I WAS SHAKING INSIDE, BUT I TRIED TO SOUND CALM AS I explained to Palm Valley's Finest that I'd left my car down the hill from Maria Posey's place and gotten a ride home from my next-door neighbor. My parents repeatedly insisted I'd been home since nine last night.
"We know the exact time because he interrupted our viewing of Flip That House when he came in," added Mom, with an assured smile in my direction, but I guess that wasn't good enough for the deputies; they figured Mommy and Daddy would say anything to protect me, and also that I could've snuck out and made my way back to the party later.
I found myself wishing it were Deputy Thompson who'd come to question us. At least we knew him, and toward the end of his three-month stint protecting us, he'd regularly taken us up on dinner. He and I had even kicked a soccer ball around outside a couple times, since my dad's not much of an athlete.
I hadn't seen Thompson in a few years, but I figured he was still around. Palm Valley was that kind of place. Since there was no reason to live here, there was no reason to leave; if you had someplace better to go, you'd have gone there in the first place.
The badges wanted to know where I'd been from midnight to three in the morning, and whether I owned a Flynn Scientific baseball cap. A blurred figure in his late teens or early twenties, wearing a Flynn Scientific cap, could apparently be seen on the hospital security tape.
My parents said no way could anyone search my room without a warrant. They even crossed their arms simultaneously and made a sort of roadblock in front of the stairs. I was impressed. I was so accustomed to their competitive psychobabble about my evolution as a person that I'd forgotten how they'd join forces against outside threats. We were an insulated group; I was protected from all angles.
The deputies grilled me about who else was at the party. I said I didn't remember.
"You'd better hope Ms. Salvador doesn't die, or these charges are going to become much more serious," one of the uniforms told me.
I decided I did remember after all. Maybe I should've felt loyalty and kept my trap shut, but loyalty to whom? Someone at the party had swiped my keys and set me up. Ellie had placed them in a dish in the kitchen once I'd handed them over to her.
I gave the badges a truncated guest list, emphasizing Ellie's new squeeze, Fred, and removing my pal Ryder, who'd left the party shortly after I arrived.
The deputies refused to give us information about the condition of my car, but since it was in their custody while they dusted it for prints, Dad had to drive me to school.
We had a decent chat on the way. One-on-one, my parents weren't bad. When they tried to outdo each other narrating and interpreting my actions, they drove me crazy. That's when I turned into "he." ("He probably meant this." "He probably feels that.") He probably wants to die. He probably wishes he had a sibling.
But minus their dueling "Explanation of Charlie" act, performed nightly from eight to ten, they were okay.
"I don't want you to worry about this, son," Dad said firmly in his closing remarks as we reached the drop-off lane at Palm Valley High. "You just worry about your schoolwork today. I know you didn't have anything to do with this poor girl's situation. Your mother and I both know that. And I don't think it's going to come to this, but we'll hire a lawyer if we need to."
Dad's always been pretty easygoing in a crisis. Back when Mom was being vilified by the town for her work with Fresh Start, he got trotted out at press conferences like the pro-choice wife of a pro-life politician, as if to say, "My fellow Americans, I'm one of you, so if I can love the senator, you can, too. Be not scared or pissed." He was always good at calming down the crowd, and his status as an award-winning journalism professor helped as well.
"What about Amelia?" I asked. Amelia was my car. Granddad and Ellie and everyone else thought I'd named her for Amelia Earhart, and I let them think so. Dad was the only person who knew the truth about my car's name, and the secret was safe with him.
"If she's in bad shape, we'll just file the insurance claim. That's what it's there for, right?" Dad said.
I was numb. "Right."
"And maybe this goes without saying, but now that the holidays are over, no more drinking."
"Not even in moderation?" I teased.
His smile was thin. "Not even then."
"Hey, Granddad's the one who gave me the flask," I pointed out.
"It was a family heirloom. And times were different when he was growing up."
