Because I was squarely in pouting mode, I decided to snoop around Sophie’s Instagram page. She’d posted a ton of selfies from the first day of school—of course. I dabbed at the subsequent tears, and I went back a little further to the photos of the two of us on our first day of our sophomore year. God, we were so excited to start school then. Sophie had braided our hair in matching fishtails, and I thought we’d looked so pretty that morning. In a weak moment, I considered responding to her text.
But after staring at my phone for a good minute, I didn’t feel brave enough or forgiving enough. She’d betrayed and hurt me too deeply for me to trust her ever again. Instead, I gave in to another temptation. Digging through my backpack, I pulled out the folder I’d been given at orientation. In addition to the map of the school, it also held a directory of students and instructions to Chamberlain High’s Intranet. After locating the directory, I flipped to the pages where all the students were listed in alphabetical order by grade.
There were three Coles. Cole Drepeau, Cole McDonald, and Cole Stewart. I turned to the computer and logged into Facebook, hoping that the Cole I’d met that morning had a profile. After plugging Cole Drepeau into the search field I let out a little whoop when I hit the jackpot on the first try. Then my breath caught as I took in the sight of him. His account settings were very private but at least I could look at his profile picture, which was so flattering. It showed him standing in a sleeveless tee; his tan, gorgeously defined arms flexing slightly while slung casually around the shoulders of two other guys to his right and left. All three boys were laughing into the face of the camera, as if the photographer had just told a particularly funny joke.
Around Cole’s neck, he wore a dark leather cord strung with a yellow bead, and around his wrist he wore a similar cord also strung with more yellow beads. The accents were subtle, but they definitely added to his level of hotness.
Hey! my bossy, rational side thought. What the hell are you doing looking up some new guy when Tanner just cheated on you?!
To which the side of myself that is a general admirer of hot guys replied, There’s no harm in looking.
My bossy side wasn’t fooled, but I still couldn’t force myself to turn away from Cole’s profile.
I studied the photo, only slightly ashamed of myself for cyber-stalking him, but I loved that he’d chosen this image to use as his profile pic. It clearly showed Cole’s lightheartedness. He looked like the kind of guy who laughed easily, held deep friendships, and was generally well-liked. Maybe that was me doing a whole lot of projecting, but there was just something friendly and kind about his face. I found myself sighing a little as I looked at his photo, and immediately rebuked myself again because I was being an idiot. No way was I ready to be thinking about getting involved with somebody else—I was still smarting from the breakup with Tanner.
But then I wondered: was I really heartbroken over losing my boyfriend, or losing my boyfriend to my best friend?
If I was being honest with myself, I was far more hurt by Sophie’s betrayal than Tanner’s. The truth was, I missed her way more than I did him.
But even that admission didn’t make me ready to start something new. At least, that’s what the practical side of me thought. And yet, when I stared at Cole’s photo, I couldn’t shake this feeling of familiarity. I couldn’t quite reconcile the sense that I knew him from somewhere. It felt like we’d met before this morning.
On impulse, I switched over to Google and plugged in a search on Cole’s name and Fredericksburg, Virginia. What came up made me gasp. The first link I found led to a news report about a murder from 1987. Investigating further, I discovered that the case was unsolved; the victim an eighteen-year-old boy who’d been shot to death the night of his prom. His name had been Ben Spencer.
I got through maybe two paragraphs of the story before I started to hyperventilate. I’d had one panic attack in my life. It had come the day Dad had tried to introduce me to his girlfriend. He and Mom had already filed for divorce, and he’d taken me to lunch like he wanted us to bond one-on-one. Instead, Jenny had been at the table, waiting for us.
It’d been so unfair, so underhanded, and I’d felt a sudden rush of panic and fear take hold of my insides and threaten to rip me apart. Dad had gotten me through it by rubbing my back and helping me regulate my breathing. The bastard.
There was no accounting for why this panic attack came on, though—it just did. I slipped out of my chair, gasping for breath, and got on all fours to try to temper the force of it.
It took a long time, and I came close to reaching for the phone to dial 911, but at last it subsided. When it did, I was damp with sweat, even though I was shivering with cold. Trembling, I crawled over to the bed and sat against it, wiping the hair out of my eyes and pulling an afghan off my bed.
“What the hell, Lil?” I asked myself.
This time I’d had to fight it all on my own. I wondered if the appearance of Dad’s girlfriend at the door of my grandmother’s house had somehow triggered a delayed reaction. But when I glanced toward my desk and the still-lit computer screen, I knew this one hadn’t been about her.