The Lies That Bind (16 page)

“Oh God, get a bucket or something, Naomi!” Bradley shouted, his hands thrown into the air. I’m pretty sure if my vision wasn’t blurred from the tears that filled my eyes, I would have shriveled under the look he gave me, which was one part shock and three parts horror, with a healthy dollop of disgust plopped on top. But I wasn’t supposed to care what Bradley thought about me. I
didn’t
care what Bradley thought about me.

That’s how I managed to gear up for another round of make-me-puke. The game was all Grace’s. She used to play before school when she hadn’t studied for an exam or was having boy issues or was just plain tired.

“It’s different every time. Sometimes I picture a maggot-and-stick-of-butter sandwich with microwaved mayonnaise poured over the top. Or last time it was being forced to suck on every single one of McAdams’s hairy toes after he’d worn socks all day,” she’d whispered into the phone. I could always imagine her shrugging her shoulders nonchalantly as she painted her fingernails or downloaded new songs onto her computer while the rest of us suffered through another endless day of school. It was such a Grace move.

And today she’d have been proud. Naomi arrived just in time with the bucket, and I puked inside for good measure. Once I started, it was kind of hard to stop. No matter how hard I tried not to think about licking the inside rim of one of the boys’ toilets in the gym, the image still kept popping up.

And I had to admit, the puking was better than the post-puking. Especially when I’d just destroyed one-third of Bradley Farrow’s closet while both he and his gorgeous sister looked on. Talk about embarrassing.

Luckily, I also knew how to cry on demand. Just another one of my many talents.

“Oh my God,” I said, using my finger to wipe away the mascara-tinted tears beneath my eyes. If I’d known I was going to have to puke, I would have worn waterproof. “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t feel good all of a sudden and I thought this was the bathroom and by the time I made it inside, it was too late, and oh my God, oh my God. I can’t believe I just did that.”

“It’s okay, seriously,” Naomi said, stifling a laugh. “I’m just glad he’s the history buff.” She nodded toward her brother, covering her smirk with a hand.

Bradley shoved her and mumbled something that sounded like “It’s fine” under his breath, even though it clearly wasn’t fine. Naomi helped me up and handed me a tissue, and Bradley returned with a garbage bag, some towels, and an armful of cleaning supplies I was almost positive he’d never used in his entire life.

“I’ll just catch up with you later,” he said, his voice sounding more nasal than normal. Clearly he was trying to breathe through his mouth. I didn’t blame him for a second. There was absolutely nothing worse than puke, and the thought of a random guy’s puke splattered all over the contents of my closet made me feel the tiniest twinge of guilt.

But then I remembered Bethany. And the phone in my pocket. Puke was the least of Bradley Farrow’s worries.

Naomi led me down the stairs like an invalid, her arm hooked through mine. “So, um, everything okay with you? That scream did not sound good,” I said, reminding myself to take it slow, that I was supposed to be sick.

“It was the weirdest thing. I was just sitting and watching TV when this guy pressed his face against our window. But when Bradley came downstairs, there was no one outside. Come to think of it, he actually looked sort of like that redheaded neighbor of yours…”

“Oh gosh, I feel like I might be sick again.” Amazing how potential puke can change the subject in a hurry.

Naomi rushed down the stairs ahead of me, ostensibly to avoid getting sprayed by rogue chunks of vomit. “Just hold on a sec. We’re almost to the door.”

As I wrapped up my own personal walk of shame, I hoped Taylor knew how much I was sacrificing in all of this. I didn’t exactly see her puking on demand in front of two of the most popular kids in school. Granted she was
the
most popular girl in school, but still.

“Um…please tell your brother that I’m really sorry. I seriously don’t even know what to say.” I could barely look her in the eye. My red cheeks were one thing that didn’t have to be faked. No one ever forgot a puker. In lower school, Leif Anderson puked all over Penelope Townsend’s desk, destroying the self-portrait she’d just completed during art class. To this day, you always left a little extra space between yourself and Leif.

