The Cheerleaders(35)

Petey thinks for a minute. Shakes his head. “I just found something to watch.”

I grit my teeth. “You can download Clan Wars on my phone and play in the car.”

“Mom said no Clan Wars today.”

“Yeah, well, I won’t tell her if you won’t.”

Petey watches me, calculating. He may be a fifth grader, but he knows a raw deal when he sees one. I sigh. “I’ll give you twenty dollars if you come and don’t tell Mom where we went.”

Ten minutes later, I’m shooing Petey out of the house and locking the front door behind us as Ginny rolls into the driveway. She’s wearing her Jessie’s Gym warm-up jacket, her hair coiled in a bun.

I climb into the front, Petey into the back. He takes a long look at Ginny. “Who are you?”

“Don’t be rude,” I say. “This is Ginny.”

Petey settles back in his seat. Meets Ginny’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Do you play Clan Wars?”

Ginny smiles and shakes her head. “I don’t know what that is.”

I try to be patient as Petey explains the nuances of village building and pillaging to Ginny. Once he falls silent, legs drawn up to his chest, my phone balancing sideways on his knees, I turn to Ginny and speak softly. “Seriously, thanks for doing this.”

She shrugs. “It was my idea.”

I realize that it’s part of the reason I like her so much: Whenever Ginny says something, it sounds like she means it. It’s enough to ease my worry that she doesn’t really want to be doing this—that I’ve somehow roped her into a mess she feels like she can’t get out of.

We listen to the radio and steer the conversation toward dance team, just in case Petey is eavesdropping from the backseat. When the exit for Orange County Community College appears, we make a right onto campus and follow the signs to the library.

As Ginny is parking, Petey pipes up: “Why are we here, anyway?”

It takes me a beat to come up with something. “I need a book for school. Our library didn’t have it.”

“Do I have to come in?” Petey asks.

I hesitate; I want Ginny with me, but I can’t leave Petey in the car by himself.

Ginny’s voice is barely above a whisper when she says, “Maybe your brother and I should wait out here. So Carly doesn’t feel ambushed.”

I nod. Once, twice, three times like a bobblehead. “Yeah. Okay. You’re right.”

I climb out of the car and head for the library entrance. Paranoia hits me as the automatic doors open for me. What if the librarian asks me for my college ID? What if Carly left already?

The library is one floor. I do a lap, heading past the circulation desk and a café. At the far end of the library are several long tables, peppered with people slumped over laptops or open textbooks. A sign on the wall overhead says STUDY AREA ONLY.

I wend my way through the tables, spotting a girl with a long raven-black bob that grazes her bare shoulders. My pulse quickens. Carly Amato turns her head toward me. She yawns and picks up her phone. From where I’m standing, I can see that the screen is full of cracks.

A textbook is open on the table in front of her, displaying a gruesome two-page diagram of the human digestive system. She’s not reading, though. She’s on her cell phone, playing some sort of bubble-breaking game.

I want to bolt, but Ginny and I didn’t come all the way here for me to bitch out at the last minute. I inch toward Carly’s table. Rest a hand on the back of the chair across from her, and say, “Hi. Can I sit here?”

She looks up at me. Blinks. Carly Amato looks about twenty years older than her yearbook and profile pictures, even though she’s only twenty-two, if I’m counting right.

Carly nods at the chair, as if to confirm it’s free. Not looking at me, she leans back and yawns so loudly that the guy next to her sets his book down and gives her a nasty stare.

“Are you Carly?”

Carly Amato looks like the type of girl who would answer that type of question in a smoker’s growl: Who’s askin’? Maybe I watch too many movies, because instead, Carly stops playing her game. Gives me a head tilt. The voice that comes out of her is husky. “Yeah. Do I know you?”

“I’m Jennifer Rayburn’s sister.”

“No shit.” This time Carly actually puts her phone down. She leans back on two chair legs, bumping into the chair behind her. The guy sitting in it turns around and scowls, but Carly ignores him, her eyes focused on me. “You’re, like, big now. I remember you from our games.”

I don’t want to tell her that she’s probably thinking of someone else’s little sister—that I rarely went to watch Jen cheer because I was always at dance class or at Rach’s or Alexa’s house. “I think I remember you too,” I lie. “You were blond then.”

Carly rummages in her purse. Produces a long tube made of bright pink metal. “You wanna go outside for a sec? I need a vape break.”

“Yeah. Sounds good.”

She leaves her textbook on the table and taps the shoulder of the guy sitting behind her. “Can you watch this?”

He nods, looking grateful for our exit.

Carly leads me out one of the emergency exit doors and leans against the side of the building. Sucks on the tube and blows out a stream of smoke that smells like fake strawberries and vanilla. After a few moments she breaks the silence.