By the time I left Seth’s house, I had five missed messages from Zach and three ignored calls from Misty. I knew what that meant without even listening to the voice mails. Dad usually didn’t get home until after dinner on Saturdays, but occasionally he came back early, and it was already well past seven when I jumped on my bike to pedal home.
Halfway there, the sky opened up and dumped all over me – turning the road to river. My wheels cut a sharp line through the rising water as I sped toward my street. I was pumping so fast, I’d have been soaked with sweat if not with rain. I guess a part of me hoped Dad had called from Iowa City to say he was on his way and that I might still have a chance of beating him back. But that hope was dashed when I turned the corner and saw his car in the driveway.
I rolled right past it without stopping, all the way into the yard, where I ditched my bike in the mud and scaled the back porch to the little slope of roof outside my bedroom window. My sneakers slipped on the shingles, and my fingers struggled to get purchase on the ledge, but finally, I found a foothold and managed to wedge the window open.
My feet weren’t even on the carpet yet when I saw Misty waiting with her arms crossed, long pink fingernails digging into the skin at her elbows, like she was physically holding something back. My first instinct was to tell her off for invading my privacy, but I was silenced by the look on her face.
‘Your father is home,’ she hissed.
‘Does he—’
‘No. He thinks you’re up here studying Spanish.’ Her cheeks went all blotchy red just then, and her voice broke in a way that made us both uncomfortable. ‘He has no idea that you put me in a position to lie to him – no clue that you took advantage of me – that you have zero respect for—’
‘Shh. Please.’ I knew shushing her wasn’t exactly the right response, but her voice was rising with every word, and neither of us wanted Dad to hear. I made a pleading face. ‘I’m sorry, okay? You’re right, and I’m sorry.’
Misty looked startled by my apology. And for every ounce of her surprise, I felt two ounces of disgust. The way she was just standing there, her arms all crossed and her face all full of worry, like she was a … parent … made me want to puke. I vowed to never grovel to her again.
‘It wasn’t cool for me to cut it so close,’ I said. The words were painful, scraping my throat on their way out.
‘Or to ignore my phone calls,’ she said.
‘Or to ignore your phone calls.’
‘Or to lie to me.’
‘Or to lie to you – wait, what?’
‘I called Zach. His mom picked up his cell. Apparently he was at a chess tournament all day.’
Your move, Eli.
I closed my eyes, wishing I had checked Zach’s messages right away.
‘I’m sorry for that too,’ I said. But that was all I was giving her.
She stood in stony silence for a few more moments, waiting for an explanation, but the only sound was the squish of my water-soaked socks.
Finally, she took pity on me. She marched into the bathroom attached to my room to grab a towel, which she tossed at my face on her way out. Before closing the door, she turned back.
‘Eli, I’m not trying to be your mom, but I can’t really be your friend either. I have to be something in between, okay?’
If by ‘in between,’ you mean neither, then sure.
I nodded. The way she said it – all tired and sad – made me feel like a jerk, which made me rage at her for making me feel like a jerk. And round and round it went. Misty got my feelings all twisted up that way sometimes.
When she finally closed the door, I stood there in my room for another solid minute, dripping rainwater and guilt onto the carpet.
A buzz against my leg shook me out of my stupor. I squeezed my phone out of my wet pocket. Another text from Zach. I had muted him after the first few. This latest message was short.
I would have covered for you … whatever it is you’re doing.
Shit. I was failing all over the place today. I hoped the ACC was worth it.
Sorry, I texted back, because telling him anything else would only make it worse.
No response.
He wanted an explanation, not an apology.
Normally, I would escape all this disappointment online, but right that minute, I needed a break from computers. Instead, I blew the dust off my Spanish workbooks and spent some time conjugating verbs. Ten minutes later, feeling lost in gibberish, I wished I’d gone to Zach’s to study after all. I was tempted to ask Misty for help, but she’d done me too many favors already. It was hard enough to apologise to her without having to beg her to tutor me too.
I didn’t remember falling asleep, but the next thing I knew, sunlight was streaming into my room, and I was peeling my face off a workbook page featuring colourful pictures of produce. My cell phone was vibrating along a small patch of my desk that wasn’t covered in cords or hard drives. I slapped the phone until the vibrating stopped and flipped a switch on the side to turn the volume on. My head was drifting back toward my Spanish-workbook-turned-pillow when the phone went off again, this time blaring an irritating noise.
‘Some snooze,’ I muttered, stifling the alarm for a second time.
I shuffled into the bathroom and did a double take at my reflection over the sink. My cheek looked like it was covered in tattoos. Ink from where I had penned in the Spanish words for the various produce had transferred to my face while I slept. I grabbed a washcloth and started scrubbing the manzanas and naranjas off my jaw. Through the open door to my room, I heard my phone’s alarm again. Except it wasn’t as shrill as my alarm. Now that I’d had a few minutes to wake up, I realised it was Sunday.
I never set alarms for Sundays. Sundays were for sleeping in.
In my morning fog, I’d been silencing text messages – probably from Zach. Man, I owed him such an apology. He wasn’t a guy to hold a grudge, but I wouldn’t blame him if the bitter taste lingered on this one. The thing is, Zach and I weren’t just best friends; we were pretty much exclusively friends. Not inviting him was one thing. Forcing him to lie for me added insult to injury. I tried to imagine how I’d feel if our roles were reversed and shook my head at my still-ink-smudged reflection.
‘You are a schmuck,’ I told mirror-me.
I finished wiping the stains from my cheek and inspected my jawline to see if I was due for a shave, but even with a lot of squinting, I only found a few disappointing patches of barely-there stubble.
From the bedroom, my phone beeped once more.
I stripped off my clothes, now smelling a little mildewy after last night’s ride in the rain, then grabbed my phone off the desk for the middle portion of my ‘shower, shit, shave’ routine. Once I was perched on the throne, I checked the messages.
Not one of them was from Zach.
It was a moment of déjà vu from the message bombs Mouse had sent me earlier in the week. But these messages weren’t from Mouse either. They were from the anonymous account we’d set up to monitor the website. I scrolled down the list – a dozen new comments.
Comments on what?
We’d been waiting for forum activity, but comments were for pages and posts, and the only post we had up was Jordan’s mug. Why would people suddenly have something to say about that?
After the list of alerts, I had a single message each from Seth and Mouse, both simple and short. Mouse had sent a smiley rat-face emoticon with devil horns, and Seth’s message was just two words: ‘Phase 2.’
With a tightening sensation in my throat, I closed my messages and opened my browser, my thumbs shaking as they tapped out FriendsofBishop.com. When the page loaded, it wasn’t Jordan’s mug I was staring at but Brett Carver’s. The junkie jock and his syringe full of steroids were the new front-page stars, and above the video a headline screamed:
Haver High Hero Exposed.
Who will be next?