Dangerous Boy

by Hubbard, Mandy

I giggle. “Hey! I shouldn’t be required to wear actual clothes until after I’ve had my Sunday morning donut. It’s not my fault I ran into a cute boy at the bakery.” I look up at her in the mirror, at her wide eyes framed by smoky makeup and thick mascara-clad lashes that curl perfectly upward. I want to ask her how she learned this stuff, if her mom bought her her first makeup and showed her how to put it on, but I don’t. That would only lead to a discussion of my own mom. And I don’t talk about her. Not with Allie and Adam and Bick, and definitely not with my dad.

  “I was joking,” she says.

  “I know, but I question it enough as it is.”

  “You do not.”

  I shrug. “Sometimes. Don’t you ever see us together and think, Wow, he is so out of her league?”

  “No way. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. Anyone who sees that wouldn’t question it.”

  I smile a little, staring down at my chipped nails. “Thanks. I just psych myself out sometimes. He seems too good to be true.”

  “Except that whole secret twin thing,” she says.

  I twist my hands in my lap. “Yeah, sorry, I was going to talk to you about it, we’ve just both been so busy. Did Bick tell you about him?”

  “Yeah. While you were riding quads. Just before you wrecked, that is. That’s some crazy stuff.” Allie unwinds another piece of hair, then sets the iron down and fluffs it up a little bit with her finger. I have to admit, it’s really pretty.

  I adjust my sling. It’s already chafing my neck. The next six weeks are not going to be fun. “Yeah. I wasn’t sure if I should be okay with it or not.”

  “Do you want a little bit of advice?” Allie asks, picking up the curling iron again.

  I don’t know. Do I? I’ve already decided to just forget about it. “Yeah. Um, sure.”

  She smiles, her pretty glossed lips turning upward as she winds another piece of hair up. “Forgive him. Guys screw up. A lot. You just have to figure out whether their heart is in the right place.”

  “And his was?” I pull away, my hair slipping off the iron.

  “Hold still, will you? I’m almost done.” She frowns, picks up the hair again, and twists it around the barrel. “Anyway, he was afraid of you rejecting him for the wrong reasons. He shouldn’t have lied, but he did it because he didn’t want to lose you. It seems like you’ve already kinda let it go. But if you haven’t, you should.”

  I purse my lips and nod, surprisingly relieved. I wanted her to say this. Wanted her to say I was right for giving him another chance.

  And she’s right. Logan’s been the perfect boyfriend, other than the whole Daemon thing. “Okay. Letting it go. Officially.”

  “You look amazing,” Allie says, untwisting the final curl from the iron.

  I stare at my almost unrecognizable reflection in the mirror. My flat brown hair has been transformed into pretty, glossy ringlets. I tug at one, and it bounces back into a tight curl.

  “You really think so?”

  Allie tips her head to the side and stares at me in the mirror.

  “Yeah. And I have an idea.”

  Allie and I sit side by side on the couch, me struggling to find a comfortable way to arrange my brace as she leans over and clicks on my bookmarks, bringing up my Facebook page. My profile picture is from last year. Allie and I are hugging, standing in front of a long stretch of pretty white fences, as a summer breeze lifts our hair out of our faces. Her mom snapped the picture of us at their house on a sunny day, the sky a vibrant blue. “This is so overdue,” she says.

  I nod, a little unsure. The pictures she took today—of me with curled hair, makeup done up—are pretty. I just don’t know if they’re too over the top to be the best profile pics. What if everyone thinks I’m trying too hard? I’d never wear this much makeup to school.

  “Seriously. Live a little. Sex it up,” she practically exclaims. “You’re always stuck in your little box.”

  “That’s what Logan always says.”

  “What?” she asks, distracted. She’s too busy clicking on buttons in a desperate attempt to transform my profile page.

  “That I’m stuck in a box,” I say. “He’s trying to break me out of it, or whatever. That’s why I was willing to ride quads.”

  “Well…” her voice trails off. “You could use a little excitement.”

  “Uh? What do you call dead birds in the school parking lot, a bloody handprint on the window of my car, a quad accident, and a boyfriend with a secret twin brother who got a kick out of freaking me out?” I ask, reaching up to adjust the Velcro on my sling.

  “That’s not the kind of excitement I’m talking about,” she says. She gives me a skeptical look before glancing back at the screen and clicking to upload the photos.

  It only takes a moment to upload a half-dozen photos Allie took in the last half hour. Looking at the shots onscreen, it’s clear that she did a good job of it too, totally avoiding the ugly cotton brace. No one who sees the pictures will even know my collarbone is broken.

  “This way, when Logan looks at his Facebook page, he remembers how hot his girlfriend is,” she says, grinning.

  Moments later, she’s resetting my profile pic to one where I’m leaned back, my curly hair fanned out around me on the floor. I have a sorta-sweet, sorta-devilish smile on my face, and I’m looking up to the left. I’m not quite sure how she caught that look, but it’s perfect. Flirty and mysterious.

