I was biting my bottom lip and stopped. “No. Not at all. The video is wrong.”
“It’s not wrong,” he said. “It’s simply been altered.”
Again, I found myself dumbfounded. “How can you possibly know that?”
He shrugged. “I have a tendency to see things others don’t. This wasn’t particularly hard.”
I leapt to my feet. “That’s great then! You can go to the police and show them how it’s wrong and Fitz is off free and clear. If someone was willing to alter video, then it’s definitely a set up.”
Locke frowned. “I can’t do that.”
“What? Why not?”
“I don’t want to tip off the person who I suspect is behind the alteration that I’m on to him. Or her.”
“No,” I said, rejecting that excuse. “I don’t care who is responsible. We can worry about that after we clear Fitz.”
Again, Locke frowned at me. “I don’t recall there being aweinvolved. There is a game, a much bigger game than you know, being played in this town and I’m of a mind to figure it out. What does or doesn’t happen to Fitz is of no matter to me. Besides, any reasonably competent investigator, which I’m sure his lawyer will hire to look into the matter, should spot it.”
I had to swallow my frustration. “Yes, but that will take time. The police might have arrested him by then. That will stick to him. It won’t matter if he’s eventually found not guilty. He’ll always be known as the Darcy kid who got arrested.”
“Sorry.” Lock shrugged.
I took in a deep breath and tried to think with a clear head. I was QB One’s girlfriend. Maybe it was time I acted like it.
Taking a few steps toward Locke I put on my most imperious expression. One I used to reserve for Fitz himself.
“You can play your games, Locke. But remember this, you go to Haddonfield High. That’s Fitz’s kingdom. Where he is considered a king. And now I am his queen. Which means I have the power to make your life a living hell. You will never successfully navigate a hallway without incident. You will never know what you might find when you open your locker. No girl will come within ten feet of you and any thoughts you might have had of a social life will be moot.”
He clutched his chest with his hand and pretended to stagger. “Brutal. Very convincing by the way. But I don’t care.”
“You don’t care?” I asked, disbelieving.
“No.”
“Not even when I tell Reen that from here on out you are dead to her.”
His eye twitched then. His right eye and only slightly, but it was there.
“No,” he said after a beat.
“We’ll see about that, Locke. If Fitz is arrested before someone figures out that video is altered, you’re going to pay. I swear it.”
21
Fitz
“Idon’t like it,” I said.
We were all together in my living room. My parents, Gigi and Beth, who had come from her meeting with Locke to share the news about the altered video.
“What kind of fucked-up, high-school shit is this?” my dad asked no one in particular. “We go from a fucking Freshman List to altering a video to set up my boy for vehicular assault? That’s messed up. You two are going to private school.”
“Dad, not helpful right now,” Gigi said. “I like Beth’s idea.”
Beth’s idea had been to go see Wick in the hospital. Taking Gi with her. If Wick actually did like Gi and was he truly upset about what happened the night of the party, he might be willing to share more of what he knew about the List.
Given the fact that someone had put his life in jeopardy over it, that was even more motivation to talk.