I nodded shortly, acutely aware of the spiked thermos of coffee in my backpack.
"What do you say we catch Blood of Mars this week?" Dad said. "There's a preview on Wednesday night. Could take your mind off things."
When I was younger, Dad and I bonded over sci-fi movies and TV shows. We watched everything from Star Trek: Next Generation reruns to Battlestar Galactica and Starship Troopers. We went to the comic store every Wednesday, when new issues of X-Men arrived, and spent an hour perusing our favorite titles.
But that was before we moved to Palm Valley, and I'd had to reinvent myself as an athlete to survive.
As for Blood of Mars, I'd been planning to take Ellie's little brother, Jonathan, to the sneak preview. By indulging his own nerdish qualities without revealing my own, I'd scored massive points with Ellie. In her view, it was even sweeter for me to provide this act of charity, considering I was a jock who supposedly couldn't tell a Klingon from a Na'vi and loathed being around anyone who could.
"Can I get back to you on that?" I asked Dad.
He clapped his hand on my shoulder. "Of course. Go get 'em today."
It felt good hearing that my dad didn't suspect me. I'd been pretty sure he didn't, but having proof of his unconditional trust was still nice.
I had library duty first thing, so I slid behind the information desk and logged on to the school server to check the Web site of the local paper, the Palm Valley Register. They jam our smartphones on campus (another one of my mom's initiatives), but the library's connection is sound.
To save money, the school has our librarian only come in three days a week, and the rest of the time the staff consists of senior monitors like me and a rotating schedule of volunteer teachers.
The sun had risen just high enough to cast slanted lines on my desk through the blinds. Part of my body was in light and part in shadow.
My library gig was punishment for an altercation in the stairwell last November. I'd caught a creeper named Carl trying to look up girls' skirts. I'd stomped his camera and shoved him against the wall but stopped short of actually hurting him; Ellie hated violence. No witnesses came forward against me because the girls who saw were all happy I'd done it. In retrospect, I should've noticed Ellie wasn't among my supporters. Maybe that's when things started to go sour.
Despite the lack of witnesses, Carl had evidence on his side, in the form of cracked camera equipment-a piece of which was lodged in my soccer cleats. I didn't mind doing time because the library sounded like peace and quiet. For the most part, it was. My shift didn't officially start for another twenty minutes, and I enjoyed the solitude.
The local crime blotter had been updated with a cursory mention of my troubles. Maria Salvador's parents urged anyone with information on their daughter's overdose to come forward. She was eighteen, so they included her name and photo, culled from last year's yearbook. With a pang of regret, I realized she was the sad girl with the dark eyes from the party. Guess she'd found that tragedy she was looking for. Should I have talked to her? Asked her what was making her so sad?
She was in choir with Maria Posey, but Maria Salvador looked nothing like her blond, blue-eyed namesake.
"We call them Sound of Music Maria and West Side Story Maria," said a wry voice.
I looked up. Bridget. She was flushed and a little out of breath. "If we're feeling generous, that is," she added. "Most of the time we call them Maria and Other Maria."
"Why don't you call them by their last names? That's what guys would do."
She looked at me like I was stupid. "Because then no one would feel bad."
She tossed my cell phone onto the desk. It bounced once, and I winced before pocketing it.
"You left this in my car last night. Threw it, actually," said Bridget. "Before calling me a starter girlfriend."
She was a hangover's hangover: annoying in and of herself as well as a reminder of my own less-than-chivalrous behavior the evening before. I took a deep breath. "Sorry for what I said last night. I didn't mean it, about using you to get to Ellie. I was drunk."
She picked up my dirty coffee, took a sip, and made a face. "You're still drunk. Do you mean what you're saying now?"
"I'm less drunk. I'm 73.5 percent sober," I said. "And I am sorry for what I said. What we had-it was fun, I just wasn't ready-"
She rolled her eyes. "I know. It's okay."
