“I literally never said that.”
“You thought it.”
Dylan laughs. “Come on. Let’s start with her messages.”
It takes minutes of scrolling through GG’s messages (hardly any), calls (minimal), and apps (she’s not on social media, whata shocker) before we think to check out her photos. It’s right there: a video, recorded the night she died. I tap it to play, then tap it again to stop.
“Do we watch it now?”
“Obviously, but wait.” Dylan grabs my hand to stop me before I can tap the screen again. “Just, before you do, that thing I wanted to tell you.”
“Tell me later,” I say, wanting and not wanting to know.
“It’s just, uh, Lisa and I broke up.”
I cover my face with my free hand. “Do we have to talk about this now?” I say, talking as much to Dylan as to my own brain, which is filling up with questions. When did he find the time to do this in a Wi-Fi and phone-service dead zone? Was a carrier pigeon involved? Did he hire a skywriter on the DL? Is Lisa right now answering the door to a singing telegram prepared to use music and dance to break the bad news?
“Just thought you might like to know.”
“Thank you for the update. Can we watch the video now?”
“I just didn’t want you to think—”
“I am up to speed.”
“I’m glad we had this enlightening talk.”
I mostly manage to hide my smile. Dylan doesn’t even try.
The video starts, and the moment it does, I forget about Dylan and Lisa and even about the hand-holding because I’m looking at GG’s face, speaking straight into the camera.
“Hello,” she says.
28
This is the part whereI should cut to Dylan and me at the police station, handing over this crucial bit of evidence (the phone), telling them what we’ve learned from watching the video (who killed GG), and going back to Perth safe, sound, and with one hell of a What I Did on Vacation essay up our sleeves. That would be the smart thing to do. But it doesn’t happen like that.
Instead let me cut to the next morning (don’t worry, you’ll get to see the video soon, and it’ll be better this way), to the living-room couch where Dylan and I fell asleep the night before, only after putting everything but GG’s phone back into the box and returning it to its hiding place so we could be the ones to reveal its existence to our parents, rather than Dad discovering all when he trips over it and breaks his neck en route to the bathroom. We’re smooshed head to toe but with just the one blanket over us and Dylan is holding one of my socked feet like it’s a comfort toy. All of which makes it kind of weird when Dad finds us half asleep.
“Good morning?” he says, making it a question. I sit up and Dylan’s foot kicks my boob, while GG’s phone drops out of my hand to the floor. I pick it up and the time on the phone tells me it’s late, nearly tena.m., and I have no idea how we slept through the family having breakfast in the next room except that we were up until threea.m. watching that video of GG and talking about what it meant until our throats were sore and even the idea of disappearing to our respective beds felt like too much.
“Dad!”
“Correct. What’s going on here?”
“We couldn’t sleep.”
“You seemed to be doing a pretty good impression of it.”
“Insomnia,” I insist, still thick-headed. “We thought TV might help.”
Dad and I both look at the TV, which is off. Resisting the temptation to prattle into the silence (always a classic giveaway of a lie in progress), I smile my blandest no-teeth smile. The one thing Dylan and I agreed on last night was that we’d show the video to our parents together, but Dylan is either still asleep or pretending to be.
“Where is everyone?” I ask, kicking Dylan lightly. “There’s something Dylan and I want to talk to you about.”
“They’re all outside—Vinx and I are going to bring Nick back from the hospital and Bec and Shippy are going to go check the bus timetable back to Perth.”
“They can’t drive home with Aunty Vinka and Nick? Or us?”
