Cold Calls (11 page)

He shrugged. “Not really. I mean, calling with that I-know-your-secret stuff? That's something you do when you're in fourth grade. You could say that to
anybody
and they'd freak.”

“That's pretty much what I did,” Fatima said. “I ended up just about begging her to tell me what she knew. And then, well, she did.”

“I didn't have to beg,” Eric said. “She called back, then sent me an email from a bogus EarthLink account.”

“And something in the email proved she knew your secret?”

Eric nodded.

“All right, let's go there next.” Below the bullet points, Shelly wrote
WHAT
.

“We're going to tell what our secret is? I don't think so,” Eric said.

“Sorry, that's not what I meant,” Shelly said. She crossed out
WHAT
and wrote
EVIDENCE
. “She's got something on each of us—”

“No kidding.”

“—but it's gotta be something that's really obvious.”

“If it was obvious, then it wouldn't be a secret.”

Shelly ignored him. “Whatever it is she's got on each of us, it's gotta be self-evident.”

Eric looked at her. “
Self-evident?
Can you just say what you mean?”

“No, hold on, I got it,” Fatima said. “You're saying that whatever evidence she has, it has to be something that she doesn't have to explain to people. Right?”

Shelly closed her eyes and smiled. “Exactly.”

Eric knocked on the table. “Why?”

“Because she's not gonna want to be there to have to explain it to them,” Fatima said. “She just wants people to look at it or read it or whatever and know right away what the big secret is.”

Eric took a second, then nodded. “Okay. Go on.”

“For me—and this is all I'm going to tell you—she's got information.” Shelly wrote the word on the paper.

“Vague much? Everything is information,” Fatima said.

Shelly played with the marker as she thought it through, pulling the cap off and snapping it back in place. “She knows something about me,” she finally said. “Is that good enough?”

Eric waved his hand, moving her along.

“A book,” Fatima said. “She has a book of mine.”

“Like a journal?”

“Sorta. But not really. Can you just put down ‘book' for now?”

Shelly added it to the list, glancing at Eric as she wrote. “Your turn.”

“I don't see the point of this,” he said. “How can knowing what she has help us figure out who it is?”

“It might not,” Shelly said. “But we don't have much to go on, do we? It's a piece of the puzzle, that's all. Maybe an important piece, maybe not. Later it might make all the difference. Or none. Look, you don't have to be specific. I wasn't. Is it bigger than an X-box?”

He sighed and rubbed the hint of stubble on his chin. “It's a picture.”

“A painting, a photograph . . . ?”

“A photo.”

“Digital?”

“Yeah,” he said, dropping his hands hard onto the arms of the metal chair. “A digital photograph. Happy?”

“Yes, thank you,” Shelly said, writing it all down. “Now the harder question. How'd she get it?”

“No frickin' clue,” Eric said.

Fatima tilted her head. “I thought you said she took a picture of you.”

“She
has
a picture. She didn't take it.”

“So she wasn't there?”

Eric looked down at the table, his hand coming up to cover his mouth as he smiled. “No, she wasn't there.”

“You sure?”

“I'm sure,” he said, his eyes shifting back and forth.

Shelly watched him, nodding, then said, “So I'm guessing that you know who took the picture and you're positive that whoever took it didn't give it to the girl who's calling us. Am I close?”

“Close enough, yeah.”

“Since it's digital, she might have hacked into your computer—”

“It was on my phone,” he said. “You can't hack into a phone.”

“Yes, you can,” Fatima said. “My cousin? Hassan? He's, like, a computer expert. I've heard him say that there's ways to do it but it's really complex. You gotta be linked into a network or something.”

“Okay, that's one way the caller could have gotten the picture,” Shelly said, adding it to the paper. “Did you loan your phone to a friend or something?”

He laughed. “They have their own.”

“Fine. Ever lose your phone anywhere?”

“No, I've always got it. My mother has it now, but before that, I always had it.”

“You
never
left it anywhere accidentally, even for a minute?”

“Well, yeah, sure. But it was never more than, I don't know, five minutes? She couldn't get to it that quick.”

“You'd be surprised at what can happen in five minutes,” Shelly said, more to herself than to the others. “So it's possible she stole it. How long for doesn't matter.”

“My book got stolen,” Fatima said. “She took it out of my locker.”

“Excellent. Now we know she goes to your school,” Eric said.

Shelly shook her head. “No, it only means that she got into the school building. You have to wear a uniform or something?”

“No,” Fatima said, making a face. “It's just Springtown. A regular high school.”

“So any girl could walk around there and nobody would notice.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“And do you always lock your locker every time?”

“No one does. We got, like, two minutes between classes. You don't want to spend half of it dialing in the combination. You close it almost all the way and it's good enough.”

Eric looked at Shelly. “What about you? How'd she get this . . .
information?
”

“She didn't have to break in, if that's what you mean,” Shelly said. “I don't know how she found it.”

“Could I find it?”

“No,” Shelly said, and before Eric could ask another question, she said, “We know more or less what she has, and for you guys, how she got it. All that's left is to figure out who she is.”

“
Who she is
is a psycho,” Eric said.

“That's a what,” Shelly said, “and given some of the girls I've met, it doesn't narrow it down much.”

Fatima said, “Let's make a list of everyone we know and see who we all know in common.”

“That's crazy,” Eric said. “You know how long that would take?”

“True, but it's the right idea,” Shelly said, “and there's an easier way. We each make a list of the things we do and compare that—say, like, sports, church, community service, clubs . . . that kind of stuff.”

“It's the same thing you said the other day in the parking lot.”

“You mean the same thing she shouted,” Fatima said.

“Yeah, she
was
loud.”

