by Bryce Gibson
“I’m just doing this for your own good,” Tristan said.
I realized then why he’d been at the Williston’s barn the day that Lisa and I had seen him there. There must have been other hunting cameras in the cabinet, and he’d been getting the SD card from one of them. He must have gone home and loaded the files onto his computer and then used his phone to take a picture of the monitor so he could bring it with him that morning. In some kind of twisted way, he thought that, by showing me, he was helping me out.
Finally, I gathered up the rest of my words and continued. “Cade must have manipulated her into it. I know all about the WHC, and how y’all...”
“You’re right,” he cut me off. “The things Cade and I did were wrong, but I’m not hear to talk about that stupid club. I’m done with all of that.” Tristan closed the image and put the phone back in his pocket.
“What are you here to talk about then?”
“Lisa,” He stated bluntly. “Listen, he was only with her one time, and afterwards she wouldn’t leave him alone about it. She latches onto you, Blake. She won’t let go.”
I shook my head. “You’re crazy,” I told him.
“There’s something about her. It’s like she gets obsessed with you or something.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” I told him. “If that was the case...”
“Once she realized that Cade didn’t want to have anything else to do with her, she was determined to keep their little fling secret. She doesn’t want anybody to know how much of a skank she really is.”
“You’re no different.” I realized that I had started to think of Cade and Tristan as a single unit—The WHC. I wanted to punch him. I wanted to hit him harder than I had hit Cade that day at school. I wanted to knock his teeth out and make his nose bleed. I wanted Tristan to walk away from the fight with two black eyes compared to my one.
I threw the weight of my body onto him, and both of us fell to the ground. I was on top of him, and I raised my fist high over my head and brought it down onto his chest. When I tried to hit his face, Tristan blocked my blows with his arms.
His hands eventually grasped onto my forearms. He was a lot stronger than me and was able to hold me off. Eventually, he put all of his strength into what he was doing and flipped me over. The back of my head thudded on the ground so hard that I actually saw a brief flash of white.
I think I went out for a second, but, when everything settled again, Tristan was straddling me. I tried swinging my closed fists at him, but all I was able to do was brush his shirt.
Finally, he let me go and hoisted himself off me. He sat down next to where I was lying and started brushing the grass and dirt off his jeans. “Believe me, you don’t want to do this.” He chuckled. And he was right—I didn’t want to fight him. That had been a really bad idea. I rolled over and pushed myself to my feet. By then, Tristan was standing. “There’s one more thing I wanted to show you.” He reached into his back pocket. He pulled out a folded piece of paper and tossed it toward me. “I don’t understand it. Cade found it in his dad’s stuff. Just think about the facts, okay?” And he walked away.
I unfolded the piece of paper and couldn’t believe what I was looking at. It was a picture of carrots growing in a garden. The green tops spelled out two names—Davey and Lisa.
When I got home, I slammed the door so forcefully that the framed pictures rattled on the wall. Dad had already left for work, and I went upstairs to shower and change clothes.
Under the hot spray of water, I did what Tristan suggested—I thought about the facts, and there was one thing that bothered me more than anything else. Lisa had been lying to me all along.
THINGS AT SCHOOL WENT downhill. My mind was so preoccupied with everything else that was going on that I could barely pay attention in any of my classes.
If I had thought that everybody had been avoiding me before, now it was like I had the plague. I got death-stares from most of the students for just walking down the hall. I realized what Cade’s prank had done. It had turned all attention toward me—the worst thing you could do to somebody with social anxiety.
It got so bad that I even avoided the picnic table on my lunch break. I figured it was possible that Cade could turn up any minute, and if he did, he would be out there waiting around the corner of the building just like he used to. So instead of going outside, I sat at a corner table in the cafeteria by myself.
The day trudged on like this, and I thought the final bell would never get there. Mrs. Reynolds had been right. Cade’s latest prank was a crafty one. In the classes that he and I shared, I looked at his empty desk from where I sat in the corner and thought to myself—he has the upper hand, and he’s not even here.
I WAS ON THE SCHOOL bus when I heard that Cade was dead.
It was raining, and the bus was moving extra slow through the downpour. It seemed like it would take forever for us to reach the drop-off spot in front of my house, and I just wanted to escape.
The news had spread through the bus the way I imagined a virus would work its way across the programs on a computer, crippling each one in its path. Nobody approached me and told me personally, but I heard it from the guy sitting in front of me who was whispering the news to his friend.
Soon, everybody had their phones out, texting and reading the story on social media. A girl who was sitting several rows up from me burst into tears because of what she was learning. I wondered if she had been another one of Cade’s conquests.
Just to make sure that what I was hearing wasn’t another of Cade’s pranks, I pulled my own phone out of my jeans pocket. After connecting to the internet and searching for Cade Williston, the first thing that came up was an article from a local TV station. It had to be true if it was on the news, right? I clicked the link and began to read.
According to the reporter, around two-thirty that afternoon, Cade’s body was found in the woods about a mile from where his truck had been abandoned in the corn field. It appeared that he had been attacked with a sharp object.