I was never, ever going to live this one down. I patted the side of my skirt and felt the hard case of the cell phone beneath my fingertips. I hoped it was worth it.

“Meh.” Naomi shrugged her shoulders. “Bradley floods a toilet at the club every time we eat dinner there. If he tries to bring it up, just tell him you know all about how our dad had to cover the cost of the men’s bathroom renovation last year.”

“Thanks, Naomi,” I said, forcing a smile and slipping through the door.

I ran all the way to Liam’s jeep, which was parked a block and a half over. Seth flung the back door open for me as though I was being chased and about to toss myself in the car, which would have been cool but overly dramatic considering there was absolutely no one outside in the dead of winter. Taylor sat shotgun but was twisted around in her seat, anxiety warping her features and highlighting the purple bags beneath her eyes.

“So?” Liam asked, letting me pull myself into the car before moving into first gear. Seth seemed disappointed at my entrance.

“Let’s just say I had to play make-me-puke.”

Taylor looked horrified, Seth laughed, and Liam appeared genuinely impressed.

“But, I got…this.” I yanked the sparkly phone out of my pocket and held it up. For a second, I was so proud of myself that I forgot what finding the phone actually meant. Then I noticed the expression on Taylor’s face. She looked like she was about to burst into tears. Her hand shook as she reached toward me, gingerly lifting the phone from my fingers.

“It’s dea…er…out of batteries, but I have the same one. We can charge it at my house,” I said, kicking myself for my initial choice of words. Liam flicked his blinker and made the turn in the direction of Seth’s and my street as Taylor turned the phone over and examined the sparkly “B.”

It wasn’t hard to imagine how I’d feel if the roles were reversed. I’d been there. Except there was never any hope. The night of the fire, I just knew Grace was gone. I barely had time to understand what hit me. With Bethany, there was still hope. Except now, as Taylor turned the phone over in her hands, I could see that hope slipping between her fingers. And it was hard to watch.

The three of us marched into my house and rushed up the stairs to the charger. The phone gave a satisfying beep as we plugged it in, and we huddled around it, our heads almost touching. I resisted the urge to cheer it on. When it finally powered on, the series of beeps and vibrations it emitted made me afraid it was broken. But really, it was recovering hundreds of missed calls, texts, and voice mails. I thought of all the times I’d called Grace the night of the fire. The calls she never got.

“Do you…” I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to say, but it didn’t seem right for anyone but Taylor to be digging around in Bethany’s phone. “Do you want to?” I lifted it and placed it in her hands.

She scrolled through the missed calls first. They were mainly from Taylor and a few of their close friends. I saw “Mom” and “Dad” and even a few of Bethany’s brothers’ names, but none from the boys we were expecting. The texts were the same. Text after text from contact after contact. I’d never considered how much a person could miss without their phone for three days. Especially if people were worried.

But Taylor quickly scrolled through the texts asking about the yoga retreat or wondering about cell service and a couple that just said “ommmmmmmmm,” which I actually thought was kind of funny.

Taylor went right to the texts that came in on January 10th. The night of Obsideo. There had to be a hundred texts from that day, and almost every one of them was from Bradley Farrow.

u think ur so smart

they’ll never believe u

my word against urs. u know how that goes

just wait

The phone slipped between Taylor’s fingers, striking the hardwood floor and making all of us jump. But it didn’t matter. The texts were seared into my brain. I just hoped we weren’t too late.

The school day was long under normal circumstances, but even longer that Friday. Watching the clock in every classroom tick away the minutes until I could interrogate Bradley Farrow was torture.

Under the new rules and regulations, by precisely 4:30 p.m. on any given day, Pemberly Brown transformed into a ghost town. The long marble hallways appeared desolate and abandoned, the parking lot cleared of all the expensive cars that occupied spots during the day. No extracurriculars, no detentions, no school meetings, no teacher planning sessions went past 4:00 p.m. Supposedly the school kept late afternoons free to ensure balance for the students. I always thought it was because too many mommies and daddies complained that school events were interfering with their happy hours, but according to Ben, the headmaster had his own extracurricular project he was attending to.

