One of Us Is Next(21)
“Evan?”
She shifts in her chair. “It’s not a big deal.”
“You getting a ride from your ex, after you just finished angsting about how you can’t make things work with your other ex, is not a big deal?” I fold my arms. For someone so smart, my sister can be ridiculously na?ve. “Come on. I spent half my life in a cancer ward and even I know that’s a bad idea.”
“Evan and I are just friends who happened to date a long time ago. Like you and Knox.”
“No, it’s not at all like me and Knox. That was mutual. You dumped Evan for Nate and Evan moped about it for the rest of senior year. He wrote poetry. Have you forgotten ‘Kilns of Despair’? Because I have not. And now he’s driving two and a half hours on a Thursday to watch Iron Man with you?”
“I don’t think it’s Iron Man,” Bronwyn says doubtfully.
“Focus, Bronwyn. That’s not the point. Evan is carrying a torch, and everybody knows it except you.” I brandish the saltshaker at her like it’s covered in flames, but I end up spilling it, and then I have to do the whole over-the-shoulder ritual. Bronwyn takes advantage of my distraction to get to her feet and corral me in a one-armed hug. She’s starting to look worried, but her ride is outside, and I can practically see the wheels turning in her head as she calculates the awkwardness quotient of backing out now. Too high.
“I have to go. See you at home,” she says. “I’ll be back before dinner.” She loops her messenger bag over one shoulder and heads for the door.
“Make good choices,” I call after her.
I glance around the café as the door shuts behind her. Phoebe is working today, her brow knitted in concentration as she jots down an order from two beanie-wearing hipsters. Ever since Sean Murdock’s infuriating Wing Zone triumph, people have been acting like Bayview High Truth or Dare is a hilarious new game. A text went out yesterday from Unknown—The next player has been contacted. Tick-tock—and now everyone is taking bets on who it is and what they’ll choose. Given how the first two rounds have gone, odds favor the Dare.
It’s like everyone at Bayview High has forgotten that Simon was a real person who ended up suffering more than anyone from the way he used gossip as a weapon. But all you have to do is look at Phoebe’s sad eyes and hollow cheeks to know there’s nothing funny about any of this.
I pull my laptop out of my bag and open the new About That website, where Sean’s Wing Zone chicken photo is prominently displayed. There’s a comment section below, and when people aren’t congratulating Sean, they’re speculating about the identity of Unknown.
It’s Janae Vargas, guys. Finishing what Simon started. I don’t buy that one for a second. Simon’s former best friend couldn’t get out of Bayview fast enough when she graduated. She goes to college in Seattle now, and I don’t think she’s been back once.
Madman Matthias Schroeder, obvs.
Simon himself. He’s not dead, he just wanted us to think he is.
I open another browser tab and type AnarchiSK—Simon’s old user name—into the search bar. I used to Google that name all the time, back when I was trying to figure out who might have it in for Simon. There are thousands of results, mostly from old news articles, so I narrow the search to the past twenty-four hours. One link remains, to a Reddit subforum with the words Vengeance Is Mine in the URL.
The skin on the back of my neck starts to prickle. Simon used to post his revenge rants on a forum called Vengeance Is Mine, but that was on 4chan. I should know; I spent hours reading through them before I sent a link to the Mikhail Powers Investigates show. Mikhail ran a spotlight series on Simon’s death, and as soon as he covered the revenge forum it got overrun with fake posts and rubberneckers. Eventually, the whole thing shut down.
At least, that’s what I thought. In the half second before I click the link, the words He’s not dead, he just wanted us to think he is don’t seem as far-fetched as they should.
But the page is nearly blank except for a handful of posts:
My teacher needs to btfo or I will kill him for real.—Jellyfish
I almost pounded his face in today lol.—Jellyfish
Well now you can’t kill him. What did AnarchiSK always tell us? “Don’t be so obvious.”—Darkestmind
Fuck that guy. He got caught.—Jellyfish
The café door opens and Luis steps inside, wearing a faded San Diego City College T-shirt and a backward baseball cap over his dark hair. He spots me and does one of those chin-jut things he and Cooper are always doing—jock-speak for Yeah, I see you, but I’m too cool to actually wave. Then, to my surprise, he shifts course and heads my way, dropping into Bronwyn’s recently vacated seat. “What’s up, Maeve?”
My white blood cell count, probably. God, I’m fun.
“Not much,” I say, pushing my laptop to one side. “You coming from class?”
“Yup. Accounting.” Luis makes a wry face. “Not my favorite. But we can’t spend every day in the kitchen. Unfortunately.” Luis is getting a hospitality degree so he can run his own restaurant one day, which is the kind of thing I never would have guessed when he was a big man on campus at Bayview.
“You just missed Bronwyn,” I say, because I assume that’s why he stopped at my table. The two of them aren’t close, exactly, but they hang out occasionally because of Cooper. “She’s at Yumiko’s if you…” And then I trail off, because the Venn diagram of Luis’s and Bronwyn’s social overlap starts and ends with Cooper. I’m pretty sure Luis isn’t planning to attend the Bayview Mathlete movie night.