CHAPTER 19

After several days of spying on Rosa Lipman, the distraction of having a new obsession hasn’t done anything to help the drowning-in-the-ocean flashbacks. One second I’m following Ms. Swanson’s calculations on the Smart Board and then her droning voice grows more distant as if at the end of a tunnel.

I’m standing in the middle of Robertson Bank and Trust in Charleston, waiting for my father. A man in a suit walks past me. His eyes stay on me while he continues to move toward the information desk. I smile at him, wait for the reaction. He bumps into the desk, turns bright red, and looks away from me. I roll my eyes, cool and calm. But under my pressed skirt and top, I’m sweating bullets, my pulse racing. Eyes off the security camera, Ellie. Calm down. Keep your heart rate under control.

And just when I manage to get myself in check, my mother walks through the revolving door of the bank. Her hair is swept up on her head, displaying her long neck and beautiful profile. She’s wearing a gray suit, heels, a briefcase in one hand. My newly calm demeanor goes out the window. She can’t be here. This can’t be happening.

I glance around, looking for someone, anyone. My chest rises and falls too rapidly. And they’re watching me. The pen tucked into my skirt pocket brushes my thigh. I look down, expecting it to glow bright, to give me away. I catch my mother’s eye. If only I were telepathic. Get out! Abort! I try, but she looks away, giving the tiniest shake of her head, telling me to calm down, to go with this new plan she and Dad made without me. A plan that ruins everything.

Mom turns her back to me, revealing something big and metal with brightly colored wires strapped to her. A bomb? What the hell is going on?

She turns to face me, lifts her hand, revealing what looks like a controller of some kind. She lays her thumb over the trigger and before I can stop her, she presses the button in a deliberate motion. I dive for the floor, squeezing my eyes shut, expecting an explosion. Instead, the building rumbles, the floor shaking. People all around scream and run. I glance out the glass windows. A giant wave rushes toward us. I stand staring at it, frozen in fear. The wave hits the glass, shattering it. Water floods in, filling the bank lobby from the floor up. Desks float beside me. I tread and tread, but the moment my head rises above the water, a wave knocks me over again.

“Nice, Kelsey…good use of the distance formula.”

I jerk awake, stifling a gasp. I glance around, expecting to see a tidal wave coming from somewhere, ready to knock me over. A few nearby classmates give me that are-you-on-something look.

My hand shoots in the air. “Bathroom break?”

Ms. Swanson gives me a nod, and I grab the wooden calculator prop we use as a hall pass and head out the door. I walk through several hallways, needing to move, needing freedom before confining myself in a bathroom or back in the classroom.

I pass an open classroom door and see my homeroom teacher, Mr. Chin, giving an animated lesson at the front of the room. He’s speaking Mandarin, writing Chinese characters on the board. He says something that makes the class laugh, but then he prompts one student to answer a question. Her eyes widen, and she shakes her head. This happens with two more kids. Mr. Chin calls on someone else and I pause in the hallway, scanning the room. Near the back, slumped down in his seat, eyes fluttering shut, is Miles.

Without straightening up in his seat or even looking awake, he answers Mr. Chin, speaking in Chinese. Despite looking a bit like Cody Smith in my lit class, Miles seems to please Mr. Chin, and he even claps for Miles.

At the sudden sound, Miles jolts upright, suddenly looking alert. I scoot quickly down the hall, away from the open door. So Miles Beckett speaks fluent Mandarin. Figures. Harper and I are both whizzes when it comes to foreign languages, especially accents, but neither of us knows a language as complex as Mandarin. That one would take years of learning.

Like Miles, I’ve become a bit of a teacher’s pet in most of my classes—lots of hard work and false enthusiasm—so I decide Ms. Swanson probably won’t mind if I take a long time in the bathroom.

I head out the front doors, toward the athletic fields, and take out my phone to dial the school office number.

“This is Judge Cohen… My son, Jacob, left this morning without taking his meds,” I say. “You know how he gets without them. I’m two minutes away… Mind sending him out front to meet me? I’m due in court soon.”

“Of course,” she says. “I’ll page him in class.”

After hanging up, it only takes about three minutes for Jacob to appear outside. He looks around, probably expecting his mom’s car, probably panicking because she’s supposed to be out of town. I wave him over, and we duck under an awning, out of range of the school’s security cameras trained on both the parking lot and the athletic fields.

“You called me?” Jacob asks, startled.

I shrug. “Indirectly.”

“What’s up?”

I take out my phone again and flip through the photos from the other night. “So, Rosa Lipman?”

“Yeah?” he says eagerly.

“She’s a victim of identity theft.”

He frowns. “I’m supposed to feel sorry for her now? Not happening.”

I lean against the school building, my arms folded across my chest. “Rosa Lipman is a thirty-two-year-old woman who lives in Maryland, works as a CPA, divorced six years ago, and recently had her identity stolen by someone who keeps opening lines of credit in the Fredricksburg, Virginia, and D.C. areas.”

