Chapter Ten
On Tuesday, I stopped by the Nelson’s house. Luckily, Mr. and Mrs. Nelson were at work, and Jonathan was the only one at home.
“Hey man, what’s up?” he asked.
“I came by to look for Jake’s camera.”
Jonathan grinned. “Oh, like, for the ring investigation?”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that,” I replied.
“Good idea. Man, I bet it’ll have an assload of chicks on there!”
I laughed. “Yeah, I’m sure it does.”
Jonathan led the way upstairs to Jake’s room. On the bed were a couple of duffle bags. Jonathan started unzipping some of them. “This was the stuff he had with him up at PawPaw’s. Mom hasn’t had the heart to unpack it yet,” he informed me.
I nodded. Something about seeing those bags weirded me out a little, and I backed away from the bed—fully content with letting Jonathan find the camera.
“Jesus,” Jonathan murmured.
My gaze fell on a plastic bag in his hand. It was Jake’s iPhone. He must’ve had it on him at the accident because it had clearly been bagged by the police—not Jake’s MeeMaw.
I gulped. “Does it work?” I croaked.
Jonathan shot me a look before he unzipped the bag. “I dunno, man. It looks fine.” He grimaced. “It must’ve been in his truck and not on him when…” Neither of us wanted to think about the rest of that statement. The battery clicked off, so Jonathan dug in the bag for the charger.
Luckily, Jake had never felt the need to lock his phone, or we would have been shit out of luck. “Lock it? Hell, I could never remember the password, so screw that!” he’d said.
Once the phone came up, I started scrolling through the pictures—paying particular attention to the dates. Finally, I found the ones Avery was talking about. “Whoa!” I didn’t know if I would ever be able to look at her again, considering she was not only naked, but in some very, very provocative poses.
Jonathan leaned over me. “Holy shit! Is that Honey Boo-Boo?”
I laughed. “Yeah, that’s her—a lot more than I’m used to seeing”
“Damn, I bet she doesn’t show all that at the pageants.”
“I sure as hell wouldn’t think so,” I mused.
“What are you going to do with them?” he asked.
“I promised her I would delete them.”
“Man, that’s a pity,” Jonathan said.
I quickly sent the five naughty pics to the recycling bin. Then I emptied it. “Okay, problem solved.”
“Yeah,” Jonathan murmured with a wistful look in his eye.
I slapped him on the arm. “Dude, quit memorizing the pictures of Honey Boo-Boo—I mean Avery—for your spank bank!”
He grinned wickedly and waggled his eyebrows. “Sorry but some pictures can’t ever be erased!”
“Yeah, that sounds exactly like something Jake would’ve said,” I said.
The mention of Jake brought us back to ourselves. An awkward silence hung in the air. I eyed the phone and then looked at Jonathan. “Hey man, would you mind if I took this phone? You know, for evidence and detective bullshit.”
“Sure. Mom and Dad won’t mind—they probably won’t even miss it for a while.”
“Okay, cool.” As I weighed the phone in my palm, I glanced up at Jonathan. “So do you have any idea who the ring chick might be?”
Jonathan rocked back on his heels before shaking his head. “I mean, I didn’t know of any specific girls in Jake’s life besides Honey Boo-Boo and that Presley chick.”
While I bobbed my head in agreement, Maddie’s face once again entered my mind. “What about Pastor Dan’s daughter?”
With his blonde brows furrowing, Jonathan gave me an epic WTF? look. “The girl who tutored Jake?”
“Yeah, Maddie.”
“Dude, I don’t think so. I mean, Jake might’ve mentioned her once or twice to me, but he never sounded like he had a jonesing for her.”
Chewing on my bottom lip, I thought about the many faces of Jake that Maddie, Pastor Dan, and even myself had seen. “But what if he was keeping his feelings for her a secret? Like he was hiding them away just like this ring?”
Jonathan snorted skeptically. “When did Jake ever hide anything? He said and did exactly what he wanted to.”
“Um duh, the ring?” I argued.
He pursed his lips in thought. “Well, maybe it could be her. Who knows. I’ll just say I’ll be shocked as hell if it actually turns out to be her.”
“You and me both,” I murmured. I then started for the door. Jonathan’s voice stopped me. “Hey Noah?”
I turned around. “Yeah?”
“Blowing up is pretty quick, right? I mean, you don’t think Jake felt anything on that tractor, do you?”
