The Perfect Stranger

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The Perfect Stranger Page 22

by Megan Miranda


  At the end of class, I almost asked Izzy to stay, but she took off in the first stream of students. She didn’t make eye contact as she walked out the door.

  I looked up her class schedule on our computer system, saw that she had art history during fourth period, my free block. I had to make the effort—had to let her see that I was meeting her halfway. That I’d noticed her sitting here early, waiting for me. That I was listening.

  Mitch caught me in the atrium on my way to the history wing after the bell for last period. “Hey,” he called. “You’re not heading out early, are you?” But he was smiling, trying to make a joke of it.

  “No, sir,” I said, emphasis on sir, also a joke. “Off to schedule a research day in the media center for my students.” The quickest excuse I could come up with, since we were standing just outside the library doors.

  Mitch stepped closer, checked over his shoulder to make sure no one was near. Our voices carried through the empty atrium. “Coach Cobb was here this morning with his paperwork.”

  “I know, I saw.”

  “He’ll be back any moment now. I was on my way to see you. Didn’t want you to run into him on your own in the hall.” He lowered his voice again. “He’s not going to bother you.”

  Mitch’s words felt too thick and cloying, and I wanted to extricate myself. “Thanks, Mitch. I’ll be fine.”

  “I’d feel better if I accompanied you to the library. You can call me from your classroom whenever you need, and I’ll come. I’ll walk with you, just until this is all sorted out. Until everything’s back to normal.”

  “I’m not afraid of him,” I said. “Besides, there are cameras in the halls.”

  Mitch tilted his head. “There are no cameras in the halls. Those are motion sensors for the lights. That’s just what we tell the students, Leah.”

  “Oh,” I said. Oh. “Listen, thanks for the offer, but I don’t want anyone to make a big deal of it. A bigger deal of it, at least. I don’t want people to think I need the escort. I have a hard enough time getting my students to take me seriously as it is.”

  He smiled at that. “Don’t take it personally. It’s all in the reputation, and you don’t have one yet. It’ll come.” Just like in my last job. Reputation is everything, everywhere.

  I waited outside the library until Mitch disappeared around the corner, and then I switched direction and walked down the history wing, where the classroom doors were open, the teachers’ voices resounding down the hall. I peered inside until I saw Izzy, sitting at the desk beside the window, looking out.

  I angled myself so the other students wouldn’t turn to see, and then I coughed once in the hall. She turned her head at the noise, and she blinked when she saw me, her face frozen as if I’d caught her doing something she wasn’t supposed to be doing.

  I stared at her until she turned back around and raised her hand. “Bathroom,” she said, and then she picked up her purse and slung it over her shoulder. I heard her footsteps following as I walked down the hall, veering into the alcove just inside the women’s bathroom.

  I did a quick check of the stalls, throwing open the doors, but I was alone. And then I wasn’t. Izzy stood just behind me at the entrance, her body stiff, and I didn’t know what to say, what to ask, after all. But she was here, and that was proof.

  “Whatever you’re trying to tell me, I need to know,” I whispered. To hell with protocol.

  She looked panicked, cornered. “It can’t come from me.”

  “What can’t come from you?” I squeezed my eyes shut. “Please, Izzy.”

  Her eyes darted around the bathroom, trailing over our reflections in the distorted mirrors. “Ms. Stevens, please. Please, you can’t say it was me. I know you won’t, right? You have to protect the source, right? I read your old articles, I saw how you do nameless sources. Can you do that for me?”

  I froze, reimagining the scene. My paper showing up on my porch. A question. Can I be a girl like this? I have something to say. Watching me, seeing if I was someone to be trusted, because she had reached that point and she didn’t yet know.

  “Yes, Izzy. I’ll never tell.” But she looked unconvinced. You have to give to get. “You know why I’m here, Izzy? Why I’m no longer there, being a journalist? Because I protected a source. Because I wouldn’t give her name. A girl not much older than you are now. You saw that in the paper you left for me, didn’t you?”