“I could hear her way back at the building. It shook the glass.”

“Tell me about it. I was standing right next to her.”

Shelly listened as they talked about her as if she wasn't there. After what she went through at her last school, she was used to it. When they finished, she smiled at them and said, “We've got three days. Less than that. Then everyone learns the one thing we don't want them to know. Now, unless you've got a better idea, this is where we start.”

 

Three hours later, they walked out of the library. Eric was smiling when he said, “Well,
that
was a waste of time.”

“No, we just didn't solve it today, that's all. We'll try again tomorrow. I'm sure we'll figure it out.”

“I like your attitude,” Fatima said.

Shelly smiled. “Thanks.”

“I think you're
crazy,
and I think we're
totally
screwed, but I still like your attitude.”

Eric thumped one of the rubber bands that held the rolled-up sheets of newsprint. “What should I do with this stuff?”

“There's no way I could bring that home,” Fatima said. “
Way
too many questions.” She waved at a silver SUV in the parking lot. “There's my mom. Same time tomorrow?”

“Absolutely.”

“Sure,” Eric said. “I've got nothing else to do.”

Fatima jogged out and climbed into the passenger seat, leaning over to kiss her mother on the cheek as the SUV drove away.

“How much you wanna bet her horrible secret is that she held some guy's hand?”

“That's a stereotype,” Shelly said. “Just because she's a Muslim doesn't mean it's like that.”

“Fine. How much you wanna bet?”

“I'm a good Catholic girl. The only gambling I'm allowed to do is bingo. Come on, walk me over to the bus stop.”

“I can give you a ride home.”

“Thanks, but I like the bus,” Shelly said, starting down the sidewalk. “That's where I do my best thinking.”

He fell in step next to her, slowing his pace to match her shorter legs. “You think we're going to figure out who it is?”

“Honestly? No. Fatima's right, we're screwed.”

“So why bother?”

She shrugged. “What else are we supposed to do? Roll over and wait for it without even trying to save ourselves?”

“It's an option.”

“I'd rather fail trying than succeed at not trying.”

“That made no sense.”

“Most things don't,” she said. “Especially this. I'm telling you, it's totally pissing me off. Don't laugh—I'm serious.” She glanced over at him. “Tell me you're not pissed.”

“Definitely.”

“And scared?”

He hummed, then said, “A little, I guess.”

“That's it? Just a little?”

“What do you want me to say? That I think about it all the time? That I'm up all night, puking 'cuz I'm so afraid of what could happen next?”

“I would if I were you.”

“You worry about yourself,” he said, balancing the rolled-up paper on the end of a finger. “I'm doing just fine.”

She watched him as they walked, his hand steady, his eyes wide, the tip of his tongue poking out between his lips as he concentrated on keeping the paper upright. It was an act—she was sure of it—but he was playing it off pretty good. Shelly checked her phone. The number twenty-four bus was three minutes away. Just enough time. She closed her phone and said, “Has she seen it?”

He kept his focus on the paper. “Who?”

“Your girlfriend.”

“Don't have one.”

“Okay, your ex-girlfriend. Has she seen it?”

The paper wobbled. “Has she seen what?”

“The naked picture you took of her.”

His finger twitched, and the paper tube dropped sideways. He grabbed for it with his left hand and missed. It bounced around on the sidewalk, and he stooped to pick it up. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Really? We're gonna have to do this? You pretending you don't know what I mean and me having to keep saying it?”

Eric whacked the paper against a light pole. The roll bent a bit, a sooty scuff below a rubber band to mark where it hit.

“It wasn't hard to figure out,” Shelly said. “You said it was a picture, and it was on your phone, so odds are it was you who took it. And when Fatima asked if the caller was there when the picture was taken? You had that look guys get when they're talking about sex.”

He shook his head. “That's just stupid.”

“Trust me—girls know. When you're with your friends and some cheerleader walks down the hall? We see the look you get.”

“I don't get
some look
—”

“Not just
you,
” she said. “All guys. And that's the look you had on your face when Fatima was asking you about the picture. Now, if it was a picture of you having sex with another guy—”

“What?”

“—you wouldn't have smirked like that. That's because you're not openly gay—”

“I'm not gay at all!”

“—and if it was a picture of you and another guy having sex—”

“Stop saying that.”

“—you wouldn't have shown
any
emotion, since you'd be trying to hide how you really felt. But you had that sex look, so I figure it was you and a girl.”

“This is insane.”

“And you have to be able to see her face in the picture. Or a tattoo. Something that would make her easy to identify. Oh, and it's not just
any
girl. It's somebody you care about. If it was only some quick hookup, you wouldn't be so worried about the picture getting out. If it did, you'd be like, ‘Yeah, I hit it, no big deal.'”

“
No.
I'm not
like
that.”

“Sure you're not,” Shelly said, digging through her backpack for her bus pass. “Anyway, that's how I figured that the caller has a picture of your ex-girlfriend naked.” She looked up at him and smiled. “Right?”

He started to say something, stopped, started again, then looked away.

“At least that explains why you were so willing to dump mac and cheese on some kid,” Shelly said. “If I had a boyfriend and he took a naked picture of me and that picture got out? His life would be over. I mean it. I would destroy him.”

“Gee, thanks. That makes me feel better.”

“It was a shitty thing to do, you know.”

“I'm not disagreeing,” he said.

“Don't worry, you're not the only one around here who wants to crawl under a rock and disappear.”

“Whatever it is you got, it can't be worse than mine.”

She laughed at that.

Eric tapped her arm with the paper roll. “You wanna swap problems? I'd rather have to deal with your secret than mine.”

“I seriously doubt that.”