When I got home, I asked Mom, “Is Meeka’s family rich?”
Mom said, “I’m sure they’re comfortable, but that doesn’t really matter, does it?”
“I guess not.”
“She seems like a nice girl.”
“She is. She’s really awesome. But why are her parents . . . not her parents?”
Mom paused for a second, then said, “Did one of the kids say that?”
I nodded.
“They’re not her biological parents,” Mom explained. “And that’s why she looks different from them. But that also doesn’t matter either, does it?”
It did, in a way, matter. At least I assumed it did. Being adopted, I mean. Only I didn’t understand exactly why it mattered. So all I said was, “They have a really cool tractor and a really cool pond and a really cool barn.”
Mom kissed my forehead and replied, “I’m glad you had so much fun. I hope you can go back and play there again someday.”
GRAYSON
I’VE SEEN HOLLY’S TITS. I’ve seen Meeka’s. I’ve seen Logan’s dick, but only for a second. My eyes didn’t linger.
On the night we decided to do it—in the barn where I’m sitting right now with Meeka—the four of us, butt naked on a blanket, pledged our allegiance to kill an asshole. Holly started it. She took off her shirt and said, “Are you with me?”
Unexpected? Yeah. Understandable? Kind of.
Cole scared the hell out of Holly. She was sure he’d follow through with his threats and absolutely sure we had to follow through with some rough justice. And she was motivated—boy, was she—in everything: school, sports, guys, name it. She always had to win, and she had to beat Cole.
So she stripped off her clothes.
It may sound insane, but being naked showed us she was committed, that she had nothing to hide. She needed to do something, and she was daring us to join her. It was a fucked-up game of chicken. Worked, though. Because Logan went next, then me, then Meeka. All our shirts off, and before we knew it, everything else too. By the time we were down to nothing but skin and hair, we were all in. There was no sex—nothing even close. It wasn’t about that.
Try it sometime. Get naked with a bunch of people and make a promise or two. You’d be surprised how it sticks. In our case, promises turned into a plan. Holly promised to snatch some pills without her mom noticing. Logan would do the talking and driving, convince Cole to get into his car and make sure he drank the whiskey. I would bring the gear and burn the evidence. We’d cart the body to Meeka’s house, where we’d all dig and we’d all bury. Later, we decided we had to bring our phones and confess, which was the stupidest part of the plan.
“Those fucking phones,” Meeka says to me now, as we sit on the hood of the Trans Am. “I never would’ve guessed this could happen.”
I stare at the spot where the blanket had been, where we’d all sat bare-ass and shivering. And then the door opens and there’s Holly and she’s crying.
“We’re so screwed,” she says.
“Honey, I’m so sorry I didn’t get back to you last night,” Meeka says. “I lost my phone in the couch cushions and Mom had one of her parties, so I was waitressing for her till midnight. But when I found out this morning, I was on it.”
Holly balls her fists like she’s about to punch both of us, but instead of punching, she paces. “What’s to figure out? We have to dig him up. We have to burn him. We have to—”
“No,” Meeka says as she moves to Holly with her hands up and open. “We have to figure out what happened. So when I ask you something, I don’t want you to take it the wrong way.”
“What?”
“On your old phone, did you forget to turn off your cloud?”
“What?”
“It’s a question for both of you. Did you have a backup on your old phone that went to a cloud?” Meeka asks. “I know we all wiped the data, but did you turn off the backups?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Holly says. “The cell services were all off, transferred to our new phones ages ago.”
“True,” Meeka says, “but not the Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi signal reaches the barn. The video could have been automatically uploaded to your cloud, even if the phone didn’t have cell service. And if it’s on your cloud, then someone else could take it off your cloud.”
My mom likes the Rolling Stones and they have a song called “Get Off of My Cloud” that starts earworming in my head. So yeah, I know the lyrics to some old-ass song, but I don’t have the first fucking clue about clouds. I mean, I know it’s like a virtual place where your files get stored. Backups and all that. But there has to be an actual physical thing somewhere that has all your shit on it, right? Seems right, but I don’t really know for sure.
I don’t tell the girls that. I just say, “I turned everything off.”
“Sign into your cloud to be certain,” Meeka says as she pulls out her phone. She taps quickly and then holds it up. “See. Nothing from that day.”
Holly taps at her own screen like she’s doing Meeka a favor, stabbing her finger and rolling her eyes. She holds up the screen for both of us to see.
“Check my iCloud stream. October twenty-ninth is all clear. I’m not an idiot.”
I pretend to sign into mine, but I’m not sure where to start. The two of them watch me, and I try to play it off. “Umm . . .”
Meeka grabs my phone before I can make a total ass of myself. “What cloud service do you use? And what’s your password?”
I grab it back. “I’m not giving you my password.”
“Fine,” she says. “Sign in yourself. Make sure the video isn’t in there.”
I think I use . . . Dropbox?
I try my most obvious password. Nope.
Try another and . . . nothing.
I’m thinking about resetting the password, when Holly says, “If you’re too stupid to open it, then you’re probably too stupid to have set it up in the first place.”
That earns her a cold, hard glare, because if she’s stupid enough to say something like that to me, then she’s not smart at all. Besides, my third try at a password—an old one with Gram’s name—works and I’m in. I hold up my phone.
“Fuck you very much,” I tell Holly.
She shrugs.
“What’s on there?” Meeka asks.
I give the files a glance. “Mostly porn,” I say.