I turned off my phone, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. My stomach clenched itself into a tight ball. I felt sick. It was no secret that Cade and I hadn’t been getting along, and I knew what all of this must look like.
I thought about what Tristan told the cops two nights earlier—Cade had smeared the inside of his truck with possum blood because he wanted people to think, even for the briefest of moments, that he had been murdered. After setting the prank, Cade hadn’t made it far.
The bus finally stopped in front of my house, and I stood from where I was sitting on the back row. I didn’t look at anybody as I walked down the aisle, but I could feel their eyes on me.
I pushed my umbrella open as soon as I was off the bus, and I started walking toward the house. Just a few seconds later, I heard the revving of the bus’s engine behind me. I stopped and looked over my shoulder.
From the other side of the bus windows, the other students were staring at me. I knew what they were thinking—I killed Cade.
Lisa was already at the house when I got there. She was sitting on the top step of the porch. The overhang of the tin roof shielded her from the falling rain. When she saw me approaching, she stood. I could tell by the look on her face that she already knew what happened.
“We have to get rid of all of it,” I told her. “The pictures, the hunting camera, all of the stuff you made for the billboard, everything. If the cops find out how far all of this has gone... if they see how much we hated Cade, you know what they’ll think.”
Lisa shook her head. “They’ll find out anyway, Blake. And if we hide everything, when they do find it, things will only be a thousand times worse.”
“Well then,” I said. “We tell them the truth about everything.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“No. I mean we tell them everything. I know about you and Cade. I saw pictures, Lisa. Why have you been lying to me?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re hurting me,” she said.
I loosened my hold, and she jerked her arm away. She knew she had been busted. She started down the steps, but she was stopped dead in her tracks by the deputy’s car that was pulling in the driveway.
WE TOLD THE DEPUTY about Cade and Lisa, the probability that Mayor Williston had paid off the sheriff to remain silent on his son’s night-hunting offense, the WHC, our plan for sabotaging the grand opening of the shopping center, and that we’d seen Tristan sneaking around the Williston’s barn the same day that we had been there.
But, even after all that, I suspected Charley17 may be the one to blame for Cade’s death.
“So let me get this straight,” the deputy said. “You think that this Charley person you met online is obsessed with you. He started sending you weird messages over the internet, you think he has been following you around wearing a rain jacket, and now, because you deleted your account, you think he might’ve snapped and committed murder?”
I nodded my head.
“Hell, at this point, I’m not ruling out anything. Can you show me the profile?”
“I’ll get my computer,” Dad said, and he left the room. He came back a minute later with his shiny silver laptop in both hands. He placed the computer in front of me on the table and pressed the power button.
The deputy moved around the table so that he was watching over my shoulder. I clicked on the browser search bar. After going to The Reading Buddy site, I found Charley17’s profile, but when I clicked I got the message that the it had been set to private.
“It looks like I’ll have to re-open my account and send him a new buddy request.” I clicked on the Log In tab and was able to reopen my account by entering my password. Then I clicked back to Charley17’s profile and sent him a buddy request. “Now we wait for him to take the bait.”
It was just a minute later that the computer dinged with an incoming message. The quick response time caused my skin to crawl. Charley17 had already accepted my request.
YOU AND CHARLEY17 ARE NOW BUDDIES. START READING AND SHARING.
“That is creepy,” the deputy admitted. “Go to his profile before he realizes that something might be up. Do it before he has a chance to think that he is in some kind of trap.”
I clicked on Charley17’s profile picture, the werewolf mask. “See, it’s empty,” I told him.
“Send your login info to this email.” From over my left shoulder, the deputy slapped a ripped corner from his yellow paper onto the table. “Pronto. We’ll get a cyber team that will be able to trace everything to see where Charley’s messages are coming from. Hopefully we’ll get this case solved before ya’ll move to Columbia.”
Lisa looked at me, and her mouth dropped open. I, like her, was speechless. Her finding out like this was the last thing that I wanted. She jumped up from her chair and stormed off. I followed after her, but she was already out the front door, and by the time that I was on the porch, she was halfway across the driveway.
“Lisa!” I yelled after her.
She spun around so that she was facing me. “How long have you known, Blake?”
“A few days,” I admitted. “I was going to tell you that day we were at your house, but...”
“But we started fooling around,” she said. “I see how it is. They drew you into their little games, didn’t they?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Cade and Tristan. You’re just like them. You’re only after one thing.”
“No. It’s nothing like that.”
“I’m going home,” she said.
chapter twenty
JUST WHEN I THOUGHT that things couldn’t get any worse, they did.
The day after Cade’s body was found, Mrs. Reynolds decided that it would be best for me to withdraw from school. The plan was for me to resume my education once I got to Columbia. Dad’s job allowed him to take the rest of the month off so that he could prepare for the move.
With both of us being at home, the process of packing up the house was kicked into high gear. By the time that mid-afternoon rolled around, most of the living room and dining room was finished. I was pulling the roll of tape across the top of a box when the doorbell rang. Dad was already on his feet, and he went to the door.
