Chapter 31
Maeve
Sunday
Maeve is cross-legged on the couch, laptop open, phone in hand.
Aoife is on the other couch, engrossed in her phone, but Maeve’s braced to close her laptop if Aoife comes any nearer.
Aoife is incredibly nosy. On Maeve’s phone, the Nika pile-on continues.
Mostly Ariana’s closest friends, but a handful of other kids from their class too.
Thinly disguised Stories on their own accounts—posts about traitors and bitches and cheats.
And how “NG better watch her back.” People love a fight.
One post sticks out though, and that’s what’s made Maeve open Google and do her own search.
A boy in their class (someone who’s not friends with Nika, Ariana or Zach, so no actual reason to be posting at all really) has just put up a picture of a packet of walnuts, with the caption “I wonder what happens if you hide these in someone’s lunch and that person has a tree-nut allergy? ”
Maeve is horrified.
Truly.
She is sure she is horrified.
But OK, part of her is just a little bit…
thrilled? Not that she’d want anything bad to happen to Nika, despite everything Nika’s done to her.
Of course not. But the idea that someone’s just posted this…
That someone could actually do this and…
what? Well, Google is telling her anaphylactic shock.
Which can be fatal. Of course, Nika’d have an EpiPen; she always does.
And this kid, he’s not actually going to act on it.
But still. She stares at the search results and clicks into a link. It’s…interesting.
As she reads, she hears her mum answering the front door, then her Aunt Greta’s voice.
Her mum is saying something about calling in to Moira Fitzpatrick with Susan.
Greta is saying it’s making things worse and Leesa should have known better.
Her mum and Greta drift into the kitchen and Maeve gets back to Google, adding “does EpiPen always work” to her search.
She clicks into an article from WebMed just as Greta comes through to the living room. Maeve’s hand hovers at her trackpad, ready to switch tabs if needed.
Greta asks how they are, though they saw her on Friday night and nothing much has happened since.
Maeve doesn’t mind. She likes Greta. And she’s always been Greta’s favorite.
It’s because she was the first niece and because Greta doesn’t have kids and because Greta is her godmother, she supposes, but also because they’re alike.
Quieter than the others, but practical and smart and good in a crisis. Mostly.
Greta steps closer, reaching for a book on the coffee table, and Maeve panics and closes the laptop. A little too suddenly, it turns out, as Aoife immediately buzzes to attention.
“Ohhh…what are you hiding?”
Maeve rolls her eyes. “Nothing.”
“Show us then,” Aoife says. “If it’s nothing.”
“God, you are so nosy.”
Aoife uncurls her legs, gets up from her couch and comes over to sit on the arm of Maeve’s.
“Go on, open it. I dare you. What was it? Something you clearly don’t want Greta or me to see.”
Maeve hugs the laptop. “Maybe I was looking at your TikTok and dying of second-hand embarrassment?”
Aoife sticks out her tongue. “I’ve blocked you on TikTok, so you couldn’t have seen it.”
“I have my ways,” Maeve says, though she does not have her ways and cannot see Aoife’s TikTok account. “That last video you put up is going to get you bullied for sure.”
As soon as she says it, she sees the open goal. Aoife has ammunition now to get her back ten times over. But they both know she won’t. Aoife might slag Maeve off from morning till night but, on pain of death, she’d never taunt her about bullying.
“You’re just jealous of how much my followers love me,” Aoife says with a smirk.
Greta is shaking her head, looking baffled.
“You two are exhausting. Would you not go out and kick a ball on a beautiful Sunday evening? I mean—” She stops as her phone starts to ring. Her brow furrows. She mutters something and steps out to the hall, answering as she goes.
“Wonder who that was?” Aoife says. “She looked kind of stressed.”
Maeve shrugs, reopening her laptop. But she heard his voice when Greta answered, and she’s almost certain it was Jon.
She flicks a glance at Aoife, but Aoife doesn’t seem to have picked up on it.
There are many things on which she and Aoife have opposite opinions—Taylor Swift, Percy Pigs, the color pink—but Jon isn’t one of them.
They both find him hard work. He’s good at making the grown-ups laugh and they all love his company on nights out and nights in, but he’s less interested in the teens.
He hides it well, he’s always reasonably friendly, but there’s something not quite genuine about it.
Or maybe they’re just judging him against their aunts, who are full of warmth and energy at all times, whether you like it or not.
Their mum is calling them, for a late Sunday dinner, and together they walk through the dividing doors into the kitchen.
Greta is staying too, Leesa says—could Maeve go out to the hall and see if she’s off the phone?
Maeve goes through the far kitchen door to check the hall, but Greta’s not there any more.
She tries the den—maybe Greta went in there for some privacy on her call—but that room is in darkness.
Then she pops her head into the living room and startles when she sees her aunt peering at her laptop screen.
A sick feeling coils inside Maeve and, for a moment, she freezes, with no idea what to do.
She’d left the laptop open, but she’d closed the tab, hadn’t she?
She hesitates, fear and politeness battling, then steps forward, but Greta has closed the laptop and is moving toward the dividing doors to the kitchen.
She hasn’t seen Maeve. And she couldn’t have seen the search results; Maeve is certain she’d closed the tab. She lets out a breath.