by Cat Patrick
“What?” I asked, annoyed at being startled.
“Ohmygod, Frankie, I think you’re right!” she said, eyes wide. “I think you’re actually right that she made these videos Thursday night—or at least recently.”
I couldn’t help myself: I grabbed back the phone to see if I could understand why Tess had flipped the switch from practically telling me I was a liar to agreeing with me so quickly. I stared at the phone, but it looked the same to me.
“She’s wearing the scarf she borrowed from me,” Tess said.
“So?” I asked.
“So she borrowed it on Thursday night!” Tess said excitedly. “She had to have made this that night!”
“Let’s go look at the school!” I said. “Maybe there’s a clue that will help us remember more of the dares. I really think that if we figure out what she was doing, we can help find her.”
“You’re being really . . . you’re . . .” Tess began, then paused for a few seconds. “You’re doing a nice thing for her, but you and Colette haven’t been exactly . . .”
She didn’t have to say it; I didn’t want her to.
“Just because you think someone sucks doesn’t mean you want bad things to happen to them,” I said.
Tess nodded slowly.
“Honestly, I think the police are our best hope,” she said. “But you were right earlier that trying is better than sitting around stressing out.” She smiled a little. “Let’s see if the school makes us remember anything else.” Ready to go, I started down the path toward the street; she grabbed my arm and I pulled it away, thinking, but not saying, Don’t touch me. “We’re only doing this until dinner, okay? It’ll be getting dark after that.”
“So?”
“So I don’t want to be out in the dark.”
That was surprising to hear since Tess had never been afraid of the dark before. In fact, all our lives, she was the one who wanted to go out at night.
“Fine by me,” I said, feeling unsettled by the change in Tess.
We plodded down the dune.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Tess asked as we trudged through the divots at exactly the same pace. She didn’t wait for me to say yes. “Colette came to my room to ask for the scarf, but while she was there, she told me something terrible. Her parents are making her move to Seattle after school gets out. I guess her dad got a new job. She said she doesn’t want to go and they got in a big fight about it and she stormed out of the house without telling them where she was going. She was really upset. She asked me to get her some cucumber water to calm her down, but she was gone when I came back.”
“Wow,” I said.
“You can’t tell anyone,” Tess said. “Mia doesn’t know.”
“Why didn’t you tell her?” I asked, my chest full in a good way because I had been told something that others hadn’t heard.
Tess shrugged. “You know how she is. I mean, she’s fun to be around, but she can’t keep a secret.” She paused. “I told the police, but they already knew because Colette’s parents told them about it.”
“Tess?”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe Colette really was making you a present with the dare videos,” I said. “But not a funny one, more a sentimental one.” I hesitated, then added, “More of a goodbye present.”
She tucked her hair back. There was a little knot in her hair under her ear like she’d been twisting it. “I guess that’s possible,” she said quietly. Then, because maybe that possibility stressed her out, she started biting the nail of her middle finger as we walked, in sync, toward school.
chapter 13
Fact: It’s possible to have a tornado and a hurricane at the same time.
TESS AND I stared up at the two-story redbrick building where we spent so much of our time: Ocean View Middle School.
“What time is it?” Tess asked, her arms wrapped around her middle, hunching over. I don’t know why some tall girls do that. I wouldn’t: I’d stand up straight and touch the ceiling to see how it feels.
“Four fifteen,” I said, putting my cell back in my pocket.
“Maybe this is a bad idea. We could get in trouble.”
“We won’t,” I said casually.
“I’m seriously so nervous right now,” Tess said, biting her nail. “I feel like I’m going to have a panic attack.”
“You won’t,” I said, because she had never had one.
“How are you not nervous?”
I shrugged. “I don’t get nervous.”
Sometimes I think that twins get unequal traits, like one gets all of something and the other gets none of it. Tess got all the nervousness and artistic ability and niceness and I got all the . . . I don’t know what I got.
Not wanting to think about that, I walked up to the front door of the school and yanked it open.
Tess’s eyes widened. “It’s unlocked?”
“Some of the teachers work weekends,” I said, shrugging again.
“How did you know that?”
“Because of when I did that Saturday kite-making class.”
“What if they see us?” Tess asked, looking completely freaked out. I didn’t know how someone who loved haunted houses thought going into our school on a Saturday afternoon was so terrifying.
“We could say we forgot a book or something?”
“How did you think of that so quickly?” She was still frozen outside the door.
“I just did,” I said impatiently. “Are you coming or not?”
“Ohmygod,” Tess whispered as she walked through the door I was holding open. I followed her in. She looked down the hall to the left, then the right. “I don’t see anyone.”
“Good! Let’s go!”
