Dead Ringer
By Jessie Rosen
Dead Ringer
By Jessie Rosen
For R.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
September 1
Laura
Deep breath, big smile, and remember: it’s all about swag.
Laura laughed at her reflection in the little compact she kept in her bag for touch-ups and pep talks. The word “swag” sounded so ridiculous. That’s what made it the perfect mantra for day one of her senior year of high school—the very first time she would be “the new girl.”
Laura had been dreaming about her entrance into Englewood High since it was decided that’s where she would spend this year—three thousand miles away from her previous home. The move was a big change, but she welcomed the clean slate. It was time to focus her energy on everything but the demons of the typical high school girl—the kind she’d been her whole life: a wallflower and a pleaser. She was over the precarious balance between wearing something trendy but not so “out there” that people might talk. She was tired of being meek because battling the Queen Bees seemed too scary. And the days of hiding her natural smarts were over. Laura felt like high school was a tricky series of hoops she had to jump through before she could finally live on her own. So if high school isn’t for me, she’d decided, why let all its silly rules run my life?
That was Laura’s final thought as she stepped out of her vintage, black BMW convertible and glanced around at the other cars in the student parking lot. She’d debated the car purchase as soon as she arrived on the East coast. Convertibles are so obnoxiously California, she’d thought, but then she reminded herself that worrying about what everyone else thought was exactly the spiral she was trying to avoid. Besides, she worshipped that car and had saved every penny she could for almost two years to buy it. So what if people assumed it was a gift from her parents? She’d inform them that she bought it with a combo of waitressing tips from Joe’s Café right on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, and money saved from fit modeling for the Rosefox denim line in downtown LA. No one would expect that. From what Laura knew of Englewood, most of the other BMWs in the lot would be brand-new sweet-sixteen gifts.
And yet the very first thing that caught her eye when Laura drove into the senior parking lot was another old car with its convertible top down. This one was cherry red and looked like it drove right out of a 90s music video, but it was in almost perfect condition. Apparently at least one other person in this town had to buy their own ride, Laura thought as she gave her reflection in the car window one final check.
For the first time in forever, she had decided to wear her long, blond hair down and parted on the far-left side so a waterfall of curls danced over her right eye, the slightly bluer one—the one that usually made her self-conscious. Today she let the curls do their thing instead of making sure every piece of frizz was locked down with an army of gooey hair products. She wore simple makeup paired with a shocking pink lipstick she’d seen on the girls strolling the pier all summer long. It was wild, but it made her feel powerful. Her first-day outfit was a 1960s floral shirt belted over a flirty, white sundress to make sure her tan legs showed, because why not milk the Cali-girl vibe? On her feet were cork-soled wedges in a neon-colored, striped print from 1989—one of her favorite vintage finds besides the car, of course. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t look like anyone at this posh, brick-and-ivy-covered, suburban New Jersey school, and she loved that fact. She was ready to start out on a totally new foot.
But just as Laura’s first-day confidence finally locked in, it vanished.
Across the parking lot, she caught the glance of two girls getting out of a shiny, white Corvette. Laura smiled in their direction, but something was off about the way they both looked back at her. Their faces were frozen in a strange, almost confused look that made her instantly uncomfortable. It was more than just the usual new-kid-in-school stares.
It wasn’t until the shorter, curly-haired girl glanced back and quickly turned away again that Laura saw the real feeling behind her eyes: she was scared.
* * *
“Rivers? Do we have a Laura Rivers? Hello, hello? Miss Rivers?”
Laura slipped into first period AP English just as the bell rang. Ms. O’Malley stood at the front of the room, just as skinny and evil-looking as all the online reviews claimed. She barely looked up from her attendance sheet as she barked. If she had, she would have seen twenty-four sets of eyes staring directly at Laura, and she would have also noticed that something was off.
As with those girls in the parking lot, there was something about these stares that gave Laura instant goose bumps. It was like everyone who saw her had the exact same thought. The only way she could think to describe the looks on their faces was spooked.
“Yes. Hi!” Laura said, trying her best to push through the awkward moment.
