Chapter 38
FISHER HOUSE
Whoever Rockytruther is, they’ve taken every safe harbor away from me. Cheer, school, camp. My own home. They’ve cut me off from almost everyone. They’ve made it impossible to trust.
I knock on Max’s front door, then stand there, shifting my weight, until he opens it. When he sees me there he opens the door wider and ushers me into the house.
“Are you okay?” he asks. “I heard about what happened this afternoon. What the fuck? Who would…”
“Jonah called me,” I say. “He said the call was coming from inside the house.”
He blinks hard, his head jerking back and forth in an almost comical double take. “What?”
“His sister traced the IP address of the Sekrit posts.” I offer a weak smile.
“They were posted by someone at my house. He seemed to think it was me, which … is kind of messed up. But I swear, Max, I swear. It wasn’t.
” I hug myself violently. “Do you think Noelle actually hates me enough to do something like this?”
“Maybe,” he says slowly. But then he pulls his phone out.
“But she’s probably not the only one who uses that Wi-Fi.
Look.” He opens up his phone menu to see what networks are close enough to join.
There are five clearly visible—“Cupcake Factory,” “This Is Not The Wifi You’re Looking For,” “DoYourChoresForPassword,” Max’s own “FBI Party Van,” and my household’s unimaginative “HenleyHouse.” Some of them—my own included—are password protected. Some of them are not.
“So you think, what, Mr. Delgado hacked our password or something?” I say, frowning. “This doesn’t really prove or refute anything.”
“No, but it means you can’t assume it was Noelle.” He looks thoughtful. “What about your friends? Have they logged on at your house?”
“Well, yeah,” I say. Half the cheer team probably has my password—plenty of them have been at my house to do homework in the last few years. And that’s not even counting Noelle’s friends. “Lots of times.”
He suddenly makes a face. “I just remembered. Katy has your Wi-Fi password too.”
“What?” I ask. “Why?”
“A few weeks ago we were working on our history papers together. My internet went out, like, minutes before we were supposed to submit them. Katy freaked out and ran over to your place and got your log-on from Noelle.”
I grit my teeth and start to pace back and forth across the foyer. Katy just doesn’t seem like the kind of person that would risk it all for some petty jealousy. Why would she orchestrate an elaborate cyberbullying campaign against me and then break up with Max anyway?
Of course, maybe it was never really about Max.
Maybe he started as a convenient excuse—that girl wants to hang out with my boyfriend?
I’ll show her—but in the end, it was always about something else.
Control. Cruelty. Secrecy. All things a girl that tightly wound might use to blow off some steam.
And then, when the gig was up and she couldn’t mine me for her own sick emotional release anymore, she dumped him.
I cover my face with my hands, breathing slowly. I’ve never felt so tired in my life.
“Can we get out of here for a little bit?” I ask.
I hear the clink of keys. “Yeah,” he says. “Let’s go.”
The moon is waning crescent, sharp and clear against the darkness. We drive out of the development and then just sort of wander for a while under drifting clouds.
“I have this kind of vision,” I say. I’m glad I can’t make out much of his face; my voice sounds so small.
“Of myself as a doll. And it feels like this person has taken me apart piece by piece and just sort of … dropped the pieces. First they wrenched off my arm. Then my leg. They twisted off my head. They pulled me apart and scattered me.”
“That’s definitely the gothest thing you’ve ever said,” Max says.
I laugh. “I know. But I just don’t know how else to describe what it’s felt like. It’s all just mindlessly destructive. I’m not a person to them. I’m just something to break.”
He doesn’t say anything else, but a few minutes later, he pulls over to the side of the road. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
He grabs a backpack from the trunk of his car and pulls out a flashlight. There, in the dark, I see a path wending through the mesquite.
We make our way carefully up the trail. The ground is dry and hard; it’s been ages since it last rained.
Somewhere in the depths of the trees I hear the hoot-HOOT-hoot of a great horned owl, and the answering cry of its mate.
We’re ascending—it’s no mountain, but after about twenty minutes the trees clear away and I see why we’ve come here.
We stand at the crest of a hill, looking out over the gently rising and falling earth around us. I’m not quite sure where we are relative to town, but there aren’t any lights out here, and the sky sprawls open above us in a riot of stars.
“Oh,” I whisper.
He pulls a blanket out from his backpack. “Here. There’s some burrs out here, you don’t want to get stung.” Together we lie back on the blanket and stare up into the star-scattered sky. His hand finds mine and squeezes. I don’t let it go.
I close my eyes and exhale. I feel untethered, floating in space. Was this how Lynette felt that last year of her life? Like a bird with nowhere to land, tired and winging her way high above it all?
But Lynette hadn’t had anyone to turn to. The one person she’d tried to connect with had used her and then murdered her.
I have Max. Max, who’s been on my side more or less the whole way through. Max, who knows everything about me and still likes me, somehow. Max, whom I like too, in a way that’s changed without me even realizing it.
I don’t give myself time to think about it.
I roll onto my side to face him, and before he can say a word, I press my lips to his.
He gives a little gasp. For just a moment we look at each other, lips touching, his eyes bright with surprise.
Then his dark lashes flutter down, and mine do too, and all I’m aware of are the points of contact between us: his fingertips brushing my chin, my hand curled against his chest. Our mouths, soft against each other.
I lean backward and pull him with me, my arms around his neck.