Gone Too Far

by Natalie D. Richards

  The notebook.

  I wasn’t wrong. That’s Harrison’s notebook. His chronicle.

  I hold on to the counter, because if I don’t, I might fall down. I’m almost sure my knees won’t hold me. Of course, I can’t stand here forever. I need to sit down. A sick student would sit down.

  “Piper, it’ll be just a minute,” Mrs. Bluth calls out from the back. “Have a seat in the waiting area.”

  I propel myself away and find the row of chairs around the corner, two empty, one occupied.

  Harrison.

  My heartbeat stutters. I could run. Turn and leave right now. I could cross off my name and go. He hasn’t looked up, though he probably heard Mrs. Bluth say my name.

  I glance at his fingers, imagine him with something sharp, scraping at the eyes on those photographs.

  A warning bell rings and I flinch. He looks right at me. Until this moment, I’m not sure I’ve ever really met Harrison’s eyes. Or maybe I did and he didn’t have all this anger pouring off of him.

  He doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t stop watching me. His expression practically dares me to ignore him, but I’m not going to do-si-do around this anymore. I came here to talk to him.

  “Hello, Harrison.”

  “Piper.”

  I swallow the fear lodged like a fist in my throat. “This timing is awful, but I think you should know I have your notebook.”

  The quiet is palpable. I can hear the soft ring of the phone, the muted conversation in the principal’s office between the teachers and the police.

  “You found it on the steps,” he finally says. He doesn’t ask which notebook or play stupid. I give him points for that. He doesn’t ask for the book either, which is good. Because I don’t have it on me, and I wouldn’t hand it over. After this, he has nothing to lose. He could decide to use that book to drag as many people down with him as possible.

  He goes on, maybe because I’m not speaking. “It’s the only place it could have happened. I was late and it was windy. Once I got inside, I would have heard it hit the floor. All this time, I assumed the janitors had thrown it away.”

  I nod, wondering how much I should hold back. “Who else knew about the book?”

  He laughs. “Do you think I’d show that to fellow students?”

  But if there’s no one else who knows… No. It makes no sense. This is all connected.

  “Harrison, do you know about the texts I’m getting?”

  He looks at me like I’m out of my mind. And then something new dawns in his expression—suspicion. Maybe he isn’t the chemistry mastermind he wants to be, but he’s an irrefutable genius. He was polishing off Great Expectations when the rest of us were struggling through easy readers.

  I said too much. He’s putting clues together faster than I can cover them up. He’ll figure out I had something to do with what happened today. It’s only a matter of time.

  “Piper—”

  “Harrison.” Mrs. Bluth can’t decide what expression to wear. She tries a smile and then a frown and ends up looking like she’s got a facial tic. “Your mother should be here shortly. The principal will see you then.”

  My stomach squirms and Harrison nods. He looks calmer than I am watching Mrs. Bluth walk back to the desk.

  “What kind of texts?” he asks, dead calm, giving nothing away. But I don’t miss that his hand is fisted at his side.

  “Never mind. Just tell me about the book. Why keep a book like that?”

  “Because no one else bothered.” He waves it off, like an annoying fly. Like it doesn’t matter. “Tell me about the texts.”

  “Someone anonymously texted me about cheating.” The lie is lemon sour on my tongue. “I thought maybe—”

  “You’re lying.”

  My grip tightens on the arms of my chair. “I guess that makes us even. You invested time in that notebook. Photographs and code names. You didn’t do it because no one else bothered.”

  “I did it because I believe society has a responsibility to record events and cultures. Every individual views this school through a social filter. It’s all personal and subjective.” He says the words like they’ve gone rancid. “I wanted something less…variable. I wanted facts.”

  Because that’s the language he understands. Cold as he seems, I can still feel the pain simmering beneath his words. It’s hiding in the pinch of his mouth and the hunch of his shoulders.

