Kiran sighed, looking down at the Sunday Style section of the New York Times. "Ever notice how much more appealing the outside world looks when you can't go there?" "Kiran, Noelle is trying to apologize," Ariana scolded. She took a sip of her coffee and gazed over the cup at Kiran. "I didn't hear an 'I'm sorry' in there," Natasha pointed out. "She has her own way of apologizing," Ariana replied. "Excuse me! I don't need anyone speaking for me, Ariana. Thanks," Noelle snapped. Ariana lifted her eyebrows and went back to her breakfast. Over at the faculty table, Mrs. Naylor, the guidance director, greeted Ms. Lewis-Hanneman with a "Good morning." Ms. Lewis-Hanneman responded with a forced smile and nod, then went back to staring. She was so obviously desperate. I wondered if that was how I had looked when Thomas had gone missing.
But why didn't she try harder to cover it up? Wasn't her affair with Blake supposed to be a secret? I knew, God I knew, that it would be hard, but you'd think that she would at least try to act normal. Cheyenne walked over with her tray of fruit salad and oatmeal and sat down at the far end of the next table, as always. Rose, London, and Vienna settled in around her. Apparently the Twin Cities had decided to defect back to their old locale. Noelle glared at them through narrowed eyes. "Who the hell does Cheyenne think she is, anyway?" she said. "Her mother lives in Jersey, for God's sake. She's lucky she even got into Billings."
"We're all lucky we got into Billings," Ariana said lightly. "What is with you today? You sound like my mother," Noelle said. "Even more so than usual." Ariana simply lifted her shoulders and stifled a smile. She did seem oddly chipper."I don't know why you're all so mad at me anyway," Noelle continued. "I was just trying to help everyone have a little fun. Kiran set the whole thing up as much as I did. And you guys were all for it yesterday." "Uh, we weren't," Natasha pointed out, lifting her fork. "Thanks for the update, Ann Curry. It's duly noted," Noelle snapped. She tore another chunk off her bagel and popped it in her mouth. "Well, at least I know Reed's not mad at me." I yanked my gaze away from Ms. Lewis-Hanneman and looked at Noelle. "Ah! So you are in there," she said.
"I'm not mad at you?" I asked. Even though I wasn't, not really. I couldn't have cared less about groundings and thwarted outings just then. But I was curious as to why she thought so. "Why would you be? You wanted to sit on your ass and do nothing, right?" Noelle said, her eyes sparkling. "Well, now you've got your wish!" Just then the cafeteria door opened and Dash barreled in with Walt Whittaker at his heels. It had just started to snow when we arrived at the cafeteria, but now it must have been coming down. Their hair and shoulders were covered with snow, which Dash quickly brushed away, even as he made a beeline for our table. Walt, however, seemed content to let it melt and wet his hair. "Did you hear?" Dash asked Noelle. "Hear what?" She leaned away from him, annoyed, as he pulled his scarf free and showered her with snow. Dash didn't notice. He was too busy looking at me. "Blake Pearson," Dash said. "He disappeared." I told him with my eyes that I already knew. Wished he could tell me with his what he was thinking. But his glance in my direction was fleeting. Good move, probably, if he didn't want his super- perceptive girlfriend asking questions. "What? When?" Kiran asked.
Across the room, Ms. Lewis-Hanneman got up and grabbed her coat. I shoved my chair away from the table and quickly gathered my things as well. "Ms. Brennan! Where do you think you're going?" Mrs. Lattimer demanded. She was sitting at a nearby table today in order to keep an eye on us. "To the library, Mrs. Lattimer," I said as Ms. Lewis-Hanneman shoved through the far door. "I'm not hungry." "Ms. Brennan!" Lattimer called after me. Utterly pointless. I had to talk to Ms. Lewis-Hanneman. If Lattimer wanted to stop me, she'd have to send Scat after me.
THE TRUTH
Outside, the campus was blanketed in white. The gray sky swirled with snow, dusting the benches and pathways and giving everything that peaceful, silent glow. It was like a photo out of the Easton catalog. Exactly the kind of picturesque scene that had made me salivate to attend this school. How could I have ever known how little opportunity I would have to appreciate such things? Instead of strolling through the grounds with my new friends, laughing on my way to some intriguing class to broaden my mind, I was chasing down the secret girlfriend of my dead boyfriend's jerk brother. Put that in the catalog, Easton.
