One Night That Changes Everything (13 page)

“Are you going to tell me or not?” Cooper asks, ignoring my remark about Clarice not being nice to him.

“Tell him what?” Clarice asks.

“What the 318s want me to do next.”

“Oooh,” she says, reaching into her purse for a piece of gum. “What do they want you to do next?” She holds out the pack of gum, and I take a slice. For a second, Clarice looks like she’s thinking about offering one to Cooper, but I shoot her a look, and she puts the gum back into her purse without a word.

“Post pictures of myself on Lanesboro Losers,” I say.

“But you already have a picture of yourself on LL,” she says. “It’s that really cute one that your mom took of you at the zoo last year.” The picture in question is me, standing next to a llama who is leaning his head down next to me, licking my face. And it wasn’t at the zoo, it was at this fair my mom dragged me to that just happened to have a petting zoo. For some reason she thought it would be super-funny to get a picture of me next to one of the animals, and the llama just happened to be the closest one.

“It wasn’t at the
zoo
,” I say. “It was a street fair.”

Cooper snorts next to me, like he thinks it’s funny.

“Shut up,” I tell him.

“I think it’s cute,” he says. “The pic, I mean. Not the fact that you were at the zoo. Well, actually no, the zoo thing’s cute too.”

“Shut up,” I say again. “I was NOT. AT. THE. ZOO. And anyway,” I say to Clarice. “They want something a little more, uh, racy.”

“Oooh,” she says, nodding.

Cooper frowns. “What do you mean, racy?”

My phone rings then, and I check the caller ID. Marissa. “Hello?” I say.

“Eliza!” she says. “Oh my God, where have you been?” Which makes no sense, since we’re the ones who’ve been looking for
her.
“I’ve been calling you for like three million minutes.”

“I dunno,” I say. “I’ve been right here, maybe my phone didn’t have service or something.”

“Well, what’s going on? I got Clarice’s message and I was trying to call her, but of course THAT didn’t work.”

“Marissa was trying to call you,” I tell Clarice. She checks her phone.

“Oh,” she says. “I guess I wasn’t hearing the beeps while I was talking to Jamie.”

Sigh.

“Anyway,” I say. “We’re at Tyler’s house in Newton, trying to steal my notebook back.”

“How did you get there?” she asks.

“Cooper drove us,” I admit.

“What?!” she screeches. “That low-down, good-for-nothing jerk drove you there? Why?” She’s yelling so loudly that I’m sure Cooper can hear her, but I don’t even care.

“Um, because we couldn’t find you,” I say. “Where are you now?”

“I was with Jeremiah,” she says. “Out on Isabella’s terrace.
I’m so sorry, I thought you knew where I was! But he had to go home for a second, and so when I got your message, I started heading for home.”

“We’re on Elm Lane in Newton,” I say. “Come meet.”

“Be there in five,” she says. She hangs up.

“She’s going to come and meet us,” I say.

“All right,” Cooper says. “The more the merrier, I guess.”

“Thanks for the permission,” I say sarcastically.

It’s not the most biting of remarks, but for some reason it seems to shut him up, and we all sit in silence for the next few minutes, waiting for Marissa. Well, except “Clarice’s Jams,” which is still pumping through the stereo system.

I watch the light streaming from a street lamp and try not to think about how I’m going to get the courage to post pictures of myself in a bikini on Lanesboro Losers. Instead, I think about how, if I can somehow figure out a way to get the notebook back, I won’t have to do that.

Finally, after what seems like forever but is probably only a few minutes, headlights pull up behind us, and Marissa strolls up to Cooper’s car.

“Hello, girls,” she says. She ignores Cooper, which makes me happy.

“Hi,” I say. I open the door and get out of the car.

“Hey,” Cooper says, getting out as well. “Where are you going?”

“We’re going to get my notebook back,” I say. Honestly. Why am I so upset about him not being my boyfriend
anymore? I mean, he’s obviously ridiculously stupid. He doesn’t even remember the plan and we just made it thirty minutes ago.

“I know that,” he says. “But do you remember what I told you?”

“Yeah, about how his basement window is open,” I say, waving my hand. “How hard can it be?”

“Okay, when you get to his house,” he says, “there’s going to be one window open, on the side of the house closest to us.”

“Okay,” I say.

