by Jessie Rosen
As much as he wanted to ignore it, he forced himself to pick his phone up off the floor and look again at what had just popped up on the screen. All he saw before hurling it toward the wall was a notification from WhispWhere, another of the apps Amanda had downloaded for him over the summer. Amanda. Unfortunately, Charlie didn’t have a lot of experience with WhispWhere. He didn’t know that all the messages come through in a string of comments by what look like anonymous posters, and that they’re all organized around a map. Once he had the screen open, Charlie pinched the map open wider so he could see where all the chatter was coming from and remembered Amanda explaining how it worked to him when she installed it months ago. “It’s so genius. You can literally comment on anything, no one knows, and it’s all based on your location. It’s like whispering about someone from their front yard without them knowing it’s you!”
That’s when Charlie started to feel his body heat rise. The notification meant that people were talking about him, close to him.
Driving around and just realized I’m in the neighborhood where that killer lives. Wonder if he’ll see me…
Wonder if he’s home, or maybe at practice…
Wonder even more if his neighbors know they live near a killer…
Thoughts, neighbors?
Beads of sweat started to pool around Charlie’s forehead and neck. This was worse than the Vids. This was someone who could be standing right outside his house. He couldn’t be 100 percent sure that the messages were meant for his eyes, but the goal seemed to be the same as the other contact—to convince Charlie that they knew something, or everything, about Sarah’s death. Right now, it was working.
Charlie looked down at the map again, trying to figure out if he could pinpoint the poster’s exact location. That was impossible, but the location function gave Charlie an idea: If CO was Amanda, then she would have to be right in his neighborhood to use the app, and he could find that out.
Charlie was slightly terrified by the thought that this might answer the question. He’d been ignoring Amanda as much as possible to avoid a confrontation. But if this was Amanda, then she was being a bully, and bullies only stopped when they knew their tactics weren’t working. This was his chance to figure out the truth, and Charlie needed to take it, even if it meant finding out that Amanda was his enemy—one with the kind of information about his life that could ruin him forever.
Charlie took a deep breath and dialed the Hunters’ number. He could feel his body clenching as it rang once, then twice, and then a third time. One more ring and the answering machine would pick up.
“Hello?” a voice finally said.
Charlie hung up before she had the chance to say another word, and then he breathed a giant sigh of relief for the first time in weeks. That was Amanda’s voice; she was no longer his number-one suspect.
The Hunters lived exactly six miles from Charlie, a route he’d jogged many times when they were dating. She wasn’t in range for him to see her comments on the app. For a moment Charlie’s anxiety shifted to guilt over all the assumptions he’d made about Amanda, but the fact that Amanda was innocent didn’t exactly give him a sense of calm. This meant that whoever was after him was someone entirely different, and unless they could hack the app, they were somewhere very, very close to his apartment. Charlie could feel his insides tighten again at that thought. They could be anywhere, and they could be anyone.
What if Sarah told someone before that night? Or, even worse, what if someone happened to see the four of them somewhere along the way? They thought they weren’t followed that night, but maybe they were? They thought no one could see them when it happened. But maybe someone did?
Charlie had to stop himself from running around the house to lock every single window and draw every single blind. He needed to think, not panic. But right now he didn’t have time for either. One look at his phone made him rush out of the room; he was already fifteen minutes late for Laura.
Laura
Laura thought about launching right into her frustrations when Charlie showed up twenty-five minutes late, but he had flowers in his hand and a devastated look on his face, so she decided to hold off.
Once again, Charlie was the ideal date. This time he even upped the ante by learning a few words in Italian to use with the waiters. His pronunciation was awful, but it was the ridiculously adorable thought that counted. Still, Laura decided that she had to stick to her guns.
“This is awkward to say,” she said just as they finished their tiramisu, “but I feel like you don’t want people at school to know that we’re together.”
The look on Charlie’s face told Laura everything she needed to know.
“It’s not exactly that.” he started, but she didn’t want to hear it.
“If that’s the way it’s going to be, then thanks for a fun two weeks and good luck finding a girlfriend that’s willing to hide so you don’t have to deal with Amanda.” Laura couldn’t believe she had the guts to say that. She wanted to burst into tears right at the restaurant table, but instead stood her ground.
“You’re right,” Charlie said. There was sadness in his voice. “I’m sorry.” Apparently confronting the issue had worked. “But it’s not just about Amanda.”
“How?” Laura asked. She wasn’t about to let up now.
“Well,” he paused and seemed to come to a decision. He leaned forward. “Amanda will give me a hard time, but that’s because of this crazy thing that happened with another girl, not just because she’s jealous of you.”
“What do you mean? What other girl?”
Charlie scanned the other guests in the restaurant before he turned to Laura with guilty eyes, and it took him another few seconds of awkward silence to answer.
“Sarah Castro-Tanner,” Charlie whispered.
Laura was shocked to hear the words come out of his mouth. They hadn’t talked about Sarah since that walk by her house weeks ago, when Laura realized Charlie was really affected by her death. Now he was confessing that there was a reason why.
