Bex couldn’t remember that, but her simmering anxiety was almost snuffed out.
BETHANNER: One of the other women—Amy Eickler, I think—we gave her a ride.
GAMECREATOR: I don’t remember that, but OK.
BETHANNER: She was murdered after.
GAMECREATOR: She was hitchhiking.
BETHANNER: Schuster could have picked her up.
GAMECREATOR: Yes.
Bex’s phone blared out Trevor’s favorite Death to Sea Monkeys song and she glanced down at it, seeing his grinning face on the home screen. She smiled to herself but sent the call to voice mail and grabbed her towel.
? ? ?
Chemistry was bad enough when she could concentrate, but on this day, it was excruciating. Bex had spent her day e-chatting with her father and her night tossing and turning, hearing him whisper to her, seeing him in the dark recesses of her mind. Was he right? Had Detective Schuster framed him? And if so, why? When she had asked her dad, he gave her this simple explanation:
Schuster is a psychopath. If he pinned the murders on me, then he’s also the hero who caught the big bad wolf. I go down and he moves up in his career, and really, he can keep doing what he’s doing. Killing them girls. He didn’t think anyone would ever figure him out. He’s like that. Narcissistic.
Narcissistic.
That’s what Schuster had called her father. That’s what “all psychopaths” were. But did her father know because he was one?
When morning came, Bex was cranky and jumpy at the breakfast table and in class, her mind constantly wandering, trying to figure out a way to help her father, trying to decide what to do about Detective Schuster. Turn him in? Set him up? Her father was stern—as stern as someone could be in writing—telling her to let him worry about Schuster. But Bex knew she had to help. She had helped incriminate her father away; now she could help to free him.
She told her dad that Schuster was in town, that he had been texting and calling her. Her father had called him a dangerous man and urged her to stay away. And in the last twenty-four hours, her phone had been mercifully silent, not a text or a call from the detective. It should have made Bex feel better, but instead she found herself studying everyone now, squinting at the barista who poured her coffee, sweeping her gaze at the team of gardeners huddled in front of the school. Now Bex wondered if Schuster was in every crowd, watching her, holding back, waiting.
Something hit her square in the lap and she glanced down, staring dumbly at the folded piece of notebook paper. Bex looked up and Trevor cocked an eyebrow, a hint of a smile on his lips. He jutted his chin toward the note and Bex looked up surreptitiously, watching Mr. Ponterra’s fat bottom jiggle while he wrote equations on the whiteboard, completely oblivious to the yawning class behind him. She snatched the note and smoothed it open on her lap.
Does this class make you want to die? Check yes/no.
There were boxes to check next to “yes” and “no.” Bex pulled out her pen, marking the “yes” box with a thick blue check and underlining it three times. She crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue at Trevor before folding the note and handing it back to him.
There was another beat, then another note in her lap.
What should we do about it?
Bex replied.
I don’t know. Stage a walkout??
He tossed the note back.
Or maybe…
She looked up when Trevor stood, waving an arm. “Mr. Ponterra?”
Bex could feel her heart flutter. Was Trevor actually going to stage a walkout?
Mr. Ponterra turned, eyebrows raised as if surprised to see an entire class behind him.
“Yes, Trevor?”
He paused, then opened his mouth at the exact moment the fire alarm started to wail from the loudspeaker.
Mr. Ponterra clapped his hands for the class’ attention. “Fire drill, fire drill, everyone! Now line up and—okay, orderly lines. Okay, okay…”
The class stood and interpreted “orderly lines” as “meandering cluster heading toward the door.” Bex grabbed Trevor’s arm.
“Did you do that?”
“Would you believe it was a lucky break?”
She hiked her backpack over her shoulder and narrowed her eyes. “No.”
“Okay, then let’s just say I have friends in low places.” He winked, his fingers sliding down her arm, then linking with hers. Bex squeezed his hand, enjoying the pinprick-like shivers. They followed their class into the hallway, carried along with the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. Bex tried to keep her focus on Trevor, on the way his thumb stroked the back of her hand, on the way their hips bumped as they walked but she still searched the crowd, examining every face for her father as the crowd wound out to the designated meeting spot on the back forty.
“Is there really a fire?” someone asked. “Oh my God, did something really happen?”