Modern Monsters (Entangled Teen) (14 page)

“Just wanted to tell you good night,” she says, and the sentence is so strained and awkward that I can’t help but smile.

“’Night, Mom.”

She almost smiles. Almost. But it’s just as uncertain as her words and she’s quick to retreat. Small progress, but at this point I’ll take what I can get.

Chapter Twenty

Friday night, Brett, Autumn, and I meet in the parking lot after school. As promised, Brett is skipping tennis practice for this outing, and my stomach is rolling around and threatening to make me sick all over my feet.

I have the last known address for my dad in my pocket. Although I put a lot of thought into telling Mom, I decided against it. She wouldn’t understand, and it’s not like I’m expecting anything amazing out of this trip. I don’t expect him to welcome me with open arms, or that we’re going to have any kind of father-son bonding moment.

Frankly, I have no idea what to expect.

We take Brett’s car because he doesn’t like not driving. Autumn sits in the back and every so often, I feel her fingertips slipping between my seat and the door to poke at my side. I eventually reach a hand back awkwardly in order to poke her knee in return, grateful for the reassurance she’s trying to offer.

“You’re really okay with this?” Brett asks once we get on the freeway.

I have to admit, “I d-don’t know.”

“What worries you about it, exactly?”

That’s a good question. Sure, there are a lot of things running through my head, but to have to stop and really think of how to put it into words… “I’m afraid…he w-won’t know who I am. I’m afraid he will. I’m afraid I’ll hate him, or l-like him, or that he’ll be a good person or a bad person.” I run my hands over my face and sigh. “Sorry. I know it doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it does,” Brett says mildly. “You don’t know what to expect and you haven’t had a lot of time to process any of this. On one hand, it’s your dad and you want to feel some kind of connection. On the other hand, he did something terrible to your mom and you want to protect her.”

“It might be strange if you
weren’t
conflicted,” Autumn adds.

Their words don’t make me feel entirely better, but at least they put my mind at ease so I don’t think I’m wrong for feeling the way I do.

They don’t prod any more for the rest of the drive and I try to focus more on the music coming from the satellite radio and less on the fact that the trip goes by a lot faster than I expected it to. It’s dark out by the time Brett is pulling off the freeway into a small town just outside of Oakland that I’ve only vaguely heard of. It’s a lot of open fields between houses, and everything is so flat. No hills or the abundance of trees like we get in the valley.

My heart is hammering so loudly I can hardly hear myself think.

Autumn reads the directions from her phone and Brett follows them, until we’re pulling onto a slightly more suburban-like street where small houses are crowded together and have no fences around their front lawns or backyards. It isn’t run-down so much as just…old. Well-worn. I wipe my palms against my jeans and look over at Autumn and Brett, who are watching me with patient expressions. They’re letting me do this at my own pace.

“W-will you come with me?”

Of course they will; they immediately start to unbuckle. They were just waiting for me to ask in case I wanted to do this by myself, and originally, I had planned on doing just that. But now, standing on the sidewalk in front of my dad’s house, I think I need them at my side more than ever.

There are two older cars parked in the driveway and the windows are aglow, so I know someone is home. Will I recognize him when I see him? Will he take one look at my face and immediately know who I am?

We come to a stop at the door and it takes everything I have to lift my hand and knock. Inside, footsteps approach, and the front door swings open to reveal an older man in suspenders and sharp facial features peering at us curiously, but not unkindly. “Can I help you?”

My throat refuses to cooperate. Brett seems to sense this because he speaks up for me. “Sorry to bother you so late. Does Don Whitmore still live here?”

He blinks slowly and the lack of recognition on his face has my heart immediately sinking.

“Sorry, I don’t know any Don. We moved in about six months ago.” He looks between us, but I feel his eyes mostly on me. Maybe I look like I’m about to pass out or something, though whether it’s from relief, disappointment, or simply the sudden drop of adrenaline, I don’t know.

Thank God for Brett thinking on his feet. “I know this is a lot to ask, but we’re trying to help our friend here find his dad. I’m not sure if you rent or own this place, but maybe you have someone you could call to get information about the previous tenants?”

