Two Can Keep a Secret(44)

“Which is?”

He rubs a hand over his face. “Hell if I know. But I don’t think it involves our friend just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

I twist my hands and tap my foot. I still can’t stop moving. “I’m going to wait outside. You coming?”

“Yeah,” Ezra says, pulling his headphones from around his neck and dropping them on the cluttered desk. He’s done more to personalize his room than I have, covering the walls with pictures from our last school and posters of his favorite bands. It looks like a teenager’s room, while mine still looks like a guest room. I don’t know what I’m waiting for. Some feeling like I belong here, maybe.

We go downstairs and outside to Nana’s front porch, settling ourselves on the bench beside the door. We haven’t been there more than a couple of minutes when Mrs. Nilssons’ car pulls into our driveway. Malcolm gets out and lifts his hand in an anemic wave, then makes his way up the lawn to us. There’s room for one more on our bench, but Malcolm doesn’t sit there. He leans against the porch railing, facing us, and shoves his hands into his pockets. I don’t know where to look, so I pick a spot over his shoulder. “Hey, guys,” he says quietly.

“How are you holding up, Mal?” Ezra asks.

I steal a glance at Malcolm as the tense lines of his face briefly relax. It means the world to him, I realize, that Ezra greeted him like normal.

“Been better,” he says. “I just wanted to tell you”—he’s looking at me, as if he knows Ezra never had a second’s doubt—“I wanted you to hear from me what I told Officer McNulty, that I saw Brooke get home safely. I watched her go inside and close the door. And then I drove home, and that’s all I knew about anything until this morning.”

“We know. Wrong place, wrong time,” Ezra says, echoing what he said upstairs. “People can’t hold that against you.”

“Well.” Malcolm slouches lower against the railing. “The thing is— Katrin is saying stuff.” He swallows hard. “She thinks Brooke and I were hooking up.”

I go rigid as Ezra inhales sharply. “What?” he asks. “Why?”

Malcolm shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know. She asked me last week if I’d take Brooke to homecoming. Since she’d just broken up with Kyle and didn’t have a date.” He darts a glance at me, which I catch out of the corner of my eye because I’m staring over his shoulder again. “I didn’t, and she never brought it up again. But that’s the only time she’s ever talked about Brooke and me. Even then, she said we’d just go as friends.”

I look down and watch a ladybug crawl across one of the porch floorboards until it slips through a crack. “I thought you and Katrin got along,” I say.

“I thought so, too,” Malcolm says, his voice heavy. “I honestly don’t know where this is coming from. I’m sick about it. I’m worried out of my mind about Brooke. But it isn’t true. At all. So I wanted you to know that, too.”

I finally meet his eyes full-on. They’re sad and scared and, yes, kind. In that moment, I choose to believe he’s not a Kelly boy with a temper, or someone with opportunity and motive, or the quiet kind you’d never suspect. I choose to believe he’s the person he’s always shown himself to be.

I choose to trust him.

“We believe you,” I say, and he sags visibly with relief.





CHAPTER TWENTY





Malcolm

Monday, September 30

Brooke is still missing at lunchtime. And I’m getting a firsthand look at what my brother went through five years ago.

The entire Echo Ridge High student body has been staring at me all morning. Everybody’s whispering behind my back, except the few who get right in my face. Like Kyle McNulty. He and his sister, Liz, were away all weekend visiting her friends at the University of Vermont, so nobody’s interrogating him. Almost as soon as I walked into the hallway this morning, he grabbed my arm and slammed me against the locker bay. “If you did anything to Brooke, I will end you,” he growled.

I broke away and shoved him back. “Fuck you, McNulty.” He probably would’ve hit me then if a teacher hadn’t stepped between us.

Now Mia and I are headed for the cafeteria, passing a homecoming poster along the way. During morning announcements, Principal Slate said that while they hadn’t decided whether to cancel Saturday’s dance, it was being “significantly scaled back,” with no homecoming court. He ended with a reminder to report anything or anyone suspicious.

Which, for most of the student body, is me.

If I weren’t so sick to my stomach, I might laugh at how fiercely Mia glares at everyone we pass in the hallway. “Go ahead and try it,” she mutters, as a couple of Kyle’s teammates who are twice her size give me the once-over. “I hope you do.”

In the cafeteria we grab trays. I pile food on mine that I know I won’t be able to eat and then we make our way to our usual table. By unspoken agreement we both sit with our backs against the wall, facing the cafeteria. If anybody’s coming for me, I’d rather see them do it.

Mia sends a look of pure loathing toward Katrin’s table, where Viv is gesturing dramatically. “Already working on her next story, I’ll bet. This is exactly the plot twist she was waiting for.”