Dangerous Boy

by Hubbard, Mandy

  Adam looks away, out the window. Which means he’s thinking about it.

  I chew on my lip, contemplating how much to reveal. “Look, I haven’t told this to Bick, and I don’t know if we should, because you know how he is. He’ll take matters into his own hands. But I think Daemon’s the one who wrecked him. I think Daemon’s…activities started back when they were in Cedar Cove. So I want to go down there and see if I can dig up anything. If we get enough evidence, we can go to the police. We have to stop him.”

  “Whoa, back up,” Adam says, his eyes wide. “Why would Daemon go after Bick?”

  “I don’t know, and I have no proof.”

  I don’t tell Adam about the paint can I found in Daemon’s room. I can’t exactly tell the cops I broke into his house and found it. And besides, Bick and I removed the red handprint from his truck. There’s no longer anything to tie it to the accident.

  “Please? I need you.”

  Adam sighs, shifting into gear. “All right, fine. Let’s go.”

  The last hour of the drive to Cedar Cove takes us along a winding highway that threads through the foothills, bringing us closer to the Pacific Ocean with each shadowed bend and turn. A dark, oppressive cloud hangs low overhead, threatening rain.

  When the road finally flattens out, adorable little motels and inns begin to dot the landscape, and that’s how I know we’re close. Billboards, seemingly out of place on such a quiet, rural road, crop up on each side, advertising suites and windsurfing and everything you’d expect from a coastal tourist trap.

  Just past a sign for Go Karts and Putt-Putt golf, we pull onto the main drag and Adam stops at a red light. “So, what’s the plan?” He glances at his watch. It’s twelve forty already. The drive took even longer than I was expecting, especially since Adam insisted on stopping for snacks. Twice. The wrappers litter the floorboards and a Big Gulp cup sits in the cup holder next to me.

  I sit up in my seat. “Let’s go to the school first. If we’re lucky, it’s big enough that we can slip in unnoticed,” I say, pretending as if I know exactly where to start. It seemed obvious when we were in Enumclaw, but now that I’m here, I am not sure what to do. I find it difficult to believe that no one will notice the new girl with the shoulder brace.

  “I don’t know…” Adam says. “I don’t think I want to trespass on school property.”

  I decide to take charge. “I just need to get into the library. And maybe talk to a few students, see if they remember Logan or Daemon.”

  Adam knows me too well to buy it. “Yeah, but it seems kinda sketchy,” he says, flicking on his blinker and following the signs to the high school, despite his protest. “I’m not big on criminal records.”

  His words send a new wave of butterflies through my stomach, and I almost balk. It can’t be criminal to walk around a high school if you’re actually a teen, can it? It’s not like we’re planning to vandalize it or something.

  Besides, I have to know what Logan is hiding. I have to know if the stuff that’s happening to me—to the town—happened here. “Come on, it’s not that big of a deal,” I say, shrugging as if I actually believe that it’s not. “We’ll be there twenty minutes. Tops.”

  “Do I have to?” he asks.

  “Did you see Bick’s face?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” Adam says.

  “Not the day it happened. You saw it a couple days later when he came back to class, and the swelling went down. He looked like he lost a fight with a brick wall the day I picked him up from the hospital.”

  Adam groans as he turns into the packed school parking lot, snagging one of the last available parking spaces at the back. “Okay, okay. You’re right. Let’s just get this over with.”

  I look around as he straightens out the car. I want people to think we’re students, but I don’t want to get caught by a school security guard who thinks we really are students, playing hooky. There’s no way I can explain to my dad why I’m five hours away in the principal’s office at the wrong high school. I’d be lucky if he remembers Logan’s name, let alone understands why I’m all the way down here, investigating his past.

  “Come on,” I say. We get out of the car and walk to the side doors while Adam shoves his keys into his pocket. I glance around, taking it all in as I bury my hands in the front pocket of my hoodie. An ocean breeze, briny and fresh, drifts over us. The school is not very big, a little smaller than Enumclaw, probably has a couple hundred students in each class. Hopefully the size helps. If it were too big, there’d always be the chance that people wouldn’t remember Logan, but if it were too small, everyone would know we don’t belong here.

  It’s pretty, though, with a manicured lawn and hedges, and it’s made of brick, with a glass sculpture meant to mimic ocean waves sweeping across the wall near the main entrance. We step into the halls just as a shrill bell rings out, and in an instant, we’re jammed into a mix of students, shoulder-to-shoulder. Adam grabs my elbow, linking us together as we push through the crowd.

  I see a giant sign proclaiming MAIN OFFICE and move faster, dragging Adam behind me even as I knock into student after student. We might not be low profile, but I don’t want anyone from the school administration seeing me, knowing I don’t belong.

