. After a wobbly start we take off on the wide path through the park and I have to admit, it’s kind of fun. The breeze flutters through my hair as my legs pump and my heart rate accelerates. It’s the first time in a week I haven’t felt half-dead. I’m surprised when Ashton stops and says, “Hour’s up.” She catches sight of my face and asks, “Should we rent for another hour?”
I grin at her. “Yeah, okay.” We get tired about halfway through, though, and return the bikes so we can go to a café and rehydrate. Ashton gets our drinks while I find seats, and I scroll through my messages while I wait for her. It takes a lot less time than it used to—I only have a couple from Cooper, asking if I’m going to Olivia’s party tonight.
Olivia and I have been friends since freshman year, but she hasn’t spoken to me all week. Pretty sure I’m not invited, I text.
“Only Girl” trills out with Cooper’s response. I make a mental note that when all this is over and I have a minute to think straight, I’m going to change my text tone to something less annoying. That’s BS. They’re your friends too.
Sitting this one out, I write. Have fun. At this point, I’m not even sad about being excluded. It’s just one more thing.
Cooper doesn’t get it. I guess I should thank him; if he’d dropped me like everyone else, Vanessa would have gone nuclear on me by now. But she doesn’t dare cross the homecoming king, even when he’s been accused of steroid use. School opinion is split down the middle about whether he did it or not, but he’s not saying either way.
I wonder if I could have done the same—bluffed and brazened my way through this whole nightmare without telling Jake the truth. Then I look at my sister, chuckling with the guy behind the coffee counter in a way she never did with Charlie, and remember how careful and contained I always had to be around Jake. If I was going to the party tonight I’d have to wear something he picked out, stay as late as he wanted, and not talk to anyone who might make him mad.
I miss him still. I do. But I don’t miss that.
Bronwyn
Saturday, October 6, 10:30 a.m.
My feet fly over the familiar path as my arms and legs match the rhythm of the music blaring in my ears. My heart accelerates and the fears that have been crowding my brain all week recede, replaced by pure physical effort. When I finish my run I’m drained but pumped full of endorphins, and feel almost cheerful as I head for the library to pick up Maeve. It’s our usual Saturday-morning routine, but I can’t find her in any of her typical spots and have to text her.
Fourth floor, she replies, so I head for the children’s room.
She’s sitting on a tiny chair near the window, tapping away at one of the computers. “Revisiting your childhood?” I ask, sinking to the floor beside her.
“No,” Maeve says, her eyes on the screen. She lowers her voice to almost a whisper. “I’m in the admin panel for About That.”
It takes a second for what she said to register, and when it does my heart takes a panicky leap. “Maeve, what the hell? What are you doing?”
“Looking around. Don’t freak out,” she adds with a sideways glance at me. “I’m not disturbing anything, but even if I were, nobody would know it’s me. I’m at a public computer.”
“Using your library card!” I hiss. You can’t get online here without entering your account number.
“No. Using his.” Maeve inclines her head toward a small boy a few tables over with a stack of picture books in front of him. I stare at her incredulously, and she shrugs. “I didn’t take it from him. He left it lying out and I wrote down the numbers.”
The little boy’s mother joins him then, smiling as she catches Maeve’s eye. She’d never guess my sweet-faced sister just committed identity theft against her six-year-old.
I can’t think of anything to say except “Why?”
“I wanted to see what the police are seeing,” Maeve says. “If there were any other draft posts, other people who might’ve wanted to keep Simon quiet.”
I inch forward in spite of myself. “Were there?”
“No, but there is something odd. About Cooper’s post. It’s date-stamped days after everyone else’s, for the night before Simon died. There’s an earlier file with his name on it, but it’s encrypted and I can’t open it.”
“So?”
“I don’t know. But it’s different, which makes it interesting. I need to come back with a thumb drive and download it.” I blink at her, trying to pinpoint the exact moment when she morphed into a hacker-investigator. “There’s something else. Simon’s user name for the site is AnarchiSK. I Googled it and came up with a bunch of 4chan threads he posted to constantly. I didn’t have time to read them, but we should.”
“Why?” I ask as she loops her backpack over her shoulder and gets to her feet.
“Because something’s weird about all this,” Maeve says matter-of-factly, leading me out the door and down the stairs. “Don’t you think?”
“Understatement of the year,” I mutter. I stop in the empty stairwell, so she does too, half turning with a questioning look. “Maeve, how’d you even get into Simon’s admin panel? How did you know where to look?”
A small smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. “You’re not the only one who grabs confidential information off computers other people were using.”
I gape at her. “So you—so Simon was posting About That at school? And left it open?”
“Of course not. Simon was smart. He did it here. Not sure if it was a one-time thing or if he posted from the library all the time, but I saw him one weekend last month when you were running. He didn’t see me. I logged in to the computer after him and got the address from the browser history. I didn’t do anything with it at first,” she says, meeting my incredulous look with a calm gaze. “Just put it aside for future reference. I started trying to get in after you came back from the police station. Don’t worry,” she adds, patting me on the arm. “Not from home. Nobody can trace it.”
“Okay, but … why the interest in the app? Before Simon even died? What were you going to do?”
Maeve purses her lips thoughtfully. “I hadn’t figured that part out. I thought maybe I’d start wiping it clean right after he posted, or switch all the text to Russian. Or dismantle the whole thing.”