Chapter 9: Forty Phones

The VanDerpool lake house had a wraparound deck, a pool lit green from below and about forty people with red cups.

Brock stood at the top of the deck steps with a microphone from a karaoke set.

When I came through the side gate, he saw me before anyone else did.

"Look who came," he said into the mic. "Saint Jo."

The deck went quiet and then loud.

Somebody whooped, and phones came up across the lawn.

"Come on up, Saint Jo. We have a spot for you."

I walked up the steps with my bandaged hand held against my stomach.

Elias had already slipped around the side of the house toward the study window.

Dane was by the railing, in his blazer, with his hands in his pockets and his face gone thin.

The lab partner sat on a lounge chair at the far end, wrapped in a towel, watching me with wide, miserable eyes.

"Tell everybody why you came," Brock said.

"I came to ask you about the twelve posts."

He tilted his head.

"What twelve posts?"

"The ones that wrecked Corinna," I said. "You reposted the first one at 12:04 a.m. on the night it started."

For a second he looked at me, and I thought it had landed.

Then he laughed and put one hand on my shoulder.

"You know what Saint Jo needs?" he said. "A baptism."

He pushed.

I went backward off the edge of the deck, arms out, and hit the pool.

The cold took all the air out of my chest.

When I came up, coughing, the water had soaked through the gauze, and my cut hand burned.

The whole deck was laughing.

I could see the phones, forty little lights on me, and in the middle of them Brock bowing with the microphone.

I got hold of the pool ladder and climbed out slowly.

Water ran off my hoodie and across the stone.

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