To Catch a Killer(66)

“Hey, Journey. Hi, Erin.” The greeting is repeated at least ten times, from people I know but have never spoken to. I even score a snack pack of Mini Oreos. How cool is that?

The topper comes when a girl with a camera asks us to pose for a photo in front of the flagpole. “It’s for the yearbook,” she says.

Journey’s all like, “Of course.”

Meanwhile, I’m worried that we’re barely ten feet from Principal Roberts’s office window. His blinds are closed now, but I know what a dedicated spy he is. And, while I fully expect something to come along and ruin this amazing moment, I don’t want it to be Rachel overreacting to a tip from Principal Roberts.





32

The leading cause of wrongful convictions in our country is eyewitness IDs that are wrong.





—VICTOR FLEMMING


The memory of my morning classes is a vague fog compared with the memory of Journey’s kiss and the worry on his face. On the other side of my brain is all the evidence stacking up against Chief Culson. There must be a way that these pieces fit together.

Tomorrow marks two weeks since the horror of Miss Peters’s murder, and the weird suspicion about us being the ones who killed her has nearly died down. Spam and Lysa and Journey and I have fallen into a lunch routine, meeting up at the secluded table behind the building. And even though my best friends are really polite to Journey these days, I sense there’s still a little bit of he and I on one side and them on the other.

Today, we sit at our usual table unwrapping our lunches. No one is really talking when, all of a sudden, there’s a cell-phone sound. It’s not a cute ringtone but a loud vibration. In unison, Journey and Lysa pull out their phones to check. I shrug. “Not me.”

“Me, either,” Journey says, stuffing his phone back in his pocket.

“Me, either,” comments Lysa, returning her phone to her purse.

Spam’s phone was already lying on the table facedown. She lifts it, looks, shrugs, and keeps eating.

The phone not only continues to buzz, but it also starts to ping. Journey, Lysa, and I look around, trying to figure out where it’s coming from.

Spam stands up. She’s wearing a pair of bright red Wellington rain boots that match her T-shirt. She props her foot up on the bench and digs deep into the boot.

“It’s just my ankle phone,” she says.

“Since when do you have an ankle phone?”

She pulls out a smaller phone with a slide-out keyboard, sits down, and starts reading the messages. “I set up a little gossip hotline,” she says. I notice she’s not making eye contact. “I wanted to keep it separate, so I sent it to a different phone.”

“Gossip hotline?” I can’t hide the surprise in my reaction.

She shrugs. “Well, we completely stopped getting Cheater Check requests after the thing with Miss P, and I had some time, so I figured I would start a little schoolwide TMZ.”

“I love gossip,” Lysa says, squirming in her seat. “What are they saying?”

Spam flips through a couple of screens with her thumb, tilting her head right and then left at each one. “Yep. Thought so,” she says. Finally, she turns the phone around to show us. “It’s all still about you two.” The photo is a shot of Journey and me from this morning, in front of the flagpole, with our arms around each other.

Journey and I exchange a look. I turn a little pink, because my first actual boyfriend—I guess I can call him my boyfriend now—happens to be the boyfriend that every girl wants. Was it my imagination, or is there a bit of bitterness in Spam’s voice?

Just this morning, Journey kissed me for the first time, and my best friends still don’t know. On a normal day, we would have spent the entire lunch—and a full day’s worth of text messaging—dissecting every detail of that one kiss. Obviously, we can’t do that with him here. But even if he wasn’t here, I’m not sure Spam would be on board with my new romance.

Spam shakes her head and gives me a little eye roll. There’s no way she knows what I’m thinking, but her reaction makes me wonder if I’m putting out the wrong vibe.

“What’s with the silly smirk?” she asks.

I shrug. What does she want me to say? My cheeks turn warm and my grin stretches from ear to ear.

Spam scowls. “You look like one of those creepy Disney princesses who’s about to start singing to birds.” Not only is Spam’s tone mean, but she flutters her hands under her chin in an extra mocking gesture.

Ouch. I blink back the hurt. “Geez, Spam.”

Lysa, who normally stays pretty neutral, jumps to her defense. “Maybe she’s waiting for you to tell us what you found out about the fingerprint scans. I know I’m dying to know. Journey, aren’t you dying to know? You did run them, right?”

I glance at Journey. There’s an uncomfortable hesitation. He’s torn. I know he wants to support me, but he also wants to know what’s going on. “Erin says she’ll tell us when she’s ready.”

“And there’s the problem,” Spam says. I don’t have to wonder this time; there is a definite sting to her voice. “We’re not a team if we have to wait until she’s ready to tell us what she’s found.”

“Spam, I always tell you eventually.”