“They have a lunch buffet on the weekend,” Dad said, which had nothing to do with anything. “I wonder why they didn’t take her with them.”
“They asked her, but she said she wasn’t feeling good and she wanted to stay home and lie down. Except, when they got back, she was gone.”
“Maybe someone kidnapped her,” Anna said. Not the conclusion most people would jump to right off the bat, but, as our resident criminal, Anna has her own way of seeing things.
Kim glared at her. “Some of her stuff was gone, so they know she ran off. But now she’s been missing for more than twenty-four hours and who knows what’s happened to her.”
“She could be starving to death,” Paige suggested. I’m sure she thought that was somehow helpful.
“I think that would take more than a day,” Mom said. “Anyway, I’m going to call Trisha’s mother to see if there’s anything we can do. She must be worried sick about her niece. And goodness knows how she’s going to contact the girl’s parents!”
I slunk out of there.
So, she wasn’t dead, which was good, but a missing teen is no joke either. Besides which, it was still my fault, so I wasn’t feeling too proud.
I wondered if Trisha’s mother was going to tell Mom the truth that Riley wasn’t actually her niece. Not that any of us would ever hear about it if she did.
The next half hour saw me searching social media sites to see if I could find a way to connect with Riley, assuming she had her phone with her. I thought if I could reach her, I could make this whole mess go away by letting her know I’d never really have ratted her out. No luck.
Then it occurred to me that Kim might have her number. I couldn’t just ask for it though — not without raising a lot of questions. I’d have to find a way to get my hands on Kim’s phone.
That was possibly the most dangerous mission I’d ever undertaken. Kim once threw me on the entryway floor and bent my arm up behind my back until I cried. (Don’t judge me, you weren’t there.) And that was because she caught me with my hand in her jacket pocket, sneaking a piece of gum.
I didn’t even want to think about what she’d do if she caught me with her phone. Instead, I steadied my nerves and went back downstairs, formulating a plan as I went. Kim’s phone is practically an extension of her. If it’s not in her hand, it’s somewhere on her person. She wouldn’t take two steps away from that thing unless she was tricked into it.
In retrospect, I should have spent a bit more time on the plan, even though it worked up to a point. I waited until she sat the phone on the arm of her chair, then sauntered to the front door, looked out the glass and yelled, “Hey! Is that Luna Amatulli?”
Paige and Kim threw themselves from their chairs, hurled themselves to the door, yanked it open and flung themselves outside. As they did that, I dashed back in and grabbed Kim’s phone.
“Whatcha doing?”
I jumped about six hundred feet and almost dropped it, which would have been my life!
Anna!
I’d somehow overlooked her, and the fact that she finds all the hoopla over Lana Amatulli boring. She hadn’t budged from the couch.
“Nothing,” I said.
She smiled the smile of the happy blackmailer. There was no way I was getting out of this one scot-free.
But there was no time to worry about that now! I scrolled frantically through Kim’s contacts. Once, twice, three times. No Riley. The sound of the door closing told me I was out of time and I dropped the phone back where it had been. A split-second later Kim and Paige and their angry faces re-entered the room.
“What’s the big idea?” Paige demanded. Had she really expected the reclusive Luna to be strolling casually along our street?
I gave the fakest laugh in the history of fake laughs. Until Kim spoke.
“Who was touching my phone?”
Her tone was totally calm and flat, which sent a chill up my quaking spine.
“I, uh, it was, that is, I just—”
Kim was advancing on me and in my panic I did something totally bizarre.
I told the truth.
Or, at least, part of it. I told her I’d been looking for Riley’s number.
“I was embarrassed to ask for it because I knew I’d have to admit why,” I explained. “I said something mean to her the other day and I wanted to let her know I was sorry.”
Kim was barely an inch away from me by then, leaning in, eyebrows practically touching. She paused and I could see she was deciding whether or not I’d been telling the truth.
And then she hugged me.
I could hardly believe it. Not only was I off the hook with Kim, but Anna’s face told me she knew she’d lost her ammunition against me.
I felt great, until I remembered Riley was still missing. And I still didn’t have her number.
Then I thought of Steve, which I should have done in the first place. He definitely had Riley’s number since she’d sent him the video. I shot him a quick text.
I need Riley’s number.
His answer was back in seconds.
What do you want it for?
I was halfway through answering when something stopped me.
Steve also had the video. What if Riley had been telling the truth when she insisted it wasn’t her who sent it out?
Could my best friend have done it? Was that even possible?
I backspaced the message I’d begun and wrote instead:
Actually, never mind
Things started running through my head. For starters, there was the way Steve obviously felt left out when I suddenly became popular. But there was more than that. He’d been angry about the picture with Skylah, and his reaction to the photo with Luna Amatulli hadn’t been great, especially when he got cut right out of it when it was posted on Strandz.
