Chapter 23
I am woken up by the strangest, most unfamiliar sound—a knock at my bedroom door, followed by Dad’s voice.
“Fern, wake up.” His voice is soft and reluctant, as though he is extremely uncomfortable at having to rouse me from my sleep, which he probably is because this is not a thing that has happened before.
“Fern?” It is the uncertainty in his voice that fully wrenches me from my slumber.
It sounds like he’s unsure of who might be inside my bedroom, other than me, and the ridiculousness of it all makes me chuckle, which in turn wakes me up completely.
“What?” I call out.
“Your friend is here,” he says, so softly that at first, I think I might have misheard him.
The next thought I have is: Did Jenna fly in from Boston to see me?
“Jenna?” I say.
“No. Your friend from school, Haven.”
Haven? Then it sinks in with cold suddenness. Is here. Haven is in my house. Adrenaline surges through me and propels me out of bed. I rush to the door and yank it open, shocking my father. “Did I hear you right? Haven Lee is here?” I hiss in an urgent whisper.
Dad looks like he is tempted to run away and hide. “Y-yes. Should I tell her that you’re not here?”
I want to laugh at him, at his cluelessness.
By now, Haven would know that I am home.
Our house is not big by any means, and sound travels with painful clarity throughout the small space.
She would have heard our hushed whispers by now.
I push past Dad and go into the bathroom, where I splash cold water onto my face in an effort to clear my scrambling thoughts.
I brush my teeth viciously and rake a comb through my hair.
Come on, I think to myself, you need to be fully awake for this.
You need all your wits about you. I rush back to my room and yank off my pajamas before grabbing the shirt and jeans I’d left on the floor the night before.
I nearly fall over in the rush to put them on, and by the time I’m done, I’m out of breath and I sure as hell do not look anywhere near presentable.
But by now, Haven would have been waiting for fifteen minutes at least, and the thought of it makes me squirm.
But then it hits me: So what if I keep her waiting?
The tables have turned, and she is no longer the queen bee.
I force myself to take a few deep breaths and straighten my hair out in the mirror.
I dab on some lipstick and try out a smile, which ends up looking awkward as hell, but it’s the best I can do for now.
My instinct is to rush down the stairs, but I make myself walk down at a sedate pace.
Haven is sitting at the dining table, with my mom to her left and my dad to her right.
They are both looking at her intently, as though they expect her to, at any moment, spontaneously combust, or do something else equally shocking.
“Ah, Fern,” Mom says. “Haven is here.” As though it weren’t painfully obvious.
“I see that,” I say. “Hi.”
Haven smiles grimly at me. “Hello, Fern.” Something in her voice reaches down into the depths of my survival instincts and tugs at an alarm bell. She sounds way too smug. My pores immediately start sweating. Why is she acting like she has the upper hand? “I thought you might want to talk.”
Mom’s and Dad’s gazes ping-pong back and forth between Haven and me.
“Let’s go out to the backyard,” I say.
“Sure.” Haven gets up, moving with that natural dancer’s grace of hers. She looks back at my parents and says, “Thanks, Mr. and Mrs. Huang.”
They smile and nod, and to my surprise, their smiles are genuine.
Frustration boils in my belly. What is it about Haven that makes even my parents, who I’ve been pretty sure are dead inside, behave like normal people?
I open the door to the backyard with more force than necessary, and from the corner of my eye I see the way my parents flinch.
I almost regret doing it; it’s childish and accomplishes nothing other than annoying my parents.
I make a mental note to apologize to Mom and Dad later, when Haven’s gone.
None of this is their fault. It’s all hers.
When we’re both outside, I turn to face Haven.
I’d planned on saying something badass, the kind of thing one might see on TV, like “Make it quick” or “You have some nerve showing up here.” But the moment I see Haven standing right there, the real Haven, warm blooded, not virtual Haven reaching out to me over Slack messages, all my prepared words evaporate, leaving me with a blank mind.
I really am not cut out for confrontation.
I’m not that kind of animal. Once again, I am reminded of where I am on the food chain.
Close to the bottom, if not right at the very bottom.
A worm wriggling blindly in the dirt, eating only the remains of whatever the thing above it leaves behind.
Luckily, Haven fills the silence almost immediately. “I came here to show you something,” she says, and there is a note of triumph in her voice that makes my senses prick up. She takes out her phone, taps at it, and brandishes the screen at me.