"Then why'd you slap me?"
"I don't know. I've never slapped anyone before. I thought it might be fun."
"Was it?" I asked, with an edge.
She laughed. "See, this, right here, is why I couldn't be with you. It's not because you didn't want to have sex sophomore year. I mean, that's part of it. It's because you're always apologizing. The boy who got drunk and spiteful last night? Him, I like. But you…We're just not a good fit when you're regular you."
Glad to have that over with, I jerked my head toward the computer screen. "You think West Side Story Maria's gonna be okay?" (I refused to call her "Other Maria.")
Bridget shrugged. "She took a lot of LSD. I hear it messes with your spine, and sticks there, and you could have flashbacks, for, like, years."
"A spine is somewhat vital," I agreed. I'd read in the paper that a dissociative fugue state causes loss of identity, and could last days or even months. It sounded horrifying.
"She knew the risks."
I was taken aback. "Harsh. I thought you songbirds all flocked together in a loving V-formation."
"You and your soccer buddies always see jock-to-jock?" she countered.
"Well, yeah."
"Okay, here's my official reaction." Eyes wide, emeralds aglitter, breathy voice: "'It's awful what happened. I can barely function.'" She grinned. "That's what I'm telling the sheriff's department later."
"You're talking to them later?"
"Everyone is. Everyone at the party, anyway. I just passed the front office, and I heard Jeffries agree to let them interrogate people all day as long as parents are present. The stay-at-home round-robin emergency callers have never been this wet."
I took a sip of my spiked coffee. I'd felt I deserved it after my personal visit from the authorities this morning.
"It was my car that dropped her at the hospital after the overdose," I said carefully, hardly believing the words as they fell out of my mouth. "Apparently, I barely hit the brakes before peeling away. May as well have the word 'guilty' spray painted on the hood."
Her eyes widened again, taking up even more of her face, which I didn't think was possible. "They think you did it? No way."
"Yeah. I might have to lawyer up." My hands shook.
"Wow, Dix. You suddenly got interesting again."
"Fuck off," I said mildly. "They'll dust the car for prints and find someone else's on top of mine, and I'll be home free," I added, with a bravado I didn't possess. "And, once she stops hallucinating, she'll tell everyone it wasn't me."
"If she stops hallucinating. I heard an urban legend once, about a drug messenger who kept the product in his sock. It seeped through to his skin, several tabs of it, and sent him to the asylum."
"I stopped listening at 'urban legend,'" I lied.
"There's not much you can do to clear your name."
"Everyone at the party saw you give me a ride in your car," I protested.
"No, they saw you give your keys to Ellie. No reason you couldn't have come back to the party later. No one's gonna stick their neck out for you, not when it'll help deflect blame from them."
If Bridget felt any sympathy for me, she was extremely good at hiding it. She flipped a chair around and straddled it, propping her elbows onto the information desk. "Anyway. Enough chitchat. I'm here because I need your help."
I frowned. "With what?"
"Friday morning I left my flash drive in one of the computers here, and when I came back to grab it, it was gone."
"What's on it?"
"Only my college application essay." She groaned. "Someone stole it! And now all they have to do is replace my name with theirs and they're golden. They can snake my spot at some school and no one will ever know."
I walked out from behind the information desk and motioned for Bridget to sit with me at an empty table.
"Did you check all the computers?" I said.
"Yes, Dix, I checked all the computers," she said, insulted. "It's not here." She pointed to the left. "I was seated in the corner by the window."
"You checked your backpack, your locker-"
"Do I look like a child?"
Um. Definitely not. "When were you here?"
"Second period."
I chewed on my pen cap for a second. "For study hall?"
"Yes. I was editing my essay, smoothing out the rough spots, rearranging sentences. I had everything else for my application done and ready to go. If I can't find it, I'll be stuck getting a bachelor of arts at frigging Lambert."
She knew full well that's where I was going. "You'll always be B.S. material to me, Bridge."
