Exposed (25 page)

Grateful, I open the door, then try to muster the energy to get out and go inside. Before I can close the door to the big white pickup, the Bear says, “I mean vhat I say, Chan Shealy. If you need me, if you need your coach, I vill be here.”

Her and Dad, always with the I’m-here-for-you’s. What am I supposed to do with that?

Take a chance and talk to them
? a chirpy part of my head suggests as I struggle into the house. If I could strangle that chirp without killing myself, I so would do it.

Instead, I guzzle some orange juice, take some serious Theraflu, and go ahead and call my doctor and up the dose on my antiviral. I check the messages, but there’s nothing
from Mom yet. She’ll call soon, probably, to check on me, so I tuck the phone into my pocket as I go upstairs.

My first urge is to lie down and fall dead asleep, but once I get to my room, I feel drawn to the closet, to my last year’s backpack and the B-3k. When I take out the little machine, though, I don’t want to turn it on. What I want to do is turn back the date to a month ago or maybe longer. If I’d never said yes to doing any of the picture stuff, or maybe if I’d never answered Paul’s first e-mail, a lot of things might be different.

Some things worse, maybe. But some things better, too. And maybe I wouldn’t have to be so worried about Lauren.

Coincidence.

But I don’t know that for sure, do I?

And I feel completely weird about all of that, and Paul, and the Internet in general.

What if he isn’t who I think he is?

What if all he wants is my naked pictures and my videos?
That’s stupid. But …

After a few seconds, I tuck the B-3k back into my pack and zip it up tight.

Then I do the most responsible thing I can think of. I head straight into the Cave of Doom.

An hour and one worried phone call from Mom later, I’ve taken the Cave of Doom apart and put it back together and found nothing at all. I feel double-miserable from doing all that, and from, I don’t know, breaking all into my little sister’s privacy.

But she’s hiding something.

Maybe something really bad.

Shouldn’t I try to find out what it is?

I’m her big sister. It’s kind of my job or something. At least it feels like it is.

The next place I go is downstairs to the computer, where I hack all over the place, but can’t find out where she’s been going, or access any of her accounts.

Of course not. The screen concealer erases all the tracks. Duh.
I sit there, head in my hands, aching.

What am I missing?

What am I not thinking about?

If I were Lauren, where would I feel safe hiding something nobody should see?

I already went through every one of her old backpacks upstairs. All the neat hiding places in her room I would have used, and some I thought of when I saw them. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

My increasingly feeble brain rambles back over the last few weeks, to all of Lauren’s patterns and habits—at least the ones I know about.

And my skin goes cold all over.

The aches in my body immediately triple, and I run to the kitchen and take more Theraflu with a bunch more juice. If I were the type to take anything stronger, I’d find something right this second.

Because I think I know.

I don’t want to know, all of a sudden, but that doesn’t
matter, because as I stand here with my hands braced against the kitchen counter, I
know
where Lauren’s hiding place has to be.

Knots tie inside my cold, miserable skin. My sick, churning belly. My tight, getting tighter chest. I need to go look. But now that I’m so sure where the hiding place is, I don’t want to find what I think I’ll find.

My legs burn and I wish I could cry. I wish something inside me would break loose and finally, finally let me sob for hours. All of last year’s tears and all of this year’s tears. All the right-now tears—and those would be plenty enough.

“Enough,” I say out loud, and I force myself to walk to the garage.

The first thing I do is flip on the lights, and the second thing I do is lock all the doors and switch off the door-opener that’s still hooked up even though my parents don’t park cars in here anymore. I haven’t heard from Mom again, and I can’t take the chance that she’ll come home and bust me. Well, bust me busting Lauren.

If I don’t find anything bad, I actually don’t want to get Lauren in trouble. I definitely don’t want to cost her this whole being-in-the-big-play dream. Big sisters just don’t do awful things like that to little sisters. I don’t want to be awful to Lauren.

I turn toward the karaoke machine, or more to the point, to the suitcase underneath it.

“Maybe it won’t be bad,” I tell nobody, but when I get
to the old beat-up suitcase—it had been one of Dad’s, I’m pretty sure—I discover it has a combination lock.

So, it’s probably going to be bad.

It takes a while to hunt up a hammer and screwdriver, but I manage that, move the karaoke machine, and beat the suitcase lock until it finally breaks and pops open.

I’m holding my breath and it hurts, and I realize I’ve closed my eyes.

Open. Look. Pay attention.

But I don’t want to. God, I really, really, really don’t want to.

It’s not like I have a choice, right? I have to find out. I have to see what’s been happening, and figure out what to do. So I lay the hammer and screwdriver on the padded floor next to my leg, and up goes the lid.

A sleek blue laptop sits in the suitcase, the very newest model with all the gadgets included—like built-in webcams and full sound capacity. Almost just like the one I picked out for myself, only a little better. It’s something like I thought I’d find, but I still suck in air through my teeth. I still feel absolutely shocked, way down deep, to my feet, to my toes. Stuff tips and teeters inside me.

When it falls, I don’t know if I’ll be able to move. Not now, or ever again.

Lauren has herself a computer worth a ton of money. Money she can’t possibly have, unless someone’s giving it to her.

Or unless she’s selling … something. Like I’ve been doing.

“No.” My voice is loud. Hoarse. “No, no, no!”

But I open the laptop.