It’s security camera footage, showing the Lees’ front door and its surroundings. My mind short-circuits and starts to gibber with useless, frantic thoughts. How—what—but—
Part of me whooshes out of my body and watches the situation in a removed way. It laughs at my cluelessness. What do you mean, how? Isn’t it self-explanatory? They have security cameras installed at their house.
I watch, frozen, as I appear on the screen, walking with my hands tucked in my hoodie pocket, my head down, my face half hidden by my surgical mask. It’s clear from my gait that I’m about to do something shady. I walk to the side of Haven’s house.
You have a really strange walk, ghost-me says. Also, you have really bad posture.
Video-me disappears from view as she rounds the corner of Haven’s house, and I let out a small breath of relief. Thank god for small mercies. I don’t know if I could stomach watching myself rip out Haven’s cables. A few moments go by, and then the video suddenly goes black.
“That was when you ripped out the electrics,” Haven says. “It killed the cam.”
Once again, a hurricane goes off in my mind, too many thoughts barging in all at once, and they end up clogging my mouth. How does she know—does she have more evidence—does this prove—
Whatever horrified expression I have on my face must give me away, because Haven nods with satisfaction. “I knew it,” she says. “And I wanted to ask why you did it, but I know why. Because after all these years, you’re still the same little freak—”
Something catches in my throat. Even my heart stops beating for a second as I wait for Haven to say it. To mention Dani.
But she merely says, “You’re the same little pathetic loser whose life is consumed by nothing but jealousy and evil thoughts.”
She’s chosen not to mention Dani, and I don’t know how to feel about it. I want to scream at her, but when I open my mouth, what comes out is “I’m not. I’m a good person.”
Haven barks with laughter. “Okay, Fern. Whatever you say.”
Something breaks inside me. “You’re evil,” I hiss. “Did you forget what you did to Dani?”
“What I did?” Haven says, her eyes widening, as though she is truly shocked. “Are you serious right now?”
“None of it would’ve happened if you hadn’t been so shitty towards me. If you hadn’t bullied and gaslit me all the way through high school. Dani wouldn’t have—she wouldn’t—she’d still be alive right now.”
Haven shakes her head slowly, looking at me with open disgust. “Don’t you dare throw what happened to Dani in my face. You think you’re so innocent. God, you’re tiresome. Did you forget what you did to me back in middle school? You remember that fucking cookie?”
The memory of it slams into me, and I want to shrivel up with shame.
Haven continues to talk. “You know what, Fern? I was nice to you on Slack. I reached out, I tried to hand you an olive branch, and then you go and pull this shit? Fuck you.”
“You were nice to me on Slack?” I echo in disbelief. “You ruined my life! You made me lose my job. You think I don’t know that you were the one who sent emails to my boss complaining about me?”
For just a sliver of a second, guilt crosses Haven’s face.
It doesn’t stay on for long, but it’s enough to confirm my suspicions that Haven was the culprit behind those emails that Annette received about me.
But any satisfaction I might’ve had for figuring out the truth is overshadowed by my own guilt.
“You can’t prove anything,” Haven says finally. “Unlike me, you don’t have any evidence.”
“I didn’t—” I start to say, but even I can hear the flimsy lie in my voice. “I didn’t do it,” I say lamely.
“Let’s let Book Twitter be the judge of that,” Haven says, and with that, she turns and walks away.
Everything inside me recoils with horror. “Wait!” I gasp. “What? Book Twitter?”
Haven doesn’t stop walking. She glances back at me over her shoulder, and her smile is pure malicious glee.
“I guess you haven’t been online, then. Bye, Fern.
Be grateful that I didn’t spill the beans about what you did to me when we were kids.
Stay away from me and my family.” She opens the back door and disappears inside my house, where my parents will no doubt flock to her and make sure she’s okay, because that’s the way the world works, isn’t it?
I scramble for my phone and unlock it. My heart sinks as soon as I get to the page with my Twitter app, because on the right-hand corner of the app, there is a red dot and the number 20+.
I haven’t had over twenty notifications on Twitter since I made my book deal announcement.
With shaking hands, I open the app and look at my notifications.
And they’re bad. They’re worse than bad. Worse than I could’ve ever imagined.
You bitch, you’re literally insane . . .
I’ve never come across anyone as evil as you.