  She clicks over to my profile, as if to confirm it looks right, and then sits back abruptly.

  “Whoa.” She glances over at me, a nervous look in her eyes.

  “What?” I sit forward, lean in to the small laptop screen.

  Logan’s user picture dominates my Facebook wall. Comment after comment. All just posted within the last few minutes.

  Your profile picture makes you look frigid. And your friend looks way hotter than you.

  You should invest in some blinds for your bedroom window, btw. I can watch you from the street.

  I meet Allie’s eyes and neither of us speaks. Why would he say that? Is he spying on me?

  She pulls up the notifications and I see that he’s been commenting on photos, too.

  “Let’s just delete them, okay?” She clicks on the first notification and it brings up a photo from last fall.

  Someone put on a little bit of weight, he wrote.

  A lump grows in my throat, and I cover my mouth.

  Allie reaches over, rubs my back softly. “It can’t be him, right? Someone hacked his page or something.”

  I can’t stop staring at my boyfriend’s photo next to such cruel, angry words. Allie deletes the comment and goes to the next one, deleting it before I can see what he wrote.

  “It could be his brother,” she says.

  I nod, swallowing down the tears. “Yeah. You think?”

  “Totally. There’s no way Logan would say that stuff to you. Just no way. And he was just here. Look at the time stamps. He would have had to literally race home, immediately log on, and start posting these. He wouldn’t have done that.”

  I nod, pull my hands away from my face, nodding. “Yeah. You’re right. It’s gotta be Daemon or something.”

  “No ‘or something.’ It must be him. There’s no other explanation.”

  “Right.”

  “Let’s just see what else Daemon has been up to.” She clicks on Logan’s—hacked?—profile. The latest activity is simple:

  Logan commented on Harper’s wall.

  Yeah, he sure did.

  Allie scrolls down, then goes back up and clicks on his information tab, then scrolls around again. The whole thing is surprisingly sparse.

  “You know, leaving the whole Daemon thing aside, it’s kind of weird that Logan only has eighteen friends,” she says, giving me a skeptical look.

  I pull on one of the curls Allie did. It’s already deflating, hanging down around my shoulders. I didn’t have the right hairspray, I guess. “Well, he just moved here.”

  She chews
on her lip and stares at the computer, then leans forward and scrolls for a while. “But his updates go back months.”

  “So?”

  “So…he had this page when he lived in Cedar Cove.”

  Oh. The implications of her words finally sink in. I swallow the anxiety rising in my throat. “Who’s on his friends list?”

  She clicks on the list and scrolls through them. “Me, you, Adam, Bick…”

  I sit forward, cradling my arm as we go over the list, both of us silent as familiar names scroll by. “They’re all from Enumclaw,” I finally say, when she gets to the end. “I don’t get it. Does this mean he didn’t have any friends in Cedar Cove?”

  She purses her lips, glancing at the screen before turning back to me. There’s something unreadable in her expression. “Either that…or he unfriended them.”

  My stomach hollows out. I hadn’t even considered that.

  She goes back to his wall, scanning his updates. Stuff about watching Fringe, something about a ball game, a picture update. All normal stuff. Probably not stuff that Daemon did. But nothing to tell us about Logan’s life in Cedar Cove.

  I wait with bated breath as she scrolls further down the page, deeper and deeper into Logan’s past.

  When she’s back several months, there are several “Likes” on his status updates. She clicks on a few, the mouse hovering over names I don’t recognize, people he’s not friends with anymore.

  She clicks back to his wall and scrolls further and further, until other things start popping up in his feed. Friend comments.

  Ex-friend comments, since they’re from names I don’t recognize, people no longer on his friends list.

  The first comes from a guy named Spencer saying, “Dude, last weekend was a blast!” followed by a girl saying, “Congrats! You killed it today.”

  Allie stops, glancing up at me. I just nod.

  She right-clicks on the girl’s name and uses the drop-down menu to open up her profile in a separate tab.

  I sit back and watch as she scrolls further, opening up new tabs for a few other people from Logan’s past.

  “So he unfriended at least six people?” I ask, furrowing my brow. Why doesn’t he want to be associated with people he was clearly friends with?

  The first two girls and one guy all have private profiles, so they’re no help beyond confirming their location—Cedar Cove, Oregon.

  The next girl, a brunette with a smile that could melt the ice caps, has an open profile. She’s from Cedar Cove, too. Allie scrolls down a bit to look for any comments from Logan, but we don’t find any.

  I lean in again as Allie scrolls back to the top of the page and clicks on the girl’s photos.

  There’s an album marked “Fun stuff.” Allie pops it open.

  “She’s cute,” Allie says. Then she cringes. We both know this girl might be Logan’s ex-girlfriend. “I mean, kind of.”

