Authors: Jessie Rosen
September
6
Laura
Laura settled into her favorite
corner of the velvety sectional couch in her living room and wrapped herself in
the blue, plaid throw that was big enough to make her feel like she was under
bed covers. On the coffee table in front of her was everything a girl needed to
get through a rough day: a pint of salted-caramel ice cream, chocolate covered
raisins to dump into that pint, and the remote control. It was just the kind of
dreary Saturday night that Laura needed to regroup after everything that
unfolded on Friday. During moments like these, Laura didn’t mind the constant
absence of her parents. Having the house to herself was nice, especially after
the discovery that some classic movie channel was running a romance movie
marathon.
Dad would be bummed to miss this
, Laura thought. He was
responsible for her love of old black-and-white films, and pints of ice cream,
for that matter.
Laura had checked the whole day’s movie lineup when she
stumbled upon the marathon that morning. Listed beside the two o’clock slot was
the exact title she was hoping to see—
Sabrina
starring Humphrey
Bogart and Audrey Hepburn. It was as if some movie-loving fairy godmother was
giving her a little gift to help her feel better after the Jeff Haskell party
drama. Though, in fairness to Jeff Haskell and the rest of the partygoers,
Amanda Hunter was the only person responsible for all the drama.
Amanda had proven to be as predictable as every other “it”
girl Laura had ever met. For the one hour that she was at the party, Laura felt
like she was sitting in on a master class in being two-faced. Though Amanda was
way too obvious about it, in Laura’s opinion, to be considered a master.
I need to solve this Charlie-and-Amanda mystery,
she
thought.
And I need to do it without involving Amanda…
Thankfully she didn’t have to deal with any of that until
after the weekend. For now Laura would be fixated on the TV screen where her
all-time favorite scene from
Sabrina
was unfolding—the one where
Sabrina writes a letter home to her father at the end of her trip to Paris. It
was just a static shot of the crazy-charming Audrey Hepburn sitting alone at a
café scribbling as her voice read her words, but Laura could have watched the
scene a thousand times and never tired.
“
I have learned how to live, how to be in the world and of
the world, and not just to stand aside and watch. And I will never, never again
run away from life. Or from love, either.”
I wonder if I can find a print of those words for my
bedroom
, Laura thought as she watched Sabrina continue to scribble on the
screen. She hopped up from the couch to grab her laptop for a quick search of
her favorite handmade-crafts site. When Laura returned to the couch, there was
a new text waiting on her cellphone from the absolute last person she expected.
Laura couldn’t for the life of her figure out how Amanda got
ahold of her cellphone number. She’d given it to Charlie and no one else. Had
Amanda hacked into Charlie’s phone? Or, worse, into her own phone? Laura
couldn’t decide which move was creepier, but they both meant the same thing:
Amanda wanted to keep her very close. Laura wasn’t naïve enough to think it was
in the name of a blossoming new friendship. Amanda had a very tight hold on
Charlie, and she obviously wasn’t going to let anyone inch in on her turf. But
Laura’s biggest concern right now was…why? In what ways were they “eternally
bound,” as Amanda said? Laura could tell by the tone in her voice that Amanda hadn’t
just said that to get rid of her—something had happened. How that past
was currently affecting Charlie was the mystery Laura was most interested in
solving. Unfortunately this was the exact sort of high school drama that Laura
wanted to avoid as the new girl. But from what little she’d seen of Amanda’s
behavior so far, Laura feared she was no longer in control, and neither was
Charlie.
September
8
Charlie
“Charlie. Hi. How are you today?” Laura asked at the start
of English class on Monday morning. Charlie thought he heard a tiny amount of
concern in her voice, but it wasn’t enough to comment on. He wasn’t expecting
such a warm hello after the way Amanda had scared her off from Jeff Haskell’s
party.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“Good,” Laura said. “I’m so glad to hear that.”
No. Concern was definitely there—as if Charlie had
been out of school sick the Friday before and Laura was checking to make sure
he was okay.
Does she think there’s something wrong with me?
