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This coy dancing around each other is getting on my nerves. I want to come out and accuse him of cornering, threatening, and hurting my sister, but I can’t do that without admitting she was there and ruining the story we created. Instead of telling him where to go, I shrug and say, “Maybe you deserved it.”
“Now, now,” he chides, leaning forward and grabbing a chunk of my hair. “You might want to be a little nicer to me, sweetheart.” He examines the fading pink color, then releases it. “I could destroy you, your boyfriend, and your little sister just like that.” He snaps his fingers.
I know what he’s talking about, he knows what he’s talking about, but neither of us is going to come out and say it.
“And how would you do that?” I ask, trying not to hold my breath for the inevitable answer.
That cocky smirk is back. He’s enjoying this. He loves the cat and mouse game. Maybe he thinks it’s some kind of twisted foreplay and has forgotten that the last time he tried something with me, I bashed him over the head with a heavy math textbook to get away.
“When I woke up and they told me what had happened, I told them I couldn’t quite remember, everything was . . .” He waves his hands in front of his face and blindly gazes past me, dramatically illustrating his point.
“Hazy.” He drops his hands. “Amnesia isn’t uncommon with head trauma, after all. They told me to stay home from school, but I just had to come and see if something would”—he eyes me pointedly—“jog my memory.”
“But you already know what happened. You were jumped by party crashers.”
“Was I? Maybe something will come back to me that’ll prove otherwise. Maybe your boyfriend lied about walking in on the tail end of everything. Maybe he was protecting someone.”
He raises an eyebrow and makes a face like we both know exactly who Jason was protecting, but still I admit to nothing. Brandon doesn’t mind my silence, though, because he’s in the middle of making whatever point he wanted to make when he sat backward in his seat.
“When they asked me and my parents if we wanted to press charges, I said no, I didn’t want to press charges when I didn’t remember what happened. However . . . if I were to suddenly remember what happened, and the story was different from what we were led to believe . . .”
He’s always scheming, always conniving ways to make things swing in his favor. Even when all the evidence pointed to him, he managed to make all the adults in my life think I was harassing him and wasting police resources trying to frame him for Lily’s disappearance over a personal vendetta I had against him.Andhe made them all think I was somehow involved in the school break-in.
So I know all this back-and-forth is leading to something, and I’m not going to like it.
I’m not stupid, I know exactly what he’s threatening. And while admittedly it’s what actually happened, and to him we’re the villains, Gia was just defending herself, and we’re already in too deep to not face any consequences.
So, instead of breaking down and giving in, I do the only thing I can and double down. “And then it will suddenly be your word—the guy with the head injury and memory loss—versus all the witness testimonies?”
He smiles, and I realize I’ve said the thing he’s been baiting me toward.
He leans over to his backpack on the floor and pulls out his shiny, expensive laptop, placing it on my desk and opening the lid. “Maybe, maybe not,” he says, clicking around on his computer. “Maybe I happen to find texts, synced to my laptop from my phone before it was stolen.
And maybe these texts are proof of me setting up a meeting with a certain girl, and maybe they also place her with me only a few minutes before your boyfriend called the ambulance, with that girl nowhere in sight.”
He turns the computer around to show me his screen.
It’s a messaging app with a number at the top instead of a saved name. The number is Gia’s—I’d know it anywhere—and I read the few lines visible on the app. The first text is from Brandon.
I’m in room 114. Come now.
I’ll be there in 5.
Are you alone?
Yes. I’m here.
The date and time indicate that they were sent just before Gia called me panicking that she had accidentally killed him. It places her there at the time Brandon was supposedly jumped, and if he shared this with anyone, I’m not sure how we could talk our way out of it. I have a fleeting thought of snatching the laptop and whipping it at the floor, then jumping on it over and over again until all that’s left are smashed bits of aluminum alloy, but like he was following my train of thought, Brandon snaps the lid shut and tucks the laptop safely back in his bag.
Keeping my voice steady, I say, “All that proves is that you’re a predator, intimidating a young girl into meeting you alone in a motel room.”
He shrugs, crossing his arms and placing them against the back of the chair. Casual. Relaxed. In control. “I did nothing illegal. Your sister, on the other hand . . .”
This is the first time he’s come right out and blamed Gia without any insinuation, and my hackles rise. Sick of the little game, I ask, “What do you want, Brandon?”
His smile is neither genuine nor comforting. It’s the smile of a man who craves power over people, who enjoys watching you squirm.
He keeps me in suspense, not answering immediately, and the bell rings, signaling the end of class. Chairs scrape across the floor as people around us stand and gather their things, but Brandon and I don’t move from where we sit staring at each other.
