A chair scrapes noisily beside me as Addy pushes herself away from the table. “Stop,” she says in a choked voice, her purple-streaked hair falling into her eyes. “Jake wouldn’t … He couldn’t …”
“I think we’ve had enough for one night,” Ashton says firmly, getting to her feet. “You guys keep going, but we need to get home.”
“Sorry, Addy,” Bronwyn says with a chagrined expression. “I got carried away.”
Addy waves a hand. “It’s fine,” she says unsteadily. “I just … can’t right now.” Ashton links arms with her until they get to the door; then she pulls it open and lets Addy slip through ahead of her.
Maeve watches them, her chin in her hands. “She has a point. The whole thing sounds impossible, doesn’t it? And even if we’re right, we can’t prove anything.” She looks hopefully at Kris, as though she’s willing him to work more Post-it magic.
Kris shrugs and taps the colored square closest to him. “Perhaps there’s one person remaining who knows something useful.”
Janae seems depressed
Bronwyn and Maeve leave around nine, and Kris and I don’t stay much longer. We gather up the table debris that’s left and deposit it in the trash can next to the exit. We’re both quiet, coming off one of the weirdest dates in history.
“Well,” Kris says, pushing through the door and pausing on the sidewalk to wait for me. “That was interesting.” Before he can say anything else I grab him and press him against the coffee shop wall, my fingers digging into his hair and my tongue sliding between his teeth in a deep, wanting kiss. He makes a sound like a surprised growl and pulls me hard against his chest. When another couple exits through the door and we break apart, he looks dazed.
He straightens his shirt and runs a hand over his hair. “Thought you’d forgotten how to do that.”
“I’m sorry.” My voice thickens with the need to kiss him again. “It’s not that I didn’t want to. It’s just—”
“I know.” Kris laces his fingers in mine and holds our hands up like a question. “Yes?”
“Yes,” I say, and we start down the sidewalk together.
Nate
Wednesday, November 7, 11:30 p.m.
So here’s how you deal with being locked up.
You keep your mouth shut. Don’t talk about your life or why you’re there. Nobody cares unless they want to use it against you.
You don’t take shit from anyone. Ever. Juvenile detention’s not Oz, but people will still fuck with you if they think you’re weak.
You make friends. I use the term loosely. You identify the least shitty people you can find and associate with them. Moving around in a pack is useful.
You don’t break rules, but you look the other way when someone else does.
You work out and watch television. A lot.
You stay under the guards’ radar as much as possible. Including the overly friendly woman who keeps offering to let you make calls from her office.
You don’t complain about how slowly time passes. When you’ve been arrested for a capital offense and you’re four months away from your eighteenth birthday, days that crawl by are your friends.
You come up with new ways to answer your lawyer’s endless questions. Yeah, I leave my locker open sometimes. No, Simon’s never been to my house. Yeah, we saw each other outside of school sometimes. The last time? Probably when I was selling him weed. Sorry, we’re not supposed to talk about that, are we?
You don’t think about what’s outside. Or who. Especially if she’s better off forgetting you exist.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Addy
Thursday, November 8, 7:00 p.m.
I keep reading through the About This Tumblr as if it’s going to change. But it never does. Ashton’s words loop through my head: Jake’s a complete control freak. She’s not wrong. But does that mean the rest of it has to be right? Maybe Jake told somebody else what I said, and they wrote it. Or maybe it’s all just a coincidence.
Except. A memory surfaces from the morning of Simon’s death, so seemingly insignificant that it hadn’t crossed my mind till now: Jake pulling my backpack off my shoulder with an easy grin as we walked down the hallway together. That’s too heavy for you, baby. I’ve got it. He’d never done that before, but I didn’t question him. Why would I?
And a phone that wasn’t mine got pulled from my backpack a few hours later.
I’m not sure what’s worse—that Jake might be part of something so awful, that I drove him to it, or that he’s been putting on an act for weeks.
“His choice, Addy,” Ashton reminds me. “Plenty of people get cheated on and don’t lose their minds. Take me, for example. I threw a vase at Charlie’s head and moved on. That’s a normal reaction. Whatever’s going on here isn’t your fault.”
That might be true. But it doesn’t feel true.
So I’m supposed to talk to Janae, who hasn’t been in school all week. I tried texting her a few times after school and again after dinner, but she never responded. Finally, I decided to borrow TJ’s trick—find her address in the school directory and just show up. When I told Bronwyn she offered to come along, but I thought it’d go better with only me. Janae never warmed up to Bronwyn all that much.
Cooper insists on driving me even though I tell him he’ll need to wait in the car. There’s no way Janae’ll open up about anything if he’s around. “That’s fine,” he says as he pulls across the street from Janae’s faux-Tudor house. “Text me if things turn weird.”
“Will do,” I say, giving him a salute as I close the door and cross the street. There aren’t any cars in Janae’s driveway, but lights are burning throughout the house. I ring the doorbell four times with no answer, glancing back at Cooper with a shrug after the last one. I’m about to give up when the door cracks and one of Janae’s black-rimmed eyes stares out at me. “What are you doing here?” she asks.
“Checking on you. You haven’t been around and you’re not answering my texts. Are you all right?”
“Fine.” Janae tries to close the door, but I stick my foot in it to stop her.
“Can I come in?” I ask.
She hesitates but releases the door and steps back, allowing me to push it forward and enter. When I get a good look at her, I almost gasp. She’s thinner than ever, and angry red hives cover her face and neck. She scratches at them self-consciously. “What? I’m not feeling well. Obviously.”
I peer down the hallway. “Anyone else home?”
“No. My parents are out to dinner. Look, um, no offense, but do you have some reason for being here?”
Bronwyn coached me on what to say. I’m supposed to start with small, subtle questions about where Janae’s been all week and how she’s feeling. To follow up on the thread of Simon’s depression and encourage her to tell me more. As a last resort, I can maybe talk about what Nate’s facing as the DA’s office tries to send him to an honest-to-God prison.
I don’t do any of that. Instead I step forward and hug her, cradling her scrawny body as though she’s a little kid who needs comforting. She feels like one, all weightless bones and fragile limbs. She stiffens, then slumps against me and starts to cry.
“Oh my God,” she says in a thick, raspy voice. “It’s all fucked up. Everything’s so massively fucked up.”
“Come on.” I lead her to the living room sofa, where we sit and she cries some more. Her head digs awkwardly into my shoulder while I pat her hair. It’s stiff with product, her mouse-brown roots blending into shiny blue-black dye.
“Simon did this to himself, didn’t he?” I ask carefully. She pulls away and buries her head in her hands, rocking back and forth.
“How did you know?” she chokes out.
God. It’s true. I didn’t fully believe it till now.