“She’ll find out the truth about you!”
“It’s about time someone other than us did.”
“This person –” He splutters and jabs his finger at the photo. “This person is dangerous. And they’re talking to Isis. What if they hurt her?”
There’s a long silence. I scoff and look him up and down.
“I’m sorry, am I supposed to care?”
Wren’s face falls like someone’s slapped him. He grits his teeth and grabs the paper back.
“I thought you did. I guess I was wrong.”
“Yes. Now, if you could turn around and march back the way you came in, I would be exceedingly grateful.”
“I care about her!” Wren shouts suddenly. Study hall goes quiet. The librarian looks up, but Wren doesn’t seem to notice. His hair comes undone from its gel, and his glasses skew minutely. “I care about Isis! She’s done more for me than anyone, and if she gets hurt again, I swear to you –”
“You’ll what?” I laugh. “Slap me with a ruler? Sic your student council grubs on me? Oh wait, I know – you’ll call in some favors and have my pudding privileges revoked.”
And then he snaps. Wren, the coward behind the camera and my mild-mannered ex-friend of ten years, snaps.
Before I can move he’s grabbed my shirt and shoved me against a bookshelf. The librarian frantically dials security and girls shriek and boys start to clamber around us in an encouraging, scattered circle.
“Come on,” I smirk. “Punch me. Do it.”
Wren’s green eyes blaze, his muscles taut for someone who isn’t in any sports clubs. I eye his fist, and just as I see it pull back, he drops me and snarls.
“No. That’s exactly what you want. Someone’s already ground you into pulp by the looks of it, and now you want me to do it more because you’re a self-absorbed, masochistic ass**le.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I laugh. Wren nods, fast and hard.
“Yeah. I don’t. I just know that before her, you were dead inside and out, walking around like a zombie. Anybody could see that. And then she came, and you lit up like a f**king candle. And we could all see that, too. Even Sophia.”
“Shut your mouth,” I growl.
“Is that why Isis ignores you now?” Wren laughs. “Because she realized Sophia means so much to you, and you were out here fooling around with her?”
“I never – no one ever -”
“You did!” Wren shouts. “You f**king did, Jack! She’s been through more shit than any girl should go through and you got her hopes up! And then she met Sophia and you f**king crushed them!”
“You have no –”
“How could she compete, you moron?” Wren’s voice gets louder. “Just use that huge f**king brain of yours for two seconds; you’ve given up everything for Sophia. You send her letters. You’ve been with her since middle school. You had Tallie, and she f**king knows about that, too –”
My mind goes white, a horrible keening noise starting in the back of my skull.
“She what?”
“She knows! She saw it! She went out and found it herself because she’s Isis and that’s what she does!”
Something in me plummets.
“What do we do?” I whisper, my own voice surprising me by how hoarse it is. Wren’s eyes grow brighter.
“You tell her the truth. Before this emailer does, and gets her involved deeper.”
“You forget she doesn’t acknowledge my presence anymore.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Wren says. “Just promise me you’ll tell her when I give you the opening.”
“You’ve become quite the little dictator,” I sneer.
“I’ve had it,” he clenches his fist. “With running away. Every time I do, someone’s gotten hurt. But not this time. I won’t run this time.”
He turns and leaves before I can verbally cut him down to size.
I watch Isis from the parking lot, feeling every bit the stalker, but bent on studying her face in a new light. She knows what I did that night. That’s why she’s ignoring me. She’s too smart not to put two and two together. And she knows about Tallie.
My biggest secrets are in her hands, now. Just as I’ve known hers for months. I’ve had her number for months. But I’ve never texted or called. Until now. My thumbs fly over the keyboard.
‘We’re even’.
I see her stop and pull her phone out, Kayla chatting aimlessly at her. She looks up and scans the parking lot, and our eyes meet for the briefest moment. For one second, the warm amber engulfs me, and I let it.
And then I let it go, and turn away.
***
Tonight is the last night.
This woman is the last woman.
She’s older – the trophy wife of a lawyer, confined to a house and left to treadmill and Martha Stewart her way into being ignored by her husband, who has enough hookers and blow to far outlast a wife. They have no children. She is miserable and in shape and anxious, and the hotel room is nicer than normal, and when she’s satisfied and exhausted, she starts crying.
“Thank you.”
I pull on my jeans and nod cordially.
“How – how old are you? I know I asked that in the lobby, but really, you can’t be twenty-three–”
I flash her a smile. “Over eighteen. You’re safe.”
She covers her eyes with her arm. “Oh Jesus. I practically cradle robbed.”
I think of all the women who came before her, who were deceived by the fact I’d looked twenty-one since I was fifteen. She has no idea. I grew up fast, and she has no idea.
“This is my last night,” I say as I button my shirt. “Of this job.”
“Oh? That’s good. Someone as nice as you doesn’t need to stay in this field. It ruins good people.”
And yet you still use our services. I curl my lip where she can’t see it. She showers and dresses, and I take my laptop out and sit on the bed, taking advantage of the free wifi.
“The room is yours for the night,” she says when she comes out, now in a pressed pink suit and perfectly styled red hair.
“Thanks,” I grunt. The woman – I forget her name – leans over my shoulder.
“Ooh, what are you doing? It looks fascinating –”
“I’m running seventy-two targeting executables for a free-roam IP trace.”
She gives me a blank look. I sigh.
“I’m trying to find someone.”
“Oh! Girlfriend? Ex-girlfriend?”
Tiresome. Women always jump straight to romance. I roll my eyes.
“An anonymous email sender.”
She laughs nervously. “Right, well, I’ll leave you to it. Thank you again.”
“It was a pleasure doing business with you.” I nod. It was no pleasure at all. The last time I felt honest pleasure - not sickly release - from sex was the last time Sophia and I slept together. And that was nearly a year and a half ago.
I wait until the door clicks shut behind the woman to pull up the trace results. I parse them down twice – once using the email address name, and once using Isis’ email address. Which I also happen to have. She didn’t exactly hide it when she put up posters around the school asking for people to contact her with dirty information bits about me.