"Cute."
"You didn't back up the file?"
"No."
"Not at home, not on e-mail?"
"Are you trying to make me feel worse? Because you're really good at it."
"I'm good at a lot of things," I remarked. "Or did you forget?"
She smirked. "Only because I taught you. I didn't back it up, okay? I was stupid. But I need that essay."
"Can't you rewrite it or something?"
"Oh my God. Do you understand what a college essay is? It's all amorphous nonsense. But I had the nonsense exactly how I wanted it, and I can't re-create a month's work in four days! The deadline for UC Irvine is Friday!"
"The deadline for UC Irvine was November 30th. Try again."
"Okay, jeez. Make me say it: The essay's for a scholarship. Happy now? If I don't get my essay back, I won't be going to college."
"Look, if you did leave your flash drive behind, anyone could've taken it," I said.
"I know. That's why I need your help. You can access the log-ins, right? Find out who was here second period?"
For a while, people were stealing books off the shelves, so now everyone who came into the library had to swipe their student ID card as they walked in, even if they didn't plan on checking out anything.
I shook my head. "It only tells me their ID number; it doesn't say who it belongs to."
She waved that issue away. "I know a guy who can translate those. So you'll help me, right?"
Bridget leaned in, allowing me a glimpse down her full-to-bursting blouse. Her leg rubbed against mine beneath the table, like a matchstick looking to ignite, and she implored me with her huge green eyes.
"Tell me this," I said. "All that stuff you piled on thick last night, about waiting for me to be single again? Did you really want to get back together, or did you just think if we were back together, I'd help you find your flash drive today?"
"I figured it couldn't hurt," she admitted. "I saw you at the party, remembered you worked at the library, and thought I'd sweeten you up before springing a favor on my once-and-future boyfriend."
"I could help," I said slowly, shaking her loose and standing up, "but why would I?"
"You'd do it for Ellie," she pouted.
I stared her straight in the eyes, just so there was no mistaking what I was about to say, and the degree to which I meant it. "I would do anything for Ellie."
She looked genuinely hurt for a second. "So the answer's no?"
"The answer's no. I've got too much going on with soccer. We have a big game Friday against Agua Dulce."
Bridget stared at me for a second. "Hmm," she said. "I was afraid of this."
My hands started shaking again. "Of what?"
"Of you refusing. Go ahead and take a look at your cell phone."
I felt a slow, icy dread crawl up my spine. "What do you mean?"
"Look at your text message history," she articulated calmly.
I took out my phone and sat back down. Tapped the messages icon and scrolled through it.
There were twenty texts from Bridget to me, all time-stamped from last night. That wasn't the horrifying part. The horrifying part was the twenty texts from me to her in return.
Apparently, I was bringing sexy back. In explicit detail.
"Find my flash drive by the scholarship deadline Friday afternoon, or Ellie gets an eyeful," said Bridget.
"You're blackmailing me!"
"You didn't give me a choice."
I clenched my fist beneath the table. "She dumped me. Why would she care?"
"You care, though, don't you? You think you still have a chance."
Her smugness knew no bounds. She wasn't the cat who ate the canary-she was the cat who bred canaries in captivity and force-fed them to each other, then had a foie gras-style feast off one epic, stuffed bird.
I shook my head, incredulous. "You sat there in your room all night, pretend-sexting me, and using my phone to write back?"
"It's pretty basic, Dix. But thanks, I thought it was clever."
I laughed for like two hours. Leaned back in my seat and clasped my hands behind my head.
It made her nervous. "What? Why are you laughing?"
"You stupid, horrible…I could hate-kiss you."
"What?"
"You've given me an alibi!"
It took her a second to realize I was right.
"Show these to the sheriff's deputy. Don't show them to Ellie," I ordered.
Bridget's dark red lips parted in a wide smile, exposing her teeth. "Guess that means you're helping me."
I guessed it did.