B00B9FX0F2 EBOK (16 page)

W
ait, what?” Jason felt like a starlet at an awards ceremony hearing someone else’s name called for best actress when she was certain she’d win; despite his best efforts, his face betrayed all of the confusion and disappointment that struck him with Troy’s revelation. But Troy didn’t notice.

“She killed herself because of me. If I hadn’t let the secrets build up like that, she’d still be alive.” Instinctively, Jason grabbed the box of tissues his mom kept on the windowsill and brought them to the table. Troy took one gratefully. His breath was shallow and the tears were streaming down his cheeks; Jason was seized by a desire to snap a photo of the oversize jock turned blubbery child. He’d be a hero to emo kids everywhere who were tormented by guys like Troy on a daily basis. Jason couldn’t remember the last time he’d wept openly, but he’d watched Troy do it twice this week.

“Do you, um, want a glass of water?”

Troy looked up at him, his blue eyes clear through the pooling tears. “That’d be great,” he sniffled. Jason brought it to the table, and Troy gulped it down, and slowly the crying subsided.

Jason sat across from him now. “I’m sorry, I know this stuff is hard for you to talk about, but can you explain what you mean? I thought Lacey’s fall was supposed to have been an accident.”

“I guess she just got sick of all the secrets,” Troy said slowly. “At Roxy’s party, she was a total mess. We got a few minutes alone, and she said, ‘We have to tell Luke about what’s going on between us
tonight
,’ but what she didn’t know was that Luke was on the warpath. Mr. Jericho, our craptastic math teacher, was trying to get it so Luke couldn’t start unless he brought up his grade to a B, which was not happening. Usually coach can get us out of stuff like that, but Mr. Jerkwad wasn’t having it, so coach told Luke he had to start getting tutored in trig. By Roxy’s party, he was ready to kill someone.”

Troy was speaking figuratively, but Jason wondered how ready.

“So I started to tell her, but she wouldn’t listen. She was like, ‘It has to be now, I can’t live like this anymore,’ and I …” Troy paused, looking stricken, “I told her to stop being such a drama queen.” His face crumbled. “It was the last thing I ever said to her.” Jason waited as Troy put himself together. Could Lacey have really killed herself? Jenna was so certain she hadn’t, but Jenna no longer qualified as a reliable source. As if Troy could read his thoughts, he continued, “Her friend Jenna found us. That was the other reason Lacey didn’t want everyone to know about us. She was worried about what Jenna would do.”

The queasiness Jason had felt in his car earlier returned. “Why?”

“I don’t want to sound conceited, but Jenna kind of had a thing for me. I had no idea, because she never said a word when she was around me, but Lacey told me. It started when they were like eleven or something — they’d spy on me and Luke when we were at the Grays’ and they called me penguin because
I wore a tux to someone’s bar mitzvah when I was in seventh grade. I literally don’t even remember it.”

Ask her if she still has the penguin’s shirt in the back of her closet
. His skin was crawling now.

“Lacey really cared about Jenna, and she didn’t want her to get hurt. She made me go out of my way to be super friendly to her whenever I was around, which was fine; Jenna’s a nice girl.”

“Depends what you mean by nice.” It was only after the words were out of his mouth that Jason realized he had spoken them aloud.

“You know Jenna?” Troy sounded surprised.

“I’m sorry — I didn’t mean to interrupt your story. What happened after Jenna found you guys?”

All the hesitance Troy had exhibited when he first sat down was gone now. He was caught up in the relief of confession. He hadn’t talked to anyone about this, and Jason could tell he wasn’t the type of guy who was meant to keep his feelings bottled up, even if that’s what everyone expected of him.

“Jenna said she needed to talk to her. At first, Lacey was like, ‘We can talk here, there’s something I need to tell you anyway,’ but I was shaking my head, trying to get her to shut up. So then she pulled Lacey aside, and I had to pretend like we were in the middle of a normal conversation. I kept waiting for another chance to get Lacey alone because we weren’t done figuring out what to do about Luke, but she disappeared. And then, the next morning, when I realized what happened …” He’d gone hoarse, but he didn’t cry this time. He went on flatly, “I knew it was my fault.”

“Troy, did you see Jenna again that night?” Once the question was past his lips, Jason realized he was terrified of the answer. He didn’t believe Jenna was capable of murder because he didn’t
want
her to be. In spite of everything, he was surprised to find that he still liked Jenna.

He shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

“It’s important.”

“Dude, I don’t get it. You just told me you barely knew Lacey. Why do you care so much? About any of this? Why did you call her house?”

“I don’t think Lacey killed herself.” It was the simplest reply.

Suddenly, the big man on campus bravado was back. “And how would you know?”

“Because I think someone pushed her.”

T
roy stared at Jason with a mixture of confusion and hurt, but before he could speak, something barreled across the kitchen and tackled him.

“How you like that?” Rakesh yelped as he ground Troy’s shoulder into the kitchen floor.

“Rakesh! He didn’t do anything!” But it was too late. Troy had knocked Rakesh off of him and pinned him down.

“Who are you?” Troy growled. Jason pulled him off and both boys scrambled to their feet.

“Both of you, calm down!” The effort of separating them had inflamed the pain in Jason’s ribs. He stood, panting, and then turned to Rakesh. “Jesus, what are you doing here?”

“That’s the thanks I get for rescuing you from this psychopath?”

“Seriously, who is this guy?”

“Troy, Rakesh, Rakesh, Troy. There, now everyone knows each other. Rock, what’s the deal?”

“I could ask you the same question. You haven’t answered any of my texts in the last two hours. So I came by to make sure everything was okay, because last I checked, the Brighton lacrosse team was out for your blood. And then lo and behold, Mr. Brighton Lacrosse himself is sitting at your kitchen table. What was I supposed to do?”

“Not break into my house?”

“I didn’t break in — I have keys!”

“Why didn’t you knock?”

“There’s a car outside with a bumper sticker that has a skull and crossbones made out of lacrosse sticks that says ‘Brighton’ underneath. I called you twice from outside — why does your phone keep going to voice mail?”

“I turned it off.”

“Why? What’s going on here?”

“That’s what I want to know,” Troy grumbled.

“Rock, Lacey’s dead,” and then when he saw Rakesh start toward Troy again, he quickly added, “Troy didn’t do it! Troy, I promised I’d explain everything, but I’m going to have to start at the beginning. Can we all be civil to each other?” Rakesh and Troy eyed each other warily, but they both assented. “All right, good. This is gonna take a while, so let’s at least sit down.”

And so Jason began with his message to Lacey and the response he got three months later. Their easy rapport, the way he fell for her. How he found the obituary. The run-in with Jenna at the memorial, and Lacey’s pleading e-mails to him implicating Troy. Troy listened to all of it quietly, interrupting here and there with a question. As Jason went on, knowing what he now knew, the story sounded stranger and stranger. Why hadn’t he realized what was happening sooner? He carefully avoided eye contact as he described tailing Troy to the cemetery, and Rakesh eagerly took over the narration when he got to Luke Gray’s attack the following morning.

And then there was nothing left except the thing he hadn’t
had the nerve to say out loud yet. “And now I know Lacey was never the one Facebooking me. It was Jenna all along.”

Rakesh gasped. “Hold up.
What?
”

“Yeah. I went over there this morning, and I used her computer. She was signed into Lacey’s profile. Jenna’s been lying to me — to everyone — this whole time. She’s the one who sent the messages, the one who told me to break into Luke’s car. She’s been setting Troy up.”

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.