“Why?” I ask.
“Daisy, you don’t have to be embarrassed,” she says, confusing me again. “I know our dads worked with the same family back in Frozen Hills. Yours counseled their son, and mine did the accounting. Their former employer is on trial for racketeering and a bunch of worse crimes.”
“Okay,” I say when she pauses. My mind is spinning. What the hell is she talking about? Then, without me having to ask, she fills in the blanks.
“That’s why you said ‘we’re the same’ when you messaged me,” Nora says. “Duh, we’re both in the witness relocation program. And I’ll tell you one thing, my relocation sucks.”
Unable to contain myself, I pretend to be called to dinner a few minutes later, promising to reconnect in the next day or two. Then I dial Megan and tell her everything that just happened, word for word.
“What the what?” Megan says when I’m finished.
“I know! I mean… This is so… What’s happening?”
“Okay, so let’s think rationally here,” Megan says.
“Okay.”
“So Nora sees you, agents disguised as police try to deter her from telling anyone—”
“And maybe bug her house in the process?”
“Maybe,” Megan agrees. “Which is how they knew that it didn’t work.”
“And why they were still following her that night.”
“Conveniently.”
“Too conveniently,” I mutter.
“Then there’s a crash, either accidental or intentional,” Megan continues piecing it together. “If it was accidental, then the agents jumped on the chance; if it was intentional, then—”
“The program is jacked up.”
“Yes,” Megan says. “Okay, so either way, what, the agents go to Nora’s parents like they did with the bus kids and say that we’ll try to bring her back if you agree to a relo?”
“And they agree, but they decide to lie to Nora about why they’re really there?”
“But they didn’t make up that story on their own,” Megan says. “The agents had to have fed it to them.”
“Why not just tell them about the program, now that they’re in it?” I ask.
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Megan says. “Maybe they were still concerned that Nora would tell, so they didn’t fully pull back the curtain. Maybe they are keeping them in the dark, forcing them to lie to Nora so she’s really in the dark and can’t do more damage.”
Neither of us speaks for a few moments as we collect our thoughts.
“I guess it works,” I say. “I guess I understand why they’d want to keep Nora clueless. But I still feel sorry for her. Unlike us, she has no network.”
“Except you, her fellow wit-pro buddy.” Megan laughs.
“Funny,” I say without laughing.
“Stop obsessing,” Megan says.
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are,” she says. “You want to know whether it was an accident or not.”
“Don’t you?”
“Honestly? Not really. I already think the program is a little dark side as it is; I don’t need to be spooked about killer agents.”
“Dark side?”
“Of course, Daisy,” Megan says. “You know it better than anyone.”
“I know,” I say. I guess I am obsessing.
“All I’m saying is that if you decide to go digging in the cemetery,” Megan says, “be careful.”
Casually, over bacon-wrapped meat loaf and garlic mashed potatoes, I ask Mason what ended up happening with Nora. He looks at me funny at first, then remembers what I’m talking about.
“Oh, nothing,” he says, setting down his fork and taking a drink of water. “If I remember correctly, the briefing said that she let it go, so we did, too. The agents were pulled out and reassigned.”
“Oh,” I say, pushing my food around on my plate with my fork.
“Sorry I forgot to circle back on that one,” Mason says.
“No problem,” I say as lightly as I can, knowing that even though Megan’s not up for digging, I’m going to need a shovel.
thirty-five
Matt comes back to school on a Thursday.
I only find out he’s coming back when he walks through the door to our English classroom. It stings a bit that he didn’t tell me—that he didn’t want to ride together or meet up before class—but I knew things would be different.
I just hope they’re not different forever.
In the halls, people look from me to Matt and back again with funny expressions that I can’t read. It feels like we broke up even though we were never official, except that when we catch each other’s eyes, we talk without speaking.
I wish they’d stop staring.
Everything’s going to be okay.
I still care about you.
We’re only a few feet apart, but there’s a wall between us, both of us unable to deal with the enormity of our feelings toward each other right now. Somehow I know that eventually we’ll fall back into step, so the pain is the low hum of detachment rather than the screaming stab of the end.
I try to busy myself with other things, namely Nora.
After Matt’s first day back, I call her like I have three other nights this week, but I need it more this time. We chat about school, she buzzes about boys. It’s like we’re old friends, except that we aren’t. Not really. Talking with Nora makes me miss my real friends. Megan. Matt.
Audrey.
When it approaches bedtime, I decide to try again on the whole accident thing.
“A girl at my school got into a car accident,” I lie. “She said it was the scariest thing that’s ever happened to her.”
“I can relate,” Nora says. “I thought I was going to die.”
“You did?”
“Of course,” Nora says. “I was already creeped out by the dark road—the streetlamps were out in a couple of places because there was an electrical storm earlier in the day. Then when the truck came around the bend with its high beams on, I got this sinking feeling, like I knew it was going to swerve into my lane before it actually lost control.”
I hold my breath; this is more than she’s shared in any of our conversations. I don’t want to call attention to her story by speaking, in the hope that she’ll keep going. For now, it works.
“I cranked the wheel to get out of the truck’s way. Half of my car went off the pavement onto the gravel, so when I braked, the loose, wet gravel sort of grabbed the car and pulled it more off the road, but my wheel was still turned so the car…” Pause. “It flipped.”
“Oh, Nora,” I say quietly. “That’s horrible.”
“Yeah,” she says.
I get the sense that she’s going to change the subject, so I ask a question to stay on topic.
“What was it like?” I ask, cringing for making her relive it.
There’s another pause, when I wonder if I’ve pushed too hard. But then…
“Loud,” she says. “It happened really quickly, but I remember it like I was in slow motion. I had this CD case on the seat next to me, and I remember watching it float around the car like there was no gravity or something. My water spilled all over me. I hit my head, but I didn’t feel any pain. Then the car landed upside down. I was still strapped in, so I was just hanging there. Bleeding.”