“I need to tell you something that almost no one in the world knows, and I need you to promise that you’re never going to tell anyone. Can you do that?” he said.
“Of course,” she said, “I promise.”
“Sarah Castro-Tanner was in love with me, and she did some things because of it that were really weird.”
“Wow,” Laura said. “Like what?”
“I don’t feel like I should talk about it, now that she’s gone. She had a lot of problems, and I know that wasn’t her fault. But what she did really scared me, and it took me awhile to get over it.”
Laura wasn’t sure that Charlie was really over it yet. He was speaking in a low, shaky voice and he kept shifting back and forth in his chair.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That sounds terrible.”
“It was, and that’s why I haven’t been as honest with my friends about you. When people were saying you kind of look like Sarah, those guys got worried about me. They don’t think I should hang out with you because it might bring back bad memories.”
Laura knew the disappointment was showing on her face, but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t want this to stand in the way of them being together, but it sounded like there was nothing she could do.
“I feel really terrible,” she finally said. “I didn’t know I was making you so uncomfortable.”
“No, no, no,” Charlie said, “That’s the thing! You’re not. Maybe on the first day or so you reminded me of her, but now all I see when I look at you is you. I love hanging out with you, Laura, and I don’t want what happened with Sarah to get in the way.”
Laura felt her body calm down; Charlie loved being with her and she felt the same way. What more really mattered? Then she remembered how she felt when he gave her a cold hello in the hallways at school. She couldn’t live like that. “But that still means we have to keep this whole thing under wraps?” she asked.
“No,” Charlie said, “It just means
I need to take it slower.”
Once again, Laura blurted out the first thing that came to her mind. “As in you don’t want to go to the homecoming dance with me?”
Charlie laughed out loud. “And there’s that honesty I love…”
“I get it, Charlie,” Laura confessed. “I would be uncomfortable, too. But I have to be honest. I can’t be with someone who isn’t willing to be brave. That’s my whole goal for myself this year, and I don’t want to let myself down. Do you understand that?”
Laura could see the disappointment land on Charlie’s face. She had obviously struck a chord. “You know what, screw it. I don’t want to go to the dance with anyone else. That gives me a full week to let my friends know that we’re together and they need to get on board.”
If Laura could have jumped out of her chair at the restaurant and thrown her arms around him without looking like a totally ridiculous, high school girl, that’s exactly what she would have done. Charlie Sanders didn’t just like her, and he was willing to stand up against his friends to prove it.
Charlie
Charlie drove straight to Amanda’s after dropping Laura off. He could barely focus the entire time they’d been eating because of the WhispWhere messages he’d received earlier. What if the mystery person who posted follow him to dinner? Did they know all about Laura? What were they going to do next? Charlie couldn’t take the anxiety. He walked straight into Amanda’s room and immediately fessed up about the image Kit received that they hid from Amanda, and about his WhispWhere situation. She didn’t take either lightly.
“Calm down?!” Amanda said. “Put yourself in my shoes, Charlie. I think we’re going to start this school year off by finally getting back together and instead you shun me, accuse me of pranking you about Sarah, and start hanging out with the new girl! I’m losing my mind!”
Charlie could see the pain in her eyes. It was not a common look from Amanda Hunter. She had been telling the truth all along; he needed to do the same.
“I’m not just hanging out with her,” Charlie admitted. Now was as good a time as any. “We’re together.”
Amanda took a deep breath in and then slowly exhaled. The information was clearly not shocking to her, but that didn’t seem to make it have less impact. She didn’t look hurt; she looked angry.
“I don’t know what to say, but you know what, I don’t have time to deal with that right now,” she finally said. “We need to do something about what’s going on.”
“I know,” Charlie said, “and I have a thought that you’re not going to like.”
“Try me.”
“I think we need to go to the police.”
“Please, Charlie. We can’t do that. What we did to Sarah has got to be ten kinds of crimes. Plus we withheld important information from the police for over a year and a half. I’m no lawyer, but I know that’s a problem. Plus there’s all the stuff that leads up to what happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everything she did to you. They’re going to see all that and feel like you have a motive.”
Charlie leaned back on the bed to think. He had only thought about what Sarah did in terms of what he and his friends did in response, but she had played a role, and it made her seem crazy, too. He bolted up. “What if they see everything Sarah did and realize she had serious mental issues? Like the ones that might make you kill yourself?”
Amanda paused, following the train of thought. “I get where you’re going, but I still don’t think it’s safe. Do you really want everyone you know to find out you’ve been keeping this all a secret since she died? Even if you don’t get arrested for what happened, your life in Englewood will be totally over.”
“Yeah… Do you think they would even believe my side of the story?” Charlie asked.
