“No more school. You’ve been pushing yourself too much. That’s why this happened.”
My vision blurs, and I bite my lip to keep from crying. I finally got everything I wanted—all the adventure I dreamed about, imagined the other kids having—and now it’s being taken away. Jenny squeezes my knee, but for once even she doesn’t stick up for me.
It’s just school, I tell myself. Just school. It’s better for me to stay home right now anyway. Someone attacked me, and I don’t know who. At least at home I’m safe. It’s just school.
Maybe if I say it enough times, it’ll start to feel true.
By the time we get home, I’m all spun up. This was an attempt on my life that left me a prisoner in my own home. I’m done being nice about this.
The moment Mom leaves me alone, I pull out the spiral notebook from under my bed and open it to my list of suspects.
TUCKER
JENNY
Now I add the names of anyone who might have seen me going to that bathroom:
SADIE
AMBER
CLAYTON
And after a brief hesitation, two more:
FARRAH
ETHAN
After the events of the night, the idea that either of them is involved doesn’t seem quite so far-fetched anymore.
But why? And how do I prove anything?
I stuff the notebook back under my bed and whip out my cell, dialing Lyla’s number.
“You won’t believe what happened.”
“Hope, is that you?” she asks.
“Yeah. So listen.”
I’m huffing for breath by the time I finish spilling all the details of the charity event. “This was a punishment,” I say, “for helping Farrah out of the freezer, which means they’re changing the rules because they can.”
“Wow. Just…wow,” she mumbles.
“This is beyond dangerous now, Lyla. It’s time to go to the cops.”
“Okay, I hear you,” she says. “But again, what kind of evidence do we have? And what would your mom say? If you filed a police report, she’d have to know about it.”
I grimace. I hadn’t thought about that. If Mom knew someone attacked me, she’d never let me out of her sight again. Forget just cutting out school. It’d be a Fort Knox?level lockdown.
“Well, I can’t just wait around for whoever did this to strike again,” I say. “Tucker might not be around next time to save me.”
Tucker. He came so quickly. And I really wasn’t gone that long. I hadn’t even reapplied my makeup. Why would he have come looking for me? Unless…unless he knew I was going to be hurt.
Was Tucker being there at the exact right moment an act of perfect timing, or was he there because he attacked me? And then a more frightening thought occurs to me.
“Hope?” Lyla asks.
“I gotta go.”
I hang up and whip open my bedroom closet, then fall to my knees in front of the cardboard box of old school assignments and other random junk I don’t know what to do with and dig through the pile with shaking hands.
For a moment I worry it’s gone, that Mom threw it out when she was snooping through my things or something. But there it is, the newspaper still folded from when it was stuffed in Ethan’s bag.
I almost can’t bring myself to read it. If I don’t read it, then nothing has to change. Tucker can keep being the gorgeous guy who wants me, despite where I come from, damn what everyone says. Ethan can still be wrong about him.
But now that the seed of doubt has been planted, it won’t stop growing.
I open the paper.
The article Ethan wanted to show me is earmarked.
TEENS CHARGED IN GANG BEATING
Six teenagers face charges after allegedly beating a sixteen-year-old boy…
Six teenagers? My heart beats fast. Tucker never mentioned anything about that.
The attack occurred at a party around 2:30 a.m. on Sunday morning. Witnesses say the boy was cornered on the roof of a condo and beaten unconscious. A neighbor saw the attack and called police. The victim was taken to University Hospital in critical condition.
The attackers are being charged with attempted murder, attempted kidnapping, and battery.
Murder? Kidnapping?
The ground shifts beneath my feet.
I pull out my phone and type “Teens Charged in Gang Beating New Orleans” into the browser. I click on the first article.
Prosecutors have dropped most of the charges against six teenagers accused of gang-beating a sixteen-year-old at a party last June. The teens had been charged with attempted first-degree murder, attempted kidnapping, and felony battery. The teens remain charged with battery. New Orleans PD declined to comment on the matter. None of the suspects have been named, as they are all minors.
The phone shakes in my hand. I should call him. Give him a chance to explain. They dropped the charges. Everything he said about his cousin could be true. He got carried away. His friends joined in.
But the bathroom—he was right there. I’d been gone only minutes.
What did he say his cousin’s name was?
Sophie, or Emily, or something else rich-sounding.