Dead Ringer (11 page)

October
9

Charlie

Charlie threw his phone across the
room and watched the blue, plastic Yankees case protecting it smash into a
bunch of pieces. He was worried and scared, but more than anything right now,
he was pissed. CO was back.

Once again, the timing was awful. He’d just gotten home from
picking up flowers for his date with Laura later than night. Charlie tried to
be romantic when he remembered, but these were a please-don’t-be-mad gift.
Laura was upset about something. She texted that they “needed to talk,” which
was girl speak for "argue." Whatever her issue was, he had been prepared
to solve it, but now his mind was focused on the anxiety of this latest
intrusion into his life. Charlie had convinced himself that he could separate
these creepy developments from all the amazing things happening with Laura, but
the messages were getting more and more out of control.

As much as he wanted to ignore it, he forced himself to pick
his phone up off the floor and look again at what had just popped up on the
screen. All he saw before hurling it toward the wall was a notification from
WhispWhere, another of the apps Amanda had downloaded for him over the summer.
Amanda.
Unfortunately, Charlie didn’t have a lot of experience with WhispWhere. He
didn’t know that all the messages come through in a string of comments by what
look like anonymous posters, and that they’re all organized around a map. Once
he had the screen open, Charlie pinched the map open wider so he could see
where all the chatter was coming from and remembered Amanda explaining how it
worked to him when she installed it months ago. “It’s so genius. You can
literally comment on
anything
, no one knows, and it’s all based on your
location. It’s like whispering about someone from their front yard without them
knowing it’s you!”

That’s when Charlie started to feel his body heat rise. The
notification meant that people were talking about him, close to him.

Beads of sweat started to pool around Charlie’s forehead and
neck. This was worse than the Vids. This was someone who could be standing
right outside his house. He couldn’t be 100 percent sure that the messages were
meant for his eyes, but the goal seemed to be the same as the other contact—to
convince Charlie that they knew something, or everything, about Sarah’s death.
Right now, it was working.

Charlie looked down at the map again, trying to figure out
if he could pinpoint the poster’s exact location. That was impossible, but the
location function gave Charlie an idea: If CO was Amanda, then she would have
to be right in his neighborhood to use the app, and he
could
find that
out.

Charlie was slightly terrified by the thought that this
might answer the question. He’d been ignoring Amanda as much as possible to
avoid a confrontation. But if this was Amanda, then she was being a bully, and
bullies only stopped when they knew their tactics weren’t working. This was his
chance to figure out the truth, and Charlie needed to take it, even if it meant
finding out that Amanda was his enemy—one with the kind of information
about his life that could ruin him forever.

Charlie took a deep breath and dialed the Hunters’ number. He
could feel his body clenching as it rang once, then twice, and then a third
time. One more ring and the answering machine would pick up.

 “Hello?” a voice finally said.

Charlie hung up before she had the chance to say another
word, and then he breathed a giant sigh of relief for the first time in weeks. That
was Amanda’s voice; she was no longer his number-one suspect.

The Hunters lived exactly six miles from Charlie, a route
he’d jogged many times when they were dating. She wasn’t in range for him to
see her comments on the app. For a moment Charlie’s anxiety shifted to guilt
over all the assumptions he’d made about Amanda, but the fact that Amanda was
innocent didn’t exactly give him a sense of calm. This meant that whoever was
after him was someone entirely different, and unless they could hack the app,
they were somewhere very, very close to his apartment. Charlie could feel his
insides tighten again at that thought. They could be anywhere, and they could
be anyone.

What if Sarah told someone before that night? Or, even
worse, what if someone happened to see the four of them somewhere along the
way? They thought they weren’t followed that night, but maybe they were? They
thought no one could see them when it happened. But maybe someone did?

Charlie had to stop himself from running around the house to
lock every single window and draw every single blind. He needed to think, not
panic. But right now he didn’t have time for either. One look at his phone made
him rush out of the room; he was already fifteen minutes late for Laura.

Laura

Laura thought about launching right
into her frustrations when Charlie showed up twenty-five minutes late, but he
had flowers in his hand and a devastated look on his face, so she decided to
hold off.

Once again, Charlie was the ideal date. This time he even
upped the ante by learning a few words in Italian to use with the waiters. His
pronunciation was awful, but it was the ridiculously adorable thought that
counted. Still, Laura decided that she had to stick to her guns.

 “This is awkward to say,” she said just as they
finished their tiramisu, “but I feel like you don’t want people at school to
know that we’re together.”

The look on Charlie’s face told Laura everything she needed
to know.

“It’s not exactly that.” he started, but she didn’t want to
hear it.

“If that’s the way it’s going to be, then thanks for a fun two
weeks and good luck finding a girlfriend that’s willing to hide so you don’t
have to deal with Amanda.” Laura couldn’t believe she had the guts to say that.
She wanted to burst into tears right at the restaurant table, but instead stood
her ground.

“You’re right,” Charlie said. There was sadness in his
voice. “I’m sorry.” Apparently confronting the issue had worked. “But it’s not
just about Amanda.”

“How?” Laura asked. She wasn’t about to let up now.

“Well,” he paused and seemed to come to a decision. He
leaned forward. “Amanda
will
give me a hard time, but that’s because of
this crazy thing that happened with another girl, not just because she’s
jealous of you.”

“What do you mean? What other girl?”

Charlie scanned the other guests in the restaurant before he
turned to Laura with guilty eyes, and it took him another few seconds of
awkward silence to answer.

“Sarah Castro-Tanner,” Charlie whispered.

Laura was shocked to hear the words come out of his mouth.
They hadn’t talked about Sarah since that walk by her house weeks ago, when
Laura realized Charlie was really affected by her death. Now he was confessing
that there was a reason why.

