I open the car door but she grabs me. “Wait, what are you doing?”
“I’m breaking into his damn car. Fuck it.”
I pull away and she calls after me. But I’m determined to finally actually do something about this asshole. Find out what he’s up to. Not sure if there will be anything incriminating in his car, but if not, maybe I’ll try his house next.
I hurry across the street, walking at a brisk pace. When I reach his driveway, I act like I live there and have every right to be doing what I’m doing. The last thing I need is to be acting shady and get caught by a curious neighbor.
I try the car door. Locked. But the window is open a crack so I work my hand through, gently wiggling and pushing downward until the window starts to slowly lower.
Finally I get it to where I can push my arm through, and luckily I have long arms. I reach all the way down and find the lock, then open the door. The whole process takes maybe a minute to complete.
Funny, I think. I used to complain so much about helping my dad at his locksmith company but here I am putting all my knowledge to such good use! Dad would be proud.
I slide into the front seat of Derek’s car. It smells like cologne and old cheeseburgers. Maybe that’s because of the McDonald’s bag sitting on the floor of the passenger side.
It’s so dark that I’m having a hard time even knowing where to look, but I figure the glove compartment is always a safe bet.
So I open it and hit the jackpot almost immediately.
A digital camera. I grab it and turn it on, and the battery still works. My heart’s racing. I swivel around and check to make sure nobody’s spotted me. So far, the coast is clear. I can see the front end of my car, but the windshield is dark and it’s impossible to tell that Natalia’s in there. She’s probably freaking out, but this needed to be done.
Once the camera’s on, I figure out how to get into the pictures. And when I see what’s there, I almost feel faint. A wave of disbelief hits me as I cycle through the hundreds of shots.
“Jesus.”
This is worse than that stupid necklace. Much, much worse.
I shove the camera in my pocket, then slam the glove compartment shut and roll up the window. I try to think about whether or not there’s anything that would tip him off to knowing I was here, but I don’t think there is. I barely even touched anything in the car. The evidence was just sitting there at the top of the glove compartment.
“Idiot,” I whisper. But is he just an idiot? It seems like there’s way more to him than that.
I hurry back to my car and get in. Natalia’s white as a ghost.
“I can’t believe you just left me like that!” she says. “And what the hell were you thinking breaking into his car?”
“Hey, relax, nothing went wrong,” I say, turning the key in the ignition and driving away from the scene.
“But what if it had? What if he’d caught you? We could have gone to jail!”
I give her a sidelong glance. “Point is, nobody got caught, Natalia.”
“You’re as crazy as everyone else,” she says, looking at me in awe.
“I don’t think so. In fact, I’m pretty damn sure your old friend Derek is topping the list right about now.”
“You saw something?”
I nod.
“Tell me, Cam.”
“You need to try to stay calm.”
“Just. Tell. Me.”
I sigh. “Okay. But prepare yourself because it’s bad.”
“Duly noted.”
“I found a digital camera in his glove box.”
Natalia makes a groaning noise. “Oh, God.”
I hold it out to her and wait for the fallout.
Chapter Three
Natalia
Cam’s holding the camera out to me, and I take it, my hands shaking. I scroll through the pictures one by one. Me, outside of school. Raine, walking in the student parking lot with Teri and Becca. Brody at football practice. Me and Adrianna at the mall.
“That asshole,” I say, “I can’t believe he followed me to the mall!”
“He followed you?”
“Yeah.” I’m still scrolling. “He must have. I thought it was weird that he just showed up there, but …” I trail off. “Jesus Christ.” I take a deep breath. This has just gone from slightly creepy to completely and totally psychotic and scary. “I think we should call the police.”
“The police? And say what?”
“Um, that my crazy ex-boyfriend has been taking creepy surveillance pictures of us?”
“Maybe,” he says.
“Maybe? Don’t you think this crosses the line?” I throw the camera back over to him, like that will somehow erase what’s on it.
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “I just…” He trails off, staring through the car window toward Derek’s house.
“You just what?”
“Look, I know it probably sounds crazy, but I get the feeling that if we go to the cops, they’re not going to be able to help us.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I pull out my cell phone. “Of course they’ll be able to help us.” Won’t they? I mean, they’re the police. They’re supposed to be there to help. In fact, this is the exact kind of situation where you should call the police. Although... Cam is kind of right. I mean, what would I say? That my ex-boyfriend gave me a weird necklace? That’s not a crime. And following me and taking pictures of me is, but how could I prove this is Derek’s camera? And even if I could prove it’s Derek’s camera, how would I say I got it? Cam broke into Derek’s car, which I’m sure the police would be very interested in.
