When the hour was finally over-the slowest hour imaginable-I grabbed my cell phone and checked for texts.
Nothing from Rachel.
Feeling dejected, I headed out the front door of the school-and there she was. I rushed over to her. “Thanks for waiting.”
Rachel nodded, said nothing. She looked distracted, unsure of herself.
“So you were going to explain?” I asked.
“You said you saw me on a surveillance video, right?”
Now I could see. She wasn’t distracted. She was frightened. “That’s right.”
“How? I mean, how did you get a hold of school security stuff?”
I shook my head. I didn’t trust her enough to tell her about Spoon. “It’s not important.”
“It is to me,” she said. “Do other people know?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Why would you have been looking at video surveillance?”
“I told you. I’m trying to figure out what happened to Ashley. Why were you at her locker?”
“Why do you think?”
“I don’t have a clue,” I said. “You told me you didn’t really know her.”
“I didn’t,” she said.
I spread my hands. “Yet there you are, cleaning out her locker.”
Rachel looked off and shook her head. “You don’t get it.”
“You’re right. I don’t. So explain it to me. And while you’re at it, why don’t you explain to me why you were pretending to be my friend?”
“Ashley asked me to do that.”
“Ashley asked you to pretend to be my friend?”
Rachel sighed, as though there were no way I would understand. “She wanted me to check up on you. She wanted to make sure that you were okay.”
“Okay?” My head was spinning. “What are you talking about?”
“Ashley didn’t want you hurt. She didn’t want you involved.”
“Involved in what?”
“It’s not my place to say. She said I shouldn’t tell you.”
My heart picked up speed. “Wait, hold up. Ashley said that?”
“Yes.”
“So you know where she is?”
She didn’t reply.
“Rachel?”
She looked up at me slowly. Our eyes met. I know that I should know better by now, but if this was an act, if I was just being played… No. They say the eyes don’t lie. I saw something there, in the way she looked at me, and it wasn’t just deception. “Yes,” Rachel finally said. “I know where Ashley is.”
“Where?”
“Come on,” Rachel said, finally breaking eye contact. “I’ll show you.”
chapter 19
WE WALKED IN COMFORTABLE SILENCE for a while. I tried to wait her out, hoping that she would volunteer some information, but she didn’t. Finally I asked, “Where are we going?”
“My house.”
“And Ashley is there?”
She made a face like maybe-yes, maybe-no. “You’ll see.”
“What does that mean? What happened?”
“I’ll let Ashley explain.”
“I’d rather hear it from you.”
“Like I said before, it’s not my place to explain.”
We walked in silence a little more.
“Mickey?”
I looked at her.
“I wasn’t pretending to be your friend. I mean, Ashley did ask me to look after you and maybe that’s why I started talking to you at first, but then…” She stopped, keeping her eyes on the pavement, and said, “Never mind.”
I wanted to do something here, reach out and take her hand, something. But I didn’t know what. My cell phone buzzed. It was a text from Ema: where r u?
I showed it to Rachel. She shook her head. “Don’t answer it.”
I nodded, put my phone away. Rachel’s sprawling estate-it wasn’t a house, it was an estate-sat atop a hill. There was an electric gate at the end of the driveway. Rachel pressed a code into the number pad and it swung open. We started up the drive.
“Are your parents home?” I asked.
A smile crossed her lips. “No.”
The smile was saying something, but I wasn’t sure what.
“Is Ashley here?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“The guesthouse in the back.”
“How long has she been here?”
“Over a week.”
“So your parents know?”
“Let’s just say”-again she flashed the small smile, only this time I could see it was a sad one-“that my parents aren’t around very much.”
Everything about this place said big bucks. We walked around back, past the marble patio and clay tennis court. There was a small house next to the pool. I gestured toward it with my chin.
“Ashley’s in there?” I said.
“Yes.”
I swallowed and hurried my step. This was it. All my questions were about to be answered. We got to the door. Rachel had a key in her hand. She put it in the lock and turned the knob.
“Ashley?” she said.
There was no reply.
“Ashley?”
Still nothing. We stepped all the way in. The bed was made. The room was neat. But no one was there. I looked at Rachel. Her face was pale now, her eyes wide. I glanced around the room, and there, on the table next to the bed, was a note. I picked it up. Rachel was next to me, looking over my shoulder.
RACHEL-
SORRY TO JUST RUN OFF LIKE THIS. CAN’T EXPLAIN WITHOUT DRAWING YOU INTO THIS DEEPER. THANK YOU FOR HIDING ME, BUT I CAN’T CAN’T HIDE FOREVER. DON’T CALL THE POLICE. THIS IS SOMETHING I HAVE TO DO.
– ASHLEY
“I don’t understand,” Rachel said. “She was terrified.”
We were inside Rachel’s house now. We had quickly checked just to make sure that Ashley wasn’t here. She wasn’t. No one was. The big house was as silent as a mausoleum.
“Tell me what happened,” I said.
“A little more than a week ago, we had tryouts for the cheerleading squad. There was only room for three new girls this year, and maybe fifty girls showed up. One of them was Ashley.”
That surprised me. “She was trying out for cheerleading?”
Rachel nodded.
“So how did it go?”
“Not well. The new girls were being selected by three of us. Cathy, Brittany, and me. I thought that she was good, had real talent, but her audition was, well, it was weird.”
“In what way?”
“This place is old-school. We do classic cheerleading. It’s more gymnastic based. Most of the girls did familiar routines-acrobatics, tumbling, showing that they could help form a pyramid. That kind of thing. Ashley, on the other hand, danced. I thought she was pretty good, showed a lot of promise, but the other girls thought…”
“Thought what?”
“That her routine was a tad”-she stopped, either searching for the word or afraid to say it-“well, it was pretty racy. Not over the top. But it was enough to get the other girls going.”
I said nothing. I thought about the Plan B Go-Go Lounge and wanted to close my eyes.
“And so Ashley finishes this, and then, well, she’s waiting for applause. No one claps. Ashley is standing there, all nervous, waiting for feedback. And the girls just dig into her. First Cathy snickers and says, ‘Where’s your stripper pole?’ Then they start in on her clothes, her hair, the whole thing.”
“What’s wrong with her clothes and hair?”
“You’re a guy, so you wouldn’t notice. The clothes are secondhand.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “So what? You guys made fun of her for having old clothes? Are you really that snobby?”
Rachel looked hurt when I said that. “You guys?”
“I just meant-”
“I’m not a snob. I don’t care how much money someone has. That’s not the point.”
“What is then?”
“The clothes weren’t even secondhand, so much as thirdor fourth-hand. There was a pretense here. It’s like she went to a thrift shop and searched for Eighties Prep. I mean, a monogrammed sweater?”