AMANDA
SUNDAY, JANUARY 7
On Sunday afternoon, I call the girls over for some emergency detective work. It’s not like I couldn’t do a Google search on my own, but honestly, I could use the moral support. Carter messing around is one thing. I hate it, but it’s not exactly new. Normally, I can tap into Linda’s advice and keep my emotions in check. But I got three more texts yesterday, and at this point I’m seriously pissed.
“I thought you said it was a wrong number.” Adele is sprawled out next to me on my bed in head-to-toe magenta velour, hugging Huggie, the stuffed elephant I’ve had since I was three, to her chest. She’s gotten her highlights touched up to an even whiter blond, and her lips are frosted pink beneath a layer of clear gloss. Her aesthetic says Real Housewife of tomorrow.
“I knew it wasn’t really a wrong number,” I admit. “I just thought she’d drop it. But she’s definitely not dropping anything.” No one is allowed to talk about Carter’s cheating unless I bring it up. I would rather die than let my friends pity me. But today, there’s no way around it. We have to talk about Rosalie.
“So you’re sure it’s that weird Culver Ridge girl?” Trina is already sitting at my desk, penguin coat and scarf combo slung across the back of my chair and emerald green nails flashing against my laptop keys. I peer over her shoulder; she’s typing how to look up a private phone number into Google. “I can’t believe Carter’s still sneaking around with her.”
Adele was the first to find out about Rosalie. She heard it from Graham, who was at this club in town with Carter the night they met last August, right before the start of senior year. Graham told Adele that Rosalie was there with a friend, and that she blew Carter off. We Facebook-stalked her anyway, and she was obviously not a threat, so I was not prepared when Trina came back from a gallery opening in the city three months later with pictures of Carter and Rosalie on her camera.
“I walked in, took some quick shots, and walked right back out before Carter saw me. It sucked too, because there were some amazing photographs in that show, and I had to make a whole other trip into the city to see them.”
I had bristled when she’d first told me. Was she actually weighing something as trivial as a missed gallery opening against my happiness? But really, we both knew she’d done me a giant favor. If Carter is messing around, I need to know about it.
In November, I was prepared to wait it out. It had been less than a year since I’d broken up with him over the apple-cheeked freshman. You have to be strategic, which means never making the same play twice. I didn’t think Rosalie would last. She’s from the sticks, for Christ sakes. She has the world’s ugliest haircut. But now, everything’s different. She’s forcing my hand.
“It has to be her,” I tell Trina. “She thinks she’s making some big move. Like if she scares me, I’ll roll over and deliver Carter on a silver platter. We need to prove it’s Rosalie sending those messages.”
My friends nod, their faces appropriately serious.
“But it seems like she’s mostly just telling you how beautiful you are,” Adele says. “That seems like a weird way of saying, ‘back off, bitch.’ ”
I shrug. “It’s a strategy. She’s obviously not naive. She knows telling me to step off would get her nowhere. But she’s graduated beyond compliments. Here, look.” I open the stream of messages from Private and scroll back to the ones from the diner Friday night. I hold my phone out to Adele, who snatches it eagerly and reads aloud.
He’s not thinking about you, but I am.
“Well, that’s creepy as shit,” Trina says.
“Wait, it gets creepier. Mandy says she knows the stalker is Rosalie, and the stalker denies it. Then she says Mandy’s going to be ‘the ultimate loser’ if she doesn’t listen to her, and Carter’s only going to give Mandy ‘a future of misery.’ That’s pretty low.”
“Hold up,” I say. “You think this qualifies as stalking?”
Trina shrugs, ombré hair fluttering around her shoulders. “She’s sending you creepy texts, and she’s obviously obsessed with you and Carter. I’d call that stalking.”
I grab a pillow and hug it to my chest, suddenly feeling cold. The texts are annoying and a little vile, but they’re just a power play. It’s hard to imagine Rosalie could actually be dangerous. . . .
“Keep reading,” I instruct Adele.
“Okay, these three are from yesterday.” She scrolls.
You know you need to end things. You’ve known it for a long time.
You may be the prettiest girl at school, but things are going to get real ugly if you don’t start listening to me.
Don’t be scared, Amanda.