I shook my head and focused. There were more important things to do right now than dwell. Up ahead, Ms. Lewis-Hanneman speed-walked toward Hell Hall, her shoulders hunched, her hands tucked under her arms. "Ms. Lewis-Hanneman!" I called out. She hesitated for a split second, then kept right on walking. "Wait up! Please?" She ignored me. Nice try. I could run the forty in 5.75. I was by her side before she even made it to the steps. "What do you want?" she asked. Her bare hand grasped the iron banister at the side of the stairs as she jogged up toward the door. Her fingers must have been like icicles. There were fresh tears on her face.
"I just wanted to see if you were okay," I said. "Thank you for your concern, Miss Brennan, but I'm fine," she said flatly. She yanked open the door to Hell Hall and I followed her into the lobby. The place was dark, quiet. Not much going on in these offices on a Sunday morning. "Will you please stop following me?" Her voice was thick. She paused by the stairs to wipe under her eyes and bent slightly at the waist. I wanted to say something. Something to make her feel better. But I couldn't think of a word. "God, this is ridiculous. I can't stop crying," she said to the ceiling, not to me. "It's okay." "No. It's not. I don't cry in front of people," she said. "Especially not you." She shot me a glare and I realized how young she was. Maybe not high school young, but younger than most of the other adults around here. And she could have been a Billings Girl with that glare.
"What's so bad about me?" I asked automatically. "Do I really have to remind you that the last time we spoke you were trying to blackmail me?" she asked sarcastically. "You don't seriously think you're going to, what, comfort me now?" She crossed over to a bench near the wall and dropped down. Tears streamed silently down her face as she tipped her head back and breathed deliberately through her nose, trying to regain control. Her fists clenched and unclenched as she breathed, but still the tears came. "I'm sorry. I forgot," I said. "I didn't know this was going to happen and I. . . was desperate."
"Whatever." She sniffled and wiped under her eyes again. "So . . . you don't have any idea where he is?" I asked. "I'm not talking to you about this," she protested. "Why not? You have to talk to someone," I said. "And I know exactly how you feel." She scoffed. "Please." I felt a white-hot surge of anger. How could she talk to me like that? Me of all people? "My boyfriend disappeared, too, remember?" If possible, her face paled even further. I could only imagine she had no idea what to say. "I. . . that's right, I--" "Forgot," I said. "I get it. Just don't talk to me like I don't know what's going on." She stared at me for a long moment. I could see her reassessing me. Maybe respecting me. "I just don't understand this," she said finally, shaking her head as fresh tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes. "Why is all this happening?" I've asked myself that one ten billion times, lady.
"What do you think happened to him?" I asked. "I have no idea," she replied, pressing her fingertips into her forehead and closing her eyes. "I've tried everything. His e-mails, all the numbers he's ever given me. It's all voice mail." I took a deep breath. I knew I had to tell her. She had to know what I knew. Maybe it would help us figure this out. Maybe there was an answer in there somewhere. But I had a feeling it was not going to be pretty. "I. . . um ... I talked to him. To Blake," I said. Her head snapped up. "You did? When? Where--?" "It was before he went missing," I clarified. She was on her feet again, practically trembling. "What did you say to him?" she asked, her eyes rimmed with red. She grasped the underside of my sleeves and held on. "Did you tell him the same thing you told me? Did you tell him you knew he was here that night?" "Yeah, I did," I replied.
"Oh God." She buckled forward, like someone had kneed her in the gut, and sat down again. Her head hung between her knees and she rocked forward and back. "Oh God, oh God, oh Go
d." My throat was dry as sand. "What? What is it?" She just kept shaking her head. "Okay, you're scaring me," I said. "What is it?" She looked up at me, pressing her hands into her thighs. The tears flowed freely as she continued to rock. I wondered if this was what a psychotic break looked like. "I swear I have no idea where he is." "I've got that. What's the matter?" I asked. "It's just. . . that night..."