I started walking down the main hall toward the lockers for our grade. The gym where Colette had made the singing-dare video was just beyond our lockers. Tess followed me instead of walking next to me. Once she and Colette tricked me into watching a horror movie where the girl who went last got killed first: I didn’t remind Tess of that. She didn’t seem in the mood to be scared—any more than she already was. We went by classroom after classroom and they all had their lights off. They weren’t dark—just dim—because it was still light out, and they all had windows. The storm clouds had cleared.
“Maybe Principal Golden’s here,” I said.
“I hope not!” Tess whispered.
“When did you turn into such a scaredy-cat?” I said. This wasn’t normal for Tess.
“Shhh!” she whispered. “Be quiet!”
“No one’s in the hallway,” I said in my regular voice.
“Frankie, stop it!”
“Fine,” I groaned, walking in silence for a few minutes. But then, without warning, I became very aware of my socks crowding and tickling my feet inside my shoes; the scratchiness of the tag in my sweatshirt at the back of my neck; the elastic gripping my wrists. There was only one surefire way to get my mind off my grippy, prickly clothing:
To run.
I bolted, pounding my feet hard against the floor all the way down the hall, shaking my wrists as I went. Some person called an occupational therapist had told me to try running once when I was having a supersensory freak-out moment. It worked, so I do it when I can—not in the middle of class or something.
I didn’t stop until I reached the beginning of the locker bank. I doubled over and rested my hands on my knees, slowing my breath until Tess caught up.
“Did it work?” she asked.
I stood up straight and nodded once, brushing my bangs out of my eyes.
“Your hair looks cute,” Tess said, tilting her head to the side. “The curls are less, uh . . .”
“Frizzy?” I asked, frowning.
She opened her mouth to answer but her phone buzzed and startled us both, making me jump and making her squeal l
ike a mouse. I frowned deeper at being scared, but Tess burst into hysterical laughter because she loves watching other people freak out in fear. I couldn’t help but laugh a little, too.
When we calmed down, Tess pulled out her phone and checked it.
“Is it Mom?” I asked, stepping closer to look over her shoulder.
“No, it’s Mia,” Tess said, reading the text. I moved away quickly while Tess kept talking. “She’s back at her house, worrying about Colette. I mean, we all are. I should probably tell her what we think she was do—”
“No!” I shouted. Tess looked at me, surprised. In a lower voice, I said, “Mia’s not a part of this. She never was.”
When Mia had shown up in the middle of last year, Tess and Colette were fascinated by her mainly because she’d moved here from New York. At least that’s what I thought at first. But then Tess and Mia had art class together, and Tess thought Mia’s paintings were beautiful and her jokes were hilarious. Mia’s big personality is basically the exact opposite of Tess’s reserved one—and I guess Tess liked that.
And Colette got obsessed with Mia’s stories about riding the subway and seeing celebrities on the street corners and Mia’s general coolness. Tess was just friends with her, but Colette seemed to kind of idolize Mia.
But what my sister and my former best friend never noticed while they were friending or idolizing her was that Mia just didn’t get me. It was obvious. And because of that, our friend group changed.
So much that I wasn’t a part of it anymore.
Tess pursed her lips like Mom did sometimes. “I don’t understand why you hate her so much.”
“I don’t get why you like her so much.” Especially since she turned Colette into a total backstabber who said terrible things about your sister, I thought but didn’t say.
Tess sighed loudly but put away her phone without replying to Mia’s text. She flipped around and went over to her locker. As she was doing the combination, she said, “I don’t say bad stuff about your friends.”
“What friends?” I muttered, wanting to tell her that, by not standing up for me, she’d taken my single friend away. I mean, Tess could have made Colette understand that she’d been wrong. She could have helped Mia get to know me, maybe. Instead, Tess had gone along with the mean stuff Colette and Mia said by not saying anything. Her silence had told them it was okay.
I didn’t want to think about that anymore. “Why are you opening your locker?” I asked my sister. “Let’s go to the gym.”
“Because I want to show you something.”
Tess flung open the locker door. I walked over and stood behind her, peering in. It looked like a normal locker—well, normal for Tess and Colette. There was a magnetic mirror stuck to the back of the door surrounded by a bunch of photos taped up with emoji washi tape.
There was a shelf that split the guts of the locker in half and I could tell which part belonged to which girl immediately. On top, the books and binders stood vertically in a row, neatly organized and looking like they were issued yesterday. That was signature Tess. On the bottom, books, loose papers, and tattered folders with drawings all over them were layered in an organized mess, which was Colette in a nutshell.
“Look,” Tess said, pointing at the picture collage that covered the entire inside of the locker door.
“What?” I asked.
“Look at the pictures,” Tess said.
“What about them?” I asked, not getting what she was saying.
Tess rolled her eyes. “You’re in them, Frankie,” she said. I took a closer look and she was right: I was in at least a dozen of them.
“What’s your point?” I asked, stepping away.
“Just that even though you and Colette were fighting or whatever, she never took down the pictures of you.”
I thought about that, and the naturally skeptical side of me said, “That’s because she shares a locker with my sister.”