  Her fingers raised to her mouth, her brown eyes growing shiny with tears.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  And then she spoke, in a voice just above a whisper. “We ride together to school sometimes because we’re neighbors. Some days I have to come in early to finish work. So we hang out at the library. I saw an email screen once. I only read it because of the name. Because it said TeachingLeahStevens, and I thought that you were, you know, having some affair or something.” She looked to the side, to the mirror. “That’s what I thought.”

  She thought I was messing around with a student. That aura of I have one over on you that I could always feel coming off her. The way she’d bait me, as if to say I dare you to say something to me—because she thought she had me beat.

  All those emails I thought had come from Cobb. I saw them all in a different light now. Theo sitting at the library computer, breathing heavily at the screen. Typing vigorously, knowingly, waiting to see my reaction.

  “Everyone thinks Coach Cobb is stalking you, right? That’s why the police called you down to the office that day? Why they arrested him? Only it’s not him.” IT WASN’T COBB.

  The emails, referencing what I was wearing. The phone calls, down to a whisper. The prepaid phone that had probably been purchased with no identification. That I had believed was Davis Cobb—had imagined as I listened to his breathing on the other end, imagined the words whispered from his mouth, pictured his eyes watching through the window. Had I made him up all along? I felt sick to my stomach, dizzy and outside myself.

  “You need to tell someone.” And then I realized she was, that was exactly what she was doing, because I was that person. How to explain that I was not a reliable source any longer? That she needed to go to the front office, to Mitch Sheldon, to Kate Turner instead?

  “I don’t want him to know. Please. He’s my neighbor. If he can do this to someone else . . .” She let the thought trail, and I tried to focus my thoughts. “Ms. Stevens?” she asked, as if wondering what I was going to do. Whether I was going to keep my promise to her.

  “I’ll take care of it, Izzy. I promise.”

  And then I let her go. Let her disappear out the bathroom entrance while I waited for all the pieces within me to realign.

  * * *

  I SCROLLED THROUGH MY phone, to the number I ignored so often, pressed send, held it to my ear. It rang once, then cut over to an out-of-service message. Ditched when Davis Cobb got taken in by the police. The emails had stopped back then, too, until this last one after Davis Cobb had been cleared. I’d been called down to the office, and Theo had heard. He’d overheard the rumors, too. That Davis Cobb was stalking me. That Davis Cobb had hurt that woman by the lake. Was it possible that all along it had been someone else?

  The end-of-class bell rang, and I stood in the atrium, letting the crowd move around me. I closed my eyes, imagined getting lost within them, hearing all the voices around me—I could blend right in, I knew I could.

  So many bodies pressing together, so much noise. And then Charlotte said—

  Did you see what she did in—

  No fucking way, I’m not—

  So much goddamn work, if he thinks—

  “Ms. Stevens?” A cool voice in my ear. I opened my eyes, spun around to see Theo standing before me. “Are you okay? Ms. Stevens?”

  I stared at Theo, seeing him as someone new. Someone worse. All those messages I deleted, sent from down the hall in the school library.

  He’s the one who knows. He’s the one who sees.

  I opened my mouth, closed it again. Rem
embered Izzy’s eyes, her face, the fear in her words. “Yes, thanks,” I said, and then I continued on my way back to my classroom. Trying not to let it show how the words got to me, how they circled my head as I felt him watching, even now.

  CHAPTER 31

  It was Friday night and I was sitting home alone, waiting for everything to crumble down. Wondering where to go from here. And the truth was, I didn’t know. I couldn’t see the right way out, couldn’t trust myself enough to know I was seeing things clearly. I picked up the phone and called Kyle.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “It’s not Davis Cobb who sent me those emails,” I told him. “It’s one of my students. I think the calls might’ve come from him, too.”

  A beat of silence. I imagined all the things he didn’t say. “Didn’t you speak with him? The caller?”

