Chapter 53
Frankie
“Yo, Earth to Frankie?” Alex waves his hand in front of my face, wiggling his eyebrows until I blink and focus on him.
“Sorry, what did you say?”
“I said, how pissed do you think Ethan’s going to be now that Lucy pulled out of the tournament?”
I glance around the bleachers and see Ethan sitting next to Dylan, holding a sno-cone. “Uh, it’s probably fine. Bigger fish to fry.”
“What does that mean?”
“Look. I know you didn’t want to be involved in my little investigation or whatever, but…”
“But what?”
I pause, pursing my lips. “We have this theory that Mr. Godwin did it.”
Alex tenses beside me and leans in. “Frankie, we’ve been through this. It’s not your job to solve a murder.”
“I know,” I say, “but what if he’s dangerous and no one knows?”
Alex stands quickly. “I’m gonna get a hot dog. Do you want anything?”
I snap my attention to Alex, and can’t help but feel like he’s hiding something. “You always run away when I ask you stuff like this. Can you just wait a sec?”
“Stop looking, Frankie,” Alex says. “Or someone will get hurt.”
Alex walks away quickly, and as he hurries, the words replay in my mind.
The same words written in blocky letters on that piece of paper.
The note that was left beside me while I slept in the backyard.
I clench my fists by my side. Alex was right behind the hedge that day, right where I left him after we fought in the pool.
What if…
“Frankie!”
I spin around and see Millie rushing up from the boardwalk, her eyes wild as she looks all around her. I get up from my seat and push through the bleachers, stepping over handbags and soda cans until I finally break free into the aisle and bolt down onto the grass.
“Are you okay?” I ask, but Millie barely seems to register my presence. “What did Trevor say? Did he say Erica wrote the note?” Please, I plead. Please let it be Erica.
Millie spins around to me. “We can’t talk here. Come on.” She grabs my hand and pulls me to the parking lot, away from everyone, from the din of the party and the thwacking of tennis balls. When we’re finally alone, she stops and turns to me, her cheeks flushed.
“I think Trevor may have done something to Billy.”
“What? Why?” I glance back to Alex, standing at the snack hut, my heart beating fast inside my chest.
Millie tells me everything Trevor just revealed, staring at me with her eyes wide, curls springing from the crown of her head, and finally, when she’s done speaking, her brows narrow, and she nods once. “Find Lucy. Get Alex. We all need to meet at their pool house. Now.”
Millie walks off to the car, leaving me alone. I know she’s right. We need to get them all in one place and ask them the questions we’ve been avoiding all summer. Well, avoiding isn’t the right word. It’s just that we never thought we had to ask them. Never thought they would have the answers.
I dash off a text to Lucy—meet at your car. NOW—and as I walk back to Alex, my stomach flips.
“Guess what,” Alex says, bounding over to me, back to his usual cheerful self.
“What?” I eye his face, the same face I’ve known my entire life. The one that has always been on my side. But those words. That note. It’s like everything clicks inside my brain, and I know, all of a sudden, that he wrote it.
“Rishi’s down to get ice cream tomorrow.”
“Wow,” I say, picking my words carefully. He can’t know I suspect him. “Hey, do you think you, Ethan, and Trevor can meet us at the pool house? Now?”
Alex cocks his head. “Why?”
“Because…” I don’t know how to finish the sentence.
But there’s a thrumming in my heart, and I pull at a truth, something Millie would say.
“The six of us haven’t been together all week.
We skipped cards after Shabbat last Friday, and this tournament’s boring as hell.
Ethan already won his match, and…I think Trevor’s pissed at Millie, but maybe you can work some magic? Get everyone there?”
“I don’t know, Frankie.”
“Alex,” I say, gripping his hands. “Please. For me.”
He hesitates, glancing at Ethan standing by the sidelines watching a match, his cheeks damp with sweat. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I grab him in a quick hug and he holds me tight, too, like we know it means something, like there’s a whole conversation happening between us.
And for a moment, I get why Millie was so choked up in the beginning of the summer, how she couldn’t bear that our lives might no longer look the same when it came time for Ethan and Lucy to leave.
Now that so much has happened, all I want is for the six of us to be together like we were in June, for us all to know where we stand with one another, for our secrets to be spilled before us.
After knowing each other our entire lives, it’s the least we can do.
I rush to the parking lot and hop in the passenger seat of Lucy’s car, while Millie climbs in the back. “They’ll meet us there,” I say, and Lucy starts the engine. We drive the rest of the way in silence.
Sure enough, a few moments after we pull into the Silvers’ driveway, Ethan parks next to Lucy, and the boys spill out of his car.
Trevor’s shoulders are slumped, and he won’t make eye contact with anyone as he shuffles forward, and Alex brings up the rear.
In silence, we walk around the side of Four Pelican Island Road and file into the pool house, one by one, until Ethan shuts the door behind me.
No one offers to get snacks from the pantry or cans of seltzer from the refrigerator.
No one even sits down, and instead we sneak looks at one another, us girls on one side of the room, the boys on the other.
No one wants to say the first word, to draw the first sword.
But this is my investigation. Right when I’m about to take charge, it’s Trevor who takes the first swing.
“If you’re going to accuse us of something, do it,” Trevor says.
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Millie says.
Alex’s face gets pale, and for a moment, I wonder if he’s going to be sick.
“Everyone has kept secrets this summer,” I say, looking from one face to the next, stopping on the space between Trevor and Ethan.
“Millie, you kissed Ethan. Lucy, you got into Penn. I learned about Trevor and Erica.” Trevor shakes his head quickly like he’s trying to get rid of a memory.
“But you three have been keeping secrets, too. Haven’t you? ”
Millie and Lucy move closer behind me, almost like they’re soldiers by my side, and I’m emboldened by their support.
“No one here hurt Billy, okay? That’s not what happened.” Ethan moves in front of his brother. “It wasn’t only Trevor on that boat—”
But Trevor cuts him off. “Stop it, Ethan.”
Millie’s face scrunches in frustration. “You were there? Trevor, what happened?”
“We didn’t do anything!” Trevor calls. “None of this was our fault. None of it.”
“Then be honest,” Lucy says, her voice harsh.
The air inside the pool house shifts as the boys look at one another, a silent conversation in motion, until finally Ethan speaks, as if for the group. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll tell you what happened. And you’ll realize we’re telling the truth.”