CHAPTER TEN

Ella and I spent the rest of the weekend eating more ice cream, and instead of dwelling on Trent like I’d thought we would, we strategized on the best way to find out whether or not Jake was cheating. (Although Ella kept insisting that he would never betray me and I was acting like an insane person. And I so wanted to believe that, but when you’re a realist and a pessimist, things don’t exactly work that way.)

In our first class together Monday morning, I told her, “We need to launch our plan soon. To see where he’s going and who he’s meeting up with.” Mostly because I suspected the anxiety was currently eating away at my stomach lining, and I wanted an answer before things got much worse.

“Text him and ask him what he’s doing today,” she instructed. I did as she said, and to my surprise, Jake wrote back almost immediately. How sad that a quick response now seemed uncharacteristic.

“He says, ‘Got some baseball stuff. Sorry.’”

“So now we follow him after school. See if he goes to practice, and if he does, we’ll follow him after. We should hang out in the parking lot, too, in case he skips it. If he does, we’ll start following him right away. Those are our best options, I think.” We agreed to meet up after school as quickly as possible and stake out his beloved red sports car.

In between third period and fourth period, Ella came running up to me at my locker. She looked so happy that for a brief moment I wondered whether Trent had come crawling back, begging for forgiveness or if that Liam Whatever guy announced that the doctors had been mistaken and his face would be fine. Instead she announced, “Mattie! Someone found my phone!”

She held her bedazzled cell phone up with both hands, like she was presenting it to all the animals on the savannah.

“Where was it?”

“Out on the football field. I must have dropped it while I was helping out the squad for tryouts.”

She looked at it with so much love I considered asking if they needed some time alone with it. “I’m glad. Although it’s dead, right? I guess you can charge it when we get home.”

Ella raised one eyebrow. She reached into her purse and pulled out a charger.

“You have a charger with you even though you didn’t know where your phone was?” I asked, incredulous.

“Duh.” She rolled her eyes at me like I did when somebody said they’d forgotten to eat that day. I forgot things all the time. Where I put my keys. The capital of Delaware. How much money my dad had said I was allowed to spend at the art supply store. But not once have I ever done something so dumb as forget to eat.

The mounted flat-screen in our hallway turned on. It was used for announcements and the student broadcast news, which aired once a week during first period. I turned, wondering what was going on.

A very famous Irish action star who’d made a movie about his teen daughter being kidnapped appeared on-screen. Gasps and whispered conversation exploded up and down the hallway as everybody watched and waited to hear what he would say.

“Rita, Aaron wants you to know that he doesn’t have a lot of money. But what he does have is a very special set of skills, skills that include dancing, making conversation, and opening the door for you. Skills that will make your prom night a dream come true. If you say yes to prom now, this will be the end of it. Aaron won’t look for you. He won’t pursue you. But if you say no, I will look for you. I will find you, and I will convince you to say yes to prom.”

While the famous actor part was cool, the rest of it had me shaking my head. “I don’t know if threatening a girl is the best way to get her to go.”

“I thought it was sweet and romantic,” Ella said. “It probably got her heart racing.”

“Yeah. Out of fear.”

Because my attention was still turned toward the TV screen near the windows, I spotted Jake heading toward the parking lot. So much for practice. “Ella! Jake’s leaving. We have to go now!”

I slammed my locker door shut and pulled her along behind me. I kept checking on Jake’s progress, and I saw that he got stopped by one of his friends, a tall football player guy named Deacon. Perfect. This would give us the time we needed to get into our car first so we could follow him.

“What are you doing?” my sister protested, but I didn’t let go of her arm. “We can’t just leave school.”

“It’s called ditching, Ella. You should try it sometime. Like right now. Come on, hurry!”

“What if we get caught?”

I kicked open the swinging outer doors using my foot. “I’m the student body president. I’ll issue us pardons. Move your tiny little legs!”

We ran all the way to the car, and my breathing like an asthmatic elephant made me remember how out of shape I was. I decided to drive, given that if Ella had her way she’d just take us right back to school.

And probably turn us both in.

“He could be going home,” Ella said as I pulled out of the school’s driveway and parked on the street.

“Then we’ll sit out in front of his house and see who else shows up.”

“Are you sure you want to find out?” she asked, using our car’s charger to breathe life back into her cell. “Ignorance can be bliss. Sort of. It at least lets you delay the inevitable.”

I shook my head. “I want to know. I have to. Like when you got tested a few months ago for the BRCA2 gene. You wanted to know one way or the other.” Ella’s mom had carried the gene, and Ella wanted to know if she had the same risk. We’d all been so relieved when it came back negative.

“Are you seriously comparing your delusions about Jake with me trying to find out whether I was going to live or die from cancer?”