Anguish swam in his dark blue eyes. I didn’t know what Jake felt in that last moment—that last second. I hoped he hadn’t felt anything—that he was here one minute and gone the next. Maybe in the end it didn’t matter if you knew for sure—maybe you could just choose to believe what you wanted.
So, I shook my head at Jonathan. “No man, you heard Bubba when they said it was quick. I’m sure Jake didn’t feel a thing.”
Jonathan weighed my answer for a few seconds before nodding. “Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. Thanks, man.”
“No problem,” I replied.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, I began the task of working my way through Jake’s phone. His address book was a symbolic black book like from back in the day. I started with the girls Jake had labeled “Butter Faces”—meaning everything was hot but the chicks’ faces.
And it was a bodacious bevy of hot bods I ‘interviewed’ that week. Long legs, fabulous racks, Jennifer Lopez like asses, but none of them had a song with Jake. Well, Libby Petersen did, but it was Let’s Get Drunk and Screw, not You Were Always on My Mind.
I started to get discouraged. What if I wasn’t able to find her? Jake had dated and screwed extensively not only through Creekview, but also at some of the other high school in our county. It was almost an unending journey—one I might still be on in my old age where I finally tracked down the girl to a nursing home.
Thursday as I sat zoned out at the lunch table, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Maddie. The moment I saw her, I couldn’t help the beaming smile that spread across my face. “Hey,” I said as I hopped up from my chair.
“Hi,” she said shyly.
“I haven’t seen you around this week.”
“Yeah, I’ve been at All State Chorus competition.”
“Oh really?”
“Uh, huh.”
Maddie and I stood awkwardly at the table. I could feel the expectant gazes of the guys at my table bearing into my back. “So did you, like, uh, win?” I stammered.
“We came in third as a group, and I came in second as an individual.”
“Wow, that’s awesome,” I replied. The back of my shirt was practically peeling off from the burn from the guys gaping at me and Maddie.
Maddie must’ve sensed my awkwardness. “Well, I just wanted to say hello and see how you were doing,” she said, a slight blush creeping across her cheeks.
My heart jolted a little in my chest. Damn. She was worried about how I was doing with my grief—so much so she’d risked being embarrassed or annihilated by the A-Crowd just to check on me. She started to turn away, but I grabbed her arm. “I’ll walk you out.”
Maddie raised her eyebrows in surprise, but then she smiled. “Okay.”
Without a word to the guys, I grabbed my books and followed Maddie out of the cafeteria.
“What about you?” I asked, as we headed through the double doors. “I mean, how are you doing?”
She shrugged. “I’m okay, I guess.” Her big dark eyes widened. “Oh Noah, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t even be talking about how I feel. I had so little time with Jake, and the two of you were best friends since you were kids.” She rubbed my arm tenderly, causing the hairs on my arm to rise. “I bet you’re really lost without him,” she said.
Damn, she’d really hit the nail on the head. I hated to admit that without Jake around, I did feel lost—like I didn’t know who I was anymore. Having those type of feelings running around in my head made me feel like a total p-ssy. The world I’d known had shattered around me in an instant, and now everything seemed so surreal. People went on doing exactly what they’d done before while I tip-toed through this new reality.
Once again, the dull ache in my chest radiated at the thoughts of Jake. “Yeah, I am,” I murmured.
Maddie smiled sadly at me. “I can’t even imagine how much you miss him, Noah. I wish there was something I could do—”
“No, it’s okay. Just being here and talking about him—that helps me,” I answered.
The bell rang shrilly over our heads. “Well, I guess I better go. It was good seeing you,” Maddie said.
“Yeah, same here.”
“Bye,” she said.
“Bye,” I murmured.
As she walked away, it once again hit me like a ton of bricks or a swift kick to the balls. I’d been through most of the girls in Jake’s phone and zilch. When I’d gotten to Maddie’s number, I’d skipped over it. Why? Because wasn’t she just the preacher’s goody daughter who was merely a friend and a tutor? But then I thought about what she’d said at the cemetery, and the things he’d confided in her—things he’d never told me when he was shitfaced or sober.
The more I thought about it, the more some of the pieces starting coming together. The more the pieces started coming together, the more I felt like a giant dumbass for not seeing it before. I made a mental note to rule out any form of detective work in my future since I was pretty suckasstastic at it.
Maddie could be her. The more I allowed myself to think it, the less I wanted it to be true. Something within me didn’t want Maddie to be Jake’s or most of all that Jake was Maddie’s.
***