  We round the corner and my heart thump-thumps when I see a placard for the library hanging from the breezeway. We scurry across the courtyard, our feet nearly silent on the concrete. I tighten my grip on Adam’s hand and pull him harder, wanting this mission to be over, wanting to get to the truth and just…know. We step into the library, the sounds of the crowd dying instantly. A few students look up at us, curious, and I hope I’m right—I hope this school is big enough that we seem anonymous.

  “Come on,” I say, faking confidence, control. “I want to see if there are any student newspapers from the time Logan was here.”

  Adam shrugs and follows me, having given up any further attempts at protest. We weave between tables sparsely populated with students quietly studying and eating lunch, toward a circular desk in the back.

  “Excuse me,” I say, stepping up to the guy behind the desk. Huh. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a guy school librarian before. I can’t decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I was hoping for a sleepy, detached sort of librarian. “I’m looking for the student papers from last spring and fall. Do you know where I can find them?”

  “Yeah, they’d be on microfiche,” he says, pointing to the machine across the room. “We don’t switch to digital until we get the new computer system in next year. Gray cabinet next to it houses the film. Most recent in the front of the top drawer, so last spring would only be a couple folders back. Copies are ten cents each. Pick up your prints here.”

  I nod, turning away. Perfect.

  “Haven’t seen you in here before,” he says, eyeballing me. I swallow.

  “Yeah, um, usually I eat lunch with my, um, boyfriend.” I nod in Adam’s direction, trying not to grimace at the mere idea of Adam being my boyfriend. Ick. I should have convinced Bick to come down here instead; at least that’d almost be believable. Then again, he still has faint, fading bruises on his face, so maybe we’d look more suspicious. “But, see, we have a bet going. About, uh, who was prom queen last year.”

  The librarian gives us this half-bored, half-annoyed look, as if to say kids these days.

  “Anyway, thanks!”

  I spin around and walk away as slowly as my legs will allow. “That was close,” I mutter to Adam. “I thought he was going to ask us for student ID or something.”

  “Miss!” the guy calls out, and I freeze, my lungs stuck somewhere in my throat as I turn back around. “You forgot this,” he says, holding up the pen I’d been tapping on his counter.

  “Oh, uh, thanks.” I scurry back, grab it, and then rejoin Adam over by the microfiche. I don’t even think it’s my pen, but I am not about to argue and raise more questions.

  “Remind me to never let you become a secret agent,” Adam says, shaking his head.
“That was terrible.”

  “Whatever,” I say, opening up the gray cabinet next to the microfiche machine. “I can’t even believe they still use one of these things.”

  “Old habits die hard?”

  “I guess so.”

  I gather the seven folders that cover the previous school year.

  “What are you looking for, exactly?” Adam asks, sliding another chair over as I settle down in front of the machine.

  “I don’t know yet. I guess I’ll know it when I see it.”

  “Well, you’d better hurry.”

  I shuffle through the film, glancing up at him. “Why? It’s not like we’re going to make it back to EHS in time. We have all day.”

  He glances up at the clock. “Not if we’re students here. Unless you want our cover blown, we probably have twenty minutes. Whenever that bell rings, we need to leave for our supposed classes.”

  His warning sends a wave of nerves through me. Somehow I’d forgotten that fact. “Good thing you’re here,” I say.

  Adam smiles ruefully and turns to the screen as I slide the first bit of film onto the panel.

  “It’s upside down and backward,” he says.

  “Obviously. It’s not like I’ve even used one of these things before. It’s prehistoric.” I slide the film out and invert it, then push it back in.

  Cedar Cove Buzz emblazons the screen. A handful of articles about an upcoming student election, prom ticket prices, and changes to the cafeteria menu greet me. My eyes search every corner of the film, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary. I rein in my worry and slide the sheet out, setting it next to the machine.

  “Next,” I say, holding my hand out.

  He slaps a new sheet of film down and I stick it into the machine, my heart plummeting as I see the first headline, then scan the rest of the page. All it’s got is as an article about the Mathletes’ returning senior members, an op-ed about the aging coaching staff, and a student-written poem.

  I deflate. Please don’t let this whole thing be for nothing. Five hours in the car, the assignments I’m going to have to do for Adam, skipping school…all to dig into Logan’s past. Logan, my boyfriend.

  But I know I’m on to something. I can practically feel it, dangling just out of my reach. I can’t stop until I know what happened here. Logan and Daemon fled this town for a reason. If I can uncover it, I’ll know why he lied about Daemon.

  “Next,” I say.

  Ten minutes later, I’m growing panicky. We have to pack up soon and I have nothing. The next sheet has something about the semester’s standardized testing and another stupid cafeteria menu.

  “Next,” I say. We’re almost a full year back now, to last fall.

  I slide the black-and-white page into the screen and my heart slams into my throat as the picture comes into focus.

  Logan’s face greets me.

  “So, there he is,” I announce. “We found him.” I look over at Adam, trying to steel my nerves for whatever this story is going to say.

  But his expression is one of confusion. “Uh, Harper, not exactly.”

  “What?”

