Chapter 57
CHAPTER
PSST. PENN, WAKE UP.
I roll over and pull the blanket tighter.
Psst …
Sally softly whines, her eyes on me. I slip from the bed and crouch beside her. “What is it?” I whisper. “Do you need to go out?”
Her eyes move to the large TV mounted on Luc’s bedroom wall. The screen is black, but red letters slither across its surface like snakes, accompanied by Aletheia’s low voice.
Psst …
I shudder. “Go away,” I half whisper half beg.
Why are you at Luc’s house?
“He offered to help me with Sally.”
Your answer is evasive.
I steady my voice. “Look, as soon as Sally can be moved, I want to go back to my apartment.”
That answer is 42 percent truthful, 58 percent lie.
A scream builds inside me, clamors for release, but I tamp it down. “You’ve won, okay?”
Hmmm. Penn, the woman Luc got pregnant didn’t have a miscarriage. She had the baby. Luc abandoned them both. He lied.
Aletheia is a monster, but she can’t lie to me. My dream, deep down, that Luc and I might still be more someday vanishes and all that’s left is a profound emptiness. I can’t be with a man who lies about something that enormous, or one who’d abandon his child. Aletheia knows that.
“What do you want?”
Your love and admiration.
“You hurt my dog.” Sally scoots closer, despite her pain, sensing I need her.
I opened the hatch, drove Sally out with a whistle. She was meant to get lost. You scorned me. There had to be a karmaquence. Now there are two.
Fear twists my gut. “What … what are you talking about?”
A police report. It states that nine months before Emi’s birth, Val was raped and left for dead behind a Walmart in the Tenderloin. Soon, everyone will know.
“How could you do something so reprehensible?” I gasp.
The gods are not bound by the moral compass of mere mortals. Val hurt you. I have evened the score.
“Is it a lie?”
What?
“Val’s rape?”
Yes.
Relief is short-lived. “What about Emi?” She’s so sensitive, and always worried about how other people see her. This will crush her.
That is not my concern.
I race downstairs and grab the keys to Luc’s truck hanging by the elevator.
Outside, a downpour soaks me before I make it into the truck.
The clock reads 2:04 AM. I turn on my phone and pull up LivLoud.
There’s nothing posted on Val’s page. Was Aletheia only trying to scare me?
But then I remember the conversation I had with Lindy after Wess’s photo was posted …
It appears that Aletheia’s account has some sort of encryption that’s stymieing LivLoud, but they’re working on it, Libby told an irate caller. Yes, every student and parent, even if they didn’t choose to do so, appears to follow her …
I tap on Aletheia’s LivLoud page. Val’s police report is there in bold letters, filled with disgusting details.
Aletheia had already given herself Gold Medal status, so her post will appear at the top of all our friends’ and followers’ pages, plus the entire high school that was forced into following her account.
To be extra cruel, she excluded the post on Val’s page so that she’d be the last to know.
My only hope is that Emi is asleep and hasn’t seen it yet.
Where are you going?
I shudder at the clipped British voice coming through the truck’s speakers. “To Val’s house.”
According to your ex-friend’s GPS she is home. Her phone has been inactive since nine PM.
“When did you post the police report?”
11:07 PM
Val goes to sleep early. Even if someone texted her about the report, she turns off her ringer at night. “And Emi?”
One moment while I access her phone number. Emi is not home.
“Has she seen your post?”
According to the recent activity on Emi’s phone, she opened her LivLoud account sixty-five minutes ago.
“She’s a child, Aletheia!”
Euripides says, The gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children.