Jacob’s eyes widen. “So you mean that she—that—”

“That your dad’s under-the-desk gal pal is not Rosa Lipman? No, she’s not. But she’s definitely making Rosa’s life hell.”

He leans against the wall, still in shock. Then skepticism fills his face. “Are you sure? There has to be more than one Rosa Lipman on the East Coast.”

“With the same Social Security number?” I shake my head. “It’s not a mistake.”

He doesn’t argue but also doesn’t look completely convinced.

“I can prove it to you, but when I do, she’ll be gone,” I warn him.

“Gone? Doing what?”

“A phone call,” I say. “But maybe it would be better to take this to your dad and let the grown-ups deal with it?”

“That won’t work. He’s fucking lovesick.” Jacob hesitates then says firmly, “Do it.”

“Pull up that application on your phone and give me her number.” When he does, I dial, put it on speakerphone, and wait for Fake Rosa to answer. It takes three rings.

“Hello, is this Rosa Lipman?”

“Yes, it is,” she says all breathy and genuine. She’s definitely a professional.

“My name is Betty Summers. I work for the Internal Revenue Service’s identity theft department. I have some good news about the claim you filed last month.”

“Oh, you do?” Some of the pro in her tone fades and there’s a hint of nerves.

“We’ve traced the perpetrator to an address in Fredericksburg, Virginia.” I glance at Jacob and then spit out his address from memory. “Fourteen Germantown Lane… We’re sending the local authorities out there now to make the arrest. Our surveillance shows the fake Rosa Lipman on the premises—”

The line goes dead, and Jacob and I stand there for a moment staring at the words call ended on my screen.

Then Jacob lifts his hands in the air and gives a yell. “Dude, that was awesome!”

I reach up and slap a hand over his mouth, nodding toward the classroom on the other side of the wall. I give him about ten seconds to celebrate because hell, I kind of want to celebrate, too. I haven’t done anything like this in forever. Then I turn businesslike. I find a pic I took on the beach the other night, one involving him snorting something from Bret’s or Dominic’s stash. “I heard you’re hoping to go to Columbia, like your mom. Law school, too…”

He looks at the picture and takes a few steps back, away from me. “Damn…that stings.”

“Relax.” I roll my eyes. “I’m just keeping this in case you talk. Not a word to anyone that I helped you, understood?”

“What about Justice and Chantel a-and Bret…” he sputters. “They were in the car.”

“Tell them you did it yourself.” When he looks unsure about that, I add, “You can say that I sent you a link to a background check site—any idiot can find what I dug up on your dad’s assistant. I’m not worried about that. But if you want to brag about running her off, you made the call, you posed as the IRS, not me.”

“So I’m Betty Summers?”

“Now you’re catching on.” I pat his shoulder. “Oh, and I’ll take my payment in cash.”

I head for the school’s front doors, leaving Jacob standing there. “Thanks, Ellie! I owe you one.”

“No, you owe me one thousand.” Realizing my position of power, I spin back around. “One more thing.”

He waits while I walk toward him again.

“I need you to answer a question and not mention it to anyone. Ever. Okay?”

He swallows. “Okay.”

“You’ve known Bret for a while, right?”

“Yeah, like, forever. We went to St. Matthews together before Holden.”

“Aren’t you Jewish?”

He shrugs. “Yeah, but it’s a good school. That’s all my parents care about.”

I lower my voice. “Can you think of any reason Bret would have followed Simon and me from the spring formal to my apartment?”

“You and Simon—” His eyes get huge. “Wait, the spring formal? That’s the night he—”

“Died,” I finish for him. The jock brain is getting annoying. “Any ideas?”

Jacob stands there for several seconds looking like the most uncomfortable person in the world. If I wasn’t so desperate for this answer, I’d enjoy watching him squirm.

“I don’t know, Ellie…” He appears to be thinking. “Simon did hang out with us that one time, and Bret was all buddy-buddy, kissing his ass, probably because of his dad, but he wouldn’t— Hell, I don’t know.”

“Yeah, that makes two of us.” I sigh and leave him there while I head inside the school.

When I get back to algebra, Ms. Swanson gives me this look that says twenty-five-minute bathroom trips are outside of the don’t-need-to-explain window.

“Sorry I was gone so long,” I say. “Mrs. Harris was giving a tour and got interrupted. I offered to show the family around the east wing. I remembered my tour of Holden and how nice it was to have an actual student offer insight.”

Her frown turns to a smile. “How nice.”

Then she proceeds to tell me everything I missed over the last twenty-five minutes. Unfortunately, not all my teachers are this gullible, even if I am a favorite.

Later, after lunch, I find an envelope full of cash at the bottom of my locker. Jacob is a man of his word. But I still can’t believe he’s paying me a thousand dollars for that. And he footed the bill for the criminal and credit checks, so I’ve got no overhead costs.

After school, I’ll take this money straight to the dentist office and have them put it toward that bill Harper is struggling to pay. A few more scandals among my classmates, and I might be able to take care of all of it.