We’re all quiet for a few beats, absorbing the aftershock of his words. Ivy looks too devastated to speak, and I have no clue what to say. I guess I can understand the position he was in with Autumn; Mateo’s family means everything to him. Ratting her out must have felt impossible, even when she was clearly in the wrong.
I try putting myself in Autumn’s shoes: If Wes or Henry were sick and needed medicine we couldn’t afford, what would I do? What lengths would I go to? But the parallels are too hard to draw; for one thing, my other dad would be there. Plus, my parents have great insurance, and savings, and all those other things Henry talks about when he’s trying to convince me that I should get a business degree alongside an art degree. You need a safety net, he always says.
We have that, but Autumn and Mateo don’t. Not anymore.
“I get it,” I finally say. It’s a weak response, I know, but it’s more of an olive branch than anything else. A signal that I’m done giving Mateo a hard time. I’m not going to tell him that Autumn did the right thing, but he’s not trying to say that, either. She came up with a bad solution to a bad situation, and everyone loses.
“You didn’t…I mean, your mom…，” Ivy says haltingly. She bites her lip, eyes on the highly polished wood of the hallway floor. “We all make mistakes, right? And almost never see the fallout coming. If we did, we’d never do…whatever it was that we…did.” She trails off, and I get the distinct impression that she stopped talking about Mateo after the first sentence.
“Hey, Ivy!” Charlie’s voice floats from Ivy’s living room, startling me. I almost forgot he was here. “Check it out. They’re talking about you on TV.”
CAL
“Oh God,” Ivy says, growing even more pale. “Now what?”
She heads down the hallway with Mateo and me at her heels. Charlie is almost exactly where I left him—curled in one corner of the couch, his eyes half-mast and his expression vacant—except now he has a remote in one hand. The television in front of him is tuned in to Central New England Cable, where Dale Hawkins is standing in front of…oh shit.
Carlton High School. Flanked by Emily Zhang, Ishaan Mittal, and Zack Abrams. “What are those three doing there?” I ask. I know Emily is Ivy’s best friend, but I’ve never seen her with either of the other two.
Ivy’s mouth is a thin line. “Can you rewind, please, Charlie?”
“Um…” Charlie stares at the remote like it’s a PhD-level math equation he has no hope of solving, and Ivy snatches it from his hand with a frustrated huff. She restarts the segment from where Dale first appears on-screen.
“Good afternoon, this is Dale Hawkins, continuing with today’s special edition of The Hawkins Report,” he says smoothly. “I’m at Carlton High School, where students are reeling from the news that their classmate, seventeen-year-old Brian Mahoney, was killed this morning. While reporting on that tragic occurrence, I was sent a link to a YouTube video featuring two of the Carlton High seniors standing beside me. These young men claim that one of their classmates, who has a history of bad blood with Mahoney and fits the description of the person of interest police have been seeking, has been missing from school all day.”
“No.” The last drop of color drains from Ivy’s face. “This can’t be happening.”
The camera pans across the three students standing beside Dale. Emily looks upset, Ishaan looks like he’s trying to figure out which side of his face will look better on television, and Zack looks nervous.
“Zack, what the hell,” Mateo mutters behind me, and it’s only then that I remember the two of them are friendly.
“Tips have been coming into the station all day, and we can’t possibly respond to them all,” Dale continues. “But this one interested me, because I’m acquainted with the young woman involved. Furthermore—and this is breaking news—my crew and I also happen to have seen her in Boston, not far from the crime scene, less than an hour ago. However, she fled before I was able to speak with her.”
“Oh nooooo,” Ivy moans.
On-screen, Emily leans forward to interrupt. “Excuse me, but I think it’s important to say that the YouTube video wasn’t a tip. It was gossip.”
Dale ignores her and angles his microphone toward Ishaan. “Ishaan Mittal, you’re one of the founders of the Carlton Speaks YouTube channel. When did you first begin to question whether Ivy Sterling-Shepard might be involved in what happened to Brian Mahoney?”