It wasn’t anywhere.
Her earpiece. And the flash drive. They were gone. They were gone and she couldn’t find them anywhere.
And a girl like Kinley didn’t lose things. She just didn’t. She put her head in her hands and gathered up big handfuls of her hair.
Her father would kill her for losing it.
No. Even worse.
Losing it would kill her father.
Her whole life, she would never, ever be forgiven for doing this to him.
She knew what had happened. She knew exactly what and how.
Tyler. He hadn’t believed her story. He was too smart. And he’d taken it. She dug out her phone from under a pile of sweaters she’d ripped from the bottom drawer and called him.
She counted the rings. He answered on the fourth.
“Hey, Kin.”
Any other day, she would have smiled at the nickname. But not today. “I need you to come over right now,” she said. “Please. I need you.”
“Are you okay?” he asked. His voice was soft.
“No. Please, please come. My parents are gone again. Just come.”
And within ten minutes, Tyler had pulled up in his car—even though Kinley knew he was grounded from it for the entire summer—and was vaulting through her window.
“Holy shit,” he said. “Kin, did you get robbed?”
She shook her head. She tried to paw her hair back from her face, but gave up. She wanted to give in to sobbing, too, but she couldn’t. She had to be strong. She had to get the flash drive back.
“What happened?”
She looked up at him through her hair. “I think you know, Tyler. You took it.”
“Took what?” he asked, but he looked guilty.
She looked up at him. “Why, Tyler? Why did you have to take it? Couldn’t you just have left it alone?”
He paused. She read the truth in his face.
“Couldn’t you have been real about it? Or just told me you didn’t want to talk about it?” Tyler asked. He cleared a spot next to Kinley and sat down. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Did you really have to make up an elaborate story? I thought we trusted each other, Kin.”
His voice was small. Hurt.
She’d never heard him sound like that before.
“If I tell you the truth, will you give it back?” Kinley put both of her hands on either side of his face.
He lifted a shoulder, not meeting her eyes.
“Look, Tyler. No one—and I mean no one—can ever have that flash drive. They can never know that it exists. They can never see it. Okay?”
Tyler frowned. “Okay. But why?”
She released his face. “Because I’m not partially deaf, okay? I lied. I made the whole thing up.” She ducked her head, and her cheeks burned. She was so stupid. Why had she ever lied to Tyler, the one person she felt close to in all of this? Why had she put this between them?
“I know,” he said quietly.
“You did?”
He nudged her with his shoulder. “There wasn’t a May Day parade five years ago. It really was canceled. I guess I should have told you that my mother’s on the board. She would have mentioned if some adorable little girl sustained a grievous injury in her parade.”
Kinley still didn’t look up. “Do you hate me?”
“No,” Tyler answered without hesitation. “But I wish I understood why you lied.”
Kinley felt a tear start in her eye, but she blinked it away quickly. She could not cry. She couldn’t. “Because I’m not as smart as everyone thinks I am.”
It was the first time she’d ever said it out loud. The first time she’d admitted it, even to herself.
She just wasn’t that smart. Not really. She wasn’t the genius. She wasn’t the prodigy.
She was just like everyone else.
Except worse.
Tyler’s expression didn’t change. He just watched her, waiting.
“I use them to study. They’re a trick. It’s a sophisticated recording-and-playback system. Sometimes, during class, I record the lectures to listen back to them. But honestly . . . I have the answers. And I listen to them during the tests.” She paused and swallowed hard.
“You have the answers,” Tyler repeated, very slowly. “How?”
Kinley pulled on her hair. “I used to volunteer in the office, you know. With standardized testing, teachers have to submit all sorts of crap to the front office and the state and stuff, so most of the teachers turn in copies of their big tests. I make copies of the Scantron forms and record the data onto the flash drive, which is, as you know, almost imperceptible. I just listen and fill in all the answers as I go.”
Tyler shrank away from her, almost imperceptibly. She almost didn’t notice.
She wanted to not care. But she did. There was some part of her that needed him.
“Say something,” she pleaded. She reached out and put her hand on his arm, and he didn’t pull away.