Chapter 16

The Slate with the password protection and the life-threatening messages, that I had remembered to charge. But my actual phone—the one I used to stay in touch with my friends—yeah, I had forgotten all about it.

So I was stuck grabbing the charger from my bag, plugging it into an outlet in a deserted hallway, and then waiting impatiently for my phone to come to life. The short length of the charger made me feel like a tiger prowling around the limits of its cage. Actually, that analogy gave me way too much credit. I was more like a worried labradoodle puppy.

I winced when my phone informed me it was at zero percent battery life, then became too distracted by unread text messages to feel guilty.

Audrey: How is it, Em? I want deets.

Ben: You still alive?

Audrey: Have you seen any familiar faces there?

Wow, real subtle, Audrey. You might as well just ask if I’ve seen Nasir. We both know that’s what you really want to hear.

Ben: Cam wants to know if you’re coming to his game this weekend. Are you?

I checked my watch and decided to call Ben, on the off-chance that he could duck away from P.E. to talk. It was possible that he’d have left his phone in his locker, but I doubted it. After only the briefest of hesitations, I began pacing a crescent moon around the outlet while I waited for him to answer.

It felt so good to hear his voice that I nearly sank to the floor in relief. It was ridiculous. I’d seen him only yesterday. I’d been able to keep it together then. No crying. No trembling bottom lip. If my knees had felt weaker than usual, well, I’d blamed it on the interrogation room grilling with Detective Dumbass. Somehow every shitty moment from the day before had been easier to withstand than Ben’s simple, you okay?

Because I wasn’t okay. I was stuck at this stupid school without my best friends. An eternity spent facing-off with Peyton and her cronies again and again and again stretched before me. Nobody here—with the possible exception of Kayla—gave a shit about me.

I’d never felt so lost before. So utterly unmoored. The only ties keeping me in place were the cord attaching my phone to a power outlet and the fear that the outside world would be even crueler than Emptor Academy.

“I—” my voice cracked and I shut my eyes in embarrassment. I didn’t want to be this girl. Needy. Weak. Desperate to hear the boy she liked insist that everything was going to be okay. “Sure. Fine. I, uh, miss you.”

The long pause on his end of the line sent me racing toward the worst conclusions.

After a total of what? Twelve hours apart? That was way too clingy. Ben would know that something was up for sure. He’d figure out that I had a crush on him and then everything would change. He’d start being too careful around me so that he didn’t accidentally lead me on. Every time we saw each other he would arrange for there to be some kind of buffer. Ben would worry that without Audrey or Cameron around I’d squeeze him to death with my emotional tentacles.

“I miss you and Audrey,” I quickly amended, before he could launch into the I-think-we-work-best-as-friends talk. “The kids here are worse than you can imagine.”

I laughed as my shoulder muscles finally began to loosen. “Pretty much. There’s this one girl named Peyton who wears thousands of dollars worth of diamonds in her ears while she slices people to ribbons with her eyes. If I wrote her into one of my books, I’d be accused of exaggerating. She’s that kind of evil.”

I could hear the smile in Ben’s voice when he said, “I’d still put my money on you in a fight, Em.”

“Absolutely. That imagination of yours doesn’t work the same way everyone else’s does, which makes it ten times more dangerous.”

The grin that spread across my face was pure mischief. “So does that mean I scare you, Ben?”

“Constantly,” he drawled. “And now look what’s happened? You’ve been abducted by a preppy gang of rich kids. Any day now you’ll be wearing argyle vests and playing lacrosse.”

I laughed. “You could come visit me here. Make sure that nobody comes too close with a pink sweater set and pearls.” I tried to keep the desperation out of my voice. “I’m sure I could get you a guest pass or something. There’s this driver named Force who might have killed the president of Chile, but if you can overlook that, he’s really not too scary.”

“Em.” There was a note of something in Ben’s voice that made me catch my breath. It felt like a warning. As if he was trying really hard not to interfere—fighting the urge to say yes and race over here and take control—and my suggestion was only making everything harder for him. Making everything worse.

