“I haven’t talked to Cassie in days,” I say. And he must know that. “Why would you think I’d have heard from her?”
“Because I got this.” Jasper digs his phone out of his pocket and hands it to me. There’s a text from Cassie open on the screen: Go to Wylie’s house. That’s it. That’s the whole message. “You have no idea why she’d tell me to come here?”
“Me?” It actually sounds like he thinks I’m the one who’s hiding something. “I have absolutely no idea. Did you tell her mom that you got this?”
“I was about to, but then—” He motions for his phone back and moves his finger up a little on the screen before handing it back to me. “I got this one.”
Don’t tell anyone you heard from me. Especially my mom.
“Okay, but—”
He reaches for the phone again, tapping in search of yet another message. He holds up the phone a third time.
I messed up again. If you call my mom, she’ll call the police. And you know what will happen. Please, just go to Wylie’s. More soon.
“What the hell is going on?” I ask, and I sound angry. At Jasper. But I am sure this is somehow at least a little bit his fault.
“I have no idea what’s going on. I came here because that’s what her text said to do,” Jasper says, and now he sounds angry at me. “But who knows? Cassie has been acting weird lately.”
“What does that mean: ‘weird’?”
“Are you asking me the definition of the word ‘weird’?”
I just glare at him. At least it’s obvious now. He doesn’t like me either.
“Like distant or whatever,” he goes on. “I don’t know why.”
“And what does she mean about the police: ‘you know what will happen’?”
“I can’t tell you,” Jasper says.
“So you can come here and pump me for information, but not give any away?”
“It’s just—she was really embarrassed about some stuff that went down,” he says finally. “She wouldn’t want you, of all people, to know.”
Fuck you, Jasper Salt, I want to shout. You don’t know anything about me. And you don’t know anything about the real Cassie, the awesome person she was before you helped destroy her. But I can’t tell him off yet, not when he knows things that I don’t. Things that might help find Cassie.
“Trust me, I know lots of embarrassing things about Cassie,” I say. “We have been friends a really long time.”
And there are definitely secrets I know that Jasper does not. Things that Cassie would have been way too embarrassed to tell him. For instance, maybe Cassie peed her bed again, but this time her mom caught it. She did that after one of her first “hangouts” with the Rainbow Coalition before she and Jasper started talking.
She was really freaked out about it, especially because she’d also blacked out at the party. Didn’t even remember getting home. Blacking out had been one of her dad’s signature moves. Cassie was convinced he didn’t remember half the messed-up things he’d done. It was how Cassie managed not to hate him. Anything he didn’t remember didn’t get held against him. But even blacking out didn’t scare Cassie straight the way I’d hoped it would. Instead, the next time it happened, she decided it was funny.
“I know you guys are close, but—” Jasper looks down at his hands, presses his fingertips together. “She specifically said she didn’t want you to know this one thing. She was worried you’d look down on her, I guess. And I have to respect that, right?”
“You cannot be serious,” I laugh. Or sort of laugh.
Jasper holds up his hands. “I’m not saying you would look down on her.” But I can tell from the way he says it that he totally does think that. “That’s just what Cassie was afraid of. She’s not always the best judge of people.” Him saying that to me makes me want to spit. “Anyway, I think the part that matters is that she’s done something her mom would be seriously, seriously pissed off about. And she was already talking about sending Cassie to some crazy boot camp boarding school.” He takes a deep breath. “Anyway, I guess Cassie having done something wrong is at least better than someone having kidnapped her or something.”
“Kidnapped?” That had not even occurred to me. “What do you mean kidnapped?”
My phone vibrates loudly on the coffee table before Jasper can explain whether he’s got some actual reason to consider kidnapping, or if he was just throwing that out there. Because now Cassie getting snatched off the street is all I can think about. As I reach for my phone, I feel like it might bite me.
Please, Wylie, I need your help, the text reads. I messed up big. I need u to come get me. I sent Jasper so he can drive. But the person I really need is you. More soon.
I take a shaky breath. At least she’s okay enough to text. That’s something. And “messed up big” does not sound like being kidnapped. And even after everything between us, I have to admit there is a tiny part of me that likes that Cassie feels like she needs me specifically.