Two Can Keep a Secret(31)
“Can you see anything?”
“Not really,” Mia grumbles. “My zoom sucks. But her hand gestures seem sort of … agitated, don’t you think?” She flaps one hand in a piss-poor imitation of Brooke.
The light turns red again and a car pulls up behind us. Brooke starts backing away from Vance, and I keep an eye on him in case he’s about to try anything weird with her. But he doesn’t move, and she doesn’t seem as though she’s trying to get away from him. When she turns toward the street, I glimpse her face just before the light changes. She doesn’t look scared or upset, or in tears like she has been for the past couple of weeks.
She looks determined.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ellery
Friday, September 27
This time it’s Ezra’s phone that buzzes with the California number.
He holds it up to me. “Sadie?” he asks.
“Probably,” I say, glancing instinctively at the door. We’re in the living room watching Netflix after dinner Friday night, and Nana’s in the basement doing laundry. She irons everything, including our T-shirts, so she’s got at least another half hour down there. Still, Ezra gets to his feet and I follow him to the staircase.
“Hello?” he answers halfway up. “Yeah, hey. We thought it was you. Hang on, we’re in transit.” We get ourselves settled in his room—Ezra at his desk and me in the window seat beside it—before he props up his phone and switches to FaceTime.
“There you are!” Sadie exclaims. Her hair’s pulled back into a low, loose ponytail with tendrils escaping everywhere. It makes her look younger. I search her face for clues for how she’s doing, because our “official” calls over Skype don’t tell me anything. And neither does Nana. But Sadie is wearing the same cheerful, determined expression she’s had every time I’ve glimpsed her over the past few weeks. The one that says, Everything is fine and I have nothing to explain or apologize for. “What are you two doing at home on a Friday night?”
“Waiting for our ride,” Ezra says. “We’re going to a pep rally. At Fright Farm.”
Sadie scratches her cheek. “A pep rally where?”
“Fright Farm,” I say. “Apparently they do school stuff there sometimes. We get a bunch of free passes so people can hang out after.”
“Oh, fun! Who are you going with?”
We both pause. “Friends,” Ezra says.
It’s mostly true. We’re meeting Mia and Malcolm there. But our actual ride is Officer Rodriguez, because Nana wasn’t going to let us leave the house until she ran into him downtown and he offered to take us. We can’t tell Sadie that, though, without falling down a rabbit hole of everything we’re not telling her.
Before we started our weekly Skype calls with Sadie, Hamilton House Rehabilitation Facility sent a three-page Resident Interactions Guide that opened with “Positive, uplifting communication between residents and their loved ones is a cornerstone of the recovery process.” In other words: skim the surface. Even now, when we’re having a decidedly unofficial call, we play by the rules. Needing a police escort after getting targeted by an anonymous stalker isn’t on the list of rehab-approved topics.
“Anyone special?” Sadie asks, batting her eyelashes.
My temper flares, because Ezra had somebody special back home. She knows perfectly well he’s not the type to move on a month later. “Just people from school,” I say. “It’s getting busy around here. We have the pep rally tonight, and homecoming next Saturday.”
If Sadie notices the coolness in my voice, she doesn’t react. “Oh my gosh, is it homecoming already? Are you two going to the dance?”
“I am,” Ezra says. “With Mia.” His glance shifts toward me, and I read in his eyes what he doesn’t say: Unless it gets canceled.
“So fun! She sounds great. What about you, El?” Sadie asks.
I pick at a frayed seam on my jeans. When Ezra told me last night that Mia asked him to homecoming, it hit me that I’m a “princess” without a date. Even though I’m positive the votes were a setup, something about that still rankles. Maybe because, until last night, I assumed our new friends weren’t the school-dance types. Now, I guess it’s just Malcolm who isn’t. With me, anyway.
But Sadie doesn’t know about any of that. “Undecided,” I say.
“You should go!” she urges. “Take the cute vandal.” She winks. “I sensed a little attraction the last time we spoke, amirite?”
Ezra turns toward me with a grin. “The what, now? Is she talking about Mal?”
My skin prickles with resentment. Sadie doesn’t get to do this; she doesn’t get to embarrass me about something I haven’t sorted out my own feelings about, when she never tells us anything that matters about herself. I straighten my shoulders and incline my head, like we’re playing chess and I just figured out my next move. “Homecoming is such a big deal around here, isn’t it?” I say. “People are obsessed with the court. They even remember how you were queen, like, twenty years ago.”
Sadie’s smile changes into something that looks fixed, unnatural, and I lean in closer to the phone. She’s uncomfortable, and I’m glad. I want her to be. I’m tired of it always being me. “You’ve never really talked about that,” I add. “Must have been a fun night.”