The Darkest Lie (21 page)

The ocean roars in my ears. I gulp and gulp the air, as if I've just swallowed a mouthful of seawater. Oh good god. Mr. Willoughby is Phoenix. I can't believe it.

But I'm staring right at the evidence, and it makes perfect sense. Who else would name himself Phoenix other than someone obsessed with comic books? Someone haunted by Jean Grey—and other voluptuous, redheaded women like her.

It can't be a coincidence. Not when I've spent the last day searching for a connection with Phoenix.

My knees turn to rubber as I remember my last image of Mr. Willoughby. Clean-shaven, smelling of musk. Rushing off to a “tutoring” appointment.

If he's Phoenix, it can only mean one thing. He's meeting a girl. Maybe Briony. Or the student I saw in the parking lot—what was her name? Ashley, Amber? Maybe that's his MO. Start with late-night meet-ups, and then escalate the relationship by taking the sessions off school premises.

This could be the meeting where an innocent student turns into prey.

I drop to the floor, shoving my spilled stuff and the comic book into my backpack. I don't have a moment to lose. I've got a sexual predator to stop.

I fly down the hallway. How much of a head start did Mr. Willoughby have? Three minutes, four? I couldn't have been in his office very long. If he stopped to talk to someone, if he took a detour back to his classroom, I can still catch him.

I jump into my car and drive to the faculty lot, scanning the vehicles for either the Bug or the Prius I saw the other night. There! On the far side of the lot, I see a familiar silver car. Exactly the type of vehicle Mr. Willoughby would drive.

Hunkering down in my seat, I pull out my phone and call Sam. It goes straight to voice mail.

Oh, that's right. He told me he was going to turn off his phone and work on the article, since his deadline's first thing tomorrow morning. If I need him, he said, call his home phone.

Well, if there was ever an emergency, this is it. I root around my backpack for the slip of paper with his contact information, but when I call the number, there's no answer.

I frown. Where could he have gone?

Before I can think of someone else to call, Mr. Willoughby strides out of the building, the momentum swinging his arms like a pendulum. He dumps his briefcase in the backseat, gets in the car, and pulls out of the parking lot. I throw my phone down and follow him.

We wind through town. There's never much traffic in Lakewood, but I manage to keep a couple of cars between us. He then turns onto a road that will take us into the country, and the few vehicles evaporate.

Crap! I grit my teeth and hit the brakes, dropping even farther behind. The pavement disappears. My car bumps and thuds on the dirt, and clouds of dust billow up with each rotation of my tires.

I glance at the gas gauge. It's been hovering on “empty” for a while now. And the farther we get out of town, the more my palms slide on the steering wheel. What am I doing? Why am I following a sexual predator to the middle of nowhere? I should turn around. Go to the police, or at least wait for Sam to come with me.

But what about the girl? If I abandon my tail now, it might be too late for her. She could end up like my mom—or worse. Tightening my grip on the steering wheel, I keep going.

An eternity later, the Prius slows and turns into a long driveway. I pull onto the side of the road. The crickets chirp over each other in a cacophony of music, and the sun flirts with the horizon, its final rays lighting the leaves on fire. Shadows creep up the trees like insidious smoke.

I rub my bare arms, which the air has pebbled into goose bumps. Slow down, heart! Apparently, it still thinks we're going forty-five miles per hour.

I take a deep breath and make my way up the side of the driveway, using the dense shrubbery for camouflage.

The branches scratch my arms, adding blood to the raised pattern on my skin, and the leaves tangle in my hair. Presently, I come to a small creek lined with rocks. Hearing voices, I perch on one of the rocks, wrap my arms around a tree for balance, and peek around the trunk.

Two people stand on the front porch of the tucked-away house. Mr. Willoughby. And a girl with her back to me.

She's wearing tight jeans and red Converse sneakers, her hair a waterfall of white over the deep black material of her shirt. The hair looks familiar. Straight, shiny, and white-blond. I've seen it before, I'm sure of it. But I can't remember where.

The girl reaches up and pulls Mr. Willoughby into a passionate kiss. My psych teacher cups his hands around her bottom and lifts her against him. Her feet leave the ground, and she wraps her legs around his waist.

Hot, smoldering coals burn in my stomach. Mr. Willoughby may be on private property, conducting his personal affairs, but I don't care. He made it my business when he decided to prey on a student. I couldn't help my mom when she needed it. But I can do something now. The question is: what?

As I watch, he puts his hands on her head and presses his fingers on her scalp.

