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  I nod. Now there’s something I can understand, though I wouldn’t have thought Todd would understand it too. He did what needed to be done, and so will I. Tessa’s stalker will never touch my sister.

  “Jim Waye has bullied his family—his daughters—for years,” Todd continues. “Tessa was afraid of him.”

  Afraid enough to jump off a building to get away?

  We come to a red light, and Todd spends a moment examining his hand. “I knew Tessa was afraid . . . maybe I should have done something. Maybe I could have saved her.”

  I look out the window. It’s understandable. Everybody thinks that after a suicide. Believe me, I know all about the doubts and blame. I feel terrible that Tally and Mrs. Waye are going through it, though. I also feel bad for Todd. The guilt looks like it’s eating him from the inside. He looks like he might cry.

  I really hope he doesn’t. Oh my God, I so hope he doesn’t. I would have no idea what to say. I would have no idea what to do. People aren’t like computers. You can’t fix them. They’re too messy.

  “Hey, Wicket, let’s keep this between us, okay?”

  The question shoots out of Todd like it’s greased. He’s so earnest it surprises—no, shocks the hell out of—me and then . . . I feel kind of good about it. Bren would have an epic shit fit if she knew about this, and he’s trusting me not to tell. He’s trusting me. The juvenile delinquent. The girl no one trusts with anything.

  “Sure thing,” I say, sounding awfully calm for someone whose heart is doing a funny leap. If he can trust me, maybe I could trust him. Maybe I could tell him about the diary.

  But I don’t.

  I roll down the window and thread my fingers through the fast-moving air. This is enough. I won’t tell him, but maybe I don’t really have to. Maybe it’s enough to know I’m not the only one with secrets.

  By the time Todd gets us home, Bren has dinner ready. The moment we open the door, I can smell warm tomatoes and chopped-up garlic.

  “Bren’s making spaghetti.” Lily meets us in the hallway, and she sounds almost reverent. I can’t really blame her—it does smell pretty amazing. The last time we had spaghetti it was microwaved noodles with ketchup on them. Dad said it was basically the same thing, but it’s not.

  It’s so not.

  “She’s already thrown away two batches,” Lily continues. “They weren’t perfect.”

  No idea how that would be possible. Bren is the most exact cook I know. Directions exist so we can follow them. Todd says she approaches their business contracts the same way.

  “Hi, honey.” Bren’s fiddling with the garlic bread, carefully pulling it away from the pan’s hot edges. “How are you holding up?”

  “How do you think?” Todd blows through the kitchen and slams his office door behind him. Briefly we’re all quiet; then Bren turns around with an incandescent smile.

  Too bad it isn’t quick enough to hide the hurt.

  Or maybe it’s just that I recognize it. In that moment, she looks crushed that he won’t confide in her. The disappointment reminds me of my mom.

  I feel terrible for her.

  “It smells really great, Bren,” I offer, and she rewards me with another too-bright smile. It doesn’t make me feel better so much as . . . relieved, like a crisis has been averted, even though Bren isn’t like that.

  And I don’t want to say it, but here’s the thing: Bren isn’t like my mom.

  Having a parent with depression kind of forces you to play psychic. You don’t know what’s going to make her angry. You don’t know what’s going to make her cry. You don’t know. Period. But you better try to anticipate, because you’ll feel the fallout. My dad made it worse. He got off on it.

  “It smells great because it’s going to be great.” Lily is already sitting at the kitchen table with a fork in one hand. “Wash up, Wick.”

  I should say no, but I’m hungry—starved, actually. After scrubbing my hands with the vanilla soap that makes Bren always smell like cookies, I flop into the closest chair and watch Bren add tiny sausages to the meat sauce.

  “I ran into your friend’s mom today,” she says after a moment.

  As in a friend other than Lauren? Bren hands me my plate, and I check the size of her pupils. They’re normal-looking, but she’s talking like she’s high on Windex. Interesting—mostly because I don’t have friends. I have Lauren, and Bren knows Lauren’s mom.