“I need to tell you something that almost no one in the
world knows, and I need you to promise that you’re never going to tell anyone.
Can you do that?” he said.

“Of course,” she said, “I promise.”

“Sarah Castro-Tanner was in love with me, and she did some
things because of it that were really weird.”

“Wow,” Laura said. “Like what?”

“I don’t feel like I should talk about it, now that she’s
gone. She had a lot of problems, and I know that wasn’t her fault. But what she
did really scared me, and it took me awhile to get over it.”

Laura wasn’t sure that Charlie was really over it yet. He
was speaking in a low, shaky voice and he kept shifting back and forth in his
chair.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That sounds terrible.”

“It was, and that’s why I haven’t been as honest with my
friends about you. When people were saying you kind of look like Sarah, those
guys got worried about me. They don’t think I should hang out with you because
it might bring back bad memories.”

Laura knew the disappointment was showing on her face, but
she couldn’t help it. She didn’t want this to stand in the way of them being
together, but it sounded like there was nothing she could do.

“I feel really terrible,” she finally said. “I didn’t know I
was making you so uncomfortable.”

“No, no, no,” Charlie said, “That’s the thing! You’re not.
Maybe on the first day or so you reminded me of her, but now all I see when I
look at you is you. I love hanging out with you, Laura, and I don’t want what
happened with Sarah to get in the way.”

Laura felt her body calm down; Charlie loved being with her
and she felt the same way. What more really mattered? Then she remembered how
she felt when he gave her a cold hello in the hallways at school. She couldn’t
live like that. “But that still means we have to keep this whole thing under
wraps?” she asked.

“No,” Charlie said, “It just means I need to take it
slower.”

Once again, Laura blurted out the first thing that came to
her mind. “As in you don’t want to go to the homecoming dance with me?”

Charlie laughed out loud. “And there’s that honesty I love…”

“I get it, Charlie,” Laura confessed. “I would be
uncomfortable, too. But I have to be honest. I can’t be with someone who isn’t
willing to be brave. That’s my whole goal for myself this year, and I don’t
want to let myself down. Do you understand that?”

Laura could see the disappointment land on Charlie’s face.
She had obviously struck a chord. “You know what, screw it. I don’t want to go
to the dance with anyone else. That gives me a full week to let my friends know
that we’re together and they need to get on board.”

If Laura could have jumped out of her chair at the
restaurant and thrown her arms around him without looking like a totally
ridiculous, high school girl, that’s exactly what she would have done. Charlie
Sanders didn’t just
like
her, and he was willing to stand up against his
friends to prove it.

Charlie

Charlie drove straight to Amanda’s
after dropping Laura off. He could barely focus the entire time they’d been eating
because of the WhispWhere messages he’d received earlier. What if the mystery person
who posted follow him to dinner? Did they know all about Laura? What were they
going to do next? Charlie couldn’t take the anxiety. He walked straight into
Amanda’s room and immediately fessed up about the image Kit received that they
hid from Amanda, and about his WhispWhere situation. She didn’t take either
lightly.

 “Calm down?!” Amanda said. “Put yourself in my shoes,
Charlie. I think we’re going to start this school year off by finally getting
back together and instead you shun me, accuse me of pranking you about Sarah,
and
start hanging out with the new girl! I’m losing my mind!”

Charlie could see the pain in her eyes. It was not a common
look from Amanda Hunter. She had been telling the truth all along; he needed to
do the same.

“I’m not just hanging out with her,” Charlie admitted. Now
was as good a time as any. “We’re together.”

Amanda took a deep breath in and then slowly exhaled. The
information was clearly not shocking to her, but that didn’t seem to make it
have less impact. She didn’t look hurt; she looked angry.

“I don’t know what to say, but you know what, I don’t have
time to deal with that right now,” she finally said. “We need to do something
about what’s going on.”

“I know,” Charlie said, “and I have a thought that you’re
not going to like.”

“Try me.”

“I think we need to go to the police.”

“Please, Charlie. We can’t do that. What we did to Sarah has
got to be ten kinds of crimes. Plus we withheld important information from the
police for over a year and a half. I’m no lawyer, but I know that’s a problem.
Plus there’s all the stuff that leads up to what happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everything she did to you. They’re going to see all that
and feel like you have a motive.”

Charlie leaned back on the bed to think. He had only thought
about what Sarah did in terms of what he and his friends did in response, but
she
had
played a role, and it made her seem crazy, too. He bolted up.
“What if they see everything Sarah did and realize she had serious mental
issues? Like the ones that might make you kill yourself?”

Amanda paused, following the train of thought. “I get where
you’re going, but I still don’t think it’s safe. Do you really want everyone
you know to find out you’ve been keeping this all a secret since she died? Even
if you don’t get arrested for what happened, your life in Englewood will be
totally over.”

“Yeah… Do you think they would even believe my side of the
story?” Charlie asked.

“I don’t know,” Amanda said, “and I don’t want to find out.
Think of everything that happened freshman year. That’s a part of this, too,
Charlie. If they go digging, they’ll find out more than just the Sarah story.
That’s why we did what we did. We needed it all to go away, and it did. We have
been a team through absolutely everything, and it’s worked. Now you need to
stay the course. Both of our futures depend on it, and isn’t that what we’ve
done everything for, always? To make it out of this town and get what we really
want out of life?”

Believing Amanda meant more hiding and more fear, but
Charlie knew he had no choice. If he told the truth about any one of the things
they’d done, his soccer career and any hope of a college career would be over.
The same went for Amanda. She would be the downfall of her entire family—all
the generations of Englewood and New Jersey leadership. This mystery person would
have to be dealt with in a different way, but if anyone could figure out how,
it was the two of them—despite whether they were still a couple or not. They
had been through the worst. They just had to stay calm and everything would be
fine.