“What the hell does that last one mean?” Trina asks. “Don’t be scared to break up with your boyfriend so I can lap up your sloppy seconds? Or don’t be scared of me?”
“Right?” Adele agrees. “That’s messed up. And pathetic.”
Something inside my stomach twists, but I bite my tongue. I think Adele would like to pretend we’ve both forgotten how she tried to lap up my sloppy seconds with Carter last year. I forgave her a long time ago, but no one’s doing any forgetting. Subconsciously, my fingers brush the onyx heart at my neck.
“It really is textbook,” Trina sighs, returning to my computer. “Veiled threats. Taking out her aggression behind a screen. I should probably refer her to my mom.” Trina’s mom is a psychiatrist or psychologist, I always forget which. I smile thinking about Rosalie pouring her heart out on Trina’s mom’s couch.
“Have you showed the texts to Carter?” Adele asks. She has a few strands of blond highlight clenched between her teeth, and she’s chewing furiously.
“Obviously not. And not because she forbid it. The last thing I need is a fight with Carter right now. No one breathes a word to him, got it?”
I lock eyes with each of them, and they both nod. I am dead serious.
“Going to Carter like a wounded puppy is not the right play.” I exhale long and slow, then toss the pillow aside and smooth down my hair. “We need to handle this without Carter. Prove she’s sending the texts. Expose her.”
“On it.” Trina starts typing again, and the screen fills up with search results for blocking your caller ID.
“So what exactly is your plan?” Adele asks while Trina scrolls through the links. “For exposing her, I mean?” Her tone lacks its usual levity. Maybe this whole taking-Rosalie-down thing will have the added benefit of disabusing Adele of any lingering notion that Carter might be hers one day. She really needs to get over herself and get together with Graham already so we can put this awkwardness squarely behind us.
“I don’t know yet. But I’ll figure something out.”
“Amanda?” My mother’s voice accompanies a swift rap on my door.
I turn to my friends. “One sec.” Then I slip into the hall and close the door behind me. I haven’t seen Linda yet today, and past experience has taught me not to invite her into my room when I have people over unless I’ve had a chance to assess her alcohol content.
When I get into the hall, though, she looks surprisingly bright eyed and bushy tailed.
“I’m not allowed to come in?” she asks.
“Adele was trying on an outfit,” I lie. “Just giving her some privacy.”
She accepts my excuse and leans against the wall. “I thought I heard voices. Are both Adele and Trina over?”
I nod.
“Well, they’re welcome to stay for dinner. Your father has business in the city, so it’s just us girls.” She says this as if it’s not “just us girls” 90 percent of the time. I guess the only difference is that it’s Sunday, not that the days of the week seem to mean much in the finance world.
“Okay,” I say hesitantly. If she’s still this with-it in a couple hours, it might actually be nice to have Trina and Adele stay. . . .
“Why don’t you ask them, because if I don’t call Lynn by two, there’s no way we’ll be able to get her for tonight.”
Oh. Lynn is the private chef we hire when my mother feels the need to impress. The chance of her having a last-minute opening seems slim, but more importantly, we can’t afford Lynn right now. My mother is doing this because Jack has deserted us tonight. Which I’m sure is only because his meeting is important for business, which means he’s doing it for us. I know my mother misses the days when Dad was the head of his division, when weekend obligations could be shuffled off to a junior partner. I barely remember that life, but it’s like a ghost in the house, dogging my father at every turn. And raising my mother’s hackles. I don’t want any part of the barbs and daggers, the financial tug-of-war that has come to define their marriage.
“It’s just Trina and Adele,” I say. “Takeout’s fine.”
My mother stiffens.
“Trina was just telling us about this new Peruvian place off Springvale,” I press on. “I’ll check with the girls and see if they deliver, okay?” I lean over to give her a peck on the cheek.
“Peruvian sounds interesting.” She eyes me suspiciously.
“Seriously, I’ve been craving it all day,” I insist. She relaxes just a little before releasing me back to my room.
I close the door, and Trina looks up from my computer. “Everything okay?”
“That Peruvian place deliver?” I ask. Trina nods.
“You should both stay for dinner, then. My thank-you for playing detective.”
“Speaking of which,” Trina says, “if we’re going to trace these texts back to Rosalie, first thing we need to do is figure out how she made her number private.”
