IN HER BED Jojo read the Facebook messages—all of them—a dozen times.
The ones to the cops were gross. Super disgusting, actually. I want you to lick my button again. I get so wet when I think of u, like, I’m dripping right now. Who in the world would, number one, sleep with any of them and, number two, apparently get off on talking about it afterward?
And it seemed like Harper really got off on it. There was nothing she didn’t seem happy to discuss, and now that Jojo had imagined her getting the shocker from Dan Toomey, she had to admit that sex had gone back to just sounding nasty.
And the messages to her father . . .
She looked around her bedroom.
Randall, Jojo’s old teddy bear, was flopped sideways, as if he, too, had lost the will to live. She pulled him into her lap.
She squeezed.
There it was.
The lump.
Time for surgery. Using her fingers, she ripped into the side seam of his belly—the same one she’d gone into years ago—and pulled out the paper-towel-wrapped cube.
She unwrapped it. The small diamond gleamed. It fit on her middle finger, though she knew she couldn’t wear it there. The second ring they’d stolen that day, the one that hadn’t been reported or apparently even noticed missing, the one only she and Harper knew about.
Jojo got out of bed, scattering Randall’s innards as she did.
She pawed through her wooden jewelry box. There it was, the long silver chain Dad had given her last Christmas. She slipped it through the ring and clasped it around her neck.
Why, though? Why was she trying to get closer to Harper, a person it seemed like she barely knew?
What they’d done together in bed couldn’t have mattered at all, could it? Sex was apparently a job for Harper. Either that or she was really sick in the head, or both.
Jojo didn’t know which option made her want to cry more.
Downstairs, the front door gave its opening creak, making her jump. Mom. Jojo ran down the steps, carrying the cell phone with its fatal messages.
Mom was hanging up her sweater. “Hey.”
If Jojo didn’t tell her now about Dad, she’d lose her nerve. “Mama, there’s something . . . something you need to know.”
Her mother froze. “Is Harper back? Did they find her?”
Jojo shook her head. “Uh-uh.”
Her mother didn’t say anything. She held up one finger and kicked off her shoes. She left them there, which was freakish in itself. Mom didn’t usually ever leave shit lying around except in the trunk of her car, which always had enough junk in it for her to hold a garage sale. “Just give me one second.”
“No—”
“Seriously, Jojo. One second.”
She went into the kitchen, leaving Jojo’s heart hammering in her throat.
And under her terror at telling her mother about what was on Harper’s cell phone was a sicker, darker feeling.
Dad wasn’t Dad. She’d read the messages he’d sent to Harper. He wasn’t the man she thought she knew. Dad, covering shit up? Willing to talk about blackmail? With the girl Jojo loved so much it sometimes hurt her heart?
Mom came back carrying a glass full of wine. “Okay. Tell me. Is this about your father?”
Shock was a gut punch. “Yeah.”
“I saw his Facebook messages to her. He showed me.”
Tears rose in the back of Jojo’s throat, but she was angry, and she didn’t want them. She swallowed as hard as she could. “He’s not doing it right.” Childish playground words, but they were all she had. “He’s doing it wrong.”
“I know.” Mom sat next to her and held out her arm.
Jojo leaned in. “How could he?”
“He’s doing the best he can, but he doesn’t know how to—”
“He’s a good cop,” she interrupted, in case Mom had forgotten. “He’s not a bad cop.” But Dad was covering up a crime. Multiple crimes. Big ones. “He knows that she’s underage. Like, technically, she’s a child.” God, it sounded sick that way. Jojo was a child by those standards, too. She tried to picture herself fucking any one of the officers and only felt a slick of nausea rise in her gullet.
“I know.”
The words came then, the ones she wanted to hold back but couldn’t. “Harper saw me.” Oh, God, that was the wrong tense. “She sees me. No one ever sees me.”
Mom frowned. “Huh?”
No one saw her. Not in her whole life. Harper, on the playground when they were four, had seen her. She’d never stopped. Harper made Jojo feel special, sparkly, like someone magical, not just a girl who got decent grades and didn’t suck at soccer. Harper saw inside her—Mom and Dad never had. Her parents thought she was going to become someone impressive and smart and important someday, which was why they didn’t want her going into emergency services.
