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  “That must keep you up nights,” Andy says. “People out there calling you a turd.”

  “I’m over it.”

  “Who’s doing it?” he asks. “Who’s calling you that stuff?”

  “Why, you going to protect me?”

  “If I make it through the night, I might.”

  Cute. I can’t even count the number of ways I don’t want to get into this with him. With anyone. So I say, “Thanks. It’s nobody in particular.”

  “Is it people at school?” Andy presses. “Or, like, online or something?”

  “Sure, yeah,” I say quickly.

  “Sucks, doesn’t it?” Andy says, and his voice has gotten softer. “People calling you names like that.”

  “You could say that.” I stop and consider for a second. “Is that what happened to you? I mean, people talking shit?”

  “It has happened,” Andy says. “But is that what parked me at the top of a hill overlooking the city? No, not exactly. I’m not that big of a nancy.”

  “Okay,” I say carefully, and peek through my blinds, as if Noah could’ve gotten here in two minutes. “So what, then? How’d you end up—here?”

  Andy is silent. And a heartbeat later that silence is filled by three thumps on my door.

  “Crap, hold on,” I say quickly into the phone, and go open the door.

  Jack stands there with the laptop resting on his upturned arm. He flips it toward me, showing the chat window with Noah that I, of course, did not close. Like I said, I’m not a fast thinker.

  “What the hell is this?” Jack says, turning the screen back toward himself, scowling and underlit by the white light from his screen.

  “I tried to tell you,” I say in a harsh whisper, and then remember to hit the mute button on my phone. “You didn’t care.”

  “You mean someone really called you to say they were going to commit suicide?”

  “Yes! I told you that.”

  “And they’re not kidding?”

  “Oh, gee, Jack, I never thought of that, let me ask him.”

  Jack considers this for a moment. It’s long enough for me to realize that this is the most we’ve talked in a month. Ever since Dad told him they might have to raid his college account to pay for Mr. Halpern if my account isn’t enough.

  “You think he means it,” Jack says finally, as if my sarcasm was totally lost on him. Maybe it was.

  I lean against my door frame. “I don’t know,” I say. “Probably not. I mean, what are the chances, right?”

  Jack snorts, and, very quickly, a look of pure disgust passes over his face. It makes my heart shrivel.

  “But so far, he sounds for real,” I go on. “I don’t know.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Some hill. Outside. One of the mountains, I guess, on a highway I think. I heard one of those tractor-trailer horns going by.”

  “That’s all you got?”

  “Yeah. Jack, please, you’ve got to help me. If something happens, if he’s really serious and something bad happens, and he has my number on his cell . . .”

  “How’d he get your number?”

  “Says he dialed it randomly.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Not exactly. But I don’t have any choice.”

  Jack snorts again. “You got that right.” Suddenly Jack shakes his head and backs off. “Well, good luck,” he says.

  “Wait!” I whisper-screech. “Can’t you at least let me borrow your laptop?”

  “No.”

  “Jack!”

  “What?”

  “Come on! At least let me look up his number!”

  Jack shakes his head again, melodramatically walking backward down the hall toward his door. “No,” he repeats. “This is your mess, Vic. Maybe you should figure a way out of it. Or maybe try, I dunno, helping the guy out. Be a nice change of pace.”

  “I can help him if you let me use your laptop, dumb-ass!” I say, following him into the hallway.

  “Right, because I have satellite-imaging capabilities and just so happened to plant a tracking device on this guy too. Brilliant.”

  “I can at least look up his number and see if it matches the name he gave me,” I say. “That way if he’s lying, I can go to sleep.”

  “And that helps him somehow, right?”

  I clench about three dozen fists. “Goddammit, Jack!”

  “It’s still all about you, isn’t it?” Jack says. “Jesus, Vic. Why can’t you just assume he’s for real? Why can’t you just offer to listen or to talk him down, or whatever needs to be done?”

  “Because I’m on fucking trial, Jack,” I whisper, and it sounds demonic.