Before I can decide what to do, the door to Derek’s house starts to open.
“Get down,” Cam says, and we both scrunch down in the front seat.
“Why didn’t we park around the corner?” I ask.
“Did you really want to be walking around out there in the dark, exposed?”
Him saying the word “exposed” breaks the somber mood a little bit and makes me want to laugh. He must see the look on my face, because he reaches over and puts a finger to my lips. “Shhh,” he says.
We hear the sound of a car starting, and Cam lifts his head up and peeks through the windshield. “What the fuck?”
I sit up a little bit too, peering over the dashboard.
“Who is that?” I ask. A familiar-looking girl with white blonde hair is walking down Derek’s driveway. She gets into a black sedan that’s parked on the street, then starts it up and drives away.
“It’s Brody’s sister,” Cam says, glancing at me and not even trying to keep the “I told you so” sound out of his voice.
“Brody’s sister?” I say. “What the fuck? I thought she was in rehab.”
“So did I.” He starts up the car.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“We’re following her.”
***
Twenty minutes later, we watch as Brody’s sister pulls her car into the driveway of Brody’s house. She cuts the engine and walks inside, turning the outside light off after she shuts the front door.
“Well, that was a little anticlimactic,” I say.
“What?” Cam’s looking out the window, distracted.
“I thought there was going to be a high speed chase or something.” I’m joking, but Cam doesn’t look like he thinks it’s that funny.
“I think Brody’s sister being at Derek’s is a little more dangerous than a high-speed chase.” He’s looking straight ahead, his mouth set in a straight line, and his tone is kind of harsh.
“Are you mad at me?” I ask.
“No,” he says, sighing. “I’m sorry, I just.. I’m stressed out. And I wish you could admit that Brody might be mixed up in this somehow.”
“Fine,” I say, “Brody might be mixed up in this somehow.” I don’t want to believe it, but seeing Brody’s sister coming out of Derek’s house is kind of hard to ignore. I think about that day with Brody in Harvard Square, how we ran into his sis
ter and how the two of them got into some kind of fight.
Suddenly, I’m exhausted. I lean my head back against the seat and close my eyes as Cam keeps driving down Brody’s street. I must drift off for a few seconds, because the next thing I know, Cam’s pulling into a twenty-four hour gas station. “Should we be stopping here?” I ask sleepily. “What if someone sees us out together?”
“It’s after midnight,” Cam says. “And besides, I don’t have enough gas to get you home.” He turns the car off and unbuckles his seatbelt, then opens the door and heads toward the pumps.
I pull the white butterfly necklace out of my pocket and sit there for a while, staring at it, my mind racing with everything that’s gone on tonight. After a couple of minutes, a car pulls up at the pump in front of us, and Becca gets out. Shit. Becca!
What the hell is she doing here?
I try to slump down in my seat, but before I can, she turns around and we lock eyes through the windshield. I see the look of surprise that crosses her face, but then she gives me a bitchy smile and saunters over to Cam’s car.
“Well, well, well,” she says to me through the open window. “What are you two crazy kids up to?”
“How’s your face?” I ask.
She just grins, and Cam, probably hearing our voices, comes around from the back where he’s been pumping the gas.
“Hi, Becca,” he says. He doesn’t sound nervous at all. “Me and Natalia were just hanging out at Brody’s, and Brody had a little bit to drink, so I offered to drive her home.” This isn’t the exactly the best story for him to come up with, since I’m sure if Becca tells Raine, Raine will check with Brody. And I really doubt that Brody’s going to go along with our lie, or be thrilled that Cam and I were hanging out.
“Really?” Becca asks, like she doesn’t believe it.
“Really,” Cam says. “How are you doing? Have you seen Aiden lately?”
“Does Raine know about this?”
“Does Raine know about what?” Cam asks, but now his voice sounds a little more strained.
“That you’re out with her.” She looks at me like I’m a piece of trailer trash or something.
“No,” Cam says. “And I wasn’t out with her. Like I said, we ran into each other at Brody’s.”
“Ri-iight,” she says.
“We did,” I tell her, nodding as if that’s going to make it true.
She turns to look at me, a smirk on her face. “If you expect me to believe that, you’re even dumber than I thought.” She flips her long blonde hair over her shoulder, then pulls her phone out, probably to text Raine and tattle on us.
