Also, he thinks we’re his friends, and I don’t know if we want to be his friends.
But before I can decide, he takes a deep breath. “Okay, so.” He lets it out, doesn’t say anything else for a while and then finally does. “I have to tell you something.”
And at last, this is it. I wait and try to slow my own breathing.
And he says, “My father’s only pretending to be drinking.”
I think of Mirabel’s report from the bar when he tried to buy a round, when Tom said beer was the best thing on the menu, when Nathan started to share a pint with the guys before my mother kicked him out. “Why would someone pretend to drink?”
But that’s not what he’s talking about. “My dad wants anyone who comes by the house to see him drinking water straight from the tap.” And I remember that from when we were there, how shocked Monday and I were. “But he’s faking it. It’s bottled. He gets Hobart Blake to make a run into Greenborough once a week. He brings back a bunch of those giant five-gallon jugs and hooks them up under all our sinks. My dad doesn’t drink the water. He doesn’t even shower in it.”
I knew it! And I still can’t believe it.
“I was thinking I could take pictures,” he offers.
My head is spinning. Maybe Mama’s been approaching this all wrong for years now. She’s been looking for evidence that’s two decades old, proof of intent to harm and recklessness in the planning stages before the plant even opened, but it’s hard to find things that have been buried for twenty years, especially if you’ve already been digging for sixteen. What if, instead of looking back and then, we started looking here and now?
But River’s still talking. “I tried his birthday, mine, my mom’s. Their anniversary. I even tried the days before and after their anniversary in case he forgot. But it’s none of those.”
“What?” I try to refocus on him.
“His laptop,” he explains and when that doesn’t do it, “It’s password protected.”
“Oh.”
“But his phone isn’t.”
“His phone isn’t what?”
He reaches over, I think to touch my cheek, but instead he pulls the magic coin from behind my ear. “Password protected.”
I wait before I reply to make sure he’s saying what I think he’s saying. “You’ll look on his phone?”
“Yeah.” He sounds slightly nervous, but only slightly.
“For us?”
“Yeah.” A little more sure.
I breathe out and can’t breathe in again. “What if you get caught?”
“What can he do? Ground me? It’s not like I’m getting invited to lots of parties, hanging out with tons of friends, going to all the good clubs.”
I try to smile, but my face is frozen. “Won’t it feel like a betrayal?”
He looks at me. And then he takes my hand. I feel it all the way up into my chest. “I think it would feel like a betrayal not to.”
Two
Mab comes home and has two pieces of news, and she says they are very exciting, and she is all panty and red and cannot wait to tell.
The first piece of very exciting news is Nathan Templeton pretends to drink tap water but actually drinks bottled water, and River is going to take pictures of the bottles and also look on his father’s phone for more evidence.
The second piece of very exciting news is River’s parents went to Ivy League colleges and so did his grandfather so River is probably going to go to one too.
It is a very disappointing afternoon because these are the two most boring pieces of exciting news I have ever heard.
Everyone in Bourne drinks bottled water, and everyone in Bourne knows the Templetons are liars so all aspects of the first piece of news are the opposite of exciting which is dull, predictable, or depressing, and this is all three.
“Ho hum,” I say because that is what people do in books when they think what you said is not interesting.
“Don’t you see?” Mab is so excited she is wiggling which is not a facial expression but a whole-body expression. “We can prove Nathan Templeton isn’t really drinking the tap water.”
“Not drinking the tap water is not illegal,” I regret to inform her.
“We can prove he’s making a big show of drinking the tap water—and showering in it, doing his laundry, washing his vegetables—but really it’s all lies.”
“Pretending to use the tap water is also not illegal,” I tell her.