The Identicals(41)

So infiltrating Candace’s locker was easy. Ainsley was the one who had left an anonymous note for the school nurse saying there was a “rumor” going around that Candace Beasley had been bringing “hard drugs” to school and telling people it was for “medicinal purposes.” The school nurse, Mrs. Pineada, was fanatical about preventing student drinking and drug use. A search of Candace Beasley’s locker had immediately followed. Bam.



As Ainsley is leaving school, someone grabs her arm. It’s Teddy.

“Ainsley,” he says, “I need you.”

Ainsley practically falls into his arms. She must be in love with him. How else can she explain the searing pain in her heart, the longing, the fervent desire for simple affection—a kiss on the cheek, a squeeze of the hand? Ainsley loves his blue eyes, his freckles, the way his red hair curls under his ball cap, the hollow at the base of his neck.

I need you. This is what Ainsley wants to hear, right? And yet she feels insidiously guilty about what she and Emma have done to Candace. Ainsley should have won Teddy back by cleaning up her act and showing him that she can be good. But she had followed Emma down the dark path, as always. They had made Candace look bad. It felt like tripping Candace up in a footrace instead of simply running faster.

“What’s up?” Ainsley asks. She decided in history class that the best tack with Teddy is to play dumb. Or if not dumb—he wouldn’t believe that Ainsley hadn’t heard about Candace—then at least calm and unemotional. If Candace Beasley has been caught with booze and drugs, what concern is it of Ainsley’s?

“Can you come to the cubby?” Teddy asks. “Do you have time?”

The cubby is a secluded nook on the back side of the school building. It’s shielded from the playing fields by the parked school buses and the Dumpster used by the wood shop. It isn’t romantic, but it is private, and couples who don’t have cars frequent the cubby before school, after school, and during school. Allegra Pancik and Brick Llewellyn purportedly had sex in the cubby during morning announcements a few years earlier—the stuff of high school legend.

Ainsley follows Teddy through the corridors and out the back door of the cafeteria. Jasmine Miyagi, the queen bee of the freshman class, tries to stop Ainsley. She probably wants to gossip about Candace, but Ainsley waves her off. Nobody thinks anything about seeing Ainsley and Teddy together because nobody other than Ainsley, Teddy, Candace, and Emma know they’ve broken up.

Teddy is three strides ahead of Ainsley. She had thought maybe he would walk alongside her, maybe hold her hand.

They get to the cubby, find it empty. Teddy checks in all directions to make sure the coast is clear, which is standard operating procedure when using the cubby for intimate purposes. Ainsley can’t wait to kiss him.

But suddenly he slams her up against the shingles of the building. Her head smacks hard. Teddy’s hands are around her throat. His eyes are blue fire, and his voice drops to a scary whisper.

“It was you,” he says.

“No,” she blurts.

“It was you. I know it was you. And Emma, that little tart. She lifted the cocaine bag from her father’s jeans pocket after he came home from work, and you stole the gin from your grandmother’s bar cart.”

Ainsley blinks. He’s exactly right.

“I know you, Ainsley,” Teddy says. “I know your tricks, and I know Emma’s tricks. I’ve spent all year with you. I’ve waited outside while you lifted booze from your grandmother’s house. I’ve been inside your grandmother’s house. I’ve seen the Bombay Sapphire. The coke was probably Emma’s idea. You probably resisted at first, but then she talked you into it the way she talks you into everything.”

Every sentence he speaks is truer than the last, but Ainsley can’t give that away. She clamps her fingers, like bracelets, around his wrists.

“Get your hands off my neck,” she says. “You’re scaring me.” Teddy’s mother is in a mental hospital. Ostensibly her state of mind was affected by his father’s death at the cat-food factory, but what if mental illness runs in the family and Teddy is not actually the greatest guy Ainsley has ever met but rather some kind of maniac who is going to strangle her here behind the high school?

“You’re scared now?” Teddy says. “Just wait.” He lets go of her neck, but she’s even more intimidated. “I’m going to Dr. Bentz in the morning. That gives you time to turn yourself in this afternoon.”

A part of Ainsley does want to turn herself in. She will cry to Dr. Bentz, admit her wrongdoing, tell him the gin was hers but not the coke. She’ll explain her broken heart, her grandfather dying, her grandmother breaking her hip, her mother leaving her alone for days. If she needs to, she will hark all the way back to losing her baby brother. She was only two, she doesn’t remember him, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t affected when he died. Her mother was forever changed: when Tabitha looks at Ainsley even now, she sees Julian’s ghost. (This may sound like a stretch, but how does Ainsley know it isn’t true? Her life, she is certain, would be better if Julian had lived.) Dr. Bentz is famous around school for being evolved, in tune with the careening emotions of teenagers. He has a record of being lenient with students who admit their wrongdoing, but what he can’t stand… is a liar.

To admit the truth, however, means to turn in Emma. Can Ainsley betray her best friend? No, she can’t. Emma only swiped her father’s empty baggie of cocaine in order to help Ainsley get back at Candace. It was Emma who took the risk of placing the incriminating evidence in Candace’s locker; someone could easily have seen her.