Up on the announcement board staked into the grass is a piece of paper with Billy’s face on it. Above the image, the wordsJustice for Billyare typed in bold. But someone’s scrawled red devil horns above his head, which seems like a little much. He may have been a douche, but he’s dead. Yeesh.
I pull out the puzzle book I bought when we first got here and crack open the spine, but I don’t get through more than a few lines before I hear bike tires crunch over gravel.Shit.It’s Erica pulling up on her bicycle. She’s got big sunglasses hiding her face, and even through that shield, her distress is obvious: Her dark hair is tangled, and her skin is red and splotchy. A lump forms in my throat and nerves flutter in my stomach.
“Oh,” she says when she sees me, pushing her hair away from her face. “Hi.”
“Hi,” I say tentatively, clutching my book.
Erica whacks the kickstand of her bike with her heel and lifts her face.
“Your bag,” I say, the words coming quickly. “It’s in the lost and found.”
Erica’s eyes go wide. “Really?”
Shit. What if she suspects I put it there?“I think so. At least, there’sabag in there that matches the description you gave us.”
Erica’s shoulders relax. “Thank god,” she say. “I’ll get it today.”
“Cool.” My heart rate begins to slow as Erica turns around so she’s facing the poster of Billy, the one that’s been vandalized.
“Messed up,” I say. “Whoever did that’s sick.”
Erica spins around, and she’s got a strange look on her face, her skin bright red.
“I mean, he’s dead. It’s like,be nice.” I should really shut up, but the words come out of my mouth like vomit.
“You don’t knowanything, Frankie,” Erica says, her voice a mixture of venom and rage. Then she gets back on her bike and hurries away.
I watch her go, speechless for a moment. Is that how someone would act if they found a defaced poster of their dead ex-boyfriend, their potentialbaby daddy? I have no idea, but it sure as hell seemed weird. Wouldn’t she have agreed with me? Or at least torn it down?
But Erica did neither of those things. Her tone almost made it seem like she wasjustifyingthe poster, like maybe Billy deserved to have those devil horns drawn on him, even in death. If she believed that, then maybe…
Maybe she’s not pregnant with Billy’s baby after all. Maybe she’s pregnant with someone else’s.
“Frankie?” Millie calls from the front door of the Bonanza.
I head over to her and gulp, not wanting to say anything andhave my voice betray me. She’s got a book tucked under her arm—A Young Person’s Guide to Grieving.I take a deep breath and finally feel like when I speak, I’ll sound normal.
“Is that for Lucy?” I ask, though it doesn’t really seem like Lucy needs any form of self-help. She’s been cool as a cucumber since everything happened, barely showing any emotion as she heads off to work at Mayor Cho’s office. When I asked her how she was doing, she said she was mostly worried about Ethan and Erica, not herself. Hearing her talk about Erica andnotsaying anything felt like a total betrayal.
“Oh,” Millie says, covering the title with her palm. “No, it’s for Ethan.”
“That’s nice of you,” I say.
Mille slips it into her tote bag and grasps the straps tight. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
But just as we’re about to get on our bikes, our phones ping with a text from Lucy to our family group chat. Millie gets to her phone before I do, and her hand flies to her mouth, her fingers pressed to her lips.
“What?” I ask.
She looks up, her eyes wide in shock. “Justin Vreeland was just arrested.”
—
We’ve never bikedfaster in our entire lives. All I can focus on is that the investigation is over. Justin killed Billy. “What’s his deal, anyway?” I ask Millie, my breathing shallow as we pedal uphill.
She glances over her shoulder. “Lucy says he deals drugs.”
“Drugs?”I’m not naive enough to think that no one on Pelican Island dabbles in the dark arts of substance abuse, but to hear Millie say it so plainly is jarring. “Like what kind?”
