Chapter Twenty-Two
Camille's steel-and-glass house sat on its lot like it had been placed there by a machine. It didn't exactly blend in with the community’s more traditional grand houses. I'd always thought it looked like a glass watchtower.
She looked up and saw me. The hose slipped from her hand.
"Zara."
She flinched and edged toward the garage. I moved faster.
"My mom isn't home," she said, her voice tight, defensive. "I can't talk. I have homework."
"While you're detailing your dad's car? This is about Leah."
Her gaze slid past me. Across the street, the Handlers were walking their golden doodle. They slowed to look. Mrs. Handler wore oversized sunglasses and a pinched mouth.
"See something interesting?" I asked, unable to stop myself. I was losing patience with everything and everyone.
Mrs. Handler sniffed. Mr. Handler tugged his cap.
I wanted to tell them to mind their own business, but I swallowed it down and smiled hard instead. They faltered but kept walking, faster now.
Zara sighed. "Fine. Five minutes. Come to the backyard. No one will see us there."
She was more worried about being seen with me than actually talking to me. Good. I could use that.
We walked down the side of the house to the back. The backyard featured a sunken slate patio, a zero-entry pool, and a high-end outdoor kitchen.
Zara hung the hose and leaned against the counter like she needed something solid at her back. She tossed her braids over her shoulder and met my gaze.
I'd always liked Camille's daughter. She had a magnetic presence, with her wide generous mouth always quick to grin, her expressive brown eyes crackling with intelligence and mischief, and her strong, confident demeanor reminiscent of her mother.
She was brilliant, a computer whiz who coded circles around most of the adults I knew, and she was also warm and engaging, drawing others in with that infectious energy.
Now, she looked wary, cautious. "My mom isn't home," she repeated. "I really have to do homework. I have a volleyball game at six."
"Mrs. Atkins saw someone on the beach that night around 12:30 a.m. Tall, slim. Bright yellow hoodie. She thinks it was you."
Zara's mouth opened in surprise. "What?"
"Alexis told me you were out of your sleeping bag that night."
Her expression darkened. "Alexis told you that?"
"What were you doing on the beach at one in the morning?"
"Nothing."
"Zara. What do you think will happen if Mrs. Atkins goes to the police, and you lied about being in bed all night?"
She wouldn't look at me.
"She saw you in your yellow volleyball hoodie. The one you wear all the time on the weekends."
Zara stiffened.
"I'm trying to help Mia, that's all. The police… I think they suspect her. I just want to find the truth."
Her shoulders slumped. "I was… I was meeting someone."
"Who?"
She sighed. "Leah."
My stomach dropped. Leah was meeting Zara in the middle of the night? Why hadn't anyone mentioned this before? I kept my face neutral, but my mind was already racing through the implications. "Why would you need to meet on the beach when you were both at the sleepover together?"
"Leah asked for my help. On a project."
"What kind of project?"
She fidgeted, looking anywhere but at me.
"Zara, please. Before Mrs. Atkins goes to the police."
"She came to me for help."
I went still. "What do you mean?"
"She wanted me to use my tech skills to help her figure out who runs the account."
"The account?" I asked, even though I already knew.
"An Instagram account. LakeshoreTea. They eviscerate people. Especially the girls. She was trying to figure out who was behind it."
"Why?"
"Because they were targeting her. But also, because of Taylor. The girl who had that awful accident."
"Taylor Everett," I said.
Zara winced. "Yeah, her."
The vacant house. The family that disappeared. Whatever had happened to Taylor had been bad enough to drive them away entirely. And now Leah was dead, too. Another girl tangled up with LakeshoreTea.
"What happened to her?"
Zara chewed her bottom lip. "LakeshoreTea targeted her. But then, there was an accident at a pool party here. She took some pills, I guess, sleeping pills or something. There were lots of rumors. It's hard to know what's real, what's not. But she was acting super weird, I remember that."
I raised my brows. "You were there?"
"Yeah, it was at Peyton's house. The Alistairs, at their pool. The annual summer pool party that Mrs. Alistair always throws."
