“I don’t remember a guy.”
“Are you sure? Think hard. Because I remember him being there, sitting with her at P.E., maybe eating lunch with her under the far tree in the quad.”
“What’s his name?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know his name, and when I see him in my mind, he has no face. My guess is that he’s someone we just don’t notice. Someone who flies under the radar. Maybe that whole bomb thing was for revenge.”
“Yeah, but it’s over. Bomb disassembled. End of story.”
“Maybe not. The cards are like threats.”
“Why would someone leave them for you?”
I run my fingertip over my raw eyebrow skin. “I don’t know. I haven’t figured that out yet. Maybe because my dad is the cop investigating all this?” I have another thought that I don’t want to say out loud. Maybe because it’s someone who thinks I can figure it out?
“Maybe. Still don’t get the link with Jo Moon though. I don’t see why someone would want to blow us all up because of her. That whole mess wasn’t our fault. None of us tied that noose for her.” Janae flips the ring in her lip around. “The only ones to blame are those irritating cheerleaders.”
“Yeah, but we all knew it was happening and nobody stood up for her. Nobody tried to be her friend.” My voice sounds intense even to my own ears. “What did she die for? To make a point?”
“Maybe. But her point to make.”
“Here’s the thing. Her point didn’t stick. We all thought about her and cried about her for a week or two, right? And now it’s as if she never existed.”
“That’s because none of us ever knew her.” Janae speaks louder and slower, like I’m hard of hearing. “We only knew her when we saw that video and when we read about her hanging from that tree. What did we have to remember?”
“So I think her friend, whoever he is, is trying to make her point again. And this time make an impact people won’t forget.”
“By bombing the school?” Janae says this like it’s the craziest thing in the world, and of course it is.
“Maybe. I think he did that whole bomb threat to scare us. To put us on alert. To make us realize we better start being nicer to the underdog.”
“Twisted.” Janae is quiet for a moment. “So he’s like an activist? He never really intended to bomb the school?”
“Maybe. But I also think he’s sending these playing cards to the cops, and maybe to other people besides me, as some kind of warning.”
“Of what?”
“I think he’s going to try again. Maybe he thinks the only way to make people really care is to make them hurt.” Saying it out loud makes me shiver.
“You’re scaring me.”
“I’m scaring myself too,” I admit. “I have to figure out who he is so we can stop him.”
“Or maybe we should just leave it to your dad. We’re talking serious shit here, Gabi. Life-and-death shit. No offense, but you are not qualified.”
“Maybe,” I say. But inside I’m thinking that the cops are doing everything they can. It can’t hurt to have another pair of eyes on this.
Janae spins her lip ring round and round, and she must be thinking along the same lines, because finally she says, “Can I see all the cards? Maybe the wording or the handwriting will help us figure him out.”
I run down, unlock Dad’s safe, and grab the cards. Chloe and Mel are watching music videos. Then I jam back up the stairs.
Now Janae is cross-legged on my bed and all intense. “I’m surprised the cops haven’t found a way to trace these cards,” she says after a while. “Like, you’d think the guy would leave fingerprints or have analyzable handwriting or something.”
“He’s too smart for that.” I go up to the mirror and examine my eyebrows. The skin is bright red and raw around where she plucked. I pull out the tweezers to clean up the hairs she missed.
“Creepy. They’re all the people cards. The jack, the queen, the king, the joker. He’s the joker, right? And the rest are us.” She’s quiet for a moment. “Huh. Most card games are games of strategy.”
“And some luck, in whatever card you draw.”
“Right. But mostly strategy. I wonder what significance these cards have? Is this a game to him?” She stops and stares at my reflection. “Are you crying, or did you tweeze a nerve?”
“Very funny.” I stick out my tongue at her reflection. “So how do we find him? Go through the yearbook and circle every senior we don’t know?”
“And then what? Stalk them? Listen to their voices so we can figure out if they’re your mystery caller?”