“Try to get here before the bell rings tomorrow,” Ms. O’Malley said. “I have you all seated alphabetically, so go take a seat behind…hmm, let me see…”
Laura scanned the room for empty desks. There were two open seats where students with last names beginning with R might fall. One was directly behind a way-too-friendly looking cheerleader type. She gave Laura a fairly convincing fake smile, but Laura took it with a grain of salt. Girls like that were skilled at the art of playing instant besties.
Then Laura’s eyes hit the person sitting behind the only other open chair, and instantly locked. It was as if there was a magnetic field around him; if you stayed far enough away it wouldn’t suck you in, but once you looked, you were done.
“Charlie Sanders,” Ms. O’Malley finally bellowed. “Charlie, raise your hand for the new girl to see.”
That wasn’t necessary—Laura had already found him. In the time it took him to lift his hand, she’d already stared through his dark-brown eyes, his knife’s-edge cheek bones, his messy-but-not-on-purpose chestnut hair, and his wide, toothy smile. She had to clench every muscle in her body to stop herself from giggling as he smiled politely in her direction.
But in the time it took for Charlie’s hand to fall back at his side, that smile was gone. Laura saw the switch go off in his head and the confusion land on his face. It was the same creeped-out reaction she’d prompted so far that morning. Charlie’s version of the gaze was by far the most intense, but it was also the shortest. He almost instantly reverted back to a wide, comfortable smile. Either he has better manners than the rest of my classmates, Laura thought, or he’s the best actor.
“I’m Charlie,” he said as she took her seat.
“So I’ve heard,” she teased. “I’m Laura…the new girl.”
“So I’ve heard,” Charlie shot back. “Welcome to Englewood. It isn’t all that bad. Where’d you move from?”
“Los Angeles.”
“Oh. In that case, this place sucks,” Charlie said.
“Way to welcome the newbie…” Laura joked, and Charlie smiled back. Then Ms. O’Malley demanded all eyes on the front of the room and started rambling about the fact that Shakespeare was probably a woman.
Laura breathed a sigh of relief. For the next forty or so minutes she didn’t have to worry about what Charlie was thinking of her, or try to hide what she was thinking about him. It wasn’t until Charlie tapped her on the shoulder to pass a copy of the homework assignment circulating around the room that Laura’s heart started pounding again. She caught him off guard when she turned around, and he had that same instant reaction to her face. For the first time, Laura put her finger on what was so strange about it.
He was looking at her like he knew her.
Charlie
Charlie’s first morning back at Englewood was as busy as any. He owed Principal Hayden a plan for the Volunteer Corps' winter trip, Coach Stanley the results of his latest physical for the soccer scouts who were already swarming, and Mrs. Smelson his application for student representative to the district school board. And then there was the requisite time spent floating around the halls and catching up with friends about the last few weeks of summer.
Charlie didn’t like to admit it, but he was pretty much a celebrity in the halls of EHS. For the past two years, he’d led the soccer team to state and national victories, and this year he would serve as captain. All the hard work and sacrifice was paying off. In nine short months, Charlie’s high school career would be over and his real life would begin, hopefully with a full ride to his first-choice college.
Right now it was hard to believe he’d ever fought his mom on the decision to leave their comfy home in Toms River for a tiny apartment in this rich soccer mecca. He hadn’t wanted his hobby to uproot their little family of two, but Pattie Sanders had turned out right, as always—it had been worth it. Applications still needed to be finished, but Charlie’s grades were right where they needed to be. Now it was all about what he did on the field, and that was the easy part. It’s nice to feel so confident and relaxed at the start of senior year, Charlie thought to himself as he slipped into Ms. O’Malley’s room. It had been a long, long time since he didn’t have something making the insides of his body churn.
Within seconds, that comfort was gone.
“Charlie, raise your hand for Miss Rivers to see,” Ms. O’Malley said seconds after the first-period bell rang. He lifted his hand as he followed her gaze to the front of the classroom. Then his mind went blank.
Standing in the doorway was… No. How could it be? Charlie clenched his stomach to stop the sick feeling from crawling any higher up his insides. Wait. Of course not. This wasn’t her—it couldn’t be. She was gone. Plus, this girl had blond hair, not black. This girl’s face was round, not long, and her nose was completely different. So then, what was it? The way she was staring? The shape of her body? Or maybe it was her eyes? Something about this girl reminded Charlie so much of her.
