Chapter Nine
3 Years, 27 Weeks, 2 Days
Since the trial, Mom’s been getting better.
I don’t know if “better” is the right word. She had to be so strong for so long, just for me, and now that I’m back, she’s leaning on me again, and I don’t mind—it’s the norm for us—but I can’t help feeling sometimes like I’m a cane instead of a daughter, but then I get guilty about thinking that and make her dinner and bring her tea and tell her it’ll be all right, instead. Love is being there for someone. If there’s one thing I learned from Aunt Beth, it’s that family means being there when no one else is. That’s why she took me in when Mom couldn’t handle the divorce and me.
Mom’s going to twice as many shrink appointments after the trial, but they seem to be helping. I see Avery at the office sometimes, and she gives me a passing sneer before flouncing out the door. She’s bitchier lately, and that means she’s happier, and that means Sophia’s probably talking to her again. Avery’s basically her yo-yo, and Sophia pulls her back and forth for her amusement. I don’t understand it, but I can see it happening the way you see a train approach a car on the tracks in slow motion. Avery is desperate to atone for whatever she did to Sophia, and Sophia pretends it’s possible. But at the very last moment, she’s going to pull the rug out from under Avery and crush her hopes once and for all. Fucking up is the worst. Not being able to make up for fucking up is absolute hell. And Avery’s been living with that this whole time. No wonder she has depression.
I feel sorry for her. I pity her. And pity’s not healthy, but after everything Avery’s done to me, to Kayla, to Jack and Sophia and Wren, I can’t bring myself to feel something better toward her. And it’s shitty of me, and it’s not very Isis Blake-like. The old Isis would’ve tried harder to be friends with Avery again, even through all this bullshit. The old Isis would’ve soldiered in with a smile and taken all the blows, because she knew how hard it was to keep living after being broken.
After seeing Tallie, a portion of the puzzle came together. Avery is terrified of people seeing Tallie’s grave. Sophia misses Tallie, demands to see her in the midst of her fits. Wren said it happened at Lake Galonagah. The grave is at Galonagah, too. Tallie was so young. Tallie couldn’t have been Sophia’s baby sister—her parents were long dead by then.
Logic dictates Tallie was Sophia’s baby.
Sophia was in eighth grade at the time. Thirteen or fourteen is right around the time everyone else started having sex at school, for better or worse, and much to the stubborn, oblivious denial of their parents. I looked it up—a baby’s skeleton begins developing in the second trimester. Ossification, the process of bones forming, is quick. It lasts from two months pregnant to about five months pregnant. The skeleton I saw was tiny, but whole and intricate. Sophia must’ve been about four months pregnant when she miscarried.
Miscarried. The word rings hollow in my head. When I was enduring the tortures of Nameless, Sophia was pregnant and then losing her baby. She’s experienced so much loss and pain—so much more than me. She deserves happiness. She deserves to live. But the world won’t let her.
Something in the back of my mind writhes, whispering: who slept with Sophia to make her pregnant?
I had sex with Jack.
I push her echoing voice from that time on the rooftop out of my head and keep moving. The hospital is quiet. Like the grave. Except people here are trying extremely hard not to be in graves. Very hard. At least four morphine drips and two crappy hospital food trays worth of hard. Being back here always makes me feel claustrophobic—the smell of antiseptic, the people in gowns wandering like ghosts from room to room, the nurses and interns all staring and trying to decide where I belong in their mini-ecosystem of healing. Naomi isn’t on duty, which I’m grateful for. I don’t want this to be any messier than it has to be. For Sophia’s sake.
I poke my head into the kids’ ward for just a second when the guard steps away to pee. Mira and James wave frantically, and I wink and put down the plastic bag of presents inside the door. They come rushing over in their little cartoon-character pajamas with big smiles on.
“Mira said you’d never come back!”
“Did not!” Mira sticks her tongue out at James.
I laugh and ruffle their hair. “I can’t stay long, but I’ll come back in the daytime this week, okay? For now just open the presents. But don’t tell Naomi where you got them. Just say it was from…uh, Jesus.”