  “I’m listening,” I say softly, trying to urge him on. By the way his face changes, I wonder how often this happens, how often anyone actually hears him.

  Misery blooms suddenly, etching itself into every line of his face. “I know it shouldn’t hurt me. I see these petty social games for exactly what they are, but the pain, the fear? It’s all still there.”

  I’ve never seen this side of Harrison, all that icy confidence melted away, leaving something raw and broken underneath. Something like all the rest of us.

  “You wanted to outthink the pain.” It’s a guess, but I can see him start to nod.

  “On your feet!” The voice that comes from the doorway hits me like a glacier and Harrison like a whip.

  He jerks out of his chair, head ducked, chin on chest. There’s no pride left. There’s nothing left at all that resembles the strange, brilliant boy I was just sitting with. His mother strides into the room with steps that snap, even on the gray rug in front of the chairs. She clamps on to his arm, pressing until his skin squishes up like dough between her fingers.

  “You will say nothing, nothing, when we walk in that room unless I ask you a direct question. Are we clear?”

  I might as well not exist. I wish I didn’t exist. Not here with Harrison’s mother looking at him like a stray dog that took a shit on the living room carpet.

  “Yes,” he says. It’s not even his voice.

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She’s wrenching him toward the office hallway now, and his close-set eyes are trained on the ground. All I can think about is what he’ll endure later, away from prying eyes. Who is Harrison without his grades? What’s left when everything you’ve ever worked for is taken away?

  The office opens, and Harrison and his mother disappear inside. My stomach rolls in all the wrong ways. I know he loaded this gun. But I really didn’t think before I pulled the trigger.

  “Piper? How can I help you?”

  “I need to go home sick.” It isn’t an excuse anymore.

  The crease in Mrs. Bluth’s forehead tells me I must look terrible. She bustles into the waiting room smelling like rose water and Sharpie markers. The back of her hand presses against my forehead, just like Hadley’s at the club.

  God, people are going to think I’m dying.

  Feels like it.

  “You sit tight. I’m going to call your dad to see if he can come down to sign you out.”

  My head bobs up and down. A puppet nod for a puppet girl.

  Because that’s what I am, right? Sure, I’m picking the target, but none of this was my idea. I’m playing along, being fed every line by a person I don’t know. I wanted to believe it was someone decent. Someone who wanted to make things better, but now?

  This could be anyone. A sicko. A mean girl. A criminal.

  It hits me then—this is dangerous. And I’m in way over my head.

  I pull up my phone with shaking hands, loading my last message, the one about the courtyard. My fingers tremble at the letters. It takes forever to get the spelling right, but I’m careful because I only want to do this once.

  That was too intense for me. Sorry, but I’m bowing out.

  I’ve barely closed my eyes when the response comes in.

  You’re not out. You pick or I will. Next Friday by 9.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I leave my phone in the bottom of my backpack for
three days and ignore the fact that he won’t let me quit. That he’s demanding a name two days before Christmas. I ignore pretty much everything—from the low-battery warning beeps on my phone to the emails from Tacey when her calls start going straight to voicemail.

  I can’t deal with any of it. Denial is all I have left.

  I roll over and look at the alarm clock. 6:15 on Sunday night. Ugh. If I don’t get my butt moving, I’m going to spend my entire Christmas break in pajamas. I have to snap out of it. Do something.

  But what? If I pick, I continue to play his game. Or her game. Whatever. If I don’t—I don’t know what happens. He picks someone himself. And if the texter knows anything about Manny’s extracurricular activities, he could be a prime target.

  Mom and Dad are getting worried though. They were cool at first, bringing me toast, asking basic questions. Now they’re checking more often. They even offered a doctor’s visit, a rare occurrence in our holistic-happy house. I don’t think they make a pill for this problem, but I haven’t explained that.

  Three times I’ve tried to tell them, but how? My parents met in the Peace Corps. I don’t know if I can look them in the eye and tell them the kind of destruction I’m wrapped up in. I’m not sure any of us could handle it.

