B00B9FX0F2 EBOK Read online

  — Jason

  PS: Were you following me at the bridge last night? Or am I just insane? Not sure I want to know the answer to that one….

  Before he could lose his courage, he pasted the message into Facebook and pressed send. He felt a rush of relief that was just as quickly replaced by anxiety. What if there was a simple, reasonable explanation for her obituary? She would think he was bonkers. Jason’s deepest fear was that the message would scare her away for good. He couldn’t bear the thought of never talking to her again.

  He made it all of five minutes without checking to see if she had responded. She hadn’t. He tried to read Hamlet, but his eyes kept wandering up to his computer screen. Sensing he wasn’t going to get anything done, he shut his laptop and padded downstairs. His mom was sitting in the den reading a magazine. He plopped down next to her.

  “Hi, cupcake,” she said, looking up at him. “Whatchya doin’?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’ve barely seen you this weekend — are you doing okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Is this going to be one of those conversations where all you give me are one-word answers?”

  “No.”

  “But you see my point, right?”

  “Mom.”

  “Because I’m happy to go back to reading my magazine.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Oh, you do one word questions, too?”

  “Mom!”

  The worst part was that arguing with his mother was still preferable to checking for Lacey’s reply. He took a deep breath. “Do you need any help with dinner?”

  She eyed him suspiciously. “I know what they say about looking gift horses in the mouth, but are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “Well you can set the table. And if you want to eat a salad, you can make one.”

  He didn’t especially want a salad, but chopping cucumbers was something to do. As he worked, he pictured his MacBook morphing into a cartoon mouth, the screen flapping toward the base as it laughed at him, the keys sprouting into jagged rows of teeth.

  “You have one new message,” it threatened.

  An almost-girlfriend everyone thought was dead, dreams about typewriters and quills, shadowy figures in the dark, sketchy text messages from anonymous phone numbers, and now a laptop that could play the villain in a Pixar movie.

  Jason wasn’t sure how much longer he could live with the sense of creeping dread, with uncertainty about everything, but at least those things had displaced boredom, and Jason didn’t much miss his old companion.

  It turned out he had to live with the uncertainty for about fifteen hours. He checked Facebook before bed and as soon as he woke up in the morning, but there was not a word from Lacey. And then after chemistry on Monday morning, Jason used his lunch period to duck into the computer lab. There were fifteen Macs there, but three were out of service and four were so old everyone joked they still had dial-up. One of the new ones was free, and Jason plopped down in front of it, greeting Ben Rosenfeld as he settled in.

  “Mrs. Kimball’s project?” he asked, pointing to the sepia image of Abraham Lincoln he saw on Ben’s screen.

  “Yeah,” Ben said, a bit dolefully. “She gave me a B on the last paper even though I pulled an all-nighter to finish it. I need to ace this one.”

  Jason nodded sympathetically. He’d gotten an A- and been thrilled, but he knew better than to say anything about it. “She’s such a tough grader. I feel like Cynthia’s the only person who she consistently gives As to, and that’s only because she likes her so much.”

  “Right? It’s so unfair. Are you doing stuff for Kimball’s class, too?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Jason said, eyeing Mr. Hughes, the school’s graying technology director. He sat at the entrance to the lab, policing kids who brought open water bottles in and quieting them down when they got too rowdy. He also made sure students only used the computers for official school business. Hughes was tall and skinny. Jason had never seen him wear anything other than khakis, a button-down, and a rumpled tie, and he rarely smiled. Jason navigated to one of Lee’s letters, but when he was sure Hughes was fully absorbed in the fantasy scores Jason had seen him checking when he first walked in, he opened a new tab and called up Facebook.

  Since freshman year, Facebook and Twitter and any other sites they might actually want to visit had been banned, but it was easy to get around the blocks the school had set up. Jason had been one of the first kids to figure out the trick for getting onto Facebook. When he logged in to his account, there was one new message.

  There was no greeting, no playful “what up, dawg?” She was serious.

