by Hannah Jayne
“Not that one. Something new.”
“The one that isn’t out yet?”
“I told you R. J. Rosen wants me to help with the launch, right? He sent me a story. It’s on my blog.”
Colton nodded and broke into a huge grin. “I think that’s so cool, Addie. And you really deserve it, totally.”
She swallowed hard, something hard and dark in her gut. “He sent this piece of the story just before”—Addie sucked in a breath, forced herself to say it—“just before we found Lydia. Then after that, he sent another message.” She thumbed through her messages, then held up the phone to Colton. He squinted in the darkness.
“Did you like my surprise?”
Addie nodded.
“That’s it?”
“That doesn’t freak you out? Not even a little?”
Colton took her phone, raised one shoulder. “I’m sorry, Addie, but…no. He said he was going to send you a surprise. He sent you some story and then asked if you like it.”
Relief, cold and damp, exploded over Addie. She couldn’t hide her smile. “Do you really think that’s it?”
“They don’t call me the Secret Decoder for nothing.”
“Colton, nobody calls you that.”
He pinched his lips. “Could maybe you start that, then? Cuz I’d love to have a cool nickname in high school.”
“I’ll see what I can do. So I’m just being dumb and paranoid, right?”
Addie pressed her lips together. “I know. It sounds weird now that I say it. I just thought… I don’t know. I think I’m just freaked out all around.”
Colton shrugged, his shoulders going to his earlobes. “I know Lydia was a big fan.”
“I know she read the books.”
“She did. She was a big, big fan. Like, Addie Gaines big.” He smiled, his white teeth straight and almost glowing. “So I guess it would be really creepy, you know? ‘Author offs his biggest fan.’”
Addie wanted to smile but everything felt wrong. Morbid. Tainted.
“Yeah, I guess that’s dumb.”
“Colton!” A shrill voice came from over his left shoulder and Colton’s face flushed a fierce red.
“And I am so, so busted.”
For as big and lanky as Colton was, he moved fast. Addie heard his big feet bounding up the porch steps, then heard the gentle click as he tried his best to silently pull the door shut behind him. Then, “I’m right here, Ma. I’ve been here the whole time.”
Addie shoved her phone into her back pocket, laughing at Colton. He was trying to convince his mother that he hadn’t been out of the house. And, Addie decided, he was right—at least when it came to R. J. Rosen. Addie was being ridiculous. She grabbed her phone as she padded up the stairs, answering his message.
AddieGaines:
The story was an awesome surprise. Thanks!
He immediately responded.
TheRealRJRosen:
There’s much more fun in store for you—you just wait!
Addie wasn’t sure she could take much more “fun.”
Eight
The next morning, Maya rolled over on the bed, dug through her bags on the floor, then made a mad dash for Addie’s closet. She threw open the double doors and pinched her bottom lip with one hand while flicking through clothes with the other hand.
“What am I going to wear today?”
Addie nudged Maya’s bag with her big toe. “Why do you bring bags when you always wear my clothes?”
Maya turned and unzipped her bag, pulling out a mammoth makeup bag and an equally large plastic tub of gummy bears.
“Because while you have impeccable taste in clothes and a credit card with a healthy limit, you have dismal taste in makeup and a pantry full of off-brand sugary treats.”
Addie crossed her arms in front of her chest. “We have Godiva chocolate.”
Maya chomped the head off a red gummy bear. “What are you even saying? Anyway, you love this, this is what we do. I wear all your clothes and in return—”
“You paint me up like a three-dollar hooker.” She grinned.
Maya stuck out her tongue. “You love it.”
“I do. It’s a nice symbiosis.”
Maya pulled out a yellow top, held it against her. “Look who’s flaunting her higher education.”
Addie sat cross-legged on her bed, flicking on the TV and changing the channels maniacally.
“What are you looking for?”
“News.”
“Fascinating.”