  I scan over her photos and see mostly female friends and what must be her dog. “Go back to the albums.”

  Allie clicks the back button.

  “Go to that one,” I say, pointing to the album labeled “mobile uploads.”

  And then, sure enough, there he is…Logan. My heart thumps when my gaze lands on his familiar face. Allie and I exchange a look, and she clicks on the thumbnail to enlarge the photo.

  When she zooms in, I realize it’s not just a group shot, but a couples shot. He has his arm around the brunette. She looks amazing in a slinky silver dress. Tall, lithe, ballerina-like.

  My breathing turns shallow as I stare at the place where his fingers touch her bare shoulder, thinking of all the times he’s held me.

  I shake my head. This was months ago. Months ago. I don’t need to get upset. I shouldn’t get upset. I’m doing this to myself, after all. Digging into his past. I have to be prepared for what I might find. And an ex-girlfriend who he never talks about anymore isn’t exactly that terrible…

  “I don’t get it,” Allie says, staring down at the photo.

  “What?”

  “Well.” She turns to me. “The whole point of Facebook is you can keep in contact with people you don’t always see in real life. I mean, my mom friended half her sorority house from twenty years ago. There’s no reason to delete all of your friends just because you move away.”

  I search for an answer. “Maybe they all know Daemon. He told me he wanted to distance himself from his brother. Daemon has a pretty bad reputation, you know?”

  Allie stares down at the monitor for a moment longer before meeting my eyes. “What if he wanted to distance himself from his own reputation?”

  I evade her look, instead reading the photo’s caption. Prom is all it says. But there are people tagged. Logan isn’t one of them. Why didn’t they tag him? Or did he un-tag himself? If he did, that must mean that he doesn’t want any of his new friends—including me—to see this photo.

  “I don’t know,” I say, my voice soft. None of this makes sense.

  “Hmm,” Allie says under her breath. She turns back to the computer, her mouse hovering over the names in the tagged section.

  Twenty minutes later, Allie snaps my laptop shut and sits back.

  Neither of us speaks for a long stretch of time.

  I don’t know if it’s the quasi-concussion I got from the accident or this whole Facebook thing, but my head is pounding harder than ever.

  “Okay, so what do we know?” Allie says, finally breaking the silence.

  I shrug my good shoulder, avoiding her eyes. I don’t know how to feel right now. Upset? Embarrassed? I just learned more about my boyfriend’s life in Cedar Cove by investigating on Facebook than I have in a month of dating.

  “Harper…” Allie urges. “Let’s figure this out.”

  I begrudgingly answer, “Okay, so he’s had Facebook for at least a year. He moved here, and then unfriended all of his old friends, untagged himself from all their photos, and deleted their comments.”

  “We just don’t know why he’d do that.”

  I nod.

  “You know,” Allie says, “it could just be really simple. Maybe Daemon did something to them, and maybe they unfriended Logan because they didn’t want anything to do with his brother.”

  Relief whooshes through me. “That makes perfect sense. Logan said Daemon completely screwed things up for him in Cedar Cove. So whatever he did, it extended to Logan’s friendships.”

  Allie nods. “Exactly. So what did Daemon do?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know. Logan tried to tell me about him, but I was too ticked off he’d kept Daemon a secret, so I wasn’t listening.”

  Allie chews on her bottom lip, staring at the closed laptop. “I think Logan needs to tell you about what happened in Oregon, and then maybe you two should have a sit-down with Daemon.”

  I pull the throw-blanket hanging on the couch over my lap, curling up underneath it. “Why?”

  “Because obviously Daemon ruined Logan’s relationships before. You two need to sit down with him and make it clear you’re not going anywhere, and that it’s not cool for him to mess with you like he obviously just did on Facebook and like he did the other day at their house.”

  I stare down at the orange blanket, picking at the little yarn pieces sticking up all over. “I don’t know. You didn’t see him fawning all over that gross stuff in the basement. I doubt a talk would just solve everything…”

  “Harper!” Allie chastises me. “Don’t just come up with excuses. This is a good first step.”

  I sigh. “Okay, you think that if we sit down with him in a cool, collected way, we can reason with him, make sure he understands that Logan and I are together, and he needs to back off?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Fine, but I seriously don’t know if I want to see him again,” I admit. “He scared the hell out of me before. There’s something wrong with him.”

  Allie raises her brows, giving me a duh kind of look. “That’s why it needs to be done.”

  “A
ll right,” I say, sinking into the sagging couch. I wish it would just swallow me up. I’m not relishing the idea of seeing Daemon again. But if he messed up Logan’s relationship last time, he could do it again. He needs to know this time is different—that I actually want to stick around long enough to have something real with Logan. His harassing me needs to stop.

  “I should probably go home,” Allie says, standing. “Want me to put the casserole in the oven for you?”

  “Sure,” I say. “My dad will be in soon, and he’ll be hungry.”