“Why didn’t you tell me?” She looks at me now, mournfully. It’s as if she’s lost something irredeemable.“I’m sorry,”I want to shout.“None of it was me. I chose a stupid dream over you and a stranger who made me feel like he saw the real me. Just help me untangle myself from this mess, and I promise I’ll make things right. I promise I’ll fix us.”But I stay quiet. Her face is slack, disappointed. It’s paralyzing.
The bell rings, and Joey closes her locker. Desperate panic floods my chest, overriding my guilt. I’m aching to talk to her, to talk to someone, and I know Joey is the only one who has a level head enough to help me through this. I just need to know what to do now so I don’t ruin things forever.
“After school?” I ask.
The cafeteria door opens and a deluge of shrill voices and laughter escapes. Then, there are bodies. Dozens of them. They scatter in all directions like fruit flies from a rotting apple. It is the last day of school, and so they are oblivious to us, busy flooding the hall with their violent shrieks that mark the impending freedom of summer. Joey glances over her shoulder, and I can see that I’m losing her, that she’s about to be pulled in one direction and I’m about to be pulled in another.
“Last English class of the year,” she says and indicates down the hall with her head. “You coming?”
It’s an invitation. A lifeline. Her way of saying that she won’t abandon me, despite it all. But I can’t stay. I can’t go to class. I can’t be so easy a target for him. I have to get out of here.
“No,” I say, and at first she looks surprised. It makes sense that she would be. I should go to English class with the rest of them and then clean out my locker and start making summer plans. I should be doing normal things. But if I do normal things, I know what will happen to me. After a few beats, she opens her mouth like she’s going to say something, but she doesn’t. Instead, she shuts her lips tight and nods in resignation, almost in defeat. And then, she goes.
I walk the other way, toward the gym. I duck out the back doors and start to plan. Home first. Then I’ll go to Joey’s. I pray that she will head home right after school. She will help me come up with some way to stop him. Maybe she’ll tell me to go to the police. Or maybe she will hide me. Maybe I can do an illusion spell to hide myself. I’ll have to tell her about the book and all the spells, but I don’t have the time or capacity to worry about what she’ll think. She’s the best one to have around when you need to solve a puzzle. The only one.
He gets off work around five, so we’ll only have an hour, give or take, but I know she’ll help me. I know she will. Because she’s Joey.
49Elena
Rain taps at the windows, like it would prefer to be let in.
As if in defiance, the lights have been turned up to industrial-level brightness. A glance over her left shoulder reveals Cal clinking away in the kitchen. Elena is drained. They’ve been working for two hours already. She read through her lines, changed her inflection, read through them again. They went through it several times, using the entire length of the room as their set. The real scene will involve a horse—standing next to one, not riding one, thank god. It’s not a major part, and she had it down pat an hour ago, but Cal suggested they run through again and again so he could rehearse his own lines. She was glad they did. It will be different on set tomorrow morning, of course, but for now she thinks she’s got it. She hid a smile when he told her she elevated the scene. Her delivery is apparently much more convincing, more emotional, than the “bee-stung” actress who quit. This is the start of something; she knows it in her bones.
Rain taps persistently at the windows as Cal stirs with a long spoon and ice clinks against glass. The flurry of texts from her agent thismorning told her she’s not wrong to be prepared for more opportunities after this.Finally, she thinks.Finally.
Since being here, though, she still hasn’t felt her phone vibrate with a message back from Joey, even though she’s kept it in her pocket the whole time. Sophie’s theory about Tanner is still pinging around in her head, and she wonders why Joey hasn’t responded. She feels, deep down, that Tanner could be their guy. He was dating and eventually married the daughter of the police chief. A police chief who somehow failed to report seven stab wounds on Quinn’s deceased body. Clearly, this whole thing has been a cover-up for Tanner.
She pulls out her phone to tap out a follow-up message.We need to talk, she types quickly.Meet at the bar later?
She hits Send and watches the text fail to send just as Cal comes up behind her.
“Tequila mule,” he says, holding a glass out to her. She pockets her phone and takes a sip.
“So good,” she says, and she means it. She can tell that he, too, is riding the high of a successful day of rehearsal. They’ve run through their lines and exhausted their opinions on technique and style and delivery, and now it’s time to relax.
He touches the rim of his glass to hers. “Thank you for doing this. I’m going to annoy my casting director until she hires you again. I know she has a cool sci-fi adaptation on the horizon, and I have a good feeling about you.”
The fizzy drink crackles inside her mouth. “Thankyou,” she says. “Looking forward to tomorrow.”
In a few minutes, she pulls out her phone again while Cal goes to the bathroom. Nothing from Joey or Sophie. She can feel a little tingle at the tips of her fingers. Something doesn’t feel right. Sophie is constantly on her phone texting her wife for updates of the little one, and Joey is a woman with a secret boyfriend, so she’s tied to her phone as much aseither of them. Sure she’s overreacting, Elena decides to let it go. Ten minutes is not a long time to wait for a response, and she almost laughs aloud at her lack of patience. Ironic when you consider that, before Monday, she hadn’t really spoken to either of them in fifteen years.
Antsy, she walks over to the bookshelf. She remembers seeing it the last time she was here. The books are still neatly aligned, most of them old, a few untitled. One book is tipped over and looks about to fall off the shelf, which is something Elena would normally never notice, except everything in this house is intentional and pristine. She’s surprised at the flaw. She rights the tipped book and realizes there’s something missing. She looks around because she remembers what else was on this shelf the last time she was here. That gorgeous sculpture of the mountain peaks.
Elena spins around at a sound. Cal is back from the bathroom, leaning against the window wall, watching her with an amused expression.
“Whose place is this anyway?” she asks, uneasy but trying to make conversation. “I never asked.”
He looks around as if seeing it for the first time. “That depends. Do you hate it?”
“I love it,” she lies. She takes a sip of her drink.
“Well then, I’ll tell you the truth. It’s mine.”
“Oh,” she says with genuine surprise. She thought this was a rental property. Why on earth would Cal Pierce want to own a home in Whisper Ridge? It feels strange, and even stranger that he didn’t say something sooner. “How often do you come here?” she asks.
“It was my mother’s. I only come every few years.”
She nods, noticing that he’s moved closer to her. She doesn’t know why, but she glances behind her to see how near she is to the wall. “So you knew about Whisper Ridge before the film then?” she asks.