“News about last night,” Addie said. She flipped channel after channel. “There has to be something. A girl is dead. Did your parents send you any information?”
Maya thumbed through her phone. “Contrary to popular belief in this room, my parents don’t send me criminal updates. But they do want me to be sure to have a healthy breakfast and not eat too much sugar.” She deleted the text while an anchorwoman broke into a segment on outdoor cooking. The Super News 6 icon shot across the screen, the words Breaking News emblazoned in animated red underneath.
“This is it.”
Maya shook her head, turning from the TV. “I don’t want to watch. I was there, I know.”
Addie turned the TV’s volume up anyway, leaning in.
“Tragedy strikes at Hawthorne High,” the buffed and coiffed reporter began. “Last night, two students from Hawthorne High School discovered the body of a third in the school journalism department. So far, there has been no confirmation on the identity of the victim or the circumstances surrounding the death. The police are saying that the death looks suspicious, but are offering no further statements. And now, on to weather.”
Addie clicked off the TV and frowned. “That’s it? Her name is Lydia Stevenson.”
“Was,” Maya said softly, eyes downcast. “Her name was Lydia Stevenson.”
Addie tried to blink away the tears that rimmed her lower lashes, tried to shrug off the heat that crawled up her vertebrae. “That’s it? That’s all they’re going to say? What happened to her? Don’t they know yet? They had all night.” She was off the bed, pacing, anger rippling through her.
Maya was shaking her head, arms crossed. “This is the way it goes, Addie. It takes time for a police investigation to go forward.”
“But we know her, Maya. We know her, and we told the police exactly who she is.”
Maya opened her mouth but Addie held up a finger. “Who she was, I know.”
Maya stepped forward, pulling Addie into a gentle hug. “The police need to notify Lydia’s parents before they’ll release anything on the news, and the coroner needs to do an autopsy. We don’t know what happened to her. You said it yourself.”
“It wasn’t bad mushrooms, Maya. She was murdered. You know it and I know it. Lydia Stevenson was murdered.”
Do you like my surprise?
***
Addie and Maya served themselves massive bowls of cereal. Maya wolfed hers down while Addie pushed her cereal around through the milk, watching the little Os get progressively bigger as they absorbed the liquid. Every once in a while, Maya would reach out and pat her best friend on the arm, offer her a small smile.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said softly. “We’re going to be okay.”
Addie nodded and started to feel a modicum better. When they were back upstairs in Addie’s room Maya pulled out a blouse, held it up to herself, and asked, “Can I pull this off?”
Addie cocked her head. “I think the question is ‘Can your imaginary man pull that off?’ And either way, the answer is no. You look like a funky banana. And besides, the tags are still on.”
Maya’s eyes flicked down to the still-attached price tag and bulged. “I’m pretty sure our house cost that much.” She clenched her fist. “Damn you, parents, for choosing public service over brute capita
lism!”
Addie snort-laughed to cover up her weird discomfort. Maya’s parents were both in law enforcement: her mother, one year in as the chief of police, and her father, a homicide detective. The Garcia family had moved to Crescent City when Maya and Addie were freshmen at Hawthorne. They had nearly every class together, and—as Garcia and Gaines—sat next to each other in every alphabetically arranged one. Addie was shyer than shy, and at the time, so was Maya. She was a little chubby with Coke-bottle glasses and brown-black hair that should have been glossy and thick, but due to puberty was stringy and greasy. Addie was the tall and gangly one, the one who would look great on a runway if it weren’t for her painful shyness, frizzy reddish hair, and inability to walk a straight line without stumbling over her own feet. Over the school year, the girls bonded over their shared awkwardness and kept it at bay by reading gobs of Gap Lake books and scrutinizing every detail. That first summer, Addie went away to a rich-kids summer camp in the Hamptons that she despised, while Maya grew three inches up in height and out in the chest area, got contacts, and developed an appreciation for boys who weren’t on the page. Their friendship survived even as Maya tried desperately to drag her best friend into the three-dimensional world while Addie flourished online. Maya loved that Addie was real and down to earth when every stereotype told her to be a bitch; Addie loved everything about Maya—in particular, the fact that she knew about Addie’s father but never, ever brought it up.