A line from my mother's journal floats across my mind.
He dug his nails into my scalp, so hard it felt like real metal nails being hammered into my head.

The coals turn into redhot sparks shooting through my entire body. I can't stand here any longer, observing. Helpless.

Sam may not be home, but there are other people who answer the phone all the time. I fumble the phone out of my pocket and dial 911.

A female voice comes on the line. “Please state your emergency.”

“There's a teacher, a sexual predator, who lures girls to his home and takes advantage of them,” I whisper. “I'm watching them right now.”

I've barely uttered the last word when I slip on the rock, and my feet plunge into the creek. I manage to stifle a scream—but there's nothing I can do about the splash of the water.

As if in slow motion, Mr. Willoughby and the girl break apart and turn toward the noise. For the first time, I see the girl's face clearly.

Even as I hear the operator asking me for the address, the phone slides through my fingers and joins my feet in the water.

Because the girl is not a student, after all.

Instead, she's our school secretary, Ms. Hughes.

Ms. Hughes. A consenting adult. Not a student.

Not a student. Not a student.

I was wrong.

My chest tingles, my throat's thick. I'm about to throw up all over my wet feet. How could I make such a mistake?

And I almost reported him. I almost gave the operator his address. His life would've been over. Even if my accusation was later proven false, the taint of scandal has a way of lingering. I should know.

The clouds spin as the ramifications hit me. The branches are suddenly on the ground, the creek in the sky. I sway, swinging my arms to catch onto something, anything. But there's nothing but the deep, pervasive knowledge of my shame.

“Cecilia, is that you?” Mr. Willoughby's voice breaks into my haze. “What are you doing here?”

Great question. I'm following you because I'm an idiot? Because I thought you were about to prey on a student? Because I was sure you killed my mother? Somehow, none of these answers seems appropriate.

I sink to my knees, and while I'm there, I fish my phone out of the creek, where it's nestled between two rocks. When I climb out, my socks weld to my toes like blocks of wet cement. Good. I deserve nothing less.

I step around the bushes and stop ten feet from the porch.

“I'm so sorry,” I choke out. They can't know the truth. That I almost ruined his career—no, his life—is bad enough. No one can know how badly I messed up. “I, uh, followed you home because you dropped something.” My mind whirls. The comic book! It's in my backpack. I could pretend I'm returning it to him. “But then I saw you had company, and I would've turned back. Except my car ran out of gas. And I'm not sure my phone's working.” I hold out my dripping phone, warming to my story. “I was hoping I could use yours.”

Ms. Hughes raises her eyebrows. They're the same white-blond as her hair. How could I have forgotten? Nobody else has hair that color. “Your car ran out of gas. Right in front of Mr. Willoughby's house.”

“Oh, yes. You can check my gauge, if you don't believe me.”

She doesn't say anything. A gust of wind blows her blouse open where two of her buttons are undone, and she quickly fastens them.

“Your hair's different,” I add lamely.

“I wear it up at school. More professional.” She confers with Mr. Willoughby with her eyes. “You might as well come in.”

I chew on my lip. “I don't want to interrupt.”

“I'd say you already have.”

I trudge onto their porch and take off my socks and shoes, so that I don't leave tracks in the house. But there's nothing I can do about my footprints on the wood. They stare at me like blemishes, the marks of my shame. Hester had her scarlet letter, and I have my wet feet.

“What did I drop, Cecilia?” Mr. Willoughby asks as we go inside.

“An X-Men comic book,” I say. “The Dark Phoenix Saga.”

As I say the words, part of me dares to hope. Maybe I'm not as foolish as I thought. Maybe he is Phoenix. Just because he's hooking up with Ms. Hughes doesn't mean he's not preying on students as well.

“Not sure where that came from,” he says. “I haven't read that comic in ages.”

Maybe not. He can't very well be obsessed with Jean Grey if he never reads her story. Unless he's lying. But how would he know to lie about something so inconsequential?

My chest deflates. Too many maybes. Too many ifs. If there is a case against Mr. Willoughby, it's full of holes.

Ms. Hughes ushers me into the kitchen and hands me a cordless phone. I stare at the black device. Who should I call? Sam? I don't have much choice. I don't have any phone numbers memorized, and I can't scroll through the address book on my waterlogged phone. So I grab the slip of paper from my pocket and dial his home number. No one picks up. Again.

