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“Looks like we all have homeroom together,” Jackie said, “and then economics. Kaleb will have to walk you to statistics and probably tutor you, but I’ll pick you up from there and take you to Spanish. You have an entire day of voice as well as classes on your full days on Tuesday and Thursday? That’s insane, Rosita.”
I grinned at him, finally feeling a little excitement about the upcoming semester. “Yeah, apparently Taylor Prep takes their singing very seriously in the second half of your senior year. I had no idea that I’d be singing all day. The only problem is that I’m going to be in there with Amelia the entire time, and I’m pretty sure that she still hates my guts.”
“You got that right,” Kaleb said, tossing my schedule to the floor. “I don’t even want to think about how terrible she’s going to be now that she’s had all break to think about Brett. She was bad enough before, but now that she’s convinced that you killed him, it’s going to be crazy.” He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.
I hadn’t told them about the letter I’d gotten from Brett about him still being alive. It’s not that I didn’t want to share that joy with them, but honestly…I wasn’t sure that I believed it.
I didn’t want to put the two of them through hell if it wasn’t necessary, but it was time. I’d spend all of my free time during break trying to research the accident and look into his family, but I hadn’t found anything.
Brett was dead. Or, at least, that was the official statement.
“I have something that I need to tell you two.” I sat up, taking a deep breath. This wasn’t going to be easy, and I knew that I should have told them earlier, but…I couldn’t. I was the only one who knew about the letter. Well…me, Brett, and whoever sent it to school. None of it made any sense. I just hoped that with their help, the three of us could figure it all out.
“Please tell me that you’re not going to try to get revenge on Kelly and Amelia for the way they treated you.” Jackie took my hand, lacing his fingers through mine, and squeezed. “We really don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Of course I am.” Every single night when I fell asleep, I thought about how I could hurt Amelia and Kelly. There was only one semester left at Taylor Prep, and I planned to make the most of it. “But that’s not what this is about. It’s about Brett.”
I felt both of my rogues stiffen next to me. Sure, we talked about him, but it was a sensitive topic, and one that we kinda avoided when we could. Nobody wants to talk about their dead boyfriend or dead best friend.
“Okay, Rose. What is it?” Kaleb snuggled closer to me, slowly stroking my arm. Every time one of them touched me, I felt a fire burning in my core. It took all of my concentration to pay attention to what I was saying and not get caught up in the way his fingers traced up and down my skin.
“Right at the end of last semester, I got a letter.” Twisting around, I picked up my journal from the bedside table and flipped it open. The letter was right in the middle where I could flip to it and read it whenever I want to. It had lost Brett’s smell, but that was okay. I still knew that it came from him.
Taking a deep breath, I lifted out the thin piece of paper and held it up for the boys to read.
“I’m alive?” Kaleb’s voice was strangled, and I turned to him to see the look of horror on his face. “Is this some fucked up joke? Where did you get this?”
Before I could answer him, Jackie snatched the note from my fingers. “It’s Brett’s handwriting. I’ve seen it too many times not to know that but…Rosita? How?”
Gently I took it back. Jackie’s hands were shaking, and I didn’t want him to accidentally rip the note. It was all that I had left from Brett. Next, I pulled out the picture of Brett and showed it to them.
They both looked horrified. It was like seeing your old friend come back from the dead. I understood exactly what they were feeling, which was probably why it was so hard for me to speak. I had to clear my throat a few times before I could finally talk.
“This was in an envelope on my desk at the end of last semester. Look at the date on the back of the photograph.” I turned it over and Kaleb gasped, reaching out to squeeze my hand, but finding Jackie’s instead. My eyes locked on my two rogues holding hands, but I had to focus.
I couldn’t think about all of us being together right now. We had to get Brett back.
“Do you believe it? Do you think that he’s really alive?” The hope in Jackie’s voice was almost palpable, and I choked back a sob. I wanted him to be alive more than anything, and of course my rogues did, too. The four of us…we had something special.
We could handle anything together, and for Brett to be taken from us? It wasn’t fair.
“I think he might be. I did a ton of research over break when we weren’t together to see if I could find anything online that may help me prove it, but I couldn’t find a thing. Whoever has him did a really damn good job of covering it up. Everyone really wants us to believe that he’s dead, but I knew he wasn’t, that he didn’t die in our accident, and this proves it.”
“Brett’s alive.” Jackie took the picture from me and ran the tip of his finger over the image. “But why would they make it seem like he was dead? What’s the point of doing that? I just don’t see what they would think that they could benefit from that, you know?”
“I know.” I watched him trace the picture, and, for just a moment, all three of us were silent. We could hear the sounds of other students moving around in their rooms and hall, but we didn’t move.
If they were feeling what I was, then they probably didn’t want to move. I wanted to hide out here with the two of them and pretend that everything was okay, even when I knew that it wasn’t.
“If they—the council, or whoever—could convince everyone else that Rose was the cause for the accident and that Brett was really dead then they may think that they have a good enough reason to drive her from Taylor Prep,” Kaleb mused.
“But who’s really behind all of this?” I was frustrated. It was infuriating to feel so close to figuring out the truth but to be unable to really get to the bottom of it. “We know that his mom hated me because she thought that I knew she helped kill her first husband, but then at her house she seemed almost apologetic.”
“The problem is the council.” Jackie swung his legs off of my bed and stood up, stretching and tossing me the photo of Brett. I grabbed it and slipped it back into my journal so that I wouldn’t have to worry about it being damaged or lost. “The council has been after Rosita since day one when Brett’s mom went to them about her being at the school.”
“But we don’t know who’s on the council,” I said, slamming my journal shut. It was fine for the two of them to get excited about figuring this out, but without knowing who was on the council, nothing mattered. “Until we figure out who’s on council, we’ll never know who’s behind this. That means that they’ll never stop, and more importantly, we’ll never be able to find Brett.”
“Is it possible that the council took Brett?” Kaleb asked. “Does that even make sense? I mean, if his mom is on the council and she doesn’t know that he’s not dead then that seems pretty far-fetched.”
