Trevor shot her a grin, and Laney nudged Bex’s hip with hers. “Don’t worry. You can tell us all your deepest, darkest secrets when you’re ready.”
Bex made it through her next class without incident, and when the lunch bell rang, Chelsea and Laney were waiting by her locker. Bex found herself glancing around for Trevor and then gave herself a mental head slap. Not even through the first day, and she was already crushing on someone.
Bex’s cell phone chirped. She glanced down at the readout, the sounds of her new friends and her new school going weird and tinny when she saw the area code preceding the strange number: 919.
Raleigh.
In her mind, she heard the muffled sounds and clicks that preceded a collect call, the robotic voice that informed her that she was receiving a call from a speaker who held the phone too close and mumbled his name. She remembered the one and only time she had heard that robotic voice, the way she had frozen, her hand gripping the old-fashioned receiver her grandmother had on the kitchen phone. She had finally croaked out the words, “I accept the charges.”
Fifteen minutes seemed to lapse between the clicks and beeps, and then she heard what she thought was her father’s voice—gravelly, low, nearly unrecognizable. It sounded like the caller said her name but blood was pulsing in her ears, and she even though she strained, she couldn’t make out the man’s mumbles. He hung up and she stood in the kitchen, pressing the receiver to her ear and pretending that her daddy was talking to her, saying soothing things and that he’d be home soon. Instead, she let the dial tone drone in her ear until her gran hung up the phone.
“You okay, Bex?” Chelsea had her hand on Bex’s shoulder, and Bex forced herself to pump her head in a positive nod.
“Yeah, sorry. It was just a weird number on my phone. Probably nothing.”
Chelsea offered a warm smile and linked her arm through Bex’s. “Okay, now I will tell you absolutely everything you need to know about living in Kill Devil Hills. Do you have three and a half minutes?”
“No,” said the man who stepped into the hall in front of them. “She doesn’t.”
Bex’s mouth dropped open, her throat going bone dry. The man in front of her was smiling but it didn’t reach his flat, emotionless brown eyes.
“You’re Bex Andrews.”
Bex wasn’t sure if he was asking or telling, but she nodded anyway. “Uh-huh.”
“I’m sorry we haven’t met sooner. I’m Terrence Howard, your guidance counselor.” He offered a hand that Bex stared at before limply shaking. “Care to step in my office?” The way he spoke wasn’t unpleasant, but something about him set Bex on edge.
“I guess.”
“Hey, we’ll catch up with you later,” Chelsea said.
Bex followed Mr. Howard into his office, a small room with the same utilitarian furniture that she suspected populated every other public school administrator’s office in the world, and sat down in the visitor’s chair across from him. As he settled himself, she glanced around the room, noting the same cache of “You Can Do It!” posters that had lined the cinderblock walls at what passed as the schoolroom at the juvenile facility where she had been held.
Then she glanced at the newspaper on his desk. The body found in the Dumpster was the topic of the main headline, accompanied by a full-color picture of the cordoned-off crime scene and insets of anguished onlookers. Bex knew she should look away but found herself skimming the headline, the article, trying to glean new information.
“It’s horrible, isn’t it?”
Bex’s head snapped up. “Excuse me?”
Mr. Howard gestured toward the newspaper. “Terrible business. A young woman like that, taken in the prime of her life.”
Bex nodded stiffly. “Yeah.”
“Anyway, Bex.” Mr. Howard smiled again, this one easier, seemingly more genuine. “That’s an interesting name, Bex. It’s not short for anything?”
He held her eye for an uncomfortably long moment, and Bex shook her head. “No.”
She could see that her file was on the desk in front of him, the name Andrews, Bex typed in a twelve-point font.
“Well, I just wanted to make sure that you’re settling in well here at KDH. Are there any questions I can answer? Anything I can help you with?”
Before she could answer, Mr. Howard prattled on. “I understand from your file that you’ve been homeschooled up until this point. Are you having trouble adjusting? I know it can be hard. Everything is all new to you here, I’ll bet.”
“I’m okay.” She cleared her throat. “People seem to be nice so far.”
“It seems that way, doesn’t it?”
Bex had been set in front of enough psychologists in her life to know that Mr. Howard was mirroring her—using her own words and body language to theoretically make her feel more comfortable, but the way he said, “seems that way,” struck her as weird and all Bex wanted to do was get out of his office.