B00B9FX0F2 EBOK (19 page)

M
ax came to as they waited for the police to arrive. Rakesh had called them while Jason untied Jenna and Troy helped Luke to his feet. Max was conscious but groggy, and Troy quickly taped his hands behind his back and hovered over him in case he got any ideas. Rakesh wasn’t taking no for an answer from the police this time.

“Maybe you didn’t hear me, this is John Sullivan the
third
,” he said very clearly. Jason would have gone with fourth, but Rakesh was selling it. “Perhaps you know my father, John Sullivan? Yeah, he’s the guy who plays golf with your boss on Saturdays, and if you don’t send a squad car over here right now, I will make sure the mayor himself knows you were the one responsible for ignoring my calls about an
actual murderer
.”

“I’m sorry,” Jenna said as soon as Jason had ripped the tape from her lips. “I should never have lied to you. I shouldn’t have trusted Max. I’m sorry I got you involved in this whole mess.”

“You’re the one who just saved my life, I should be thanking you.”

She kept talking as if he hadn’t said anything. “Messaging you, pretending to be Lacey, it was Max’s idea. He showed me that video of Troy, and I didn’t know … I thought … He said Troy had killed Lacey, but he couldn’t prove it. It made sense. I mean, she never lied to me, but here was this huge secret. I was the one who went into her Facebook. When I found your message, Jason,
I just lost it. It was like you were everyone who was never going to get a chance to get to know Lacey. But then Max thought maybe you could help us, and that’s why I wrote you.”

She started to cry, great, heaving sobs she couldn’t speak through. Jason put his arms around her, letting her weep onto his shoulder. He still had so many questions.

Though he looked a little worse for the wear, Luke was standing now. He stumbled toward Max, and Troy steadied him. “He’s not worth it,” he said. From the look in his eyes, Jason wasn’t sure he meant it.

They heard sirens in the distance, and Jason knew it was his only chance to find out the thing he couldn’t find out for himself. He poked Max’s shoulder until he cast his dark eyes up to him.

“Why me?”

“You messaged her first.”

“No. I don’t buy that. You had everything you needed to frame Troy. Why get me involved? Besides, I can’t be the only person who messaged her.”

Max smiled. It sent a chill down Jason’s spine. “You were so easy,” he said at last. “The music you like, the photos of your boring suburban life, the way no one notices you. You’re just like me. I knew exactly how you were going to react, exactly what you were going to do. It was like finding a puppet.”

Jenna had drawn away and was wiping her eyes with a tissue. Jason stepped forward so he was right above Max. “Did you know I was going to do this?” he asked sweetly. He pulled back his foot and kicked him as hard as he could in the side. Then he walked out of the garage.

The rest of the night passed in a blur. The postmidnight excursions and sleepless nights caught up with Jason all at once, and a fog descended on him. He watched as the police led Max away in handcuffs. At some point paramedics arrived and even though Jenna and Luke both waved them off, they were loaded into an ambulance and driven away. Jason didn’t know how much time passed before he found himself at the station house, sitting in a windowless interrogation room, a grizzled detective who’d introduced himself as Officer O’Leary opposite him. Jason answered every question posed to him, allowing all the secrets and lies to fall away for the first time in what felt like forever. When he finished the story, his head felt like a ton of bricks.

O’Leary whistled quietly. “Sheesh,” he said. “My day, you get a girl’s number, you ask her out. Maybe she says she’s gotta wash her hair and you see her at the dance with another guy, you get your heart a little broken. But I tell ya, I don’t envy you kids with your Facebook, your YouTube. It’s hard enough to meet someone you can be yourself around without all these identities getting in the way.”

Jason stared at him blankly, but his mind flashed to Jenna, the night in the car outside Troy’s house. How easy it had been, how natural. It was strange to think she’d been the one he’d been falling for all along. How many hours ago had he discovered Lacey’s profile on her computer? Everything seemed so black-and-white at that moment, but here, in the fuzzy light of exhaustion and revelation, Jason wasn’t so sure. It was strange to think Jenna was the one he’d been falling for the whole time. The one who’d written the messages that made his breath shorten and his heart jump. All the secrets were
finally out in the open, but there were some things he still couldn’t get clear.

“C’mon, kid,” Officer O’Leary said after he didn’t answer. “Let’s get you home. One thing the Internet hasn’t changed is how much one of those hurts.” He gestured to Jason’s bruised and swollen eye. Jason blinked, and as if on cue, waves of pain reverberated through his head, causing him to wince.

“Thanks,” he managed, as the gruff, graying man helped him to his feet.

By the time he stepped outside the station, the sun was rising. Rakesh was sitting in the front seat of Mrs. Adams’s car, and Jason could tell from her expression that she was right in the middle of one of her epic tirades, but she paused, mouth agape, when Rakesh spotted Jason and waved him over. He tumbled into the backseat, dazed from the daylight.

“Oh, Jason, you must be so tired. I’ll take you straight home.” Her voice was thick with concern. If he weren’t so numb from the wild events of the past twenty-four hours, he would have marveled at the rare occasion when Rakesh was in trouble for something while his involvement would go unpunished. He had no idea how Rakesh had convinced the police not to call his mother, but he was deeply grateful. He thought his brain might sputter out if he had to go through the whole story again.

The next thing he knew, Mrs. Adams was shaking him gently. “Sweetie, we’re at your house.” Her face loomed above him, and he lurched backward, startled before he realized he’d fallen asleep against the window. “Are you sure you don’t want to come over and sleep in the guest bedroom for a little while?
Rocky says your mom will be home soon, but I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“No, it’s fine,” he said. The words felt heavy as they passed through his gravelly throat. “I just want my bed.” He sounded like a cranky toddler, but he didn’t care.