They nod frantically, and Mira hugs me around the neck so hard I think she’s trying to merge with me on a cellular level. I manage to pry off her fingers and sneak out just as the guard rounds the corner. The sounds of tearing wrapping paper and squealing reverberate behind me. I made some spawn happy. And that definitely does not make me feel all gooey and happy inside.
Sophia’s open doorway looms before me. It’s dim, and the usual flower vases line her window. I can see her feet under the blanket.
I stand there for what feels like years. And then I take a deep breath and walk in.
She’s not asleep like I’d hoped. She’s very much awake, blue eyes staring at me over the cover of a romance novel. This one has a knight on it and a very lost-looking busty lady.
“Yo!” I smile.
“I thought I told you to leave me alone,” she deadpans.
“Uh, yeah, I’ve never been very good at following directions. Or respecting people’s wishes. Or anything at all, really. So here I am. Doing…here stuff.”
She shoots me a withering look. “You’re annoying.”
“That, my dear, is nothing new!” I sit on the end of her bed. “In fact, ’tis ancient knowledge. The Egyptians foretold of my coming. Actually they mostly told stories about how Isis the goddess of fertility got it on with her brother. Incest was big back then. So was not living past thirty.”
Sophia doesn’t crack a smile, eyes set and hard like blue-black flint.
There’s no avoiding it. Whatever tenuous friendship we once had has been tainted by our mutual insecurities. It was easy when we didn’t know anything about each other, and now it’s hard. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. Sophia’s presence was always calm and gentle, but heavy, and I feel the weight of it now more than ever.
“I met Tallie,” I say. There’s a half second of silence, and then Sophia puts her book down slowly. I can’t stand the quiet. “I found her. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry for prying. I’m sorry for meeting her. I’m sure you don’t want many people to. I’m sorry. I’m sorry it happened to you in the first place—”
“What happened to me?” Sophia interjects viciously. “Please, tell me exactly what happened to me, since you seem to know so much already.”
“Whoa, hold on, that’s not what I meant—”
“Then why are you apologizing? Do you think that’ll make anything better? Do you think that will help at all? Words don’t help. They never have. And they help even less coming from your mouth.”
I knit my lips shut.
Sophia glares. “I don’t need your pity. That’s what you came to give, isn’t it? Or are you guilt-tripping me with the knowledge you have now?”
“No— Sophia, I wouldn’t—”
“You would. Because you think like Jack. And it’s what he would do.”
And just like that, all my anger wells up and blocks my throat.
“I. Am. Not. Jack!”
My fist swings and accidentally knocks a vase over. It shatters, opalescent shards puddling on the ground. Sophia’s glare breaks into a bitter smile.
“It’s about time you got mad at me! I knew you weren’t as manic-pixie-dream-girl as you make yourself out to be.”
“Enough with the insults! Why are you doing this? Why are you being such a horrible poop-face to me?”
She stops smiling, eyes getting heavy-lidded.
“Because you have it all. You have your health. You have family. You have friends. And even though you have all that, you still want the one thing I have left. You coveted it. You tried to take it from me.”
“I didn’t—”
“You did. You kept pressing. You met him and tried everything to get his attention, and when you had it and found out about me, you still kept pushing. You kept yourself in his life. You wanted him. You still do. And it makes me sick—”
My hand stings. Sophia’s face swings to the side, her eyes filled with utter shock and hurt as she looks back at me, her cheek red.
“I’ve never liked Jack, and I never will,” I say through gritted teeth. “He’s yours. He’s always been yours. So stop. Stop being such an ass. Let go of all this useless hate. I want to be your friend. Just let me be your friend.”
She goes still, staring at me, and I watch as her eyes slowly start to fill with tears.
“I can’t,” she whispers. “I can’t.”
Her hands go to her eyes, and she starts to sob. I don’t touch her. I want to, I want to hug her and call her Soapy and hold her hand like she held mine when I cried to her about Mom, and Leo, and what happened. But she hates me. I was wrong. Jack might be the bad prince, and the bad prince hurts, but a dragon hurts worse.