  He’s not impressed. I never could scare him. “All the more reason to stick with him, even if he’s full of crap,” Jack says. “If it’s a sick joke, you lose a little sleep. If it’s not, maybe you can—”

  He cuts himself off, snapping his mouth closed. I peer at him in the dark hallway, trembling at the many, many ways that sentence might end.

  “Maybe I can what?”

  My big brother stares at me. For a long time. Then he snorts and shakes his head. “My computer can’t help you help him,” Jack says. “You’re gonna have to do that on your own. If you want to.”

  “If I want to?” I say. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Oh, now suddenly you don’t remember Jack Pus-Berger? Krakatoa? Cyst—”

  These are all names Jack got called during the worst of his acne. I interrupt him. “What does any of that have to do with this?”

  Jack narrows his eyes. “I was an inconvenience to you last year,” he says. “And that’s the only way you could see me. Well, now this guy’s inconveniencing you. Oh, snap.”

  But Jack’s sarcasm flies past me. Or, through me, maybe.

  “You think that’s what I thought about you?” I say. “That you were an inconvenience?”

  “If I had a dollar for every time you talked to me at school last year, Victoria,” Jack says, “I’d have about a buck fifty.”

  “You didn’t talk to me!”

  “If I didn’t talk to you, it was because you were too busy with your little jock buddies,” Jack says. “And look what hanging out with them got you.”

  Trust me: If I could call Jack a liar right now, I would. In an instant. I have no trouble telling him when he’s full of it. What I’ve never been very good at, though, is refuting him when he’s telling the truth.

  Jack doesn’t give me time to form a response. “Better get back to your call,” he says, and continues on toward his room.

  I shake my head to snap back to my immediate issue. “At least let me Google the number, Jack. Please?”

  Jack pauses, then turns to me, gritting his teeth. “Gimme the phone.”

  I go grab it and show him the screen. He types the number in while the laptop is still balanced on his arm. He scans the page.

  “Nothing,” he says. “It’s a cell, and it’s local. If you want to know who it is, you’d need a credit card.”

  “Would you—”

  “No. It doesn’t matter,” Jack says, clearly impatient. “Knowing if he is who he says he is doesn’t help him. Look, just stay up with him. All night if you have to. Things will look better when the sun comes up.”

  “But the hearing . . .”

  “Somehow I’m sure Mom and Dad will make sure you’re there on time. I gotta get back to work.”

  “Are you coming tomorrow?” I blurt.

  Jack hesitates, and doesn’t look at me.

  “I don’t know,” he mumbles.

  With that, he finishes his walk to his room and closes the door behind him.

  Feeling my body go empty, I go back to my room and close my door too, and put the phone back to my ear. I’ve got to get my head back in the game. Basically, Jack is right; whether Andy is lying or not has nothing to do with him and everything to do with me. I want to sleep just so I don’t look like a burnout tomorrow morning in court. Righ
t now, this is more important.

  “Sorry,” I say to Andy after tapping the mute button off. “It was my brother again.” I try to erase Jack’s voice playing on repeat in my head. I don’t know. I don’t know.

  “It’s okay,” Andy says, and he sounds tired. “No big. You love him?”

  “Who, Jack? My brother?” I sit down on the edge of my bed and hunch my shoulders. “Now is maybe not the best time to ask. I mean, fundamentally, yes. I do. It’s just that lately he’s been a real bitch.”

  “Why lately?”

  The real reasons spring to mind, but I’m not about to talk to Andy about them. And without stopping to consider why I’m telling him anything at all, I say, “Some of my friends used to make fun of him a little, and he thinks it’s my fault or something.”

  “Is it?”

  “What? No! Wait a sec, you’re the one on the verge of offing himself and you’re going to psychoanalyze me?”

  Andy laughs a bit. “Sure. Why not.” He affects a deeper, professional voice. “Tell me about your parents.”

  Smirking, I just say, “Whatever.”

  “No, really,” Andy says. “What about them? Do you love them?”

