“You know what,” I snap. “That wasn’t nice.”
“I’m not nice,” Bram says flippantly. “You remind me of this fact all the time. And yet, you know I’d walk a few state lines to get you those damned apples.”
My stomach swims. Somehow, I do know. I know that Bram would do a lot more for me than trek far and wide for fruit. “I’ve got to call my dad,” I say, leaving my coffee on the counter.
I hurry out the kitchen door and upstairs to Henry’s room. I have to be quiet; Adam’s room shares a wall with this one, and he’s in there now.
To my dismay, Henry’s phone isn’t there on the bedside table.
I check the wrinkled bedsheets and the desk. I even root around in the drawer, but it’s nowhere to be found. When I start to wonder if he somehow had the phone on him after all, I spot the desk chair, rolledover to the corner. My spirits soar. The phone is resting on the seat.
I tiptoe over, finding it locked. Fortunately, I know Henry’s passcode. He had a phone long before I did and let me use it often to call my parents.
But when I try the passcode, it fails.
All the questions and suspicions I’ve had since Bram’s story last night trickle into my brain. Why would Henry change his passcode? Have I been a fool this entire time? Has Henry been lying? He told Adam he has feelings for me.
Was he actually seeing Kennedy in secret?
And how am I supposed to get into his phone? I can’t ask Bram for help. Not just because he’s infuriating, but because he’d never betray Henry. It was hard enough getting him to tell me the truth about the fire alarm last night. He’d never give me the passcode.
A traitorous thought sneaks in: Bram wouldn’t share the passcode, but Adam might.
My mind drifts back to that huge blowup between Henry and Adam last year before Christmas, right outside these rooms. Henry completely lost it in a way I’d never witnessed before. There’s bad blood there. The question is whether or not I’m willing to betray both of them by taking advantage of it.
I know the answer the moment I ask myself. Defeated, I head back toward the chair, only my gaze hitches on Henry’s desk drawer, which I somehow left half-open.
I pad back over and push on it, but something inside keeps the drawer from shutting all the way. I dig my hand inside to freeup whatever’s blocking it, and my fingers light on what feels like a paperback novel.
As I tug it free, I hear arip. The sound of paper tearing. My heart thumps, and I carefully twist and maneuver the book until it’s free.
I’m holding a copy ofThe Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.Luckily, the cover seems to be intact. I flip through the pages in search of what tore, finding it marked up the way we were supposed to annotate our outside reading novels last year.
But I thought Henry was readingFrankenstein, like Adam. He had asked to borrow my copy.
Maybe he didn’t like it and moved on to something else. I continue flipping, and sure enough, there’s a page torn near the end. But the way the novel was crumpled up at the back of the desk drawer like an afterthought, I doubt Henry will notice.
When I go to put it back, the door creaks behind me.
I turn, finding Henry in the doorway. He’s clutching the empty plastic bag in one white-knuckled fist.
He isn’t smiling.
HenryOne Week before Kennedy Russo’s Murder
“At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; and the thing that was projected was Edward Hyde.”
—The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hydeby Robert Louis Stevenson
Henry had been back at school only two weeks when Kennedy Russo asked if he’d tutor her in math. “You’re the smartest kid in this school,” she said. “And I’ll pay you.”
Henry didn’t need the money, and he was pretty sure Kennedy knew that. He wondered what game she was playing—if she even needed help in math.
“Maybe we could meet at your house for an hour or so after school? Please.” She made a pouty face and batted her eyelashes like a movie vixen. It sort of worked on Henry, who saw no reason to say no. Kennedy Russo had been Henry’s first crush, back when they were in grade school and she let him borrow her blue crayon. She’d never traveled in his circle, though, existing only in his periphery. A beautiful yet alien-like, elusive being.
But now she was standing in front of him, asking to come to his house.
Henry thought of Hayden then, his best friend whom he lovedmore than anything. Their friendship had started to feel different lately, and he wasn’t quite sure about this new trajectory. Plus, Hayden had never expressed any of this, so it remained merely a feeling. If anything, Henry suspected Hayden felt a certain way about Bram, which wouldn’t be surprising; every girl Henry had ever been interested in only seemed to notice Bram. And Henry sometimes wondered if he himself was actually interested in Hayden that way at all, or if he was simply fearful of Bram taking her away from him.
