Vengeance (Private 14)

I wanted to laugh too, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I had started to think I could maybe trust my mystery texter. They’d led me to Carolina. They’d let me know—too late, of course, but still—that my room had been violated. But now . . . now I didn’t know what to think. Had MT been trying to help me tonight? Or were they trying to kill me?

NOT ACCORDING TO PLAN

I stood outside the door to the Art Cemetery on Tuesday night and took a deep breath. Josh was inside, studying in seclusion, and I’d told him I might stop by for a quick break and snack. The moment he’d seen my cast and stitches that morning, he had, as predicted, basically freaked. He was my boyfriend. A girl was supposed to call her boyfriend when she was whisked off to the hospital. But I’d managed to calm him down, telling him I was embarrassed over putting myself in danger and that it wasn’t the biggest deal. He’d finally relented, and spent the rest of the day carrying my bag, running to get my food, and opening doors for me, even when it made him late for class.

Yes, he was the best boyfriend ever. And I felt like a disloyal jerk for ever thinking that he might have something to do with the Billings sabotage. Hopefully the chocolate donuts and super-caffeinated coffee would make up for that.

And then, once I had him lulled into a sugar coma, I’d tell him all about MT and the weird stuff that had been going on. He had a right to know.

I held the bag between my cast and my body and lifted my good hand to rap out our secret knock. Three knocks, three knocks, five knocks. Kind of to the beat of M-I-C . . . K-E-Y . . . M-O-U-S-E. His idea. I swear.

Josh swung the door open. “Hey!” His dark blond curls stuck up in the front and he had a bit of the crazy professor look about his eyes. He waved me in, peeked out into the hall, then quickly shut the door behind me.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

A quick glance around told me he’d been camping out here a lot lately. The ancient settee where we usually sat and, more often, hooked up, was covered with loose papers, a blanket I recognized from his room, and an Easton Academy hooded sweatshirt. There were a couple of take-out bags on the floor, stuffed with garbage, and My Chemical Romance blasted through the speakers of an iPod dock on the chair in the corner.

“Everything’s fine,” he said, hastily lowering the volume. “Why wouldn’t everything be okay?”

His hands were on his hips, the sleeves of his green rugby shirt pushed up to his elbows. I sat down carefully on the settee and put the bag down on the table next to his open laptop, trying not to disturb the note cards strewn around it.

“No reason,” I said. I pressed my lips together and cradled my cast with my other hand. I had to choose my words cautiously here. Clearly he was feeling hyper or tense or both. “Are you going to sit?” I asked, casting my glance down next to me. “I brought your favorites.”

Josh tucked his hands under his arms and took a few steps toward the settee, but still kept a good distance. “I just ate, actually, but I’ll save them for later. I’m really just wondering what you mean when you ask me if everything’s okay.”

I blinked. Instantly those nigglings of uncertainty started to bother my nerves again, and the stitches in my chin began to itch. Why was he being so weird? He’d been fine all day, but now he was acting like he’d been chugging Red Bull for the past twenty-four hours.

“I was just asking,” I said. “You seem a little tense.”

“No, I’m not. Where do you get tense?” he asked, throwing his hands wide. “I’m fine.” He walked over to the window and looked out across campus. Then he turned around so suddenly I almost jumped. “Did Graham say something to you?” he demanded. “Or Sawyer?”

I licked my dry lips. Out of nowhere my arm started to throb and then my head began to throb with it. “Something about what?” I asked.

“They did, didn’t they?” he said, anger filling his eyes. “God! I should’ve known.”

“Josh, just calm down,” I said, standing, still cradling my arm. “I came here tonight to give you a study break. Why don’t we just—”

“Calm down?” he said, laughing. “How am I supposed to calm down when my girlfriend, the one person who’s supposed to love me no matter what, is talking to other guys about me behind my back?” he blurted. “Especially when one of those guys hates my guts and the other one is clearly totally in love with her?”

I swallowed hard and found myself glancing at the door. This was a Josh I hadn’t seen since last year, since the night of his arrest.

“What?” he said. “Aren’t you even going to say anything?”

“No, actually,” I said, skirting the table and walking steadily towar

d the door. “I think I’m just gonna go.”

“Oh, that’s great. That’s just perfect,” Josh yelled, his green eyes flashing. “Fine! Go ahead and go! Maybe Sawyer’s waiting for you back in your room. Maybe you’ll talk to him.”

“I don’t want to talk to him,” I said, frustration and anger searing my veins. “I want to talk to you, but you can’t even chill out long enough to have a normal conversation.” I looked him up and down, my heart cracking slowly. This had not gone as planned. “Maybe when you calm down you can give me a call.”

Then I yanked open the door and stormed out, slamming it behind me before he could respond. As I tore across campus, I kept feeling like he was going to come after me, but I refused to look back. I didn’t relax until I got to the center of the quad and realized he wasn’t going to run up behind me and keep right on yelling. I let out a breath and dropped down on one of the stone benches. I went to hold my head in my hands, but my broken arm protested with an angry, painful twinge and tears filled my eyes. Lovely. I couldn’t even properly mope.

“Calm down, calm down, calm down,” I told myself, my heel jiggling beneath the bench. I needed to try to look at this whole thing through Josh’s eyes. Yes, he’d been acting freakish lately, but did he have a reason? How would I feel if I’d walked in on him, say, holding hands with Ivy? How would I feel if he was in a serious accident and didn’t let me know? Maybe he was just reacting the way any normal boyfriend would react when he thought his girlfriend was pulling away.

My teeth clenched and the fingers on my free hand curled around the edge of the bench’s seat. This was all Graham’s fault. If he hadn’t planted those suspicions in my mind, if he hadn’t called Josh a liar to my face, I wouldn’t be feeling this way. I wouldn’t be wondering so much about Josh’s mood swings. I would be able to just chalk them up to end-of-the-year stress, separation anxiety, fear of the future.

Wouldn’t I?