By talking about Tallie, by finding Tallie, I’m breathing fire over a village and burning everyone inside to a crisp. Sophia. And Jack. And Wren and Avery. It’s not my delicate nightmare, but I’m inserting myself anyway because I think I can what, help? Make things right? Nothing will make things right. Nothing will reverse what happened that night in the woods, no matter how much I dig or how much I try to get them to talk about it. I’m stupid for even thinking I could make things better.
And then, just like that, Sophia reaches out for my hand and pulls it to her heart.
“I want Tallie back,” she cries, angelic face swollen. “Please. Just give her back.”
I squeeze her hand and nod.
“I will.”
Two weeks after we found the body, we decide to finally talk about it.
At school, Kayla’s been avoiding me about the baby at the lake. I’ve tried to bring it up at lunch break, but she refused to mention it. Until now. It’s like she had to recharge, get over her own shock, before she could face the reality of it.
She calls it Lake Baby. She didn’t see the name on the bracelet, and I haven’t told her. Mostly because she already goes the color of thousand-year-old rice when I bring Lake Baby up. If names were attached, she might just combust on the spot out of grief. I think that’s what it is. Grief. Maybe she’s just been raised in suburban America all her life, hard things like unwanted pregnancies and skeletons far displaced from her life. I’ve told her it isn’t Avery’s baby, though, which is what she was worrying and crying about in the forest. It’s Sophia’s. But that just confuses her more.
“How do you know Sophia had a—”
“I just do. She asked Wren why he hadn’t visited the grave lately. They all must know about the grave. God, no wonder they clam up about it.”
“Wait, but what about what happened that night?” Kayla munches a cucumber and every boy within five fifty feet is staring, enraptured. “The one in middle school? Did she— Did she lose the baby then? Or before?”
“Avery said she hired some guys to do something to her, and Wren said Jack drove them off. What if the shock made her lose it? What if one of them pushed her and she fell hard, and she miscarried right there in the woods? That’d disturb them enough into the crazy-weird silence they have going on now.”
What if they had to bury more than one body that night? The picture from the email is still vivid, like a blind spot you get from staring at the sun too long. But there’s another spot that sticks harder to my mind. Kayla voices it first.
“If Sophia and Jack were going out back then…”
My stomach curls in on itself. Kayla’s eyes widen.
“…does that mean—”
“You two look way too serious for eleven thirty a.m.” Wren slides to sit by Kayla, a smile on his face. Kayla clears her throat and smooths her hair.
“Um. Yeah! We were just, um, talking about the prom! Senior prom feels like such a letdown after junior prom, I think.”
“Well, it’s the last time we’ll have a school function,” he says.
“And the last time we’ll ever have to buy hand-me-down dresses from Ross,” I say, “and put up with groping boys who can’t tell the vagina from the anus while a DJ plays something about partying till the sun goes up from the top forty and people sneak cheap vodka from thigh flasks.”
Wren and Kayla stare at me.
“What?” I ask innocently.
“You sound like you’ve been to a lot of school dances,” Wren says.
“I’ve been to exactly zero school dances.” I puff my chest proudly and my nipple hits the ketchup bottle off the table and there is a fabulous red puddle on the floor directly in front of the shoes of Jack Hunter. Kayla and Wren freeze, staring at him as if waiting for him to say something first. I keep my eyes ahead, focused on the radical silver perm of the second-in-line lunch lady.
“I’d advise you learn to control your extremities,” Jack sneers. “Or lack thereof.”
It’s almost traditional. My mind nags at me that this is the normal procedure of things between Jack and me. The memories are there, just hazy, and they all say I should snark something back about the way his hair looks like a duck’s butt, but I can’t. I can’t say anything. He’s terrifying. The email picture is fresh in my mind, and the image of Tallie’s skeleton hangs just before my eyes, and I can’t get rid of either of them. They’re his. They are extensions of him, and they terrify me—me! The girl who’s afraid of nothing except centipedes. And the green Teletubby. And the front-row seat of Space Mountain.
