Truth about Truman School (19 page)

“Are you sure those other girls you hang out with had nothing to do with this?” my mom asked. “The website says ‘
We
Hate Lilly Clarke.' ”

“It was just me,” I mumbled. Because I don't rat on my friends! But it seemed a little unfair that I was the only one who was going to get in trouble for this.

“So ‘milkandhoney' is just one person,” the lady police officer said.

What? Wait a minute. “I never said I was milkandhoney,” I told the lady police officer.

The two police officers looked confused. “You just admitted you created the We Hate Lilly website,” the tall, skinny officer said.

“Yeah, but that doesn't mean I'm milkandhoney. I'm
not
milkandhoney!”

Mr. Gates typed something on his laptop, then turned it around so I could see it. He had the Truth About Truman website up. “There's a link to the We Hate Lilly Clarke website on this other website. And that link was posted by milkandhoney.”

Uh-oh. I had forgotten about that. “I uh, borrowed the name milkandhoney. I'm not milkandhoney,” I said, knowing it sounded lame. But it was the truth! Milkandhoney had posted all this other stuff about Lilly, so we decided we'd post our link to the We Hate Lilly Clarke website under that name, too. It was Hayley's idea. She said that way nobody would know it was our website. Because obviously
we
weren't milkandhoney.

“Who did you borrow the name from?” the lady police officer asked.

“From … this other person who was posting all this stuff about Lilly. Hey, if you traced that post back to my house, can't you trace milkandhoney's other posts?” I asked. Now, I was thinking! “Then you'd know milkandhoney wasn't me.”

It turned out they already had traced milkandhoney's other posts. To the school media center computers. The police had dates and times. All after school.

“Mrs. Conway gave us a list of kids who have been in the media center after school,” Mr. Gates said. “Your name was on that list, Brianna.”

I slumped down in my chair. Of course my name was on it. Hayley, Lilly, and I stayed after school and looked up cheerleading stuff in the media center.

“W-what about those other websites?” I sputtered. “Did you find the people who created the Lilly's Lesbian Diary website or the Truth about Truman website. Maybe they're milkandhoney?”

“We've spoken with the students who created the Truth about Truman,” the lady police officer said. “And while no one has claimed credit for Lilly's Lesbian Diary, we were able to trace that one back to the school computers, too.”

They all stared at me like they were waiting for something.

What were they waiting for? I wondered.

Then I got it. They thought
I
did Lilly's Lesbian Diary, too.

I expected more. More from the school, I mean. I figured if they ever found out what was going on, they'd confiscate all the computers, round up every single person who ever posted anything bad about Lilly online, call in extra counselors, and have a big school assembly to talk about cyberbullying, maybe even bullying in general. But none of that happened.

When they called Brianna Brinkman to the office, I was sure they'd be calling my name next. If they knew about Brianna, they had to know about me.

But apparently, they didn't.

Before the day was over, everyone knew that Brianna had been suspended for writing mean things about Lilly Clarke online and for creating the We Hate Lilly website and the Lilly's Lesbian Diary site, too, and that she was milkandhoney. People thought Brianna was responsible for pretty much everything bad people posted about Lilly.

Obviously, people were wrong.

You might be wondering whether I felt bad about Brianna getting suspended while I pretty much got away with everything I did. Not really. Because I couldn't feel too bad about Brianna Brinkman getting in trouble.

So Brianna Brinkman got suspended. I
knew
milkandhoney would turn out to be one of the popular kids.

But just because milkandhoney got caught didn't mean the whole thing was over. I still had to figure out what to do about our website.
Find
a responsible way to run it or take the whole thing down
. My mom said I was grounded until I did one or the other.

And Lilly was still missing.

I have to tell you, I never meant for things to get so out of control. I just wanted to publish an alternative newspaper. I wanted to publish good, hard-hitting articles that said something about the middle-school experience. I wanted to publish something that
mattered
.

But the Truth about Truman School didn't matter to anyone except me and Amr. The only reason anybody read it was to see who said what about someone else.

That was never what I had in mind.

So in the end, I took the whole thing down. I replaced everything with just one line on the main page: The Truth about Truman School is … .

If you clicked, another page came up that said, “people there can be really mean.”

I couldn't concentrate on my homework that night. My dad joined the search for Lilly again after work. I guess there had been people searching pretty much round the clock.

Where could she have gone? It was hard to picture her wandering around out in the woods somewhere. Or sleeping outside. Lilly was not the sleep-outside type.

