I sit back in my chair, an odd thrumming in my body. Something isn’t right.
This article says that Jack Canning was reaching into his dresser drawer before Tom shot him.
I read the paragraph again, searching for any mention of Jack Canning pointing a gun at Tom and Mike. When I don’t find one, I double back to the search results and narrow the hits to ones that mention Tom and Mike by name.
This can’t be right. They all say the same thing, that Jack Canning was reaching into his dresser, where he kept a gun, when Tom killed him.
So why, in the version of the events I have in my head, was Jack Canning pointing the gun at Tom and Mike?
In the weeks that followed, my mother shielded me from the news. She said Tom had to shoot Jack Canning, or Canning would have shot Tom and Mike. Everyone else in town was saying it too—that Jack Canning murdered two girls and would have murdered two cops as well if Tom hadn’t taken him down. In public, and especially when the cameras were rolling, they all spoke about what a tragedy that night was. In private, I heard people whisper about how glad they were that my stepfather had killed the pervert and how they hoped Jack Canning suffered in his final moments.
I bring my feet up to my chair. Hug my knees to my chest. If Jack Canning hadn’t really been reaching for his gun…
My door creaks open, sending my stomach into my throat.
I slam my laptop shut. Tom is standing there, his shape illuminated by the glow of the hallway sconce outside my door.
“Jesus,” I say. “Can’t you knock?”
Tom cocks his head at me. Mango rockets past him and crouches at the base of my bed. He tries to jump, but he’s not used to the height of my new bed. The result is him pathetically bouncing on his back legs.
“I thought you were asleep,” Tom says. “The dog was scratching at your door to get in.”
I push myself away from my desk. Scoop up Mango and deposit him on the bed.
Tom is still watching me. “What are you doing up?”
“Nothing. I couldn’t sleep.”
Tom eyes my laptop. “Staring at your screen will only make it worse.”
I try to imagine what his reaction would be if he knew what I’d been reading.
I know it wasn’t him. Connect the dots.
I want to ask him what it means, but I can’t tell him I know about the letters. Hey, Tom, I found something weird when I was snooping through your desk for drugs. I can’t form any words at all.
“I know,” I say. “I might take some melatonin.”
“That’s a good idea,” he says. As he’s shutting my door, I think I see him look at my laptop once more.
* * *
—
I have to make up the chem quiz I missed yesterday. I finish with ten minutes left in the lunch period. On my way to the cafeteria, a security guard spots me.
“Where we going, hon?”
“Lunch,” I say, and he nods and leaves it at that. No one ever says shit to me. For being in the hall after the bell, for being in the newspaper office without a pass. I’ve seen how security hassles some of the other kids—groups of black girls, the guys who speak to each other in Spanish, the rowdy football players. I’ve done worse things in one summer than all of them have probably ever done combined.
Rachel spots me from across the cafeteria; she waves with one hand and gives Alexa’s shoulder a shake with her other. Alexa looks over at me and clamps her mouth shut. A wave of paranoia hits me.
They can’t have figured it out. They don’t even know I’ve been with a guy since Matt and I broke up.
Rachel moves her bag off the seat next to her so I can slide in. I hold back a wince.
“We were just talking about the seniors,” Rachel says in a voice that suggests they totally were not talking about the seniors. “Coach didn’t pick captains yet.”
“Isn’t it going to be the Kelseys?”
“That’s the thing,” Alexa says. “They showed up late for the meeting yesterday because they went to Dunkin’ Donuts.”
“I didn’t show up to the meeting at all,” I say.
Alexa’s expression darkens. “Well, you had an excuse. You were sick.”
“Who else made it?” I ask, eager to shunt aside thoughts of what Coach will do to punish me for missing the meeting.
Alexa takes a noisy pull from the dregs of her iced tea. “Everyone from last year, plus these two freshmen.”
“And that girl Ginny or whatever her name is,” Rachel says. “The one in our grade.”
Obviously Rachel knows exactly who Ginny Cordero is—our class only has two hundred kids, so it’s virtually impossible to go ten years without learning everyone’s name. But we pretend we don’t know, because it makes us feel important.
“Her,” Alexa says.
I look over at the lunch line. Ginny Cordero is buying a Snapple. She keeps her eyes down as she takes her change from the lunch lady and tries to slip out of the cafeteria. Joe Gabriel, Kelsey’s twin brother, stumbles back to catch a Nerf football and nearly knocks Ginny over.
Ginny Cordero isn’t a loser or anything. People just don’t think about her much at all. She’s pretty in that untouched way—pale skin dotted with freckles, sun-streaked strawberry-blond hair she never cuts.
Sometimes I think about her.
When Jen was thirteen, she wasn’t in high school or on cheerleading yet, so she was still taking tumbling classes at Jessie’s Gym three nights a week. Whenever Tom had to work late, my brother and I had to ride along in the car with Mom when she went to pick Jen up.
Jen was always talking about how annoyed Jessie would get with Ginny Cordero’s mother, who was always late picking her up. Class ended at 7:00 p.m., and sometimes Ginny’s mom didn’t show up until 7:40, and Jessie would have to wait until she did to close the gym.
One night, my mother pulled into the parking lot, and Jen wasn’t waiting outside with the other girls. Petey was next to me in the backseat, straining in his car seat, fussy because it was approaching his bedtime.
Through the gym’s front window, I spotted my sister sitting next to Ginny in the waiting area. She refused to come outside until Ginny’s mother arrived at twenty after seven.
Now Ginny’s eyes connect with mine for a moment before she slips out of the cafeteria.
I wonder if she remembers that night—if it’s why she’s always avoiding looking me in the face.
“She was really good,” Rachel says. I don’t even remember seeing Ginny at tryouts on Monday.
“You’re really good,” I say. But I can tell she’s thinking about that triple pirouette—her Achilles’ heel.
When Alexa stands, announcing that she’s buying a cookie, Rachel turns to me, her voice low. “Why did you get called to guidance?”
“Coughlin wants me to help with a memorial for the cheerleaders.”
“She asked me too,” Rachel says. “After health yesterday.”
Bethany Steiger was Rachel’s cousin. Rach hated her; Bethany only ever wanted to hang out with Rachel’s older sister Sarah, and she would make fun of the gap between Rachel’s front teeth.
I look down at the PB&J I’ve barely touched. I tear off a piece of the crust. “Did you say you’d help?”
“I couldn’t say no. She put me on the spot.” Rachel eyes me. “Are you going to do it?”
I don’t answer. Part of me itches to tell Rach about the letters, just like I wanted to tell her about Brandon this summer. She and I tell each other everything; two summers ago, when Matt told me he loved me for the first time, under the porch light of my old house, I called Rachel immediately, even though it was almost midnight. I’m the only one of our friends who knows that her parents were separated for a year when we were kids and that she doesn’t remember losing her virginity to a senior on the soccer team last year at one of Kelsey Gabriel’s parties. She made me swear I’d never tell, and I know she’d do the same for me.
But when I think about telling her why I was in Tom’s desk, and what I found there and what I read online last night, something in me screams not to. And I don’t know why.