So I just stare and don’t say anything. Jack waits, and Kayla and Wren wait on him, and nothing moves. Jack’s expression is barely there, but the hint of smug wilts rapidly, and he steps over the ketchup puddle and leaves. Wren gets up with a wad of napkins and wipes the puddle.
“What was that all about?” he asks.
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t say anything. You always say something.”
“Ignoring him is the best way to get him to back off.” I shrug. “I’ve had enough, I guess. It’s just boring now.”
Kayla narrows her eyes. “That sounds like bullshit to the max.”
“You’d rather I fight him like I used to? Didn’t that like, end in tears? And a broken head? Let’s not go for a repeat performance just this once, okay?”
Kayla and Wren look at each other but don’t press it. And I’m grateful. The last thing I need for them to know is what I know. Because I know a lot. And it hurts my head. And possibly my heart. If I had one.
“Did you see his face?” Kayla asks as we walk together to our next class.
“Whose?”
“Jack’s. His lip was busted and scabbing. And that was a mean bruise on his cheekbone.”
“Probably got in a fight with the mirror when he saw it was prettier than him.”
“Isis, I’m being serious!”
“So am I!”
“Look, I know you have like, amnesia about him and your feelings for him are all mixed up or whatever—”
“Feelings? What is this foreign word you speak of?”
“—but you don’t have to be such a fucking jerk about it. He’s a person, too, okay? You can’t just cut people off and put them back in whenever you want.”
The words sting, mostly because they sound too much like what Jack himself said. Kayla’s too pissed to talk to me anymore, so I spend the period doodling exploding things on my worksheet.
Wren and I have yearbook together, so it’s the perfect time to show him. I print out the strange email picture and pass it to him over the computers. There’s a beat, and then:
“What is this, Isis?” he asks.
“What does it look like?” I singsong.
“Where did you get this?”
“Someone sent it to me. Over email. That’s Jack’s lovely hand, isn’t it? Holding that bloody bat and standing over that guy who looks very much dead.”
I can see Wren’s hand on his mouse, and it’s shaking.
“What interests me wayyyy more,” I press, “is the fact that the quality is shit. Shit enough to be in a sewage pipe. Or my makeup collection. And see the way the pixels are a little off? Like they’re wavy? It’s almost like someone took a screenshot of a video—”
“What’s the email address?” Wren interrupts. “That sent this to you?”
“Just random key smash. [email protected] Nobody either of us would know just from the address. You can’t even say it. Ickwajihuk? Ikewjahooookk?”
I hear Wren typing, and I sigh.
“Trust me, I’ve already looked. Google’s got nothing. I’ve dug in fifty-two pages and a lot of backlog. Ickwajhuk doesn’t exist anywhere else on the internet.”
“Isis, listen to me.” Wren looks at me from between our computers, expression serious. “Whoever gave you that picture is dangerous. Block the address and don’t correspond with him.”
“Why?” I laugh. “What’s he gonna do, send me an unsolicited dick pic?”
“That’s the video I took from that night,” Wren murmurs. “I gave it to the federal investigator who questioned us.”
“Wait—what? The Feds questioned you guys?”
Wren inhales. “There were…issues. We were the only ones signed into a cabin near the lake, so we were questioned.”
“About what?”
He doesn’t say anything. I sigh.
“Okay, so you’re saying the Feds sent me the picture?”
“The guy who questioned us turned it over to the bureau’s vault. He died five years ago of a heart attack.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve been keeping close tabs on everything.” Wren adjusts his glasses. “So it couldn’t have been him. Whoever sent you this picture—he either works there or hacked into it. If he works there, he isn’t good news. And if he could hack something that secure, he is really, really bad news.”
“This is ridiculous. Nobody hacks the Feds except in movies.”
“Trust me, Isis. Wipe your computer. Wipe the entire hard drive. Don’t take any chances. And don’t ask any more questions.”
“So that’s it? I’m just supposed to forget I’ve ever seen this? Sorry, I have a better memory and more self-respect than that.”
Wren sets his jaw. I lean in and whisper.
