Cold Calls (23 page)

“A Muslim,” Fatima said.

“Whatevs. I read some of the stuff you wrote in the book, which was still no biggie, but then there were these notes like ‘I could never tell my parents' and ‘They'd be so upset if they read this.' It was perfect, like you wrote a script for me.”

Fatima looked away, her hair falling across her face.

“Then there was your address book—how stupid was that? Every page was
filled
with stuff. You should watch what you write down.”

“It's a shame you didn't try that at my school,” Shelly said, grabbing a soda, clicking it open with one hand, playing it cooler than she felt. “Everybody knows everybody. You would've got caught in a second.”

Morgan paused, her icy smile growing. “You
still
don't recognize me, do you?”

Shelly looked at the others, then back at Morgan, not sure who she was talking to.

“I shouldn't be surprised,” Morgan said. “You were a year ahead of me.”

Shelly blinked.

“Come on, think,” Morgan said. “It wasn't
that
long ago.”

“Wait, hold on,” Shelly said, stalling, forcing her mind back, then, when it clicked, forcing the words out slow. “You went to Lockport High?”

“No. We moved here over the summer. Now I'm homeschooled. But two years ago, I was in middle school with you. You remember middle school, don't you? You should—you were one of the popular girls.”

“I was
never
a popular girl,” Shelly said, controlling her voice, keeping her nerves steady.

“More popular than me. At least, you didn't get picked on as much. Anyway, that was ages ago, right?”

“Right, so just—”

“But I still recognized you,” Morgan said. “As soon as I saw you on the St. Anne's Facebook page. I was looking for Heather, and all of a sudden there you were, in a picture of new students. Your hair is different. It used to be light brown and she parted it on the other side, and it wasn't all wild like now,” she said to Fatima. “Plus, she never wore that much eye makeup in eighth grade. But I knew it was her.”

“Okay, fine,” Shelly said, careful not to meet Fatima's gaze. “Let's get to the videos and get this—”

“So I looked for your name under the picture—”

Shelly motioned at Eric without turning. “Tell her the YouTube title or whatever it's called.”

“—but it wasn't
your
name. I thought it was a typo. So I found another picture—”

“We get it,”
Shelly said. “Eric, tell her what to look up. We gotta get going.”

Morgan looked into Shelly's eyes. “And that's when I knew I'd found the person I was looking for. Somebody with a secret
so
big she had to change her name and hide.”

Shelly squeezed her fists tight, her thumbnails digging in.

“And your secret? It's absolutely horrible,” Morgan said. “Whatever it is.”

Shelly froze.

“I mean, it's gotta be something awful, right? Why else would you go through all that trouble?”

Sitting on the bed, Shelly watched as her knees started to shake, all of them staring at her, wondering.

“It was like you were pulling some witness-protection-program thing, only you're the criminal,” Morgan said. “I searched you on Google, but nothing came up. It didn't matter, though. You never asked me what I knew.”

Shelly felt faint.

“Whatever your secret is, you were willing to do some crazy shit to keep it hidden.”

A white-noise roar filled Shelly's head.

“And that's all I needed anyway.”

The noise grew louder as the meaning of Morgan's words sank in.

“Good thing for me you didn't ask,” Morgan said, turning back to the keyboard, the YouTube homepage on the screen. “No more delays. What do I type?”

Eric glanced at Shelly, her eyes glazed over. “Mac and Cheese Punks Three,” he said, sticking to the script, then leaned back and watched the screen. Morgan typed the words and hit
ENTER
. A page-long list of videos popped up. The first two were paid ads, and all but one looked like cooking shows.

Eric scooted his chair forward and looked down the list, remembering his lines. “I don't see it,” he said.

“If this is some kind of—”

“Just hold on,” he said, faking the irritation in his voice. He pointed to a red screen capture he'd had Ian post two hours ago. “Try that one.”

Morgan clicked on the image, and a standard YouTube page appeared, and in the player, a red screen, the white words were easy to read:

 

THIS VIDEO HAS BEEN DEEMED
INAPPROPRIATE AND REMOVED
.

 

Eric punched the air. “That's
bullshit,
” he said, then turned to Fatima. “I
told
you we should have waited.”

“I'll tell you what sounds like bullshit,” Morgan said, her smile gone.

“You think I'm lying? You think I didn't post the videos?”

“I don't think you did
any
of it. None of you. You showed up here, trying to fake your way out—”

Eric pulled Ian's note from his pocket and tossed it on the keyboard. “Try this.”

Morgan looked at the paper, then at each of them.

Her eyes narrowed, and she smiled as she typed.

She hit
ENTER
and the screen went white, the little circle on the tab bar spinning as the browser loaded.

The webpage appeared—silver accents on a black background with a white rectangle space that said “password.”

Morgan raised an eyebrow. “Well?”

“Secrets,” Eric said. “All lowercase.”

Morgan typed the password and hit
ENTER
.

The page refreshed, and there were six white squares in two even rows, just like he had described to Ian. Centered in each square was a black play arrow, and above that, a name.

“The three you want are on the bottom,” Eric said, his finger tapping the squares that read
KATIE
,
CONNOR
,
and
HEATHER
. “Click on one of them and it'll play.”

Morgan hesitated, her hard grin twisting as she ran the cursor over the top row, buying it. “What about this Lisa one? What's that about? Or these two that say ‘Bianca'?”

“They're nothing. These are the three you wanted.”

“Videos?” Morgan smiled at Eric. “I thought you would have learned your lesson.” She moved her hand, and the cursor slid down, centering on
KATIE
.

The word turned light blue.

Morgan's finger twitched.

Click.

A warning box appeared on the screen.

Morgan clicked “Download anyway,” and it disappeared.

Another box came up, this one with a stop sign.

She clicked “Proceed.”

