28
JILLIE
Carlos has the answer. He wastes no time giving it to me when I enter the closet.
“Listen, Jillie. I’m not supposed to be telling you this let aloneknowabout this.”
“Know about what?”
Carlos shifts nervously, looks up, then back at me. “This is really fucked up, but you deserve to know.”
“Uh huh. I pretty much figured out it was hinky. Go on,” I urge.
“You know at the party how Ellen was still there when we went inside?”
I nod. “Right. She said she was getting her purse.”
“Yeah, well. Uh… she wasn’tjustgetting her purse,” he tells me.
“Oooo-kay.”
He takes a deep breath, then mutters something under his breath. He wrings his hands together then looks at me. “EllenhasasexvideoofyouandLeo.”
He says it so fast I’m hoping I’m hearing him wrong. My heart is hammering. My mouth is filling up with saliva—a telltale sign I’m about to puke.
He sighs. “Ellen. She set up a camera in Leo’s room, and everything you two did that night? It’s on there. She’s got it.”
I sit down on an overturned bucket. “Well, that’s so much worse than hinky. It’s all kinds of fucky.”
“Yeah.” He turns a bucket over and joins me.
My stomach is twisted in knots from my anxiety—my fear. For the first time I actually do fear Ella, what she could do.
I drop my head into my hands and feel my face burning—not from fever, but from embarrassment, rage, humiliation.
“Who’s all seen it?” I ask.
Carlos clears his throat. “Uh, Leo, me, and Brent. That’s all. But Brent and me, we didn’twatchit. We just saw what it was, and we didn’t need to know anything else.”
“God.” I lean back against the wall.What am I going to do? This is going to ruin me—and Leo. But his family has someone who can spin this. I have—oh God. Aunt Ruthie. Dad. Then a thought begins to form. “Wait.” I sit up straight. “Is this why Leo is being all Ella-lover-ish?”
Carlos nods. “Yeah. He’s trying to keep her from releasing the vid. He’s also trying to find it.”
“What do you mean?”
“He knows it’s on her computer. Pretty sure it’s still on her camera, too, but we don’t know if it’s anywhere else,” he informs me.
“Great. That’s just great. That night wasspecial,” I say out loud.
Carlos just cringes and kinda nods. He looks so uncomfortable.
“Does Leo know you’re telling me?”
“Yeah. Kinda had to let you know, what with you parading Damon around and all. Hell, Foxy J, that was classic and any other time I’d have appreciated it, but with what she’s got? You gotta tone it down, girl,” he informs me.
“But if I do that, won’t she suspect something?”
“Maybe. Just don’t push her too much. Let us get all the copies and shit first. Then you can do whatever the hell you want,” he tells me.