  “It was always in a whisper,” I said. “Or heavy breathing. But the things he said . . . I just assumed, it made sense.” Are you home alone, Leah? Do you ever wonder who else sees you? I shivered, remembering that first call. It was after he’d shown up at my house, and it seemed like he was referencing that . . . “Anyway, the emails, I’m sure, are from a student.”

  “How do you know this?” His voice was deeper, closer somehow.

  “Another one of my students told me.”

  “Who is it? Leah, we need his name.”

  “I’m not going to tell you who told me. But the student who sent the emails is Theo Burton. I have a drawing he did of the lake. And another of me. And this piece he wrote . . .” I dug his journal out of the pile of schoolwork in my bag, read off the lines to Kyle: The boy sees her and he knows what she has done. The boy imagines twisted limbs and the color red.

  Silence hung between us. “Fuck,” he said. “He’s a minor?”

  “Yes.”

  He let out a sigh. I knew what it meant. We wouldn’t get to talk to Theo easily. He’d need his parents, probably a lawyer, the whole thing turned into a spectacle. We’d need proof, everything documented. They couldn’t strike until they were sure. There would be hoops to jump through, paperwork to adhere to, a long line of accountability.

  I, on the other hand . . .

  “Okay,” he said. “You’re sure about this, Leah? Because you were pretty damn sure it was Davis Cobb yesterday.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I know it’s probably not what you wanted to hear.” I wasn’t sure if he wanted to believe me, either. Because if he did, then his theory was currently breaking apart in his hands. He’d be back to square one. All he had right now was an anonymous witness. And even though Kyle hadn’t heard it yet, if Emmy knew Bethany all along and her boyfriend turned up dead, it all seemed to discount Davis as the tie that bound the case together.

  “Okay,” he said again before hanging up. He and I both knew it was time to start over.

  I opened my email, logged on to my private account. I began a new message addressed to TeachingLeahStevens.

  I wrote: There once was a boy who forgot about IP addresses and cameras in the library.

  * * *

  IT WAS DARK AFTER dinner, darker because of the rain, so I didn’t see or hear anyone approaching until there was a rapid knocking on the glass. I turned on the outside light so I could see first: Kyle Donovan stood there in jeans and a lightweight coat, rain dripping from his hair, a puddle forming around his feet. He raised his eyes to meet mine through the glass. “Can I come in?”

  I slid the door open, stepped back. “Aren’t you worried someone will see? Or is this an official visit?”

  “No,” he said. He ran his hand back and forth through his hair, shaking free the droplets of water. “It’s not.” Then he threw his jacket on the back of the chair, the rain dripping onto the scratched wooden floor. “Like you said, I already fucked up, right?”

  There was something wrong with him—facing away, nothing about him careful and contained—and my whole body thrummed as if gearing up for a fight.

  “Sometimes I think you were sent here to test me. To see what I’m made of,” he said, finally turning in my direction. But I could’ve said the same of him. I wasn’t sure whether to trust his motives, whether he was playing me to get information. And I wasn’t sure why he was here.

  I curled my hands on the back of the chair. “And? What are you made of?”

  He shook his head, laughed to himself. “I need to close this case, Leah. This is my trial period before I can get promoted. I came here for a fresh start, do you understand?”

  I did. And here was Kyle, his past shimmering behind, coming closer. “How come?” I asked.

  He shook his head at the floor. Why did anyone come here? Why did anyone pick up and move and start fresh? “My last job, I got tangled up in a case too personally. Crossed a few lines that shouldn’t be crossed. You were right about me, you know. I go after the truth. I go after it with all I’ve got.” He looked up at me. “The whole case got thrown out in court. He’s guilty, and he’s out there, and I couldn’t stand it. I can’t stand it. I proved it and still lost. You have no idea what that feels like.”

  Except I did. I was holding my breath, waiting for more.

  “I couldn’t really recover from that,” he continued. “Not in the same small town I’d grown up in. So I asked for a transfer, and here I am, and I’m doing the same damn thing, only worse.”

  The rain slid down the side of his face, and there was something so heartbreaking about him standing in front of me, confessing.