“I saw Tallie, Wren. I met her. I know where she is and who she is. And I know that’s what happened that night. Sophia lost her. You all saw it. You buried her together. And maybe you buried other bodies, too. I don’t know. But I won’t stop until I do.”
Wren clenches his fist and stands from the chair. “Then you leave me no choice.”
He says something to Mrs. Greene and strides out the door. I try to follow, but Mrs. Greene harps with her shrieky voice.
“Where do you think you’re going, Blake?”
“The South Pole?”
She frowns.
“Nicaragua?”
She frowns harder.
“Okay, fine, the piss palace.”
“Emily left with the bathroom pass. You’ll have to wait till she gets back.”
“But what if I wet my pants? Do teacher salaries really pay enough to replace student underwear? I’m wearing very expensive underwear.”
This is a bluff. My underwear is blue and three years old. We both know I am not That Girl.
“Sit. Down. Ms. Blake.”
I cross my arms and flop in my chair with considerable grumpy pizzazz.
For the first time in nearly five years, Wren walks up to me. He peeks into study hall, finds my table, and walks over, looking me in the eye as he does it, too.
This is my first indication that something has gone very wrong. He’s cowardly. He’s hesitant. And he’s carrying years of guilt toward me on his shoulders. He would never approach me this boldly unless something dire was happening.
He slides a paper across the table. It’s a printout of a picture, of a very familiar bloody baseball bat, and my hand, and a dark shape in the background I know all too well. I see it each night my brain decides to grant me a nightmare.
“Isis had this,” Wren says, voice strong but low. My lungs splinter with ice at her name, but I quell the pain and quirk a brow.
“And?”
“You know what it’s from,” he hisses. “Someone sent that to her in an email.”
“Did she say what the address was?”
“[email protected] All in lower case.”
The letters are simple to memorize. I sit back in my chair and struggle to look casual. “Sounds like a trash-byte spammer.”
Wren leans in, now closer to me physically than we’ve been in five years. His green eyes are dark behind his glasses.
“I know you know more about computers than I do,” he says.
“Correct.”
“And I know—God, the whole school knows—you like Isis.”
I have to force the chuckle, and it comes out bitter. “Really? Fascinating. I love hearing fresh gossip.”
“It’s not gossip, Jack, and it’s sure as hell not new. It’s the goddamn old truth and you and I both know it.”
He’s breathing heavily, his face flushed. He’s frustrated and flustered, not angry. Wren never gets truly angry. I give him my best glare.
“Didn’t you see her in the cafeteria?” I ask. “I don’t exist to her. She clearly has no concern for me. Why should I care who she’s emailing?”
“She’ll find out the truth about you!”
“It’s about time someone other than us did.”
“This p-person—” He splutters and jabs his finger at the photo. “This person is dangerous. And he’s talking to Isis. What if he hurts her?”
There’s a long silence. I scoff and look him up and down.
“I’m sorry, am I supposed to care?”
Wren’s face falls like someone’s slapped him. He grits his teeth and grabs the paper back.
“I thought you did. I guess I was wrong.”
“Yes. Now, if you could turn around and march back the way you came in, I’d be very grateful.”
“I care about her!” Wren shouts suddenly. Study hall goes quiet. The librarian looks up, but Wren doesn’t seem to notice. His hair comes undone from its gel, and his glasses skew minutely. “I care about Isis! She’s done more for me than anyone, and if she gets hurt again, I swear to you—”
“You’ll what?” I laugh. “Slap me with a ruler? Sic your student council lackeys on me? Oh wait, I know—you’ll call in some favors and have my pudding privileges revoked with the cafeteria.”
And then he snaps. Wren, the coward behind the camera and my mild-mannered ex-friend of ten years, snaps.
Before I can move, he’s grabbed my shirt and shoved me against a bookshelf. The librarian frantically dials security. Girls shriek and boys start to clamber around us in an encouraging, scattered circle.
“Come on.” I smirk. “Punch me. Do it.”
Wren’s green eyes blaze, his muscles taut for someone who isn’t in any sports clubs. I eye his fist, and just as I see it pull back, he drops me and snarls.
