Chapter 91
“So?” Lucy asked as soon as I walked into biology class. I’d avoided her in the hallway, but there was going to be no getting around her now. We were partners after all.
Playing dumb, I asked, “So what?”
“So… why didn’t you call me yesterday? Where were you this morning?” She lowered her voice. “What happened with the video? Emma said you wanted to call me and tell me yourself, but you didn’t.”
I took a deep breath and sat down in my seat. “It’s nothing,” I said, trying to figure out how to make my voice sound nonchalant. I was lying to her, and I hated it, but I didn’t know what else to do. I’d promised Elliott I wouldn’t tell them anything else.
“What’s nothing?” Emma asked, flinging her books down in such a way that papers spread everywhere out of her notebooks and folders. Lucy and I grabbed them before they spilled all over the floor and helped her stack them back up. She always carried too much stuff….
“Nothing is nothing,” I replied as she sat down between us.
“The video,” Lucy whisper-yelled. “She won’t tell me.”
“Oh,” Emma said, her eyebrows knitting together. “Why don’t you want to tell Lucy it’s a match?” she asked.
Lucy gasped, and I couldn’t decide whether or not to slug Emma in the arm or bang my head on the table. I opted for taking a few deep breaths.
“OMG! Cassidy! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“This! This is why I didn’t tell you,” I replied. “You’re not supposed to know anything, and now everyone is staring.”
“But… what do you expect? You should’ve called me!”
“I’m sorry,” I replied. “But I promised I wouldn’t say anything to you, okay? When I got home from church yesterday… let’s just say there was someone waiting for me! I am in huge trouble! I almost got all of our memories wiped again.” I was gritting my teeth, looking around like a crazy person. While we were getting some stares, no one seemed to be able to hear what we were saying.
“I’m sorry,” Lucy said, clearly trying to control herself. “But… if the video was a match, then that means….”
“I know what it means!” I knew I’d hurt her feelings, but there was no way I was going to let her say it.
“Yeah it means that Jack’s not dead.”
Emma’s voice seemed to boom through the room like a bomb going off. Lots of people heard that. Their faces turned to us, their mouths dropped open, and Emma just shrugged at all of them. “Uh, because he will always live in our hearts,” I said, as sympathetically as I could, and as if on cue, Lucy began to cry, real tears splashing down her face.
“Miss Burk, do you need a moment?” Mr. Horton asked, having clearly also heard Emma’s declaration.
Nodding, with her hand pressed over her eyes, Lucy took off toward the bathroom, shouting over her shoulder, “Come on, Cassidy.”
I looked at Mr. Horton for a moment, silently asking permission, and he nodded at me. I could see in his eyes that he understood what a trying time this must be for all of us. I knew asking for Emma to come, too, would be pushing it, but I wondered if she’d say anything else, anything more detrimental, if I left her alone. Luckily, I heard Mr. Horton give a direction to open our books to a specific page as I made it out into the hallway and knew that would distract her.
Lucy waited for me about halfway to the bathroom. I rushed to catch up with her. We pushed through the doors and made sure no one else was around. “Holy crap, Cassidy!” she exclaimed as soon as we knew we were alone. “I can’t believe this! That means that Jack is actually a….”
I rushed to cover her mouth with my hand. “Shhh!” I said before she could get the word out, looking around us like some sort of a crazy paranoid person. “Don’t say it!”
Once I was sure she understood how serious I was, I withdrew my hand. “Cassidy? What the crap is going on?” Lucy asked. She looked around, too, like there was something she wasn’t seeing.
“I wasn’t supposed to tell you guys. They know—they know I told you! And if they find out that you still know, they’ll come and brainwash you again, to make you forget! And I don’t want that to happen, so please… just don’t say that word, okay?”
“Okaaay,” Lucy said, fairly certain I’d lost my mind. “But Cassidy, there’s no one else in here.”
“I know that, but we didn’t think they could hear us when we were at your house the other night either, and yet they knew everything I said to you.”
She folded her arms. “How is that possible?”
I had my theories, and a lot of them involved people on the roof, but I wasn’t about to try to explain that to her right now, not when she was looking at me like I was an escapee from the looney bin. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But Elliott was at my house yesterday, and he threatened to wipe everything away again. Listen, Lucy, these people mean business. We can’t keep jerking them around.”
Her eyes were the size of saucers. “Have we been jerking them around?”
I realized she didn’t remember most of what I was talking about. She had no idea we’d already been through all of this once. “I have been,” I admitted. “So… in answer to your question, yes, it does mean that about the person you mentioned. But we aren’t in any danger.”
“How is this possible?”
“I don’t know—something must’ve happened the night that they went to that place.” I was speaking in a code she didn’t understand, but I didn’t see any alternatives. She continued to stare at me. “We’ll have to find another way, another place to talk about this, okay?”
“Oh, okay. I’ll just go back to class and pretend you didn’t just tell me your sister’s ex-boyfriend is a….”
The threat of my hand covering her mouth again made her stop. “I know it’s hard. Believe me. But we don’t have any choice.”
Lucy opened her mouth to say more when the bathroom door opened. I turned to see Jessica standing behind me, a sympathetic look on her face. “Hey, you guys. Mr. Horton sent me to check on you. Are you okay?”
The tears were long since dried up, as Lucy’s fake tears could come and go at will. “Yeah, we’re coming,” she said quietly. “Just a minute.”
Jessica nodded and headed back to class. Lucy went over to the sink and splashed some water on her face. “We are not done talking about this,” she said to my reflection.
“I know.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know!”
She spun and headed back to class and I followed, wondering how in the world I was going to get myself out of this one. If Elliott found out—or more importantly, if Aaron did—we would all be drinking the Kool-Aid again really soon, and I just wasn’t ready for that. No matter how mind boggling it was knowing what I knew, it was better than being oblivious.
