17
Not all messages are text messages
When I woke up, it felt like someone had been drilling into my skull. I had sleep in my eyes, I felt weak, and I had a banging headache. I let out a few groans, blinked until I could see properly, and then started trying to get my bearings.
I was lying on the cushions inside the treehouse. The sun was shining with an irritating intensity.
And Adrik was no longer there.
For a minute, I wondered if it had all been a dream, but the evidence was undeniable. I was still in my underwear, and as I lowered the rungs, trying not to fall flat on my face, I saw the remnants of the fire.
Adrik’s shoes and some of his clothes had barely been burned, which made me chuckle a little.
Most likely, the wind and the cold had snuffed out the flames faster than we expected.
There was also a small fragment of his tie left, charred at the edges, yet white satin in the middle.
Maybe all my neurons were fried by the booze, but I picked it up and decided to hold onto it.
I then took a deep breath and prepared myself for what I was about to do. Barefoot and half-naked, I walked back to the Cash family’s country house.
Come on, girl!
I slipped in through the back door and saw some people from the party having breakfast in the garden. Aegan, Aleixandre, Laila, Artie, Owen, and his girl were all sitting at a small picnic-style table.
I stopped briefly and looked at them with my most nonchalant expression. They looked at me, caught somewhere between surprise and bewilderment. Aegan looked me up and down. Even Aleixandre chewed slowly, like he was trying to conjure a story that could explain me randomly showing up like that.
Yeah, they were probably thinking they’d underestimated how crazy I was, but by that point, I couldn’t have cared less what they thought, so I strode over to the small table. Aegan’s eyes followed me as I reached for a piece of toast from the basket in the center.
“Good morning,” I said to all of them, then nodded and headed into the house.
I thought I’d done fairly well, until Aegan caught up with me just as I reached the stairs. He grabbed my elbow and roughly pulled me around.
“What happened you?” he said, looking really pissed off. “Where were you?”
I shook off his arm until he let go of me. I looked at him with disgust. Thinking about what had happened was enough for me to start cussing him out.
“Don’t touch me again, for the rest of your fucking life,” I warned him.
His dark eyebrows furrowed. His shock didn’t last long though and his expression quickly turned to pleased, as if this was the reaction he’d expected.
“Why not?” he asked.
I wasn’t going to give him an explanation. Right then, my patience was at an all-time low.
“How did you find out about my mom?” I asked him. “Is that one of your hobbies, going around investigating your girlfriends’ backgrounds?”
Aegan raised his eyebrows, acting surprised.
“Why are you so pissed off?”
“Answer me,” I shouted at him.
He shrugged with charming indifference.
“If there’s one thing I have plenty of, it’s contacts,” he boasted. “Let’s just say I like to know who I’m up against.”
I stepped forward, standing tall to show him he didn’t intimidate me. One of the things I despised most about Aegan was his incredible ability to say something laced with irony, cheek, and feigned innocence all at the same time.
“Does a sick mom seem dangerous to you?” I shot back. “Were you afraid she’d get out of bed and stand up to you?”
“I’m trying to show you that I’m willing to help with anything,” he lied, the words sliding from his tongue.
I threw him a smile that was pure rage on the inside.
“I’m touched by your kindness. But how about you keep her out of all this?”
Aegan glared back. He was rather good at theatrical expressions.
“By ‘this,’ do you mean our incredible relationship?” he answered back, acting like he was hurt. “Fuck, Jude, that really hurt. I’m just a concerned boyfriend, that’s all.”
“Boyfriend?” I spat back at him. The word had sounded dreadful coming from his mouth, like a punishment, a form of torture, something you’d only wish on your worst enemy.
“Look, Aegan, last night was the final straw; I don’t want—”
“Jude,” Artie interrupted.
We both quickly turned around. I saw her running down the stairs. How dare she interrupt our amazing argument?
“Wait a minute, Artie,” I requested, so I could finish saying my peace to Aegan.
She shook her head.
“You can speak to Aegan after you have a shower and get dressed,” she said, and it also seemed like she was trying to tell me something with her gaze. But I was so angry that I wasn’t able to pick up on it.
“No, I’ve got to—”
“Whatever you have to say to him can wait,” she insisted, before coming over and pushing me toward the stairs. “Because I’ve got to show you something.”
Okay, so this must’ve been important.
My gaze switched between her and Aegan. I was still pissed and wanting to take out all my anger on him.
His brow remained furrowed, and his hands were tightly clenched.
My entire body was burning, ready to unleash a torrent of insults and slap Aegan across the face, but I took a deep breath in to calm myself down.
I let Artie lead me upstairs, but not without first looking back at that idiot in disgust.
His cheeky reply nearly made me run back down to give him another piece of my mind: he winked and blew me a kiss, just as I’d done the day before when I’d overheard his conversation with Adrik.