The man rubs the back of his neck, though his gaze seems to have softened a little. “Let me grab a pen and paper.” He disappears briefly from the doorway, returning a second later with a yellow notepad and a ballpoint pen, which he hands to me. At least I manage a “thank you” without stumbling over the words, and I scribble down my first and last name, along with my phone number, before handing it back.

“Sorry to disappoint you kids,” he says as he accepts it. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Autumn gives him a sunny smile. “Thank you. We really appreciate it.”

The door is closed and I’m vaguely aware of my hands trembling. I cram them into my pockets and turn away, jogging back to the car. Am I going to throw up? I don’t know what’s wrong with me beyond wanting to laugh and cry and curl into a little ball. I was stupid to think I could just show up at Dad’s doorstep and expect some magical reunion.

Autumn comes up to where I’ve slumped against the car. Her fingers are cool and gentle as they slide through my hair, and it coaxes me into looking up at her. She takes this as incentive to wrap her arms around me in a tight hug, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t help even a little. Even more so when Brett comes up alongside us and slings an arm around my shoulders, too, and for a moment I’m simply engulfed in this warm embrace of comfort and support, and it makes things just a little bit better.

I turn down Brett’s invitation to go out that night. He has plans to hit up some coffee shop art gathering, which is about as much my scene as a lake house party, and besides that…I don’t really feel like being around people. He drops us off at school to get Autumn’s car, and surprises me with a hearty hug and a pat on the back. “Don’t let it get to you so much, yeah? We’ll find your dad.” I smile a little as he drives away, and then I turn to Autumn.

She tilts her head. “My parents are in town, unfortunately, otherwise I’d drag you home with me.”

“Th-that’s all right. You can come to my place. If you want.” As far as I know, Mom should be out at bingo with Ruthie tonight, and they usually aren’t home until late.

Autumn considers. “Are you sure you’re up for company? My feelings won’t be hurt if you want to be alone.”

“Why w-would you think I want to be alone?”

“You turned Brett down, so…”

My lips twitch into a smile. Sometimes the things she says, the small and sweet considerations she shows me, make me want to pick her up and spin her around. “You aren’t Brett.” That’s all there is to it. There are certain things I prefer to share with my best friend. Certain moments I feel like I need Brett’s guidance and presence at my side. And other things…I need Autumn. I need her gentleness and her fierce loyalty, and her honesty rather than Brett’s wanting to take charge of everything and withhold information—like how Aaron found out I was a suspect—because he thinks it’ll protect me.

We get back into the car and head home, where Mom’s sedan is absent from the driveway. I have Autumn park across the street and we slip inside. I want to get changed and cleaned up first, but rather than wait in the living room, she follows me to my room and plops onto the edge of my bed with a sigh.

“So how are you really feeling?”

I can tell she’s purposely looking elsewhere in the room to give me a bit of privacy without actually giving me privacy, and at least this time I’m a little less self-conscious as I start stripping down. To answer that, though… “I think I’m okay.”

“For real?”

“I don’t know. Everything is sort of…sort of a jumble.” I skim down to my boxers while staring blankly at the selection of clothes in my closet. “Partly disappointed, partly r-relieved?”

She glances in my direction. “Mm-hm. Elaborate?”

“Like…” I sigh, pushing a hand through my messy hair before turning to face her. “D-disappointed because I r-really had to work up the nerve to go in the first place…but relieved because I don’t know what I would have said.”

Her chin is propped in her hands, elbows on her knees, cross-legged. “Are you going to keep trying to find him, then?”

“Maybe. Some part of me wants closure from it.” Something, even just a glimpse of his face in person, to close the book I’ve always had open about the mysterious figure that is my father. If Mom had told me earlier in life about him, I wonder if things would have been easier? Of course, wondering that isn’t going to make me feel any better, and I don’t need anything else to be resentful of Mom over.

