One of Us Is Back (ONE OF US IS LYING)

Addy

Tuesday, July 14

“Practice makes perfect,” Maeve says, staring at her laptop in the Rojas media room, which is filled with the entire Bayview Crew. “That has to be the phrase that someone’s building toward. Practice on Phoebe’s arm, and makes on Reggie’s. Don’t you think?”

“Maybe,” I say as a familiar sense of unease settles into my stomach. I knew the good mood that Keely put me in wasn’t going to last. “But the bigger question is, who’s the someone? Jake? He told Phoebe to practice, remember?”

I look toward Phoebe, anxiously—she’s sitting on a sofa beside Cooper and Kris instead of Knox for a change—but it’s Bronwyn who answers. I’m pretty sure I know why; she never likes me to fall down a Jake rabbit hole for too long. “True, but even if Jake has managed to get around his monitoring system, why would he target Phoebe?” she says. “There’s no bad blood between them. Or Reggie? Reggie supported Jake in that Bayview Blade article, remember? Said he used to be nice to him, or something like that.”

“He said, He was always pretty cool to me,” I quote. I have that stupid article practically memorized. “Okay. Fair point.”

Phoebe leans forward. “It’s interesting that you said building toward, Maeve,” she says. “Things are escalating. I…I wasn’t tied up like Reggie was. I don’t think whoever did this wanted me dead, or even hurt.” She swallows hard as Cooper slings a comforting arm around her shoulder. “I think they just wanted me found.”

“It’s possible they didn’t want Reggie dead either,” Bronwyn says. She exchanges a loaded glance with Nate. “We’re not supposed to talk about what we saw, but…”

“Murder Club cone of silence,” Nate says. Everyone murmurs in agreement, except for Maeve, who probably already knows whatever Bronwyn is about to say.

“It looked almost like Reggie died accidentally,” Bronwyn says. “The floor was all scraped up from the chair, and the part of the wall that was spattered with blood looked like the height Reggie would have been while sitting in the chair. Nate and I think Reggie was trying to get free, but tipped over and slammed himself into a sharp corner of the wall.”

My stomach rolls. I never cared for Reggie Crawley in high school; most of the time, I could barely stand him. But no one deserves to die like he did.

“So, whoever did this wanted to—what? Terrorize him?” Cooper asks. “Send a message? I can think of a few people who’d want to do that. Katrina Lott, for one. But it’s a stretch to think she’d come all the way back from Portland to kidnap Reggie. Plus, what does she, or anybody else, have against Phoebe? There’s no connection.”

“Well, both Phoebe and Reggie were at Nate’s Fourth of July party,” I say. “And you guys talked for a while, right, Phoebe? Did anyone see you together?”

“I don’t think so,” Phoebe says. “As far as I can remember, everyone who’d been hanging out in his room had left by the time he came in.”

Bronwyn puts her legs over Nate’s lap, her brow furrowing as she plays with his hair. “Whoever it is, they’re both frighteningly competent and staggeringly incompetent,” she says. “They were able to make kids vanish and take out an entire security-camera system—”

“That wouldn’t be hard if it’s a local system,” Maeve interrupts. “All you’d have to do is erase the footage of you entering the building, then shut the whole thing down.”

Luis shoots her a look that’s half admiration, half alarm. “Sometimes I don’t know whether to be turned on or terrified by you,” he says.

Maeve smiles serenely. “Both is fine.”

Bronwyn clears her throat. “As I was saying—they could do all that, but they couldn’t keep Reggie alive?”

“Maybe they didn’t want to,” I say, my skin prickling. “Maybe Reggie’s death was only supposed to look like an accident. Just like Brandon’s.”

“Right. Just like Brandon’s,” Knox echoes. He tries to catch Phoebe’s eye, but she just stares at the floor. The energy between those two is seriously off, which I’d ask about if we didn’t have bigger problems. “Any chatter from the revenge forum guys, Maeve?” he asks.

“They’re talking about it,” she says. “Like everyone else is. Wondering if it’s a Jared copycat, now that Reggie turned up dead. But they’re not taking credit. And nobody’s saying anything about practice makes perfect.” A faraway look comes into her eyes. “I can’t stop thinking about that phrase, though. What if it’s connected to the time for a new game billboard? I mean, Bronwyn and Nate found Reggie because they were thinking in terms of a sports theme; first the equipment shed, then the locker room. Could practice makes perfect be the ‘one rule’ the ad mentioned?”