He let his hand fall back down, flashed a quick smile, and then looked away. You’re the only one seeing it, Charlie thought to himself. You’re looking for it. Get her out of your head. It’s been long enough.
“Mr. Sanders, Miss Rivers,” O’Malley bellowed from the front of the room.
Before he knew it, the new girl was sitting directly in front of him. He was pretty sure she’d said something cute. There was a chance he’d said something clever back. All he knew for sure was that her name was Laura Rivers, and she was from Southern California. Could she see him staring at her face? Had other people stared, too? They must have. They must have all stared. That is, if they all remembered her half as well as he did.
Forty-five minutes later, Charlie was kicking himself as he watched Laura Rivers walk toward her next class. He’d invited her to sit with them at lunch. He couldn’t explain why, but in two short hours he’d have to—to Kit, Miller, and Amanda.
Charlie may have been the ringleader of their foursome, but he did very little without the approval of the other three members of their set. In fact, the fifty-minute English class that just ended was the first time they’d been apart since 7:30 a.m.
The morning started like it had every single school day in the six years they’d been best friends—except that today, for the first time, Charlie was their ride in the 1996 Pontiac Grand Am convertible he saved his rec-soccer-coaching money to buy for his seventeenth birthday.
Kit and Miller were waiting on the curb between their two houses when Charlie pulled up. Kit was fidgeting with her cellphone while telling a mile-a-minute story to Miller. Miller was half asleep and fake-listening while chugging an orange juice that Charlie knew he would later leave in the back of the convertible car. Without missing a beat, Kit saw Charlie approach, grabbed the almost-empty carton out of Miller’s hand, and tossed it in the trashcan next to the curb. What would Miller do without her? Charlie thought.
“Were you two out here waiting for Bertha’s boob-mobile? If so, I can just meet you at school…”
“I hope I never see that crazy bitch again,” Miller said as he climbed into the back of the car.
“Sean! Be nice. You took that bus for five days and poor Bertha probably had serious back problems because of those boobs,” Kit said as she climbed in beside him. “Let’s go. Amanda is waiting.”
Leave it to Kit to defend the only bus driver in the world that got lost four times a week, Charlie thought as they sped off toward Amanda’s house.
Predictably, Amanda was not waiting at the curb. Amanda Hunter did not wait for people anywhere, ever. After two beeps, she finally appeared with a fake-apologetic look on her face.
“Happy first day, Carly!” she said as she approached the convertible.
Charlie had long since given up on convincing Amanda to drop the dumb nickname she’d given him when he’d first arrived at Englewood Middle School.
“Your name is Carly?” she had said when he introduced himself to her all those years ago.
“No, it’s Charlie!”
“Well, I heard Carly, so I’m calling you that…forever.”
Charlie had thought forever would last about a year, but he’d underestimated Amanda. That was a mistake he’d never make again.
“Hey, kids,” she said, and climbed into the front seat. “Thanks for leaving me the front.”
“Like we have a choice,” Miller said.
“Exactly,” Amanda responded.
Charlie glanced over at Amanda as she sidled in beside him. Sometimes it was impossible to look at her without seeing all the history that had passed between them, but today all Charlie could focus on was the fact that she was gorgeous. She probably spent an hour making her curls look like she just got out of bed and picking out her shorts and top, but Charlie saw right through it. Amanda cared deeply what other people thought of her. Charlie knew how she felt because he was exactly the same.
Amanda must have sensed his gaze because she reached out and gently touched her hand to his knee. “I have a good feeling about this year,” she whispered.
They had decided not to tell Kit and Miller that they’d been talking about getting back together. Kit would explode with delight at the thought of all the double dates in their future, and Miller would immediately inform the rest of the soccer team that Amanda Hunter was off the market again, courtesy of his best friend. Charlie wasn’t ready to jump back into things quite yet, despite Amanda’s very convincing ways.
“You know we’re the best when we’re together,” she’d said to him the other night as they lay on the couch in her pool house. She was right: when he and Amanda were great, they were really, really great. She was demanding and could be a brat from time to time, but underneath that tough edge was a girl who knew what she wanted and how to get it. Charlie always admired that about Amanda. She forced him to work harder to make all his goals a reality. He wanted them to get back to being the couple they were always meant to be, but they had been through more in two and a half years of dating than most people would experience in a lifetime, and it sometimes made Charlie wonder if he and Amanda were cursed.