Charlie
thought. He almost wanted to run to the bathroom to check his face in the
mirror, like maybe he’d spontaneously popped a giant black eye.
Laura rushed off at the end-of-class bell before Charlie could
gather any clues about her weird sincerity, but he got another chance in the
student parking lot after school.
“Hey, Cali. I see you staring at my car,” Charlie said as he
walked toward the Grand Am.
“I was just wondering why you bought a convertible if you’re
going to have the top up, especially on a day like today,” she said. “It’s so
sunny out.”
“It’s fifty degrees! The sun isn’t as strong on this side of
the country.”
“That’s what the car heat is for,” Laura said with a coy
smile. “I’m not putting my top up until there’s frost on my windshield.”
“That sounds like a challenge,” Charlie said.
“It would be, but you already lost.”
It didn’t take much for Charlie’s competitive streak to kick
in. “Fine. We start over today. First person to arrive at school with their top
up loses.”
“And what does the winner get?” Laura asked.
“The best thing a winner can ever get,” Charlie replied.
“Glory.”
Laura laughed—she didn’t know that Charlie wasn’t
kidding—then walked over to where he was standing.
“Think I’m safe to ask you a question over here?” she asked,
looking over her shoulder.
“Don’t worry about Amanda,” Charlie said. “She’s just
territorial.”
“Oh, I know,” Laura said. “It’s nice. She clearly cares so
much about you.”
There was that strange sensitivity again—the same tone
Charlie heard in Laura’s voice at the start of class. Like she was talking to a
cancer patient or something.
“So,” Laura said, “my question: I’m doing a profile for the
paper on a student athlete. We want to uncover what it’s like to balance sports
and school and friends.”
“That’s cool,” Charlie said. “There’s a lot to it that
people don’t realize.”
“Exactly,” Laura said, “So could you suggest one of your
teammates for me to ask? Maybe Miller?”
Charlie hoped the look on his face didn’t give away his reaction:
why not me?
Was she really not going to ask him? If Laura knew anything
about the Englewood soccer team, she would know he was the one to watch.
Charlie stopped himself at that thought. That was his crazy
ego talking, and when he didn’t keep it in check, there was no telling what it
could do…what it had already done.
“Let me talk to the guys about it,” he said, then his mouth
betrayed his mind, “or you could interview me.”
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry,” Laura said, “I don’t want you to
think I’m snubbing you. I just…I just figured now wasn’t a great time for you.”
Once again, Laura had turned on the caring-nurse voice. This
time Charlie couldn’t let it go.
“Why wouldn’t it be a great time for me?”
“Oh God,
please
don’t tell her I told you. I know
Amanda was talking to me in total confidence. ”
“About what?” Now Charlie was freaked. What did Amanda tell
her, and why?
“No, no. Don’t worry. She didn’t say anything. She was being
totally respectful to you. She just said you’ve been through a lot and are
still working through some things, so I figured the last thing you would want
is some fake journalist following you around for a silly school-newspaper
article.”
Leave it to Amanda to use him in her dirty work. Charlie
wondered if she could see the steam pouring out of his ears from wherever she
was on campus at that moment.
“Yeah,” Charlie said, “Just some family stuff. But you know
what, I think the article would be good for me. It’ll give me the chance to
show people who I really am.”
“Wait, you’re not really a seventeen-year-old, Caucasian,
male soccer player? This article just got
way
more interesting…”
Charlie laughed. He liked how Laura kept him on his toes. She
was funny, but still so sweet.
“Well, let me talk to my editor, and I’ll get back to you,”
she said. “For now I’ve got to run home and Skype with some of my friends from
back home before they head out for their sunset surf.”
“God, that’s cool,” Charlie said. “Why did you
ever
leave that place?”
“I had to,” Laura said. “But so far…” she looked up at
Charlie and smiled, and his heart skipped a beat. “I’m not totally devastated
that I did.” And with that she turned and walked off toward her car.
Sasha
Sasha went wild gathering every
piece of information she could on her first official leads: Charlie Sanders and
Amanda Hunter. As she suspected, a quick hack through their online chat history
delivered their full names and a whole lot more.
