High-profile. Famous. The beautiful, tragically missing Hope Jensen, the shifty Tony Gardner.
Hope sure had a perfect setup. Or Hope had me perfectly set up.
I didn’t want to be famous. When I met Hope, I’d heard that her parents had some TV show and that some people thought she was some kind of a celebrity, but that had nothing to do with why I wanted to go out with her. I wanted to go out with her because she was cool, funny, and so pretty, and she actually had a brain.
And the whole celebrity thing? It was weird. No one cared who I was until I was with Hope. That was kind of amazing. When you go through three years of high school with barely anyone knowing your name, then suddenly everyone wants to know everything about you… Well, that’s kind of cool. But now it was awful.
“I thought there were still some privacy laws,” my father said while clucking his tongue at an article in the newspaper. “Aren’t they not allowed to print his name because he’s a minor?”
I shrugged. “Bellingham said I’m not a suspect. That because I haven’t been charged with anything officially, they can say my name. Right to information or public record or something.”
Hope must have known that. She must have known that she could up and disappear, and Renee and Ashleigh would let all the right people know that I was the last one to talk to Hope, the last one to argue with her—and they would come running: the police, the press.
I looked out the living room window, half expecting to see Bruce and Becky Jensen striding across our lawn, perfectly coifed, lapel mikes secure as they filmed a surprise-the-lowlife episode of Wake Up the Bay!
“I didn’t do anything though. The only reason they’re questioning me is because Hope was my girlfriend. And…I guess I was the last one to talk to her.”
My mother smoothed her hands on her jeans. “I’m sure they’re just trying to get all the information they can.”
“Meanwhile, the media is dragging our son’s name through the mud. There’s got to be a law…” My dad was furious, pacing. I could tell it made my mother nervous, and I was glad that Alice was an iPad kid, completely absorbed in whatever cartoon was marching across the screen. “What did Mr. Bellingham say? There has to be something he can do.”
I swallowed hard. “I just went to talk.” My head started to swirl. Suspect. Attorneys. Missing kids, the media on my lawn, the police in my living room. If this was Hope, this was some evil plot.
Go big or go home, she always said.
I gritted my teeth. “It’ll all blow over.”
“How can you be so sure?” my mother asked.
I poured myself a glass of water and downed it. “I just know Hope.”
Hope was going to pop out of the woodwork any day now, grinning—once she, the police, and the media had sufficiently pulverized me and my reputation—because that was the way Hope operated. That’s what this was: a revenge plot. I had gotten one over on Hope, and she was going to tear me to shreds because of it.
I thought of the throbbing cursor urging me to share her location. I thought of myself typing yes.
Coincidence.
Hope was just trying to get back at me.
Right?