Bex wasn’t sure what happened first.
The Red Devils held off a Fighting Mustangs play that brought the crowd to its feet, whooping and hollering and stomping and cheering.
A rough hand closed on Bex’s upper arm.
She screamed. Deep and loud, ripping from the pit of her soul.
The crowd roared.
The hand around her arm tightened.
She gripped the cement pillar in front of her with her free arm, her hand wrapping around, fingers clutching at the rough concrete.
“Please!” Bex shrieked.
“Please,” came the gruff voice.
She almost recognized the eyes in the darkness. Were they his?
“Dad?” Bex’s voice was a choked whisper.
“Bex?”
Bex blinked, feeling like a wild animal caught between hunters.
Finally, Trevor chuckled and touched her softly on the shoulder before pulling her in to him.
“Hey, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. You were gone for a long time and I thought—are you okay?”
Bex realized that her mouth was hanging open, her body stiff even as Trevor’s fingers trailed up her arm.
“Are you okay?” he asked again.
She forced herself to pump her head, her eyes scanning the space.
“Did you see someone else here just a minute ago? A man?”
“A man? I saw Rod Delveccio giving Tabitha Collins a hell of a mouth check back there, but I wouldn’t say he was a real man about it.”
“No,” she said. “A guy, a man. Right here”—she patted the air—“by me. He had his hand on my arm.”
He cocked his head, gave an eyebrows-up frown. “There was no one else down here that I saw. What do you mean, he had his hand on your arm? Are you okay? Did some guy try to hurt you?”
Trevor seemed to puff up in the chest, his cheeks flushing a hint of crimson as he whipped around, looking for some imaginary Lothario.
“No, Trevor, I guess I was just…” Bex looked around again, feeling exposed, feeling watched. “I guess I just thought I saw someone. Must have been nothing.”
“You ready?”
Bex swallowed hard, Detective Schuster’s message burned in her head. He’s here, Bex. She looped her arm through Trevor’s and held on tight, trying to get as close as possible.
Here in Kill Devil Hills? Here at the game?
She scrutinized every face she could, paying extra attention to those who glanced at her, but it was futile: there seemed to be thousands of people, and half of them were wearing baseball hats pulled low or had their faces painted red and black. It should have been impossible to spot someone, but Bex was sure she could feel eyes on her, that she was pinned under someone’s unfaltering gaze. When she turned, she saw Laney and Chelsea deep in conversation with a clutch of other cheerleaders. Zach was at the top of the bleachers staring down, but was he looking at her or at his GoPro?
And halfway down, arms crossed in front of her chest, was Lauren, staring passed Bex with flat eyes that looked vacant, unfocused. Bex’s stomach seized as the chatter and noise went on around her. People approached her, chucking her shoulder, fist-bumping Trevor, jumping up and down. All around her, people moved forward while she seemed to wind down, slipping into some sort of vortex where everyone but her swirled and blended. She stood out like the hard-lined oddity.
Trevor tried to convince Bex to come with him out to the beach where Laney, Chelsea, and the rest of the spirit squad were setting up a bonfire and a keg, but Bex’s nerves were a jangled mess. She slid down in Trevor’s car, not sure whether she was hiding from her father or Detective Schuster, not entirely sure whether she wanted to sit by Trevor’s fire or pack up all her things and run.
Once home, she didn’t bother turning on the lights. She went straight from the front door up to her room without checking in with Denise or Michael. She undressed in the dark, using a bath towel to rub off the pitchfork tattoo that Chelsea had insisted she wear since halftime, then folding herself into the relaxing cool of her mint-green sheets. She pressed her eyelids shut even as Detective Schuster called and texted her. She glanced at the first text, “Did you get my message? Has he contacted you?” then thumbed the phone to silent and pushed it under the bed.
Her father was in Kill Devil Hills. She thought that he had come for her, that he was there under the bleachers but—but what? Had she made the whole thing up? And if she hadn’t, what had happened to him? Bex’s heart skipped from thrilled to terrified to guilt-ridden to sick. The filmstrip of girls… Detective Schuster, convincing Bex she was doing the right thing.
But what if I’m not?
Bex pulled her laptop from her desk and opened it. She began to type:
BETHANNER has requested a private chat with GAMECREATOR.
Immediately, GAMECREATOR accepted.
BETHANNER: Who is this?
GAMECREATOR: You put buckets of powdered sugar on your waffles. At least you did whenever we went to the diner and your gran wasn’t around to stop you.
Bex’s head started to buzz. Her palms started to sweat. Could this really be him? She kept typing and continued with a question-and-answer session that lasted deep into the night, that convinced her that if GAMECREATOR wasn’t her father, he was someone very close. That was the last conscious thought Bex had before falling off to sleep.
• • •
“Shouldn’t they have to pay us for this or something?” Chelsea whined. “School’s been out for an hour. We should get overtime.”
