by Gina Ciocca
“Reiser!” Jordan shouted. We both looked up in time to see Charlie’s phone flying at us. She caught it, fumbling it between her mittened hands before getting a secure grip.
“Ass! You would’ve been in deep shit if you broke my phone!” Charlie called at his retreating back.
He still had his own phone pressed against his ear. Without looking back, he raised an arm in more of a salute than a wave and replied, “I’m out of here.”
Charlie’s face contorted with disgust. “What crawled up his ass and died?”
I didn’t respond. I scooped my purse off the steps and started to go after him. Charlie grabbed my arm.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m following him.”
“Are you nuts? Following people is what got you into this mess. You don’t owe Sara Mendez anything.” She clung to my arm and dug her heels into the ground as I tried to walk away.
“Sara thinks I’m the one Jordan is cheating with, remember? This ‘mess’ probably has her firing up the wood chipper as we speak. My name is shit, Char. I have to do something about it.” I strained to keep moving, but she locked her boots against the concrete.
“Catching Jordan with someone other than Sara only proves he’s a whore. It won’t make all the crap that came from spying go away. And as for the damn essay, make something up. I’m sorry I ever gave you that flyer.”
“Easy for you to say. We wouldn’t be here if you had parents like mine.”
Her hands fell to her sides and her mouth drooped. “A lot of good it did me.”
I felt a stab of guilt, but apologies would have to wait. “You’re either with me or you’re not. Decide fast, because I’m leaving.”
I watched her pupils dart from side to side as she warred with herself. Then her grip on my arm loosened. “Come on,” she said. “Our douchebag’s getting away.”
26
“Look away. I’m going to talk on the phone while driving,” I told Charlie as I manned the wheel with one hand and one eye, trailing Jordan’s car, and searched for TJ’s number with the others.
She snorted and ripped the phone out of my hand. “Who are you calling?”
“TJ. I saw him across from the school while I was talking to Jordan.”
“What was he doing there?”
“Who knows? Looking for Kendall?”
Charlie whistled as she scrolled through my contacts. “Damn. If he saw what I saw, it really does suck to be you tonight.”
She pressed the ringing phone against my ear as I shot her a stink eye. “Don’t remind me. He’s not answer—TJ?” I almost drove off the road when his voice met my ear. I would’ve bet money he’d send me to voicemail. “Hi, it’s Marisa. Listen—”
“So all this time you’ve been pretending to be my friend because you were spying on me?”
Maybe calling from the car hadn’t been such a great idea. “I wasn’t pretending to be your friend, TJ, I—”
“Then Kendall was right about one thing. You’re a pretty lousy friend if you think this is what friendship is.”
My fingers clenched my phone. “You’re one to talk! She never would’ve had to ask me for help if you’d opened your mouth and broke it off sooner! What kind of boyfriend breaks plans with his girlfriend to meet up with strange people in parking lots and make bracelets with another girl? What the hell is your deal anyway?”
TJ took a breath, like he needed to calm himself. “My situation with Kendall is a lot more complicated than it seems.”
“Well, now’s your chance. Explain.”
“If you’d given me a little more time, I would’ve opened up to you on my own. But I’m glad I didn’t. I obviously misjudged the kind of person you are. Besides, it looks like you have your hands full with Jordan Pace.”
With that, he hung up.
I swore under my breath and threw the phone into the cup holder. “It’s official. He hates me.”
“Please tell me you have enough sense to let sleeping dogs lie and you’re not going to keep up the investigation.”
“Of course I am! If TJ wants nothing to do with me, I at least have to make things right with Kendall. I have to prove I didn’t try to steal her boyfriend.”
Charlie gaped at me. “After she told you your life and your work are shit, and blasted you on the internet? Marisa, I’m seriously starting to wonder if you’re deaf, because you can’t possibly hear how ridiculous you sound.”
“She said and did those things because she thinks I betrayed her.”
“You did!”
“No, I didn’t! Not intentionally, anyway.”
“And if she were really your friend, she’d know that.”
We fell silent as Jordan’s car made a left up ahead. Then I sighed. “I at least need to get her to take the site down.”
Charlie didn’t comment. She stared out the windshield, an unusual seriousness in her expression. “Tell me the truth,” she finally said. “Are we following Jordan because you’re still clinging to the idea of getting back together?”
I looked from the road to her and back again, words choking my throat even though I felt sure of my answer. “No. I swear to you.”
She turned to me. “Do you want to be with TJ?”
I shrank in my seat, keeping my eyes trained on Jordan’s car. It was true that I liked TJ a lot more than I should have. I definitely enjoyed kissing him way more than I should have. But I’d never stopped to think about what would happen between us if the situation were different. Or even if it wasn’t. Trying to come up with an answer now made me feel like my tongue had been swapped out for a cement block.
A smirk formed on Charlie’s lips. “Your silence is answer enough.”
I only half heard her. My eyes narrowed as we passed a house adorned with colored Christmas lights and an inflatable snowman in the front yard. I could’ve sworn I’d seen it before.
“Does this neighborhood look familiar to you?” I asked.
