Neither of them said anything for a moment; Fola just looked at him with a frown, clearly annoyed by his presence. Suddenly her facial expression morphed into interest.
She turned back to Romeo. “He could help us, actually. We need access to the files I was telling you about…” She looked again at Octavius, who was very lost as he often was when his sister was in plotting mode. “Tavi, do you still have that desktop PC that Dad got you a few years ago? Or did the police take it?”
Octavius narrowed his eyes suspiciously at her. Fola had made fun of that PC more times than he could count, treating it as if it were some ancient artifact and going as far as to call it adinosaur boxwhen it was really quite a nice model. His other siblings had been given laptops, but he apparently couldn’t be trusted with too many moveable devices. He’d been given the computer to write and research music, but instead he had mostly used it to play the Sims in his room whenever their father wasn’t looking.
“Yes, it’s in my closet, why?”
“Because I need to look somethingsup, and they still have all of our devices,” she answered.
“Why are you being mysterious… Are you going to tell me what thesethingsare?” Octavius replied.
“Yes. But first, can I use it?” Fola asked, her arms folded. “It’s the least you can do after throwing up all over one of my favorite pairs of boots.”
Octavius was planning to let her use it anyway, but his reason wasn’t just remorse. It was because of the expression on her face.
His sister’s face was figuratively bleeding. Her wounds that she usually spent so much time and care concealing were laid bare. With their father nolonger there to monitor their every move, Fola’s mask had lost its stronghold. It had been clear all day that his sister was barely hanging on by a thread; he didn’t want to tip her over the edge.
So he nodded. “You can use it.”
The three of them were able to sneak up to Octavius’s bedroom through a longer passageway in the east wing, as it was too risky to use the west wing staircase in the foyer.
Once inside, Octavius immediately noticed that his race car rug had been removed, but that the smell of sick still lingered uncomfortably in the air. He thought about grabbing some air freshener from his en suite bathroom but decided against it once he saw how agitated Fola was. She was even biting her fingernails, a habit she’d abandoned as a child. She was also glaring at him. It was clear that time was of the essence. Any moment now the cops would be putting someone in handcuffs.
Octavius tried to ignore his own jittery limbs as he quickly dragged the old computer out from its hiding place. He set it down on his desk, plugged it in, and waited for it to reboot, dusting off the years that clung to the exterior of the screen like a blanket. The rebooting process didn’t take as long as he thought it would. Fola, who was seated at his desk and seemed very antsy—watching the door as if Waxler would suddenly materialize—said, “Thank God,” when the page with the login popped up.
“Password?” she asked, looking up at Octavius.
“ ‘Tchaikovsky’s left tit.’ All lowercase,” he answered. Romeo snorted loudly in amusement—the complete opposite from Fola, who was not amused at all and had a single eyebrow raised in a judgmental expression.
“What? Thirteen-year-old me thought it was very edgy. And honestly, seventeen-year-old me still thinks so too,” Octavius said.
Fola ignored him, as she often did when the things he was saying had no use to her and her overly analytical brain.
He squinted, watching her rejoin the Wi-Fi and scroll through her emails.
“Are you sending an email?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No, I’m just checking it. I’ve been paging a guy all day and he told me he sent an email with attachments—which I obviously couldn’t open on the pager.”
A pager? Who even had a pager anymore?His type A professional workaholic sister, that’s who.
“What details? Are you guys going to tell me anything at all?”
“Are you going to sober up tonight?”
“Sure,” Octavius said.
Romeo and Fola shared that look again.
Fola sighed, stopped fiddling with the mouse, and turned to face Octavius now, Romeo following suit.
“Do you want to tell him or should I?” Fola asked.
Romeo straightened up, clearly nervous. “You know Evie…”
Octavius felt his stomach twist at the sound of the girl’s name. Of course he knew Evie.
He nodded, saying nothing.