A progress bar popped up in its place, the red line inching up the scale. They watched as it moved across the screen, holding at 87 percent forever, then flashing ahead to 100 percent, where it froze.

A muffled rooster crowed, and they looked at Fatima. She pulled out her cell phone and hit the mute. On the screen, the countdown clock was all zeros. Then they jumped at the knock, Shelly gasping as the door flew open, Morgan's mother scowling from the hallway. “Two minutes,” she said, then pulled the door shut with a thud.

Shelly set the near-full Coke on the desk. “We're outta here.”

Morgan looked back at the screen. “This isn't playing.”

“They're big files. It'll take a while,” Eric said. “It'll play.”

“It better.”

“And then you delete all the stuff you have on us.
Everything.
”

“I told you I would, and I will. Once I get these videos up on YouTube.”

“And don't ever try contacting any of us again. For anything. You do, and I swear we'll call the cops.”

“The same goes for you,” Morgan says.

Fatima coughed. “Can I have my books back now? I don't want to have to come all the way back to get them later.”

“I didn't want you here in the first place,” Morgan said, then opened the desk drawer and took out a worn, yellow-covered book. A spiral address book was jammed between the marked-up pages. “I have scans of all the good parts, anyway.”

Fatima took the book and slid it under her arm, front cover down, and out of habit mumbled a thanks as they crossed the room.

Shelly opened the door, half expecting Morgan's mother to stumble in, but the hallway was empty, and from the other side of the house she could hear the faint strains of a TV theme song. “Let's go.”

Eric and Fatima followed her out, and the three of them started down the hall, Morgan a step behind, glancing over her shoulder. “This better work.”

Eric looked ahead at Fatima and Shelly, then back at Morgan. “You're right.”

T
HE VOICE ON HIS I
P
HONE SAID
, “I
KNOW YOUR SECRET
.”

He paused, took a breath. “Really?”

“I think so,” Fatima said. “Does it have something to do with a picture of you dressed up like SpongeBob at a Halloween party?”

Eric laughed. “Where'd you find that?”

“Something you said the other day at Starbucks got me thinking. So, is that it?”

He started to say one thing, then said, “No, it's a little worse than that.”

“What, Mr. Krabs? Patrick the starfish?”

“Why is this so important to you?”

“Because you know my secret, so I should know yours.”

“I didn't ask, you just told me.”

“I wanted you to know. I didn't want you thinking it was something horrible.”

“I never did.”

“Yeah, right,” she said.

“What if it is?”

“Is what?”

“Horrible. What if my secret is something really bad? Would you still want to know?”

She was quiet for a moment. In the background he could hear her kid sister singing along with a Disney movie. “No, I guess not.”

Eric exhaled. “It was a picture I took of a friend. If people we knew saw it, my friend would have been really embarrassed.”

“It wasn't even of
you?
”

“No, just . . . my friend.”

“So you went through all of this to keep someone else from being embarrassed?”

He closed his eyes and lied. “Yeah, I guess.”

“That's sweet,” she said. “You're a really good friend.”

“Thanks,” he said without thinking, the expression she couldn't see saying how he really felt.

“Speaking of friends, have you heard from Shelly?”

“I haven't talked to her since I dropped her off that night.”

“Me neither. I told her to call me. I figured we'd keep in touch or something, but I guess not,” Fatima said, a second later adding, “She's kinda weird.”

He grunted.

“Ever find out who she really is?”

“She said her name was Shelly,” Eric said. “That's good enough for me.”

“I wonder what she did that was so bad.”

Eric shook his head. “I don't want to know.”

“You think she hooked up with Ian?”

He pictured them side by side, Ian and Shelly. Same dark clothes, same shaggy black hair, same bizarre T-shirts, same haunted stares. The perfect postapocalyptic, cybergoth, techno-loving, hard-style couple. “Maybe.”

“As weird as she is,” Fatima said, “if it wasn't for her, we never would have met.”

“No. If it wasn't for
Morgan,
we never would have met.”

“Actually,”
Fatima said, adding an exaggerated Egyptian accent. “If I didn't scribble notes on everything and if you didn't take embarrassing pictures of your friends . . .” She laughed, then said, “I'm just glad it's over.”

It took him an instant to replay it all in his head.

The phone call.

That voice.

Lying awake, staring at the ceiling, his stomach one big knot, scared shitless.

Then—everything.

What he had done to Connor.

To his parents.

To April.

And Morgan.

At least there was that.

Shelly and Fatima didn't have to know everything.

Whatever.

He was just glad it was over.

There was no way he could go through that again.

“T
HANK YOU TENFOLD FOR FACILITATING SUCH A THUNDEROUS
participation from the worshipers.”

Shelly smiled with the priest. “There were twenty people at the mass. I wouldn't call it thunderous.”

“You were not standing at the pulpit, miss. When I said ‘God is good' and they shouted it back, the rafters shook with joy.”

“Maybe the church needs a new roof.”

“Mr. Nacca told me how you stood at the front door of the church and asked all who entered to participate fully,” Father Joe said. “Thank you for that kindness.”

Shelly shrugged, her cheeks reddening as she looked away. Father Joe straightened a stack of hymnals at the end of the pew.

“It's good to see you happy, miss.”

“Happier, anyway,” she said, still smiling.

“And do you know the source of this great happiness?”

She thought of Ian's late-night phone calls, hanging out at Sips Coffee and listening to Komor on his Beats headphones. But she kept that to herself. “There's this girl at my school,” she said. “I was sort of, well, mean to her. Anyway, this week I finally had a chance to apologize. She was actually cool about the whole thing.”

The priest nodded. “Forgiveness is a great blessing. This is why we ask God to forgive us as we forgive others.” He paused and looked into her eyes. “And why we must forgive ourselves.”