By the time I sank into Collin’s passenger seat with my warm egg sandwich and thermos of hot coffee in hand, I was starting to doubt my plan. Word about Chloe had to have gotten around by now. People would probably ask me about her. They’d for sure spread rumors about what they thought “really” happened. Everyone knew I was her best friend. Could I face all the looks and questions again, like what happened with Emery?
I suddenly felt sick.
Collin glanced over at me while he drove. “Oh, cheese. You’re green. Are you gonna puke in the car?” He looked genuinely worried. “Do you need me to pull over?”
I set the sandwich down on my lap and drew a deep breath. “No. I’m just—”
He hesitated a moment, then reached for my hand.
I tensed as his fingers found mine, but I didn’t pull away.
“You’re scared,” he said gently, glancing between me and the road. “I get it. Do you want me to take you back home?”
I looked over at him, and the compassion in his expression nearly undid me.
“No, I… I need a moment.” I forced myself to meet his eyes. “I won’t puke in your car.”
He squeezed my fingers, then moved his hand back to the steering wheel. “Well, if you change your mind, let me know. I don’t mind.” He smiled at me. “About taking you home, I mean. I kinda would mind if you puked in my car.”
A small chuckle escaped me. “Noted.”
He let me ride in silence.
I stared out the window while he drove, trying to get my thoughts in order. If the police wouldn’t help Chloe, then I would have to do it myself, but I had no clue where to start. These supposed cheerleader-investigators were my only hope… if those rumors were even true. What would I do, just go up and ask them?
When Collin pulled into the school parking lot, I saw the three cheerleaders in question conversing on the other side of the lot, chatting with a bunch of other upperclassmen.
I turned to Collin. “What do you know about the newest members of Lockley’s cheer squad? The three girls who transferred in this year?” I gestured toward them.
He glanced at me. “Considering I transferred to your school a few weeks ago? Nothing. I’m not even sure of half the squad’s names.”
My heart sank a bit. “Lockley’s never mentioned them? She seems friendly with them.”
He parked in a spot further down the row, then looked at me. “I love my sister, but I’m not tracking the details of her social calendar. I think she hangs out with pretty much everyone from the squad.” He raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“No reason.”
His eyes narrowed. “What’s this about? You have that I’m about to do something stupid look again.”
I glared at him.
He shrugged. “Hey, who am I to stop you? I do stupid stuff all the time.”
His uptight manner and carefully styled prep-school hair begged to differ, but the attempted look of mischief in his eyes did lift my mood a bit.
I gave him a smile that might have been genuine if I wasn’t still so panicked. “Thanks for the ride, Collin, and for understanding that I needed time to think. I’ll meet you here after school, unless I leave early with my parents—I’ll text you if I do. Same number you called me from, right?”
“You’re welcome… and right,” he said, shutting off the car. “But does that mean you’re planning to skip all the classes we have together? You’re talking like you won’t see me until after school.” He unbuckled and leaned to grab his backpack from the back floorboard.
My retort flew off my tongue before I caught it. “Knowing you, you’d pretend you didn’t know me, even if I did see you in class.”
His gaze snapped to mine. He looked a bit offended. “Are you still upset about that?”
If I hadn’t been before, I was now. “Why wouldn’t I be? You never even apologized.”
His jaw clenched. He sat up with his backpack and stared at me for a long moment, then sighed. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry. I wanted to eat alone, but I never meant to embarrass you in front of everyone.”
“Was sitting with Chloe and me really that terrible of a prospect?” Chloe. Saying her name sent a pang through my chest.
Collin shook his head. “Of course not. But I don’t want to be anyone’s pity friend. You all have your own routines, and I’m not a part of them. It’s fine.”
I gaped at him. “Did you ever consider we may have wanted you to join us?”
He gave me a flat stare. “Did you, though? Honestly? Not Chloe, but you?”
I opened my mouth to reply, then closed it again.
Collin gave me a half-smile. “I thought so.”
I started to apologize, but he cut me off.
“It’s okay, Aubrey. You and I haven’t ever gotten along, and I didn’t expect you to pretend otherwise.”
Something about that cut deep. He was 99% right, except… “We haven’t gotten along? Or we still don’t?”
He held my gaze. “You tell me.”
I studied him, then answered through a tight throat. “I thought we were getting along, last night.”
He’d been a friend when I needed one, and as unexpected as it had been, that kind of thing meant something to me.
He watched me for a long moment, then gave me a soft smile. “We were. But you’re also going through a lot. You might feel differently when this is all over. And that’s okay. Lock the car when you get out, will you?” He pulled back and shoved open his car door.
“Collin, wait—”
But the door shut and he was gone.
I grabbed my backpack and made it out of the car soon after, but he was already halfway across the parking lot, walking at a pace that said he really didn’t want to continue this conversation with me right now.
