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“How many people saw it?” Jack asked.
“About twenty. Or so.”
“And Janet was one of them,” Sara said.
They nodded.
“And all your parents did was ground you for a couple of weeks?” Jack’s tone told what he thought of that.
“With today’s parents,” Sara said, “be glad they weren’t rewarded for being creative.”
Britney’s eyes lit up. “My dad said I was smack on in
my impersonation. He wants me to take acting classes. And my mother said—” She broke off at the scowls from the adults.
Jack drained his glass and stood up. “Okay, you’ve told us, but there’s still nothing we can do. So go home.”
“You haven’t heard it all.” Madison was looking at her hands.
“I’ve heard about all I can stand,” Jack said. “If we did have something to do with finding a murderer, I might put the lot of you at the head of my list.”
The girls hung their heads and said nothing.
With a sigh, Jack sat back down. “Out with it.”
“The next day,” Britney said, “the texts about me started.”
“I thought you were grounded,” Jack said.
“We still had our phones.” Madison was looking at Jack as though he were daft.
“What did the texts say?” Sara asked.
“That I was fat and ugly and—”
“We didn’t send them!” Ashley’s teeth were clenched. “We’ve told you that a thousand times!”
“But they came from your phones.” Britney sounded exasperated.
“But we didn’t—”
“Okay,” Sara said loudly. “What you believe can be as important as the truth. What happened then?”
The two girls looked at Britney, then they held hands.
“I took some of my mother’s pills. Too many of them.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “I just wanted my friends back.” She wiped away the tears. “Mrs. Beeson found me and called an ambulance. She saved my life.”
“How did she know what you were doing?” Sara asked.
The girls looked down at their hands and didn’t speak.
“Facebook?” Kate asked.
Britney nodded but didn’t look up.
Sara’s eyes widened. “You took pills in front of a camera? I’ve heard of that, but—” She took a deep breath and her voice lowered. “You didn’t want a life without friends—and neither did Mrs. Beeson.”
Britney’s head was down and big tears were dropping onto her hands.
