B00B9FX0F2 EBOK Page 17

  He let the news sink in. “So you’re saying Jenna killed Lacey?” Jason was so grateful for the skepticism in Rakesh’s voice he could have hugged him. It was like Lacey all over again. There had to be some other explanation.

  “Sorry, can we go back a second?” Troy’s face was twisted up, like he was remembering something. “Can I see the messages you got from ‘Lacey’?”

  The air quotations he made with his fingers caused Jason to wince, but all the same he went to his room to retrieve his laptop. When he got back downstairs, Rakesh was standing in the hallway whispering into his phone. “No, tell them not to come…. Because …” He turned and saw Jason. “I’ll call you back. Don’t come here.”

  “What was that?”

  “Um, nothing.”

  Jason set down his computer in the living room and logged in to Facebook. “Rakesh, why are you being shady?”

  “I’m not being shady.”

  “Rock.”

  “Fine, I kind of sort of may have invited some people over. But it was before I knew what was going on. Don’t worry, I’ve rescinded all of the invitations.”

  “What’s wrong with you? I told you I wasn’t having a party tonight.”

  “It seemed kind of like you wanted me to invite people anyway.”

  “It didn’t seem like that at all!”

  “We can just chalk it up to a failure to communicate.”

  “I could seriously kill you.”

  “Look, you have to admit, this is sort of your fault.”

  “My fault? Are you kidding?”

  “If you’d just answered your text messages, we could have avoided the confusion.”

  Before Jason could sputter a reply, Troy cut in. “I hate to interrupt you two crazy kids, but can we get back to business?” He gestured to the computer. Still fuming, Jason logged in to Facebook and opened his messages. And then he blinked. And blinked again. This couldn’t be happening.

  Rakesh peered over his shoulder. “Wait.” He drew out the word as the reality of what Jason had already recognized dawned on him. “Oh my god, all the Lacey messages are gone.”

  Frantically, Jason typed her name into the search bar. The memorial page came up, but her profile was nowhere to be found. He put his forehead to the coffee table. “Jenna,” he breathed. “She must have deleted them and then deleted the profile.”

  “Oh, there’s something I forgot to mention,” Rakesh said nervously. Jason lifted his head to glower at him, but didn’t say a word. “It’s possible that I invited her to your party tonight.”

  “This is a joke. You’re playing a joke on me. That’s what’s happening, right? You’re messing with me?” He’d started to laugh, but it sounded raw, almost animal, the type of thing you heard from crazy people on public buses, and Rakesh was slowly backing away.

  “It was before I knew she had a Single White Female thing going and might have murdered her best friend. If it helps, I really thought you guys might have something together.”

  “It doesn’t help. Why would that help?”

  Troy was not amused, either. “Can you guys focus? Please? When I’m the person telling you not to act like children, you have a problem.”

  “But …” Rakesh started.

  Jason cut him off with dagger eyes. “Troy’s right. We need a plan. Starting with you need to keep Jenna from coming here. How did you even invite her in the first place?”

  “I friended her.”

  “Of course you did.” Jason was practically shaking with rage.

  Rakesh took out his phone. “I didn’t give her your address. But …” He looked up nervously. Jason waited. “She said she already had it.”

  “Don’t answer!” Jason remembered the way she’d looked in his rearview mirror when she was chasing him. Desperate. Her showing up at his house was the last thing he needed.

  “I wasn’t going to. As if I need your help blowing someone off. Jesus, these messages. She really wants you to call her. You’re not gonna be able to avoid her forever.”

  Before they could descend further into an argument, Troy interrupted. “He only needs to avoid her until we figure out what to do. Jason, do you have any record of the messages she sent you as Lacey?”

  Jason tried to remember, but came up short. He shook his head. “I thought we were all on the same side.”

  “Well, except for you,” Rakesh added pointedly to Troy. “And Luke. Who’s the worst.”

  “Dude, are you really gonna talk to me like that after what just happened in the kitchen?”