I let him go. He was my ride home, unless I called my parents, so we could revisit this later.
I turned back, locked the car and shut my door, then looked across the parking lot.
The three cheerleaders were still conversing on the far side of the lot, though the rest of the group which had previously surrounded them had already filtered into the school.
I drew a deep breath and strode toward them. I only had a few minutes until the starting bell rang. I had to make them count.
The three girls stood in a close huddle. The muscular girl with shoulder-length dark hair and sweeping bangs reminiscent of an emo style—whom I knew to be named Meredith—and the tall, lanky redhead—whom I was pretty sure was named Tory—had their backs to me. The third, a lean model-type with long, blonde hair, was facing my direction, engaged in animated conversation with the other two. From my observations, she seemed like maybe the ringleader of the group, though I was always forgetting her name. Judy or something?
Despite the three girls’ differing physical attributes, they all gave off a definite “we’re a group” vibe. It was something about the way they moved or stood… or maybe their similar outfits of oversized shirts and flared jeans that looked like the pants my Mom wore in pictures from her teen years. I was never good at keeping up with fashion trends, but the latest ones were especially baffling.
As I neared them, the one with the long, blonde ponytail smiled and waved at me. “Hi, Aubrey!”
The other two turned and fixed their stares on me, too.
I froze, taken aback by the exuberant greeting… and by the fact that one of them knew who I was. “Uh—hi?”
Meredith nudged her sweeping, dark bangs out of her eyes and smiled at me. “I’m Meredith. This is Tory and Jillian,” she said, gesturing to each.
Jillian. Not Judy. At least I’d been right about the other two.
Now that I was actually talking to them, all three of them gave me really weird vibes, but I kept that to myself. Between Chloe and all the strange dreams I’d been having lately, I was probably just on edge.
I forced a smile. “Hi. I’m… well, Aubrey. But obviously you knew that.” There was an awkward pause as they stared at me. “Um, how did you know that?”
“You do the literature radio show, of course,” Jillian smiled at me. “Doesn’t everyone know who you are? There are posters on the library door.”
I blinked at her. “Oh.”
This was getting more awkward by the second, so I figured I’d better just go for it. “I heard a rumor—maybe it’s not true—but I was wondering… did you all do some kind of investigative thing after school in your last town? Like, a detective agency or something?”
Tory’s gaze snapped to mine and locked on. “Where did you hear that?” Her tone was friendly, but her focus on me was intense.
“Um, just a rumor?” I said, backing away. “I’m sorry. Maybe it’s not—”
“It’s true,” Meredith said with a shrug. Then her face turned serious. “Wait—your friend Chloe. Is this about her?”
My hands went cold. “Yeah. I just… the police think she ran away, and I wanted… I mean, I was hoping…”
“You wanted to hire us?” Jillian asked, exchanging glances with the other two.
I nodded, starting to question my decision. “I’ll pay you. I mean, I don’t know what you cost, but I swear, I’ll figure it out, if you can just—”
“I’ll pay,” a voice said from behind me.
I spun around. “Collin? I thought you went inside.”
“I came back out and saw you over here,” he said, then looked up at the three cheerleaders. “I assume you have competitive rates. Anything within reason, I’ll pay.”
I stared at him. “What? No, Collin, you don’t have to do that.”
He glanced at me. “I like having answers.”
The three girls looked at each other.
Tory tossed her long, red ponytail behind her shoulder and stepped toward Collin. “Okay, we’ll bite. But just so you know—we’ll see what we can find out, but we can’t guarantee the result.”
Collin nodded. “I wouldn’t expect you to. But you know what you’re doing, and how to find info the cops may have missed, right?”
The three girls exchanged another glance.
“Yes,” Jillian said.
“Then done,” Collin said.
“Wait,” I interjected, giving a panicked glance at Collin. This was moving too quickly. I looked back at the cheerleaders. “What can you do that the police can’t? Is there any fine print to this arrangement? What’s your price?”
All three girls watched me for a long, unsettling moment, then Tory moved toward me.
“Do you two mind stepping into our office?” She gestured toward the back side of the school building, which butted up to the fence and an open field used in the afternoons by the agriculture class. That whole area was out of sight from any other part of the school.
“Uh…” I hesitated, because as much as I wanted answers, these girls were weirder than I’d counted on, and getting murdered behind the school building was not on my bucket list for this year.
At least I had Collin with me. I wasn’t sure of his fighting skills, but despite being a nerd, I was scrappy when I needed to be and hopefully he was, too. Two to three against a group of cheerleaders seemed like decent odds, if it came to that. Maybe. That sort of depended on whether they’d practiced kicks with all their flips.
Collin glanced at me with a question in his eyes.
I drew a long breath, then nodded, and we followed the cheerleaders around to the back of the school building.
***
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