Emerson tensed. She didn’t want this feeling again. She was done digging. And this call wasn’t even for her! But the words formed in her mouth anyway. “Did they ever find out who did it?” From the couch, Josh gave her a curious look, and she held up a finger, indicating she needed a moment.
“No. I talked to my friend who works in the student-affairs office, and there’s no official record of it. But she checked the school roster for me, and this is where it gets kind of creepy. The shower incident happened at the end of May our sophomore year, and by the start of the next school year, Jenny had already transferred schools. Apparently, there was one other name that dropped off the roster around the same time. Calum Bauer. He started back at Winslow right around then, at the beginning of our junior year.”
Emerson sucked in a breath. The line crackled loudly. “Do you think…?”
“I don’t know what to think. It could just be a coincidence. But something feels off about the whole thing. Sydney seems pretty close to him, so…” He trailed off, and the blank envy in his voice made Emerson blink in surprise. Apparently, Joey Bakersfield had a thing for Sydney. “I just thought she should know.” The static grew stronger, almost drowning him out. “Her phone went straight to voice mail, though, so I tried you.”
“Thanks, Joey.” Emerson practically had to shout over the static, and she didn’t bother trying to clear up her identity again. Her mind was already skipping ahead to what this might mean. “I’ll make sure to tell Sydney.” A heavy feeling welled in her stomach as she ended the call.
“What was that?” Josh asked.
“Nothing—” Emerson began. She stopped short. She wanted so badly to ignore it, to just crawl back onto the couch and wrap her arms around Josh. But that heavy feeling was still there, traveling from her stomach to her chest. “Actually, I’m not sure.” She leaned against the kitchen counter and accessed the Internet on Tenley’s phone. “Come on,” she murmured, as it slowly loaded. Finally, a search bar opened on the screen.
Josh climbed off the couch and joined her at the counter. He looked over her shoulder as she typed Jenny Hearst, Danford into the search engine. “I’ll explain in a minute,” she said when Josh gave her a questioning look.
Several links popped up. One Jennifer Hearst was a doctor at Danford Medical in Louisiana. Another Jenny Hearst had won the Danford toddler pageant in Virginia. Halfway down the list, Emerson found a possible match. A Facebook page for a Jenny Hearst in Boston. She clicked on it. It took a full minute, but, finally, the page loaded.
Jenny Hearst’s profile picture was a shot of Fenway Park. Most of the page was blocked, but a few public items were listed under her information. Her hometown of Newton, Massachusetts, and two schools: Danford Academy and Haleworth Prep, another fancy boarding school.
“Bingo,” Emerson whispered. She knew Haleworth. Her freshman year at Winslow, a girl from her grade had transferred there. It was an all-girls school north of Boston, not far from Echo Bay. She quickly looked up the school number.
“Haleworth Prep,” a fuzzy voice answered a minute later. “How may I direct your call?” The connection faltered, then returned.
“Can I be transferred to Jenny Hearst’s room?” Emerson asked quickly.
“Transferring to 213. One moment please.” Staticky music filled the line, then abruptly cut out. A girl’s exasperated voice exploded through the phone. “Mom, I told you, I have enough flashlights and canned food to last me a year!”
“Uh, Jenny?” Emerson’s voice squeaked a little, and she quickly cleared her throat. “My name is Emerson.”
“Oh. Sorry.” A laugh cut across the phone line. “That’s embarrassing. I thought you were my mom calling for the twentieth time. Who did you say this is?”
“My name’s Emerson. We’ve never met, but I was hoping to ask you about Danford Academy.” The lie came out in one long stream. “I’m thinking of transferring there, and my friend gave me your name. I thought maybe you could tell me about your experience?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Who’s your friend?” Jenny asked finally.
“His name is Calum Bauer.” Emerson cringed at the lie. “He said you might—”
Click.
The line went dead.
Emerson looked down at her phone. It still seemed to be working. Maybe Haleworth had lost its phone lines? She quickly redialed the number. “Haleworth Prep,” the same fuzzy voice answered.