“There will be a chair underneath the window, so step onto that to get down into the basement so that you don’t get hurt. Once you’re in there, go to the back corner—you’ll see a circle of chairs, and in the middle of it will be a black box. Go into the box and get the notebook.”

“Are you sure it’s there?” Marissa asks, acknowledging him for the first time.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m sure.”

“Wouldn’t Tyler have it with him?” I ask. “So that he would know what to torture me with next?”

“No,” he says. “He figured you’d probably at some point come up with the idea of getting it back, so he decided to keep it at home.” He looks down at the ground. “He, uh, was afraid you might hire one of your sister’s friends to kick his ass.”

Hmm, now that I think about it, that’s not that bad of an idea. “That’s not that bad of an idea,” I say. “Kate has a lot of friends on the football team, guys who do a lot of steroids
and have rage problems. Guys who really need to take their aggression out on someone and would probably be happy to take it out on anyone who messed with me. For free, even.” I look him right in the eye and hope he gets that I’m talking about him and not Tyler.

He doesn’t say anything.

“All right,” I say. “If this is a trick—”

“It’s
not
,” he says. He’s looking right in my eyes, and I have no choice but to believe him.

“Now,” I say, turning to Clarice and Marissa. “One of you is coming with me, and one of you is staying here.”

“Why?” Marissa asks at the same time Clarice says, “I want to stay here.”

“Because there’s less chance of us getting caught if there’s only two of us, and if this is a trick, one of you has to stay here so that she can tell the authorities all the pertinent information when the other two of us end up murdered and/or maimed.”

Clarice gets a shocked look on her face, and her hands fly up to her nose. Clarice had a nose job a couple of years ago, and now she’s super-paranoid about something bad happening to it that would mess it up. I guess a maiming qualifies.

Marissa, however, looks unperturbed. “Like they’re going to kill us right in Tyler’s house.” She looks at Cooper, then walks over to him and pokes her finger right into his chest. “You better not be fucking with us.”

He holds his hands up and takes a step back.

“Okay,” she says, sliding the hair tie off her wrist. She
gathers her hair in a sloppy ponytail, slides her cell phone into her pocket, then hands her purse to Clarice. “You hold this while I’m gone.”

“And don’t be nice to Cooper,” I command her. “And if you see anything weird, like if Tyler starts coming, or you get spooked by anything, anything at all, call my cell and warn us. Got it?”

“Got it,” Clarice says. She gives me a determined nod but I’m still a little nervous.

Marissa and I start tromping down the street, looking out for Tyler’s house, number 22.

“Jesus,” I say. “That’s number 223. Why the hell would Cooper park so far away?”

“Because,” Marissa says, “he wanted to save his own ass of course, so he parked far away so that no one will see him. He doesn’t give a crap if me and you have to walk and walk and walk.” She doesn’t seem tired, though, and she’s taking long strides, so long that I’m struggling to keep up with her.

The houses go by faster than I thought, and before I know it, we’re standing outside number 22, a white house with a huge sprawling porch with four rocking chairs on it.

“Why do they need so many rocking chairs?” I ask, frowning.

“Dunno,” Marissa says. “Probably so they can all sit out there and pretend to be a big happy family and not even realize that their son is King of the Assholes.”

“Probably,” I agree. Now that I’m here, actually faced with the house and the task that’s before us, I’m starting to lose my
nerve. What seemed like a wonderful opportunity, something I could do to get out of this whole mess, now seems like a horrible, scary plan. I mean, think of all the things that could go wrong.

Then I notice that almost every light in Tyler’s house is on, shining out into the night.

“All the lights are on,” I whisper to Marissa.

“Yeah, so?” she says.

“So … maybe he’s here.”

“Nah,” she says. “I saw him right before I was about to leave the city. He was still at Isabella’s, hitting on some poor little freshman with a lip ring.”

“But then … why are all the lights on?”

“Um, probably because his parents are home,” Marissa says. “And because they’re obviously not worried about their carbon footprint. Now, come on.” She starts crossing the lawn, heading over to the side of the house where Cooper told us the open basement window is. I follow her, but … it’s kind of creepy out here.

And dark, which in the city didn’t seem so bad, because there were people around. And, yeah, some of those people were shady, but at least they were people. Out here there’s just … nothing. But darkness. And crickets.

