His face reddened and he kept his voice low, though it warbled, “Stop bossing me around and tell me what you want me to keep secret.”
“Harry and I went to homecoming together and then you walked in on what was our second date today. We were about to kiss and you ruined it. I just want to make sure you know because I haven’t said it aloud to you.” I barely had breath left to squeeze the important part out. “I like Harry.”
His expression was unreadable. “You’re babbling.”
“I like Harry,” I said more emphatically.
His jaw tensed. “Not twenty seconds ago you referenced the enormous brain sloshing around in my skull. You said I wasn’t stupid. You plus Harry. I’ve gleaned it already.”
“Giant. I called it a giant brain. Enormous—that’s just cocky.”
“I am sorry that I interrupted you guys when you were about to hook up.”
“Kiss,” I said, “and don’t apologize.”
His fisted hands rubbed at his eyes. “What is the secret, Izzie?”
The grandfather clock in the hallway ticked five times. I felt each down to my bones.
“Want to find a killer with me?”
Retrieved from the cellular phone of Isadora Anne Pendletona
Transcript and notes prepared by Badge #821891
Shared Media Folder Titled: IV, Mon., Oct. 21, 12:05 a.m.
Video start.
I. Pendleton sits in her mostly dark bedroom. “It finally happened,” she whispers. “I got home from Graham’s about an hour ago. I thought my parents would be sleeping because they go to bed superearly. Wrong. I was going to the kitchen for water when I saw my dad at the dining room table. In the dark. Just sitting.”
She pauses.
“He said he was sorry for startling me and I asked if everything was okay, even though I knew it must not be. Then he started to cry. I froze at the other end of the table. Waiting. I got all antsy, like I wanted to scream at him to just say it already. He goes, ‘We don’t want you to be worried. Your grandma needed your mom to stay with her a while is all. Nothing specifically wrong with her health. Mom’ll just be gone for the week.’ And I’m like, ‘In Denver?’ He nods and I go, ‘Did you bring her to the airport?’
“He says, ‘No, she took a taxi. You just missed her.’?” She exhales loudly. “We’ve flown to see Grandma a billion times, and there are so few flights out of Santa Barbara and they’re always during the day. By the time Mom gets to the airport, it’ll be one a.m. It’s a teeny-tiny airport. They don’t have red-eyes. No. If something else wasn’t wrong she would have slept here and left early in the morning. She must have found out about Dad. I can’t think how. Maybe he finally told?”
Her expression wavers between a frown and a smile. “She knows about Dad and Ina and she left. I don’t mean she left me—technically, yeah, but she’ll be back. Obviously. I just mean she didn’t hang around to argue. To let him weasel his way out of trouble. She ran. I guess I’m kind of surprised and proud of her.
“When I got up to my room a little while ago, I called Viv to tell her what I thought had happened. She said her parents were asleep in their room together. She’d gone in and said good night to them when she got home and they were totally normal. She doesn’t think my mom found out about Dad and Ina, because if Mom knew, wouldn’t Viv’s dad have heard too? Wouldn’t he be angry and have left? I don’t know what to think. I guess I’m just relieved it’s not up to us to tell or not tell anymore.”
Video stop.
25
The dark hours of Monday morning saw the delivery of the initiates’ first rites. I kept low as I stole up Trent’s driveway. I was in luck; he’d left his car window cracked open, and I slipped the envelope through the gap. Trent would find both an embarrassing rite and the rite all of the initiates would receive, which added up to our larger rebellion.
I delivered Jess’s rite to her locker at school, my footsteps the only sound echoing through the campus. It fell to Viv, Harry, and Graham to deliver the rest of the instructions clandestinely.
I considered giving Jess two rites, like I gave Trent. But the night to come, revenge for Goldilocks, Mom gone, the embarrassment I planned for Trent, and mine and Graham’s emerging plan took up too much space in my head. And honestly, the more I’d gotten to know Jess, the less I wanted to embarrass her. She was quick-witted, world-weary, and interesting.
There was a vague nagging that deadlines for college applications were coming. Later, I told myself. After, I promised. Once Mom got back I’d write my personal statement and ask her to read it.
The crowd in Cup of Jo was thin; it was early. Chai latte in hand, I went to sit across the street in the gazebo at the center of the knoll. I gave a finger to the founder’s plaque affixed to the right of the short staircase. From the gazebo’s axis all of the town square stores were visible; likewise, all of the stores had a clear shot to the gazebo. I spat a mouthful of chai on the ground. It smelled normal but there was a mysterious bitter taste on my tongue. Bullshit. The nasty taste came from the recording I’d left in our shared folder the night before. Chances were, it was the roses I had delivered to Ina’s clinic from my dad that got them caught. The flowers arrived on a day Ina didn’t work; a curious nurse or doctor must have flipped open the card, and they told someone in a gossipy whisper. It took over a week to reach my mom.
Seeing Dad as a zombie in the dark got me thinking about how hard Viv would take it. I was afraid; I couldn’t admit to her that I’d set my dad up. So I faked shock and called her, then I recorded myself talking about it. I was a liar. Lying about the truth in which I tried to tell the truth. It was complicated.
I watched the line curl around the corner at Holy Bagels. Tons of middle school kids standing beside their bikes and trying to look older by acting busy on their cells. If I shouted, they’d all look my way. I stood up on the bench that ran the perimeter inside the gazebo and inspected the rafters of the roof. The gazebo was a better stage than our rock.
I texted Graham. Do you still have that spy cam?
Graham’s reply dinged. Think so. Inspecting train tracks.
Where?
Ghost Tunnel to knoll.
How?
Walking them. Will be late for class.
I lobbed the chai into the wastepaper basket and went to stroll around the square, on the lookout for security cameras. A girl was taking out the recycling in the alleyway between Holy Bagels and Cup of Jo. She’d worked the counter for at least a few months at Holy Bagels.
The recycling lid slammed shut and she was wiping her hands on her jeans when I reached her. “Hey,” I said.
She whirled around, mouth open in surprise.
“Could I ask you something?” She checked over her shoulder to the back door of the bagel shop. “I’ll be quick,” I added.
She crossed her arms and gave a beleaguered sigh. “What’s up?”