I gave her a blank look.
She laughed. “Okay, I probably wouldn’t know that either if my dad didn’t watch so much basketball. Here’s the short version: there are five positions—point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward, and center.” She pointed out at the court. “See, they’ve got Nick as point guard, and then Charlie as power forward, and then that beanstalk in the middle, Trent”—she waggled her finger toward the guy who was by far the tallest guy on the court—“they’ve got him as center because he could probably dunk the ball without so much as leaving the ground.”
“Got it,” I said. “The game now fascinates me.”
“Wow, sarcasm. You’re learning.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Pro tip,” she said. “If you want to soften Nick up, you should tell him that he’s a super-awesome point guard with amazing ball-handling skills. He’ll be like putty in your hands.”
“I do not want him to be ‘putty in my hands,’ ” I told her.
“Actually,” she said, with a wicked grin, “I think you kind of do.”
—
SARAH WAS NOT RIGHT. BUT then again, she wasn’t wrong. It was confusing.
And I was still thinking about that—about Nick, about hands—the next day when Mona slid into the seat across from me in the cafeteria.
“I’m here to give you back your phone,” she said.
I nodded, bracing myself for disappointing news. “Nothing you could do, right?”
“Oh no,” she said, smiling. “I fixed it.”
“You fixed it? Really?”
Mona started to search through her bag. “Yeah. It still looks like hell, of course. It’s up to you if you want to pony up for a new screen. But it turns on now, and I’m ninety percent sure that everything will still be there—though you’ll only know for sure once you put in your—I mean her—password.”
She handed over the Ziploc with Anna’s phone. The phone looked just like it had before, the screen a maze of spiderwebs, but somehow it felt different, now that I knew it worked again, like it contained more than metal and chips. “That’s amazing. Thank you.”
She nodded, then blushed. “Oh,” she said. “I just realized…wouldn’t it have been turned off by now?”
I shook my head. “Family plan,” I told her.
“Oh, okay. Good.” She paused. “I can stay for a minute if you want me to look at it. Make sure all the data is still there.”
“No thanks,” I said. “I’d prefer to do it on my own.”
“Right. Of course,” she said, and started to stand up. Then she stopped. “If she has anything weird on her phone, maybe you could let me know?”
“Weird how?”
She paused. “I wondered if—” Then she stopped. “You know what? Never mind. I hope it works, Jess. I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for.”
—
AT FIRST NOTHING HAPPENED, AND I thought Mona had been wrong, that it was still broken. I almost dropped it on the floor of the bathroom—where I’d retreated for privacy—when it lit up and buzzed in my hand.
Anna’s password was the month and year of our birthday. I’d told her a million times to change it, to make it something harder to guess. Now I was grateful that she hadn’t.
I looked at her texts first. The last one she’d received was from Lily:
Sorry, but need to push it back by 30. And the boys may stop by first before we head out.
Anna had texted her back shortly afterward:
Okay, see you then!
That was all there was. On the surface, it kind of fit with the narrative Mom had proposed—that Anna and Lily had been planning to hang out together but expected that some boys might drop by. The boys. One must have been Charlie for Lily, and the other…Brian? Certainly, Lily wouldn’t have described Mr. Matthews that way. But maybe he was the next part of the itinerary—what they were heading toward.
I kept scrolling back through her messages with Lily, hoping to find something more concrete—a name, a telling detail. Nothing.
I went to Anna’s photos, thinking maybe I’d find some picture of her with the guy—their faces close together, smiling. Or even just a picture of Mr. Matthews alone. She would have wanted that, I thought, some proof, something to carry around with her. Except there was no photo like that. Close-ups of flowers and trees and ruined old barns, yes; some goofy group shots from cross-country, photos of her and Lily, and some shots of me and her, her arm stretched out to catch us both.
And then, from a few weeks before she died, there was something different. A photo of her taken in a mirror. A full-length one of her completely naked.
And she hadn’t sent it to one phone number.
She’d sent it to two.
A week later, Lily disappeared while we were at the bar, leaving me alone as time ticked by.
After a while, I got nervous. I checked the bathroom, every corner of the bar. I finally went out into the parking lot. And there she was walking back, wearing a secret smile, hair mussed, arm around some guy. I pretended not to see her—just headed back into the bar.
So when he put his hand on my leg again, I didn’t move away. Instead, I thought of Lily that night. And I moved closer.
If Lily could have her secrets, then I could have mine.
I FELT SICK TO MY stomach, knowing I’d seen something Anna would never have wanted me to see, and also deeply confused. If she’d sent the photo to one number, I’d have assumed I had my answer. But two? Two was different.
Additionally, there was something off about the photo. She wasn’t smiling—wasn’t looking flirty or pouty or anything I thought someone might aim for in that kind of photo. Instead, she looked almost angry. Like she resented taking it.
One of the numbers had no name attached, only the number. There were no other texts to that number.
The second one was listed as “pf5.” There were other texts from this number, unfortunately all unhelpfully short and clipped:
Not today.
Meet