“But what’s the game?” I ask, exasperated. “It’s not like Truth or Dare, where people got texts and instructions. One hacked billboard, and that’s it?”

“Maybe only the person behind it gets to play,” Maeve says, plugging her laptop into a cord running across the end table beside her. Within seconds, search results fill the wall-mounted television screen. “I’ve been Googling the phrase, obviously, but I haven’t found much. Just a bunch of songs, Wikipedia entries, some kind of summer enrichment program…”

The sound of a doorbell interrupts her. “Who could that be?” Bronwyn says as she detaches from Nate. “Everyone is already here.” She gets to her feet and crosses the room to peer at the small screen beside the doorway. Then she frowns. “Hold on…am I seeing things, or is Vanessa Merriman at our front door?”

“Oh, shit,” Nate says in a tone so unfamiliar that I need a few seconds to place it. He sounds…guilty. He leans forward, his elbows on his knees, and says, “Okay, yeah, that’s my bad. There’s been so much going on, I forgot to tell her it’s not a party anymore.”

“Nate!” My jaw drops as I glare accusingly at him. “You invited Vanessa to our one-third birthday party? Why would you do that?”

He stands and raises one hand in a conciliatory gesture. “Sorry. I meant to give you a heads-up before everything happened with Reggie. Vanessa hangs out at the country club a lot, and she said she wanted to apologize for how she treated you and Cooper in high school, so I thought…” He trails off as the entire room gapes at him. “I thought wrong, obviously. This was a terrible idea. I’ll tell her it’s not a good time.”

“Vanessa wants to apologize?” I ask. “Seriously?”

“She said she does,” Nate says.

“Well, it’s not like this so-called party could get any worse,” I say. “We might as well hear what she has to say.”

“You sure?” he asks. I nod, and he turns to Cooper. “Coop?”

Cooper shrugs. “Why the hell not?”

Nate disappears into the hallway, and Bronwyn watches him go with a mixture of trepidation and pride. “He means so well,” she says.

A muscle in Kris’s cheek twitches. “Is this the girl…,” he starts.

“From the cafeteria,” Cooper confirms, and Kris’s expression gets deadly.

“Oh, I’d say that whatever apology she wants to give is too little and far too late,” he says darkly, folding his arms across his chest.

I hear murmured voices and footsteps, and then Nate returns with Vanessa in tow. She’s dressed for a much more exciting night than this one, in a short, sparkly dress and strappy heels. Her ombré hair is pulled back into a loose ponytail, with a few caramel-colored strands framing her face. “Huh,” she says as she walks in. Her eyes scan the room, taking in all of us sipping soft drinks while angled toward the television screen displaying Maeve’s laptop screen. “This is almost exactly what I thought a Rojas party would be like.”

Nate exhales in frustration. “Really? That’s how you’re gonna start?”

“No, I…here.” Vanessa thrusts a silver foil–wrapped bottle at me. “Happy, um, quarter birthday or whatever.” I take the bottle without correcting her, and she adds, “It’s pink champagne. The kind I brought that time you, me, Keely, and Olivia had a beach day without the boys the summer before senior year. Remember that?”

“Yeah,” I say. It’s one of my favorite memories from that summer, and probably the single-best memory I have of Vanessa. “Thanks.”

She fiddles with the bracelets on her arm, like she’s waiting for me to say more. When I don’t, a long silence fills the room until Nate prompts, “And?”

“And I’m really sorry,” Vanessa blurts out. “I’m sorry that I took Jake’s side, and that I slut-shamed you, and that I tried to turn all our friends against you—”

“You didn’t try,” I break in, feeling a twinge of the hurt that was my constant companion back then. “You succeeded.” Even Keely stopped talking to me for a while.

“Except Cooper,” Vanessa says, her eyes flicking his way. “I’m sorry I was a total homophobe to you, Cooper. That was gross and wrong. There’s no excuse for any of the things I did back then, so I won’t try to make one. I was an insecure asshole, but lots of people are insecure assholes and don’t do what I did. I really am sorry, though. And I’m glad you guys are doing amazing and have like a million friends, so…” She twists her bracelets again. “I guess you could say that karma works.”

Maybe it’s the way she’s playing with her bracelets—it reminds me of how I tug on my earrings when I’m nervous or worried—but I find myself softening toward her. Her apology doesn’t make everything okay, but at least she finally made one. And with Reggie in the back of my mind, I don’t want to hold grudges against former classmates, even the awful ones. You never know when you’re going to see a person for the last time.