“I don’t know,” Amanda said, “and I don’t want to find out. Think of everything that happened freshman year. That’s a part of this, too, Charlie. If they go digging, they’ll find out more than just the Sarah story. That’s why we did what we did. We needed it all to go away, and it did. We have been a team through absolutely everything, and it’s worked. Now you need to stay the course. Both of our futures depend on it, and isn’t that what we’ve done everything for, always? To make it out of this town and get what we really want out of life?”
Believing Amanda meant more hiding and more fear, but Charlie knew he had no choice. If he told the truth about any one of the things they’d done, his soccer career and any hope of a college career would be over. The same went for Amanda. She would be the downfall of her entire family—all the generations of Englewood and New Jersey leadership. This mystery person would have to be dealt with in a different way, but if anyone could figure out how, it was the two of them—despite whether they were still a couple or not. They had been through the worst. They just had to stay calm and everything would be fine.
October 10
Sasha
Sasha reread the article for what must have been the twentieth time.
It has been eighteen months since the Englewood Police closed the case on the alleged suicide of high school freshman Sarah Castro-Tanner, but now they are opening it once again. Yesterday evening, a statement was released on Readle.com from an anonymous tipster going by the name “Sasha.” The note reads:
“Looks like the Englewood PD deserves zero stars for thorough detective work. I just discovered that poor Sarah Castro-Tanner—the girl whose case the EPD closed almost two years ago—didn’t necessarily commit suicide, and I’m not even eighteen years old. Since you cops are technically my ‘elders,’ I’ll give you a shot to redeem yourselves by figuring out what I now know before I tell the entire internet. You have one week and I’m going to give you one clue: search through the halls of Englewood High. The people you need to talk to are there.”
We will continue to follow this story.
She didn’t think it would feel quite as amazing as it did to see those words in print, and now on more than a dozen local news websites, but she was more than happy to be wrong. This was the riskiest, but most clever move she’d made to date, and now it was time for her to take a break.
The goal had always been for the police to take over when Sasha gathered enough evidence to warrant reopening the case. She wanted answers, but now that she’d done the difficult work of peaking interest, the authorities could step in. That was the best way to get the mystery solved while remaining safely on the sidelines. Sasha could not run the risk of the police finding her. They would want to know how she found the information she was threatening to reveal, and right now the answer made her a criminal. She wanted justice, but the ripple effect of what that could do to her was too intense. The wheels were in motion. Professionals could handle the rest.
* * *
It was hard for Sasha to concentrate on anything but the Sarah case as she tried to answer each interview question for the new part-time job she’d just lined up. There had been costs involved in getting to this point with all the hacking. Also, any day now her parents would ask what after-school job she found. But she’d thought of a clever way to kill two birds with one stone.
“So, tell me more about your experience working with children,” Karen asked. She was a naturally beautiful woman, but expensive clothes and expertly applied makeup made her even more radiant.
“I took a babysitting course at Robert Wood Johnson Hospital that covered first aid for kids, but I also grew up with lots and lots of younger cousins,” Sasha said. She was trying to use her most mature voice and kept reminding herself to sit up straight during the interview.
The original posting on MothersHelper.com had been for a sitter who was sixteen or older, and she was only fourteen. If she was going to get this job, she needed to help this seemingly detail-oriented mom forget that fact.
“Are any of your little cousins girls?” she asked.
“Most of them are,” Sasha said. “That’s really why I applied for this job with your daughters. I feel like I
can be a good match.”
“I hope so, because this job involves walking them from school to home for a quick snack and then taking them off to ballet. My girls can be tornados when it comes to walking, eating, and dancing.”
“I promise I can keep up.”
“Great. And you know the neighborhood here well? Even though you don’t live right here in Englewood?”
“I do. I used to take ballet at the Center Stage dance studio for years. I know exactly how to get there and around town.”
“Wonderful. So I guess my only question is, why should I hire you as opposed to the other girls and boys I’m interviewing?”
Sasha thought about the question for a second before answering. She wanted to get the response just right because this felt like the make-or-break moment.
“Because I will be incredibly committed to your family. I don’t have any siblings of my own, so the reason I’m applying for a babysitting job instead of just something at the mall is because I feel like I’m missing out on what it would be like to have two little sisters to run around, play with, and teach things to. I promise I’ll be like an awesome big sister to them—well, another awesome big sister.”
“They could use that,” Karen said. “Amanda’s just so busy this year.”
Sasha smiled to herself. “Well, then count me in, Mrs. Hunter,” she said.
“Fabulous. Let me talk to my husband tonight, but I think this is going to work out perfectly.”
Sasha reached her hand out for a very professional shake. This was going to be the beginning of a beautiful work relationship, though it was admittedly a little one-sided. She was going to get time inside the Hunter household for completely legal eavesdropping and fact-finding, and in return Mrs. Hunter was going to pay her good money. All Sasha had to do was walk two little rascals around town and take the bus back and forth. There was a strong chance she’d get to meet Charlie, Kit, and Miller in the process, only increasing the odds for one of them to reveal yet another clue. And none of them would have any idea they were among the enemy. None of them knew who she really was.