Autumn says, “Come here?” and I obediently move across the room to stand at the edge of the bed in front of her, almost forgetting that I’m not wearing much and there’s a beautiful girl that I really, really like on my bed. She uncurls from herself a bit and brings her hands up to my waist, pressing a kiss to my stomach in a way that makes me blush while silently willing the lower regions of my body to not react and embarrass the hell out of me. “I don’t really know if you should find him or not, frankly. He sounds like an asshole. But if you want to keep up the search, I’ll go along with it.”

I exhale. “How is this n-not weird for you? Being here with me, I mean. Doesn’t it bother your parents or Callie?”

Her expression turns sheepish. She tugs me to lie down on the bed beside her. “I haven’t exactly told my parents yet…”

“Oh.”

“Don’t ‘oh’ me. Have you told your mom you’ve been talking with me?”

She’s got me there. Except I’m not so sure she’d give a damn. “No.”

“I’ll tell them when things die down a little.” She leans into me. “I’ve talked in-depth with Callie about it. It doesn’t bother her. She’s convinced it wasn’t you, after all, so why would it matter?”

“Lingering d-doubts?”

“I won’t lie and say I don’t think she has any. I’m sure some little part of her suspects everyone. But she trusts you as much as she’s capable of trusting a guy right now.”

Hearing that makes me feel a little better, at least.

Autumn’s fingers touch the side of my face, tracing up my jaw and tickling along the back of my ear. She could reduce a guy to a puddle with those hands. “I believe you completely, if that helps.”

“It does,” I murmur. It helps a lot. Maybe her actions show me her trust more than her words, because I can’t imagine she’d be lying here with me half dressed if she had any remaining suspicion that I raped her best friend. “I want you to trust me.”

Her lips curve into one of those smiles I’ve grown to love. Her palms cup the sides of my face and she waits to speak until I manage to make eye contact, which is getting more difficult by the minute considering how her touching me is making me really want to touch her, too.

“Vic,” she says.

I swallow hard. “Yeah.”

She’s going to kiss me. I know this a full second before she does it, but it still comes as a surprise that renders me unable to respond at first. Her mouth is as warm and soft as I imagined it would be. Thank God I don’t freeze up or pull away; I lean into her almost cautiously, not entirely sure what I’m doing but like hell if I’m going to pass up the opportunity to kiss Autumn Dixon.

It’s a lingering kiss, but not a deep one. Her lips part beneath mine slightly, and then she pulls back and strokes her fingers through my messy hair.

She says, “I trust you,” and all the tension rushes right out of me.

I shift onto my back, and Autumn follows suit and stretches out beside me, tucked against my bare side in a way that I think friends definitely do not do unless they like each other, but I don’t want to say as much in case it makes her move away. I want to ask what the kiss means, if we’ve stepped past the friendship line, but I don’t want to ruin the moment.

“Don’t fall asleep,” I warn her softly. Her parents are expecting her home and although Mom doesn’t make it a habit of coming into my room, there’s a first time for everything.

Autumn says, “Mm-hm…”

But it’s only a matter of time before we’ve both drifted off.

Chapter Twenty-One

I wake to the sound of muffled ringing across the room, and it takes me a few moments to place what it is. My phone rings so rarely that the sound is unfamiliar. Autumn’s body is pressed neatly along mine, a leg hiked over my hip and her ponytail halfway down so that her dark hair is sticking out every which way. My phone is in the pocket of the pants I was wearing yesterday, I realize, and then it occurs to me that the sun is shining brightly through my window and…

“Shit.”

Autumn makes a noise when I nudge her, but that’s all it takes before her eyes are blinking open blearily and she, too, is coming to terms with the fact that we fell asleep and it’s now morning.

“Shit!”

“That’s what I said.”

She sits up and I roll out of bed to grab my pants and phone, answering it quickly. “H-hello?”

“Vic? It’s Callie. Is Autumn with you?”

Oh, I’d forgotten she had my number. “Y-yeah, she’s here. Hold on.” I turn and offer the cell out to Autumn and she snatches it.