  “Troy, I know he’s your friend, but Rock has a point about Luke. I think he’s involved in this somehow.”

  “Oh, that’s just perfect coming from you. First of all, your batting average when it comes to getting suspicious is a little spotty. Exhibit A.” Troy pointed to himself. “And second of all, it’s obvious you just don’t want to consider the possibility that your girlfriend may have done this.” It was like he hadn’t sat in front of Jason weeping just an hour ago; when it came to his teammates, Troy was pure alpha male.

  Jason stood and turned toward him. “For the last freaking time, Jenna is not my girlfriend. But while we’re on the subject of willful blindness, let’s talk about Luke. You said yourself he’d have gone ballistic if he knew about you and Lacey, but he did know about you and Lacey. I found the video in his car. We know he’s violent because, um, hello? My face. And I’m sorry, but I’m just not buying that the way he looked out for his sister was normal. I saw the way he nearly ripped Max’s head off for just talking to her this summer, and it was way beyond bros being bros.”

  His fight with Jenna this morning, his injuries, the way his world kept turning upside down like a snow globe — these things should have left him spent. Instead, they were having the opposite effect, transforming Jason into a commanding presence who had no problem standing up to a guy practically twice his size. Troy clearly wasn’t used to it, either — he was stunned into silence. Just before Jason lost his momentum, his eyes widened. “The video.” He sprinted back up the stairs, returning breathless. “I got it from Luke’s car. They can’t destroy the hard copy.” Troy and Rakesh gathered behind him, and he plugged the drive into his computer.

  He waited until Troy had seen the whole thing before opening his mouth. Instead of drawing attention to Luke’s unbridled aggression, which he sensed was a losing game, he brought up the cameraman. “The guy who shot this, Sully. What’s his real name again?”

  “John Sullivan.”

  “Yeah, him. Is he a friend of yours?”

  “He’s on the team, so yeah.”

  Behind Troy’s back, Rakesh rolled his eyes.

  “So then he must be a friend of Luke’s, too.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “How’d Luke get this?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe sweet innocent Jenna stole it from him and planted it on him.”

  Jason resisted the urge to defend her. There was no point. “What would Sully have done after he shot this? No offense, but I feel like a guy who secretly records his ‘friend’ fighting with their girlfriend isn’t all that likely to keep someone else’s secrets out of the goodness of his heart. Who does he like better, you or Luke?”

  “Luke,” Troy admitted reluctantly. Before he could say more, the doorbell rang.

  “Oh goodie,” Jason said sarcastically to Rakesh, “the party’s starting.”

  When Jason opened the door, Gabe Wyffels was standing there, his goofy grin plastered across his face. “Hey, man,” Gabe said, peeking into the hallway behind Jason. “Am I early?”

  Jason realized he had no idea what time it was or where the day had gone. Darkness had settled around his house, and the temperature had dropped. The cool air felt good on his bare arms, and for a moment he imagined slipping outside into the night, blasting Titus Andronicus from the Subaru, and driving somewhere far, far away. Rakesh sidled up behind him. “Gabe, buddy, good to see you. Listen …” He slung his arm around Gabe
’s shoulders and began guiding him back to his car. Jason tuned out the murmured excuses and padded into his yard for some fresh air.

  He took his phone out of his pocket and turned it back on to check the time. How had he gotten himself into this mess? Lacey was supposed to make his quiet little world better, not flip it on its head and toss a grenade into the middle of it. The first girl he’d ever truly cared about turned out to be a hoax propagated by his first female friend. His best friend was unplanning the party of the century — to which he hadn’t even really been invited — while a rival school’s golden boy waited in his living room for his directions. The old Jason, the one who was invisible to girls, happy to spend his Saturday afternoons seeking out new music, whose problems consisted of boredom, that guy had no idea how good he had it. Gabe Wyffels’s taillights disappeared down the block, and Rakesh returned to Jason’s side.

  “I’m sorry about tonight,” he said quietly. “Are you all right?”