Charlie sat up straighter and looked out the window. “Now that you mention it, it kind of does. Where are we?”
“Monroe, I think.”
The déjà vu only grew stronger as Jordan made another left turn.
“Oh my God,” Charlie said. “I know where we are.”
A second later, I did too. Not that I believed my eyes, because it should’ve been the last place on earth we’d end up.
But unless the stress of my night had caused me to hallucinate, Jordan had just pulled up the long, circular driveway to Kendall Keene’s house.
27
Charlie and I stared in disbelief from where we were parked on the street.
“How do Jordan and Kendall know each other?” Charlie asked.
“Maybe they don’t. Maybe he’s using her driveway to turn around.”
Nope. Jordan’s headlights cut off and his car door opened. I must’ve been on autopilot, because I grabbed the yearbook camera from my back seat and snapped a picture. Charlie looked as confused as I felt.
“Does Kendall know you dated Jordan?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve never had a reason to bring him up.”
“So this isn’t some sort of revenge booty call she orchestrated to get back at you?”
That sounded right up Kendall’s alley, with the exception that she knew nothing of my history with Jordan. Yet Kendall herself opened the door for him. We were too far and it was too dark to see her face when she found Jordan on her front step, but she didn’t hesitate to let him in. I snapped another picture before the door closed.
“Was that for you or for Sara?” Charlie asked. “Or TJ?”
I pulled up the grainy image on my screen and zoomed in on Kendall. It was dark and blurry, but there was no mistaking the smile on her face. I frowned at Charlie. “Whichever one of us needs it most.”
A few seconds later, a light came on in one of the turreted windows on the upper level. A window with frilly, pink-and-green curtains.
“I think they’re in her bedroom,” Charlie said, reading my mind. No sooner had she finished her sentence than the light went out. “No way. Do you think they’re doing it?”
The sour taste of betrayal lingered in my mouth. If Kendall and Jordan were hooking up, why had she been so focused on TJ’s extracurricular activities? And how dare she accuse me of stealing something she’d already thrown away? Maybe I was jumping to conclusions, but something was very wrong here and I had to figure out what.
I held up my phone and waited, watching for the light to go back on. When it didn’t, I hit TJ’s number and sent him a text.
Any reason why Jordan Pace would be at Kendall’s house right now?
A long, loaded pause followed before my phone buzzed with his response:
I might have an idea.
• • •
I lay in bed that night with my mind reeling. I’d been humiliated by my ex–best friend, comforted and almost kissed by my ex-boyfriend, and then discovered the two of them were possibly hooking up behind everyone’s backs. It had been a hell of a twenty-four hours.
On top of it, I’d gone into the Busted email account to find it littered with hate mail. Complete strangers had gone out of their way to tell me how horrible I was, and one of them even used the word unprofessional.
Unprofessional. Like this private eye crap was real.
The email I didn’t receive bothered me most though. For all the overly brave anonymous venom, the one eff-you I expected never materialized: Sara’s. When I finally drifted off for a few minutes, I dreamed that she and her friends snuck up behind me at my locker with baseball bats, pounding away until my limbs snapped like tree branches and fell onto the linoleum in sharp right angles.
I woke with a start and launched myself at my computer, taking half of my bedding with me. I didn’t need another person plotting revenge against me. I opened an email and addressed it to SaraCat42.
Hi, Sara,
You probably know who Reverse Cupid is already, but in case you haven’t heard, it’s me, Marisa Palmera. I know you think there’s something going on between Jordan and me, but I can assure you there’s not. I went to the Templeton game last night like you asked me to, and I saw him there. He didn’t have a girl with him, but did he tell you where he went afterward?
Marisa
I left it at that. Mentioning the video seemed like a stupid move. If she’d seen it, she’d draw her own conclusions, and if she hadn’t, there was no sense in pointing a giant flashing sign at it.
I looked at the clock—4:00 a.m. All I could do was wait for the ax to fall. And figure out what to say to TJ when I saw him. I’d responded to his I might have an idea text message with Care to elaborate? But he hadn’t answered.
While I was on a roll, I unplugged my phone from its charger and clicked on Kendall’s name. I started to type and deleted my message three times. Finally, I wrote I think we both have some explaining to do and hit send. At that point, I couldn’t see the harm in adding one more knot to my intestines.
An eternity of silence passed while I alternately checked my phone and email. Nothing appeared in either one.
I looked at the clock again—4:15. This was going to be a long night.
I pulled out the chair at my craft table, knowing I’d never get back to sleep. I needed a way to occupy my mind, to remember that I was good at something. My fingers wandered over to the box at the far edge of the table, one that I hadn’t opened in quite a while, and an idea started to form. I set to work. Gradually, some of the tension faded from my shoulders. My plan might not get me anywhere, but for once, I felt like I was doing something right.
28
The first thing I became aware of was a sharp pain in my forehead. For a second, I wondered if my run-in with Sara and her baseball bat had been real. I peeled my face from the sticky surface it had congealed to and rubbed the stinging spot on my head. A tiny blue crystal came off on my fingertip.