When I'd asked Whitney about Taylor Everett at Brooke's house, she'd said nothing about it happening at her own pool.
At her party. She'd made it sound like it had nothing to do with her, just a neighborhood tragedy she'd observed from the sidelines, not something that occured in her backyard while she was hosting.
"What happened at the pool party?"
"She, like, fell in the pool when no one was paying attention, and almost drowned."
"That's awful."
"I went to see her once in the hospital. It was intense. She had brain damage from it. Really bad. She couldn't talk or walk anymore. The family was devastated. Her parents and little brother moved away, a week or two after it happened."
Anger flared hot in my chest. Whitney had lied by omission. They all had. Protecting themselves, their reputations, their shiny perfect lives. While a girl lay brain-damaged in a hospital bed.
"After that, LakeshoreTea stopped for a while. But then at the beginning of this year, it started up again like nothing had ever happened."
"Who runs the account?"
"We weren't sure. We suspected Alexis or Peyton, or even Chloe, maybe. Based on posting times, captions, and who benefited. Nothing solid. Whoever runs it is careful. They use VPNs, fake emails, maybe even a burner phone. We needed the source, the phone itself, to clone it."
"So, what, you guys had a plan at the slumber party?"
"Sort of." Her mouth twisted, in pride or shame, I wasn't sure.
"Leah would take the phones at the party, while they were distracted.
All three, if she could snag them. Then she was gonna meet me on the beach at 1 a.m. I'd go back to my house via the beach so no one would see me, then clone each phone.
Fifteen minutes each, twenty if security was decent.
Then I'd bring it back the same way, and she'd put it back in Peyton's bag, or next to Alexis and Chloe when they were sleeping. No biggie, as long as no one saw."
"And if Leah got caught by one of the girls, it would all be on her, and not you." The words came out harsher than I'd intended. But I was tired of these girls protecting themselves at each other's expense. Tired of the calculated risks that left someone else holding the bag.
Zara dropped her gaze. "Look. I did some things I'm not exactly proud of. Not everything, but enough. I helped spread the rumors. I laughed at some bad stuff I regret now. Leah knew what I’d done. She said if I wanted to do better, to be a good person, I should do something that mattered."
"Where were you that night? Exactly."
"I got to our meeting spot on the beach early, around 12:15 a.m. I sat on the bleached log near the seawall at the bottom of the Westinghouse property. Close enough to hear if someone came out on the bluff."
"Did you hear anything?"
"Girls' voices. At least three. Mad, like they were arguing, but keeping it down. I couldn't catch the words. The wind off the lake made it hard to hear clearly."
"Leah, Chloe, and Mia," I said. My daughter's name felt like rubbing a burn.
Zara shrugged. "Maybe."
"Did you hear anything else?"
She glanced around nervously. "Ah… a scream."
I went still. "What time?"
"Around 12:45, I think? Maybe a couple of minutes earlier. I was chilling on my phone."
A cloud passed over the sun. I shivered, though it wasn't cold. So far, the details matched Alexis's story.
Two witnesses. The same time, the same scream. That meant something. That scream was Leah. It had to be. Which meant someone had pushed her between 12:40 a.m. and 12:45 a.m., not later. The timeline was tightening.
"Then what?"
"The wind picked up, and I couldn't hear much anymore.
I kept waiting for Leah to come down. She never did.
I told myself Leah changed her mind, that she didn't take the phones.
I was afraid Leah got caught and ratted me out.
" Her voice dropped. "I was scared. I didn't want them to turn on me, too.
Peyton's done stuff like this before. Hurt other girls. I didn't want to be next."
"What do you mean about Peyton?"
Zara pressed her lips together and shook her head. "Just stuff. Rumors."
She wasn't going to tell me. Not now. I moved on. "What happened after Leah didn't show?"
"I stayed on the beach. In case someone was still up there. I messed with my phone for quite a while, kinda lost track of time. Then I heard something."
The hairs on my neck raised. "What?"
"On the bluff. A scrape. A thud. Heavy rustling in the bushes."