  The contrition in his tone stirred up all of Jason’s exhausted hopelessness. His eyes stung, and a lump formed in his throat. It seemed foolish now that he knew his Lacey was a hoax, but grief for losing her was coursing through him. Before the emotion could bubble over, Troy-style, the phone in his hand came to life. There were a dozen new text messages and half as many voice mails. Facebook, texting, looking up something online in an instant. These things had always been so comforting to him, but for the first time he understood why his mom found technology so frustrating. You couldn’t pause for a minute to take a breath, or slow anything down. Even when you tried to shut the world out, you couldn’t escape the fact that it was carrying on around you. Something Jenna said the first time they met popped into his head. Lacey’s gone, and Facebook keeps happening. Thinking about it now, he shuddered.

  He scrolled through the texts Rakesh had sent.

  2:45 Imma invite some people to your house. I’ll keep it small.

  3:22 Maybe not that small.

  3:24 15-150 people

  3:29 8 pm good?

  3:57 Pinata good idea or best idea?

  4:17 Taking your silence as a yes.

  4:38 Ok, now I’m worried. Are you ok?

  Rakesh grinned sheepishly, and even Jason cracked a smile at the piñata line.

  There was one from his mother, reminding him to water her plants, and signed, like all of her texts, “Love, Mom.” And then there were four from Jenna.

  2:37 J, I can explain, please just pick up the phone

  2:50 PLEASE call me I need to talk to you

  3:05 I’m so sorry, we needed your help. There was no other way.

  4:58 K now I am stalking you, but DON’T DELETE my vm. Listen & call me back.

  All but one of the voice messages were from Jenna. Jason sighed.

  “Are you going to call her back?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I have to listen to the messages first. But not until I get some food.” Hunger gnawed away at him. He’d eaten a banana in the kitchen with Troy, but before that he’d left the contents of his stomach by the side of the road. The Tylenol he’d taken that morning had worn off hours ago. He felt a little like a walking corpse, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to rest until he understood why Jenna had done this to him. So maybe Lacey was nothing more than a fantasy. That didn’t mean he couldn’t help her. It was what any nice guy would do.

  There was an argument when it emerged that Troy wanted to go see Sully alone. “You didn’t even know Lacey,” he said, “and Sully will freak if a stranger shows up asking questions about one of his videos. Let me handle this.”

  Jason told Troy he wouldn’t even know about the video if it weren’t for him, and besides, he had a right to know why Jenna was manipulating him. Troy scoffed at this line of reasoning, and then Jason bluffed. “You think Sully’s the only one with a camera phone? Jenna said following you was worthless unless we got proof.” He removed his phone from his pocket and held it under Troy’s nose. “Unless you want the entire Internet to see you crying like a child, Rakesh and I are coming along.”

  Troy begrudgingly agreed after that, and Jason made a note to try blackmail again sometime.

  And then they were in Troy’s car, barreling toward Brighton at fifteen miles above the speed limit. They picked up a pizza on the way, the hot cheese burning the roof of Jason’s mouth as he tore into it. Food kept the dizziness at bay, and filling his stomach provided a second wind.

  “Who’s we?” he shouted over the B.o.B blasting from Troy’s speakers.

  “What?” Troy answered.

  “We. Jenna said ‘we needed your help’ in her text message. Who is she talking about?”

  “I thought we agreed homegirl is crazy,” Rakesh said from the backseat. “She probably means Lacey. Or maybe she’s referring to an imaginary friend.”

  Jason chewed, hesitant to voice his theory lest Troy throw him out of the car. But it was coming together in his mind. Luke and Jenna made the perfect team. They knew everything there was to know about Lacey. They had access to her history, her photographs, even what she was wearing when her body was found. Luke had known about Lacey and Troy, so he’d murdered Lacey and framed her boyfriend to get revenge. Jenna was jealous that her best friend was secretly dating the guy she’d been after since they were in middle school.

