Page 106 of Electricity

Hey—don’t know if you were coming over this morning? If you weren’t it’s OK—if you were, I’m riding in with Lacey.

“Were you, uh, doing it then?” Lacey’s brown eyes glanced over at me in the rearview.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m glad you can do that—even though I’m still a little jealous.”

“You might be less jealous if you knew what it did to my head. When my mom realizes how much Tylenol I’m going through, she’s going to freak out.” I felt stupid after I said it—like my head hurting even began to compare. Luckily she pressed on.

“Are you going to be able to do that for the rest of your life?”

“Don’t know, really. I’m just glad it worked yesterday.”

“How did you even meet him?”

“It was Darius, really—turns out Mason’s a stoner. Took me with him on a sales call, and I was able to get his phone.”

“Cool. No, not cool,” she corrected herself. “Useful.”

“I wish I’d done it sooner is all.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, remembering my latest headache. “You know you weren’t the only one.”

“What? Who?”

I could see them. Burned in my mind. Shana, Jenny K, Leslie. I’d seen their faces, and I’d been in locker rooms with them before, I knew their naked skin. “I don’t know if I should tell you their names. The ones I know, that is. Because they’re in the exact same situation as you—where they don’t want people to know anything, either.”

Lacey nodded quickly. “I probably don’t want to know—but—how many?”

I closed my eyes, taking myself back to Mason’s phone. “Three for sure. Plus maybe a couple others—limbs mostly.” I put a hand up to my neck to indicate where pictures had stopped. “Headless girls.”

“God,” she said. “What’re you gonna do?”

“I don’t know what I can do. Telling them Mason has photos of them won’t help anything. Maybe just make things worse. I mean, some of them may not know.”

“And some of them may think they know, but not remember, and just feel dirty and wonder.” My stomach turned anew as she balled one hand into a fist and pounded it against the steering wheel with surprising force. “Damn it! I just—I wish there was a way to make them pay!”

“Me too.” Instead, we’d have to just be happy dodging prom. “But look—after prom its just a few more weeks of school, then summer.”

“Yeah.” She wrung the steering wheel with both hands as if winding it up could wind her down.

I had a thousand other things I wanted to ask her—how her mom was, how she was, really, how she was going to manage toget through the school day today?—but for now I was OK with pretending that everything was fine until we got to campus.

CHAPTER 40

Darius was waiting beside our lockers when we walked in. “Got your message,” he said to me and, “Good to see you,” to Lacey.

“Thanks for helping,” Lacey said.

“You’re welcome,” he said. “Can we, uh—” he asked, and angled away from Lacey. I met him there, all of two feet away. “Are we still going to prom?”

“That’s a really good question that I don’t have the answer to just yet,” I whispered. If Lacey wanted to stay home on Friday watching movies and eating chocolate, I was best-friend contractually obligated to stay with her. “Is that okay? I mean, unless you wanted to invite someone else?—”

“No, I just like knowing the plan.”

“The plan is there is no plan yet,” I said.

“Okay, well, second awkward question—are you going to want a ride home?”

“Um—” I didn’t want to not ride with Lacey, but?—

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