  Could she mean Griff’s mom? I hope not. I don’t think Griff qualifies as a friend . . . although I’m not sure what that makes him.“She was really nice,” Bren continues, passing Lily a plate full enough to feed a football team. She looks at me. “Wick, sweetheart, please sit up. Posture conveys how you feel about yourself.”

  Dutifully, I scoot up in my chair, and Bren smiles like I’ve just done the cutest trick. “Anyway, she said you had physics with her Ronald.”

  My breath dries up. On the other side of the table, Lily stiffens.

  “Ronald?” I put down my fork and focus on not shaking. “You’re sure she said Ronald?”

  Bren’s studying the progress of her garlic bread, but hearing my questions, her head whips around. “Of course I’m sure. Why? What’s going on?”

  What’s going on is I am dangerously close to blowing my cool. Get a grip, Wicket.

  I pull my mouth to one side, try to look like I’m thinking. “Oh yeah, Ronald. He sits a couple rows away from me.”

  “So you do know him.” The muscles in Bren’s neck relax.

  “Yeah, I just forgot about his real name.” I push my food around. So much for my appetite. At this rate, I doubt I’ll ever eat again. “We call him Ron.”

  We also call him Joe, my dad’s best friend. The message is one Lily and I were told to expect. It goes down like this: Joe sends his girlfriend— although girlfriend is kind of stretching it. Flavor of the week is more accurate. Anyway, Joe’s girlfriend is supposed to contact us by posing as Ronald White’s mother. She would ask Bren to say hello to us for her. Bren, thinking she was speaking to a nice Peachtree City mom and not a meth-head, would pass on the story.

  And I would know my dad’s back and I need to make my way to Joe’s place.

  I focus on my plate, but inside my ears, my blood is rushing. My dad’s home. He’s back. And he wants us back too.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  .....................................................................

  Even when he’s not there, I feel like he is.

  —Page 19 of Tessa Waye’s diary

  “So we chatted for about a half hour,” Bren continues, pausing only to examine her spaghetti sauce. “Strange really that I’ve never seen her at the PTA meetings.”

  Jesus, they were close enough to touch her. Bren could have been hurt. Easily. The thought makes me even queasier.

  “Lily?” Bren notices my sister has pushed her plate away. “Aren’t you hungry? Don’t you like it?”

  “No, I’m just not as hungry as I thought.” Lily’s tone is suitably blank, but her face is tight, like she’s seconds away from tears. Her lying could use serious work.

  “Do you mind if I take this upstairs, Bren?” I motion to my spaghetti, knowing I’m pushing boundaries here, but I’m pretty sure I’ll get away with it. As much as Bren wants us to not eat like gypsies, Dr. Norcut also told her Lily and I could end up with “food issues” after everything that’s happened, so she’s supposed to cut us slack if we get weird about eating at the table.

  Sure enough, the skin around Bren’s eyes creases in disappointment, but she nods. “Okay. Just put your plates away afterward.”

  We go straight to my room, where I leave the two dishes on my computer desk and Lily shuts the door. For a while, we don’t say anything.

  “Are you going to go?” Lily asks at last.

  “Of course not.”

  “But what if he gets mad?”

  Yeah, what if he does? I shake my head; act like it’s
no big deal, like I’m not jumping at every shadow that might be him. “So what? He can’t touch us, Lil. Don’t worry about it.”

  Lily scrunches up her face. She looks like I just said the sky is green. “But . . . we have to go. Dad said.”

  I try to nudge Lily’s plate into her slack hands. She needs to eat. “We don’t have to do what he says anymore.”

  “Does he know that?”

  I concentrate on starting up my computer, but I can still hear all the questions Lily won’t ask, like: Who are you kidding? Or don’t you remember what Dad was like? But mostly: What if he comes for us?

  Scary thought, that one.

  We have a lot to lose these days. Maybe I do need to go. If Joe knows who Bren is, he definitely knows where we’re living. If he came here to look for us . . . I grip my chair’s armrests.

