Two Truths and a Lie(49)
“Morgan!” she called through the door, irritated. “Come on, we’re going to be late!”
Why can’t you be nicer, Alexa? Like you used to be.
But. “Down here!” came Morgan’s voice. Alexa found Morgan in the kitchen, already having eaten breakfast and applied sunscreen to her face, ears, and arms, even rubbing most of it in. Morgan was practically quivering with anticipation, and Alexa’s heart softened.
“Sorry,” said Alexa. “I thought you wouldn’t be ready.” Alexa ate her own breakfast—a Chobani yogurt sprinkled liberally with cinnamon—and repaired to her room to brush her teeth.
It was only then that Alexa realized something, and that something caused her to stop short and stand still in the middle of her bedroom. She realized that a current of fear was running alongside the caffeinelike buzz of excitement. What if Katie was right? What if there were bad men out there? What if they’d been following Katie and Sherri, and by association they were now following Alexa? Weren’t there, like, people who could spy on your Web searches if they knew your IP address or something? Did phones have IP addresses? What even was an IP address? What if she’d left a digital trail, and someone had found it? What if somebody knew that she knew what she knew?
What if those people followed her all the way to Canobie Lake, where she would be responsible for two young girls amid throngs of people? She needed backup.
She held her phone for a moment, studying her contact list. There was literally nobody to call. Caitlin and Destiny were out of the question. Tyler was still in Silver Lake, probably with @silvergurl.
There was one person, actually. But he probably didn’t want to hear from her: she’d burned that bridge before construction had even begun.
The bad men, the bad men, the bad men.
He answered on the first ring.
“Hey,” she said, all cautious. “Sorry about how I acted at the casino. I—I had some things on my mind. I wasn’t myself.” She didn’t wait for a reply. “Anyway. I’m taking my sister and her friend to Canobie Lake and I was thinking it might be more fun to have somebody who’s not, like, eleven, there to keep me company, so is there any chance you’re free today and want to come?”
She said all of that without taking a breath; she exhaled and waited in an agony of regret, chastising herself. She shouldn’t have called. He’d never want to go.
“No apologies necessary, Alexa,” said Cam. “I would love to accompany you to Canobie Lake.” She could practically hear him smiling. “The Boston Tea Party? The Yankee Cannonball? I love that place.”
She and Morgan collected Katie on Olive Street, then headed back out to Turkey Hill for Cam, then hit the highway.
Morgan, for all of her general timidity toward the outside world, was positively fearless when it came to amusement park rides—when she was younger she used to stand on tiptoe to meet the requisite height minimum for the roller coasters—and she and Katie spent most of the drive to the park on their phones, looking through Canobie’s Web site so Morgan could tell Katie what was what. Wipeout was overrated. The pirate ship was only worthwhile if you were at either end. The Corkscrew Coaster was more jarring than scary, but Starblaster was pretty good. Yankee Cannonball was old-fashioned but fun, and the newest roller coaster, Untamed, was the best.
Here Cam turned from the front seat to deliver a history lesson on how the Yankee Cannonball was the oldest continuously running wooden roller coaster in the country and how it was moved in 1936 from Waterbury, Connecticut, and how they had to shorten each section by six inches to get it into the space where it now resided. Alexa glanced in the rearview mirror, expecting to see the girls’ eyes glazing over with boredom, but instead they both seemed riveted. They were staring at Cam like he was solving for them the riddle of the Sphinx, and Alexa remembered that these girls were young and neither one had an older brother or a father. The attention of a fairly charming and, it should be noted, pretty good-looking example of the male species was probably exotic enough to be entrancing.
Once inside the park, a wave of nostalgia washed over Alexa. She still had a photo of herself with Destiny and Caitlin standing in front of the Boston Tea Party at about the age Morgan and Katie were now, when life was easier to navigate. Their T-shirts were soaked—you got positively doused on the Boston Tea Party—and they were smiling hard, with the July sunlight glinting off their braces.
Of course the girls wanted to go off on their own. Alexa hesitated, thinking about the bad men. She glanced around. The park was getting crowded.
“They’ll be okay,” Cam said. “I mean, if you’re worried, we can stay with them. But I think they’ll be fine.” He was wearing a St. Michael’s baseball cap, but other than that he was surprisingly, refreshingly free of spirit wear.
Morgan said, “Pleeeeeasssse,” and practically went down on her knees on the asphalt to beg, and Katie gave Alexa puppy dog eyes.
“Okay,” said Alexa finally. “But if anybody bothers you, you scream as loud as you can, got it?” Morgan opened her mouth as if to demonstrate and Alexa said, “Not now! Only if somebody bothers you.”
She took a photo of the girls together just inside the entrance, so she’d know what they were wearing in case anything untoward happened, and she gave them each ten dollars for when they needed snacks. She made them promise to check in with her by phone every twenty minutes. When she and Cam spotted them by the giant swings, they trailed them for a few minutes to make sure no creep-os were bothering them. Then they got in line for the Caterpillar.