Tess ignored that comment, touching a picture of Colette. In it, Colette was smiling huge, jumping off something so her red hair was flying out in all directions. “I hope she’s okay.”
“Are you crying?” I asked, leaning around to look at her. Her eyes looked like tiny buckets.
“It’s just . . . seeing her face,” Tess said. “I’m really worried about her, Frankie.” Tess looked at me with big, sad eyes and it made my heart pinch. “What if no one finds her?”
“We’re going to,” I said. “Will you get out a piece of paper and pencil?”
Tess nodded and handed me a notebook with a pen stuck in the spiral. I sat down on the floor, leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the hall, stretching out my legs in front of me. When I did, Tess slid to the floor, too, stretching her legs out like a mirror of mine. The bottoms of our feet were only about a foot apart.
In the notebook, I wrote which dares Colette had done from dare-or-scare recently:
Running off dune dare?
Ding-dong-ditch . . . but with flowers.
Singing in public (gym).
Staring at something gross (Jake).
“We need to remember more of the dares,” I said, eyes on the page. “I think it’s important. I’ll bring this with us.” I started to rip out the paper. “And we can write down our notes. Can I borrow the pen?”
I reached across and handed the notebook back to Tess. She looked like she’d been blasted off to space while I was making the list. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Do you think she killed herself and wants us to find her?”
The words made my heart jump. It felt like too big a thing to say out loud, let alone think about.
“No!” I said. Then, “She better not have!”
“It happens,” spacey Tess said. “I read a book about it. You can think someone is completely fine and then they kill themselves. I mean, she had gotten into a fight with her parents. She was really upset about the idea of moving to Seattle.”
“You should read happier books,” I said. Then, rationally, I added, “People kill themselves because they have depression, not because of a single fight.”
“How do you know so much about it?”
“I saw a book at Gabe’s office once.” The conversation was making me feel on edge. I was starting to notice my restrictive clothes again. “Do you think she’s depressed?”
“No,” Tess admitted. “I don’t really know what that means, but I don’t think so.”
I didn’t really either, and I didn’t want to know. “Stop talking about that.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice a little more normal.
“Are you depressed?” I asked.
“No!” she said strongly, looking at me funny. “Are you?”
“No?” I said like a question, looking at her funny right back. “How do you know if you’re depressed?”
I wondered if depression was something you caught like the flu or Ebola and you didn’t know you had it until it was too late.
“You’re the one who read a book about it!” Tess said.
“I didn’t read it cover to cover,” I said. “I didn’t memorize it! I just flipped through it.” Then, “Let’s seriously stop talking about this.”
“Okay,” Tess said. She folded her legs into crisscross applesauce. “But if you ever feel, like, um . . . bad . . . you know you can . . .”
“I know.” Awkward pause. “You too.”
“I mean because friendships can be—”
“Don’t talk about that either.” I cut her off, looking back at the paper again. I drew a tornado in the corner, then another one, then another one. Without the notebook under the paper, the pen poked through and made marks on my jeans.
“Let’s just get back to dare-or-scare,” I said, standing up. “Let’s go to the gym and—”
A door slammed with a boom at the other
end of the main hall. Tess and I both looked toward the sound, then back at each other, eyes wide. She stood up fast.
“Come on,” I said in a low voice, pointing toward the gym, which happened to be in the opposite direction of where the sound had come from. “We can go out that way.”
We ran down the hall and pushed through the double doors to the gym as quietly as we could, our sneakers squeaking against the shiny floor as we hurried toward the door leading out.
When we were almost there, I turned back to look at the wide-open space. “Where did she make the video?” I asked, pulling out my phone and unlocking it. The screen was still on the singing dare.
“What are you doing?” Tess asked. “Someone’s coming; we have to go.”
“We will,” I said. “Just let me look really quick.”
I held my phone out in front of my face and turned in a semicircle, trying to match the backgrounds here to the one in the video.
“She was right over there,” I said, pointing. “Under the basket. See, you can see the edge of the poster in the video?”
“Frankie, we have to leave,” Tess said, pulling on me.
“Stop!” I said. “I’m trying to concentrate!” But there was no way I could let my brain remember anything when I was being rushed and pulled by Tess. I needed her to be quiet and leave me alone, but she wouldn’t. I was starting to get mad. “Stop touching me!”
“Stop yelling at me!” Tess yelled herself. “I’m leaving, and you should, too. We are going to get in trouble, Frankie. This is really stupid!”
“Don’t call me stupid!” I shouted, my throat tightening, my cheeks growing hot.
“Ugh!” Tess shouted, frustrated. “I didn’t say that!”
“Just leave and go hang out with Mia,” I said nastily. “I know that’s where you’d rather be.”
“I should,” Tess said. “At least she doesn’t yell at me all the time. I swear, I don’t know why you take everything out on me! And you’re so mean to Mia for no reason!”