But Artie kept pushing me.
We went up the stairs. As soon as we got into the room, I turned on her.
“Why didn’t you let me tell him to go fuck himself?”
“Because you’ve got to see this,” she said, and dragged me to the bathroom.
I had no idea what was going on until she opened the door, and then I saw it in the rectangular mirror above the sink.
Something was written on it.
Friday.
Club.
1802.
Girls’ bathroom.
My anger melted away instantly. I looked at the letters. They were written in deep red. Like red lipstick. Lipstick that had been left on the bathroom counter without a lid, by whoever left the message.
Artie stood beside the mirror and pointed at it. Her perfectly shaped eyebrows were arched in concern; all that was missing were beads of sweat.
“What’s this, Jude?” she asked nervously.
“A message, duh.”
“But who from?” she stressed. “Does anyone besides Aegan, Aleixandre, Adrik, and Owen know that we know about the club?”
It was obvious somebody else knew. It was a secret too valuable, too dangerous, because although it looked like this mysterious person was helping me, there was still a chance they were deliberately trying to throw me off their scent.
“This is bad,” gasped Artie, throwing her hands over her head. “This is really bad.”
I looked at the message again. The handwriting didn’t look familiar. And the numbers were obviously the password to get into the girls’ bathroom at the club on Friday.
“This is really weird . . .” I muttered.
“No!” exclaimed Artie. “It’s bad! It could even be a setup!”
“It could be.” I nodded without taking my eyes off the message. Artie started pacing restlessly around the bathroom.
“And what if Aegan did it?” she said, her nerves getting the best of her. “There were tons of people at the party. And if he’s caught wind of what you’re going to do to him in public, maybe now he wants to do something to us on Friday night?”
I stopped her and looked straight into her eyes.
“Artie, calm down,” I said. “Yeah, it might’ve been Aegan, but it could just as easily have been Kiana, Dash, or someone else trying to help us uncover something.”
“All of those possibilities are dangerous,” she said, no less terrified, “because nobody should know that we went to the club. We signed the agreement, and Aegan wouldn’t believe that we hadn’t told anyone.
And why would someone want to ‘help us uncover something’?
It couldn’t just be for the sake of it.”
“I’m still not sure,” I said honestly. “Maybe more people are out to get Aegan than we think. Maybe someone suspects him, just like you do. Maybe there’s something to uncover.”
She stared, lost in thought, as if my words made perfect sense.
Okay, I couldn’t break up with Aegan for now.
Not after this message. I need to work on keeping my emotions under control.
Backing out because of the humiliation wasn’t an option.
If he attacked, I had to focus on defending myself and honing my strategy.
Only then could I topple him. I also couldn’t give him the satisfaction of defeating me.
“Also, I know you don’t want to dig into Eli’s disappearance or pry into Aegan’s secrets,” I told her, trying to stop her from having a heart attack. “So, ignore this message. It’s my thing. I’ll have a think about what I can do.”
Artie scratched the back of her neck, tense and frightened.
“Okay,” she agreed. “Hey, I’m sorry about last night, about your mom. Why didn’t you tell me?”
I never thought Aegan would tell everyone my mom had HIV. Yeah, this was a big deal, but what bothered me the most was people talking to me like I was leading some tragic life because of my mom’s illness.
“Should I introduce myself differently?” I asked, kind of annoyed. “Hey, my name’s Jude and my mom has AIDS, how are things?”
Artie sighed and shook her head. “Jude, I’m your friend, I wouldn’t have cared if you’d introduced yourself to me like that.”
I’m your friend. That was how I felt too, but I suddenly remembered what Adrik had told me in the treehouse. He didn’t like Artie.
Should I tell her? Should I tell her what happened with him last night? As her roommate I felt like I should, but then again, I didn’t really have to. She was kind of sensitive. How would she react to discovering that I’d slept half-naked next to the guy who’d made her feel bad at the party?
“I don’t want to talk about it,” is all I said.
“Okay,” she accepted, after realizing I wasn’t going to say another word about it. “But what Aegan did was a real low blow.”
I asked her to leave me alone so I could have a shower.
Once I was alone, I just stood there under the warm water for what seemed like ages. I thought carefully about what to do, trying to plan and link everything together.
I looked at it from all perspectives. I knew the risks, understood the consequences, and calculated the probabilities.
Did Aegan suspect the two girls that he thought were stupid were actually the ones hatching a plan against him?
Had he left the message so we’d fall into his trap?
Or was someone giving me the chance to uncover something far more significant?
Maybe that’s what it was. Aegan underestimated us.
In his world, he was the only one with a fully functioning brain.
The rest of us were just a bunch of fools he could push around and manipulate however he pleased.
And maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing; to defeat him, he needed to think he had the upper hand.
And be a perfect liar.