When he got upstairs, he reflexively planted himself at his desk chair and logged in to Facebook. When his screen lit up with the missed messages from Jenna, he felt his body sag a little.

“What am I doing?” he mumbled. Officer O’Leary had been right: There was nothing more than confusion waiting for him online. So he shut down his computer, turned off his phone, and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

D
oes she know that’s what you’re wearing?” Rakesh couldn’t mask his skepticism. He sat on Jason’s bed in a narrowly cut black suit.

“She won’t care,” Jason answered without taking his eyes off his reflection. He’d found the tuxedo T-shirt in a thrift shop months ago and bought it even though at the time he was vehemently anti–school dance. But here he was, about to get into a limo that would take him to a darkened gym where a DJ would no doubt be blasting LFMAO and Ke$ha. If there was anything he’d learned, it was that things didn’t usually work out the way you expected.

“So she
doesn’t
know?”

“Does Meg know you’re wearing a tie so skinny I think it might be anorexic?”

“Adrian Grenier wore this tie to his last movie premiere.”

“The guy from
Entourage
? Is that supposed to be a selling point?”

“Jason, it’s a first impression. Which means you have to
impress
her.”

“It’s not a first impression,” Jason protested. “We’ve hung out before.”

“Yeah, but not on a date. Don’t you think it will be weird enough without your hipster wardrobe choices?”

Jason didn’t answer. He couldn’t deny it was weird that he and Jenna were going on a date. He had flirted with her before, but that was when he thought she was Lacey. When they first became friends, there was a small spark, but it was buried beneath his devotion to Lacey — and then extinguished completely by Jenna’s betrayal. But the weirdest part about tonight was that Jason
wasn’t
nervous.

In the days after Max’s arrest, Jason had wandered around in a fog of grief and sadness. The girl he’d fallen in love with was gone forever — worse than that, the girl he’d fallen for was an invention of a murderer and brought to life by someone he thought was his friend.

At school, Jason was no longer invisible. Lacey’s story had circulated like the plague, developing twisted strains with each retelling — Rakesh recounted one version he had heard that involved Jason wielding nunchucks to knock a gun from Max’s hands. Of course Rakesh had no problem inflating his own heroics, and he made sure to correct any recount that didn’t properly recognize his athleticism or bravery. Kids in the hall looked at Jason with newfound respect, but he was so lost in his own thoughts he barely noticed, let alone cared. He stayed off Facebook and e-mail, and rarely checked his phone, and messages from classmates he barely knew inviting him to parties or offering a shoulder to cry on all went unanswered. And then just as everything was beginning to settle down, he came home to find a thick envelope, his name etched across the front in round neat letters, the return address one “J. Merrick.”

He was the first one home that day, and his stomach somersaulted when he found the letter in the hall beneath the mail
slot. He smuggled it up to his room unopened and laid it carefully on the bed, looking down at it anxiously, as if it might explode in his face at any minute. The wanting to know, the not wanting to know — he hadn’t felt like this since Lacey. Who was Jenna. Who had sent the letter that was in front of him now. Finally, he ripped the envelope open.

When Jason was finished reading, he sat very still. He was waiting for the anger to flare up inside him, to feel the sting of Jenna’s deception anew. But to his surprise, the only thing he felt was warmth flooding his chest. He realized he was smiling.
For the first time, he had some clarity. And Jenna liked him.
Like
liked him.

He sat down at his computer and began to type.

As soon as he’d sent the IM to Jenna, the familiar anticipation of waiting for a response crept into his body — his chest ping-ponging, his stomach flip-flopping, all of it vaguely pleasant.

It had begun with two little words with Lacey, and this time it only took one.

In the days and weeks that followed, they slipped into an easy correspondence, writing and IM’ing frequently. They mostly avoided the topic of Lacey, but not always — Jenna told him how Troy and Luke had been different in school, nicer to strangers they passed in the hall, more respectful of kids in their classes. Jason told her how he sometimes had nightmares about Max, but he left out the scariest part, which was that he was unable to rescue her.

“So when are we going to hang out?” Jenna asked when they were Skyping illicitly one night. Jason had been grounded ever since his mom had come home to find him bloodied and bruised and fresh from a trip to the police station. She was so shocked when he first recounted everything that happened that she punished him indefinitely, but lately she’d eased up, allowing him to use his computer for non-school-related things
and not pestering him when he hung out with Rakesh after school.

“There’s this dance,” Jason answered.

“Jason Moreland, are you telling me you’re going to spend a night in a gym decorated with cheesy plastic palm trees listening to Top 40?”

“I am if you are,” he answered, trying to mask how desperately he hoped she’d say yes.

“Yes! But only if you promise me you’ll actually dance.”

“We’ll see about that,” he laughed, but even then he knew if it was important to Jenna he’d do it.

When Jason told Rakesh his mom had granted him permission to go and he’d secured a date, Rakesh whooped with joy and then quickly booked a limo and assembled a group. Before he headed off to his first school dance, Jason checked himself in the mirror one last time. For a brief moment, his mind bounced reflexively to Lacey. Instead of wondering about her approval, though, Jason felt an overwhelming sense of sadness for the dances she would not attend, the nights out she’d never enjoy. But he shook those thoughts from his head, and surveyed the face before him. The bruises had faded entirely, and his hair wasn’t too floppy. For once the light wasn’t bouncing off his glasses. Part of him wanted to snap a photo to post to Facebook, but the only person he wanted to impress wouldn’t be checking her news feed — instead, she’d be hanging out with Jason.