Normally I was the first one out the door when the last bell rang, but today I lingered at my locker and wandered the deserted halls long after most of the students and teachers had left for the day.

I heard whispers. The faint echo of voices trailing down empty hallways.

House
party
at
the
U, keg, college boys.

Peter
Remington-Davis’s parents are out of town. Pre-game.

My
mom’s stylist at Saks put it on hold, meet me there after school.

The
7:30 show with those kids from public.

Student parking was already empty. Even the office was dark behind its glass walls. The week was over. It was time to play. Liam thought I was with Seth; Seth thought I was with Liam; and Taylor thought I was with both of them. Even after seeing Bradley’s name attached to the texts, after reading his threats to Bethany, after I’d spent hours imagining what he was truly capable of, he still didn’t scare me. I was too pissed to be scared. We had a history, and I wanted to watch Bradley go down knowing I was the one who pulled the trigger.
Bang
.

And it wasn’t because Bradley had spread the word of my puke-n-rally. He hadn’t. Turns out Bradley can be a true gentleman in regards to humiliating bodily functions, even if they do destroy his designer wardrobe. I was angry because none of this should have been happening. I remembered the way his mouth felt on mine when he kissed me the night Grace died. The way my entire body had leaned into his, the way my lips had parted and my fingers had involuntarily wound themselves around his neck. But the moment I gave in was the same moment he’d pulled away. It wasn’t until he’d left me sitting alone on the bench that I’d smelled the smoke.

And now Bethany’s disappearance was history repeating itself. Only this time instead of sitting on a bench at the Pemberly Brown lake, giggling like an imbecile with butterflies fluttering thousands of tiny wings in my stomach, I was going to confront the bastard head-on. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I’m going to kick your ass.” Wait, I don’t think that’s how the saying goes.

Regardless, a confrontation between me and Bradley Farrow was long overdue. And so I sat in front of his locker. Waiting. He could have pushed out through a side door or maybe the back, but his black Range Rover was parked where it had been all day, a layer of snow on the windshield reflecting the last rays of the late-afternoon sun. I knew there was a risk in leaving my post to search the empty school, that we might completely miss each other as he went out and I went up or vice versa, but I couldn’t sit still any longer.

Plus, I figured walking around might help me formulate a plan. Which I clearly sucked at, hence my little puke-on-demand performance. My riding boots clicked along the abandoned hallways, the sound bouncing off the surrounding lockers, a few with doors still hanging open slightly after students rushed home at the end of a busy day.

For once, I actually had time to prepare, and I knew exactly how everything was going to play out. I’d quote a few of Bradley’s horrible texts to Bethany so he’d figure out that I had her phone. And then I’d force him to confess to everything. Including where he’d hidden Bethany. After that I’d rescue Bethany and convince her to press charges and destroy the Brotherhood once and for all. It was so easy, it was sick.

Of course there was always the chance he’d confess right when he saw me, a silent understanding exchanged between both of us that this wasn’t going to go any further, that I was here for the truth. Then he’d lead me to the Brotherhood’s new headquarters, which also happened to be where they were holding Bethany, and I’d finally save someone instead of sitting around with my thumb up my butt.

Suddenly, my neck prickled with the knowledge that I was no longer alone in the deserted hallways. I whirled around, prepared to finally confront Bradley, but instead caught a flash of plaid and streaming black hair disappearing around the corner of the hallway.

Bethany?

I clutched the pearls wrapped around my neck. She was back. Or was I just hallucinating again? I chased after her. I had to know for sure.

When I turned the corner, the hallway was empty except for a small slip of paper in the middle of the floor. I didn’t start trembling until I saw the familiar orange handwriting. Grace.

This time it had been Grace.

