I still hadn’t even dealt with the issue of my father. I’d ignored a call and a voice mail this morning from Bridgette, too. We’d just had our weekly catch-up chat, so if she was calling in the middle of the week, there was something she needed to discuss. Was it about my father? Had he reached out to her? Or had she heard about Beck?
“Are you okay?” asked Langdon.
I realized that I was frowning, and rubbing the back of my neck. “No,” I said. “You know, not really.”
“Okay,” he said. “Understandable.”
We pulled up in front of the house. There was still a half hour before Luke would get home. It was a half day at school today for some reason, which was why I had to go right after class. We’d have the whole afternoon together.
“Be careful,” Langdon said, after I’d thanked him for the ride. “Don’t let him know he got to you.”
“What makes you think he got to me?”
He lifted his eyebrows, gave me a little half smile he seemed to have perfected-professorial and yet smart-alecky all at once.
“Uh, you were out in the middle of the night, wandering around a graveyard shack where a guy killed himself-all because of a poem he wrote. I’d say he got to you.”
I thought about offering a protest, reminding him again that it was just a game I was playing with a kid in my care. But I didn’t bother.
He beeped his horn when he saw that I’d opened the door, and I felt a little wistful as he drove his gray Touareg off into the gray afternoon.
Inside, I immediately set up my laptop and hooked into the wireless router. Rachel had given me the code so that I could go online. First, I tried to track down that article about Greenwald that Langdon said he found. But even after scrolling through pages of links, there was nothing. I knew he wouldn’t lie. I must have been doing something wrong. Or maybe he used a more powerful search engine; he would have access to LexisNexis at the library.
I checked my e-mail and saw a note from my aunt:
Call me, honey. We need to talk about something. And I heard about that missing girl at your school. I want to check in with you, okay?
She was a good person, my aunt. I thought that my mother would be so appreciative of how hard she’d worked at her relationship with me. And I thought she’d be a little angry with me for how hard I worked against her. I was a terrible and ungrateful child. But, of course, that wouldn’t be news to anyone.
There was an e-mail from Ainsley, too.
I’m going home. I can’t be here right now. My teachers said that I could take my classes online, so that’s what I’m going to do until things are settled. Sorry to leave you here alone. I just can’t go through this again. Tell Beck I’m sorry when she comes home. If she’s hurt or worse, I’ll hate myself. But if she’s fucking with us, I’ll never speak to her again. I totally mean it.
I was surprised by a powerful wave of sadness and fear. I didn’t want to be in that room without either of them. And I had no home to escape to; I certainly wouldn’t go to hide in my aunt’s perfectly lovely guest room. It wasn’t home and it never would be. I had always envied Ainsley her goodness, and her nice parents.
P.S., she wrote. I hate to tell you this. But some people are talking shit about you on Facebook. You might want to check it out. I’m sorry. I really am. I know I’m a sucky friend for abandoning you like this.
I didn’t blame her. If I had a real home, and loving parents who would nurture and protect me, I’d leave, too. But I was used to being on my own. (It would really hurt Bridgette’s feelings to hear me say that.)
Next stop: Fakebook, Beck’s misery page. Oh, the outpouring of sadness and love. We are praying for you, Rebecca! Please come home safe, wrote a girl I’d never even seen before. You hot, girl, wrote another moron. What I wouldn’t do to see you again:(, wrote a girl whom I knew Beck had once experimented with sexually but whom she now hated passionately.
What was it about a situation like this that brought out all the drama queens and glommers-on? How could people live with it, injecting themselves into an event that had nothing whatsoever to do with them? They were nightmare chasers, sucking up other people’s tragedy, anesthetizing their own boredom for a few days or weeks.
I scrolled through about a hundred posts that varied little from one another. Until I came to one that must have been what Ainsley was talking about.
What does Lana Granger know about Beck? What were they fighting about the night Beck went missing? And wasn’t she fighting with Elizabeth the night she went missing, too? And, naturally, people jumped at the chance to dish.
That girl’s a freak. She looks like a boy. (Nice.)
I hear they were lovers. (No.)
Don’t argue with Lana Granger or you go missing or dead! (Moron.)
Aren’t her parents dead? (Shit.)
She’s got problems, and she’s fugly. (Really? Fugly?)
You guys don’t know what you’re talking about. They’re best friends and have been forever. Shut your stupid mouths!!!! (Ainsley, of course.)
Didn’t her father kill her mother? (That one made my blood chill. Who knew that? The poster’s profile image was blank, and his page had no information at all. His name: Lester Nobody.)
Whaaaaat??? Is that true? That’s fucked up.
Google that shit, yo.
I let my head fall into my hands. I thought of the newspaper article I’d found in Beck’s drawer. It was all coming out. After a second I felt myself shutting down inside, the fear, despair, and panic disappearing down the big drain I had in my center. I closed the lid of my laptop and all that idiot chatter was gone, and the waves of emotion I’d been feeling since last night, gone, too. When you’ve been exposed to massive psychological trauma, Dr. Cooper explained, your mind learns how to do this. It’s survival. But those feelings don’t really go away. You can’t repress them forever. They will demand that you deal with them, one way or another.
After a quick glance outside for any sign of Luke, I found myself drifting up the stairs. There were still ten minutes before he was due home and I wondered if it was enough time for me to get a leg up on the whole scavenger hunt thing.
Instead of heading to Luke’s room, I wandered into Rachel’s. It was a peaceful, pretty space. The watery-gray afternoon light washed in. She had folded the throw blanket over the right foot of the bed. The radio had been left on and some kind of ambient, New Age music was playing. The room smelled like her perfume as I walked in and stood at the foot of her bed, then to the bedside table where her books and reading glasses sat in a tidy pile. At the low armless chair and ottoman by the window, I took a quick peek outside. The street was empty.
I ran my hand along her dresser. It was spotless, the surface shining and free from dust. Like everything in the house, it was perfect-a study in style and cleanliness.
“I am obsessively clean,” Rachel had admitted to me. “I clean to relieve stress.”