"Zara. What do you think will happen if Mrs. Atkins goes to the police, and you lied about being in bed all night?"
She wouldn't look at me.
"She saw you in your yellow volleyball hoodie. The one you wear all the time on the weekends."
Zarastiffened.
"I'm trying to help Mia, that's all. The police… I think they suspect her. I just want to find the truth."
Her shoulders slumped. "I was… I was meeting someone."
"Who?"
She sighed. "Leah."
My stomach dropped. Leah was meeting Zara in the middle of the night? Why hadn't anyone mentioned this before? I kept my face neutral, but my mind was already racing through the implications. "Why would you need to meet on the beach when you were both at the sleepover together?"
"Leah asked for my help. On a project."
"What kind of project?"
She fidgeted, looking anywhere but at me.
"Zara, please. Before Mrs. Atkins goes to the police."
"She came to me for help."
I went still. "What do you mean?"
"She wanted me to use my tech skills to help her figure out who runs the account."
"The account?" I asked, even though I already knew.
"An Instagram account. LakeshoreTea. They eviscerate people. Especially the girls. She was trying to figure out who was behind it."
"Why?"
"Because they were targeting her. But also, because of Taylor. The girl who had that awful accident."
"Taylor Everett," I said.
Zara winced. "Yeah, her."
The vacant house. The family that disappeared. Whatever had happened to Taylor had been bad enough to drive them away entirely. And now Leah was dead, too. Another girl tangled up with LakeshoreTea.
"What happened to her?"
Zara chewed her bottom lip. "LakeshoreTea targeted her. But then, there was an accident at a pool party here. She took some pills, I guess, sleeping pills or something. There were lots of rumors. It'shard to know what's real, what's not. But she was acting super weird, I remember that."
I raised my brows. "You were there?"
"Yeah, it was at Peyton's house. The Alistairs, at their pool. The annual summer pool party that Mrs. Alistair always throws."
When I'd asked Whitney about Taylor Everett at Brooke's house, she'd said nothing about it happening at her own pool. At her party. She'd made it sound like it had nothing to do with her, just a neighborhood tragedy she'd observed from the sidelines, not something that occured in her backyard while she was hosting.
"What happened at the pool party?"
"She, like, fell in the pool when no one was paying attention, and almost drowned."