“It's me,” I say to the dial tone, rather than explain my predicament. “My car ran out of gas. Could you meet me and bring a gallon of gas, please?” I rattle off the country road and then hang up.

“Well, thank you so much,” I say, channeling my inner Raleigh. “I'll go wait in my car now. Bye.”

“Not so fast.” Ms. Hughes crosses her arms. “I'd like to talk to you.”

Mr. Willoughby starts to say something, but she presses a hand on his arm. “Let me handle this, honey.”

He nods. “Okay. See you at school, Cecilia,” he says, and leaves the room.

“Can we make this quick?” I mumble. “My ride will be here any minute.”

“You didn't make a phone call, Cecilia.” Her voice is small and tight. Completely unlike the friendly secretary I know from school. “I could hear the dial tone from where I was standing.”

Oh. Just when I thought I'd hit creek-bottom. Crap, crap, crap!

“I decided to walk.” My words fall out like the rounds of a machine gun. “I remembered my friend lives near here and—”

“You don't have to do this. I know why you're really here.”

This stops me. “You do?”

“Mr. Willoughby is a good-looking man.” She sighs, as if it's taken her months to come to terms with this fact. “Many of his students have crushes on him.”

My mouth drops open. “I don't have a crush on him. I was . . .”

But I can hardly tell her the truth. That I suspected him of exploiting my mom. That I was seconds from reporting him to the police. A water's splash from destroying his life—and mine. What's left of it, anyway.

“It's okay. I'm not going to call your grandma or dad.” Her tone softens. She's not quite at the lollipop-offering stage yet, but she's getting close. “Just don't follow him again, okay?”

I nod, staring at the floor. It's the same yellow laminate that's at our house. Maybe the hardware store was having a sale. And maybe, if I keep my mouth shut, I'll be able to show my face sometime in the next century.

“Now I would appreciate it if you could do something for me,” she says. “Nobody at school knows about Ty and me. And we'd like to keep it that way.”

“What's the big secret?” I blurt.

“He has his reasons.” She rubs her neck. “It's a long story, and it mostly concerns his wife.”

“Who's been dead for over twenty years.”

“Twenty-six years, to be exact,” she says, her tone suddenly weary. “But who's counting?”

I twist the straps of my backpack. I should get out of here before my poor judgment gets me in even more trouble. And yet, part of me is curious. Even before I found the comic book, I suspected Mr. Willoughby. And there's a reason. He acted suspicious. He did his best to keep his relationship with Ms. Hughes a secret. Why?

“Could you tell me the story?” I ask haltingly. “I know it's none of my business, but I'm curious. Mr. Willoughby is such a mystery. Maybe I wouldn't have followed him if I knew more about him.”

She studies me so closely she could be counting my eyelashes. “All right, I'll tell you. But only because I think you're right. This secret hurts more people than Ty realizes.”

She walks to the sink, where she runs water over a stack of dirty plates. I don't think her need to wash dishes is so urgent, but like my backpack-twisting, it keeps her hands busy.

“Maria was Mexican,” she says. “Ty met her during one of his semesters abroad in college, and they eloped to the States when she was eighteen. Immediately, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died six months later. It's a tragedy, to be sure, but he could've moved on from it. He should've moved on.”

Her nails scrape across a plate. “Problem is, her family blames him. They feel she wouldn't have died if he hadn't taken her away. And a large part of him agrees. It's completely irrational, of course, but he feels tremendous guilt. So much that he's brought her entire family here to live, and he won't go public with any relationship. He feels like it would disrespect his late wife's memory.”

Guilt. Yes, I can understand that. I've felt the way it wraps its tentacles around me, squeezing so tightly I can hardly breathe. And if this monster has infiltrated Mr. Willoughby's life, it would explain why he's never openly dated anyone.

But I still have to ask. “And you're sure he's not seeing anybody else?”

She looks up, her gaze sharper than the knife in the drying rack. “Cecilia, I love this man. And he loves me, even if he doesn't realize it yet. I'd stake my life on his faithfulness.”

She's so certain. So positive. We always think we know someone. . . until we don't. But even I have to admit it's looking less likely that Mr. Willoughby is Phoenix.

“Thanks for telling me,” I say. “And, uh, sorry about the intrusion. I'll let myself out.”

I leave the house and hurry to my Camry. It may only be a hundred yards, but after the hour I had, it feels more like a hundred miles.

I reach the Camry, and I almost cry as my hand closes around the door handle. But my relief is short-lived. Because the car won't start.

I groan. My lie has become truth. I'm out of gas.