Emerson’s phone dropped away from her ear. If Haleworth’s phones still worked, then Jenny Hearst had just hung up on her. As soon as she mentioned Calum’s name.
She could feel the blood draining from her face. It could mean nothing at all.
Or it could mean something.
She dialed her own cell number, hoping Tenley would pick up, but after several rings, she got voice mail. She tried Sydney next, but her phone went straight to voice mail, and she remembered that Sydney’s cell was still in an evidence bag at the police station. She quickly looked up the Morgans’ landline number, but the call didn’t go through. It looked as if all regular phone lines were down.
She stared blindly at the phone screen. Something was off. She felt it deep down, the same way she’d known when her last dare was coming. A gut instinct that demanded she listen.
There could be a simple explanation. Maybe it really was just an innocent prank gone wrong. But wouldn’t someone have told Joey that? It was the shroud of mystery she kept returning to. No records… no public knowledge. It screamed suspicious. If they hadn’t already nailed Sam, it would also scream darer.
She grabbed her car keys. There was only one person who could answer her questions.
“Whoa.” Josh’s hand clamped down on hers. His fingers were warm against her skin. “Where are you going in this weather, Em?”
She looked up at him. His half Mohawk was even more rumpled now, and his nose was wrinkled up adorably with concern. She could lie, say she had to get home. But she was done with lying. “I have to get to Haleworth Prep before the roads close. It’s not a far drive, only about twenty minutes.” It was a crazy plan. She knew that. But after weeks of running from the darer, she was feeling crazy. Sometimes all that was left was to fight.
Josh studied her for a moment. She was worried he would try to stop her. But he just nodded. “Fine.” He grabbed his keys off the table. “But we’re taking my rental car. It has snow tires.”
“You don’t have to—” she began, but she fell silent when she saw the determined look on his face. Maybe he did have to. Maybe that’s what you did when you loved someone. She lifted onto her toes and kissed the soft stubble on his cheek. “Thank you,” she said instead.
Josh held up a hand. “Don’t thank me yet. I have one condition.” He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Once we’re in the car, you have to tell me what the hell is going on.”
Emerson hesitated. She thought of Caitlin and Tricia and Delancey, of the darer and the Lost Girls, how it all spiraled backward, year after year, fear breeding lies breeding fear. And suddenly she found herself wanting to talk about it. To tell him. “Everything,” she promised.
The windows at Haleworth Prep were all dark. It made the huge gothic building look menacing, all spike-tipped spires and blackened windows. Snow crept into Emerson’s boots as she and Josh treaded toward the school’s entrance. The grounds were silent around them. Even the birds had stopped chirping. It was as if the whole place had frozen solid.
Josh’s hand found hers. “This is exactly how I pictured our third first date,” he said.
Despite everything, Emerson laughed. “I do know how to have a good time, don’t I?”
She’d told him everything on the car ride over: Caitlin and the dares and Tricia and how they’d thought it had ended, but it had only just begun. The more she talked, the easier it became, and soon the words were spilling out of her, more than she’d told the police, more than she’d ever told anyone. She’d explained how she’d
been dragged into the game; how her secrets had been lorded over her, how no place, not even her home, had felt safe anymore. She’d told him how wrong they’d been: about Joey, and Tricia, and Abby, and Delancey. She’d told him about the surveillance shed and Sam Bauer’s panic room, and how, that night, she really thought she might die. And, finally, she’d told him about Jenny, and the uneasy feeling Joey’s story had left her with. When she was done, she felt the way she used to after a tough cheerleading practice, as if she’d sweat out any poison inside her.
Now they both grew quiet as they walked up to the building’s entrance. The door was locked, a large buzzer next to it. Emerson jabbed at the buzzer several times, but nothing happened.
“The power’s out,” Josh murmured. “Maybe we should try the—”
The door swung open before he could finish his sentence. A girl hurried outside, bundled up in a thick ski jacket, a cigarette clutched in her gloved hand. Her eyes widened when she caught sight of Josh and Emerson. “You never saw me here,” she snapped.
