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“It is,” she said stubbornly. “If I hadn’t told my parents about her, the society wouldn’t have tracked her down, seeing as the source didn’t give up her name.”
“You don’t know that. They could’ve tracked her down the same way they tracked him down, whoever he was.”
Addy shrugged and wiped her face again. “Maybe. Maybe not. I’ll never know,” she murmured, despondent eyes on her lap.
After that, she lapsed into silence. Jensen looked at me, brows furrowed. Then he crouched down and rested a hand on Addy’s shoulder. “Can you tell us what you meant when you said you were trying to protect Amerie?” he asked.
Addy sniffed and nodded. Then she took a deep breath and sat up straight. “Over the summer break, I was at a café, and I saw Piper come in with a date. She didn’t notice me, because girls like her never do. She sat right near me, and I heard the entire conversation she was having with the guy,” she said. “She told him she had a long-lost sister moving to town soon. She said the girl came from a really shady background, and she wasn’t sure how long she’d last here. As soon as I heard that, I knew. I just knew.”
“That I was a target for the society?”
She nodded. “Yes. It was so clear once I went over everything Rosie told me. How the society gets young women to work for them to pay off debt, and how lots of them are sold and brought here against their will. I thought the whole ‘long-lost sister’ story was an obvious cover for the Prescotts to lure you here and force you into their scheme without anyone else getting suspicious.”
“How did you know the Prescotts were society members?”
Addy sniffled again. “Zara and Ali are both descended from some of the town’s oldest, richest families. It seemed obvious that they were in the society.”
“Right.” Jensen nodded slowly. “So what happened then?”
Addy looked at me. “When you arrived in town, I knew I couldn’t just walk up to you on the first day of school and tell you that you had to leave because an evil secret society was planning to take you away and turn you into the equivalent of a breeding sow. You would’ve thought I was totally crazy.”
“Yeah, I probably would have,” I said softly.
“I had to get rid of you some other way. So I decided to scare you out of town by pretending to be a creepy stalker bully.” Addy rubbed her face. “I’ve never done anything like that before, so I just copied what I saw on TV and movies. I spread awful rumors, started that Instagram smear account, and wrote nasty messages on your locker every day so you’d feel unwelcome here. But it didn’t work, because you stayed.”
“What about those texts you sent me?” I asked, cocking my head. “You kept saying you knew what I did.”
“That was just one of the threats I came up with to scare you away,” she said. “I figured everyone in the world has a dark secret in their past that they don’t want exposed. So I figured I could freak you out and convince you to leave by claiming to know one of yours. But that didn’t work either. Nothing did.”
Jensen frowned. “What happened on the night of the dance?”
Addy reached into her blazer pocket with her uninjured arm and pulled out a tissue. She blew her nose into it before sucking down another long, deep breath. “It’ll take a minute to explain,” she said.
“That’s fine. Take your time.”
She took another deep breath. “So… after what happened to Rosie, I was pretty cold with my parents. I couldn’t help it. I mean, they basically murdered my only real friend.”
“Yeah, that’s completely understandable.”
“I couldn’t tell them that I knew, because then I’d be in trouble too. But I think they suspected it anyway. That I’d figured out how Rosie was right about everything. So they started keeping an extra-close eye on me, just in case,” she went on. “On the night of the Snowflake dance, you guys caught me. I didn’t know how to explain it to you without looking crazy. I was totally overwhelmed. So I just started crying. Then Zara came over. You told her that I’d been trying to run you out of town with the bullying.”
“So she immediately suspected what you were up to,” Jensen said, rubbing his jaw. “Because she and your parents are fellow society members. They probably talk a lot.”
“Yes, exactly.” Addy nodded emphatically. “Also, Zara already had a vague suspicion about me because of the DNA test I made you do.”
“So that wasn’t really for the school paper?”
“No. I was hoping you’d get your results and realize the Prescotts were lying to you. It was just another way for me to get you to leave town without raising my mom or dad’s suspicions,” she said. “Anyway, Zara took me home that night and had a private conversation with my parents. After that, they basically spent the entire weekend interrogating me, trying to get me to admit exactly why I’d been bullying you so much. Zara joined in for part of it too, acting like a concerned parent.”
“Did you tell them anything?”
Addy shook her head. “No. They kept telling me they were being so hard on me because they were upset that I’d become such a bully. But I knew what it was really about. They were worried I might spill everything to you now that you knew I was the one targeting you. They were also angry at me for trying to convince you to leave town before it was too late. But of course, they couldn’t admit any of that to my face without also admitting everything about the society.”
Jensen gestured to her injured arm. “Did they do that to you?”
“Yes. While they were yelling at me, my mom pushed me. I fell over and landed on my side on the coffee table, and the wood shattered underneath me. I fractured my arm, and this whole side of my body is covered in cuts and bruises,” Addy said, motioning to her left side. “They took me to the ER and made me lie about falling down the stairs. Then they took my phone and locked me in my room for the next few days, and they told everyone I was sick so I couldn’t talk to anyone.”
“I’m so sorry, Addy,” I said, gut twisting with horror.
