Bex might have worked to erase the memories but there they were—buried, not gone. She dialed the number on her phone and, with a shaking hand, held it to her ear.
Each ring made the knot in Bex’s stomach pull tighter. She didn’t realize she had been holding her breath until she heard the click of the phone, the gravelly voice of the man on the other end of the line.
“Beth Anne?”
Bex’s fingers were numb. The phone slide through them and fell like deadweight into the toilet. The Call in Progress icon kept dancing and she stared at it, transfixed, until the screen began to blacken. The man’s voice reverberated in her head.
Beth Anne.
No, she was Bex Andrews now. Beth Anne Reimer didn’t exist. Beth Anne Reimer had a father who was accused of killing six women before he took off. Beth Anne Reimer had disappeared right along with him. The man’s voice kept echoing in her head and she tried to focus on it. There was a slight accent. The man had pulled the end of her name up, just barely. He wasn’t sure it was her.
Was he her father? Would she recognize him if he was?
The school bell shocked Bex and she backed into the corner of the stall, suddenly terrified, suddenly certain that whether or not her father had been on the phone, he was at the school. She started to shake, started to plan her escape. She could dye her hair again or maybe shave it off. She could get a wig and glasses and a bus ticket and go—where? She had eleven dollars to her name. Eleven dollars that wouldn’t even buy her a ticket to get across town.
“It’s still weird not having her here, you know?”
“I feel bad for getting so mad at her.”
There was a clamor of chatter as the bathroom door opened and closed, but Bex could pick out Laney and Chelsea’s distinct voices. She should have been calmed but anxiety tightened in her chest.
“Bex!” Chelsea’s hand was on the stall door and Bex cursed herself for not locking it. “Are you okay? You look…not great.”
She wanted to tell them everything. She wanted to run away from Kill Devil High and never return. She wanted to be able to speak. Instead, she pointed to the toilet.
“Phone,” she offered in a croaked whisper.
Chelsea gave a cautious glance toward the toilet bowl, her face breaking into a grin. “Oh, that sucks.”
Laney came up behind her. “Ew, toilet phone. Double ew, public toilet phone!”
“At least the water looks clean. It’s clean, right?”
Bex nodded. “Yeah, I just… I was texting and…” She shrugged. “What should I do?”
“Put it in rice,” Laney said. “Like, a tub of uncooked rice. It draws out the moisture and… How long has it been in there? Like a second or like ten minutes?”
For the life of her, Bex couldn’t remember how much time had passed since she’d been in the office, since she’d received the note, since she’d heard the man’s voice.
“Does it matter?”
“Well, yeah. Had they gotten to the Titanic in the first five minutes, it would have been a bad day instead of an international tragedy.”
Chelsea shook her head, disgusted. “I think this one will be an international tragedy.”
Bex actually felt a small sense of lightness.
“Aren’t you going to get it out?” Laney wanted to know.
“Can’t I just flush it?”
“It’s a cell phone, not a goldfish. And it might still work. Or they could save the SIM card and at least get all your contacts back. But if it’s already synched to your computer, you’re totally fine.”
“No.” Bex shook her head. “Not synched.”
“I forgot you came from the Ozarks or whatever.”
“Raleigh is hardly the Ozarks.”
Chelsea shrugged. “Are you really going to let it sit there?”
Bex slowly pulled up her sleeve, eyeing the drowned phone. Finally, Laney shoved her out of the way, snatched the phone from the toilet bowl, and handed it to her.
“Ew!” Chelsea screamed, running out of the stall. Laney chased her, flicking toilet water in her direction while Chelsea continued to gross out.
“You should wash that,” Laney said.
Bex dumped the phone in the sink and turned on the tap, letting the water pour over it. She imagined the voice and the number with the Raleigh area code slipping down the drain. She’d start fresh again.
Fifteen
Without her phone, Bex felt insulated from the world, enclosed in her tiny circle of Kill Devil Hills—Laney, Chelsea, Trevor, Michael, and Denise. She liked it. But still her thoughts drifted to the man in the car and the man on the phone. At home, Bex looked up another number and dialed, gnawing on her lower lip as the phone rang and rang. Finally, a pickup.
“Dr. Gold’s office.”
Bex opened her mouth to ask for the doctor again, but nothing came out.
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