Page 119

Then a firefly zipped into my phone. I read it at the same moment my thumbs pulled up my screen.

Ur dead

It wasn’t from a number I knew. I jumped into ZB and scanned. There were a jillion new photos of everyone’s prom, and then a lull during attendance, a spike during the slideshow, a lull during the parties, and then a ton of curse words and all caps promising violent retribution as assorted classmates got drunker.

Oh no.I knew there was no point in reading, or responding, or anything—the advice I’d given Lacey week ago was the only advice I’d had.

I’d had to do it tonight. For Lacey’s sake, and also because Mason and Danny couldn’t win. But being right didn’t stop me from spinning in my sheets after I turned my phone off, like I was spiraling down a drain.

I got up the next morning and my phone’s dead screen taunted me. For as long as it was turned off—as long as I had the strength to keep it off—I could pretend that prom hadn’t happened.

I made myself get up, eat breakfast, and hang out with Allie. In the middle of one of her cartoons, there was a commercial for the evening news, full of teasers for that night’s show, and Rebecca Molange popped up, her concerned face looking straight into the camera, saying: “Local prom ruined by master hacker.” I stared at the screen, jaw dropped. “All that and more at 6!” she proclaimed, before a toy commercial came on.

I couldn’t stand it anymore—I walked back to my room and turned my phone on.

Information flooded in. ZB was busier than it’d ever been before—people rehashing what and who they’d done at the parties. At least that part of prom hadn’t been canceled, or there’d likely be a mob outside my door.

But interspersed with all the gossip and the trash was an obsessive level of threats against me via texts and ZB as whoever had decided that I was dead got increasingly upset that I wasn’t responding, until about five AM when I assumed they’d finally passed out.

If that was happening to me—I sent Lacey a quick text with my mind:

You okay?

and paced my room in circles till she sent back:

Yeah. You?

I lied.

Yeah, just checking.

I stared at the vitriol on my phone. I’d started getting texts from more than one number, but the messages were all the same: they wanted to hurt me, wanted me dead, because I was a whore.

If I was a whore—me who hadn’t ever done anything ever, like just had gotten kissed for the first time this past week—what chance did Lacey have?

And it pissed me off! I’d been reading enough guy’s phones this past week—I knew they all wanted sex—they were dying for it! So shouldn’t they be happy if I was actually as whorey as they claimed?

Damned if I was, and damned if I wasn’t.

I sat on the edge of my bed. Did I actually need to be afraid? Not after what I’d done to Razor. But I didn’t have eyes in the back of my head—and sometimes I was in cars that could be run off the road—and I wasn’t with Allie or my mom all day every day. And what if they did something to the trailer while all three of us were gone? Despite the fact that I’d personally wanted to burn the trailer down before didn’t mean that I really wanted it to happen.

The threats hadn’t branched out yet, but what would I do if they did? I doubted the same cops that’d ignored a bleeding Lacey would give two shits about anonymous text threats to me.

It hadn’t started up again this morning though—maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe I’d get lucky and he, whoever he was, would move on to the next girl.

I frowned at my phone for thinking that—and then the doorbell rang and I jumped up.

It was too late, Allie’d beaten me to the door. I had visions of the baseball team reaching in and pulling her out, hoisting her over their head like a virgin sacrifice to a volcano god.

“Barbar!” Allie flung the door open, revealing Barbara standing outside, looking a little bit like a horror movie actress with her scissors in one hand. Barbara was my mother’s best friend, fellow bar employee, and had been cutting all of our hair since I was five.

“Allie! Jessie!” she announced, as Allie let her in, and there were hugs all around. “Go get the tarp, will you?” she told Allie, who obediently ran off.

“Mom’s not up yet—” I said.

“Rachel! I’m here!” Barbara shouted, loud enough to get through the walls to my mother’s room. “Get your lazy ass out of bed!”

I stood in awe of this woman who could get away with that, and then she beamed at me. “I’ll start with you two, until the bear wakes up.”