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“Let me deal with that.”
“What do you think you’re going to do?” he asked. “Hide in the Sorenson house? Hide here? Well, you can’t. You can’t spend the next year and a half hiding. Your brother and your parents aren’t stupid. They’ll find out.”
Danielle threw up her hands and her eyes flared wide. “I said I’d handle it!” She pointed to her chest. “I’m not going back. I’m done. We’re wasting time. You’re just keeping us there.”
Nathan sputtered for an answer that would sink into her thick skull. “Do you not see everything going on at the school? You go to lunch. You don’t see the police? Hear what’s going on?”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with me,” she said.
“It has everything to do with what you want,” he said. “Do you think for one second you’d just waltz out of school and no one would notice? Every option to get you out involves a principal’s approval, among other things.” He waved his hand outward. “The principal is gone, Danielle. Gone.”
She frowned. “Sang’s out. You got her out.”
“She’s still going to school. Only she’s taken all the tests and not complaining about it. She knows she has to stay in for now. And she’s doing far more work than you are for what she wants.”
Danielle threw up her hands again and waved them around. “Fine! It’s whatever. I’m trying to help you, after all. I don’t need to tell you about her real mom. Or help you with Erica...”
Nathan glared at her. “Help? What are you talking about? And I don’t even know if you know about Sang’s mom. How would you know anything? I can just ask Marie.” He pointed a finger at her. “And it’s really shitty the way you’re using Marie and Sang and their situation to get something out of it.”
She reeled her head back and then stopped. She turned, blew out a breath and then lowered her shoulders a bit, dipping her head. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He blinked rapidly at how her whole demeanor seemed to change. It reminded him that he was supposed to become friendly with them to get the answers they might have. Answers weren’t going to come if he was yelling at her. “Look, I just don’t understand how to help you. You wanted out of classes, we did that. The process to get you out of school, though, that’s on hold until we’re absolutely sure things can’t be questioned about your exit. It takes time, okay?” He paused. “And what did you mean about Erica?”
Danielle lifted her head, gazing at him with her big brown eyes. “I told Jessica you and I were hooking up.”
Nathan stopped himself before he could make a gagging noise. “What?”
“I asked her why you two were fighting in the yard. She said it was because you were trying to kiss Sang. So I helped you by letting her think over the last week I was coming over more, hanging out together with you.” She reached into her back pocket, pulling out her cell phone. “I put a pic up on Facebook of back in the day when we used to hang out together. She follows me.”
She turned her phone around, showing a picture of Nathan and Danielle at the pool in his backyard. It must have been at least five years ago, if not before then. He barely remembered taking the picture.
Nathan shook his head slowly. He pressed a palm to his forehead. “I don’t...understand...why you thought that would help.”
“Are you kidding?” she said and returned the phone to her pocket. “I saved your ass. Jessica was ready to tell the world about how she saved Sang from getting harassed, to tell other people to stick up for people like her. She was practically going to tell everyone about this. I stopped her. You didn’t deserve it. And now that you’re ‘dating’ me, and you’re back to friendly terms, she’s okay with keeping it a secret.” She pointed a finger at him. “So don’t tell me I’m not working for the benefit of all of us.”
God. Fuck. If Jessica thought he was going out with Danielle...Did Jessica end up telling this to Erica? Is that why Erica came to him the other day? She thought he was over Sang and safe to integrate back into the family?
Nathan turned away from her, heading to the couch and sitting on it. He buried his face into his palms. The worst part was, Danielle thought she was helping. And it was perpetuating the lie he and Kota had developed for Erica’s benefit.
Their lies were making it so much worse.
He felt Danielle sitting next to him on the couch. “I believe you about how difficult it is right now getting us out of school,” she said. “I hadn’t thought the principal being gone put this on hold. So...I’ll wait. But do I have to take those tests? Can’t we just bring a tablet to school or do something else?”
“You don’t have to take the tests,” Nathan said. “It’s your situation that makes this more difficult than them. You’re going to have to figure out what to tell your parents. We can put you in homeschool. That’s probably the easiest. You can take the classes online. You’ll graduate on time. It’s up to you if you want to take the SATs or apply to college. Or whatever you want to do.”
“I’ll handle it,” she said. “Then maybe I can talk to Marie. Maybe I can tell her to go ahead and let you all know what she knows.”
Nathan picked his head up. “You’d do that? I thought you knew?”
“I was just saying that to get you to do what I wanted,” she said. “But I was the one to tell her she should tell Sang the truth about her real mom, about what she knows. She didn’t even want to.”
A flicker of appreciation developed inside of him. Despite everything that was going on, was Danielle really trying to help them out? Even if it felt like a disaster, maybe it was helping. She was willing to lie about her own relationship status online to help save Sang and himself from that sort of attention.
“And maybe you can do me a favor,” she said. She took her phone out and showed it to him. “Can you take a picture with me? For Facebook? It’ll help with Jessica, I think.”
It didn’t seem like a horrible idea. But he needed time to think if this was helping the situation or hurting it. He wasn’t totally sure why he was willing to do that part anyway.
She wasn’t working with Marie out of the kindness of her heart. Not without getting something out of it. What would Danielle get out of letting people think they were dating?
The door to the house opened then, and heavier footsteps came through. It had to be the guys this time.
Danielle pulled herself away from the couch, tucking her phone into her pocket.
She didn’t want anyone else to know. That made Nathan even more suspicious. He put the thought on the shelf for now.
Victor and Silas appeared. Victor had changed into his usual dark pants and Armani shirt and carried a backpack. Silas wore jeans and a blue T-shirt.
They both stopped as they looked in on Nathan, leaning into the room from the kitchen area. They paused, glancing at Danielle’s embarrassed expression and then Nathan’s. She appeared guilty as all hell.
He’d have to explain to them after she left. It probably looked weird.
“Is it okay to come in?” Victor asked tentatively.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Nathan asked.
“I was leaving,” Danielle said. She waved shortly to Nathan. “I’ll see you before school, okay?” She walked out, and the
y heard her leaving through the front door.
Even then, they all waited a few moments. Silas left the living room and then returned. “She’s gone.”
“What are you two doing here?” Nathan asked, sounding grumpier than he meant to. It wasn’t them. It was Danielle making things weird.
Victor shot a look over at Silas and then back to Nathan. “I need to ask you a few questions. About what happened the other night.”
Nathan groaned and dropped his feet off the coffee table, starting to sit up. “I don’t want to talk about Lily,” he said.
“No, not about that,” Victor said. He crossed the room, sitting on the coffee table in front of Nathan and putting his bag on the floor. “I mean about Volto driving North’s Jeep.”
“I want to hear about Lily,” Silas said, remaining closer to the fireplace on the far side of the room. He stood in front of it, hands in his pockets. “But I’ll wait.”
Victor pulled out his laptop and turned it on, waiting for it to boot. “Volto was the one driving, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Nathan said. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “What’s this about?”
Victor looked at his screen. “According to the reports, someone leaned out the passenger side. Ms. Johnson said there was someone sitting in it.” He turned the screen around, showing the highlighted portion of a witness report.
Nathan carefully read the neat cursive handwriting detailing seeing a face and the arm that threw the smoke bomb. “She didn’t recognize him?”
“You were following the Jeep,” Victor asked, gazing at him over the laptop screen he was showing him. “Do you remember seeing two people?”
“No,” Nathan said. “I only saw the Volto mask the driver was wearing. And I thought he somehow threw the bomb out the other window.”
“It would have been more difficult to do,” Victor said. He flipped the laptop around again. He started clicking around. “But here’s the weird part. Check out who I found coming into the school with the Jeep.”
