The Cheerleaders(12)

“I’m okay. I have homework to start.” I head upstairs without looking back at him.

I don’t like doubting Tom. He’s always been more of a father to me than my real dad, who I hear from only on Christmas and my birthday. I was three when he moved out and then in with the professor from his university he’d been having an affair with. They bought a house in Iowa when he accepted a teaching position at a college there, and not long after, my mom met Tom.

For as long as I can remember, Tom has been there. Installed in his armchair from nine p.m. on, watching those shows my mom hates about people treasure hunting in abandoned storage lockers. Tom is the one in the family photos from trips to Disney World, the one who showed up to my dance recitals with an armful of roses. Around the time Jen died, Tom was teaching her how to drive.

Even though she wasn’t his real daughter, Tom was as devastated by Jen’s death as the rest of us. Sometimes I think it’s possible it was worse for him than for the rest of us. He saw Colleen’s and Bethany’s bodies at the crash site, Juliana’s and Susan’s at the murder scene; when Jen wouldn’t answer her phone the morning she died, Tom was the one who went to check on her and had to break down her locked door.

Tom loved my sister like a daughter. It makes sense that he’d want to go through her phone after her death; Jen didn’t leave a note. When a child kills herself, isn’t every parent desperate to know why?

But I can’t think of a single good reason why he’d hang on to her phone all these years.

I pick my way through the storage tubs in my room, Jen’s phone jangling in my pocket. Somewhere in this mess is a box of crap from my old nightstand. I know an outdated phone charger that will fit Jen’s phone is buried among it.

I lift a box of my winter clothes; in the tub below it, I can see a charger, coiled and fraying. I dig it out and sit back, my heart pounding like a jackrabbit’s.

I know it wasn’t him. Connect the dots.

Is that why Tom has her phone? Did he try to connect the dots? The alternate scenario sends a chill through me. Tom was the responding officer to the scene of Bethany and Colleen’s accident. He shot Juliana and Susan’s killer.

Tom found Jen’s body.

Tom is what connects the dots.

I scoot over to my nightstand and plug the charger into the outlet behind it. Plop onto my bed and sit cross-legged, the phone on my lap. When I stick the charger into the phone’s port, the screen stays black, and I think maybe the phone is actually dead dead.

Then, movement. A lightning bolt icon pops up on the screen.

I wait for what feels like an eternity, but when the screen flickers to life, the time shows that only two minutes have passed. Jen’s wallpaper loads; it’s a photo of her cradling Mango, his heinous underbite on full display as he accepts a belly rub.

Something isn’t right. I shouldn’t be able to see Jen’s home screen. My sister kept her phone locked; I know because I was a little snoop, and whenever she left her phone within reach, I would try to guess her passcode.

Tom must have found a way around the passcode and disabled it. I take in a breath that’s sharp in my nose and open Jen’s text messages.

There’s nothing there.

Did she delete all her texts? Did Tom?

I switch to her call log and exhale. It’s intact. The calls end the morning of November 7.

My mother called her every hour from work that morning to see if she was okay. I still remember she was only working a half day. Jen had woken up nauseous and my mom let her stay home.

Sandwiched between two of those calls is a number I don’t recognize.

It’s not stored in her phone under a name. The skin on the back of my neck prickles. I scroll through the rest of the call log.

The number isn’t there. Whoever the number belongs to only called Jen once, the day she died. The conversation was seventeen minutes—too long to be a spam call or a wrong number.

The conversation ended around 10:20 a.m. Not long after, my mother called Jen three times. She must have sent Tom to the house to check on her after that.

This room is too hot. I strip off my sweatshirt, panting in my dance tank top.

I copy the number into my phone and address a text to it. Stare at the screen, thumbs hovering over my keyboard.

This is absurd. There’s nothing I can say to the owner of this number that won’t sound totally absurd.





I hit SEND and swallow and type out:





My whole body tenses as I press SEND again. I stare at my screen, palms sweating. The delivery message flashes to read. An ellipsis appears. A few seconds later, a text pops up.





My pulse ticks in my ears. I respond:





The read receipt appears. I stare at the screen, waiting for the ellipsis to pop up, to signal that he or she is typing. My stomach sinks lower with every moment that goes by and the screen is still blank.

I reach over to my nightstand. The second I set my phone down, the screen lights up.





My fingers are flying over the keyboard so quickly I screw up the message twice and have to retype it.





I hit SEND. Lean back into my headboard, holding out the phone in front of me with one hand and covering my mouth with the other.

Five minutes go by without a response. I blink, warding off tears of frustration, and text him or her again.