From where I was sitting on the floor in the other room, I could hear the voices. Dad was talking to Deputy Roper. “Is Blake around?” The deputy wanted to know.
“Yes,” Dad answered, “Is something wrong?”
“Well, Mr. Thomas, there’s something I need to talk to both of you about.”
Then there was the sound of the door shutting, followed by heavy steps across the floor. “Blake,” Dad called. “Deputy Roper’s here. He needs to see you.”
By then I was already standing, and I went into the foyer where I leaned against the doorframe with my arms crossed.
Deputy Roper looked at me and nodded his head before he started speaking. “We found Charley,” he said. My heart skipped at the mention of my Reading Buddy, who I suspected of stalking me and killing Cade. “But here’s the thing,” the deputy continued. “There is no way Charley had anything to do with what happened to Cade Williston.” Out of the corner of my eye I could see Dad glance in my direction. “You were right about one thing though. Charley is in Columbia, but here’s the kicker—he’s been in a mental hospital the whole time. They’ve had him on suicide watch for the past eight months. It’s impossible that he would be anywhere but there.”
On the day that Charley had sent me the creepy message about wanting to live together, he’d said that he thought that the apartment he picked out would be a big step up from the crazy house. Now I knew that he hadn’t been talking about my time in the mental hospital. He had been referring to his own.
“The guy has a long history of being abused by both of his guardians,” Mr. Roper continued. “It really messed him up. His therapist thought it would be a good idea for him to join The Reading Buddy site. He thought it would be a good way for Charley to begin to interact with others.”
That made sense. After all, it was that line of reasoning that Mrs. Reynolds had pushed me to do the same thing.
Dad spoke up. “So what do we do now?”
“Well, we have to look at all of this from a different angle. The fact is that Cade Williston was murdered, and somebody, most likely a local, knows the answer.” Deputy Roper was still looking at me, and I tore my eyes away from his stare. “If either of you think of anything else, don’t hesitate to give me a call.” The deputy went to the door, opened it, and looked over his shoulder before stepping outside. “I have a feeling that all of us will be talking again real soon.” And then he left.
As soon as the door was shut, I let myself slide down the wall so that I was sitting on the floor. Both Wolf and Zee came over and crawled onto my lap. They were pawing at my arms and licking my face. Dad looked at me and said, “We’ll get through this. One way or another, everything will be okay.”
Eventually, I got to my feet and went upstairs to my room where I let myself fall backward onto the bed. I stared at the ceiling and let everything begin to sink in. All of us—me, Lisa, Davey, and Cade—had been linked together our entire lives. A long time ago, Lisa and Davey were assigned to be together. Lisa had lied about messing around with Cade. Now, Davey and Cade were dead. All rationality pointed to either me or Lisa killing Cade, and I knew I didn’t do it.
Until then, the darkest moment of my life had been when I’d been trapped underneath the overturned pool with my dying stepdad. Now I felt like I had lost everything. Lisa, college, all of the progress that I had made—none of that mattered any more. I was done. I got up and yanked the progress chart off the wall, wadded it into a tight ball, and threw it across the room.
I went back to the bed where I eventuall
y fell asleep and dreamed that I was dead. I was in a closed casket and could hear the dirt being thrown on top of me. Eventually, my eyes shot open, and I knew that I wasn’t ready to be buried underneath all of this. I reached into my shirt and wrapped my hand around the pendant that Riley had given me. The oak tree was a symbol of strength. It was time to set things right. I clawed at the lid of the casket until it splintered into pieces, and I dug my way through the soft dirt, finally emerging zombie-like under the glowing moon.
When I woke it was dusk, and I was filled with hope. Back on the night that my stepdad had been running behind me with an axe, I had been sure that the keys in my hand would be my salvation.
I stood from the bed and went to the closet. The door was standing open, and I reached inside to the top shelf where there was an old, raggedy shoe box that I picked up. With the box in my hand, I lifted the top and dropped it to the floor. I reached inside and dug around the loose change and trinkets until I found what I was looking for—Morris’s key ring.
There were at least a couple dozen keys on the thing. In addition to the ones for things around the household, there were also the keys for the pool store. I searched through them all until I found what I was looking for. It was a small skeleton key with a round end. On the opposite side of the room, Mom’s memory box was sitting on top of the desk. That was where I went next.
With the metal box in my lap, I sat on the floor and leaned my back against the bed. Mom always said that only happy memories were allowed inside. Defining moments, she called them. After she died, I would often look through the contents to remind myself that those things had in fact happened. For the first time in nearly a year, I put the key into the latch. The hinges squeaked when I opened the lid.
Inside were snapshots of Mom and Dad, her and Morris, and several of me at various ages. One picture in particular caught my attention—I must have been four or five. I was standing in front of a shabby picket fence where I was feeding a carrot to a little black and white goat. Amid all of this, there was something that I had not seen inside the box before, and the sight of it now broke my heart—it was the paper groundhog that Morris had drawn for me. I picked it up and traced my thumb over its surface.