He took her hand in his and gave it a quick squeeze as he backed out of her family’s long driveway and headed toward school. So what if Kit or Miller noticed? Right then, it felt right.
* * *
But now, as he caught Amanda’s face watching Laura Rivers slowly glide down the lunch line en route to their table, Charlie wasn’t so sure.
“You guys hear there’s a new girl?” Miller asked, his mouth half-full with the first of two meatball subs he’d grabbed from the cafeteria line. As usual, his timing was terrible.
Amanda glanced at Kit, who acknowledged the look, but quickly turned away. So much for Charlie seeing things that weren’t really there.
“Yeah. We have English together first period. I actually invited her to sit with us today,” Charlie said. He knew the Band-Aid approach was best with this group. Better to just rip it off so there was more time to deal with Amanda’s freak-out.
“You did what?” Amanda barked.
“What’s the problem?” Charlie was bluffing, and he knew that she knew it.
“Fine. Since no one else is going to say it…” she lowered her voice and leaned in, “she kinda looks like you-know-who.”
“I think she does, too, Charlie,” Kit chimed in. “But maybe that’s just because we’re paranoid…”
“You girls are crazy,” Miller said. “I don’t see it.”
“You don’t see anything, Sean,” Kit said.
Charlie had no interest in dwelling on the issue. “Her name is Laura and we all need to get over it,” Charlie said, mostly to himself.
The next second, she was standing inches from the table. Charlie looked over at Miller as he registered Laura’s features. Within a second, Charlie could tell that he saw it, too.
Charlie watched Laura nervously touch a chunk of her gold curls and felt his entire body clench. In that moment, any thought about moving on seemed ridiculous. Laura looked like her, yes, but the bigger problem was that Charlie found her totally captivating.
Sasha
It was ten o’clock at night before Sasha finally settled down to her computer and read the words she’d talked herself into believing she would never see—the ones that made her whole body shiver.
The first day back had been typically busy, plus she’d stayed after school to help Mrs. Egenoff finish organizing the computer lab for extra credit. Sasha didn’t need the extra credit. She could probably teach all of the computer classes her school offered, but new Design Suite software had just arrived for the AP engineering class, and Mrs. Egenoff said she could spend an hour playing with it as thanks for the help. It didn’t hurt that hiding out in the lab meant she could avoid walking through the first-day activities fair. The thought of table after table of screaming upperclassmen hawking a dozen different paths to high school glory was the opposite of appealing. Sasha made it her goal to talk to as few people as humanly possible in a given day.
By the time Sasha got home, it was already six o’clock, and then there was dinner to make and a surprising amount of homework to do. She didn’t hold out hope that they might eat as a family in honor of the first day of school. They had never been that kind of unit. Mom would probably labor away at some ridiculous metal sculpture thing in her studio and Dad would hide out at the office until at least eight. Sasha was pretty sure that neither of them even knew school was back in session, but she didn’t mind. The less they paid attention to her, the more time she could spend online.
Sasha very clearly remembered the day she’d first learned what hacking meant. It was the spring of her eighth-grade year, and she was sitting in computer class. Some terrified-looking substitute teacher had been directed to keep the kids quiet by showing a “20/20” special on people who got caught cracking the New York Stock Exchange security systems and wound up serving eight years in a federal prison. It was intended to scare the class away from any curiosity about the hacking world, but it had the opposite effect on Sasha. From that point on, she was hooked. It was exactly what she needed to help with the investigation.
It takes the average baby hacker about a year to develop the skills to crack a basic office security system. After that, things progress quickly to the point of figuring out how to monitor a person’s online life. Sasha tackled all that within her first six months. That’s how she earned the name “Phenom.” You know you’re finally accepted into the community once another hacker gives you a handle, and she received hers from Syke, the leader of the Midnight Kids—one of the top hacking groups online.
