eyes had the glazed devotion of a cult member. “We need each other.”
From what I’ve heard around school, it looks as though the Truth or Dare game ended with the Knox/Maeve bombshell—which makes me wonder if the whole point of the game was to mess with her. After all, she’s the one who turned the tide against Simon last year. Maybe one of his acolytes decided to get his revenge. If so, job well done, because she and Knox are still barely speaking and it’s making her miserable. Which sucks, but at least nobody at Bayview is talking about that stupid game anymore.
Another possibility, I guess, is that Brandon was behind the game all along and used it to help his friends win popularity points while messing with people he didn’t like. But since the game kicked off with an ugly secret about me while Brandon and I were hooking up, I can’t think about that for too long without wanting to throw up.
Meanwhile, Sean’s started up a weird little bromance with Knox. He’s suddenly calling Knox “my man” and yelling at anyone who tries to make a limp dick joke. Which is confusing for people, since he’s the one who started them in the first place. Knox still can’t remember what happened at the construction site the day Brandon died.
And Brandon—Brandon is buried and gone.
His funeral was last weekend, the first one I’d gone to since my father’s. I’d never felt such a confusing mash-up of emotions—shock and disbelief and sadness, but also some anger still. It’s strange, mourning someone who’d been legitimately horrible to you. When the priest eulogized Brandon, I felt like he was talking about a boy I’d never met. I wish I had, because that guy sounded great.
So much potential, wasted.
“Am I taking you to Until Proven, Knox?” Emma asks. She’s back to being calmly polite toward me, and hasn’t mentioned Derek once since Brandon’s funeral. Maybe his death shocked her out of her anger, or maybe it’s just that I finally have a friend she likes. She doesn’t even mind giving Knox the occasional lift to San Diego.
“No, I’m not working,” Knox says. I glance at him in the rearview mirror, cataloging the state of his bruises like I do every day. The ring around his eye is still purple, but his cheek and jaw have calmed down to a yellowish color. If he wore makeup, he could totally cover it up with the right foundation. “Just home, thanks.”
“You should come over,” I say impulsively. “Play that Bounty Wars game Owen keeps asking about.” My brother has been subdued lately, picking up on the sad vibe running through our house since Brandon died. A video game session with someone new would be the perfect way to cheer him up.
“Yeah, sure,” Knox says. Then he frowns and leans forward. “Does the car feel kind of—lopsided to you guys?”
“Always,” I say. “It’s ancient.”
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Emma says. “Something’s not right.” She turns in to the parking garage beneath our building and pulls into our assigned spot. I grab my bag as she climbs out and steps backward to look at the driver’s-side front tire.
“It’s going flat,” she groans as I get out.
Knox crouches down and examines the tire. “Looks like you picked up a nail,” he says.
I pull out my phone, only to see the power drained to nothing. “Emma, can you text Mom to call Triple A?” I ask. “I’m out of battery.”
My sister shakes her head. “I lost my phone, remember?”
Emma lost her phone almost a week ago. Mom had a fit and said she couldn’t afford a new one and Emma would have to pay for it out of her tutoring money. So far, Emma hasn’t replaced it, which is unfathomable to me. I can’t go an hour without my phone, let alone a week. But Emma acts like she doesn’t even miss it.
“Do you have a spare tire?” Knox asks. “I can change it.”
“Really?” I ask, surprised.
Knox flushes as he opens the trunk. “Don’t look so shocked. I’m not completely useless.”
“I didn’t mean that,” I say quickly, moving beside him to give his arm a reassuring pat. “I’ve just never met anybody who knows how to change a tire before. I thought it was a lost skill.” Which is true, but also: if I’d been asked to guess Knox’s car repair abilities on a scale of one to ten, I would’ve said zero. He doesn’t