  You weren’t supposed to find out this way. I don’t want you to get hurt, but now that you’ve seen what you’ve seen, I need your help. I didn’t disappear because I wanted to. Someone made me, and they will destroy you if they know we’re talking.

  I know you met Jenna yesterday. I know you didn’t tell her anything about me, but I think she can help us. You have to find out if she’s my real friend; if we can trust her.

  Jason, I’m sorry I lied to you. But you have to know that what’s between us is real — the realest thing I have right now — and as complicated as everything else is, you can’t doubt that.

  “Hey, Jason.” Ben’s whisper startled him. Expertly, he toggled back to the history page he’d opened, but Ben shrugged as if to say, “I don’t care.”

  “Do you know how many pages our report is supposed to be?”

  “I think eight to ten?”

  “Thanks. I wish she wasn’t so strict about the fonts.” Before Jason could reply, they were shushed by Hughes. Jason turned back to his computer, sneaking glances over his shoulder until he was sure Hughes was no longer paying attention.

  He reopened Lacey’s message and tried to parse it sentence by sentence. She was trying to protect him, but he still didn’t understand from what or what was so dangerous. His cheeks burned with shame as he remembered the utter sadness in her father’s voice; he wondered if she knew about that, too. He hoped not. And despite all his confusion, his heart swelled as he reread the last lines. What’s between us is real — the realest thing I have right now. His stomach flipped a little, the way it did before things had gotten so messy, when a message from Lacey was a treat in itself.

  He read it again. She didn’t say anything about the bridge. What if Lacey hadn’t sent the text message he’d gotten on Saturday? Before you start digging around, remember I’ve got more experience hiding in the dark than you. There was something menacing about it, something that didn’t sound like Lacey. They will destroy you if they know we’re talking. Jason felt sick to his stomach. Worrying about Lacey was bad enough, and now there was some mystery third party he had to steer clear of. Who had done this to her? And what exactly had they done?

  The noise of the bell startled him, and he quickly logged out of Facebook before the other students in the lab could see the letter on his screen. The kids he saw in the halls every day suddenly seemed like potential enemies. Now that Jason had a secret to keep, he wondered what each of them was hiding.

  Lunch was his first opportunity to catch up with Rakesh, but as soon as they had settled into their seats in a corner of the cafeteria, Molly Mara attacked. Jason hadn’t seen her coming, but when she interrupted his hushed reenactment of his visit to the memorial, he noticed a table full of her girlfriends staring at them and giggling. He flushed, though it was obvious he wasn’t the main attraction.

  “Hello, Rakesh,” she said purposefully.

  He avoided eye contact. “Hi, Molly.”

  “I thought we were going to Skype yesterday.”

  Jason thought of getting up to leave, but he knew Rakesh was desperate not to be left alone with Molly. He’d spent the entire car ride home from the bridge complaining about how she followed him around like a lovesick puppy. More than wanting to support him, Jason wanted to finish his story, so he sat throug
h Rakesh’s excuses about the broken camera on his computer, having his phone confiscated by his parents, and getting caught up in a Vince Vaughn marathon on TV. Finally, Molly skulked back to her still-gawking friends. When he was sure she was gone, Rakesh exhaled, adding an exaggerated eye roll.

  “Dude, why don’t you just tell her you don’t like her?”

  “I do like her,” Rakesh protested, “I just don’t want to go to the spring formal with her.”

  “So tell her that.”

  “When you meet your girlfriend in person and she can explain why there are obituaries for her everywhere, I will start taking your advice about my love life. Until then, how ’bout you let Rakesh do Rakesh?”

  It was Jason’s turn to show off his exaggerated eye roll.

  “So wait, you met her best friend? Why didn’t you tell me at the bridge?”

  “I didn’t want to bring it up in front of Lloyd. But also …” Jason looked around them to make sure no one was listening in. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “I couldn’t find you….”