“Hey, your parents are heroes. That’s pretty amazing.”
“And your father could buy and sell this whole town.”
Addie sucked her teeth. There were a lot of people in the town who would angrily agree with Maya—and argue that the reason Morton Gaines was walking around free was because he did buy the town—or at least the police department. She launched off the bed, grabbed the yellow blouse, and yanked off the price tag.
“You know what? You should wear this.”
Maya pursed her lips. “I thought you said it made me look banana-y.”
Addie shrugged. “I’m jealous, okay? I look ridiculous in that thing. You’ve got the boobs for it.”
Maya grabbed her chest. “I do have great boobs.”
“You’re so weird.”
“I am. And now I’m going to take a shower.”
Addie rolled her eyes as Maya stomped across the floor and into the en suite bathroom. “God, your life is amazing!” she shouted—like she always did—before slamming the door and turning on the faucet. Addie grabbed her laptop from under the bed, clicked to her GapLakeLove site, and grinned at the ticker showing her page hits.
It was up by 1,500.
PinUp55: I love, love, LOVE this site!
PANDAPup: Best. Fanfic. EVER!!!!!
Joni1: I swear this might be better than the Gap Lake books themselves.
Addie pulled up her story file and started writing.
Jordan knew she should be careful. Crystal Lanier was dead. Jordan straightened her shoulders as she walked through the forest, the smell of mud from the lake surrounding her. She could hear the suck from her shoes each time she stepped and she tried to block out the thudding of her heart. Suck, suck, thud. Suck, suck, thud.
A twig snapped behind her.
A car door slammed outside and Addie jumped, her laptop sliding off her thighs and onto the bed.
“Jeez!” She clutched at her racing heart, then laughed at herself, rolling up onto hands and knees and peering out her window. But the car wasn’t in her driveway—it was in Colton’s.
It was Spencer’s car.
Addie scrambled off her bed and knelt in front of the window, low enough so that no one downstairs could see her peeking.
Spencer shifted the car into park but didn’t move. Instead, he rested his forehead on the steering wheel. Addie pressed herself up a tiny bit more to get a better view of her crush, crumpled against his steering wheel in her next-door neighbor’s driveway. What is he doing here?
They were friendly, Addie knew that. Everyone at Hawthorne High was pretty friendly. But Addie didn’t know Spencer and Colton were the kind of friends who hung out. She shrunk back into the curtains as Colton came out the front door and knocked on Spencer’s car door. They gave each other the obligatory boy head bob, then Spencer kicked open his car door.
She could make out something like “hey,” then pressed her forehead against the cool glass as Spencer and Colton walked to the trunk of the car. Spencer pulled out a cardboard box. He handed it to Colton, piled a smaller one on top of that, and took another two himself.
Was Spencer moving in?
She was enrapt, watching Spencer and Colton’s every move, heat racing across her body.
“You have the best shower,” Maya said, opening the bathroom door in a cloud of steam. She had a towel turbaned around her head and another wrapped around her body as she slathered Addie’s lotion on her arms. “I swear, ours is like a garden hose with a colander. What are you staring at?”
Addie sprang back from the window, landing with a hard thud on her butt. She blinked. “Nothing.”
Maya’s smile was wry. She crossed the room leaving wet footprints on the carpet. She picked at the curtains, peered out. “You’re spying on Colton. You can see directly into his bedroom from here. Dude, you’re kind of a perv.” She grinned and turned. “I must be rubbing off on you.”
Addie grabbed her curtains and pulled them shut. “I wasn’t spying on Colton.” She paused for a beat, then licked her lips and lifted the corner of the curtain two inches. “I was actually spying on Spencer.” She gestured with her chin. “His car is out there. It looked like he was moving in or something.”