“We could try to send him a message.” I tweeze out the last stray hair. “And then trap him in some way.”
“Uh, Gabs? This is a kid who might blow us up into little pieces. Who hasn’t been caught by the police. This wacko is probably smarter than both of us combined.”
“He’s also a kid who doesn’t feel heard. Or noticed.” I turn to face her. “Maybe we can figure out who to watch if we can somehow set up a forum for him to be heard.”
“Like what? A peer counseling helpline?”
“Very funny. You don’t think he’s one of us, do you?”
“Not until I just heard you say that,” Janae says. “We do have a couple weirdos among us. Whoever handpicked our team picked out people from just about every clique. Even the ones who are their own clique because they aren’t a clique.” She stops suddenly. “Like what about Eric?”
“People know him—he’s not invisible.”
“I’m just brainstorming here. But it’s interesting, because what if they created this helpline to watch us? The listeners. Like what if their main suspects are on the Line?”
“Are you saying you and I are suspects?”
“No. Who could suspect us of anything?” She bats her eyelids all innocent. “At least you, anyway. They’d have to have regular kids too. Otherwise it would be obvious.”
“This is like major conspiracy theory.”
“Maybe. Do you remember Eric from freshman and sophomore year? Do you remember who he hung out with?”
“No,” I say slowly.
“Here, grab your yearbook from freshman year. Let’s check him out.” We flip through freshman year’s yearbook. I find his picture on page thirty-three. He looks like himself, only scrawnier. With his washed-out face and shaggy dirt-colored hair.
“Is this the guy you remember? The guy who hung with Jo Moon?”
I stare at the picture so hard it changes shape. “I’m not sure,” I admit. “But it’s possible.”
If it is Eric, I’ve got to stop him. Before he ruins his own life and everyone else’s.
29
The gun is gone.
When I go back to put the cards away, I see that the safe door has swung wide open under Mom’s desk, open like a dark, gaping mouth. I stick my head nearly inside the safe to make sure I’m not missing something. The smell of metal is so strong it makes me dizzy. I try to remember. Did I lock the safe after I came down to get the cards for Janae?
I don’t know. But the gun is gone. And so is my stomach. It has dropped completely out of my body and disintegrated onto the floor.
I run back to the living room. The television is still blaring. I see legs. Covered in jeans. Hanging over the edge of the couch in front of the TV. Not moving. I can’t tell whether they are Chloe’s or Mel’s. Even the thought of Mel in all her Eeyorish gloom makes the little hairs on my arms stand on end.
I stumble forward, trying to see what is attached to those legs. Blame it on too many horror movies, but my brain keeps flashing images of bloody bodies. I almost turn away, but then I remind myself that I have heard no gunshots. There is still hope.
Once I get close enough to see the hair, I know it’s Chloe. She’s either dead or asleep. I watch, trying not to shake uncontrollably and failing miserably. I hold on to the back of the couch and force myself to watch her chest. I am too scared to touch her hand.
It’s moving. Her chest. So she’s sleeping. I spin around, scanning the room for Mel. If Chloe’s asleep, Mel must have taken that chance to go poke around in Dad’s office. Possibly looking for the gun?
My eyes have gone all superhero on me. Maybe it’s the adrenaline, but I can practically see through walls. I’m twisting the knob on the door to the downstairs bathroom. It’s locked. I shake the handle.
“Mel, are you in there?” My voice sounds like it’s coming from somewhere else. I press my ear up against the door, but everything sounds muted. I bang on the door again. “Melissa! Open the door!”
I feel someone come up behind me and I whirl, ready to block. The irony hits me. Ready to block a bullet? This superhero thing has gone to my head.
It’s Chloe though, and I lock in on her eyes. She’s got her hands up, like “What the hell are you doing, talking to my friend that way?” But my eyes must tell her something too, because she pulls away from that stance and her own eyes widen and change from irritated to alarmed. Somehow she knows to whisper, “What’s wrong?”