I also couldn’t help remembering the way he’d practically defended whoever sent out the rooftop video. As if it was nothing but a harmless joke.
And one other thing poked its way into my head — the disappointment in Steve’s voice the day he’d said no one would ever see him skywalking. Well, they’d seen him now, even if the focus moved to my terror afterward.
Then I laughed right out loud. What was wrong with me? How could I think for one minute that Steve would do something like that to me? I knew the guy. I’d known him my whole life.
There was no way he had anything to do with that video being shared all over Breval.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Two more days went by with no sign of Riley. Kim kept us updated on what was happening. Or rather, what wasn’t happening.
There was talk at school and talk just about everywhere you went. And sightings! There were enough sightings for two or three Rileys, but none of them turned up anything other than a few interesting stories.
One old fellow claimed she was asleep out behind the shed in his backyard. The police checked into that only to find the neighbor’s German Shepherd there, along with three new puppies.
Then a nineteen-year-old girl working nights at a drive- through claimed a girl matching Riley’s description had approached the window on foot and asked for something to eat. She later admitted she’d made the story up in case there was a reward. I don’t know how she thought she’d qualify for a reward by telling a pointless story, even if there had been one.
I listened carefully to everything, hoping for a grain of truth or a hint that would help me figure out where she was. I couldn’t focus in class and even had a hard time paying attention to Denise when we ate lunch.
Tuesday felt like it would never end and by the time school let out on Wednesday I couldn’t take it any longer. In an act of pure desperation, I walked over to Trisha’s house instead of going home. She answered my knock.
“Hi, Derek.”
“Hi, Trisha. I was looking for Riley’s
phone number.”
“What for?”
“There’s something I want to tell her. I think it might help.”
Trisha recited a number.
“Whoa, hold on!” I pulled out my phone and input the number as she repeated it slowly.
“It won’t help though,” she added when I’d input Riley to my contacts. “She took out the battery.”
I wondered why she hadn’t started off with that detail, which seemed pretty significant, but a deeper question came to mind.
“How do you know that?”
“The police told my dad. They said the last time her phone pinged she was somewhere near the dental clinic.”
“What day was that?”
“Sunday. It hasn’t been on since. That’s how they figured she took out the battery.”
It wasn’t much of a starting point, but it was all I had. I made my mind up to head that way after supper. Once I’d done my chore for the day, which was loading the dishwasher and wiping the table and counters, I told Mom I was going for a walk. She smiled and winked and told me to have a really nice time.
I realized she assumed I was going to see Denise, which was actually a great idea. I texted her and she agreed to meet up with me at the end of her street.
She was already at the corner when I got there. Plus she was holding two big, fat oatmeal raisin cookies. She passed both of them over.
“Don’t you want one?” I asked. I tried not to sound pushy about it.
Denise laughed. “I actually had four with me when I left the house,” she said, patting her stomach happily.
In spite of that, I thought she was looking a bit too fondly at the unbitten cookie in my free hand so I dropped it to my side and out of her line of vision. No point taking unnecessary risks.
“So, where are we going?”
“Just for a walk,” I said, which wasn’t a lie, but also wasn’t exactly the whole truth.
She didn’t ask anything else, not then anyway. We started walking and she was close enough that our arms brushed sometimes. Every so often she looked over and smiled at me and I liked that.
When we got to the dental clinic, I found myself looking around, trying to think of where Riley might have been heading when she came this way. The clinic is at the top of a hill near the outskirts on the south side of town, which offered a great view. Unfortunately, that’s all it offered.
“Are you looking for something, Derek?” Denise asked, breaking into my thoughts.
“Kind of.”
“Is this about Riley?”
I sure hadn’t expected that. “How did you know?”
“You’ve been super distracted since she went missing.” She turned slowly, making a circle, her hand shading her eyes as she peered around. “So, why here?”
I explained what Trisha had told me earlier. “I know that was three days ago, but I had some crazy idea I might get a hint about where she was going.”
“Nothing, huh?”
I shook my head. And then I blurted it out, how I’d found something out about Riley and had told her I was going to spread it around because of what she’d done.
“I think that’s why she took off,” I finished.
“What do you mean, about what Riley did?”
“The video on the roof of the train station,” I said. “She’s the one who posted it.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“No, she tried to deny it, but it had to be her. She made the video, and the only other person she sent it to was Steve. Until last week.”
Denise frowned. She looked like she was about to say something else when a thought flashed in my brain.
“I have an idea!” I said excitedly.
“About where she is?”
“Yeah — come on!”
I hurried down a path to a lower street with Denise right behind me. Ten minutes later we’d crossed through to a now-familiar sight in town.
The old train station.
“I just remembered, that day when we were on the roof, Riley said she felt safe from the whole world,” I told Denise.
Denise stared at me. “And?” she said.
