Gone Too Far (17 page)

Please let her be all right.

Please
.

“You're scaring me, Mom.”

She nods, smoothing my hair back from my forehead. “Tacey's fine. She's not…hurt.”

“Okay,” I say, but it's not okay. Something's obviously really wrong.

“Tacey's mom called just now.”

“At six in the morning?”

“She knows I'm an early riser. She asked me if you'd ever mentioned anything about Tacey acting oddly or being involved in any sort of…”

Her look seems to ask me to fill in the blanks, but there's nothing
but
blanks here. I scoot back to my headboard and pull my knees up but keep them under the covers. “Any sort of
what
?”

“Drugs,” she says. “Tacey's been using drugs.”

I laugh. Because it's laughable. Unthinkable. Tacey on drugs is like me in a cheerleading skirt. Not possible.

“Piper, I know it sounds a bit odd—”

“Odd? No, Mom, it doesn't sound odd. It sounds
ridiculous
. Tacey is on the antidrug committee for God's sake! She did that extra credit video essay reviewing heroin documentaries last year.”

“Honey, I know it sounds out of character, but she was caught red-handed. She confessed.”

“Confessed to
what
?” I'm practically shouting, but I can't seem to stop myself. “Shooting up in the library? Come on!”

My mother presses her lips together and looks at her lap. “No, Piper. Not those kind of drugs.”

I stop then, holding my breath as I wait for her to go on.

“Tacey's little sister, Tara, is on ADHD medicine. They found her pills in Tacey's purse. Someone knocked it over at the coffee shop the other day. The bottle fell out and I guess a bunch of kids saw it.”

The yearbook meeting. The meeting I was supposed to go to.

I shudder at the memory of Manny's text about something going down. But there's more than that. Tacey's endless energy. The lost weight. The way she never, ever seems to slow down. Or even sleep.

No. No, don't go there.

A cold, panicky feeling crawls through my middle, and I can barely find my voice. “Maybe she was holding it.”

It sounds pretty desperate, even to me. My mom puts a gentle hand on my knee, and it's all I can do to not pull away.

“Honey, I told you. She confessed. She told them what she was doing.”

“I want to see her,” I say.

“I don't think that's a good idea right now.”

“I don't care if it's a good idea. She's one of my best friends, and she's hurting and—”

“I think she needs some time, Piper. Their whole family probably does.”

“Why are you telling me all of this? To scare me away?”

“I told you because I didn't want you to hear it some other way. With the way news spreads in your school, you could have found out through some random text message from a stranger!”

Some random text message from a stranger.

Oh God.

My cheeks ache and my stomach rolls. I close my eyes and bring my hand to my cold, clammy forehead. That yearbook holiday thing was on Thursday night. And then on Friday I decided to be smug—to call his bluff.

No.
Please
, no.

“Who told her parents?” I ask, voice shaking.

“I don't know.”

“They didn't say?”

Mom's brow puckers. She can barely keep up with me. If I don't ease up, she's probably going to check
my
bag for a bottle of pills.

“They didn't give a name and Tacey's parents didn't recognize the phone number,” she finally says. “Piper, who told is not the issue here. You know that, right?”

“Yes,” I say, but she's wrong. Who told is the
whole
issue. I eye my phone on my nightstand but look away quickly. I don't want her spotting it, deciding to take it away before I try to call Tacey.

But I don't want to call anyone. I want to check my messages.

“What can I do for you, sweetheart? How can I help?”

I close my eyes and take a shaky breath. “Could I just have a few minutes alone? To process.”

I feel the gossamer brush of her lips on my forehead. And then the mattress shifts as she gets up, crosses my room, and slips outside.

I scramble for my phone the instant the door closes. The screen blooms to life and I see the message. The too-familiar number. I pull it up, holding my breath.

You should have given me a name.

• • •

Mom was right about Tacey's parents. Her mom wouldn't even let me in to drop off flowers. So I text Manny, hoping he's home from his aunt's place. He is. He answers the door wearing a giant hoodie and seriously dark circles under his eyes.

“Did you drive through the night?” I ask.

“Ten hours straight.”

“You probably need sleep.”

“Yeah, well my phone's been blowing up with this Tacey stuff.”

“What happened?”

Manny heaves a sigh and rubs his eyes. “Come in.”

Mr. Raines is snoring softly in his recliner. It smells like oranges and boys in here. The citrus is probably thanks to the fruit basket on the table. I see a red scarf on the back of Manny's chair. It'll probably end up around my neck within a week. The Raines boys are not scarf people.

I follow Manny into his room and kick some of his shoes out of the way so I can sit down on his bed. He moves straight to his computer, pulling things up before I even ask. I have a feeling I'm not going to want to see whatever he's looking up. But it's time for me to do a lot of things I don't want to do.

Like
telling
Manny
about
the
vigilante
stuff?

Maybe. Probably.

“We were all at the coffee shop—everybody but you and Connor. It was a total waste of time. The typical holly-jolly crap we do was a lot less enthusiastic after Ms. Collins used half an hour and a lot of fifty-cent words to tell us the website isn't coming back. And
then
she tried to dig for information about who had access to what and if we knew anyone that might want to put the tape up.”

“You think she wants to break this thing open?”

“Makes sense, right? She wants a real teaching job, not the part-time advising crap. Saving the school's morality or whatever seems like a good bet.” Manny yawns. “Anyway, Ms. Collins got up to leave and knocked over Tacey's purse. Those stupid pills flew halfway across the room.”

“Okay, but not that many people saw, right?”

“Eh, I wouldn't say that. Aimee was the one who picked them up—she tried to be discreet, but Candace was there. It might have been okay if Tacey hadn't freaked out, which made everything
really
obvious.”

It probably wouldn't have mattered. Candace is more effective than an emergency broadcast system.