“Hey? Yeah. I totally fell asleep and I think my phone is in my car… Thank God. You’re a lifesaver. I’ll go call them. Love you.” She hangs up while I’m pulling on a pair of pants and a shirt, and we both begin searching for our shoes. “Mom called Callie and she told them I was in the shower.”

Good save, Callie. “D-do you need to go home?” We had planned on going to Aaron’s today, but I don’t want her in trouble and grounded from seeing me altogether.

“I don’t know. We’ll see how it goes when I call home.” She opens my bedroom door and we make the mistake of stepping into the hall without thinking.

Which has us running right into my mom, who is still in her pajamas and is on her way to her room with a cup of coffee in hand. I freeze. Autumn freezes. Mom stares, looking shocked and confused. Guess it’s a good thing I thought to get dressed. “H-hey, Mom.” Do I introduce Autumn? As a friend, as a girlfriend…?

Autumn recovers first, although her voice is a little higher than usual with her nervousness. “Hi! You must be Ms. Howard. I’m Autumn.” She extends her hand, which Mom slowly takes out of pure reflex. “I was just coming to pick Vic up so we could go on a study date. Um, I hope I didn’t wake you.”

Mom blinks slowly and withdraws her hand. “No, you didn’t…”

“We’re s-sort of in a hurry,” I apologize, ushering Autumn for the front door.

“It was nice meeting you!” Autumn calls, and we leave Mom behind, looking after us in stunned silence.

We hurry across the street and dive into the car. I can barely suppress a laugh. Autumn slumps into her seat with cell in hand. She grimaces at the sight of several missed calls on the screen, and dials home. Whoever it is answers on the first ring. “Daddy? Hey, I’m
so
, so sorry. I crashed last night and my phone was in the car…”

I can hear the vague outlines of a lecture from the other line, but no yelling. That’s a good sign. Autumn seems to be relaxing.

“Yeah, I understand. I know. I’m really sorry. I promise I’ll be home tonight.” She endures a few more minutes of talking to him before hanging up, then slouches down and sighs.

“Good?” I ask.

“Good,” she agrees. “One of the benefits of not being a troublemaker, I guess. When I do screw up, they aren’t as hard on me. Sorry if I got you in trouble with your mom.”

“Honestly, sh-she tends to not say anything when she feels awkward, and I’m pretty sure we made her feel awkward.”

“Not as awkward as it would’ve been if you’d still been mostly undressed. She would’ve thought I was taking advantage of you.”

That gets a snort out of me. “Somehow, I don’t think so.”

She grins a little and starts the car. “So, I’ve got a little cash on me. I say breakfast before we go tackle this whole Aaron thing.”

I haven’t had a second to ask Autumn about last night and what it meant. But I guess our plan is still on.

I’ve been to Aaron’s a handful of times, always with Mom, and never for very long. I remember the first time I was there, and Aaron and his brother made themselves scarce and I was stuck talking to their mostly senile grandmother for twenty minutes while Mom chatted with Ruthie. Approaching his door, then, with just Autumn feels incredibly off. His car is out front, so we know he’s home. And it’s the only car, so I take that to mean at least his brother and Ruthie are gone for the moment.

We exchange glances before I ring the doorbell. My heart is already starting to pound. Maybe this is a bad idea. “W-what do we do if he denies it?”

“How can he deny it? We’ve got proof right here.” She waves her phone. “He can either tell us the truth, or we’ll go to the police. Simple as that.”

For some reason, I can’t wrap my head around it being that easy.

It only takes a minute for Aaron to answer the door. Any other day, I would say the startled look on his face was priceless. “What are you doing here?”

“We came to talk to you about something.” Autumn inclines her chin, trying to make herself look taller than she is. She’s good at looking down her nose at people even when she’s smaller than they are; I know this because it’s a tactic she used on me repeatedly the first few times we ran into each other. “Can we come in?”

Aaron glances between us, a wary crease forming between his brows. He seems to decide we aren’t a physical threat and steps aside to let us in.