My heart flipped up into my mouth as my knees lost all strength. I found myself, just like that, kneeling on the floor in front of her. My brain was so fogged through, I could barely see straight. "What about that night?" I asked. "Ms. . . . Cara. What really happened that night?" She took a deep breath through her nose, which was obviously clogged, and then it all came out with the air. "Josh walked in on us in the art cemetery. Blake got angry, of course. It was late. He thought we were safe. So he shouted at Josh. Asked him what the hell he was doing there so late. So Josh told him the truth. He said, "Your stupid brother's on another one of his benders, so I had to come here to study.' He said it with a laugh, poor kid. Like he was making some joke we were all in on. But Blake, he . . . he--"
"He didn't think it was funny," I stated. "No." She sniffed. "He basically lost it. He just shouted this stream of curses about Thomas and stormed out. He was so angry...." Oh my God. This was not happening. "Where did he go?" I asked. "I don't know," she whimpered, tears filling her eyes. "I stayed there and did some work for the Boosters' dinner, just hoping he'd come back. Josh stayed, too. I think he was worried about me being there alone. ..." That sounded like Josh. Ever the gentleman. Caring about everyone else. And now, because he'd cared about the wrong people that night, he was in jail. "We left together a couple of hours later. Blake never came back," Ms. Lewis-Hanneman said, a tear spilling over. I could feel her just aching to confess. "The truth is . . . the truth is . . ."
"What?" I asked, trying to keep my voice from sounding strained. "What's the truth?" She took a deep breath. Looked down at her hands. "The truth is, I have no idea where Blake was that night." I sat back, my butt hitting the cold marble floor. Before me, Ms. Lewis-Hanneman quietly wept into her hands. All the pieces started to fall together in my mind. How angry Blake was at Thomas. How that anger had been festering all his life. How Josh's statement had clearly broken something inside of him. How he'd gone off in a rage. How there was no accounting for where he'd gone. Blake had serious motive. And now, I knew, Blake had real opportunity. Josh had an alibi. A real, solid, alibi. Blake had none. And now that he knew there were people who were aware he'd been on campus that night, he had disappeared. No one had taken him. He had fled. That much was now perfectly clear to me. These were not the actions of an innocent guy. He knew he was close to being caught and he'd gone on the run.
Blake had killed Thomas. Blake Pearson had murdered his own brother. And he'd been right in front of me just two days ago. He'd talked to me like I was sludge. I had let him go. "You have to go to the police," I said quietly. "You have to." "My life will be over," she said through her tears. "No. No. I know one of the detectives," I told her. "He's a really good guy. Maybe you can talk to him, make some kind of deal to . . . I don't know.. . keep your name a secret or something. There must be some way to work it out."
She lifted her head. Her face was soaked, her eyes blurry and red. "But what if there's not? Without Blake, without my husband, without my job . . . I'll have nothing." I got back to my knees and slid forward. I placed my hand on hers, just as Constance had so often done for me. "I'm not saying he's guilty, Cara," I said. It was difficult, but I said it. "He may not be. There may be a perfectly good explanation for all of this. But we'll never find out unless you do the right thing." She nodded and sniffled again, looking down. "It's all gonna be okay," I told her, wishing I actually felt it. "I'm sorry about Josh," she said to her hands. "He really is a good kid." "You're the only one who can help him," I said. "I know." She cleared her throat and took a deep breath. Then again, more firmly this time, "I know."
Thirty-four hours. That was how much time had passed since Cara Lewis-Hanneman had promised me she would go to the police. Thirty-four hours of waiting for the call. Of praying to hear Josh's voice again. Of aching with every inch of my body to tell someone what I knew. To clear his name. But I didn't want to jinx it. More than anything, I wanted to see Josh again. And for some reason I felt that if I so much as uttered his name, Ms. Lewis-Hanneman would chicken out. She would vanish as well, and Josh's life would be over. "Reed, will you please stop before you give me a seizure?" Noelle snapped, glaring down at my pencil. I stopped tapping it against the library table, which I hadn't even known I was doing. "Sorry," I said automatically. She blew out a huge sigh and lifted her thick brown hair over her shoulder. "Are you going to do some work, or can you only do that with Dash's help these days?"
