Broken Pretty Things by Amber Faye
Chapter 28
Gunnar:What do you mean?
Andie: It’s not a hard question, Gunnar… was that you or wasn’t it?
“Miss Palmer,” Mr Rayne says smoothly. “Just because you did well on one assignment doesn’t mean you can check out for the rest of the year. Phone. Give it to me.”
I try to protest, but everyone in English class is staring. I hand over my phone. Mr Rayne smiles at me as he takes it, then shuts it in his desk. “As I was saying…”
It’s too hard to focus. I keep thinking about the figure in my bedroom. The glint of something in his hand. Now, the more I think about it, the more I think about his odd posture. Like he was in pain, bent over, breathing fast. The rasping sounds his dark clothes made as he strode suddenly towards me, as if making a decision. The way he bolted when he heard Ulla’s voice.
The completely unfamiliar, almost medicinal scent of him that lingered after he fled.
If it really wasn’t Gunnar, I need to tell the police.
If JJ is really this angry at me, why hasn’t he tried to contact me? Talk to me? None of this makes sense. I thought I knew him so well.
The bell rings, and I gather my stuff on autopilot. “Miss Palmer, see me, please.” I turn around in the doorway, almost running into someone. Mr Rayne is giving me that knowing smile everyone in his family seems to have inherited, hands in his pockets and his shirt rolled up to his elbows. There is a family resemblance, for sure, but his dark hair is cut much shorter at the back and sides, and his eyes are a grey blue.
As the last student filters out, I step over to his desk. He brandishes my phone. “You almost left without this,” he says. “And a student almost forgetting her phone? Well, that’s a red flag. Is something up?”
“I honestly wouldn’t even know where to start,” I surprise myself by saying, and gladly take my phone.
“You want to talk?” he asks, gesturing to a chair.
“I appreciate it, but—”
“You know, it’s not really my place to say this, any of this, but did you ever properly grieve for your friend, Cole?” I watch his face as he asks this, seeing real sympathy in his eyes, and I don’t know how to respond.
“How do you grieve properly?” I ask.
He scratches his chin, a patch of stubble he missed in the morning. “That’s a good question. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer that. Maybe you should speak to someone who is?”
I don’t think I’m going to, but I smile up at him anyway. “That’s a great idea,” I say.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said, about how Cole wasn’t sad,” he says, and I pause, hovering between staying and giving him my full attention, and running out before he can say anything more. But he stops there, looking at me with sympathy in his eyes. “Does that have something to do with why you broke into Preston’s office?”
“I—” I freeze.
“It’s OK,” he says steadily, holding up his hands. “He doesn’t know. But I want to tell you, I think invading his space and rifling through his things … no matter if he’s guilty or not of that, it’s a surefire way to get yourself on some shit lists.” He winces with one eye. “Don’t tell the other teachers I just cursed in front of you.”
“Thank you,” I say, looking down at the floor, at my feet. “For the warning. And not saying anything. I guess Gunnar told you.” That or there’s some security feed in the house I didn’t consider — which would explain how Gunnar knew I was there — and Spencer Rayne came to my rescue by intercepting it before Preston saw me on it. “Thanks,” I mutter again. It feels good to have another ally.
“Wait. Andrea.” I’m about to turn and leave, but I pause. “I’m really concerned about you. I overheard some stuff. About some kind of … event in the cafeteria.” Oh. He lets out a long, awkward sigh. “I told the principal it was another rumor, but I’m not so sure, from what Gunnar was saying.” He pauses. “If you want my advice — which, you’re a teenager, so you probably don’t — it would be to stay away from him.”
“Why would you say that?” I ask.
“He’s not …” He trails off, looking up at the ceiling. “Listen, I’m torn here. Because I am your teacher, so maybe I shouldn’t be talking to you about this so familiarly. But I also know Gunnar very well. I know the way he is, what he’s capable of, when he’s angry.” He swallows. “And right now he is very, very angry.”
The way he says that, with so much conviction, makes me shiver. I try not to let him know by hitching my backpack higher up on my shoulder at the same time. “That’s not a problem,” I say. “I wasn’t planning on talking to him or hanging out with him anymore.”
“Good,” he says. “Because he’s absolutely his father’s son.” He moves behind his desk to grab his stuff, and then freezes, glancing up at me like I caught him doing something wrong. “Disregard that.”
“Um,” I say. “OK.” I head out into the hallway, wondering what he meant. He’s his father’s son. Why did he look so unnerved that he’d said that out loud?
Does he know something about Preston Rayne?
* * *
Gunnar:OK. I’m kind of freaking out and I’m hoping I’m misunderstanding you.
Gunnar: You’re asking me if I was in your bedroom last night?
Gunnar: ??
Gunnar: I’m not doing shit like that anymore.
Gunnar: Why aren’t you responding?
I read over the texts I got while my phone was in the desk at the front of the room as I navigate my way through the school corridors, trying not to collide with anyone. Also trying not to panic about what Gunnar has messaged me. What does he mean he’s not doing ‘shit like that’? Scaring me, or trying to see me?
How can he do stuff with me one night and then snuggle up with Aurelia in the hallway the very next day? And if he’s pissed I didn’t climb into his car after everything that’s happened, let him be.
I hit Back to read the rest of my messages and another one comes up that I wasn’t expecting.
Unknown: if you go to the cops i will gut you, bitch. you’re lucky we weren’t alone.
I read it twice, so absorbed in it that I don’t look up in time to avoid colliding head-on with Dimitri. He was also buried deep in his old cellphone, and drops it. He dives to snatch it back up before I can get it while I’m down there retrieving my own phone. I pause and as I straighten up, I stare at him.
“What’s up with you?” I ask. He looks shaken, immediately looking down at his phone screen again.