  No, it can’t happen. I can’t have him here. We can’t risk Bren freaking. Getting kicked back into the foster care system would be a disaster. We’re safer with Bren and Todd. Lily’s safer with Bren and Todd.

  Which means I’ll have to go.

  I can’t think about this right now. If I do, my head will explode, so I’ll concentrate on Tally and Lily and how I’m going to protect my sister, because deep down, I’m pretty sure I’m the best chance she has.

  You see, adults mess things up even when they’re trying to fix them. No. Check that. They mess things up especially when they’re trying to fix them. I mean, think about how they tried to save us from our dad, how they tried to help my mom. Failure all the way around.

  In a way, I guess, it’s not their fault. They’re bound by rules.

  But I’m not.

  I can make my own rules. Online, I’m in charge. I rule the world. I can find this guy.

  I slide a quick look at Lily, who’s reading on my bedroom floor. She betrayed me, but she did it to save someone else. My sister might not approve of me, but she believed I could help. I’m not sure how I feel about such faith.

  “You told Tally Waye about me.”

  Lily’s eyes lift. “Yeah.”

  “It’s supposed to be a secret, Lil. What part of ‘do not tell people’ didn’t you understand?”

  “I wanted you to have the opportunity to do something good for once.”

  For once? For once! “I do help people.”

  “Yeah, but how many of them really need it? Tessa had some boyfriend who made her cry.”

  “Boyfriend? Did she ever tell you his name?”

  “No, but you should find him so he knows what he’s done.” Lily tucks a strand of curly blond hair behind her ear. It’s such a small gesture, but she looks so . . . fragile.

  Because she always has been?

  Or because of what I know now?

  Either way, it doesn’t change what I have to do. I pull out the diary pages, force myself through them and . . . it’s useless. Nothing more than emotions gutted onto the page. I don’t want to read Tessa’s perceptions of him. I want to know about their interactions. I want evidence.

  Good thing there’s another way. I pull my chair closer to the desk, turn the computer on, and start hacking Tessa Waye’s email account.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  .....................................................................

  I have all the stuff anyone could want.

  I look normal. I look happy. Makes me wonder

  how many other girls are faking.

  —Page 51 of Tessa Waye’s diary

  Thirty minutes later, I’m in.

  Usually this elicits a happy dance. I learned the Dirty Bird from watching football with Joe. I learned the Funky Chicken from Lauren. But this time?

  This time I don’t feel anything like dancing. This time I just feel sad.

  And super paranoid.

  I can’t afford to make mistakes in here. It’s not just about the police aspect. I’m pretty sure I can duck them even if they are checking all the accounts. It’s about Tessa’s family. Lauren’s not the only one who’s had too much therapy. I know what I’m playing with here, can probably spell it out in Norcut-speak.

  It’s been four years since my mom committed suicide, but I can still feel all those moments and hours and days afterward. When I thought I was getting over it and I wasn’t. When I realized I should’ve known and stopped it.

  Except, as Norcut always reminds me, you can’t stop it.

  Wish I could believe her.

  But no matter how many times people say they understand . . . they don’t. No one gets what it’s like to waver between what you had and what you have now. Your new reality perches on top of your old life, but you cannot, cannot, cannot get your head around the fact that you no longer have a mom . . . or a daughter.

  And how are you supposed to live without them anyway?

  If Tessa’s parents knew someone logged on to her account, they’d immediately think maybe, somehow their daughter was alive and had checked her email. Irrational, yes, but that’s what I would’ve thought—what I would’ve hoped—until reason squished it flat.

  Then they’d wonder what kind of disgusting person would do that, maybe the press or some hateful classmate. They would worry, period. I want to spare them that.

  So I’m extra careful, but I go through everything. All of Tessa’s deleted emails, all of her sent emails, everything she saved, and there’s nothing—absolutely nothing useful. How is that possible?