Charlie Sanders was a soccer player and honors student whose
mother worked at the overnight call center for doctors at Jersey Shore Medical
Center. There was no info on Charlie’s father, so Sasha assumed he was gone. From
what she could tell, Charlie and his mom had moved into some crappy apartment
in the only rough corner of Englewood when he was in middle school. Charlie
seemed focused and competitive, serious, but also relaxed, and confident, but
still clearly under Amanda’s thumb. From what Sasha could find, the two dated
earlier in high school but broke up right around the time that the Sarah story
surfaced. Sasha typed that fact on a Post-it note and tagged it to the digital
board she created marked “
CLUES
.”
Amanda Hunter was a typical alpha girl from the town’s most
alpha family. Mr. Hunter was mayor and had been for the past six months, but
had a decades-old reputation as a prominent town lawyer and community leader.
Mrs. Hunter served as president of the local hospital board. The family seemed
to have more money than God, and they spent it for the whole world to see—they
owned a huge mansion, the ritziest cars, and designer clothes for Amanda and
her younger twin sisters. Amanda was the clear center of the Hunter family
world. She surprisingly wasn’t an Englewood cheerleader, but she was president
of the student class, head of the annual Dance Marathon charity event, and
founder of the ski club and organizer of its annual ski trip. It appeared that
most of the fun anyone at Englewood had was because Amanda Hunter planned it.
It made sense why she was so popular. Sasha had never been one to admire a
queen bee, but Amanda didn’t seem like the typical terror—at least, not
in the online world.
For a second, Sasha wanted to stop. She’d spent months and
months desperate to uncover any information connected to the apparent suicide,
but now that she had exactly what she’d been looking for, she was terrified.
What did they know? Who had they told? Their conversation didn’t give much
away, but one line kept playing over and over in Sasha’s head:
I would never
torture you about her.
That told Sasha that Charlie and Amanda had some
kind of relationship with Sarah. This new girl, Laura, was the trigger that
brought the memories back for them, but what were they going to do next?
Sasha needed more from Charlie and Amanda. The question was
how to make them talk more. Sasha needed to create another trigger—maybe
a news article about Sarah’s death? That might work, but there was no news to
report. The detectives had done their work, and the local newspapers covered it
from every angle. Unless a completely new discovery was made, they would have
nothing to write. Besides, Sasha wasn’t ready to get other people involved. She
needed to handle this one on her own until sharing her information felt safe.
But what if there was something connected to Sarah’s story
that might come up for a different reason? Something that Sasha could slip in
front of Charlie and Amanda’s faces to gauge their reaction? Perhaps…some
memory of Sarah.
Sasha spent the next few days combing through every detail
of the Sarah Castro-Tanner case, looking for a way in, but there wasn’t much to
work with. Sarah hadn’t been involved in any school clubs, didn’t have any
record of interacting with Charlie or Amanda, and had been alone for the entire
day before she jumped off the Navesink River Bridge.
After hitting so many dead ends, Sasha decided to take a few
days away from the Charlie-and-Amanda angle of her project. A clear mind would
be helpful, plus she had work to do on another facet of her research: securing
just the right part-time job. Then, two days later, she found the inspiration
for her next move on the cover of a
Business Week
magazine that arrive
in her dad’s mail. Among the lists of articles in the table of contents was a
headline that caught her eye: “Smart Brands Use Real Teens to Sell Clothes.”
Sasha flipped to the page and found a full spread of ads all
featuring real high school students from average American towns wearing clothes
from a specific company or using products from a certain brand in their
everyday settings. There was a shot of three kids at a diner in New York all
playing with smartwatches as they scarfed down fries, a shot of ballerinas in
Boston wearing a hot, new fitness brand to warm up for class, and a couple
running together, each in a his-and-hers edition of some retro-brand sneakers.
That was the image that made the light bulb go off for
Sasha. She knew exactly how she’d lure Charlie and Amanda back into the
conversation about Sarah.