“No. That’s exactly what you want. Someone’s already ground you into pulp by the looks of it, and now you want me to do more damage because you’re a self-absorbed, masochistic asshole.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I laugh.
Wren nods, fast and hard. “Yeah. I don’t. I just know that before her, you were dead inside and out, walking around like a zombie. Anybody could see that. And then she came, and you lit up like a fucking candle. And we could all see that, too. Even Sophia.”
“Shut your mouth,” I growl.
“Is that why Isis ignores you now?” Wren laughs. “Because she realized Sophia means so much to you, and you were out here fooling around with her?”
“I never— No one ever—”
“You did!” Wren hisses. “You did, Jack! Isis’s been through more shit than any girl should go through and you got her hopes up! And then she met Sophia and you fucking crushed them!”
“You have no—”
“How could she compete, you moron?” Wren’s voice gets softer, but not any less deadly. “Just use that huge fucking brain of yours for two seconds; you’ve given up everything for Sophia. You send her letters. You’ve been with her since middle school. You had Tallie, and she knows about that, too—”
My mind goes white, a horrible keening noise starting in the back of my skull.
“She what?”
“She knows. She saw it. She went out and found it herself because she’s Isis and that’s what she does.”
Something in me plummets.
“What do we do?” I whisper, my own voice surprising me by how hoarse it is. Wren’s eyes grow brighter.
“You tell her the truth. Before this emailer does, and gets her involved deeper.”
“You forget she doesn’t acknowledge my presence anymore.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Wren says. “Just promise me you’ll tell her when I give you the opening.”
“You’ve become quite the little dictator,” I sneer.
“I’ve had it”—he clenches his fist—“with running away. Every time I do, someone’s gotten hurt. But not this time. I won’t run this time. We have to own up to what we did. We can’t keep living like this.”
He turns and leaves before I can verbally cut him down to size.
The rest of the day passes in a panicked blur. I watch Isis from the parking lot, feeling every bit the stalker but bent on studying her face in a new light. She knows what I did that night. That’s why she’s ignoring me. She’s too smart not to put two and two together.
And she knows about Tallie.
My biggest secrets are in her hands now. Just as I’ve known hers for months. I’ve had her number for months. But I’ve never texted or called. Until now. My thumbs fly over the keyboard.
We’re even.
I see her stop and pull her phone out, Kayla chatting aimlessly at her. She looks up and scans the parking lot, and our eyes meet for the briefest moment. For one second, the warm amber engulfs me, and I let it.
And then I release it and turn away.
Tonight is the last night.
This woman is the last woman.
She’s older—the trophy wife of a lawyer, confined to a house and left to treadmill and Martha Stewart her way into being ignored by her husband, who has enough hookers and blow to far outlast a wife. They have no children. She is miserable and in shape and anxious, and the hotel room is nicer than normal, and when she’s satisfied and exhausted, she starts crying.
“Thank you.”
I pull on my jeans and nod cordially.
“How— How old are you? I know I asked that in the lobby, but really, you can’t be twenty-three.”
I flash a smile. “Over eighteen. You’re safe.”
She covers her eyes with her arm. “Oh Jesus. I practically cradle-robbed.”
I think of all the women who came before her, who were deceived by the fact that I’d looked twenty-one since I was fifteen. She has no idea. I grew up fast, and she has no idea.
“This is my last night,” I say as I button my shirt. “Of this job.”
“Oh? That’s good. Someone as nice as you doesn’t need to stay in this field. It ruins good people.”
And yet you still use our services. I curl my lip where she can’t see it. There are plenty of good people at the Rose Club. She’s ignorant, just another person who considers sex work base and below her. Hypocrite. She showers and dresses, and I pull out my laptop and sit on the bed, taking advantage of the free, harder-to-trace wifi.
“The room is yours for the night,” she says when she comes out, now in a pressed pink suit and perfectly styled red hair.
“Thanks,” I grunt. The woman—I forget her name—leans over my shoulder.
“Ooh, what are you doing? It looks fascinating—”
“I’m running seventy-two targeting executables for a free-roam IP trace.”