“No! Of course not.” Yes, of course I was. This Jake thing felt very life and death to me. But I knew how shallow and pathetic that would make me sound so I stayed quiet up until I heard the roar of Jake’s sports car. I hissed, “Get down!”

She reluctantly complied and might have even muttered some things under her breath, which was very unlike her. “He’s going to notice you eventually, Miss Purple Hair.”

“No way. I got this. I’ve seen plenty of cop shows, and I know all about how to tail someone.”

Jake turned left while I had anticipated he’d turn right. Which meant that my car was pointed in the wrong direction. Taking the name of various deities in vain, I executed a quick U-turn so that I could follow him, making the tires squeal.

“Tell me again how this is not being a stalker?” Ella demanded, clinging to her side of the car as she was thrown against the door.

“It’s not stalking if you really love the person.”

Ella frowned at me. “I’m pretty sure every stalker thinks they really love the person.”

It was only two days ago that I was at Kenyetta’s birthday party, sarcastically telling Mercedes that I belonged to Stalkers Anonymous, and now I probably needed to apply. “I’m just verifying his whereabouts. Without him knowing it. That’s on the low end of the crazy scale.”

She started going through her purse. “You’re so far past crazy you couldn’t get back there with a map. You should just get him chipped like people do with their pets, and then you’ll always know where he is.”

“Whoa, what is up with you being all Miss Snarktastic?” I was both annoyed and proud at how much my sister sounded like me.

“I was looking for books online on how to get over a breakup, and I found that Eat, Pray, Love one, and I thought that sounded good, but I’m stuck on the first part. And I’m snarky because I’ve recently discovered that I have OCD.”

“OCD?” I repeated. Wouldn’t someone have told me if Ella had been diagnosed with something that serious?

“Obsessive Chocolate Disorder.” She pulled out a bag of M&M’s and held it up triumphantly. “Right now all I want to do is eat candy until my kidneys explode.”

“That doesn’t sound like the best plan,” I warned her, but she shrugged me off.

Jake pulled into a gas station, and I parked my car on the street, where I could see him and he hopefully wouldn’t notice us. He got out of his car and entered his credit card, then put the nozzle into his gas tank. He leaned against his car, staring at the pump.

“Why is he on this side of town at a gas station?”

“To get gas?” Ella offered sarcastically in between tossing M&M’s into her mouth. “You were right. He’s obviously up to no good with his nefarious schemes to put gas in his car.”

“I think you may have a sugar addiction that turns you into a not nice person. Admitting you have a problem is the first step.”

She swallowed her mouthful. “Says the girl currently stalking her boyfriend.”

Well, she had me there.

“I’m going to call him and ask him where he is. Let’s see if he lies to me.” I dialed his number and waited.

I watched as he took his phone out of his pocket, looked at the screen, pushed a button, and then put it back in his pocket. I heard his voice mail on my end. I immediately hung up.

Gasping in outrage, I said, “Did he just do that? Did he seriously just do that? He sent me to voice mail?”

“I saw this news report that said it’s bad to talk on cell phones around gas. Something about them making the pumps blow up.”

She was not going to make excuses for him. “Isn’t it like one of those Ten Commandments? Thou shalt answer the phone when thy girlfriend calls?”

Ella started sorting out her candy by color. “I’m pretty sure those are about not killing people and stuff like that.”

“Exactly. Because when you deliberately ignore your girlfriend’s phone calls she might kill you!” I took out my phone and started to text him. Send me to voice mail, would he?

Ella grabbed my cell out of my hand.

“Hey!” I protested. “I want to text that idiot and tell him that I saw what he just did.”

“You need to curb your textual impulses because if you tell him that you saw him do it, you’ll also have to tell him that you’re watching him like a psycho. And that won’t go over well, and you’ll blow your entire operation.”

Wasn’t she the one who didn’t even want to come? “I thought you didn’t want to be a part of this.”

“Well, now I’m invested, and I want to see how it all turns out.”

I crossed my arms and huffed once or twice. She was right, of course, but I still couldn’t believe he’d sent me to voice mail. Jake finished pumping his gas and walked into the convenience store. “He just paid for his gas. Why would he go inside?”

“To use the restroom? To buy some gum? To rob the place? There could be all kinds of reasons.”

“Or because the girl he’s seeing works there.”

Ella squinted at the store. “It’s a woman old enough to be his grandmother at the register. And I don’t think he’s into that. It looks like Jake’s buying snacks.”

A few minutes later, he came back out with several bags filled with junk food. He got out his cell phone and started doing something on it.

“Is he texting me?” I asked Ella. “To apologize for his earlier behavior?”

She checked my cell. “Nope. Tilly, he could be doing a thousand things. Watching a video where men injure themselves deliberately. Counting up all the calories in that massive amount of food he just bought. Maybe he’s looking for an address on Google Maps so he knows where to go next.”