I mouth back. “Dad’s gun is gone. Safe is open.”
She understands. Not at first, maybe, because she twists toward the office as if she’s going to go back there to check, to verify that the gun is really gone. But then she stops, looks at the closed bathroom door, and she gets it. She moves toward the door and raps her knuckles against it. Twice.
“Hey, Mel, you in there?”
No answer.
Chloe dips her head toward mine and whispers, “Remember what Mom used to do when we locked ourselves in there?”
I do. We used to eat candy in the shower. As part of her healthy-eating-for-our-whole-family philosophy, Mom confiscated our candy from Valentine’s Day, Halloween, and any birthday-party piñatas. As soon as we got home, we had to turn it over. If we gave her puppy-dog eyes, she’d let us each eat one piece before she stashed it away.
Of course it didn’t take us long to figure out we could hide some of the candy in our pockets before we turned it in. We found all kinds of creative places to stash it, and then we’d stand in the shower eating piece after piece, knowing we could wash any telltale crumbs down the drain. The wrappers were a problem though. If we dumped them in the trash, Mom might find them. So we balled them up and stuffed them in our backpacks until we could dump them.
We got away with it at least four times before Mom figured us out. She sat us down and explained that she’d set up the household nutrition for our own good. It all had the flavor of a great, big pep talk. That’s probably why we tried it again.
She caught us one more time after that. We’d locked ourselves in the bathroom, and we could hear her rattling the door. Chloe and I stood, cramming sweets in our mouths like starving street kids. Mom shouted ultimatums through the door. We both sank down on the shower floor, holding hands and panting, and I could smell our breath, mine chocolate peanut-buttery, hers sweet-and-sour sugary. Maybe it was the smell or maybe it was the thousands of calories I’d just consumed, but I felt like I might puke. We stayed there, sticky hands entwined, until Mom got the door unlocked with a tiny screwdriver.
She separated us and grounded us from any party where there might be candy, which was every birthday party and school party for the next six months. Apparently grounding from social events was much more effective than the pep talk because we never did it again. Plus around then Chloe and I took separate sides. I went with the Perfect Daughter Program, followed the rules, and dove into academics full force. Chloe decided about that time that Mom was a complete lunatic, that she didn’t care about Mom’s rules, and in fact she’d defy them as often as possible.
Chloe bangs one more time on the door, bringing me back to the present. “Mel?” she asks, and the unsaid question in her word hangs over my head. She spins around and dashes for the kitchen. I can hear her rummaging around in our miscellaneous drawer next to the silverware one, searching for that baby screwdriver.
She must have found it, because the rummaging stops and suddenly she is by my side again. I hear another voice behind me and I jump at least a foot.
“What’s up?” It’s Janae. I put my finger to my lips.
Chloe twists the screwdriver in the side of the doorknob, trying to find that secret button that pops the lock undone. And suddenly I realize what complete imbeciles we are. We’re about to barge into a bathroom with a deranged, depressed teenager who’s probably holding a gun.
I reach for Chloe’s shoulder to stop her, to tell her, Wait, let’s call Dad. We should let the professionals handle this. But just as I reach, I hear the pop of the lock, and she’s already pushing through the door. I follow, wanting to be first at the very least, not wanting Chloe to beat me, but I’m swimming upstream, and I can’t seem to move past her.
Until she halts.
Then I bump into her and Janae bumps into me from behind.
Mel is sitting on top of the toilet cover, her head bowed forward like she’s praying, a black metal object square on her lap. She is not touching it.
“Goddamn it,” she snaps. “Can’t you give me a tiny bit of privacy?”
I think we are all a bit out of breath and certainly shocked, and so it takes us a few moments to gather our words. I’m the first to speak. “Well, not if that privacy involves blowing your brains out.”
Mel cocks an eye open, and I see that her mascara has bled around her eyes. She looks like a monster. “You do realize there are no bullets in this gun, don’t you?”