And okay, yeah, maybe Tyler’s not here, but what if someone’s about to jump out at me? Not even one of the 318s, but someone else? Like a real murderer or maimer, who’s hanging out in the woods, waiting to get me? Not that there are woods out here. But Tyler’s backyard
does
have a lot of trees and a lot
of good hiding places for crazy people. Wouldn’t that be a horrible, unfortunate coincidence? Some kind of weird stalker/killer type hanging out back here on the one night I attempt to break into Tyler’s house?

“Hey,” I whisper to Marissa. “Are we sure this is a good idea?”

“Do you want them passing your notebook all over school?” she asks.

“No,” I say. “But they won’t post it all over school if I do everything they say.”

“How do you know?” She’s a few steps ahead of me, and she looks over her shoulder meaningfully. Oh my God. I never even thought of that! I mean, there’s no way to know for
sure
that the 318s are going to stop this. I could do everything they want, and they could still pass my notebook around or post it online. The only real way to make sure all the secrets stay safe is to get the notebook back.

“There it is,” Marissa whispers. She points at the basement window, which, just like Cooper said, is open. Just a tiny bit, so little that you wouldn’t even notice it if you didn’t know. I guess that’s the point. So that Tyler’s parents and/or burglars don’t realize that people can get in if they want.

There’s no screen on the outside, and Marissa leans down and slides the window open easily. I take my cell phone out of my pocket and turn it on, letting the light flash into the cellar. There’s a black folding chair under the window. Again, just like Cooper said.

“That thing doesn’t look so sturdy,” I say, looking at it doubtfully.

“Oh, please,” Marissa says. “If it can hold Eric Partridge, it can hold us.” Eric Partridge is one of Tyler’s best friends, and he must weigh at least three hundred pounds. One time in gym class when we had to do rope climbing, Eric started climbing and the whole apparatus snapped and fell from the gym ceiling.

“I don’t think Eric Partridge uses that chair,” I say. My stomach turns a little bit at the thought of actually going into Tyler’s basement. Isn’t this breaking and entering?

“We’re not going to get caught,” Marissa says, as if she’s reading my mind. “No one’s going to hear us, we’re going to get in and get out.”

“Fine,” I say uncertainly.

“I’ll go in first,” she offers. Which is really nice of her, since (a) it’s my notebook that we’re trying to get back and (b) we don’t know for sure that there aren’t snakes and/or someone waiting down there to kill us.

She turns around and slides down through the window, taking a second for her feet to find the chair. I hear her step down, and then she disappears into the darkness.

“Nice,” she whispers. “It’s carpeted.”

I sigh and turn around, then slide myself backward through the window. My hands get wet grass all over them, and I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be doing this in the outfit I’m wearing. Hopefully Kate doesn’t love these pants. My legs flail
around until I feel the chair, and then I step down onto the carpet of Tyler’s basement.

Marissa and I stand there for a second, letting our eyes adjust to the darkness. Hmm. Okay, so this place is starting to seem not so creepy. There are big squashy couches and a dart board on the wall. A big flat-screen TV is mounted in the corner, and a couple of empty beer bottles sit on a coffee table, which is littered with sports magazines.

The floor is clean, and it looks kind of like a bachelor pad, if the bachelor had someone (I’m assuming Tyler’s mom) making sure that the place stayed clean and didn’t get too gross. And it’s not even really that dark down here, with the moonlight streaming in through the windows.

Over in the corner, near what looks like the furnace, is a circle of chairs.

“I think that’s—,” I start. From upstairs, a big booming sound comes, like someone dropped something on the floor. Then I hear a woman’s voice say, “Oh sorry, Cal, I just wanted to make sure I got this in the fridge now that our guests have gone.”

Ohmigod! Tyler’s parents! Tyler’s parents are in what sounds like the kitchen, and I can hear them! Talking about getting something into the refrigerator! I look over to the stairs that lead up to the house and notice that the door at the top of them is open just a crack. OH. MY. GOD. Is Cooper crazy? Why would he send me into Tyler’s house if he knew that THE DOOR AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS MIGHT BE
OPEN? And that Tyler’s parents might be flouncing around the kitchen?

“Edward!” the woman’s voice says next. “What are you doing up? It’s very late, young man, you get back upstairs to bed right now.”