Sasha’s skills expanded a thousand-fold once she had the support of Syke and his crew. They helped her develop an interface to track all the communication she was monitoring. Sasha knew everything that went on inside the computers of over three hundred fifty people—emails, chats, downloads, searches, and more. After that, she built an alert system to let her know when relevant information was shared. That is, if relevant information was ever shared.
It had been five hundred twenty-one days since the search terms she’d built her system around popped up in the interface—almost a year and a half since any of the people she was hacking mentioned the words she’d been waiting to hear. Those words were the key to building her case.
Sasha still checked in on the feed twice a day, every day, no matter how useless the act felt. She couldn’t let herself give up yet, if ever. She’d wake up, shower, get dressed, and then sit down at her computer to check the feed. At the end of the day, she’d finish her homework, change into her pajamas, and sit down to check it one more time before bed. Every single day was the same. No new mentions of the search terms.
They had obviously all forgotten about what happened, and she hated them for it. Nobody wanted to remember that kind of tragedy, least of all Sasha. And yet here she was again, as always, sitting before her computer for the end-of-day check. She refused to let a day go by without honoring the promise she’d made herself all those months ago, even if no new clues ever surfaced.
But today, all that patience finally paid off.
Sasha saw the flashing red S on the top right of her screen and a mix of joy and fear rushed through her body.
She clicked on the icon, which opened the master-panel listing of all the computers she followed. Sasha had built the system to collect a huge amount of data—enough to give her the greatest chance possible of finding the one thing she was looking for. But the deluge of information wouldn’t be a problem today. The problem now was where to begin.
For a second, Sasha just froze. She didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, jump up and down, or scream. Somehow every emotion available felt right. Instead, she took a deep breath and clicked on the very first name on the list: Andrea Adams. An instant-message screen popped open. She noticed that Andrea Adams had engaged in an online conversation with a Christine Beck at 3:45 p.m., which was almost immediately after school let out for the day. Sasha would typically do a control+F keyboard search to find mentions of the word Sarah, but that wouldn’t be necessary. It was the very first thing Andrea Adams said.
Laura
Laura sat on her bed working on the latest in her ever-growing collection of infinity scarves. Her mom’s mom, Grandma Hellen, had taught her to knit the summer that she stayed in her cottage in Santa Barbara. Laura had been something like ten years old, but the lesson stuck and knitting became her favorite way to relax—even if it did make her feel like an old lady.
Laura thought back on her first day at Englewood as she stared at the needles flying around the bright-pink yarn. “I survived,” she’d reported at the dinner table earlier, and luckily there was no follow-up question. Laura didn’t want to talk about the confusing looks, and she certainly didn’t want to remember what she overheard as she left lunch.
Charlie and his friends were already at the table when she walked into the room, giving her the chance to observe them from afar. To Charlie’s left sat a petite blonde wearing a blue-and-white-striped sweater dress. She had blunt-cut bangs and tiny little panda bears painted on her fingernails, and she moved like a flitting hummingbird, totally focused on everyone but herself. To her left was a shorter, stockier version of Charlie. He wore a Varsity jacket, an attempt at dressy sweat pants, and the only five o’clock shadow Laura had ever seen at noon. On his lunch tray were two meatball sandwiches and a giant side of fries, most of which appeared to be from the blond girl’s tray. And then there was the other girl, the really beautiful one. Her lanky frame, bone-white skin, and deep-auburn hair made her look like she’d just stepped out of a magazine fashion spread, and her perfect posture made it clear that she knew it. She clearly owned the table, if not the whole school.
Just as Laura was about to approach, the beautiful one hit Charlie with a look like he’d just said something totally shocking.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Laura said as she slipped a tendril of hair behind her ear. Everyone in the group started at her arrival—especially Charlie.
“There she is now!” he said, expertly smoothing over the awkward moment. “We were just talking about how much it must have sucked to never have winter on the West Coast.”
Laura smiled. “Seventy-five degrees year-round is a total bummer.” The group forced a laugh. Whatever they had been talking about was being pushed aside for now.
“Laura, the group—group, Laura.”
The little blond one stuck her hand out first. “Welcome to Englewood. I’m Katherine Jacobs, but everyone calls me Kit. Your dress is super cute, but you’re probably going to tell me it’s from some cool shop in L.A.” Kit seemed sweet and genuine, like she knew just how to make a person feel comfortable.