“You and Audrey, of course.” I felt like an idiot constantly making it an outing for two when what I craved was some alone time with him. “You could both visit. In fact, I bet you could both enroll here. My scholarship could include the two of you.”

Ben laughed, but not as if he saw much humor in the situation. “I seriously doubt your scholarship is a one-size-fits-all-of-Emmy-and-her-friends type deal.”

“Well, since I don’t think the scholarship really exists, I don’t see why I couldn’t negotiate something with President Gilcrest,” I said, warming to the idea. “I’ll just tell him that I need you and Audrey to help with the dead guy and—”

“You told the president of your new school about the dead guy?” Ben demanded.

“He brought it up. Apparently the two of them were friends. Sort of.” I tried to mentally replay the conversation, but it was hard to concentrate with Ben grumbling in my ear.

“You shouldn’t be there, Emmy. Not if the president of the academy is somehow involved in this mess. You need to hand the Slate over to the cops!”

“I’ll go with you,” Ben said steamrolling over any objection. “It’ll take ten minutes. We’ll walk into the precinct, ask to see the cops you spoke to before, and say that you were still in shock during your first questioning.”

“Then you can spend the night at my place. You don’t even have to go back to your apartment, okay? My parents have missed you, and Cam wants to show you his new curveball. You can come home, Em.”

It was funny, I’d called Ben’s place my home-away-from-home hundreds of times, without realizing that I had it all wrong. Home was sleeping on the spare mattress that he kept ready for me underneath his bed. Home was scrambling eggs in the kitchen with his parents while Cam waged war with his plastic Transformers against his unsuspecting dinosaurs. It was knowing that I didn’t have to walk on tiptoe to avoid waking the asshole du jour.

“I got a message last night, Ben,” I lowered my voice instinctively. “It said, ‘I won’t stop until I find you.’”

“All the more reason for you to hand it over to the police and let them stop it for you!”

I rubbed my forehead as a wave of exhaustion hit hard. It was so tempting to walk right out the door, disconnecting the phone cord in the process so I wouldn’t be tied down to anything—not even this conversation with Ben.

“It said ‘I won’t stop until I find you,’ Ben. Not ‘I won’t stop until I find it.’ Whatever is going on, it’s personal. It’s me. Handing the Slate over to the cops won’t make that go away.”

The momentary silence that hung between us felt saturated with the weight of his exasperation. “You know that imagination of yours, Em? This is the kind of trouble it makes for you. You think there’s something special about you, but there isn’t. You’re not the princess in a fairytale. You’re just a girl who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and for some stupid reason has decided that she needs to stay in the wrongness instead of fixing it!”

No need for the let’s-just-stay-friends talk or the it’s-not-you-it’s-me excuse. Ben didn’t need to make his position any clearer. I’d gotten the message and it was humiliating enough to last a lifetime. I stood frozen in horror as it finally sank in that we were never, ever getting together. That after careful consideration, he’d reached the conclusion that I was nothing special.

I hung up and leaned against the wall as my whole body shook with tremors of self-loathing.

It wasn’t rejection, I told myself numbly. It couldn’t count as rejection if I hadn’t officially put the offer out on the table. We had merely reached an understanding.

He wanted me to come home because we were friends. Buddies. Pals. Not because I was anyone special to him. My chest felt excruciatingly tight, as if I’d been sentenced to die beneath great slabs of stone during the Salem witch trials.

Ben: We need to talk.

Sure. Absolutely. Just as soon as the idea of pretending that everything was normal between us didn’t make me want to vomit. I’d give him a call the instant I figured out how not to be in love with him. Considering that I’d been trying to move past this stupid one-sided crush for years, I didn’t think that would be happening anytime soon.

My pride still required that I respond to his text. Otherwise he might think I was sulking or pouting or throwing a hissy fit. Or worse, he might stumble across the truth. I quickly dashed off a response and hit send before I could reconsider it.

Emmy: Later. Tell Cam that I probably won’t make it.

I tried to imagine how a plucky heroine would handle this kind of rejection. Would she drown her sorrows in a pint of ice cream? Maybe. The idea definitely held appeal, but rocky road wasn’t going to fix any of my problems.