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. She’s treating me like she used to treat Avery, and it’s cold and silent and so full of disdain my stomach shudders with queasy unrest. 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 threatening me with the knowledge you have now?”
“No – Sophia, I wouldn’t –”
“You would. Because you think like me. And it’s what I would do.”
And just like that, all my anger wells up and blocks my throat.
“I. Am. Not. You!”
My fist swings and accidentally knocks a vase over. It shatters, opalescent shards puddling on the ground. Sophia’s glare breaks into a smile.
“It’s about time you got mad at me! I knew you weren’t as cutesy and kind 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. So stop. Stop being such an ass. Let go of all this useless hate.”
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.
I am the villain.
And 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 me her back.”
I squeeze my hand, and nod.
“I will.”
***
Two weeks after we found the body, we decide to finally talk about it.
Kayla’s been avoiding me at school about the baby at the lake. I’ve tried to bring it up at lunch, break, but she refused to talk about 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 goes the color of thousand-year-old rice when I bring Lake Baby up already. If names were attached, she might just combust on the spot out of grief. I think that’s what it is. Grief. Or maybe shock. Or maybe a prolonged case of diarrhea. 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 worried 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 Tallie lately. They all must know about the grave. God, no wonder they all 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 shitty 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 am.” 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 let down 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 and put up with groping boys who can’t tell the vagina from the anus apart while a DJ plays something about partying till the sun goes up from the Top 40 and people sneak cheap vodka from thigh-flasks,” I say.
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 I. 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 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 ba
rely 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. It was all bruised up. 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? Not just some part of your past that you can cut out and put 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 email picture and pass it to him over the computers. There’s a beat, and then;
“What is this, Isis?”
“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 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.
“Just random keysmash.
[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 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 them.”
“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.”
“This fed sent me the picture?”
“He turned it over to the bureau’s vault. He died five years ago of a heart attack. So it couldn’t have been him. Whoever sent you this picture – they either work there, or hacked into it. If they work there, they aren’t good news. And if they could hack something that secure, they are really, really bad news.”
“This is ridiculous –”
“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. And you all saw it. And 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 poop palace.”
“No. Emily left with the bathroom pass. You’ll have to wait till she gets back.”
“But what if I shit my pants? Do teacher salaries really pay enough to replace student underwear? I’m wearing very expensive underwear.”
This is a bluff. My underwear are 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 pizazz.
***
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 on his shoulders towards me. He would never approach me this boldly unless something dire was happening.
He slides a paper across the table. It’s a print out 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 ever been in five years. His green eyes are dark behind his glasses.
“I know you know more about computers than I do, or anyone in this school.”
“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 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 person –” He splutters and jabs his finger at the photo. “This person is dangerous. And they’re talking to Isis. What if they hurt 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 would
be exceedingly 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 grubs on me? Oh wait, I know – you’ll call in some favors and have my pudding privileges revoked.”
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 and 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 it more 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 shouts. “You fucking did, Jack! She’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 louder. “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 fucking knows about that, too –”