I'm so shocked I can barely find the words, but Manny doesn't look so shocked. He picks his thumbnail and looks at the wall like none of this is unexpected.

“Manny, did you know about this?”

He shrugs. “I figured. She's been antsy, running a hundred miles an hour and outperforming everyone. Plus, Tara hates taking her meds. What, you didn't even suspect?”

“No.” Because I wasn't paying attention. I've been so wrapped up in fixing the world that I didn't see. She
needed
me. My friend needed me, and I was too busy playing vigilante games to notice.

“So the whole school knows?” I ask, voice cracking.

“It's a little bigger than that. Check out the website.” Manny rolls away from the computer and stretches out on his bed, face-first. “They got it down, but Connor sent me this screenshot. It was already over fifty thousand visits then. It's on the screen if you want to look.”

I don't. The three steps to that computer feel like three miles. But I sit down anyway. Adjust the monitor so I can see the image. Wish I could burn it out of my eyes just as fast as I take it in.

It's a social profile page, but it's not Tacey's. It's her name and picture, but the rest of it looks like it's been peeled off of someone else altogether. The background is graffiti-embossed black, with cannabis leaves in the corners. The
Things
I
Dig
section includes flying and tripping, and there's a life quote about how good and free she feels with the needle deep inside. And the pictures? Heroin, crack, every awful thing you can imagine.

I close my eyes, revolted. “That's…that's not Tacey.”

“She'll survive it. It'll be all right,” Manny says, his words muffled by his pillow and slurred by his exhaustion.

I shake my head because he's wrong. Nothing will be right now. It's my fault this happened. This will affect everything. Her position in the antidrug group. Maybe even her spot on the yearbook committee. All the things that matter to her—I stripped them away. Guilty or not, she would have never been a target if picking her wouldn't have hurt me.

And no one would have picked her if I had swallowed my fear and turned myself in. If I had done the right thing.

I'm back to Nick's words. Back to finding the place where it all went wrong. I don't even know if I'll ever find it. Every layer I peel back reveals a new stain.

Like best friends keeping big secrets.

I square my shoulders and close down the screen on Manny's window.

“Manny? I need to tell you something.”

He's quiet and still on his bed. I stand up and walk over, nudging the mattress with my knee.

“Manny?”

The mattress makes a rustling noise, but Manny doesn't move. He's dead asleep. I look down to see a wad of papers sticking out from between the mattress and the box spring. It doesn't look like the kind of thing a boy keeps under his mattress. It's graph paper. A thick stack of it folded in half. Curiosity picks at my fingers, whispers in my ears.

I shouldn't.

God, I know I shouldn't. But one more soft nudge of my knee and the papers fall out, unfolding like an invitation.

I look down at the kind of evidence that warrants expulsion. Maybe worse. Names, payment amounts, student ID numbers. And the worst part of all. Job descriptions. It isn't much. Tardies for Dean Jiminez. English and history for Shawna Welsh. Which means he didn't just mess with attendance. He somehow did grades too.

My stomach sours and I take a breath. I pick the papers up, because it doesn't matter anymore. I already know too much.

There are four sheets—six names I recognize and more I don't. What the hell? How big is this mess? Is he doing this for other schools? He told me he was done. He kept this from me.

You're keeping secrets too.

Guilt pricks at my chest, curls fingers around my ribs. It hurts. Everything hurts.

I flip to the next page with shaking fingers. Not graph paper. A bill. Claireville Orthopedic and a local address is listed at the top. I scan down the bill. Some sort of preauthorization. A surgical preauthorization. Lumbar fusion.

I think back to Mr. Raines struggling under the desk. To the two weeks this summer when he was laid up in bed. Out of work. He's had a bad back for a while, but I didn't know.

My eyes trail to the patient responsibility amount listed after the insurance payment—$3,164. I close my eyes and swallow down the bitter truth. I didn't know anything.

It's like a nail in my coffin. One that feels like it's been driven through the center of my chest.

I put the papers back where I found them and tug a blanket over Manny. I pull an afghan over Mr. Raines too, before I head outside. The door bangs louder than I intended, and I cringe, hoping it doesn't wake them. I start my car and sit there, shivering and sick in their driveway. I don't know where to start.

My phone shows a list of texts that burn my eyes. Where did it go wrong to begin with? This is where it went wrong. Right here.

I was stupid enough to believe that this was about justice, that I could do right by Stella. But this was never about any of those things. It was me pretending I could make up for something I can never change.

Tacey paid the price. I can't let that happen again.

Nick asked me if I was afraid to get caught. I was. Still am. But I'm more afraid of what will happen if I don't end this.

My fingers fly over the keyboard on my phone.

You went too far. We need to be done.

His reply comes moments later.

We aren't done. Lots of people left to punish.

I don't want to punish anyone. I told you, I quit.

If you quit, I'll keep choosing. Who do you think I'll find next?

Manny. Rage bubbles up from my center, so hot my head spins when I reply.

You're the next person to get found. I'm about to make sure of it.

I press Send and shove my phone to the bottom of my purse. Because I don't want to hear back from him. I don't want to read another damn thing he has to say.

I steer my Subaru out of Manny's driveway and take a left at the light. I head into town, past all the places I would normally stop. In the business district, I take the left toward our government offices. It's not an area I'm familiar with, but soon enough I see the brass letters on red brick. The ones that spell out
Police
Station.

I park in the lot and pull my purse onto my lap. Then I stare at the brightly lit double doors that lead inside.

I can do this. I picture it in my head, sliding my phone across a high counter. Speaking to a nameless, faceless police officer. Admitting my part in this awful thing.

Shame burns my cheeks, but it's starting to feel familiar. Just another part of me.

I grab my door handle and my purse vibrates on my legs. My body turns to stone.