Don't Look Back(24)

“Including you?” I asked, remembering what Scott had said.

“Oh god,” Scott muttered, rubbing the heel of his palm down his face. “Sam, after today, maybe you...”

“I should what?”

Julie set the book aside. “We were friends up until the beginning of junior year.”

“What happened then?”

She hesitated. “I wanted to start dating your brother, and you told me we couldn’t be friends if I did. And I put it to the test. You weren’t joking.”

Wow. I was seriously starting to believe I was the Antichrist. “I’m sorry,” I said. Then I spun around and speed-walked down the hall. I made it halfway before I heard Julie’s voice. “Sam, wait a sec.”

I turned back to the taller girl and braced myself. Whatever she was going to say was something I most definitely deserved.

She stopped in front of me, smoothing her hands over the studded belt around her hips. “I wanted to talk to you more today, but...”

Surprised that she wasn’t cursing me up and down, I felt the muscles in my back ease up a little. “But I ran off like a freak.”

“I wouldn’t say it was like a freak.” She gave me a tentative smile. “Are you okay?”

There was a moment when I wanted to spew everything that I’d been seeing, because there was a part of me that recognized Julie on some kind of internal level, but the last thing I wanted to do was come off as someone crazy. “Yeah, I’m fine. It was . . . it was just a lot today.”

“I can imagine.” A sympathetic look crept across her face, and then she took a deep breath. “You really did remember me today? Briefly?”

I nodded. “It wasn’t much. I just remembered you when we were—”

“We were probably ten,” she cut in, biting down on her bottom lip. “We hung out every day after school and on the weekends. We were practically inseparable.”

A yearning to go back to that time filled me. “Did I really stop talking to you because you started dating Scott? Because he said I stopped talking to you because you wore something I didn’t like, but I ... I don’t think I was that big on fashion.”

“You’ve always had really nice clothes and dressed like a socialite, but you’ve never cared about clothes. Not like the other girls.” Julie’s lips pursed as she brushed a strand of hair off her forehead. “I don’t know what the real reason was. Who knows if it was Scott? That’s what you told me, but it didn’t make sense. And Cassie didn’t like me, Sam. She was epically jealous over our friendship, and I’m pretty sure she had something to do with it.”

Everything came back to Cassie. Did the girl have that much control over my life? Or was it something more than that?

“I should get back. We’re busy studying.” She winked at the look that crossed my face. “I really would like to hang out if you want.”

“That would be nice,” I said quickly. “I mean, I really would like that.”

She laughed softly. “I got it. See you later?”

I gave her a quick, majorly awkward wave and then headed to my bedroom. Closing the door behind me, I let out a ragged breath and sat in front of my laptop. Very slowly, almost reluctantly, I typed in Carson’s name. As I clicked on next, I squeezed my eyes shut.

I pried opened one eye.

The space to enter my new password greeted me.

Confusion bulldozed over me, but behind the question of why I would’ve picked him as a secret answer when I seemed to have hated him, there was a thrilling, humming excitement that brought a giddy smile to my face. A smile I didn’t understand, because I had a boyfriend who I’d apparently been really into.

But Carson had been so close to me in the tree house.

Pushing thoughts of Carson aside, I picked a new password and finally logged in to my account. All the e-mail in my in-box before last Wednesday had been deleted.

Huh ... Now that was odd—there wasn’t a single e-mail from Cassie. Not one saved or even in my sent file. Nothing. Someone had been in my e-mail account. That would explain why the password had been goofed up, but the thought made me feel paranoid.

Opening one from Veronica, I read that she was sorry about lunch and she still loved me. Rolling my eyes, I started to delete it but responded back and told her it was okay. My friends might be jackasses of the highest order, but I needed to give them a chance. Before I shut it down, I opened up a new message and typed C in the address bar.

[email protected] auto-filled.

Seeing the e-mail address stole my breath. I didn’t know why I did what I did next, but I typed two short sentences. Where are you? And then, Who are you?

I hit send.





Chapter eight





The rest of the week was sort of normal. I went back to school, and I tried to fit back into this life that was so unfamiliar to me. I learned the hierarchy of my school pretty quickly and how it all worked. There were three groups, it seemed: those at the top, those who managed to become friends with the ones at the top, and then everyone who didn’t. My friends were clearly part of the first group. Each of our families had strong roots in Gettysburg or in the surrounding towns. All the sprawling estates we passed from our home to school were owned by one of them or their extended family.