“Is private the same as unlisted?” Adele asks.
“Not exactly,” Trina says. “Unlisted means your number isn’t in the phone book or the White Pages online. My mom keeps our landline unlisted. She likes to keep family and business separate.” I’d keep my home number unlisted too if I had tons of psych patients with twenty-four-hour access to my cell phone.
“Private’s like anonymous or blocked, right?” I ask.
“Right.” Trina turns back to my laptop. “This site says if you dial star-sixty-seven before typing in a number, it will block your outbound caller ID. But I think that only works for calling, not texting.” She clicks back to the search results and opens a new link. “Okay, here we go. Apparently there are websites you can use to send anonymous texts, but most of them don’t let the person on the other end text back. You’ve been writing back to her?”
“Yeah, and she’s been responding.”
“Okay, so scratch that.” Trina scrolls some more. “Here it says you can send anonymous texts via email, but I think then they would show up from an email account, and she’d also have to know your phone carrier.”
I shake my head. “Keep going.”
“So there are also a bunch of apps. I think most of them give you a fake number to use, but maybe some show up as ‘Private’? The bad news is it’s pretty impossible to figure out who’s texting you because you don’t have to use your real name or number when you make an account. So, unless she’s totally clueless, she used fake info.”
“Can you schedule a text to send later?”
“Why does that matter?” Adele asks.
I shoot her a look. “Just considering all the angles. The texts from Thursday night, I know she was out with Carter. The more we can figure out about how she’s pulling this off, the better.”
Trina frowns and stares at the screen. “This article doesn’t say. Sorry. Maybe on some of the apps?”
Adele switches out the piece of hair she’s destroying for a new one. “That must be it, right? The app thing?”
“I guess so.” I groan and collapse back into the wall of pillows on my bed. If Rosalie is using an app, there’ll be no way to trace the texts back to her. This is impossible.
“Okay, wait.” Adele grabs my hand. “If she’s using an app, she had to download it, right? Like through the Apple Store or whatever? That’s totally traceable.”
“Sure,” Trina says. “If we had her phone. Or if we were the FBI.”
“Wait a second.” I sit up straight. “That’s it.”
“We’re going to take this to the FBI?” Trina raises her eyebrows at me.
“No. The FBI wouldn’t give ten shits. But the Logansville police might, if she screws up.”
“What do you mean?” Adele asks.
“Right now, she hasn’t done anything illegal, right? I mean the texts are a little stalker-ish, but she’s probably not breaking any laws. But what if she directly threatens me? That’s illegal harassment.”
“And then you could get the police involved.” Adele sticks another strand of hair in her mouth, and I glare at her. “I get hungry when I’m thinking. Sorry.” Trina digs out a Kind bar from the box on my desk and tosses it over.
“Jack and Linda Kelly’s daughter being harassed by an anonymous stalker? That’s news. We can’t trace the texts back to Rosalie, but the police could. If she’s charged with harassment, they’ll confiscate her phone. They’d be able to figure it out.”
“Right,” Trina says slowly. “But how do we know she’s going to do something illegal? Like you said, the texts aren’t exactly law-breaking.”
“Not yet,” I agree. “But I’m pretty sure she’s capable of taking things to the next level. ‘Things are going to get real ugly?’ ‘Don’t be scared?’ ”
Adele nods furiously, eyes wide. “That was totally creepy.”
“If I don’t give in, she’ll have to up the ante. She just needs a little push.” I smile, sinking back into the pillow wall again. Now, I have an idea.
“What are you going to do?” Adele asks through a mouthful of Kind bar.
“Right now, she has the upper hand. She’s behind this shield of anonymity. But what if I remove the shield? What if I email her?”
“You have her address?” Trina asks.
“School account. I’ll plug her name or initials or whatever into the Greater Logansville formula. Once I call her out, she’ll have to back off or step up her game. Either way, I win.”
Secretly, I hope she doesn’t back off. Now I’m mad. Now I want her to threaten me so I can turn her in to the cops. That boyfriend-thief might think she’s being all clever, but she doesn’t know who she’s messing with. I feel ten times better now that I have a plan.
Rosalie Bell is going to crash and burn.