The Cheerleaders(61)

Ethan nods. He watches me sling my backpack over my shoulder. It looks like he wants to say something else.

I return his stare. “What?”

Ethan glances down at his lighter again. His voice sounds far off. “When I called her that morning—I asked if she was okay. She said she was, and I believed her.”

I pause, the strap of my backpack sliding down my shoulder. Swallow. “You don’t think she did it.”

Ethan lifts his eyes to meet mine. “Do you?”

“I go back and forth,” I say. “Sometimes I don’t believe she would ever do that to us. Sometimes I think, maybe, if I had gone through what she did…”

“You wonder if you’d feel like you had any other choice.”

I nod. Hearing him say it feels like a gut punch.

Ethan is still studying me as I hop on my bike. “Do you think it would be easier if you found out she was murdered?” he asks.

I think for a moment, the balls of my feet grazing the pavement below me.

“Only if I find who did it,” I say, kicking up the stand on my bike and pedaling into the direction of the high school.



* * *



—

The school day doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes and there aren’t any buses here yet. I lock up my bike on the rack, my nostrils curling at the scent of weed clinging to the air. I can’t imagine the stoners being at school this early, and I wonder if the rumors about Mr. Ward and the other English teachers blazing in the parking lot are true. Before I head inside, I pull up Carly Amato’s Facebook page and send her a new message.





Ginny is waiting for me at my locker.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “For Saturday.”

She picks over her words carefully, as if she’s not sure she’s apologizing correctly. I’m pretty confident it’s not something she has to do often.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t listen to you.”

“Well, I didn’t have to freak out like I did.” Ginny inhales and closes her eyes. Opens them. “My dad left us on October eighteenth. That was a week before the murders.”

All the blood in my body drains to my toes. When I open my mouth to speak, Ginny holds up a hand. “It’s okay. I know how it looks. The week he left, he beat up my mom, and she finally decided to press charges.”

My chest constricts. “Ginny, that’s horrible. I’m so sorry.”

“I know. So I don’t like talking about him.”

I want to evaporate on the spot. Anything to get away from the sad look on her face. “I never actually thought—”

“It’s really okay.” She hikes her bag strap up her shoulder. “Let’s forget about it?”

I nod. The knot that’s been in my chest since Saturday has loosened a bit. “What do you have this period?”

“Earth science,” she says. “You?”

“Chem. I’ll walk with you.”

We wend our way through the crowds outside the classrooms. When the clusters of people are behind us, I lower my voice so only Ginny can hear. “I have to tell you something.”

“What is it?”

I glance down at my phone; Carly’s page is still open. I refresh it, hoping she’ll have responded to my message by the time the page loads.

“There’s not enough time before the bell,” I say to Ginny. “Can we talk somewhere at lunch?”

She nods. “Mrs. Goldberg is out today, but I have a key to her room. We can meet there. Monica? Did you hear me?”

I’m staring at the screen of my phone. The page has reloaded, but Carly Amato’s profile has disappeared and been replaced by an error message.

“What’s wrong?” Ginny asks.

I look up at her, feeling a little shell-shocked. “Carly Amato just blocked me.”





FIVE YEARS AGO


OCTOBER




Tom was always saying there were no such things as accidents. He would come home with stories about teenagers driving into signposts because they were texting, elderly people in Buicks putting their cars in drive instead of reverse and hitting every car in the parking lot.

“It’s not an accident if it could have been avoided.” Tom would share the stories over dinner, while he had a captive audience. He wanted Jen and Monica to know, he said, for when they started driving. He wanted them to understand that even the worst-case scenario could be avoided through skill and by paying attention.

Ever since Bethany Steiger drove into a tree, killing herself and Colleen, though, Tom hadn’t said much at all.

No one could explain what had happened. Everyone who had ever been in the car with Bethany had said she was a good driver, and her phone records showed that she hadn’t been texting Friday night.

That night, after her mother woke her to tell her about the accident, Jen had waited up until Tom came home. He walked past the living room couch where she had curled up, listening to her mother on the phone in the kitchen. He walked right past Jen as if he didn’t even see her.

She caught pieces of what he told her mother. Worst I’ve ever seen. Couldn’t even tell which girl was which. One of the paramedics puked everywhere. She heard sobbing, but it was Tom.