  But Jason kept running up against the fact that Jenna didn’t seem capable of violence. That wasn’t misguided affection for her talking; he sensed deep in his gut there was something they were all missing. Jason was convinced that piece would explain his involvement, because so far nothing else had even come close to helping him understand what Jenna and Luke wanted with him.

  Jenna’s messages kept creeping back into his head. I’m so sorry, we needed your help. There was no other way. No other way to what? His impulse to call her and hear her out may have been crazy, but it wasn’t going away.

  “What did Sully say?” Jason asked, reaching into the backseat for another slice. “When you asked him about the video.”

  “I told him I knew about the footage from the summer and I wanted to see it all. He texted me back and said I should come over.”

  “Did he say ‘come over,’ like, ‘we’re friends, and I’ll show you anything you want to see,’ or was it, ‘come over,’ like, ‘come over so I can tell you to your face why I’m not gonna give you the video?’”

  “It was ‘come over’ like it was a text message. Look, when we get there, you have to relax with this Sherlock Holmes business. And unless you want to get beat up again, you better not say anything to him about Luke — Sully’s small, but he’s vicious.”

  The food and darkness lulled Jason into a disoriented daze, and he couldn’t have said whether it was minutes or hours that passed before they arrived in Brighton. Climbing out of the car, he couldn’t believe it had only been this morning that he’d sprinted out of Jenna’s room; only two nights ago that he’d bonded with Jenna as they watched Troy. Like so many other things in Jason’s life, time had twisted into an unfamiliar force with questionable intentions.

  Sully’s house was larger than Jenna’s, almost palatial. The three boys marched past a black BMW parked in the driveway and then the silver Lexus hidden behind it. John Sullivan. It was the sort of name that should have a number after it, and Jason guessed he probably did. When they reached a door in the back, Troy opened it without knocking and then turned to Jason and Rakesh and held a finger to his lips. They followed him up two dark staircases, Jason clutching the banister to guide him. When they reached the brightly lit third floor, a stocky guy in sweatpants and a Giants T-shirt looked up from the enormous TV he was sprawled in front of.

  “Who are they?” he asked, nodding in Jason’s direction. His voice was instantly recognizable from the video.

  “Jason, Rakesh, this is Sully.”

  Sully lumbered to his feet and surveyed them. Jason tried to picture how he must look through someone else’s eyes: His hair, he was sure, was sticking out in a million directions, a
nd his bruised face couldn’t be helping with his credibility. Next to him, Rakesh, slender, striking, held his shoulders back and stared Sully down defiantly. Sully didn’t flinch.

  “What can I do for you, Troy?” he drawled, eyes lingering on Rock.

  “Where’s the video?”

  “Now, what video could you be talking about?”

  “Sully, I swear, don’t mess with me. I saw the video you made from that night at Luke’s. I want to know what you did with it.”

  “Oh, you mean the video where you humiliate Luke’s sister in front of all of his friends? That one?”

  “I never humilia …” Sully’s face lit up with glee at the response, and Troy composed himself, shoving his hands into his pockets. It reminded Jason of the person he’d seen in Sully’s home movie — all controlled fury, none of the weepiness Troy had displayed so unabashedly. It was like with Jenna: You think you see someone, and then the light shifts, and they have a whole new face. “What’d you do with it?”

  “How about you explain something to me first? Did you really think no one was gonna find out? That using that Max kid was going to work as an excuse forever? Please. You think you and Lacey were being so stealthy, but everyone knew.”

  “What do you care?”

  “That’s my team, man! Gray was going to find out, and he was going to kill you, and it was going to kill our season.”

  Typical, Jason thought. A girl is dead, I’m being stalked by a psycho, and he’s talking about lacrosse. Glad we’ve all got our priorities straight. But Troy was unfazed. “What’d you do with it?” he asked again.

  “I should be asking you the same question.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t have the video, Troy. I haven’t had it since I lost my phone. So do you want to tell me how you somehow managed to watch it? Let me guess, it has something to do with these clowns.” He sneered at Rakesh, but it was Jason who answered him.

  “When’d you lose your phone?”

  Sully took a step toward him. “September.”