"An animal?"
She shook her head. "Something big. Something careful. It sounded like someone climbing down from the top."
"A person."
"Yeah."
"Did you see who?"
"It was too dark. They were up higher on the bluff. I was more worried about not being seen than seeing them."
"What time?"
"Around 3:30 a.m. My phone had three percent battery left, the same as the time. I remember thinking that."
3:30 a.m. Nearly three hours after the scream. Leah was already dead by then. So, who had been climbing the bluff? And why? Were they checking to see if she was really gone? Moving evidence? Something worse? My throat tightened. "What did you do?"
"When the noises finally stopped, I left.
I… I didn't want to climb the stairs where I'd just heard the noise.
I was kinda freaked out. So, I just stayed out there, thinking, worried.
My brain does this thing where it won't turn off.
I finally decided to go back inside when it was almost light out.
At the top of the bluff, I saw a glint in the grass.
It was Leah's phone. When I went over to check, that's when I saw her.
" She rubbed her nose, sniffing. "She was there all that time, when I was on the beach, and I had no clue. "
"I'm sorry, Zara." I meant it. Though she was tall and looked a few years older than her age, she was still just a kid. "The next morning, were any phones missing?"
"Alexis still had hers. Same pink case, the cracked corner. Peyton had her new iPhone with the purple case. And Chloe had hers. If Leah took any of the phones, she'd put them back. Or she never took them at all."
I weighed what Zara had given me and what she hadn't. Her fear felt real. Her guilt had sharp edges. But she was still holding something back.
"Why didn't you go to the detectives?"
She let out a humorless laugh. "I'm a Black girl who can hack.
I don't have an alibi. The only person who could confirm my story is dead.
And those girls, if they think I'm snitching?
They'll join ranks against me. Mrs. Atkins already thinks I'm guilty of moving her stupid garbage cans because of how I look. How would that work out for me?"
The fear in her voice was real. Raw. I recognized her fear of being judged before you opened your mouth, to have people decide who you were based on what they saw. Zara wasn't wrong. The system wouldn't give her the benefit of the doubt. Neither would this neighborhood.
But I had to think about my daughter first. "The detectives suspect Mia. Would you stay quiet while they cuffed her?"
She swore under her breath. "I wasn't going to stay quiet forever. I just…"
"You were scared."
"I'm still scared. If my mom finds out, I'm grounded for life. If the school finds out, I'm expelled. No one hears the part where I stopped being a part of the bullying, the part where I'm trying."
"A girl is dead, Zara."
She flinched. "I know."
"You can still choose to be brave. You need to tell the detectives what you heard and when. And all the stuff with LakeshoreTea."
She closed her eyes. "Mom's going to kill me for lying to her, to the police. It's obstruction of justice. It's a crime."
I let the quiet do its work. The pool pump hummed. A gull squawked overhead. Waves slapped the sand below the bluff.
"I need one night," she said. "I need to tell her myself."
"You can have until morning," I said. "Or I walk into the station and hand them what I know. It will be better coming from you."
Was I doing the right thing? Giving her time felt like mercy. But it also felt like a risk. What if she clammed up? What if Camille shut her down? What if she was dangerous and I just gave her twelve hours to cover her tracks?
Zara had the information. It was Zara who needed to act. If she didn't tell Camille by tomorrow morning, I would.
Zara sighed, her mouth set. "I'm not a bad person."
"Then do the right thing."
She nodded. It didn't make either of us feel better.
I turned, walked back around the side of the house, and headed toward home. Apollo trotted after me, his tags jingling.
By the time I reached my car in my driveway, my hands were shaking with adrenaline. I had a timeline now. Voices at 12:15. A scream at 12:40 a.m. Someone on the bluff at 3:30 a.m., climbing down and back up. Leah was already dead by then, pushed at 12:40 a.m. by someone.
I checked my phone. 3:47 p.m. Mia's afterschool Yearbook class ended at four.
I opened the back door of my car, and Apollo jumped inside. He loved car rides. I started the engine and drove toward the school, my mind already racing ahead to what came next.