Endangered (16 page)

Maybe the Admirer's right. I don't get to be done. He's going to regret letting me in on that little secret.

MOM AND DAD LEAVE ME WITH
a list of weird tasks, as usual. I buckle down and fly through everything in under three hours, giving myself six hours before either of them will be home. Time to do some real work.

Getting my equipment back is easy. It's all locked in a backyard shed, same place Dad used to hide my Christmas presents. Dad keeps the shed key on him. No issue. When I taught myself to pick locks, I practiced on the very padlock I'm breaking into now.

Inside, the smell of lawn mower gas is cloying, swirling around me on a cool breeze. There's a dust-free plastic tub in the back corner by the garden shears. Inside I find my camera, laptop, and a few other useful items Dad confiscated in his sweep. Decorative bricks, left over from the flower bed Mom created in the spring, are arranged on a shelf. I drop a couple in the tub to throw Dad off should he make it out here in the next few days and move stuff around, then I transfer most of my gear to my car trunk. I won't need my camera or the other stuff inside the house, and my MacBook will
be easy enough to conceal when my parents are around.

Back in my room I make the most of my alone time, arranging everything I've ever gotten from my Admirer in a single file. I sit back, viewing it all as one big picture, each item layered in cascading windows, looking for clues with the scrutiny I reserve for Gray targets.

Everyone I ever exposed, I had to get to know from afar. Their friends and their patterns. Of course, I always had a name and a face to start.

He's awesome with a camera. Able to get into places other people can't get in, either through his charm or stealth. He can get his hands on crime scene photos from secure police servers. He's a meticulous planner. If he wasn't we would have never crossed paths because he'd have cooked himself alive trying to get the
Dante
shot.

What
don't
I know?

I spend the afternoon combing through Marcos's and Brock's Facebook pages, Twitter, Tumblr, whatever I can find. They're my only suspects. Yet, I can't find anything to suggest either one of them could pull off what my Admirer has.

All I get for my effort is a dose of torment. My social media accounts are filled with hate messages from everyone who's turned on Gray. Me.

The most brutal posts have as many as three hundred likes. I consider deleting my page altogether, but there's a single friend request. Roz Petrie.

I accept and spend some time clicking through her photos because old habits don't die. Mostly selfies of her hiking, or canoeing, or lying in bed making goofy faces. Nothing spectacular, though she is pretty when she's not hunched and shuffling.

Aunt Victoria pops into my head:
She could look like a young blah, blah, blah, with some effort
.

My hands retract from the keyboard and rest on my thighs. Those were Victoria's words, but not her voice in my head. It was mine. Making the same judgments as my annoying aunt and soon-to-be roommate.

One hand darts to my Magic Mouse like a squirrel snaring an acorn, moving the cursor and clicking things until I reach the MESSAGE icon on Roz's cover page. I start a private conversation with her that she'll answer at her leisure though it eases my conscience right away.

For a while I surf aimlessly before returning to Facebook and seeing the little speech bubble icon lit up with a red “1” in the top corner of the page. I open my new message, Roz's response, and I'm excited. Who doesn't like reading praise?

Ah, Gray's third exposé. A classic bully known for robbing neighborhood kids, boys
and
girls, of whatever cash their parents had entrusted them with, then bragging about it.

I caught him vandalizing a teacher's house by sprinkling chlorine pellets on the lawn during a late-night rain shower. I don't think he got in much trouble, but he calmed down significantly before his family moved to Maryland last year. A minor victory.

Her gratitudinal email address is now clear. But her note generates other questions and not about “Gunters” and “Parzival,” whatever those are.

Two words are what I send.

I don't wait long.

A link follows. It takes me to another Facebook page. A private group that I can now join thanks to Roz's hypertext invite. The Gray Beards.

My official fan club.

Okay, okay. I sought out Roz because I needed a pick-me-up, but this? This is going to Starbucks for caffeine and getting heroin.

There are 204 members, a bunch of kids I know from school—including a few from my DP class. Several of my revealing photos are visible in the news feed and thumbnails. No one here is trashing me. I scroll through and learn that “Gray rocks” and “bullies suck” and, and, and . . .

Perked up and curious, I click the link that always interests me most on FB pages, photos. There are two albums. One is named “Gray Scales” and is a compilation of everything from my site. The other, it makes the bottom of my stomach fall out.

It's called “The Game.”