“Thank you,” Laura said, “It’s actually from my friend’s fashion line. Your nails are really fun. Do you get them done in town?”
“Of course you have a friend with a fashion line, and, yes, at Satin Hands. They can do any nail art you could possibly think of. We’ll have to go sometime.”
“That would be really nice,” Laura said.
“Don’t let Kit morph you into her taller twin,” Varsity Jacket said. “She makes up for her height with her bossiness.” She fake-shoved him. He put his arm around her and gave her a rough kiss. Okay, so these two are a couple, Laura thought. Then she said a silent prayer that Charlie and the perfect one weren’t also a pair. “Sean Miller,” the wrestler said. “But everyone calls me Miller.”
“Miller,” Laura repeated. “Got it.”
“I’m Amanda.”
She’d said it casually, like she was obligated—not like she had any real interest in meeting this new person at their table. By the time Laura had the chance to turn in her direction, Amanda appeared to have shifted her seat closer to Charlie.
“Hi, Amanda,” Laura said, “Thanks for letting me join you guys.”
“It was Charlie’s idea,” Amanda said, shooting a pageant-queen smile in his direction. Unlike Kit, Amanda knew just how to make a girl feel uncomfortable.
Laura got a full rundown of life in Englewood over the course of lunch: Yes, the school is cliquey, but people are happy keeping to their own groups, and don’t worry, we get along with everyone. The football team sucks; the soccer teams reign supreme (and with them Captain Charlie Sanders). People mostly hang out at house parties over the weekend, and at The Golden Bell Diner over on Route 9 most weeknights.
She also answered the full barrage of new-girl questions, most of which she’d prepped for: Yes, I really miss home, but I’m excited to be on the East Coast. Yes, I was pissed at my parents for moving me before senior year, but their new jobs have them traveling a ton, so that’s a plus. No, no boyfriend back in Cali (and thank you, Kit, for asking in front of Charlie.)
And then the bell rang for fifth period and it was over. Laura silently patted herself on the back for making what she thought was an excellent first impression.
“We’re off to Señor Leon,” Kit said, “You guys?”
“Calc for me,” Charlie said.
“Same,” echoed Amanda with a big, wide smile.
“I have AP stats,” Laura said. “Is that in the same hallway?”
“Whoa. Impressive,” Charlie said, which instantly wiped the smile off Amanda’s face. “That’s in the same hall as us. Let’s go.”
They only made it a few steps beyond the cafeteria doors together before Amanda looped her right arm into Charlie’s left and pulled him aside.
“You know what…can I have a word, Carly?” she said.
“Um…sure?” Charlie said, clearly thrown off by the move. Laura didn’t budge at first. She was testing the situation to gauge whether what she suspected was true: that Amanda wanted to have a word about her.
“Could you excuse us for a moment, Lauren?” And there was her answer.
“Of course,” Laura said. “I think I forgot something in my locker anyway. See you guys later.”
Laura chose to overlook the fact that Amanda had intentionally botched her name, but as the two of them walked away, she overheard something that she could not ignore.
“The last thing we need is our faces associated with that face,” Amanda hissed. “Stay away.”
Charlie
The sun had almost completely set when Charlie huffed up Vista Hill on the final leg of his evening three-miler. Soccer practice had officially started two weeks ago, and each player was responsible for logging five additional miles of running per day. Charlie made sure he did at least seven. These next few weeks of training would be brutal and he was determined to leave the right impression on every recruiter that came to visit. But the truth was that he’d always loved pushing his body to its limits. It made him feel powerful, and it helped him take his mind off life.
Right now, though, it wasn’t working. All he could think about as he ran was whether or not Laura had overheard what Amanda said outside the cafeteria—and why he cared so much.
Maybe Amanda was right. Charlie had been too focused on his instant attraction to Laura to realize that one of the last things he needed was to be reminded of her. It was all in the past now. It had happened over eighteen months ago. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d heard her name uttered in the halls of Englewood. Everyone had moved on—including him. Amanda was right.
