“Let’s talk about something else. It was just a normal day—nothing happened.”
“Just because I don’t go to your fancy high school and I’m not headed to an Ivy League college doesn’t make me stupid—” I try to interrupt, but she’s on a roll. “And just because I can’t make out with you in the back of the Jag I got for my sixteenth birthday and seduce you with the perfect boobs I got for my seventeenth—or is it the other way around, Jonah? How do Cross Pointe snobs order their lives: cars or plastic surgery first?”
I laugh. I can’t help it. “Plastic surgery. Then the cars.”
“Oh, so this is a joke to you? I guess you’d know. So tell me: Exactly how many sets of Cross Pointe boobs have you seen?”
The nail of her pointer finger is inches from my face. I push it away and snap back, “You think I’m cheating? Are you crazy?”
“We both know you are. At least be man enough to admit it.”
“That’s such crap. I can’t believe—”
“Don’t even try to deny it. I found this in your backseat last week.” She pulls the bright blue paper back out of her pocket and holds it like a murder weapon.
I have no clue what’s on it or why it’s made Carly psycho. I take it from her hand and hope it contains the logo from Punk’d. The creases are deep and smooth, like it’s been unfolded repeatedly.
She crosses her arms and watches my face expectantly. I look down—it’s a single sheet of paper. A flyer from Cross Pointe, like the hundreds of others that are hung on the school walls at neat intervals.
“So?” I’m baffled. So confused that I’m not even angry anymore.
“Are you kidding me?”
“Did you want to help put together care packages for last year’s seniors? I don’t know what the problem is. Yes, it’s a stupid project—but who cares if some idiots wanted to mail snacks and instant coffee to a group of spoiled college freshmen?”
Carly’s face is red, her lips pressed together so tight they disappear. “Who. Is. She?” She snatches the flyer from my hands and it tears in the corner. I’m left holding a jagged scrap of blue paper. Carly points to some handwriting at the bottom of the page: ten digits and a name.
Brighton.
10
Brighton
6:07 P.M.
18 HOURS, 53 MINUTES LEFT
The Sheas gave me a tour and left three different ways to contact them. Sophia’s already asleep and they promised to be home by ten, so the only real directions for the next four hours are: “Check the baby monitor and call if you need us. No, actually, if she wakes up at all, call us.”
It seems straightforward, and she hasn’t woken so I haven’t called. But this hasn’t stopped Mr. Shea from checking in three times already.
I reassure him, for the third time, “Everything is quiet here.”
“And the monitor is definitely working?” he asks.
“It is.” I hold it up to the phone and turn up the volume so he can hear the steady raindrop sounds of Sophia’s white-noise machine.
“Okay.” He exhales. “So, you’re all set?”
“Go enjoy your dinner,” I tell him. “Everything here is fine.”
“Great. Great, great. Thanks so much, Brighton. We’ll see you in a few hours.”
I hang up and pace from the kitchen to the living room, through the dining room and one of those never-really-used rooms with new “antique” furniture and a grandfather clock that bongs about seven minutes early. It almost looks like every other house in Cross Pointe, but there’s a hint of not-quite-there-yet—it’s apparent in the price tag still dangling from a throw pillow, and the dining room chairs, which look like they’ve never been sat on. Everything is slightly too matchy-matchy and too new. But the Sheas are still new, still trying too hard.
Not that everyone else in Cross Pointe doesn’t try; we just don’t let our efforts show.
I circle back to the kitchen. They have one of those floor plans where the rooms all connect with multiple entrances; it all flows around the staircase to the second floor where Sophia sleeps in the only room with an open door. Behind one of the other seven is all the information I’d ever need to know about Jonah.
The Sheas said I don’t even need to go upstairs—as long as she’s quiet, I should just let her sleep. I click the video button on the monitor—not awake.