Click
.

There are dozens of photos, with hundreds of comments spread among them. I look through many of them. Selfies, photobombs, landscapes. Amateur shots from fuzzy to awesome. On the better photos there's a trend of some commenter giving begrudging praise (“Sweet, but peep this . . .”) then linking to another photo meant to outdo the last. Exchanges I've become very familiar with in recent weeks.

There's no
Dante
, or
Neptune's Fury
, or any of the other visual capital my Admirer and me have traded. Certainly no plain, bleached picture of Keachin, or the richly colored snapshot of her cracked skull, with a convenient link back to the profile of whoever posted the pics.

The game I thought so unique to me and my Admirer appears to be a common thing here. That's the bad news.

The worse news: I just gained 204 new suspects.

WHEN MY PARENTS GET HOME, I
have to tuck my Mac between my mattress and box spring, then get back to it after they're in bed. I don't mind the break, because the challenges I'm dealing with are frying my brain.

Next steps? Well, in the immediate, the plan doesn't change. I talk to Brock first. From the technical angle of my undoing, Taylor likes him as the prime suspect. Also, it's less sanity-destroying than printing off a list of Gray Beards and throwing darts at it.

While I comb through Brock's online profiles, I get pinged by the actual culprit—whoever he is—several times.

SecretAdm1r3r wants to chat
.

I don't care what he wants.

Near midnight my eyes are burning, and my temples pulse. I shut the machine down and lie on my bed, my phone on my chest. It's Friday. Me and Ocie's night when I'm not in solitary confinement.

It's still our night.

It's a lie. I could've been texting and emailing all day the same way I've been communicating with Taylor and Roz. Just forgot. Focused on the mission. Probably best not to mention that.

That knocks my thought train right off the track. I didn't see that coming. Not in a million years.

She's still been talking to him. She knows I've been talking to him. Crap.

This is going bad. Fast. Face-to-face will be better. Then she'll understand.

Mrs. Horton doesn't want me and Ocie together anymore? Of all the ways my life's gone to pot since my secret came out, this feels most surreal. The most excruciating.

No. I'm losing everything else. Not my best friend. I'll speak to Mrs. Horton myself and explain that I'm not some low-life bad influence. Make her see it's all a misunderstanding. That I made a mistake and I'm sorry. All that good stuff parents like to hear.

Once I get out of this house.

The next morning, Dad's up early and off to the gym. It's his weekend ritual. Which is why I was up even earlier, waiting.

The hiss-spray of the shower in my parents' room comes on. It's time.

Sticking my head in their bathroom, I say, “Mom, I've got your grocery list and the credit card. Be back in an hour.”

“What?” She pokes her lathered head from behind the shower curtain, her eyes sealed against the sluicing soap.

“Early start to the chores. Up and at 'em. See ya.” I run for the stairs.

She yells, “But that's not
your
chore!”

I don't slow, and don't look back. I figure I'm halfway down the block before she can get to her bathrobe. There's a stop sign at the end of my street, then a left to get to Ocie's.

I go right.

I'll fix things with Ocie and her mom, for sure. After I pay Brock a visit.

A small delay in my repentance isn't going to kill anyone.

BROCK'S NEIGHBORHOOD ISN'T KEACHIN-LEVEL SWANK, BUT
his family is a couple of rungs above mine on the affluence ladder. I pull to the curb by his brick-and-siding McMansion and stare across a lawn so perfect it looks like a green swimming pool. The street is silent except for the
swish-swish-swish
of a nearby sprinkler. Brock's probably sleeping soundly.

Enough of that.

I dial the cell number I pulled off his Facebook profile. Convenient for me, but tarnishes my theory that he's my guy. My Admirer's tech savvy, and most tech-savvy people know to adjust their Facebook settings to hide such info. Still, a conversation is in order, if only for the sake of elimination.

The phone rings and rings, then goes to voice mail. I hang up and dial again. This cycle repeats three more times before a groggy troll picks up.

“Who is this, you freakin' dickbag?”

“Come outside, Boy Wonder.” I kill the call and wait.

Within a minute he's stepping onto his porch wearing basketball shorts
and pulling a Portside Football T-shirt over his admittedly ripped torso. He crosses the lawn in bare feet, squinting in the daylight. He's close enough to touch my car when recognition hits.

“Morning, Brock.”