By the time he got home from his run, the smell of his mom’s famous lasagna was wafting out the front door. Charlie should have known she wouldn’t be able to help herself today, even though she should have been getting her sleep in before the overnight shift at the hospital call center. Grandma’s meatball lasagna had always been the first-day-of-school dinner tradition, and Mom wasn’t about to deny her pride and joy a family tradition.
“Look at you,” she said as he walked into the kitchen. “Where did my little Choo Choo Charlie go?”
Charlie walked over and smothered her in a sweaty hug. “He grew into a six-foot monster!”
“That smells! Go wash up before we sit down for some lasagna,” she said.
“You didn’t have to, Mom,” Charlie said.
“I know,” she said. “But I’m proud of you. It’s been a tough few years, and you’re handling it like a pro—just like you handle everything.”
Charlie gave his mom a kiss on the forehead. He was tall enough now to do it just like Gramps always had—way up top where her hair met her forehead. Grandpa used to say that he did it because his back was too achy to bend down for a hug. Charlie would never admit that he took over the tradition because it was often too hard for him to look his mother in the eyes after all the lies he’d told her. No more, he thought as he watched her grab her famous icebox cake out of the fridge. This year will be different.
* * *
It was nine o’clock at night by the time Charlie grabbed a bottle of Gatorade from the fridge and headed into the apartment building’s garage. He needed to work the heavy meal off so it didn’t turn him into a slug at practice the next morning.
After his freshman year, Charlie built a small home gym to fit inside his mom’s garage unit out behind their building. This way he could put more hours into lifting than what coach required during school practice, even if it meant having to dig her car out of the snow a few times a year. The whole thing had technically been Amanda’s dad’s idea, and the equipment was his very generous gift. Dan Hunter had been a star Englewood player back in his day. He was part of the alumni team that scouted the country to find Coach Stanley for Englewood, and he still coached his own traveling boy’s team on the weekend, even as the town’s newly elected mayor. “The time you spend in the gym makes all the difference,” he’d told Charlie during one of their first heart-to-hearts.
Mr. Hunter had treated Charlie like a son from the moment Amanda brought him over for his first Sunday dinner. The Hunters had three very girly girls, and it was obvious that Dan—as he insisted Charlie call him—loved having another guy in the house. Charlie was more than happy to fill in, even if the frequent gifts of expensive soccer cleats and extra summer training camps made him a little uncomfortable. Dan had his back, and he also had Coach Stanley’s ear, which didn’t hurt.
Charlie put his cellphone on the floor next to the lifting bench and started in on his reps. His mind was clearest when his muscles were moving. Hopefully this would help get him ready for a good night of sleep. But just as he pushed through the first lift in, his phone buzzed. Charlie looked down as a black square flashed on the screen. He placed the weight on its rack and picked up the phone to examine the weird image closer. It wasn’t actually a picture; it was a video, and it had popped up on VidBit, one of the thousand apps Amanda had loaded onto his phone over the summer. Charlie opened the app and clicked on the video.
The black box never turned into an image, but Charlie did hear the recording of a voice: “What don’t you understand, asshole?! She doesn’t want to do it! We’re leaving!”
The line repeated over and over and over again against the blank box, but Charlie only needed to hear it once. It was Miller’s voice, though Charlie had no idea what he was talking about. Miller didn’t need much of an excuse to yell at someone, especially someone on their team. He must have accidentally recorded this and sent it. Charlie shot Miller a text.
Miller replied after a few seconds.
There was a longer delay before Miller responded.
Charlie touched the app symbol to look for the list of incoming messages. The video was gone, and a new username was now sitting directly above “MillerTime” in his contacts list. “C-O,” Charlie read aloud. “Who the hell is that?”
Charlie didn’t have the time or interest to figure out the inner workings of this dumb, cellphone time suck. The only reason he even had it was because Amanda insisted. Hopefully he could delete it without her throwing a fit.
Charlie shifted back into position on the bench and got back to work. He didn’t give the video a second thought, not until he found himself sitting straight up in his bed at three o’clock in the morning, dripping with sweat.
“She doesn’t want to do it! We’re leaving!” he heard Miller yell over and over in his mind as if he was sitting right next to him on the bed.
Suddenly those words didn’t seem so random. Charlie didn’t want to let himself think it, but he was almost certain he’d heard Miller say them before—the night that Sarah died.