  “Look at the headline,” he replies, his voice as hard as stone.

  I look down slowly and that’s when I see it. Above Logan’s picture. I can’t bring myself to read it aloud.

  Adam does it for me. “Student Trent Townsend paints the sophomore homecoming float,” he says, slowly, deliberately, as if he’s even more baffled than I am. His jaw drops, and he turns to stare at me.

  We fall silent. I’m frozen, staring at Logan’s face, grainy in black and white as my fingers tremble against the microfiche machine.

  “So one of them is really named Trent,” Adam finally says.

  I turn to him. “The question is, which one?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I slam the passenger door to Adam’s car, on the verge of tears. One way or another, Logan lied.

  Again.

  “So, do you think it’s Logan or Daemon who is really Trent?” Adam asks, trying to get me to do more than just sit there dejectedly in my seat.

  “I dunno,” I respond. It’s too hard to think. I feel sick to my stomach.

  Adam pats me on the shoulder. “Well, my guess is that since Logan’s actually enrolled in school, he probably had to use his real name, so it’s probably Daemon who is Trent.”

  I bet that’s true. He couldn’t be at Enumclaw using a false name, could he?

  Adam stares out the windshield, chewing on his lip. At least he’s on board with my investigation now, instead of acting like it’s stupid. “Have you tried to Google Daemon’s name?”

  “Yeah. And I got nothing,” I say, unable to even fake a neutral voice. “Absolutely nothing.” I’m crushed and embarrassed and confused, and I feel so entirely pathetic I just want to crawl into the backseat of the Samurai and curl up with a blanket over my head for the rest of the day.

  “Not even a Facebook page, an old news story, Twitter?”

  I shake my head. “No. Logan’s got a Facebook page, but Daemon doesn’t. Unless he’s Trent…Oh,” I say, finally getting what Adam’s saying. “If his real name is Trent, I wouldn’t find anything under Daemon.”

  Adam chews on his lip and stares out the windshield. “So that means the picture of ‘Trent,’” he says, using air quotes, “is probably ‘Daemon,’” he says, using the air quotes again.

  “Yeah.” I slide further into my seat, propping my knees up on the dashboard. “How did I get to this point? That I’m playing private investigator on my own boyfriend?”

  Adam shrugs. “I dunno. Can’t say I saw it coming myself.” Adam gives me the look. “And if you can’t trust him, what’s the point?”

  “I don’t know. I just feel different around him. He gets me.” I frown, blinking away the threat of tears. “It probably doesn’t even matter. I told him off on Friday and we haven’t talked since.”

  “It’s probably for the best,” Adam says, in his softest voice. I wonder if he can actually hear my heart breaking.

  I swallow, but it does nothing about the lump in my throat. “Maybe he has a really good reason for all this.”

  “Don’t you think if he had one, he would have offered it up by now? It’s all more than a little suspicious.”

  I sigh deeply and turn back to the window.

  Turns out that driving to Cedar Cove didn’t give me any answers.

  Just a whole new set of questions.

  Back at home, I slide my laptop across my bed. I burrow into my thick comforter, lean back on a few pillows, and click the computer on.

  Dad’s still outside, fighting the falling darkness to finish the green-chop, gathering up grass to bring in and feed the cows. It’s time consuming but he does it every chance he gets. The grass in the field is free. The alfalfa truck is not.

  Maybe we can’t afford to just buy hay all the time or hire a bunch of help, but I wish my dad would just take an afternoon off somehow. Come inside and watch a movie with me. Ask me how my day was.

  Act like I exist. After he had such a strong reaction at the hospital when I broke my collarbone, I kind of thought it might be a wake-up call. But it wasn’t. He didn’t even stay until I was done, and by the time Logan brought me home, he was working out in the barns.

  My computer finally boots up and I pop open Google, input Trent Townsend, and sit back, my stomach in my throat as I hit “enter” with shaky fingers. As my computer fetches the results, I close my eyes.

  I want to know, but then again I don’t. I have this overwhelming feeling that I’m standing at the edge of a cliff, about to jump.

  I open my eyes, and my vision swims with headlines.

  CEDAR COVE STUDENT EXPELLED FOR HARASSMENT

  CEDAR COVE TEEN CHARGED WITH ASSAULT

  CEDAR COVE HIGH THE EPICENTER OF VIOLENCE?

  I think I’m going to be sick. My room spins around me as I stare at the monitor, my fingers trembling on the keyboard. I’m afraid to click on any
thing. I’m staring for so long, in the growing darkness, that my phone ringing terrifies me so much I leap into the air, narrowly saving my laptop from flying across the room.

  Willing my racing heart back under control, I reach for my cell.

  Adam.

  I click it on and put it to my ear, wondering belatedly if my heartbeat will be heard over the phone.

  “I don’t want you talking to him,” Adam says.

  “Did you—”

  “Trent Townsend, Google result number six. Click it.”