Emerson grabbed the door before it could slam shut. “Or you us,” she replied.
Lucky, Josh mouthed as they slipped through the doorway. Inside, the main lights were out, but the building’s emergency lights cast a dim glow over the hallways. Emerson took a quick look around. The floor was empty; everyone was in their rooms.
“Earlier when I asked for Jenny, the operator transferred me to two thirteen,” Emerson whispered. “Her room number, I’m guessing?”
Josh led the way to the stairs. She followed him soundlessly up, her heart knocking loudly against her rib cage. She barely had time to prepare herself before they were standing in front of room 213. The door was shut, but the faint sound of pages turning drifted out from behind it.
Josh squeezed her shoulder. “You up for this?”
No, she wanted to scream. They should be cuddling on Josh’s couch right now. But they’d come this far. “Let’s do it,” she croaked.
Josh rapped on the door.
Nothing.
He knocked again.
“Coming!” It was the same voice that had greeted Emerson on the phone: bubbly, but impatient. The door swung open to reveal a willowy girl with wavy brown hair and wide-set blue eyes. A wrinkle formed between the girl’s eyebrows. “You’re not check-in.”
“Jenny Hearst?” Emerson asked. The girl gave a hesitant nod. Emerson tried to say more, but she found her mouth had stopped working. She and Josh had come up with a game plan during the drive, but now, standing face-to-face with Jenny, her mind went blank.
“I’m Josh,” Josh jumped in. He stuck out his hand. Jenny looked wary as she shook it. “And this is Emerson,” Josh continued. “You spoke on the phone before?”
Immediately, Jenny’s countenance changed. Her shoulders stiffened. Her expression hardened. “I’m not sure why you’re here,” she said quietly, “but I’ll get school security if you don’t leave now.” She went to close the door, but Emerson reached out to block it.
“Please! Wait! I—I was getting notes,” Emerson blurted. It came out on instinct, a last-ditch attempt.
Jenny froze, her hand on the door. “What—what kind of notes?” she asked slowly.
“Threatening ones.” Emerson forced the words out. Even now, talking about the dares in public felt like writing her own death sentence. But Jenny was paying attention. “They’d show up at my house, or on my phone, demanding I obey, or—or else. Like this horrible game I had no choice but to play.”
Jenny’s face had gone sheet white. “So he’s still doing it.”
Emerson could barely feel her own body anymore. “Who?” she whispered. The voice seemed to come from someone else. “Who did it to you?”
Jenny shook her head mutely. Emerson knew her expression well. She was terrified.
It made Emerson want to stop and walk away, leave this poor girl in peace. But she’d come too far. She had to know.
“Calum.” Emerson was the one to say it: the name that had made Jenny hang up the phone. Now Jenny recoiled as if she’d been slapped. Emerson’s blood ran cold. “Was it Calum who was sending you the notes?”
Jenny gave a single shaky nod.
The dorm room swam in Emerson’s vision, and for a second she thought she might pass out. Josh took her arm, steadying her. “How did you figure out it was him?” she asked.
“We grew up together.” Jenny’s voice was so quiet Emerson had to strain to hear it. “Our dads used to be business partners. One night, I was at his house for dinner. I’d been getting the notes for almost a year at that point. They were destroying me, and I had no idea who was sending them, which only made it worse. I went to borrow a sweatshirt from his room, because the house was freezing, and—and I found one of the notes.” Jenny’s voice wobbled. “It gave me the courage to tell my mom. When she confronted Calum’s dad, he offered to pay for the rest of my schooling if I transferred to Haleworth and kept the whole thing quiet.” Her voice caught, and she cleared her throat.
“At first, we said no, but then there was this awful shower incident and…” She shook her head. “I just wanted it to stop. I really believed it was just me, though. Some kind of personal vendetta. I didn’t—I never thought he’d do it to someone else.”
Adrenaline surged through Emerson’s veins, clearing away any last remnants of fog. “The notes Calum sent you, were they typed on a typewriter?” She was surprised by how steady her voice sounded when inside she felt like jelly. She inched closer to Josh, leaning against him.