  “Yeah, because that one” — he stuck his chin in the direction of Molly’s table — “wanted to turn the fact that we kissed one time into some huge production.”

  “Shh! Lower your voice. Can we leave your drama out of this for, like, five minutes?”

  Rakesh held up his hands. “Touchy, touchy.” He wasn’t very sympathetic, but at least he shut up.

  “After I couldn’t find you, I went into the woods. I just wanted some air, but someone followed me.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I couldn’t see them. I thought it was Lacey, but …”

  “But Lacey’s dead?”

  “She’s not dead!” Several heads swiveled around to see what Jason’s outburst was about. When he was sure no one was watching anymore, he resumed his hushed tones and described the message he’d just received. He told Rakesh about his phone call to the Grays, how he impersonated Keith McKeller the guitar teacher and reopened a wound with them. “They definitely have no idea she’s alive.”

  “Are you sure she’s alive?”

  “She messaged me this morning.”

  “What have our parents been telling us since the day we started using computers? It could be anyone we’re talking to online.”

  “Okay, Mom. But this isn’t anyone. It’s Lacey.”

  “If you say so. What are you going to do?”

  “I have to help her figure out what happened. I’m going to do what she told me and Facebook Jenna.”

  “Don’t you think she’s going to be a little bit freaked out to hear that her best friend isn’t so dead after all?”

  “Not as freaked out as she’ll be if we don’t get to the bottom of this.”

  Jason was too distracted by Lacey’s message to go to his afternoon classes. Instead, he snuck into the boys’ bathroom on the third floor by the music practice rooms. Between its out-of-the-way location and the easily clogged, rarely cleaned toilets, it was almost always deserted. Locking himself in the less disgusting of the two stalls, he took out his phone and logged in to Facebook.

  Jenna had hidden most of her profile behind various privacy restrictions, but Jason was still able to recognize her from the thumbnail-size photo depicting her arms wrapped around the shaggy neck of a white sheepdog, her own smooth dark hair framing a huge smile on her face. The third friend that appeared below the photo caught his eye. It was Luke Gray. Jason enlarged the image. He looked a lot like Lacey, but his tanned square jaw and confident gaze at the camera made Jason shrink into himself a little. You could tell he was the type to walk down the hall to class like he was some sort of movie star.

  Jason heard footsteps in the hallway and quickly clicked the “Add Jenna Merrick as a friend” button, and then added a message to her.

  Hey Jenna,

  We met at the memorial in Brighton Park. There’s something I want to talk to you about, but I need to do it in person. Can we meet after school one day? I can come to Brighton. OK, thanks.

  Jason

  He wondered if she’d think he was weird for Facebooking her, if she’d even remember him. But that was the least of his problems. Jenna had the power to break the spell. He was certain the girl he was dealing with online was Lacey and that she was alive, but Jenna knew more about her than anyone in the world. What if she laughed him off? Or told him things about Lacey he didn’t want to know? Still, as Jason saw it, he didn’t have any other options, so he pressed send, watched the bar load on his phone, and then exited the bathroom and made his way to his next class.

  Sure enough, when he got home from school, her response was waiting for him.

  Hey Jason,

  I’m glad you wrote. Maybe it’s just ’cause we met at the memorial, but I feel like Lacey would have liked you. Sorry if that is super weird to say … I think about her so much though.

  Anyway, I will definitely meet up with you. Do you know Play It Again, Sam on Montrose? It’s a coffee shop — one of Lacey’s favorites. Can you come Wednesday at 4? I’ll meet you there.

  Jenna

  On Wednesday, Jason would go to Lacey’s favorite coffee shop and learn all about her life and share a little more about himself. It was just like he’d pictured their first date so many times. The only difference was that in his fantasies, she was there to see it.

  Lacey?”

  “Yeah, what was she like?”

