“Matt,” he said, seeing me.
“Oh, hi, Tariq,” I said, after a pause that was hopefully just long enough to weird him out.
“How are you doing?”
I shrugged. “Could be worse.”
Worse like my sister. After what you did to her.
Whatever it was.
Tariq smiled. Avoided eye contact like he always did with me. Said nothing.
Smelling Tariq, letting my nose break the boy down into his component smells, I found myself significantly less afraid of him. Whatever he was—bully, monster, untouchable jock superstar—he was also very human. There was no reason to fear him. Especially since I could find out so much more about what happened to Maya by getting closer to him.
“I heard about a party this weekend,” I said, thinking fast, stepping closer. “Tomorrow. Down by the Dunes. Are you going?”
“Thinking about it,” he said, and smiled the slightest bit. “You?”
“Yeah.”
“Surprised to hear it,” he said. “Didn’t think it was your thing.”
“It’s not. I’m actually a narc,” I said, deadpanning. “I’m forty years old, infiltrating high school so I can catch teenage drug dealers.”
Tariq scoffed. “Then this party is definitely where you want to be.” He paused. “I can give you a ride,” he said, and his smile widened significantly.
It did things to me, that smile. Those beautiful teeth, those lopsided-yet-perfect dimples. My knees weakened. Revenge is hard when your target is so pretty.
Just remember: he used that smile on Maya.
“Sure. Pick me up down the block from my house, tomorrow around seven,” I said, and told him where I lived.
Even though I knew he already knew. Because that’s where he picked up my sister the last night any of us saw her.
“You got it,” Tariq said.
Pretty brazen, you’re probably thinking. A dude would have to be pretty cocky, pretty evil, or pretty stupid to buddy up with the brother of a girl to whom he did something terrible. Or a girl to whom one of his best friends did something terrible.
Of course, it was also pretty cocky and pretty stupid of me to agree to get in the car with him. But I’m both those things.
I needed to know more. I had nothing real to pin on him, so far, except that since my sister disappeared I obviously made him and Ott deeply uncomfortable.
Maya ran with a crowd of tough kids, sure, but those kids were poor like us. Like us, they couldn’t afford a car. But Tariq, rumor had it, had a brand-new truck his wealthy father had bought for him. And a clear interest in Maya’s company.
I overheard her on the phone with him. That night. I almost asked to tag along, until I heard the urgency in her voice. Urgency and something much darker.
We used to bond over how badly we both wanted him. I freely acknowledged that I had no shot and wholeheartedly cheered her on when he started texting her, then calling, then picking her up to go hang out.
The summer I was fifteen, Maya found me in the living room watching a horror movie Mom wouldn’t have let me see if she hadn’t been working an extra shift, and I thought for sure I was busted, because Maya enjoyed being a hard-ass disciplinarian even more than Mom did, but to my great surprise she came with a bowl of microwave popcorn and held it out to me, and when I reached for it she pulled back, so I’d look up at her, and she made eye contact and looked dead into my soul and said, “Just so you know, I know you’re gay, and I think that’s fucking awesome, because straight guys are the worst, and I know you’re probably not ready to talk about it with anyone else, and I’ll never tell a soul, but I need you to know that you can always come talk to me about anything.”
Which made me blow up and scream at her—a classic closet-case defensive overreaction—and go to my room and cry, and not talk to her for two days, and then once all that had blown over go to her and say, “What about [INSERT CRUSH-OF-THE-WEEK NAME HERE]? Do you think I have a chance with him?”
And from that moment on, we were forever gushing over boys together. Reading the How to Tell if a Boy Likes You quizzes in Cosmo and Seventeen together. Digging deep into the Facebook photos of the boys we liked, looking for summer vacation shots where they might be shirtless or sweaty or smiling sexily.
She was the only person on the whole planet who told me to be Me and be proud of it.
Then Tariq befriended her, and got her to let her guard down, and hurt her—he didn’t kill her, didn’t cripple her, but whatever it was, the psychological impact was such that she had to get the hell out of Hudson and away from everything she loved.
Now I would do the same to him.
RULE #9
Your body is an animal. Animals always know what to do. They sleep, they hump, they hunt, they eat. They run from danger or they die. Humans are different. They hesitate. They choose to stay in dangerous places—like high school—for a million crazy reasons. So your body will frequently find itself stuck in situations it cannot handle, and it will make you very sorry for putting it there.
DAY: 5
TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 1000
An email from Maya.
Hey Matt. I’m fine. Tell Mom I’ll try to call Monday.
Nothing more. I made a sound, probably a curse word, at the computer, very loudly.
And then I wrote back. I wrote back again and again.
I miss you
Where are you? I know you said Providence but I don’t think I believe you.
In between every email, I hit Refresh a hundred times, desperate for a response.
When are you coming home?
Mom’s so pissed at you, for missing school and stuff.
Something happened. Tell me what happened. Did somebody hurt you?
I think someone hurt you. And I think you’re probably planning a Bloody Revenge of some kind. I want to help.
I want you to trust me. I want you to tell me what’s going on.
Silence was her only response.
Silence was my sister’s weapon. When people hurt or angered her, she never got loud like Mom or mean and smart-ass like me. Silence was how she fought back. It wasn’t passive, or an act of helplessness: it was a cold cruel withering blade, lasting far longer than my mother’s rage or my own antagonism, strong enough to make us practically beg for forgiveness every time.
Except now her weapon had gone haywire, turned on herself, driven her from her home and her support system and into who-knew-what kind of danger.
I taped a note to the phone for Mom. Then I stayed up ’til midnight, when I heard her car pull up. I opened the door and surprised her smoking a cigarette on the front steps.
“Hi, Matt!” she said, hiding it behind her back. “What are you still doing up?”
“Can I have a cigarette?” I asked.
“No, stupid,” she said, as I knew she would, but I knew where she hid them, and anyway smoking was a skill I should pick up sooner or later. Maya and I tried Mom’s cigarettes when she was fourteen and I was thirteen. I threw up. She didn’t.