Amelia sat at our normal lunch table with a stack of papers.
“Are you doing homework?”
“Our homework, yes.”
“We have homework?”
“Don’t we? Don’t you still want to know who Heath Hall is? We haven’t talked about it in a while.”
“Did you learn something new?” I still wanted to know. Probably even more so since I’d been talking to him online. I did not want to be blindsided by his identity, caught off guard. But she was right. We hadn’t been working on finding out who he was lately.
“I thought we should sit down and compile a list of the evidence we’ve collected so we can narrow this down.”
I glanced around the crowded courtyard. “Should we really talk about it here?”
“Why not? Everybody seems to have theories about who he is. We should just stand up and ask everybody right now if they are Heath Hall.” She stood like she was actually going to yell that question across the cafeteria. I pulled on her arm, forcing her to sit back down.
“Evidence,” I reminded her.
“Right. Evidence. I’ve made lists of all the people at both events, cross-checked it with his followers online. I think I’ve narrowed it down to two suspects.”
“Robert?” I asked, wanting her to disagree with me.
“Yes.”
My shoulders slumped. “Wait, you said two. Who else?”
“Jackson.”
She let the name hang there while I processed it.
“No, that doesn’t make sense. Jackson was at Whitestone Bridge talking to us.”
“Exactly. But he mysteriously disappeared when the jumping took place.”
I thought back to that night. She was right. About five minutes before the jump, Jackson had left and I hadn’t seen him the rest of the night. Was Jackson Heath Hall? As I thought about all the conversations we’d had online, and now in real life too, my heart seemed to sing at that suggestion.
“And Robert,” Amelia continued. “He claims to know who he is but hasn’t been at a single Heath Hall event to support him.”
“You’re right.” That hadn’t occurred to me until now.
“I know.”
“Is it weird that our final list includes only people we actually know?” I asked.
“No. I definitely think it’s someone we know. He’s been private messaging you online. I don’t think he does that with anyone else. And besides, we didn’t really know Jackson before Heath Hall showed up at the school pool. Then all of a sudden we see him everywhere. Maybe he’s trying to keep us from discovering the secret. And Robert, well, he’s just been too secretive about this whole thing.”
“But wait, Jackson’s name was on the Just Jump leaderboard, remember? He’d jumped before and did it well. He wouldn’t need to face that fear.”
“Maybe he somehow rigged that to throw us off his track.”
That did sound like something Jackson would do. He was the one who cheated during our race.
As if he knew we were talking about him, Jackson came running by our table, doubled back, then slid in between me and Amelia on the bench seat.
Amelia flipped over the paper of names in front of her and exchanged a confused look with me.
“Do I blend in?” he whispered.
“What?”
“Will Colton notice me here?” His eyes met mine, sparkling with joy. I couldn’t help but smile.
I broke his gaze to look around, and just as I was about to ask him what he was talking about, saw Colton, a big football player, barrel into the courtyard.
“What did you do to him?” Amelia asked.
“Milk in a backpack is nowhere near as bad as milk in a gas tank. Wouldn’t you agree, Moore?”
I laughed.
“I could totally take him,” Jackson said. “But I don’t want to embarrass him.”
I nudged his leg with mine. “Sure you could.”
He nudged me back and left his thigh pressed there against my leg. That small act made my insides flip. He picked up one of my chips, raised it in the air toward Colton, and gave him that sly smile of his before he popped it in his mouth.
Colton narrowed his eyes. “Jackson, you’re a dead man.”
“You know you deserved it,” he called back.
Colton didn’t disagree. He just scowled and walked away.
Jackson put an arm around both me and Amelia and brought us into a group hug. “Thanks for the diversion, ladies. You were perfect.” With that, he stood and was gone again.
“See, he’s everywhere,” Amelia said.
I narrowed my eyes and watched him disappear around a building. “You’re right. You were also right about something else—he is kind of funny, I’ve decided.”
Her head whipped toward mine. “What?”
“What? You disagree now?”
She shook her head and flipped the paper back over. “Okay, back to the case. You have still been private messaging Heath Hall, right?”
“Yes.”
“Is there a way you can use this new intel to figure out which one he is?”
“I think, yes.”
She smiled. “And I’ll talk to the two guys this week and see what I can do from my end.”
“You’re going to ask them if they’re Heath Hall?”
“No, I’ve learned my lesson about that. They won’t admit it. I’ll be more subtle.”
“I can take on one of them too. I mean, you don’t have to try to crack both,” I said, focusing on a chip in front of me.
She smiled. “Which one, Hadley? Was there one in particular you want to handle?”
“I hate you.”
She laughed. “You’ve totally been Jacksoned.”
“I have not.”
She smirked. “Okay, you can have Jackson. I’ll deal with Robert.”
She stacked her loose papers and put them in her backpack. “So what actually happened? I thought Jackson annoyed you.”
“He still does sometimes, but he helped me escape school when I needed it and he was really nice about it. That kind of turned things around for us.”
“I can see that.” She looked at my still-lingering smile. “He seems to lighten you up a bit.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You know what it means.”
She was right. I did know. And I did feel light. As light as air.