morning about Katelyn, her mother, and whatever it was that was on her laptop that Sandra had wanted to see. As he ate, he watched from the window for Hayley and Taylor to emerge from their house so they could huddle at the bus stop.
He left Katelyn’s laptop and a Post-it note with her password on the kitchen table. Sandra Berkley said she was going to come by later in the morning to pick it up.
“Did you look at any of it?” Shania asked.
He shook his head. “Not really,” he said. It wasn’t a lie. He hadn’t. “Seemed a little invasive to me.”
Shania nodded in the direction of the Ryan girls and Colton got up.
“Yes,” she said, “I think it would be. But I think if something happened to you, I’d probably do the same thing.”
He zipped up his coat, grabbed his backpack, and went for the door.
“I guess I should start deleting all the bad stuff I’m into when I get home tonight,” he said, deadpan. “You know, so you don’t have to dig through all that ugly.”
“No need,” she teased. “I’ve already installed a secret Net Nanny on your PC. I’ve caught up with all your ugly already.”
Colton was fifteen, too old to hug his mom, but he wanted to just then. He never had any doubt that she was always on his side.
“Bye, Mom,” he said.
The sky had cleared overnight, which brought temperatures down to well below freezing. Hayley, Taylor, and Colton met in the alley. The girls were zipped up and prepared for the Arctic. To humor her mother, Taylor wore what Colton knew was Aunt Jolene’s vomit scarf. Hayley had on a bright red scarf with a four-inch black leather fringe. He’d been with her when she bought it, and she had told him it was both cool and functional.
“Which is very difficult to achieve,” she had said.
Colton handed over the thumb drive. “All of Katelyn’s info is on this,” he said. “E-mails, saved chats, Word docs.”
Hayley took the thumb drive and zipped it into her pocket.
“Now are you going to tell me what’s up with that?” Colton asked.
They were nearly at the bus stop, where a few other kids were waiting.
“I have a feeling that Katelyn would never have committed suicide,” Hayley said, thinking about how she was going to say the next part.
“We both do,” Taylor said, cutting in. “It’s either an accident—”
This time it was Hayley’s turn to cut off her sister. “Or a homicide,” she said.
“You’ve been reading too many of your dad’s books.”
“Maybe so. But suspicion is a good thing,” said Taylor, the daughter who had never cracked a Kevin Ryan paperback in her life.
The bus came into view, and the space between the kids tightened as they lined up to get on board out of the cold.
“How’s that?” Colton asked, hoisting his backpack over his shoulder.
“Keeps things interesting. And we need that in Port Gamble,” she said.
Colton nodded, but deep down he knew that was far from the truth. Port Gamble was a small town, certainly, and those who didn’t live there might think it was a sleepy little place. Yet the truth was almost every household had been the victim of something. Starla’s dad, Adam, left town without so much as a word; Beth’s father drowned; Katelyn was dead; and then there was what had happened to his own mom.
Exactly what it was had never been a topic of conversation around the Jameses’ household. And as much as he loved his mother, he loved her enough not to say a word about it. Whenever he saw the scars on her neck, he pretended they weren’t there.
Later at school, between algebra and history, Colton ran into Starla—a rare occurrence because they spent most of their passing time in their separate pods, his orange, hers blue. It was even more unusual that Starla was alone, away from her usual group of mean-girl admirers and the straggler or two who wanted to be part of the group—until Starla ordered the poor girl picked off like a weakened zebra.
“Hi, Colt,” she said.
“Hi, Starla.” Colton tried to remember the last time she had spoken to him privately. Was it seventh grade? When she pretended to like him, when all she really wanted was for him to do her computer science homework? Like the biggest idiot in the universe, he had done it.
Starla edged a little closer, drawing him over by the teacher’s resource room, where it was quiet.
“You doing okay?” she asked him.
“I’m fine,” Colton said, “but what about you? Are you doing all right?”
She was full-on Starla just then. She smelled good. Her eyes were done up in such a way that they looked anime-big. “It has been really hard,” she said. “My mom mentioned to me that Sandra dropped off Katelyn’s laptop for you to hack.”
“Yeah,” he said. “She did.”
“Were you able to get into it? You’re pretty good at that kind of stuff.”
Colton knew she was using him again, yet he still blushed a little.
“Thanks. I guess. But yeah, I was.”
“Really.”
“Yeah.
Starla inched a little closer. She looked concerned, interested. She was kind of good at that, and just maybe had a future in movies. Make that TV.
“What did you find out?” she asked. “She was pretty messed up, wasn’t she?”
Colton thought a moment before answering. There was always a risk in telling Starla something. Information was her currency. Gossip. Truth. Whatever she could use, she did. She was, Colton knew, an info-parasite.
“Messed up, maybe,” he said. “But not half as much as the SOB who was sending her those taunting e- mails.”
He wanted to tell her that the sick SOB who sent them was her mom’s boyfriend, but he didn’t.
“Wow,” she said, her eyes no longer as large, but shuttered a little as if she were concentrating on something important. Or as if she were trying to narrow her focus on Colton to see just what it was that he knew. “That’s totally scary.”
Colton brushed past her. “Yeah.” He didn’t look back at her anime eyes. He just went to class, letting Starla think about just what he’d found on her dead friend’s hard drive.
MOIRA WINDSOR ATE A COUPLE OF MINT-FLAVOR TUMS she had fished out of the Paradise Bay house’s medicine cabinet. She had eaten too much. Too fast. She heard the ping of a new e-mail being delivered and quickly returned to her computer.
Moira picked up her phone and tapped out the telephone number provided. After a few pleasantries and some confirmation about what she wanted, Savannah Osteen invited her to come over.
“When can I come? I’m kind of on deadline.”
“Anytime,” Savannah said. “I work out of my home.”
Moira pounced. “How about today?”
Savannah paused, thinking it over. “Today’s fine,” she said.