Harper had always thought she was impressive and smart and important.
But what if that had all been a lie?
Like Dad had been lying. “What’s he going to do? Does one of them have her? He has to go public with it, right? He has to.”
“I don’t know.”
Jojo twisted and pulled her legs up, so that she sat cross-legged facing her mother. She folded her arms. “What part don’t you know?”
“Any of it.”
Panic streaked through Jojo’s body, opening like a zipper from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet. If Dad didn’t know, and if Mom didn’t know, then what the fuck were they supposed to do? “Mom?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to scare you.”
“Too late.”
Mom looked surprised. Jojo guessed it was a long time since she’d admitted she was scared of anything, least of all to her mother. “Baby—”
“I wish you’d stop calling me that.”
“Okay.” Mom closed her eyes, as if by doing that she could shut Jojo up.
So Jojo said, “Also, I might be gay.”
Mom choked on her wine.
The terror grew wider, opening into a chasm in her chest, the Grand Canyon of fear. She didn’t know if she was more scared of Mom not accepting her or the fact that it might be true. “I mean, I might not be gay. I have no idea.”
“Joshi.”
Tears spilled down Jojo’s cheeks, and she swiped them away angrily. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Why had she said it? She was such an idiot.
Mom reached out a hand to touch her cheek. Her palm was warm, and it smelled like the Jergens lotion she’d used forever. “I love you.”
Jojo made a strangled noise. It was all she had.
“Listen to me, Jojo. I love you so hard that you could do anything, be anything, and I’d love you. You could murder six babies and eat them, and I’d be really upset, but I’d love you.”
Jojo’s spine went rigid. “So being gay—possibly being gay—is like being a baby-killing cannibal? Are you actually serious?”
“No! Shit. Sorry. I’m just—”
“Because that’s completely offensive, you know that, right? I thought you were all for human rights.”
“I am. Jesus, Jojo, it’s just a lot.”
Jojo unfolded and refolded her arms even tighter against her chest. “Sorry that you found out your daughter might be a dyke”—it was the first time she’d said the word out loud, and it sounded dirty and hollow in her mouth—“and that your husband is a piece of shit all on the same night.”
Mom looked wounded, as if Jojo had said something unfair, but she hadn’t. Jojo might be a dyke. Dad was a crooked cop, willing to cover up crimes of his own staff to avoid a scandal.
Jojo’s phone pinged with a text. She looked at it automatically—it was from a number she didn’t recognize.
Cordelia, where’s your ring?
Her heart pounded in her temples.
No one called her Cordelia but Harper.
No one.
No one else knew about the second ring she still had.
Harper’s still alive, but she probably wishes she wasn’t. Love, CapB.
She felt the blood drain from her hands and face, and she went cold all over. The ring on its chain felt heavy under her shirt.
“What?” Mom demanded. “Give it to me.”
Jojo held out the phone.
Mom gasped. She stood and then sat right back down. “Whose number is this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who’s Cordelia?”
“Me. I am. So is Harper.” Literally no one knew that. They’d kept it their secret code name for each other.
The rings they’d stolen had been their Cordelia rings.
Harper’s still alive, but she probably wishes she wasn’t. Harper was wishing for death? What were they doing to her? Jojo’s stomach heaved.
Now Mom said, “How are you both Cordelia? I don’t understand!”
Was she ignoring the most important part on purpose? “She wishes she wasn’t alive! Mom!”
“Honey, if it’s CapB, it’s him. It’s Kevin. You know that.”
They were missing something. She could feel it. As her mother finished talking, Jojo closed her eyes and thought as hard as she could. It felt like doing math in her head, the same kind of preliminary confusion, but if she just thought for a minute . . .
“I’ll call dispatch,” Mom said, her phone already in her hands. “They can run the number and see if it matches anything we have.”
Jojo formed herself into a ball on the couch, bringing up her knees and hugging them against her chest as hard as she could. “You can’t call them.”
No answer from her mother.
“Mom? Mom! Hang up! It has to be a cop.”