Tony
I finished my story—again—while Pace stared at me and MacNamara took notes. I tried to look nonchalant, but my eyes kept going to the video camera, to the stupid red light that flashed, letting me know that everything I was saying was being recorded.
Again.
We lapsed into silence—an incredibly uncomfortable silence—and I opened my mouth and rushed to fill the silence, but Bellingham put his hand on my arm and shot me a stern look.
“Any more questions?”
Pace and MacNamara exchange a look, and I had a vague flashback to some Law and Order episode. I wondered if they were going to do some sort of good cop/bad cop routine. And then I remembered that this was my life, not some television show.
“So why don’t you tell us about the Internet?” Pace said.
I swallowed a ball of white-hot heat. “Excuse me?”
MacNamara produced a file folder, opened it, and started reading. “Instagram. Twitter. Snapchat.”
Social media. I started to relax.
“Hope was on everything.”
I nodded slowly.
“Tinder, Cupid Cat. She even signed herself up for something called Bangbook.” MacNamara looked up at me, and I shifted. “And for the Desert Storm Survival chat room. Some interesting choices for a high school girl, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Bellingham blew out a dramatic sigh. “Are you going somewhere with this, officer?”
“Hope’s information was everywhere online. And prior to her going missing, she was complaining about it. Do you have anything to say about that, Tony?”
I thought of that final screen: Share Location? Saw Hope’s GPS coordinates line up in my head before they were broadcast out to the world, to any idiot with a computer and an Internet connection. I had put a target on Hope’s back.
“I don’t think Hope is really missing—” I said quickly.
“We have nothing further.” Bellingham clipped the end of my statement, but MacNamara was already on me.
“And where do you think Hope is?”
I shook my head and clasped my hands in my lap. “I don’t know, but her friend Everly even said…”
The legs of Bellingham’s chair scraped loudly against the floor as he quickly stood up and grabbed my arm. “Are we done here?”
“Who exactly is Everly, Tony?” Pace wanted to know.
“Everly Byer,” I supplied, avoiding Bellingham’s death glare. “She goes to our school. She’s right outside.” I pointed, like she would mysteriously appear through the wall.
“Isn’t she the one who came to visit you?” Pace asked calmly.
I could feel myself go white, could feel the saliva go sour in my mouth. “She just stopped by. She just came by on her own.”
There was a hint of a smile on Pace’s face, and I didn’t like it.
“And she’s a good friend of Hope’s?”
I thought of Everly sitting at my kitchen table, of the way her eyes were hard and steel blue when she talked about Hope, and I started to feel uneasy. “Well…yeah. I mean, they were.”
“And she has some ideas about where Hope may have gone?” It was MacNamara then, her voice soft and motherly, encouraging even. I stared at my shoes.
“You should talk to her maybe.” I thought of Everly’s lips then, pressed against mine, eager, insistent, surprising. I felt the heat cross my cheeks, and I knew I was blushing. I stared harder at my shoes, hoping no one would notice, hoping the earth would split open and swallow me up, or split open and spit Hope back out.
* * *
Most of the crowds had dispersed by the time I was done. I scanned the group that was left, looking for Everly, but stopped when Bellingham clapped a hand on my shoulder and growled in my ear.
“Next time, I do all the talking.”
I nodded dumbly, half listening, half wondering if Pace and MacNamara had sent someone out to collect Everly. Was she giving her statement right now?
Bellingham kept hold of my arm, and my parents flanked me on either side. I walked like a robot, head down, trying to focus on putting one foot in front of the other, nothing else. But I heard them.
“Mr. Gardner, Mr. Gardner, are you officially a suspect in this case?”
“Mr. Gardner, did you a give a statement to the police?”
“Mr. Gardner! Mr. Gardner!”
“Tony!”
I whipped around, staring at these strangers who knew my name. They leered. They shoved their microphones forward.
A heavyset man in a Channel 7 windbreaker stepped in front of us, arm extended, microphone an inch from my nose.
“Where’s Hope?” he asked. “Tony, where’s Hope?”