When my best friend remains silent, my momentary happiness disintegrates like a dried flower petal. I prepare myself for the worst. Finally, she expels a long breath. "I got a call from Rhys's BFF."
Rhys is close enough to hear Denielle's statement, and his eyebrows knit together. "Why wouldn't Wes just—oh..." He leaps off the bed and charges into my bathroom. It takes me longer to comprehend the meaning of Den's words. When I hear Rhys rummaging through the vanity, it clicks.
His BFF. George.
I follow with my cell phone still pressed to my ear and find Rhys sitting on the floor, scrolling through something on the phone.
"That little cunt. If I get my hands on her tomorrow." His body is shaking with rage.
"Call me back later?" Denielle's voice filters through to my brain as I'm staring at Rhys white-knuckling the device in his hands.
"Hm-hmm." I lower my phone without hanging up. Crouching in front of him, I try to get his attention, but he is focused on whatever he's looking at.
"What is it?" I whisper.
His eyes snap up as if he just now realizes I'm in the room. He draws in a slow breath and expels it at the same pace, which makes his nostrils flare. "Nate messaged."
"Okay?"
What has him bent so out of shape?
"He stopped the article that was supposed to print today. I forgot about it with the shit show in school."
Tristen mentioned another press release yesterday, but like Rhys, I didn't remember it until now. His face, however, tells me that this is not all. I wait.
"Your brother figured out who tagged your locker. Seems like he’s been following you all day. And he wants to know why you left French class early with wet hair."
There are no cameras in the classrooms, just the hallways, cafeteria, auditorium, and gym, etc.—all the places big groups of students congregate. It makes sense that he didn't see the actual incident but was able to find out who wrote the lovely message on my locker.
"What did he do?"
Please tell me you didn’t do anything stupid, Nate.
He made it clear that he will do anything to protect me.
Rhys hands me the phone, and I start scrolling. The first message contains a video and several stills from the security footage. Even from the frozen picture, I instantly recognize who vandalized my locker: Emma.
Something breaks inside of me. Emma. Why? We’ve been friends for years. Maybe not best friends, but friends, nonetheless. I ungracefully fall out of my crouch onto my butt. My gaze meets Rhys's, and the betrayal he feels for me is written all over his face. I take in the pictures that follow the video and see Kat huddled with Emma in a corner. According to the timestamp, their meeting was shortly before Emma tagged the school property.
My brother's next message is about the article.
Below is the article that was supposed to print today. I was able to "remove" it from the paper’s server and sent the fucker who wrote it a little present, but that won’t stop it from being published. We just delayed it. He’s already in the process of rewriting it.
It still baffles me how Nate does all this without being traced. I move on to the message that contains the actual article.
Lilly McGuire—Is Her Memory Loss Real or Is It All Just a Ploy?
My breath hitchesat the picture underneath the headline. I’m staring at myself sitting on my hospital bed at Hill Crest Medical Center. My eyes are bloodshot and wide with shock from the reporter invading my hospital room. I'm in the clothes George dropped me off in—the clothes I wore the day I crashed the Jeep. This was all part of the plan, but seeing myself like this makes my throat close up. My hair is wild, unkempt. I look crazed.
Parts of the timeline fall back into place. I didn't remember much from when the guy snuck into my room to when the nurse helped me change out of my filthy clothes, but things are starting to come back. My breath is getting labored, and I faintly register Rhys's hand on my leg. He's saying something, but the memories flash in front of my eyes. The nurse and doctors had just placed the IVs to counteract whatever was still in my bloodstream. It was like I’d had one too many drinks. Everything was fuzzy, and concentrating was impossible. I was waiting for the nurse to come back with a change of clothes—the only reason they discovered the intruder so quickly.
We got a first-hand glimpse at Miss McGuire right after her discovery at Hill Crest Medical Center. Miss McGuire is the alleged first victim of The Babysitter, who was taken a second time by the perpetrator on March 2nd and reappeared on March 21st. When we spoke to Miss McGuire, she kept asking where "he" was. A fair question of a real victim if she hadn't followed with the statement of "I can't go home. We need to figure out what happened."
Oh,no. What did I do? I don't remember this at all.
The medical staff of Hill Crest Medical Center refused to let us continue the interview, and we, therefore, have to speculate what Miss McGuire meant with her words. Who was she referring to? Is she somehow involved with The Babysitter? And what does she need to figure out? Is her memory loss real, or is she playing all of us? Is she lying to the families of the other victims to protect herself or, worse, the perpetrator himself? We tried to get a statement from the McGuire family, who refused to comment at this point on anything other than their children's relationship.
There is more,but I stop reading. This is so much worse than anyone could’ve anticipated.