  Jason settled comfortably into a plush velvety armchair in a corner of Play It Again, Sam. Across from him, Jenna perched on a mismatched overstuffed sofa, her hands wrapped around a steaming latte in a thick homey mug. Over the racket of the espresso machine, notes of Arcade Fire wafted around the softly lit coffee shop. It had a hipster vibe, but it wasn’t too pretentious. Of course Lacey liked it. Or would have liked it. He still wasn’t sure what tense to use.

  Jenna blew gently on her latte before sipping it. After she swallowed, she looked over at him quizzically. “Do you mind if I ask why you want to know?”

  Jason had rehearsed this part. He hoped he sounded self-assured rather than wooden, the way he had as a kid when he’d been forced to act in school plays. “Well, I wasn’t totally honest with you when we met the other day. I did sort of know Lacey.” He watched her closely, but her face was frozen. “I mean, just online. On Facebook. We’d been in touch.” Lacey had told him he could confide in Jenna, but Lacey wasn’t the one sitting across from her right now, risking everything. If Jason was in danger, he had the right to test the waters before revealing himself to be a complete lunatic.

  “When?” Jenna asked coolly.

  “A while ago. It wasn’t much, but I thought it might turn into something.” She nodded without speaking, as if processing the information. “What?” he asked finally.

  “I thought it might be something like that,” she said. “Part of the reason I came is that I thought you might know something about what happened to her.”

  Jason felt like his blood had suddenly turned to ice. There was something about the way she said “happened to her” that made him fear he was going to get more of Lacey’s story than he wanted to hear. “What do you mean?”

  Jenna’s eyes narrowed. “When did you say you and Lacey started talking?”

  It was his chance to come clean. He’d never liked lying, but he’d played this scene out in his head before he came. Lacey needed to know she could trust Jenna before revealing herself, and Jason did, too — especially if Lacey was right and he was in danger. “It was in the fall,” he answered. It wasn’t a lie. Not exactly. That was when he first Facebooked her. So what if he didn’t hear back until after she faked her own death?

  “I see. And how did it start?” Maybe Jason was just being paranoid, but Jenna was starting to resemble a cop conducting an interrogation on a TV show.

  “Well, we had the same quote on our profiles. When I noticed it, I messaged her, and then she wrote back. I mean, we barely talked, and it was always about normal stuff, like music or m
ovies. I thought there might be something there, but then she stopped writing me. To be honest with you, I didn’t even hear about what happened to her until recently. That’s why I went to the memorial.”

  Jenna didn’t say anything, and Jason began fidgeting in his chair. He couldn’t tell whether or not she was buying what he was saying. Finally, she responded in a tone so hushed Jason had to lean forward to hear her. “Look, Jason, I think there was something going on with Lacey this fall. Before she, you know …”

  “Like, what kind of something?”

  “I don’t know how well you got to know her, but there are things you have to understand about Lacey for this to make sense.” She put down her mug and took a deep breath. “It’s hard to describe your best friend. The words that come to mind, they’re, like, smart, funny, nice. Lots of people are smart and funny. Everybody’s nice. But Lacey wasn’t like a lot of people. She wasn’t really like anyone. She had this energy. It was so magnetic. And when you were friends with her, you felt like the coolest person on earth.”

  She paused to take another sip from her coffee. Warmth had crept into her voice as she talked about Lacey; underneath it, Jason could detect a note of pain. The secret he was keeping tugged guiltily at his heart. “But something changed?”

  Jenna looked around nervously. At the other end of the couch was a frazzled, curly-haired woman rocking a baby against her chest while a chubby-cheeked toddler crawled at her feet. A young couple that was thoroughly engrossed in their conversation sat behind him. When she was satisfied no one was watching, she began to explain. “When we got back to school last fall, Lacey seemed … different. Like, I’d talk to her about a fight with my mom or something and she’d zone out. And she’d disappear sometimes. We’d have plans, but she’d flake. I’d ask her about it later, and she’d always have some excuse. But I know she was hiding something.”

  “How do you know?” Jason tried to keep the question casual, but he was gripping the handle of his coffee cup tightly.