“Maybe he’s just spending the night.”
“They barely even talk, though. Isn’t that weird?”
Maya shrugged. “They could be moving black market items and using Colton’s room as a temporary holding spot.”
Addie gaped.
“I’m kidding. You’re nuts. Look”—Maya jutted her chin toward the window again—“Spencer’s leaving. Mystery solved.”
“That doesn’t solve anything.”
“Because there’s nothing to solve, Sherlock Holmes.” Maya took a handful of gummies from her stash and shoved them in her mouth. “Not everything that happens is some crazy mystery,” she said with her mouth full.
“Don’t you want to know what’s in the boxes?”
Maya shrugged. “Nope. I want to know when I can start moving my boxes over.”
Addie raised an eyebrow.
“I could so totally move in! Your dad won’t even know I’m here. I’ll just lay low here in the west wing.” Her teeth were riddled with gummy bears.
Nine
“Oh. That’s not good.” Maya had her cell phone in her lap, a red gummy bear hanging out of her mouth.
“What’s that?” Addie asked, wrinkling her nose at the dresses in her closet.
“Rumor mill. People are actually saying that they think Spencer had something to do with Lydia’s murder.”
The word murder was a cold black stone in Addie’s gut. She could feel the color drain from her face, and the room started to spin. Addie didn’t want this to be real. She didn’t want any of this.
When she read Gap Lake mysteries, she secretly wished that something as interesting would happen in her town. When she wrote GapLakeLove, she lived in a world full of mystery and intrigue where everyone had some delicious secret, where every touch or conversation could mean nothing at all or a thousand wonderful, sinister things. She would close her laptop and drift off to sleep vaguely wishing that something would happen here in Crescent City, that there would be a big mystery, a big upheaval. But she never really wanted it.
“How do you even know that? We haven’t been back to school.”
Maya glanced up from her phone, then dangled it. “It’s all over social media
. People aren’t out-and-out saying it but…”
“How can anyone think Spencer is responsible? He’s just a kid—we’re all just…” Addie let her sentence trail off.
“He put that one kid in a coma, you know.”
Addie could feel the tension thrum through her, making her skin feel too hot, too tight.
“It was a concussion and it was an accident,” Addie muttered under her breath. “Everyone knew it was an accident.”
It had happened over a year ago when the Hawthorne boys’ water polo team was in the semifinals against Crescent High. It was a tense game made worse by two weeks of trash talking and a rivalry that went back to the seventies. Then the game was tied with only four minutes left. Addie didn’t remember much except some kind of skirmish, a lot of splashing, and the overwhelming crack of bone against concrete. Spencer was waist deep in the water looking dumbfounded as the Crescent High kid reeled backward. It seemed to go in slow motion at first, this guy sailing through the water, then everything moved very, very fast when his head hit the edge of the pool with a sickening thud. Addie remembered the collective whoosh of air from the astonished crowd; she remembered the sound of trainers plunking into the pool, pulling Spencer backward and pulling the Crescent kid out of the water. She had watched, transfixed, as they pounded his chest and patted his cheeks—and she had watched Spencer’s face, drawn, tears mixed with beads of pool water as he shook his head and mouthed the words “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry,” over and over again.
“So what do you think?”
Addie shook her head. “I don’t know what to think, but I don’t think Spencer had anything to do with it.”
“Adds, he nearly killed someone during a water polo match.”
“It was an accident. An accident, Maya. That doesn’t make him a murderer.”
“People kill for less.”
Addie shook her head. “No, they don’t. And not their girlfriends!”
Maya held up a finger. “He was her ex.”
“So?”
“I’m just pointing out that there could have been something we don’t know. I’m just saying! I am the daughter of cops, you know, and my parents always say there are five main reasons people kill: money, love, lust, revenge…” She frowned.