“I’ll tell him where he can go,” I muttered. “Because that’s more snacks than just Jake can eat. I’ve seen him when he’s hungry, and it was a little like a starving hippo at the zoo during feeding time, but what he has now seems excessive even for him.”

Jake drove out to the street, and I continued stalking him. Er, vigorously verifying his whereabouts. I gripped the steering wheel tightly. Even though the bigger part of my brain kept reassuring me that he wouldn’t cheat, some smaller panicky part tried to prepare me in case it turned out to be true.

Ella announced, “I’m not really going to prom.”

“What do you mean?” I asked her. “Of course you’re going. You’re head of the prom committee.”

“No, I mean, I am going. Somebody has to make sure everything is perfect. I meant I’m not going to have that going with your boyfriend magical night that I’d always dreamed about.”

My heart squeezed hard inside my chest. I wanted that for her. “But you’ll be there with people who care about you, and that’s better than going with someone who kisses pretentious losers in steak houses.”

“I know. It’s just hard when life happens, and you have to alter your plans. When you realize that things aren’t going to be what you’d hoped they would be.” She seemed a little sad, but definitely more mellow. The candy must have done the trick.

“If we find out Jake is cheating on me, we’ll go together and be each other’s dates.”

“Sounds like an excellent plan B. For now, I just have to keep prom and carry on.”

That made me laugh, something I hadn’t been able to do for a few days what with all my worry and concern and anxiety.

Jake pulled into a parking lot, and I realized that it was for a hospital. I found a parking spot not too far off and watched as he got out of his car and headed to the main entrance, still carrying enough snacks to feed a small country.

“That’s a weird place to meet up with someone,” Ella commented.

Should I follow him inside? How would I explain it if we accidentally ran into him? “Maybe he’s dating a nurse. Or one of those candy strippers in those skank outfits.”

“Candy stripers,” she corrected me. “Not strippers.”

“Same difference.”

“Uh, no. I used to be a candy striper, remember?”

It was probably during that time period where I saw Ella as my stepsister and my enemy, since I was deeply envious of her life. Not so much the volunteering and cleaning parts, but the boy she dated part. “You’re not helping. Jake used to date you. Which means he has a type, and he’s gone back to their spawning ground to find another one, and I’m going to walk in on them kissing in a family restaurant, and then I’ll hyperventilate, and then my panic attack will turn into something worse, and I don’t want to die of a heart attack before I turn nineteen.”

She made a thoughtful face. “If Jake is dating a candy striper, at least she’ll be able to help you when that happens.”

I smacked her on the upper arm and she said “Ow!” and I could tell she was trying not to smile. “Maybe he’s here to see a patient.”

Who would Jake be seeing in the hospital? He would have told me if anyone he knew was sick. “Or date one.” A terrible thought occurred to me. “OMB. What if she’s one of those people dying and her Make-A-Wish dream was to date Jake?”

“Then she won’t be competition for very long.”

“Ella!”

“I’m just saying.”

She took out her phone, which finally had enough juice for her to log on. I sat and pondered my next move. Maybe her earlier suggestion of getting him chipped wasn’t so off base. It had some definite merit.

“What the—”

“What? Do you see Jake with someone?” I looked everywhere, even checking behind me, but he wasn’t anywhere visible.

Then I noticed that Ella was shaking. “Someone . . . someone sent Trent a text. They pretended to be me and broke up with him.”

I blinked several times, not really getting what she was saying. “Somebody got on your phone and broke up with Trent? Don’t you have a password?”

“Yes. And no, I don’t have a password. Why would I?”

This was part of the problem when you had all the trust and innocence of a newborn fawn. People took advantage of it. “When was it sent?”

“The day I lost my phone. No wonder he was kissing Bronte. He thought I’d broken up with him.”

The kiss I’d seen didn’t appear to have been a first date kind of kiss. More like they’d been going out for a while and felt comfortable kissing over appetizers. But I wasn’t about to rain on Ella’s parade.

“Did Trent reply to your text?”

“No.”

“Then he doesn’t get a pass. He should have talked to you first. I mean, breaking up with someone is pretty serious. You’d think he would have run it by you to make sure your phone didn’t do some weird auto-correct thing. And to find out why you would just break up with him out of the blue after you’d stood by him for so long.”

She stayed quiet for a minute. “Maybe. I don’t know. I think I should explain it to him.”

“You can if you want to. I don’t think it’ll change anything.”

“I know. I’m not trying to change anything. But I feel like we should have a final conversation. For closure or whatever.”

Maybe I should go with her. And start throwing some left hooks if dumb boys got out of line. “Up to you.” I checked my phone for the time. “Jake’s been in there a while, and we have no idea if he’s coming out soon. We’ll pick this up another day.” I started the car, and as I was backing out of the parking lot, I turned to my sister to ask the one question neither one of us had voiced yet.

“Who would send Trent a breakup message from your phone?”