I’d fallen asleep at my craft table. Not just fallen asleep—face-planted into a crystal and passed out cold.
I groaned as I massaged the dented spot on my head and the night before came rushing back. Before I could grab for my phone to see if anyone had acknowledged me, my bedroom door opened slightly. Nick’s eye appeared in the crack.
“Hey,” he said. “You okay?”
“Well, in one night, I became the laughingstock of Monroe County, made more enemies than I have in my entire life, and almost gave myself a lobotomy with a bead. So yeah, I’m stellar.”
Nick leaned against the door frame with his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants. “Charlie says she’s making you cookies today.”
“Aw, she’s the best.”
His face instantly went all moony. “Yeah, she is.” He caught himself and stood up straighter. “She knows what you’re going through.”
I rubbed my eyes, finally starting to wake up a little. “I guess at this point it can’t get much worse, right?” I reached for where I’d left my phone the night before, but my hand came in contact with an empty table. I leaned down to see if it had fallen on the floor. Not there either.
“Where’s my phone?” I stood up to look around and noticed an empty space where my computer had been too. “What happened to my—” I whipped around to face my brother. “What’s going on?”
Nick ducked out of my room, trying and failing to shut the door before I started chasing him. I threw it open and reached his door right before he could close it, hurling all my weight against it and yelling that I’d shave off his eyebrows in his sleep if he didn’t give my stuff back. The door gave way and Nick leaped over his bed, half laughing and half hovering behind it like it wasn’t the least effective barricade on the planet. “Trust me,” he said, “you don’t want to look at the internet right now. I’m doing you a favor.”
I charged at him. He tried to roll over his bed, but I dove on top of him and shoved his face into the comforter so that only one eye stared up at me. “Tell me what’s going on right now or I send Charlie my video of you cleaning our bathroom in your underwear and singing with your headphones on.”
“No!” He stuck his tongue out and tried to lick my hand. I relocated my grip to his forehead and pushed harder.
“Dream on,” I sang in my best screechy falsetto, imitating Nick in the video I’d shot on the sly a couple months ago. He’d threatened my life if I ever posted it anywhere, but at this point, nothing he did could be much worse than what had already happened to me. “Dream on, aaaahhhahaha!”
“Okay!” He pushed himself up like Gulliver breaking away from Lilliputian restraints, and I rolled backward off the bed and onto the floor. When I looked up, Nick was peering over the edge and holding out his hand to help me up. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He rubbed the side of his face as he headed to his closet. “Shit, I think some of Kendall’s spaz rubbed off on you. You are freakishly strong.” He pulled my laptop from beneath a pile of crap on his closet floor and opened it. When he turned it toward me, the Busted-turned-Bitch website lit up the screen.
I didn’t reach for it. “Oh God. What now?”
Nick proffered the computer. “Do you want to know or not?”
I took it from him, and the way my stomach lurched made me grateful I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet.
At first glance, nothing seemed different. The bitch headline still came screaming out of the old Busted one, and the video of the promposal still showcased the same god-awful thumbnail.
And then I scrolled a little further.
The blood drained from my face. A photo from last year’s bonfire stared back at me. The picture had been taken from Kevin’s deck, looking down into the backyard. Kevin and two of his friends stood in front of the fire wi
th their arms around each other’s shoulders, beers held high in their free hands. But off to the side sat two people unaware that their picture was being taken. Jordan had his arm wrapped around my shoulder and my hand rested on his knee. We were looking at each other, lost in our own little world. The caption below read Marisa gets cozy with the boyfriend of another client.
“What? This picture is old! Where did she even get it?”
My mind raced. Could Jordan have done this? Was this the reason he’d gone to Kendall’s house? It didn’t make any sense. Why would he implicate himself as part of Kendall’s disgusting need for revenge?
I scrolled down again to read the testimonial that went along with the picture.
I wanted to make sure my boyfriend was only into me, so I asked Marisa for help. All she needed to do was catch him with another girl, and instead she was the one in his face all the time. She may have proved my boyfriend doesn’t deserve me, but she did it by being as big a slut as he is.
My throat constricted. In his face all the time were the exact words Sara had used in her original email to me. Kendall might’ve seen it before I changed the password, but how could she possibly have known who’d written it? Not only that, if Kendall and Jordan were friends—or friends with benefits—why would she let Sara call him out this way?
The misery didn’t stop there. Beneath Sara’s lovely little blurb, Kendall had added another photo. Jordan and me at our lockers, talking. My back faced the camera and Jordan’s eyes were trained on my face. My green shirt, black flats, and TJ’s black belt around my waist told me it was the day Jordan had asked me to the bonfire.
Apparently, Sara Cat had done a little spy work of her own.
I looked at Nick. “I don’t even know what to say anymore.”
“Say the word and I’ll make Pace a eunuch.”
“He didn’t get me into this mess. I did. I did this all by my own stupid self.” I stared at the screen again, watching the word Bitch blare into view over and over.
I’d made some seriously dumb decisions in my life, but the dumbest was letting Kendall Keene back into it.