  She had to have contact with this guy. I just have to find how they did it. Cell phone records are usually a great starting point, and once I have access to the target’s email account, they’re pretty easy to get into. It’s all just clicking the carrier’s “Forgot Password” link, sending the new temporary password to the hacked email address, and wham, bam, thank you ma’am, I’m in.

  But in this case, it won’t work. Tessa would’ve been on her family’s plan, and I’d waste too much time tracking down the email address associated with her carrier.

  I rub the skin between my eyes, feeling the beginnings of another headache, probably from caffeine withdrawal. I’m at least two cups of coffee low, and it’s making me feel fuzzy and dull.

  I’m not sure how long I’ve been staring at my computer, but Lily’s been asleep in my bed for hours. A while ago, I heard Bren and Todd put in a movie, but even that’s gone quiet now.

  I crack my knuckles and decide to switch things up. If the email is a dead end, I’ll try something else. Opening a new window, I log into Tessa’s Facebook account—easy enough, since it’s the same password as her email—and I read through all the comments posted to her wall. Too many go on and on about how she shouldn’t have given up and how much her friends miss her. I shouldn’t read any further, but I can’t seem to stop myself.

  Poor Tessa. Is this how they remember you? Matthew Bradford posted he was “sorry she couldn’t take it.” Jenna’s remembering her as a girl who was “afraid.” It makes me stiffen. There was more courage in Tessa’s leap than they will ever realize.

  I click on the Friends link and scroll down through the list of names, recognizing almost everyone from our school.

  Football player . . . football player . . . Griff. I wonder if Tessa asked him to be her Friend on Facebook or if he asked her.

  That really shouldn’t matter to me, but it does.

  I keep scrolling. Cheerleader . . . oh wow, Layla Howard. With practically no social skills and even less fashion sense, poor Layla makes me look normal. I like that Tessa was friends with her, even if it was just on Facebook. I bet that made Layla’s day.

  Then I spot the name under Layla. Michael Starling. That’s not familiar. I click on the name, and it takes me to an almost empty profile page. There’s some information near the top—birthdate and stuff—but no wall postings . . . and no other friends besides Tessa, even though he says he attends our high school.

  Interesting. I click on the only picture at the top. It enlarges to show a good-loo
king blond-haired guy, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old. I still don’t recognize the name, but the guy looks oddly familiar . . . and not quite right.

  He looks staged . . . and that’s when it hits me. I don’t know the guy. I know the picture—specifically the shirt from the picture. Lauren showed it to me when she was ordering a birthday present for her brother and wanted my opinion. I open Google Images and search for Ralph Lauren polo shirts . . . there it is. Third from the bottom. Michael Starling is using a Ralph Lauren model as his profile picture.

  That’s weird. All of Tessa’s other Facebook friends seem to be from school. Unless Michael is some friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend exception, she would have known it was a fake picture. So is it fake because Michael’s a three-hundred-pound shut-in hiding behind a generic-looking model, or is it fake because he was trying to blend in with her other friends?

  Some parents check their kids’ Facebook accounts, and it’s not much of a stretch to think Tessa’s would do the same. By putting up some cursory information and how he’s “attending” our high school, Michael looks legit. Tessa’s dad or mom probably would have glossed right over him. Could this be the unnamed “he”?

  Could be . . . but it’s not enough. I click on Tessa’s wall again and scroll farther down, looking for past postings. There isn’t a lot. Considering Tessa’s popularity, that seems strange. Did she find Facebook stupid? Or was it something else? She was selective about what she wrote in her diary. Maybe this is the same kind of thing.

  I keep scrolling down, clicking the Older Posts link until I’m looking at entries from almost a year ago. Interestingly, this far back, Tessa’s online activity was more frequent. There are the usual shout-outs to friends and comments about weekend plans, but there’s also a link to a newspaper article on National Night Out, and Tessa labeled it as “Another Weekend with the ’Rents.” The article itself is pretty fluffy—lots of talk about community involvement, which is not a lot of help to me.