The names clearly didn’t mean anything to him. From inside the house, I heard a woman’s voice shout, “Jared? Who’s there?”
“I got it, Ma.”
“I didn’t ask if you got it. I asked who’s there.”
Jared looked at us as though waiting for the answer. I said, “We’re here on behalf of Ema Beaumont.”
I wasn’t sure what to suspect. The most likely answer to all of this remained the most obvious one: Ema had been catfished. This guy, this Jared, had no idea who she was or what we were talking about. Still, this visit would confirm that fact, and we could be on our way.
In another sense, our mission was over the moment Jared Lowell opened that door. Jared Lowell wasn’t missing. We had found him. He was safe. The rest-whether he was the guy who’d befriended Ema online or not-was irrelevant.
So I expected him to say, “Who?” or “I don’t know any Ema Beaumont” or something along those lines. But that was not what happened. Instead his face drained of all color.
“Jared?”
It was his mom again.
“Just some friends from town,” he shouted back. “Everything’s fine.”
He stepped outside and closed the door behind him. He hurried down the cracked-concrete path. Rachel and I caught up to him.
“What are you doing here?” Jared asked.
“We’re friends of Ema’s,” I said.
“So?”
“You know who she is, right?”
He didn’t reply.
“Jared?”
“Yeah, I know who she is. So what?”
Jared looked at his front door as though expecting it to open. He picked up the pace. We kept up with him. When we reached the corner, he stopped abruptly.
“What’s this about?” Jared asked me. “I got to get to work at the club soon.”
Now that I had him in front of me, listening, I wasn’t sure how to put it. “You, uh, had a relationship with her,” I began.
“With Ema, you mean?”
“Yes.”
He shrugged. “We communicated online, I guess.”
“Just communicated?”
Jared looked over at Rachel, then back at me. “Why is this your business?”
Fair question.
Rachel said, “She’s worried about you.”
“Who?”
“Who do you think?” I snapped. “Ema.”
“And how does any of this concern you two?”
“You were ‘communicating’”-I made quote marks in the air-“online, right?”
“What if I was?”
“Well, Jared, you just stopped cold. Why?”
He shook his head slowly. “What’s your name again? Never mind. This is really none of your business.” He turned toward Rachel and his face softened. “No offense to you, Rachel, but I’m not sure it’s your business either.”
“Didn’t forget her name,” I mumbled.
“What?”
I stepped up to him. “You don’t do that to a person,” I said.
“Do what?”
“You don’t just stop communicating with someone like that. You don’t just disappear and not tell the other person. You don’t just leave them hanging like that. It’s mean.”
“‘It’s mean’?” he repeated, turning toward Rachel. “Is he for real?”
“I agree with him,” Rachel said.
That made him swallow. “Wait, I did send her an e-mail. Maybe, I don’t know, maybe it got stuck in her spam folder or something.”
“Yeah,” I said in a voice dripping with sarcasm, “that seems likely.”
There was a sound that drew his attention. I looked behind me to see what it was. The front door opened. A woman I assumed was his mother was standing in the doorway. “Everything okay, Jared?”
“Fine, Ma.” Then in a quieter voice to us: “I have to go.”
I stepped in his path. I didn’t exactly block him, but the move definitely had some force behind it. “Wait a second,” I said. “The two of us came a long way.”
“For what?” he asked.
I looked at Rachel. She looked at me. I didn’t have an answer. Jared Lowell wasn’t missing. He wasn’t in danger. He was, it seemed, a jerk, but that didn’t make him in need of rescue.
“Why did you stop communicating with Ema?” I asked again.
“None of your business.”
Again his eyes drifted toward Rachel, and when they did, a cold realization entered my brain.
“Oh man,” I said.
“What?”
“When did you first see a picture of Ema?”
“What?”
A small seed of anger began to grow in my chest. “When did you first see what Ema looked like, Jared?”
He shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“No?” I said. “So maybe-wild guess here-it was around the time you decided not to talk to her anymore?”
“I told you. We never talked.”
“E-mailed, texted, whatever. You know what I mean. Is that when you first saw her picture?”
But I saw something churning behind his eyes. “Yeah? So what of it?” He grabbed my arm and pulled me away from Rachel. He spoke in a soft voice.
“Dude, do you really blame me? I mean, look at the girl you’re with.”
I was actually cocking my fist when I remembered that his mom was still at the front door.
“Jared?” she called out.
“I’ll be there in a second, Ma.” He leaned close to me and kept his voice low. “Look, okay, maybe I should have told her better. Maybe I should have made it clearer, but really, it wasn’t a big thing.”
“It was to her.”
“That’s not my problem.”
“Yeah, Jared, it is.”
“What? Are you going to hit me, big man? Defend Ema’s honor?”
Man, I wanted to. I wanted to smack him good and hard. “You have no idea what a great person Ema is.”
“Then why don’t you date her?” He grinned. “I’d be happy to take Rachel off your hands.”
Rachel put her hand on my shoulder, her way of telling me to stay calm. “Not worth it,” she whispered.
“Look,” Jared said, “I’ll e-mail her, okay? I’ll let her know. You’re right about that. But, Mickey? You better get out of my face now, because one thing is for sure: This is none of your damned business.”
CHAPTER 30
I called Ema, but it went straight into her voice mail. I sent her a brief text: Found Jared. He’s safe. Call if you have any questions.
“I blew it,” I said to Rachel.
“How?”
“Got too aggressive.”
“You were mad.”
“It’s just… when I think of Ema waiting by her computer…”
Rachel smiled. “You’re sweet.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t even ask him the important question.”
“That being?”
“Why is Jared home? Why isn’t he still at school?”
“We didn’t come to change his life,” Rachel said. “We were supposed to find him. Mission accomplished.”
I knew that she was speaking the truth. Jared had vanished-and we had found him. Period. The end.
But something felt very wrong about it.
When we arrived back home, I got a text from Brandon Foley: Anything new on Troy’s test?
I thought about it. I simply was not buying that Buck’s mother would suddenly be granted full custody and that he would have to move away. Sure, I had heard of some pretty strange arrangements in cases of divorce, but who would move a kid when he was seventeen years old and already into his final year of high school?
It might make sense in a vacuum-if that was all that had happened. But at the same time Buck decided to leave, his best friend and cohort in crime, Troy Taylor, failed a drug test.
Coincidence?
I didn’t think so. Troy insisted that he’s innocent, and most of the guys on the team seemed to believe him. I started drawing little lines in my head, trying to make things connect.
My brain started to hurt.
I needed more information, so as soon as I made sure Rachel was home safe and sound, I decided that it was time I had a heart-to-heart with Troy.