Bex unfurled another loop of red crepe paper and Trevor cut it off. “If you’re getting paid to go to school, I need to know,” Trevor said.
“It’s one day,” Laney said.
“It’s a week,” Chelsea corrected, holding up the appropriate number of fingers. “Three days to decorate these ugly halls, one day to make the ‘Yay parents!’ posters, and one day to hand out punch and cookies. All after school hours.”
“In other words, it’s Back to School Night.”
Bex smiled thinly. For the past two days, she had been emailing GAMECREATOR. She was sure now that he was her father, and she refused to allow herself to think of anything else—not Darla, not Detective Schuster. She would draw him out when the time was right, but for now, Bex was enjoying their e-chats, her father asking her about Gran and bringing up memories—ones that no one but her father could have known.
“Are your foster parents coming?” Trevor asked.
“Michael and Denise are the coolest. I wish my parents would give me up for adoption. I’d sign up to stay with them.”
Laney shot Chelsea a murderous look and Chelsea shrugged, sticking a piece of tape to the crepe paper and smacking it to the wall.
“Um, I guess,” Bex said. But in her mind she pictured her father here, talking to her teachers, impressed at how quickly she caught up, examining the series of ocean paintings she had done in art class.
“Bex! Bex!”
Bex snapped to attention. Trevor was standing directly in front of her. “I don’t know where you’ve been all day, but it sure isn’t here.” His voice was playful, but there was an edge to it that made guilt flutter through her.
“I’m sorry. I’ve just got…a lot on my mind.” She unfurled the last of the crepe paper, and Chelsea stuck it to the wall. “Are we good here?”
• • •
When Trevor dropped Bex off, she was ready to race to her room to start another chat with her father, but Denise met her on the landing.
“I was just going upstairs,” Bex said.
Denise gently turned her around and led her down the stairs and into the kitchen where Michael was chopping vegetables.
“You’ve been holed up in your room every day for a week now.”
“Yeah,” Michael said. “What have you been doing up there? Running a meth lab? A salamander-fighting ring?”
Denise stole a stalk of celery from Michael; he waited for her to turn around before handing Bex a cookie.
“Just a lot of schoolwork,” Bex said, her mind going to the web forum, to her father who was probably waiting to talk to her.
“Well, tonight schoolwork can wait until after dinner. You’re starting to get computer screen pallor.” Denise pulled out a chair. “Sit, talk, interact.”
Bex did as she was told, answering questions about Trevor and school and whether she was interested in any school activities. She tried to be as social and as normal as possible, but she wanted to talk with her father. When dinner was mercifully over, she bounded up the stairs and sat in front of her screen, frowning at the only message in her inbox:
GAMECREATOR has left this conversation.
A beat passed before the icon showed GAMECREATOR logging back in. Bex started to type, but stopped when GAMECREATOR’s message came through:
Don’t have access to computer much longer. Can I talk to you?
Bex tried to swallow the boulder in her throat. Slowly, she watched her hands settle on the keys. She watched herself type the three letters that would make GAMECREATOR and her father real.
BETHANNER: Yes.
She gave him her phone number, then stared at her phone, feeling beads of sweat running down the back of her neck. She jumped at every little sound, certain it would be an incoming call.
And then the phone rang.
She stared at it, dumbfounded. Her hand shaky, she slid the phone on.
“Hello?” Her breath came out a strangled whisper.
There was no sound on the other end of the phone, just a dull static and Bex could feel herself straining to hear if there was someone there. She pressed the phone hard against her ear, listening for a wisp of breath or the peals of laughter from a prankster screaming that, as always, the joke was on her.
“Bethy.”
The man’s voice plucked her from her surroundings and dragged her back ten years to the last time she heard it. Bex wondered how she could have ever thought she’d forget. It was as if he’d never stopped talking to her, never stopped calling her Bethy.
Bex’s uncertainty about what to call him, how to address him went out the window and the word rolled out. “Dad!”
She hadn’t meant to cry. The tears rolled over her cheeks. “Dad.”
Her father sniffed and chuckled on his end of the phone. “I’ve dreamed of hearing your voice for ten long years.”
Bex nodded her head in agreement. “Me too.”
“I can’t believe it’s really you.”
She remembered she was supposed to be skeptical, analytical, on guard, but all she could think was that she was on the phone with her father—her dad!—and he was crying and sniffling and as stunned and happy as she was.
He did miss me. He does love me.
“Bethy, I don’t have much time.”
“Where are you?”
A slight pause, a sound like he was sucking air through his teeth. “I can’t tell you that.”
“I can help you, Dad. I know I can. And Michael and Denise—”
“That the couple I saw you with?”
Bex’s heart dropped into her gut. “You saw me?”
“We’re family, Bethy. The first thing I did was come and find you.”