He leans forward with his elbows on my window frame. “I thought you, like, skulked in the shadows and shit. Doesn't sunlight hurt you?”

“No, but your morning breath does. Please direct it elsewhere.”

He inhales deeply then blows a slow blast of foulness into my vehicle. It smells like warm Dumpster juice.

No one ever said interrogations were fun.

“So what do I owe this visit from Portside's Most Hated? You wanna take me up on my previous offer of free lovin'? I still don't have a bear costume, but my mom's got this fox fur stole. I can tie it around my head like a bandana if that works for you.”

The same old Brock, with the same old tired jokes. It's hard to fathom him being as scary original as my Admirer. Still: “I came to talk about Keachin.”

His joker grin recedes. “You should've come to her funeral yesterday. You could've given the eulogy.”

“Screw you.”

“I thought we covered that already.” He backs away from my window and makes a show of slow-scratching his crotch.

“Did you know she was involved with Coach Bottin? Before?”

“If I did, why would I tell you?”

“Because I've still got pictures of you that I've never shown anyone. These photos make your Robin costume look like a Tom Ford suit.”

His Adam's apple bobs like he wants to say something, but if he has a comeback, it never makes it into the world.

A subhuman like Brock probably does so much dirt that the prospect of any one of his nefarious deeds being dragged into the open is terrifying. I hope that's what's on his mind. Because there are no pictures. His superhero affinity is the best I've got. He doesn't need to know that.

He's leaning back into my car again. “Unh-uh. Didn't know about her and Bottin. That scoop was all you, Gray.”

“I thought you used to hang. You weren't close?”

“Not as close as I wanted to be. None of us ever had a chance. Everyone knew she dated older dudes, but I always thought she was into Commonwealth U guys. Not grown-ass men.”

“That piss you off?”

“Not me. I smash hot chicks all the time. One tease don't affect the Brock.”

If he was my Admirer, and was really behind Keachin dying, he wouldn't flat-out admit to anything I'm trying to get at. I know that. But, God help me, though Brock's mean and disgusting, I don't think he's a liar. You have to care what other people think to make lying worth it.

My phone vibrates in my lap. I ignore it to finish here.

“Two more questions. Did you hack my email and tell everyone I was Gray?”

“If I'd done it, you wouldn't have to ask. I would've had a T-shirt made.”

“Last question. You secretly into photography?”

“Only selfies.” He uses one hand to lift his shirt and give me a profile shot of his perfect abs. I shift my car into gear and pull off with him still leaning on it. He stumbles backward onto his dew-damp lawn.

Swinging a U-turn, I drive back the way I came, back to having a couple of hundred theories but no solid leads on my Admirer's identity. Even if Brock lied about everything, what do I have for proof?

My phone buzzes with an incoming text. There's a strip mall at the mouth of Brock's neighborhood. I pull into the lot so I can read the messages my Admirer's been sending.

A final message comes through. It's a photo. As plain and badly composed as the one I got the night Keachin died. It's his next target.

Ocie.

Reckless. In so many ways.

Ocie won't answer my calls. I'm passing cars on streets not meant for passing. Laying on the horn when someone waits a half second too long before turning on red. At the intersection, a block from Ocie's, I get caught at the light myself. I would run it if there was a break in the traffic. A congested boulevard keeps me from saving my friend.

Tires screech around the corner, out of my line of sight. The green light comes. I stomp the gas hard, revving my engine to a strained roar that I've never heard before.

“Come on!” I scream, pounding the wheel with my fists.

My car's on two wheels—or it feels that way when I make the turn onto Ocie's street. I come up on a stopped Hyundai too fast. I slam the brakes
as hard as I stomped the accelerator moments before. My car's mechanical whine is like a cry for mercy. I skid to a stop inches short of the abandoned vehicle. Its yellow hazard lights are flashing, and the driver's door hangs open like the wing on a lame bird.

“Help!” some person screams.

I shift into park and leave my car, rounding the vehicle blocking my way. A stranger is crouched, phone to his ear, rambling about ambulances and blood to a 911 operator.

Ocie is motionless in the street, with her legs at wrong angles and fluid leaking from her skull. Ocie's parents are summoned by the commotion. Watching their faces go from curious to concerned to horrified as they push through the crowd is almost as bad as seeing Ocie's broken body.

Sirens are fast approaching. My best friend in the world is posed grotesquely on the pavement.

I'm not distracted anymore.