“I forgive you,” I say.

“Really?” Kris blurts out. “That’s generous of you, Addy, but as for me…” Everyone turns his way, and his cheeks stain a deep, angry red. “I realize this isn’t my apology, but I’m the one who had to pick up the pieces with Cooper that day.” His green eyes bore into Vanessa’s, who flushes but doesn’t look away. “He was devastated, because you were awful.”

“I know,” Vanessa says.

“Do you?” Kris bites out. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be falsely accused of murder, outed to your entire school, and then mocked by people you thought were your friends in the course of a single day?” His voice rises with every word as I catch Bronwyn’s eye and she mouths Whoa. I’ve never seen Kris like this; I’m not sure I even realized, until right this second, that he was capable of being so angry. Nate’s wide-eyed and frozen, like he can’t believe he inadvertently released Kris’s inner Hulk. “And it’s not just about what you did to Cooper. Poor Addy had to deal with your abuse for weeks—”

“Hey,” Cooper breaks in, his eyes on Kris and his voice low and soothing—like he has, in fact, seen Kris this angry before and knows exactly how to calm him down. “We got through all that, right? I did things I’m not proud of back then—”

“You were never cruel!” Kris says.

“You’re right,” Vanessa says. Her chin is still up, but her neck is nearly as red as Kris’s face. “I was horrible, and I’m sorry.”

“Well, maybe you should consider making your regret tangible,” Kris snaps. “With a donation to the Trevor Project, for example.”

“Okay,” Vanessa says, nodding eagerly. “I will.”

“Good.” Kris looks a tiny fraction less pissed off. “It’s a start.”

Silence falls. Nate throws such a desperate look toward Bronwyn that, despite the tension in the room, I have to choke back a giggle. It’ll be an ice-cold day in hell before Nate Macauley attempts to play the role of peacemaker again. “That’s probably enough on this topic for one night,” Bronwyn says smoothly.

Cooper squeezes Kris’s hand before saying, “I appreciate your apology, Vanessa.”

Vanessa gives him a rueful smile, maybe noticing that he said appreciate, not accept. “You always were a lot nicer to people than they deserve, Cooper. Well, listen, I didn’t mean to bring down the party. I’ll let you guys get back to…” Her eyes drift across the Rojases’ television screen. “Looking up old ad campaigns?”

“Ad campaigns?” I ask, putting the bottle of pink champagne down on the nearest side table. It was a decent gesture from Vanessa, even though a champagne toast is the last thing I feel like having right now. “What do you mean?”

Vanessa waves a hand toward Maeve’s Google search results. “Isn’t that what that is? Practice makes perfect. Remember those ads from middle school? From that SAT tutoring company, when there was all that controversy because parents were like, There’s no such thing as perfect. But the company still doubled its business.” She catches Nate’s eye and adds, “That was a Conrad and Olsen campaign, by the way. It’s the one that put them on the map.”

There’s something familiar about the name, but I can’t place it. Nate obviously can, though. “Really?” he asks, his tone suddenly sharp. Maeve started Googling again while we were talking, and a YouTube ad springs to life on the television screen. Three “teens”—all of whom are unquestionably actors in their twenties—are sitting in the world’s most stylish library, surrounded by a mountain of books. “Practice,” says one girl, tapping her pencil to the beat of a pulsing music track. “Makes,” says another girl, flipping long braids over one shoulder. “Perfect,” finishes the boy with a roguish grin, blue eyes flashing.

Now I remember the ads; they were everywhere the summer before I started high school. They totally worked on me; I’d asked my mother about SAT tutoring even though the test was years away. She’d rolled her eyes and bought me a padded bra instead.

“You sure about that?” Nate asks Vanessa.

“Positive,” she says. “I studied it last semester.”

“What’s Conrad and Olsen?” I ask.

The commercial finishes, and Maeve hits Replay. It’s more than a little chilling, suddenly, to watch the smiling actors speak the words that somebody wrote across Phoebe and Reggie’s arms. Practice. Makes.

“They’re the ad agency that manages the hacked billboard,” Nate says. “And where Jake’s mother used to work.”

Ohhhh, of course. Ms. Riordan had given her notice at the agency by the time I met her, but she’d mentioned it more than once. I always wondered why she’d left; from the way she talked about it, it seemed as though her job had been…

“Perfect,” says the blue-eyed boy.