I open the first one, and it’s immediately clear why she didn’t want anyone to see these.
The first photo is of Dylan doing a keg stand, and then the second is of a bunch of girls in their class taking shots from small plastic cups. Then an image of Justin Vreeland with his arms crossed over his chest, scowling at something off-screen the same way he did to me on Main Street the other day. I inhale sharply and remember what I’m looking at:suspects.
Quickly, I grab a paper and pen and start making a list of everyone in these photos. I see no one surprising—so many members of the senior class, Billy’s cousin Olivia, Ethan.
I keep scrolling, getting a sense of what the party felt like—beer pong and cartwheels in the sand, the thinning of people, a mad dash into the water, excited faces when they come up for air. Nothing to suggest that someone might have been plotting to hurt Billy.
This is a dumb idea. It is foolish to think I could find anything in these images other than a renewed dedication tonotpartying like these people. Instead of making it look fun, they all look like they’re acting in a bad movie where someone winds up pregnant or, I realize with a shock, dead.
There’s only one image left, and I open it, expecting more of the same. But this one’s a photo of the water, the dock extending into it in the distance, no faces in frame.
Except.
I lean closer and turn up the brightness on my screen, which is when I see it.Him.
In the corner of the photo is the small silhouette of a boy wearing no shirt, only a pair of jeans rolled up at the ankles, his feet submerged in the ocean. He’s turned to the side, so I can only see half his face. I zoom in and bring the screen closer, expecting the image to change in front of me. But it stays exactly the same, an anonymous boy, one of our own.
I scratch my pen against the paper and finish my list.Shirtless mystery kid. I snap a photo of the screen with my phone so I can come back to that one later.
The SIM card fits into Erica’s camera easily, and I slip the deviceback into her bag, but when I do, my finger catches on a hard corner poking out of the zippered pocket, a slip of paper coated in something that feels glossy, like a professionally printed photograph. I pinch it between my fingers and pull it out, blinking when I see it in my hand.
It takes me a moment to fully take in what I’m looking at: an abstract image. Black, with grainy white and gray lines. An outline of something that looks like a small turtle. Or maybe a bean. A little alien. The picture looks just like those pages in my health textbook, in the chapter on how babies are made. But that can’t be whatthisis.Thatwas a sonogram from a pregnant person.Thiswas in Erica’s bag.This…
I squint at the slip of paper, study the contours, the border. In the top corner is her name—Richardson, Erica.
Holy shit.
This is a sonogram.Because Erica is pregnant.
—
The next day,I’m a live wire at work, unable to sit still in the welcome hut. I could barely sleep last night, thinking about the sonogram I found in Erica’s bag. There were so many moments that I almost told Lucy, that I almost texted Alex. But something about that little image tucked away in her bag made me keep the information to myself.
The wind picks up, blowing up the corners of the towels in the hut, and I pull my hoodie tight around my middle.
“I’m gonna get a lemonade. You’ll be okay?” Alex asks.
“Yep,” I say. “It’s not like someone’s going to attack mehere.” I wave my hands around at our little office as Alex nods and rushes off to the clubhouse. But I have to admit that as soon as he leaves, my stomach starts humming. It’s quiet today, the only sound coming from the pitter-patter of a drizzle picking up overhead.
Spinning around in my chair, I reach for my book of logic puzzles and steady my breathing. But just as I’m about to crack it open, someone knocks on the welcome hut, and I lean out the window. “Hello?”
“Oh, good. Someone’s here. Wasn’t sure with the weather.” Erica’s standing there, shivering in a thin T-shirt and shorts, flip-flops strapped to her feet. Her hair is damp, from the pool or the rain, I’m not sure, and she’s got an anxious look on her face. There’s a buzzing in my stomach, and I grip my pencil so hard I think it may snap in half. “Mind if I come in?”
But she doesn’t wait for my answer, just barrels through the door. “What’s up?” I say as nonchalantly as I can.
“I can’t find my purse,” she says. “Small black thing with a thick strap. I thought it might be in the lost and found. Mind if I check?” She motions to the cardboard box behind me. Everything inside my body tenses. Obviously, the bag isn’t in the lost and found. It’s in my room, hidden under the bed with a pile of sweatshirts I was supposed to fold last week.
“Actually…” I start, the admission hot on my tongue. But when Erica snaps her attention to me, her skin sallow and her eyes wide and frantic, I hesitate.
“What?” she snaps. “Actuallywhat? Because this is kind of important, and I don’t have time foractually.”
“Um…”
Erica pushes past me and starts digging through the box.
I can picture the sonogram in the bag, the wobbly lines etched onto the paper. I could tell her I took her bag by accident. I wouldn’t even have to say I saw what was inside. But the way she’s tossing things around like they did something to hurt her makes me nervous. I haven’t thought this through. I haven’t even considered what she might do when she finds out I know.
“Fuck,” she says, her voice sharp, all edges. “It’s not here.”