  I roll over and blink at the ceiling. I can’t stay in this bed until I rot. The last time I left my room was to shower and drag a brush through my hair at noon. This is passing pathetic. It’s tiptoeing dangerously close to psychologically unstable. I should be wrapping things or decking halls. At the very least, I should try to get some stuff together for the Thursday yearbook holiday gathering. The one I’m probably going to skip.

  I hear the doorbell and I flop onto my back, heaving a sigh. Tacey, no doubt. She’s probably ready to threaten me with flogging if I bail. I glance around my room, wondering if there’s any way for me to convince my parents that I’m too sick to see her. Unlikely, since I told them both I was feeling better earlier.

  My mom knocks on my door. I can tell as soon as she opens it—just by her face—that it isn’t Tacey.

  She takes a breath. “Piper, there’s a boy here to see you.”

  Manny is Manny and Connor is out of town, so I already have a pretty good feeling who boy refers to. I sit up in a rush of flailing limbs, feeling my hair slide wildly around my shoulders.

  “What boy?”

  “Nick. Nick Patterson. He insisted he’d wait outside. He’s very…” I mentally fill in the blanks while she searches for a word that fits. Tall? Athletic? So not your type? “Polite.”

  Yeah, that works too.

  I give my reflection a passing look in the mirror. It’s bad. And it’s going to take more than a coat of lip gloss and a spritz of perfume to tidy me up, so I head downstairs. At least I showered. He should have called first anyway. Except that my phone’s doornail dead.

  I pull open the door and there he is, hands plunged into his coat pockets and cheeks pink from the cold.

  His smile is hesitant. “I, uh, tried to call.”

  “My phone’s dead.”

  “Ah. Gotcha.”

  “Piper?” Mom says from behind me. She’s clearly not down with this super rude keep-your-half-frozen-guest-out-on-the-porch conversation.

  I should invite him in. My mom is obviously prompting for that. But I try to imagine it—Nick on the couch next to my dad, talking about what? Jackson Pollock? Or maybe he can chat with Mom about one of her troubled orphans.

  “Let me grab a coat,” I say.

  Mom laughs kind of breathlessly. “Piper, for heaven’s sake, invite him in out of the cold.”

  I relent with a quiet sigh, pushing the door open. Nick shuffles in looking worried and ridiculously tall. It’s not even normal the way he fills up our entry.

  Mom extends her hand. “I’m Diana.”

  “Nick, huh?” my dad says, appearing just behind my mom’s shoulder. He’s got paint in his hair and a Pink Floyd T-shirt on. “I’m Tim. Sorry about this. Believe it or not, we trained her not to leave guests shivering on the porch.”

  I will kill my dad later for that. For now, I watch him shake Nick’s hand.

  Nick knows to do all the right parent things. He offers to leave his shoes by the door and thanks my mom for taking his coat. He’s not kissing up or painfully awkward—he’s just like he always is—friendly and courteous and, just…Nick. Even my dad, a man who normally pushes me toward creative types, seems completely enchanted by this lumbering jock creature.

  Mom has him follow her into the kitchen. Dad comes too and everyone’s talking about the holidays and college, and it’s like I’m watching the whole thing in a movie. I know people put on their Sunday best for company, but this? This doesn’t even resemble my family.

  “So, did you need my chemistry notes?” I ask pointedly.

  My hope to rattle him fails. Nick looks over at me without flinching at my ridiculous question. He and I both know he’s not in my chemistry class. We also know that since we are on winter break, notes aren’t a top priority.

  “No, but thank you.”

  I arch a brow. “No? What’s up then?”

  Dad gives me a hard look over his mug of green tea. I don’t dare glance at Mom. She’s surely got her gaze switched from stun to kill.

  “I have a special project I want to have done before the end of break,” Nick says. “I was hoping you could help me with it.”

  “Is it about photography?”

  “Actually, it’s about social justice in high school,” he says.