“Nothing, Andie. See you at home,” he mumbles, and shoves past me and disappears around the corner.
“Hey, there you are.” I turn just as Gunnar grabs my arm and pulls me out of the middle of the hallway, against the lockers. He glances over his shoulder, as if to check none of his friends are around to see me with him, and that makes me roll my eyes. “What the fuck?”
I twist out of his grip and thrust my phone screen at him. He stares at me for a second, then narrows his eyes and reads the words sent to me by an unknown number. Then his eyes shut, he pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales something like, ‘Jesus Christ.’
“You guys are messing with me, or what?” I say.
“No, no, god,” he snaps. “I covered your clothes in corn syrup. You think I graduated to sending you fucking death threats?”
I find it crazy that he looks offended right now. “You tied me to a fence during a thunderstorm and left me there.”
“I knew you’d get out, Andie, and trying to get you to leave town was supposed to be the best thing for all of us, not—”
“So what the fuck is this?”
“It’s JJ,” he says, rubbing his face hard, and taking another cursory glance around. “I promised my brother I wouldn’t let JJ down like this.”
“What? What does that mean?”
“It means I grew up with that kid and I don’t want him to go to jail for the rest of his life.” I don’t meet his eye. “I’ll fix this, OK? It was only a matter of time before he found out where you live. I just wanted more time to get you to go back to California.” He sighs, leans back on his heels. “I’ll figure something out. For now, you’re safe on campus. Don’t leave the school alone.”
He walks away, disappearing quickly into the crowd of kids. I look at my phone one more time, then turn off the screen and shove it back into my pocket.
A part of me is stuck on Dimitri just now. The burner phone, the fact that he’d been right there, where I was, and then hadn’t wanted me to touch his phone. Is it possible that my mystery texter wasn’t JJ at all?
The sooner I figure out what happened to Cole, the sooner all of this stuff can be over and done with. I make the decision to skip my next period, and spend some time in the library with my notebook.
* * *
By the timeI’m done talking, Hero’s blue eyes are wide and she is frozen like a deer.
“The note mentioned you by name?” she finally whispers.
“Right. More than once. Called me the love of his life. That’s what he said.”
“When was the note found?” she asks. I shrug. “Because that window”—she karate chops her palm as she speaks—“between the death and the note being found, that’s when the killer was in the Waller house. Could that narrow down your list?”
We both look at my hasty scribbles. Every person who was at the Palace for Logan’s 17th, either from Westerley or Torrent Bay, is on there. I know there are names missing. Kids who turned up with other people, especially from Westerley, whose names I don’t know, but this list is the best I could do with the information I have.
I trail my finger down it and pause on JJ’s name. “Well, this is the most obvious, then. And he’s the one person I can’t talk to.”
“Gunnar said he carries the note around with him?” Hero says carefully, straightening up her glasses.
“Yeah, like some kind of psycho serial k—”
“Andie, we need to see the suicide note. Cole’s murderer wrote that note. There’s no way it doesn’t have clues in it. It’s the key.”
I lean back in the chair and brush my fingers through my hair. She’s right. “There’s not much I can do about that. If Gunnar isn’t lying,” I say, rolling my eyes, because it’s not completely improbable, “he broke into my house with some kind of weapon last night.”
“Well, what else do we know?” Hero asks patiently, folding her hands in her lap.
“You’d make a good teacher, you know,” I say with a tired laugh. “Just tell me what you’re thinking.”
“We know that Ransom Rayne hangs out with JJ almost every day, and updates his brother on his location so they can help prevent another murder,” she says. “If you’re not on terrible terms with Ransom, you could ask him to help you.”
I think about it for a minute, and she’s right. My relationship with Ransom was always pleasant, though I wouldn’t have gone so far as to call us close friends. He was my best friend’s little brother. If I had wanted something from him back then, he would have done it to avoid getting into it with Gunnar. Now, maybe the same thing is still true.
“I need to get another Rayne in my corner first, I think,” I say finally.
“That’s logical,” she says. “Do what you have to do to get that note.” She claps her hands. “We can use handwriting analysis, analyze the language, maybe even DNA evidence.” I’m about to tell her she is being pretty optimistic here, but she pivots to another subject too fast. “Did you try any of the things yet?”
I blush bright red and shut my mouth, and she laughs, covering her mouth. “I’m sorry. I know it’s weird. As soon as I finalized the payment, I knew it was weird.” She twirls her pen in her hand. “But I was hoping it would help. You know, your problem.”
“My problem that I keep thinking about my worst enemy in all the wrong ways?” She nods. “It … hasn’t helped with that yet.” Hero doesn’t need to know just how much it didn’t help. The memory brings uncomfortably intense flutters to my stomach, and I try to get back to what I was doing. The list. But, I realize, the conclusion here was that I needed to talk to Gunnar.
“Maybe you should just fuck him,” Hero says, her face the picture of sweet innocence, and I am glad I didn’t just take a sip of my water because I might have choked. “It’ll just be sex. People have sex.” She shrugs, flipping open her own notebooks to get started on some studying. “Then you can move on without any curiosity.”
“That’s definitely a theory,” I tell her. “But he was my best friend, and I was in love with him. I don’t think it would just be sex.” It still makes me feel weird to say the L word about him, or maybe about anyone, but it’s the truth. This truth-telling thing is slowly getting easier. I don’t know why I haven’t told her about what happened the other night, but it doesn’t feel like lying. Some memories are OK to keep just for you, surely.
“Well, whatever your decision is in that department,” she says carefully, “just try to get your hands on that note. We can figure this out, OK?” I meet her serious expression, and when I smile at her, it softens.
“Thanks,” I say, and then add, “You’re doing really great at this friend thing.” Her face splits into a grin.