  I shift my position. “Getting awful personal there, aren’t you?”

  Andy’s momentary jokey mood ends abruptly. “I got nothing to lose,” he says.

  Right, I think. Of course not.

  “I love them, yeah,” I say.

  More comes to mind, but I don’t say it. The truth is, I know my parents love me. They’re mad right now. Sure. Why not? I guess I would be too. But I know they love me. I wish my whole stupid thing hadn’t happened so they wouldn’t have to go through all this. I wish that for Jack, too. I mean, he didn’t do anything wrong. Except maybe be a huge nerd, ha-ha.

  “They still married?” Andy asks me.

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow,” he says. “Who’d’ve thunk it was still possible?”

  I laugh—a very, very little—despite myself. “Yours?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Recently?”

  “Nah. A while back.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No worries.”

  “No worries” is something of an understatement considering where you are and what you are doing, I think, but have the intelligence not to say. But only barely.

  “Is that why you’re out there?” I ask anyway.

  “Not exactly.”

  “So then why?”

  Andy sighs, but it’s not all showy like mine are. Like one of those nasal sighs.

  “You really want to know?”

  “All things considered, it’s the least you can do.”

  Andy hesitates. “All right,” he says. “Fine. But it’s just a bunch of sappy romantic horseshit likely to make your ears bleed.”

  I lie back on my mattress. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I say, “but that sounds pretty good right now.”

  Andy grunts. Maybe it was another weird laugh.

  “All right,” he says. “This is what happened.”

  Kevin Cooper life is one giant fucking toilet bowl. and no one ever flushes. shit just piles up and piles up until it gets clogged. it doesn’t go anywhere. it just sits and rots and smells

  Like · Comment · Share · May 6, one year ago

  Tori Hershberger Super Duper Pooper Cooper? :)

  Kevin Cooper No tori I’m fucking serious.

  Tori Hershberger What’s going on?

  Kevin Cooper Can I just text you

  Noah Murphy likes this.

  Tori Hershberger Maybe later. I really need to study. Hang in there, okay?

  EIGHT

  “Her name was Kayla,” Andy says.

  “Uh-huh?” I say.

  “We met at—”

  Thump, thump, thump.

  Dammit, Jack . . .

  “Uh, hold on again,” I say, and get up.

  Jack is waiting impatiently when I open my door. He shoves his laptop toward me.

  “It’s Noah,” he says.

  Juggling the phone while trying to keep my thumb over the receiver and take the laptop from Jack is something of a chore.

  “You didn’t log me out?” I demand.

  “Why didn’t you log yourself out, genius?”

  “Because you came barging in here before I could!”

  “What possible interest could your stupid e-mail hold for me?”

  “I don’t know, looking for sexy softball team pictures maybe?”

  “I’d consider that if any of you were sexy.”

  At a loss, I resort to a withering glare.

  Jack, knowing he’s scored a point, jabs a finger toward me. “I’m making Pop-Tarts!” he declares, which actually does make me laugh out loud. God, I’ve got to learn to control myself. “When I’m done, I want my computer back and that’s it. Got it?”

  Several smart-ass responses come to mind, but since he just loaned me the laptop, I can’t exactly use any of them.

  “Yes, yes,” I say to him, and drop to my knees, setting the laptop on my bed. I drop the phone on the mattress and quickly open the chat window.

  Noah’s message reads:

  Noah: Are you still there? I’m going to have to sneak out and find a way to get the car without anyone noticing.

  Crap. I write back:

  Me: What about your bike?

  Noah: Flat. You want me to hoof it?

  Me: If that’s what it takes. I owe you big-time.

  Noah: Yep. :) OK I’m leaving now.

  Me: THANK YOU NOAH!

  Something crackles over the flip phone. Andy’s still there. He’s saying something. I pick the phone back up.

  “Sorry, I had to . . . deal with my brother. What’d you say?”

  “I said, you’re still typing,” Andy says.