Lauren’s a little kid, so she hasn’t thought through what might happen if somebody finds the computer—not all the way, anyway. She’s got the concealer, but her files aren’t password-protected, and what she has put passwords on, she’s told the computer to remember. So, the minute I type the correct first letter, the rest of the password comes up and the files open.

I poke around through everything—her word processing documents. Her e-mail. And then, her picture files.

Oh, God. OhGodnonono …

I’m saying it out loud.

Yelling it.

Things crash down in my mind and explode. Pulverize. Definitely not in my body anymore. Definitely way up on the ceiling somewhere, staring down at that awful stuff from someplace far, far away.

“David” doesn’t talk in the e-mails like any little boy I know.

The way he does talk is so familiar I want to tear out all my insides and use them to drown the computer so Lauren can’t ever, ever, ever use it again.

Lauren’s made some pictures of herself.

A lot of pictures.

Still-shot after still-shot clog up her files, mailed to this “David” in exchange for his “coaching” on her singing for
the play. “David” compliments her on how beautiful she is, how much he loves her. He confesses to being “a little older.” He plays into her whole vampire-goth thing, signing himself
Prince of Darkness
.

Vomit. Vomit!

She’s got her clothes on—but it’s still all wrong.

And “David—”

No, don’t think about it.

But I have to.

“David” talks about how hard his life is. How his dad picks on him. How he knows how she can make a lot of money and have anything she wants. How he’ll show her, teach her, be beside her every step of the way.

Sounds a lot like Paul, doesn’t it?

No!

Coincidence.

My vision blurs until I can’t even read the words anymore.

But they’re burned into my brain, my heart.

Lauren….

I drop the computer back into the suitcase. Before I really think about it, I’ve picked up the hammer and screwdriver, and I’m one second from bashing that stupid machine to bits when a rational thought or two nudges through my brain.

Police.

Prosecution.

Catching this sick perv like they do on those television news shows.

If I break all the evidence, nobody can hunt down “David” and leave him to rot in prison for trying to mess with Lauren.

And the timing. Oh, God.

From what I can tell, Lauren got the laptop about ten days after I got my weights. The first e-mails on that machine hinted that she and “David” have been boyfriend-girlfriend (
ohGodgross
) since right after that.

Another coincidence? Three in a row?

The screen saver site, the way the e-mails sound—and now the timeline, too?

Paul….

Or … “Paul”?

“No,” I chant like I’ve been doing since I first opened the computer. “It’s not the same person. These are definitely coincidences.”

But I’m going numb inside. Numb and cold and I think I might faint.

Okay, no. Really no. I can’t faint out here in the garage holding a computer full of sick perv letters to my little sister. I have to do something. Right now. Call Mom. Call the police. Anything.

And yet …

The play.

I know what’ll happen to Lauren when I rat her out
like I promised I wouldn’t. Her life will be totally screwed. Everybody’ll find out, and she’ll have to live like I’ve lived all this last year, with witch-monsters calling her skank and treating her like she’s a freak.

How can I do that to her? To my little sister?

Even if everybody doesn’t find out, Mom and Dad will know, and
they’ll
treat her like a freak. She’ll lose everything. No way they’ll let her out the door for
Sound of Music
. She’ll be trapped in worse than Mommy-jail forever, with nothing.

But if I wait until tomorrow night when I get home from Regionals, I’ll be finished with this year’s big competition, and Lauren will be finished with dress rehearsal and ready for opening night. And maybe that’ll work like twirling. They’ll restrict her from everything but school and play practice, and at least she’ll have that.

We’d both win, Lauren and me.

God only knows all the times I’ve been grounded, if I hadn’t had twirling, I would have had less than no life. The least I can do is give her that play. And the least I can do for myself is finish Regionals.

Tomorrow night, everything will be a lot simpler, won’t it?

My head gradually stops spinning, and I close the laptop and take it out of its suitcase. Then I close the suitcase, push the lock back into place, and set the karaoke
machine back into position. It only takes me a second or two after that to put away the hammer and screwdriver, and open the garage again.

The computer’s so small I can put it under my shirt, just in case Mom shows up before I get it upstairs.

For now, I have a plan.

Take the computer, and for tonight, hide it in my room. That way, Lauren can’t get hurt anymore. She’ll probably be focused on the play, anyway. Obsessed with that all night. If she realizes the laptop is gone, she won’t dare say a single word.

Then, tomorrow, after Regionals and her dress rehearsal, I’ll go to Mom and Dad.

About Lauren.

Not about me.

Not about Paul.

At least … not until I can make myself talk to him. Not until I know whether or not “David” is really Paul.

Maybe he isn’t.

Besides, I need to be sure before I screw up my whole life even worse, and his, too. At least I think I do.

That seems like the responsible thing.

Isn’t it?

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory,

As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear.

Emily Dickinson

AT THE TOP—OR THE BOTTOM

The rain
It’s coming again I can
Feel it
On my shoulders
At my back
Wind
Scraping my cheek
A cold paintbrush
Stiff
With unknown pictures.

Chan Shealy

Devin’s “armpit of dawn” comes even earlier than I thought it would.

By the time I get up, pass Mom’s health-check by lying like a total dog, and load myself with antiviral meds, Theraflu, and orange juice, Mom has Lauren in the shower.

I fell asleep early last night, throbbing and half-insane from the outbreak trying to take over my entire body, and from everything rammed and jammed into my head.

Of course, I dreamed. Weird, off-color nightmares about Lauren, singing and sobbing and screaming, then about me being in jail over what was on her computer.