Chapter 14: Thanksgiving Eve

I left the towels in the dryer and ran.

My bed was exactly where it always was.

The quilt was pulled up crooked, the way I'd left it.

I dragged the whole bed away from the wall.

Dust, a sock, a hair tie, a pen I'd blamed on Jordyn.

I pulled the mattress half off the frame and looked underneath.

Nothing.

I sat on the bare box spring and typed into the group chat with my thumbs shaking.

"Vault. My bed. Now."

Crew got there in ten minutes.

Corey got there in nine and pretended he'd been in the area.

Crew took my phone and zoomed in on the still until it fell apart into squares.

"That's a shoulder," he said. "Gray sleeve."

"Lots of people have gray sleeves."

"And that's a bottle." He turned the screen to Corey. "Blue."

Corey went pale under his tan.

"The desk," he said. "That's me. With the Gatorade."

I thought back.

The Saturday before last.

Ten minutes.

He'd sat on the end of my bed for ten minutes and drunk a sports drink.

"There's nothing to uncut," I said. "He complained about stairs and left."

"They don't need something to happen," Crew said. "They need you to think it did."

He went to the window.

My blinds were up.

They'd been up that night too, because Corey had said my room smelled like a hamster cage and opened the window.

Across the street was the top deck of the parking garage.

The one I'd written a great piece about.

"Long lens," Crew said. "From up there you'd see straight onto the bed."

I yanked the blinds down so hard one slat bent.

Then I taped the edges to the frame with packing tape.

Corey watched me do it and didn't make a joke, which scared me more than the photo.

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