Chapter 45
VARDA’S MAIN STREET
“Okay,” I say. “Good luck with it.”
Big fake smile. A thing I’ve practiced for years on the cheer team. But is it too big? I tone it down a little. I try to look normal. What is normal? I don’t know but I have to try, because I don’t want her to see it in my eyes, on my mouth, the fact that I know. The fact that she’s the catfish.
But her expression looks somehow fixed and frozen too. Her eyes are too wide, strangely shiny. She stands there for a long moment, motionless.
I should say something light, dumb, dismissive, so she can believe I didn’t just hear what I heard. My mind just spins like a broken machine, though, like blank, hissing tape, like static. Finally she nods slowly. “Yeah. It’ll be fine. I’ll finish it and it’ll be fine.”
“See you at school?” I ask, groping behind me for the diner’s door handle.
“Yeah, see you soon,” she says.
Inside, I sit back down next to my cold coffee and my half-eaten pie. Her form has already vanished down the street. I pick up my phone. My thumbs hover uncertainly over the keyboard.
I open my chat history with Max. I haven’t talked to him since Thursday, obviously.
Which means the last thing he said to me was “Come on over.” Sure, come on over, Iris, and ruin your entire life.
Come on over and let me see up close how much you’re suffering.
Come on over and let me mine you for information I can use against you.
God, I was an idiot.
No, wrong. I’m done blaming myself for other people’s monstrosity. He was a fucking snake.
Still, he is the one person I know that can answer my question now.
Do you still have that security footage you told me about?
My appetite is effectively ruined. I leave the pie and the coffee and a tip, and I head out to my car. The clouds are thickening, and the air feels vaguely swampy. I get into the car and roll down the windows to let the scant breeze in.
I feel my phone vibrate when I’m at a red light a block or two away.
Sure. Here you go.
I should just put the phone down. I should just wait until I get back home, get up to my lonely room, across from the dark void of his. I shouldn’t risk watching it in the car, even if I am at a stop.
But I press play anyway.
He’s sent me a seven-minute clip recording every time some kind of movement set off the camera that night.
At 10:13, the Garzas’ orange tabby tries to jump on top of a trash can and knocks it over, the resulting crash sending him skittering.
At 10:33, a red pickup truck drives past Max’s house.
At 11:04, a black pickup truck drives past Max’s house.
At 11:22, a tan pickup truck drives past Max’s house.
“Fucking Texas,” I mutter, speeding the video up to twice the speed.
11:53: A single raccoon converges on the knocked-over trash.
12:05: Another raccoon, this one with twin babies in tow, joins the first. Cute, but not useful.
12:18: A black pickup drives past Max’s house.
2:03: A Jeep drives past Max’s house.
The image isn’t clear enough to make out the license plate. But I can just make out the sticker on the back. It looks almost like a flower, a firework, but I know what it really is. It’s a pom-pom.
I didn’t leave the house that night.
But Hayden did.