“Stop,” I tell her. “You’re not telling Raine.” And before I know what I’m doing, I’m out of the car and trying to grab the phone out of her hands.
“Knock it off,” she says, shouldering me off and turning away from me.
The fact that she acts like I’m not a threat makes me madder than I already am, and so I try to reach for the phone again.
“What the hell is your problem?” she asks.
“Well, I punched you once, right?” I say. “So you can’t be too surprised that I’d start messing with you again.”
She rolls her eyes at me, then starts to text Raine again. But this time she falters for a second, and when she does, a weird rush flows through my body. It’s not heat, although it does make me feel hot. It’s more like a jolt of something, not electricity, but close to it.
“You are not,” I say, moving toward her. “Going to tell Raine about this. You’re going to go back to your car, get in, drive away, and forget you ever saw us here.”
Becca nods, but not in fear. It’s more like she’s in a trance or something. I turn and watch as she walks away, slides into her car, and then pulls out of the parking lot.
It’s only when she’s gone that I realize I’m still clutching the white butterfly necklace, and that it’s burning red hot in my hand.
Chapter Four
Campbell
Becca drives off and I look at Natalia, see her holding that necklace. Her eyes are wide and her lips are pressed tightly together. “Hey!” I say, snapping my fingers in front of her face. She looks at me and blinks a few times. “What the hell was that?”
She doesn’t answer. But I know what that was, I’ve seen it before. When Raine did that weird stuff with her parents, having them fetch me beer when they’d just been screaming about underage drinking ten minutes beforehand.
And what about Aiden and Becca? Same thing.
I take a step back. “You…you can do it too.”
“Wait, what? Do what? Cam.”
“You’re like them, Nat. Like Raine.”
“No, I’m not.” She looks down at the necklace in her hand and then stuffs it in her pocket.
“You controlled Becca just now. I saw you do it. She was about to rat us out to Raine and then you told her to forget it and she just….obeyed you.”
“Cam, come on.” She laughs but her eyes tell a different story. “That’s crazy.”
“Nat—”
“I didn’t do anything. I’m not some evil witch.”
“I didn’t say you were evil. Maybe it’s that necklace.”
She crosses her arms. “Take me home, okay?”
“Yeah. Come on.”
We get back in the car and start driving toward her house. Neither of us say anything most of the way home. She picks up Derek’s camera at one point and starts scrolling through the pictures again.
Finally, I park outside her house and leave the car running. I feel kind of bad about saying all of that stuff to her, freaking her out.
She starts to grab her purse and I put my hand on her arm. “Hey.”
“No, you shouldn’t touch me. I might infect you or something.”
“Nat, I didn’t mean it that way. I know you’re one of the good ones.”
She looks at me with watery eyes. “I’m not one of anything.”
“I didn’t…come on. You have to admit, it’s been a crazy night,” I say, smiling.
“But it was worth it to see Becca put in her place.”
Natalia grins. “That was pretty cool.” Then her smile fades and is replaced by concern. “But how did I do it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What if you’re right? What if I’m like Raine?”
“You’re not.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Actually, I do know it.”
“How?”
“This is how.” I lean in and kiss her full lips. At first it seems as if she might push me away, but then she presses against me and we kiss for a long time. I love the way it feels. And it’s the opposite of how it feels when I’m with Raine. Raine makes me drunk, disoriented, sick and weak.
Natalia makes me feel…like myself. But somehow better.
“You get it now?” I say when we finally break away. “If I did that with Raine they’d probably have to take me to the emergency room.”
“So that’s how you figured out I’m not evil? By kissing me? Convenient.”
I nod. “We’ll have to check periodically,” I say. “Make sure nothing’s changed.”
“Right. Of course.” She laughs. “I should go.”
“You can text me if anything comes up…”
She gets out of the car.
“Nat.”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful, okay?” She nods and waves, then heads into her house. I wait until she’s safely inside before pulling out of the driveway and heading home.
***
The next day I wonder if there will be any fallout from Becca catching us together at the gas station. But there’s none.
When Raine sees me in the hallway for the first time, she’s her usual self.
“Hi, sexy.” She smiles.
Becca and Teri are following behind her like good little lackeys.
“Hey. What’s going on?” I say, acting casual but interested, even though everything in me wants t
o get away from this chick.
“Nothing. Haven’t heard from you in ages.” She raises an eyebrow. In the past I would have found this hot, but not anymore.
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