“So, I think she might be there.”
“On the roof?”
“Maybe. Or inside — it would be an ideal place to hide out.”
“But you’re already in trouble over this place,” Denise said. “Imagine what would happen if you got caught in there again. Besides, you can’t go on the roof.”
She was polite enough not to mention that I became a human jellyfish up there.
“I have to check,” I said.
“Okay then,” Denise said.“I’ll stay here and keep watch. If I see anyone coming I’ll send you a text to get out quick.”
Ten minutes later I was making my way up to the door onto the roof. I moved as quietly as the creaky old wooden steps would allow and when I reached the top I slowly eased the door open.
And there she was, not ten feet away. She looked so small, sitting cross-legged and hunched over, swaying slightly and singing a low, mournful song.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Itapped gently on the doorframe. Riley stiffened for a second and then swung around slowly.
“Hi,” I said.
“This is not really happening,” she said.
“I need to talk to you,” I said, trying to ignore the way she irritated me, even when I was trying to rescue her.
“So talk.” She stood and smirked. “You’re welcome to join me out here.”
Normally, this would be the place in the story where the hero overcomes his fear and walks right out, proving how determined he really is to do the right thing.
But not in my story.
“I can’t,” I said. “I’m way too afraid of heights.”
I expected her to make fun of me, and I think she was going to — at first. Her chin lifted and her eyes were mocking, but when she opened her mouth, something stopped her.
Her face changed. Slowly, like the scorn was melting away. And the next thing I knew, she was sobbing.
I did take a single step forward, because it seemed the decent thing to do would be to go to her and give her a shoulder to cry on or something. It was impossible. I couldn’t make it past the doorframe, or even let go of it.
“Um, you want to come inside?” I said, feeling awkward and embarrassed.
To my surprise, she stumbled forward, nodding, and followed me inside to the landing. Since I didn’t have a clue what she was crying about, I just waited for her to speak. When she did, it was nothing I expected her to say.
“I’ve never been that brave,” she said.
“Huh?” I said.
A smile trembled on her face for a microsecond, and was gone.
“Brave enough to admit I was afraid of anything,” she said. “I could never do that.”
“Is that why you make stuff up?” I said. It was a bit of a wild guess, but for once I got something right.
“That’s exactly why,” she said. She looked, I dunno, a bit amazed, at my insightfulness, I suppose.
“I figured,” I said. And nodded wisely.
“I always feel there’s too much risk in telling the truth, that if they know the facts people will look down on me, and I won’t have any friends.”
Then she told me a bunch of stuff about herself and her family and I could see why she might not want to go around broadcasting some of it. It’s her business, so I won’t say any more about it, but it put her in a completely different light.
When she was finished talking, she said, very softly, “Please don’t tell anyone.”
“That’s why I’m here,” I said. “I wanted to let you know I wasn’t really going to do that. I just said it because I was upset about the video.”
“I told you I d
idn’t do that,” she reminded me.
“Yeah, but you make things up,” I said. “So I didn’t believe you.”
Then I smiled to show her I wasn’t mad about it anymore. That only made her stick her chin forward and some of the blaze came back to her eyes.
“I said, it wasn’t me!” she repeated.
And I knew, right then and there, she was telling the truth.
That only left one possible culprit. Steve. The friend I’d been so sure could never have done such a thing.
But I had no time to think about that right then. Riley needed to go home, and I was going to persuade her to do just that no matter how long it took.
It didn’t take long. I think she was hungry and tired and probably lonely after days hiding out by herself. But she was also nervous about facing everyone, which made her more than willing to have Denise and I walk her home.
Man, were they glad to see her! There were hugs and tears and more hugs — it looked like it might go on for a while so Denise and I snuck off before we got dragged into the whole emotion-fest.
It was a nice night and after the Riley rescue we both felt lit-up happy. It would have been sweet to just keep walking for a while, but I needed to settle this thing with Steve.
I explained that to Denise and then walked her to her place.
“Good luck, Derek,” she said, leaning up and giving me a quick kiss. It landed kind of lopsided, half on and half off my mouth, which made her giggle.
I hated leaving her. But this had to be taken care of, and putting it off was only going to make it worse.
Confrontation isn’t really my thing so I don’t have a lot of practice. If there’s such a thing as the right way to accuse a person of something, it’s probably not what I did. I went straight to Steve’s house and knocked good and hard on the door.
“Why’d you do it?” I asked as soon as Steve appeared.
“Do what?” He looked puzzled.
“Don’t waste your time with the innocent act,” I said. “I know you’re the one who sent that video out.”
Steve blinked a couple of times, as if he was trying to bring things into focus. Then he looked me in the face, man to man, and his hands came up, like he was surrendering. For a second I expected him to blurt out a confession.
The Rise and Fall of Derek Cowell Page 14