I stared at her. "He helped me with one thing," I said. "One project." "And how did it turn out?" she asked. I thought of Josh. Wondered if he was still in a cell somewhere or if he'd been freed. If maybe he was hugging his mom and dad right now, just waiting for the chance to call me. I glanced at my silent phone on the table next to me. "Well, I think," I replied. "I guess I'll just have to wait and see." The front door of the library slammed and everyone jumped. Within seconds, Walt Whittaker had rocketed into view at the end of the stacks that surrounded us, his skin ruddy from the cold and his breath short with exertion. My heart stopped beating entirely. I gripped my pencil with both hands. Mrs. Lattimer stood up and Whit leaned down to whisper something to her. Her face registered shock, then reset into its grim lines. She nodded. Whit turned to go.
Look at me, Whit! Look at me! Tell me what's going on! But he didn't. He didn't so much as smile, wink, or frown in my direction. The big-boned bastard. "All right, ladies," Mrs. Lattimer said. "It seems that the dean has called yet another emergency assembly." A sizzle of intense curiosity and dread buzzed through our cozy group. "What's going on?" someone whispered. "God, not again," someone else moaned. Noelle stood and gathered her things, as if this happened every day. Ariana slid her arms into her coat jacket and calmly picked up her books. I tried to hide my hopeful smile. After all, this could be anything. It wasn't necessarily what I wanted to be. Until I saw Josh with my own eyes, I was not going to allow myself to celebrate. I felt Ariana's eyes on me and composed my mouth in a straight line. I could see, however, that she'd caught me. That she'd noted my almost-glee. She leveled me with one of her patented stares.
"What the hell is happening now?" Kiran asked the others. "Good question," Ariana replied, never taking her eyes off me. "Let's go find out."
GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS
I hadn't been this excited to be inside the chapel since my first day at Easton. "What's going on?" Constance asked me as we slid down toward the center aisle in our pews. Josh has been cleared. He didn't do it. I told everyone he didn't do it and now, finally, everything is right again. That was what I wanted to say, but instead I bit the inside of my cheek. I could not jinx this. Would not, for anything. If I said one word, Dean Marcus would walk out and tell us we were getting a new science lab, and I was not going to survive. "I have no idea," I told her. "You don't think there's been another murder, do you?" Diana Waters asked, pale as her crisp white shirt. "I'm starting to feel like we go to Hogwarts," Lorna Gross grumbled. "Oh, grow up, Lorna," Missy Thurber snapped. "You need new references." I forced myself to face forward and clutched the low armrest at the end of the pew. In ten minutes this would be over. In ten minutes we'd all know what this was all about.
The back door of the chapel finally closed and all the murmuring in the room came to an abrupt stop. Constance pulled her coat closer around her body and I wondered if it was chilly in the chapel. I felt as if my bones were portable heating rods, emanating warmth from the inside out. Dean Marcus stepped up to the podium. For once there were no candles lit in the room, so the only light came from the weak fluorescents set high in the pointed ceiling. The effect on the dean was freakish. He looked like a corpse just risen from his g
rave. If I had been one to believe in omens, this would not have been a good one. Oh God. He looked grim. This was an omen. He wasn't going to tell us Josh had been freed. He was going to tell us something awful.
And then, the door at the back of the stage area opened and Josh walked out behind the dean. My heart exploded. Seeing him was like every good thing that had ever happened to me happening again, all at once. Buying my first bike, scoring the winning goal against Lakeland last year, winning counties in lacrosse, getting into Easton. They all paled in comparison to this moment. I knew right then that I had never loved Thomas. There was no way I could have. Because nothing I had ever felt in his presence even approached what I felt at that moment. I loved Josh. I loved Josh Hollis. As everyone else in the chapel started talking again, gasping, questioning, hypothesizing, I imagined myself running down the aisle and throwing myself into his arms. I stared at Josh until he found me and smiled. For the first time in days, I felt free. Everything was okay. Everything was going to be fine. Then two people walked out behind him. Two people who could only be his parents. His father, tall, with the same blond curls, but tamed and slicked to his temples. His mother, tall as well, but darker. Exotic-looking. Not at all what I would have imagined his mother to look like. They all sat in the front bench, once intended for the chapel choir. Josh's mother took his hand and clasped it. I turned around and looked at Noelle and Ariana. Their shock made me smile even wider. But the longer I looked at them, the more I realized they weren't happy-shocked. They both looked as if they had swallowed something sour.