  Here’s something else they don’t teach you in school: Sometimes you just have to make a choice and go with your gut. To stake everything on it and be willing to fall alongside it.

  “I think Emmy knew Bethany,” I whispered.

  He tilted his head, didn’t come closer. “What are you doing?”

  “Helping you,” I said. It’s what we did in the field with the cops. We worked toward the same goal.

  “And why do you think that?” he asked, folding his arms across his chest.

  “Everything’s tied together somehow. I found an old picture, I think of Bethany.”

  “Where?” he asked. When I shook my head, he said, “I need to see it.”

  I felt the pull of the trunk outside, the information closed up tight, in the dark. It would be so easy to lift the lid and turn it all over to Kyle right now. To absolve myself of it. But without Emmy, all evidence threads went straight from me to Bethany. “I’m not giving you any more evidence that can be twisted around on me right now.”

  He shifted his lower jaw, then shook his head. He pulled open the nearest kitchen drawer, and it made me jump. He rifled through it, slammed it shut, then opened the next, and the next, my heart jumping in time to the rhythm.

  I lunged for him, grabbed his arm. “Stop,” I said. “Stop!”

  He spun around, my hand still on his arm, and I could feel the muscle, the nerve, twitching with restraint. “When did you find the picture, Leah?” he asked.

  “Right before you searched my house,” I said.

  He shook off my arm. “And you’re just now telling me?”

  I leaned toward him, the words coming out more desperately than I wanted. “But I’m telling you, Kyle.” It was a risk, couldn’t he see? I knew the gut instincts that I confessed could be used against me. I had been betrayed. And here I was doing the same thing, over and over, naively hoping the outcome might be different this time.

  “You’re telling me, but you won’t show me,” he said, as if this alone were a new piece of evidence stacked against me.

  But he couldn’t have it. Not until I had proof she existed. Otherwise everything circled back to me: Bethany’s picture, the bleach under the house, James Finley.

  I needed proof.

  There was one person. One person I knew could vouch for her, 100 percent. Who saw her in the flesh, who knew her as Emmy. Who watched as she took a very real knife to her boyfriend’s arm.

  If it got that far, to my arrest, I wondered if Paige would stand up for
me. If the police called her up, asking, I wondered if she’d say, Oh yes, I know who you’re talking about. I know the girl named Emmy. Or if she’d see an opportunity and seize it. Say, No, no, there was never any other girl at all. It was all Leah. It was always Leah. And quietly watch as I was locked away—a small thrill as she stared into my eyes to be sure I knew that she was the one who had done it.

  I had to hope there was someone else. Someone more who had seen her, who knew.

  “I still don’t know if you’re playing me,” he said, but he wasn’t asking. As if he didn’t want to have to know.

  “I can’t tell if you’re playing me, either,” I said. “You show up in the middle of the night, and here I am, spilling my fucking guts, telling you things that make me look bad. So tell me, Kyle, who’s playing whom here?”

  He stepped closer, spoke softer. “This case rests in your hands, you know that, right? My case.”

  I nodded. “I do. I know that.”

  “Okay,” he said. And he nodded to me, to himself, and he said, “I’m worried you’re going to ruin me.” And then he kissed me. Right there, in front of those big open glass windows, for whoever wanted to watch. He pulled my shirt over my head in one quick motion, scraped his teeth against my shoulder as he lifted me onto the counter, and I was lost.

  CHAPTER 32

  She arrived without warning, as one disappears. My sister. But before I knew it was her, when I first stood at the sliding glass doors and saw the blue car at the edge of the road, I thought: Emmy. She’s come back to apologize, to clear things up, to make sure I’m not here to take the fall.

  A terrible hope cut short when the car paused at the driveway entrance, as if she wasn’t sure after all. Then the unfamiliar car edged its way slowly up the drive, parking behind Kyle’s car.

  I knew it was Rebecca from the way she threw the driver’s-side door open, in a practiced, familiar move. “It’s my sister,” I said.

 

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