I hadn’t. Well, I mean I knew my dad didn’t keep the bullets with the gun. Come to think of it, I don’t know where he keeps the bullets, but all this happened too fast to do much thinking at all.
“What are we supposed to think?” I try not to sound too accusing. “You locked yourself in the bathroom with a gun!”
Mel opens her other eye. “First of all, I wasn’t going to really do it. I was going to think about doing it. But then I look at this gun and there are no bullets. I feel royally gypped. In fact, I’ve been sitting here cursing my luck.”
I look back at Chloe and at Janae, who both seem to have lost the ability to speak. “You need some professional help.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“No, really. I don’t care whether you were really planning to do it or not, this is totally not cool. You need help either way.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been telling my parents that for the last three years, and you know how many counselors they’ve taken me to?” Mel glares at me, as if this whole thing is my fault.
I don’t know. But I have a feeling she wants to say.
“Zero. They come from the school of figure-it-out-your-damn-self, don’t lie down on some couch and share your soul.”
Janae finally speaks. Quietly. “You don’t actually have to lie down on a couch, you know. A lot of counselors don’t even have couches in their offices.”
“And how would you know?” Mel snaps her voice and her head, pointing her darkened eyes at Janae.
“How do you think I know?” Janae retorts, her cadence and tone mirroring Mel’s. This seems to work, because Mel goes all quiet. “And you don’t need parent permission, by the way.”
“Really?” This comes from Chloe.
“I’ve gone by myself before. In California, there’s some law that says if you’re over twelve, you can consent for counseling on your own. There’s a free clinic run by Central University. They staff it with counselors in training, so they’re mostly pretty young, but that’s not so bad. Sometimes the young ones are the best.”
“Really,” Mel says. The word is a statement, not a question. With attitude. But I watch her face, watch how she lets the idea sink in. And then she says the word again, slower, and it’s a question. “Really?”
“Sure. I’ll take you there.”
Actually we all take her there. Because even though she says she wouldn’t have pulled the trigger if there were bullets, I am not convinced. Janae walks with her, arm in arm. I’m glad f
or this, because now my superhero eyes have turned paranoid. I see every potential danger. I see how fast the cars barrel down the street, how they swerve around the corners, and how easy it would be for Mel to dive beneath their wheels. I see the rusty pocketknife in the gutter. I see everything.
Chloe and I walk about ten steps behind to give them a little privacy. I am tempted to link my arm in hers the way Janae has linked arms with Mel, but I worry that she’ll pull away. We haven’t walked like that since we were kids.
But she surprises me, because she’s the one to grab on to my arm. I accept it, grateful for something to hold on to, realizing now how shaky I am. Holding on to her settles me.
“So do we tell Dad?” Chloe asks.
“If we tell Dad, he’ll know I was in his safe without permission.”
Chloe fake-gasps. “Oh no! The golden child will fall from honor!” She laughs. “They probably wouldn’t believe it was you anyway. Somehow I’d get blamed for it.” I search for bitterness in her voice, but it must be down deep somewhere because I don’t hear it. “Why were you in there, anyway?”
I walk ten steps without answering. Then I take a deep breath and I tell her. I tell her everything I know (except for the part where I spied on her).
“Holy batshit,” she says softly. “I got a card like that too.”
I know this, but I don’t say.
“I found it in my locker. It was a queen with a noose around her neck. I didn’t realize it was related to any of the bombing crap. I just thought it was from one of the guys I dumped.”
“Did it look like that card you found in Dad’s wallet? The one with the ‘tick-tock’ written on it?”
She pauses for a moment. “Yeah,” she says. “I guess it did.”
“Why would you think one of your ex-boyfriends would have sent you something that awful?”
“I don’t know.” She scuffs her feet.
“And who was the queen supposed to be?”
“I thought it was me.” She says this to her feet.
“Seriously?” I stop walking. “Who the hell have you been dating?”
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