  There’s no change to his smile, but there’s something in his eyes that pins me to the floor. Looks like Harrison’s not the only one putting pieces together. My parents smile, completely oblivious to the fact that I’ve turned to stone in the middle of the kitchen.

  Nick seems all too happy to wait for me to think it over. Adrenaline races through my veins, sending pins and needles down my spine. How much does he know? What is he going to say? Is he here to threaten me? Is that why he’s here?

  The idea sends a jolt through my middle. I need to get him out of here. Right now.

  “I’m starving,” I say, pushing enthusiasm—and maybe even a smidge of flirty—into my voice. “Nick, would you be willing to talk over a burger? It’ll only take me a minute to change.”

  “That’d be great.”

  I fly into my room with my heart hammering wildly. I can still fix this. I don’t know how, but I’ll figure it out. Because I don’t have a choice.

  • • •

  We take Nick’s Jeep. It still smells like him, but it smells like something else too—some sort of citrus cleaner that I’m guessing he used for Tate’s issues the other night. I figure we’ll just launch right into it, but he doesn’t. And God knows I’m not going there, so we proceed to back out of my driveway with the radio playing and snow drifting around us.

  He’s completely relaxed, shifting easily through the gears as he works his way out of my neighborhood. I’m perched like a steel beam at the edge of the seat, my hands fisted at my sides.

  We pull up to the stop sign at Haywood Road and he looks over at me.

  “So, where do you like your burgers? Are we talking Randall’s or McDonald’s?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I thought you said you were hungry.”

  “I thought you just came into my house and basically accused me of being in on this vigilante crap!”

  Which I totally am, so all this righteous indignation is a little misspent. And really, he didn’t accuse me of anything, but apparently, I’ve marinated in crazy sauce for the last three days. I feel like a pressure cooker with a crack in the lid.

  “I didn’t accuse you. But yeah, I do want to know what’s going on.”

  “Nothing’s going on.”

  Nick sighs. “Look, I know I’m not in all of yo
ur AP classes or whatever, but I’m not a complete idiot. You’ve been there every single time, Piper. With a camera. And I hate to say it, but it’s right up your alley—pointing out how immature and unaware the popular kids are.”

  Fire shoots through me. “And there it is.”

  “There what is?”

  “The real reason you’ve been so attentive,” I say.

  “I’m attentive because I like you, but liking you doesn’t make me an idiot. Stop treating me like I’m too stupid to put this together. You’re involved in these takedowns, so just talk to me. Help me understand.”

  “I—” My voice cracks. Splits. Just like the rest of me. I hate this. I’m terrified to tell him, terrified of what he already knows. Most of all I’m terrified because I believe the kindness in his voice. And I’m setting myself up for a fall.

  “It’s complicated,” I finally say.

  “I’m sure coordinating massive humiliation stunts is complicated,” he says, and this time there’s a sharp edge to his voice.

  God, he thinks I planned the takedowns. The thought tangles my insides, makes me cold all over. But how is what I did so much better? Maybe I didn’t choose the sentence, but I enjoyed every last bit of it.

  No. Not all of it.

  “Fine,” he says. “Don’t tell me. But, Piper, as smart as you think you are, I’m telling you, someone else is going to figure this out.”

  I bite my lip, heat crawling under my coat, sweat rising on the back of my neck. He’s right. I’m going to get caught. And Nick’s going to hate me. A lot of people are going to hate me when they find out about this. God, how did this get so out of control? A memory of Jackson on the football field—coal-black eyes and a promise of vengeance—turns my vision muddy.

  “I’m sorry, Nick. I am. You should probably stay as far away from this as you can.”

  I open the door and slip out of the Jeep, my heart slamming against my ribs and my breath coming in gasps. What am I going to do? Where do I go? Telling someone before seemed crazy, but I still had some control then. I didn’t know I couldn’t quit. I didn’t know my partner would ruin lives.