His house isn’t much different than I remember it. Not that I remember a lot. Just enough that I know to head down the entryway and to the right where the living room is, and where Aaron seemed to have been in the middle of watching TV. He stays right behind us and flops onto the couch, arms flung over the back of it.

“So? What do you want?”

I hadn’t noticed it before, but it’s more apparent to me now that Autumn is trying hard not to lose her temper. I can sense it in the way she’s standing, in the way she has to take deep breaths before speaking. “We want to know what happened the night of the party.”

Aaron squints, mouth slightly parted, trying to figure out the meaning of that statement. “What?”

“The night C-Callie was raped,” I say patiently. “You know m-more than you’ve told anyone.”

He scoffs. “What makes you think that? I’ve told the cops everything I know.”

“No, you didn’t.” Autumn’s voice can’t hide the sharp edge forming around her words. “We have proof that you didn’t, so you can spill whatever you know now or we’ll take that proof to the police.”

The wary scowl on Aaron’s face smooths out and he looks simultaneously worried and confused. “You’re both fucking crazy. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The cell is still in Autumn’s hand and she whips it up, turns it on, opens the photo we took of Aaron’s phone with the picture of Callie, then promptly shoves it in his face. “Stop screwing around, Aaron!”

Aaron jerks back like he expects she’s going to grind the phone into his face, both hands coming up as though to grab it. He comes just short of doing so as he realizes what it is he’s looking at. “Abject horror” is the term that comes to mind to describe his expression, and his voice is soft, barely above a whisper. “Where did you get that?”

“Can’t you tell?” Autumn hisses. “It’s from
your
cell phone.”

“What…?”

“I’m sure you remember a day where you came back from gym and found your lock missing, right?”

Aaron’s gaze flickers to Autumn, but only briefly before it’s back on the phone again. If I didn’t know any better, I would say his face has become extremely ashen in the last thirty seconds or so. Still, he insists, “That isn’t my picture.”

As though to prove it, he pulls his cell from his pocket and turns it on with shaky hands, opening up the folder with pictures from the party to scroll through them.

“It n-not being on there isn’t going to prove anything. You c-could have deleted it b-by now.” In fact, if he had even the smallest inkling that someone had been in his locker, he would have been smart to delete all the pictures from the party. Maybe we should’ve thought that through more.

Except seconds later, Aaron has the picture of Callie up on his phone, and any remaining semblance of color has drained from his face. “It’s here.”

“Congratulations. Now explain
why
it’s there.” Autumn lowers her own cell, still seething.

“I don’t… I don’t know.” Aaron slowly offers the cell out, helpless, eyes wide, as though giving it to us will somehow cleanse his hands of it. “I didn’t take that picture. I swear to God, I didn’t. It wasn’t there before.”

Ingenuous:
innocent and unsuspecting.

If there is anything I gather from how small and helpless Aaron sounds and looks right now, it’s that one word. It makes me want to believe him. No…more than that, it
does
make me believe him. I wonder if this is how Autumn felt when she realized I wasn’t the rapist. Frustrated, because it puts us back at square one. “Was anyone else using your ph-phone the night of the party?”

“I don’t know,” he repeats. “I mean, I was drunk off my ass. I don’t remember. Someone may have taken it, I guess? But I don’t think that’s it.”

Autumn asks, “Why not?”

“Because I’ve looked at all these pictures since then.” Aaron lowers the phone, staring at it like it might miraculously give him some answers. “I’ve gone over them like a thousand times, trying to find some idea of who hurt Callie.”

“Have the police?”

Aaron falters. “Well—they…no. I gave them all the disposable cameras and they developed the pictures, but they never asked for my phone.”

Which doesn’t reflect all that well on Aaron, I have to say. If the cops had already checked out his cell, that might clear him, but… “Okay. Th-then how do
you
think it got there?”

“I don’t know,” he stresses, and I could swear that he’s close to tears. “Maybe someone planted it there. How do I know you guys didn’t?! You admitted to getting hold of my phone!”

A sharp laugh escapes Autumn’s mouth. “You think
we
did it? Get real.”

