“No.” A hint of her usual stubbornness returns to Ivy’s face as she continues rooting through Lara’s desk. “She’s still massively shady. Boney died in her studio. Charlie’s house got torn apart. She had a list with both of their names circled, and she—” She tugs hard on the bottom drawer and frowns. “This is locked.”
“Listen…” I pause, trying to come up with the right words to get her out of here. Then there’s a loud rap on the half-open door and I jump back in surprise as a blond head pokes through, wearing an expression that’s half-incredulous, half-angry.
“What are you guys doing here?” Daniel Sterling-Shepard demands.
IVY
“What are you doing here?” I counter, trying to buy time. “I heard you leave.”
“You heard me leave?” Daniel repeats. “What are you, spying on me now?”
This isn’t starting well. “No, I just—I heard you and Trevor in the hallway when I was coming in, and then I…I heard you leave.”
“I came back to take a piss,” my brother eloquently says. “And then I heard you. For the first time in hours.” He’s wearing a Carlton Lacrosse T-shirt and shorts, his hair sweaty against his forehead. His oversized lacrosse bag is slung over one shoulder, making his stance lopsided. He lowers it to the ground and leans against the doorframe, eyes narrowing. “Why are you wearing my sweatshirt?”
I tug on one of the hood’s strings. “I, um. Was cold.”
“You were cold,” Daniel repeats. Then he shakes his head, like he’s trying to clear it. “Never mind. More importantly, where the hell have you been all day?”
“Oh, you know,” I say as vaguely as possible. Cal inches closer to the wall, like he’s trying to get out of the line of fire between Daniel and me. “Here and there.”
It’s an obnoxious response, fully deserving of my brother’s answering glare. “Do you realize I had to miss half of lax practice to talk to the cops about you?” he asks.
Oh God. My legs are rubber bands, suddenly, barely keeping me upright until I can collapse into the nearest chair. “The cops?” I repeat. “What…why?”
“Why do you think?” Daniel snaps. “Maybe because you’ve been missing all day, and everyone’s been talking about you, and nobody knew where you were? Except for that brief moment in time when you ran away from a news crew downtown, of course.”
Here it is. This entire horrific day is about to come crashing down on me, and I’m nowhere near ready for it. “So they think…do they really think I killed Boney?” I whisper.
Daniel lets out a harsh laugh. “They don’t know what to think. They’d like to talk to you, but you’ve been, you know.” He puts his hands up in finger quotes. “Here and there.”
I can’t match his sarcasm right now. “What kind of questions did they ask?” I press.
“Oh, they ran the whole gamut. Where you were, why you weren’t in school, why you were downtown today, were you angry with Boney about the student council election. Fun stuff like that. And they wanted your phone number.”
“Did you give it to them?” I ask while simultaneously checking my phone for unknown calls. There are a few, but before I can listen to any of them, an alert flashes on my screen. Flight 8802 is delayed due to air traffic, and is now scheduled to arrive at 5:45 p.m. I glance at the clock on the wall and wince; even with the delay, that’s less than half an hour from now.
Less than half an hour until they know everything. My stomach sinks, and I finally have to admit that I’ve been fooling myself for hours. For the entire day, really.
Cal was right. We can’t fix anything.
“I gave them a number,” Daniel says.
I frown. “What do you mean?”
He shrugs. “I might’ve transposed a couple of digits.”
I blink. I can’t have heard that right. “On purpose?” I ask, confused, and he rolls his eyes. “What did you tell them about me?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing?” I ask, frustrated. I might deserve these vague answers after the ones I gave him, but that doesn’t make them any easier to take.
“What I said. I told them I talked to you around one o’clock, and you seemed fine, and I hadn’t heard from you since.”
You seemed fine. I flash back to that conversation, which mainly consisted of Daniel yelling at me and refusing to give me Charlie St. Clair’s phone number. “Did you tell them that I asked for Charlie’s number?”