She gives me a blank look. I sigh.
“I’m trying to find someone.”
“Oh! Girlfriend? Ex-girlfriend?”
Tiresome. Women like her always jump straight to romance. I roll my eyes.
“An anonymous email sender.”
She laughs nervously. “Right, well, I’ll leave you to it. Thank you again.”
“It was a pleasure doing business with you.” I nod. It was no pleasure at all. The last time I felt honest pleasure—not sickly release—from sex was the last time Sophia and I slept together. And that was nearly a year and a half ago. Before the pain flares got so bad she couldn’t walk sometimes.
Before her soul got darker.
I wait until the door clicks shut behind the woman to pull up the trace results. I parse them down twice—once using the email address name and once using Isis’s email address. Which I also happen to have. She didn’t exactly hide it when she put up posters around the school asking for people to contact her with dirty information bits about me.
She knows about Tallie.
I shake Wren’s words out of my head and work quickly. I’m by no means gifted at computer hacking—if you could even call it that—but I know my way around a program or two. Ruby and C++ are far easier languages than any drivel humans speak. People much smarter have made sinfully simple IP trace programs for people like me to use and abuse.
After two hours of parsing, I’m left with 137,108 possible IP addresses the email could have originated from. I could go through them all one by one, but there has to be some connecting factor. And that factor is no doubt Isis. Why her? I check Maryland and Washington, DC. There are two IPs there, but none of them from the federal bureau where the investigators have the tape. The tape Wren gave to them behind my back.
I’m not mad about it. I was at first. But then I learned the tape was badly damaged, and video-imaging technology back then wasn’t the best. The police discovered Joseph Hernandez’s body days after the incident, but ruled it an accident. The other three men Avery hired were conveniently paid off by Avery’s parents, who knew something terrible had happened because of their daughter but never quite knew what, preferring to make the problem go away instead of linger on it. Those three men never spoke a word of what happened.
That reminds me—Belina, the woman whose husband is gone because of me, because of that night in middle school, will be needing her check sometime soon. I’d give it to Wren, but this was the last lump sum I’d have for a while. Of course, I’d invested a small amount in a hedge fund so she wouldn’t be completely cut off when I went to college, but she’d quickly run out in a year or two. Hopefully, by my second year, I’ll have an internship that pays well. No, I have to have one. It’s the only option.
By then, Sophia’s surgery will be over.
And she will either be dead or alive.
I press my fingers to my temples and try to focus. The majority of the IP address near-matches are located in Florida. I narrow my eyes. Florida is where Isis used to live. That can’t be a coincidence.
But there’s one IP address that bucks the norm, way out in Dubai. The rest are in America. Whoever this person is, he clearly knows how to access information that isn’t his. He’s good. Rerouting his IP through proxy servers to Dubai would throw anyone looking for an American off the trail. Unless he kept his IP in Florida, purposefully, knowing something like Dubai would stick out like a sore thumb. Basically, every one of these dots is suspect.
I sigh and pick up the phone to order room service and a change of bedsheets. It’s going to be a long night.
Between coffee and eggrolls at 1:00 a.m., I get a text. From someone in my phone I’ve labeled “Never.” I ignore the palpitation in my lungs at the sight of that name on my phone.
What would you do if everyone hated you?
I pause and consider my answer carefully. Everyone has hated me at some point. Women, because I turn them down. Men, because I turn the women they love down.
I would ignore them.
I try not to stare at my phone, waiting. I have work to do. But I slog through it reluctantly until her answer comes, ten minutes later.
That’s what I’m doing. But I don’t like it much.
Then stop doing it. Do what you like, not what you don’t.
But what I like hurts people. I get in the way. I mess things up.
Sometimes people need to be messed up. It reminds them life is short.
There’s a long silence. Just as I start regretting what I said, my phone lights up again.
She would have been a very pretty baby.
My eyes sting. The cold numbness of the woman I’d slept with earlier and the single-minded focus on finding the mystery emailer melts. Just like that, with a single sentence.
Thank you.