Unfriended (13 page)

I sat on my bed, my laptop on and open before me, heart hammering. The flash drive rested next to me on my comforter.

After Isabel and Justin had left, I had remained in the store for a few more minutes, trying to order my thoughts and thinking that now would be a really excellent time for Einstein’s theorems of time travel to suddenly be proved, and transport me back to a moment before I’d ever even heard of Isabel Ryan. When that didn’t happen, I had closed up the store, gotten into Judy, and driven home, thoughts still swirling.

When I turned up my driveway, I had been surprised to see that all the lights were off. It looked like my father was still dealing with the situation at the paper. I figured it must have been pretty serious, to take him away from his sabbatical. But the fact that he was gone actually
suited my purposes fine, as I didn’t think that I would have been capable of any kind of coherent conversation.

I had gone straight up to my room and had turned on my computer, but somehow was having trouble taking the plunge and putting the flash drive into my laptop. I had just been sitting and staring at it, and for long enough that my computer had gone into power save mode and my screensaver had kicked in. A montage of pictures from my photo library was now filling the screen—Nate and I, arms around each other, shots of all my friends in various configurations, one of Travis looking distinctly green on the deck of our Galápagos boat, and an old one of Ruth and me in fourth grade, dressed up as prom queens for Halloween. The screensaver scrolled on, filling over and over again with images of all my favorite people, and Travis.

I reached for the flash drive, picking it up and turning it over in my hands. It seemed much too small and innocuous to have the power possibly to damage me and everyone I loved. I touched my keypad and woke my computer back up. A picture of Nate and me, slow dancing at the prom, was the last image on the screen, and it froze there for a moment before fading out. Both of us looked so happy. In that moment, I had thought we’d gotten away with everything. I had no idea how wrong I’d been.

My hand hovered over the keypad, and I wanted nothing more than to message my friends, to iChat them and see their faces, and tell them everything that had happened. I wanted to talk to Nate. I wanted not to be the only one holding on to this information. And even though
I couldn’t imagine how Isabel would know if I told any of them, she had seemed so absolutely serious when she told me that I didn’t want to chance it. I swallowed hard and gathered my courage. And before I could talk myself out of it, I inserted the flash drive into my computer.

The flash drive icon appeared on my screen a few seconds later, taking a bit longer than normal to show up. It was labeled FOR MADISON. I clicked on it. There was just one folder inside, labeled DOSSIERS. When I clicked on that, there was another strange multi-second pause before the folder opened. And when it did, I could feel my heart start to beat faster. There were fourteen folders inside this one, a list of names stretching alphabetically down my screen.

Zach Baylor

Ginger Davis

Sarah Donner

Nate (Jonathan) Ellis

Lisa Feldman

Dave (David) Gold

Andy (Anderson) Lee

Madison MacDonald

Brian McMahon

Ruth Miller

Kittson Pearson