“No, I think
he
did it.” Aaron trains his suddenly sharp gaze on me and rises to his feet. The accusing stare is enough to make me want to scoot behind Autumn and hide, but I stand my ground. “He was a suspect. Of course he would do it! He would have had every reason to!”

“The lady doth protest too much,” Autumn says, not backing down or cowering away. She extends her hand to Aaron. He hesitates, but slowly places his cell in her palm so that she can look at the photo up close, studying it longer. “Look, we aren’t saying you raped Callie. We’re asking for you to honestly tell us if you’re covering for someone.”

Some of Aaron’s tension seems to ease out of him, though only slightly. His hands are balled into fists at his sides, and he seems to be thinking. “I don’t know anything.”

“You’re sure?” I press.

“I’m sure,” he snaps. But it isn’t convincing.

Autumn and I exchange looks, both of us knowing we aren’t going to get any more information out of him. She hands him back his phone. Without saying a word, we turn to leave.

Aaron starts after us worriedly. “You guys aren’t going to the cops, are you?”

“If what you say is true, then it won’t matter if we do because you have nothing to hide.” Autumn opens the front door and looks back at him. “Right?”

His expression is a mystery to me. Something trapped between worry and uncertainty and anger. For half a second, I think he might change his mind and suddenly decide to be honest with us; instead he says, “Right,” and watches us leave.

Back in the car, we slump into our seats with synchronized sighs.

“So,” I ask, “w-what now?”

“Now…I think we have to go to the police. I noticed something while looking at it.”

“What?”

“The time stamp in the file info. It isn’t immediately obvious, but you can look to see when the pic was originally taken and when it was last modified. I don’t think that photo came from Aaron’s phone.” She runs a hand through her wavy hair, eyes closed. I can tell she’s feeling as drained and at a loss as I am. “Maybe the police can track the source of that picture or something, if Aaron is telling the truth and someone put it on there.”

I consider this. “We should ask Mr. Mason. He might have a better idea.”

Autumn’s lashes lift and she stares off at nothing. “Yeah. That’ll work. But you didn’t tell Brett we were coming here, did you?”

“No,” I admit. “I d-didn’t want to bother him with it.” He’ll undoubtedly be unhappy with me for it, but I’ll have to explain to him that it was in his best interest. Even now, I don’t want to drag him into things, but I can’t exactly go over there to have a serious conversation with his father without him finding out about it.

There isn’t a point in wasting time. I give Autumn the directions to Brett’s place. Although I have a key, it feels rude to just walk in when I have company, so I knock. Mr. Mason will be home today; he does most of his work in his home office. After a moment, he just so happens to be the one who answers the door.

“Hey, Vic.” He glances at Autumn curiously, but his smile doesn’t waver. “Brett’s still asleep. He was out late last night at a study group. Come on in.”

“Actually, I c-came to talk to you,” I say, stepping inside. “If you have a minute.”

He blinks once, closing the door behind us. “I’m getting some things ready for court on Monday, but I can spare a bit, if it’s important.”

“It’s important,” Autumn assures him.

He glances at her again, and I figure I should probably introduce her. “Th-this is Autumn Dixon. She’s, um, Callie Wheeler’s best friend.”

An indescribable look passes over Mr. Mason’s face, and I think he’s probably worried for me, and confused, and maybe a little annoyed that I would be “fraternizing with the prosecution” or something like that. But as quickly as it was there, the look is gone and he’s all polite business again as he offers a hand. “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Dixon.”

She takes the offered hand and shakes it. “You, too. Just Autumn is fine.”

Mr. Mason ushers us into his office, where I take a seat in the chair I’ve sat in way too many times over the last several weeks. Autumn sits beside me, looking around in awe. It definitely feels like we’ve stepped from a pristine household into a law office. It should say something for how good Mr. Mason is that although he’s part of a law firm, he rarely has to go into his actual office except to meet with clients he doesn’t trust to have at home. Frankly, I don’t think I could work with people I was afraid of, but that’s just me. Mr. Mason is a unique sort of man.