Maybe she was hiding in Wal-Mart or something? Hadn't I read a story in the news a while back about somebody living in a Wal-Mart? But if she was, wouldn't someone have seen her and recognized her? This wasn't that big a town.

She wouldn't have done something stupid like hitchhiked her way out of here, would she? Like back before anyone even knew she was missing? What if she ended up in a car with some psycho who—I didn't want to think about it.

No she wouldn't have hitchhiked, I decided. She had to be hiding out somewhere around here. Somewhere where no one would see her.

I wondered where
I
would go if I wanted to hide from everyone for a while? Probably to that old tree house we used to play in in the woods. It wasn't too likely
Lilly
would go there, though. Like I said, she wasn't exactly the outdoor type. Plus she didn't even like the tree house. She used to make fun of me and Zebby for still wanting to play in it when we were in sixth grade.

But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered, what if she
was
up there? Had anyone even checked?

Amr called me while I was getting ready for bed that night. He wondered if Lilly was hiding out in our old tree house.

“Oh, I doubt it,” I said. I don't think she ever liked the tree house as much as Amr and I did. Even when we were all friends.

“Yeah, you're probably right,” Amr said.

But what if she
was
up there? All those people were out looking for her … what if she really was that close?

“I'll see you tomorrow,” Amr said.

“Wait!” I cried before he hung up. “Maybe we should go up there and check things out?”

“By ourselves?”

“Sure,” I said. “It won't take very long, and she's probably not there anyway.”

“Okay. I'll meet you in your backyard in about ten minutes,” Amr said.

I pulled a pair of sweatpants over my pajama bottoms and grabbed my gray jacket.

“I need to go outside and talk to Amr for a minute,” I told my mom as I strolled past the family room.

My mom looked up from the cross-stitch she was doing. “Now? It's pretty late, Zebby. Can't you talk to him on the phone?”

“No, he's on his way over. It won't take long. We'll just be out back.” I walked away before she could make me stay inside.

I grabbed a flashlight from the utility room and went out the back door. Amr was already waiting by my old swing set. He looked a little nervous.

“Are you ready?” he asked, turning his flashlight on.

“Yeah,” I said. Then we plunged into the dark, dark woods behind my house. We had to walk single file because of all the bushes and trees. Leaves and twigs crackled beneath our feet. Even with the flashlights, we could hardly see anything.

We came to the rickety little bridge that went over the creek and I stopped.

“Why are you stopping?” Amr asked.

I shined my flashlight down at the bridge. “We're not little kids anymore,” I said. “Do you think this bridge will still hold us?”

Amr looked at it. “It will if we cross separately,” he decided. Then to prove it, he hurried across. No problem. When he got to the other side, he turned around and shined his flashlight back on the bridge. “Your turn,” he said.

Gingerly, I took one … two … three … four steps on my tiptoes and then I was standing next to Amr. The woods weren't as thick on this side of the creek, so we could walk side by side.

All of a sudden, Amr stopped. He turned his flashlight off and told me to turn mine off, too.

“What? Why?”

“Just turn it off.” Amr grabbed the flashlight out of my hand and turned it off himself. Now it was pitch black.

I could feel Amr standing perfectly still beside me. Watching. Listening.

“What?” I said again, still not seeing or hearing what he was.

“I saw a light,” Amr said in a low voice.

“Where?” I squinted, then opened my eyes wide, but I had no idea how he could see anything out here without a flashlight.

“Up ahead. Around the tree house.”

I grabbed onto Amr's sleeve and we slowly made our way through the trees. I knew the tree house was in one of those old oak trees at the edge of the woods, right before you got to the grassy field. There were pieces of wood nailed into the trunk for steps. And an actual wooden tree house loomed in the large branches of the tree. It had a door, windows, even a roof. No one knew for sure who built it, but it was probably the guy who owned the land where all our houses are now. People said there used to be a big farmhouse right where my house is.

Amr, Lilly, and I had spent hours up in that tree house when we were little. But I hadn't been there in at least two years. I wasn't even sure I could find the right tree in the dark. But Amr seemed to know exactly where we were going. I followed him as he forged a trail through the thick underbrush. When we reached the edge of the woods, light from a half moon lit up the grassy field in front of us. Amr steered us to the right and we walked along the edge of the woods a little further.

“There it is,” Amr said, stopping in front of a tree with wood boards nailed to the trunk.

I couldn't believe he found it in the dark.

I peered up at the dark blob.

“Do you really think she's up there?” I asked.

Amr shrugged. “There's only one way to find out.” He held his flashlight under his arm, put his foot on the bottom rung, and started climbing.