  “Listen,” I say, “you have my full attention, I swear to God. I just . . . I’m taking notes, okay?”

  “Notes? I’m not giving a pop quiz after this.”

  “Notes on everything you’re saying, everything I’m saying. I have to cover my ass here. I hope you understand that.”

  Andy’s voice gets suspicious. “Cover your ass, how?”

  At that, I get pissed. I stand up from the carpet and damn near throw the phone right through my door and into the kitchen.

  Which, oddly, reminds me suddenly that I’m actually hungry. I check the time. 1:38 a.m. You know what sounds good right now? Steak. A steak burrito, never mind chicken. Steak burrito with everything. There’s a twenty-four-hour Mexican food place a few blocks from here. If only my parents would let me drive again. If only it weren’t after one thirty in the morning.

  If only I weren’t on the phone with a suicidal freak show.

  “I’m covering my ass in case I wake up tomorrow morning and find out some dude drove his car off a cliff and I was the last person to talk to him!” I whisper in a way that sounds very much like screaming.

  Andy’s quiet. Still there, I’m sure. But quiet.

  “This is stupid,” he whispers finally.

  I rub my eyes. “No, no, you’re not stupid, come on.”

  “This is stupid. I didn’t say I was stupid.”

  “Well, either way.”

  “I shouldn’t have called you. That was the stupid thing. I’m sorry. I should—”

  “You woulda done it already,” I blurt.

  Another silence.

  Oh, God. No, no, no, Tori, you complete idiot. . . .

  “What?” Andy says. He sounds pissed now. Pissed, or maybe shocked.

  I try to swallow but only choke on air. “You don’t want to commit . . . you know. Do this. You would’ve already done it if you really wanted to. You know?”

  I hear him snort. It reminds me of Jack. Which irritates me.

  “You don’t know anything about me,” Andy says.

  I can hear Jack’s voice in my head. Stay up with him. All night if you have to. Things will look better when the sun comes up. �
��Okay, so, tell me,” I say. “I’m here. I’m listening.”

  “No, you’re not, you’re blogging.”

  “I’m not blogging,” I say. “I’m just . . . writing some stuff down, is all.”

  “Stuff about me?”

  “Both of us. I just told you.”

  “Well. I’m flattered.”

  It occurs to me that I’ve actually got the right idea: I should be keeping a record of this in case something bad happens to Andy. Document everything, Mr. Halpern said. Even if you don’t think it’s important, document everything. When the brick smashed Mom’s car window, Mr. Halpern made us all write down what we knew about it. Which wasn’t much. Probably whoever threw it picked Mom’s car because it was parked on the street and was easier to hit. It could have been anyone’s car. All that mattered was that it was in front of my house.

  The chat with Noah will be archived automatically, so that’s something. Plus, my phone and Andy’s phone will show that he called me first, proof I didn’t initiate contact. That might be important if he—

  You know.

  “I get it,” Andy goes on. “It’s okay. Keeping a record probably makes sense. I guess I’m really screwing up your night, huh?”

  “You could say that.”

  When Andy laughs, it catches me completely off guard. This guy’s mood has more swings than a playground. That’s probably not a sign of good mental health.

  “I really am pissing you off, aren’t I,” he says.

  Would a suicidal guy really laugh? Unless he’s already made up his mind to go through with it, and all this is just some sick psycho thing he’s doing.

  “Do you really think this is funny?” I say.

  His laugh cuts short. “No.”

  “Good,” I say. “Because I don’t either.”

  “You’re not really writing all this down, are you,” Andy says, kind of all of a sudden, and not like a question. “You’re not typing when I’m talking. . . . Are you chatting with someone? Is that it?”

  “No!”

  Oh yeah, that sounded believable.

  “Who is it, Tori? Don’t screw around with me.”

  The car engine revs.

  “It’s no one—I mean, I’m not, no.”

  Worst. Liar. Ever.

  The engine sound dies down. “Oh, I get it,” Andy says. “You got a boyfriend? And now he’s all jealous over little old me?”