“Yeah.” Something pulsed in Jenny’s neck. “It was his dad’s old one.”
Emerson couldn’t stop the strangled sound that spilled out of her. Josh said something, but she didn’t hear him. There had been holes—she’d known that. But she’d reasoned some away and refused to acknowledge others. But here was the truth, too bright and burning to ignore.
Cassandra Bauer might have been a kidnapper, and Sam Bauer might be a killer, but neither was the darer.
It was their son.
It was Calum.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Tuesday, 5 PM
“So that’s everything that happened?” Calum took a long swig from his beer. It was his second since Sydney’s arrival, but judging by the unfocused look in his eyes, it wasn’t just his second of the night. Sydney wished she had gotten there earlier, but between the snow and an accident on the road, the fifteen-minute drive to Neddles Island had taken over an hour.
“That’s it.” Sydney fought to conceal the lie in her voice. It turned out Calum hadn’t been allowed to see his dad yet, so when he asked her to tell him everything she knew about what happened, Sydney had planned to answer openly: the darer truth and all. But then she’d looked at Calum’s bleary red eyes. She’d smelled the alcohol on his breath and seen the glossy sheen of sweat on his skin. And all she’d been able to think about was Guinness: how on his worst days, he wasn’t himself anymore, but a brittle shell. One wrong touch, one cruel word, and he’d shatter to pieces. So Sydney had found herself editing—twisting the story into its most harmless form: Emerson and Tenley had come looking for Calum, and his dad must have snapped when he saw them, and locked them up in the panic room.
“I’m so sorry, Calum.” She scooted closer to him on the couch. “No matter what he did, he’s still your dad.”
Calum twisted around, looking out the living room’s wall of windows. The one the police had shattered was now boarded up with wood. Outside, the sun was setting, darkening the sky. The snowflakes grew thicker with each passing second, until they seemed to thread together, a quilt of snow, flapping in the wind. The sight lifted goose bumps on Sydney’s arms despite the prickly heat flooding through the Bauer house.
“Good thing you’ve got a backup generator.” Sydney squeezed Calum’s hand, trying to elicit a response. But, still, he didn’t look at her. The silence, so unlike him, made her squirm. She stood up, busying herself by going over to the landline. “Still no dial tone,” she
told Calum.
“Looks like no calls are getting in or out.” Calum’s voice was flat, but when he finally looked at her, she saw a glint of tears in his eyes.
“Oh, Calum.” She went back to the couch and wrapped her arms around him. “Just tell me what I can do. Do you want a drinking buddy?” She said it jokingly, but once again, she got no response. “Calum?”
Slowly, he pulled back. A single tear had worked its way down to his chin. “My Syd.” He pressed a hand to her cheek. His palm was warm against her skin, and there was a longing in his voice she’d never heard before. “We really could have had something. Or at least I believed that once.”
Sydney blinked. His expression was pained, a swirl of regret and self-pity. It reminded her of how he’d looked after he tried to kiss her at homecoming. “The timing was bad, Calum—” she began, but he kept on talking as if he hadn’t heard her.
“For a while I assumed it was Guinness’s fault.” He pressed his palm harder against her face, cupping her cheekbone. “That if I just got rid of him, you’d finally give me a chance. But it didn’t happen as I predicted.”
Sydney drew back. Her skin felt cold in the sudden absence of his hand. “What do you mean got rid of him?”
Calum gave her a sad smile. But when his eyes met hers, it wasn’t pain or sadness she saw anymore. It was nothingness. Hardness. “My whole purpose of working at the Club’s pool was to get to know you better, and I have to say: You took me by surprise, Syd. You really made me believe that you were different from the other girls. Real in a way that none of them are. But I should have known better.”
Sydney moved off the couch. Something in Calum’s voice wasn’t right. It was too cold, too low. It wasn’t him. “You’re freaking me out a little, Calum. Maybe you’ve had too much to drink.” She took a step away from the couch. The room suddenly felt much too hot.
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