Don’t trust him. The lies bind.

But there was no time to process the note, because I finally heard his voice. It almost sounded like it was coming from within the walls.

“We’re almost there. Yeah. No, not everyone. They’re taken care of. I’ll find out who. Uh-huh. Yeah.”

There was a pause as though I was listening in on half a phone conversation. Inside a locker. I brought my ear closer to the metal grates, and sure enough, I heard the voice even clearer.

“No, not after Obsideo. No, no. She’s gone. We’re supposed to move forward with Conventus as planned. Yeah. Everything’s in place.”

I stepped back after the voice dropped off again, my hand over my mouth. I’d recognize Bradley Farrow’s voice anywhere, but this didn’t make any sense. What the hell was he doing in the lockers?

And then I remembered what Ben had said—I heard his voice clear as day. “And now that they have these new secret passageways built into the walls, they don’t really use the tunnels anymore.”

Just as my feeble brain finally began to put two and two together, I saw one of the handles of the lockers jiggle. I looked at the note in my hands, thought about the words I just heard, and I realized I wasn’t ready to face Bradley. Not yet.

I whipped my head left and right looking for a place to hide. About three feet down, a locker door hung ajar, a heavy fleece preventing the lock from clicking into place. I ran toward it and sized up the space. Whoever used the locker wasn’t exactly a neat person. An entire coat closet worth of jackets were looped over the hook, and textbooks were stacked with crumpled papers sticking out from between the pages. I didn’t think even the creepy contortionist who had performed at Maddie’s seventh-grade birthday party, made famous by his ability to fold himself into a small cooler, could have pulled this off. But I had to try. I put my foot in first, shoving the fleece and nylon back with my arm while my body temperature increased approximately fifteen degrees.

“Ahem.”

At that moment I knew I’d rather be puking. I yanked my foot from the jaws of life, aka the most disgusting locker on the face of the planet, while working very hard not to make eye contact.

“You’re not going to puke again, are you?” Bradley stood at the other end of the hallway, as far away as possible from the locker I’d just heard him speaking out of. Despite the fact that I was now questioning my own sanity, I did know one thing for sure. He had not emerged from behind that locker door. There was just no way. Empty or not. No one could fit into one of those. Especially not someone Bradley’s size.

Before I could stop myself, another kind of vomit began spewing out uncontrollably from between my lips. And it was so much worse than a partially digested lunch.

“I saw the texts on Bethany’s phone. I know you kidnapped her and I know she’s in danger and I have no idea what you’re planning on doing to her, but I swear to God, I will bring you down and destroy everything you love and I heard you talking in that locker and I don’t care how you got in there but I am so sick of all these freaking secrets so bring me to her right now or…or…I’ll…” I wracked my brain in the second it took to catch my breath and said the first thing that came to mind, raging lunatic or not: “Or I’ll puke on you. I swear to God, I’ll throw up right on you.” I paused for dramatic effect. “And I had tacos for lunch.”

Even with the distance between us, I could see Bradley’s eyes widen. I watched as he pulled his head back as though he wasn’t quite sure he was hearing what he was hearing. And then he lowered his head in his hands, his giant palms covering his face. I thought for a second that a confession was forthcoming, that I’d finally brought the king of the Brotherhood to tears. But then I realized this was an emotional breakdown of a completely different variety.

Bradley wasn’t crying; he was laughing, the huge, shoulder-jerking, can’t-catch-your-breath kind of laughing that Grace, Maddie, and I used to spend entire summers doing.

I probably should have been scared for my own safety, considering I was alone in an empty building with a person clearly crazier than myself, but I was too pissed off for fear.

Instead, a burning rage coursed through my veins, and my fists clenched and unclenched. I was going to get the truth out of Bradley Farrow, even if I had to rip it out of his throat. I rushed at him with every intention of wrapping my hands around his neck and doing just that.

Triumph burst sweet and bitter, like sour candy in my mouth, the moment my fingers met his neck.