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.Please? Will you come?”“I won’t make any promises—” I start to say.Dizzy shrieks, “Great! I’m so excited.And Daph, I really owe you an apology about all that Jesse stuff.I’m sorry.”“So you don’t think he’s a dangerous person?”She takes a long breath and blows it through the phone.“I think there’s a party on Saturday and you’re my guest.That’s it.”I can live with that.For now.I take a bite out of something leftover in the fridge—something that seems too squishy to be food—and spit it out into the sink.“Come to Josh’s house.You know it, right? It’s off Lakeview? At the top of the hill? The big three-story place—you know, Richard Kable’s house.” Dizzy stops suddenly.“Jesse’s old house,” she says quietly.“I know the place,” I say, even though I’ve never been there.You can see it from the road when you drive around the lake.Quiet’s very own mansion with its very own royalty.I wonder if there are any signs of Jesse there.Do I want there to be? Or would it be easier to know that everything about Jesse—including Jesse himself—disappeared into the sunny West, where I imagine the landscape is nothing but mountains and tall trees.“Has Jesse called you?” Dizzy asks, as if reading my mind.“No.Why?” My heart starts beating quickly.“Just wondering.Josh said he was thinking of coming back to Quiet.”“For good?”“I hope not.Nobody wants him here.” I say nothing, which prompts a meek and relatively sincere, “Sorry,” from Dizzy.“Why would he come back?” I ask casually.I can’t help but wonder if—and hope—it’s because of me.“I don’t know.Hey, are you going to wear your bathing suit with a wrap or something, or are you going to change at Josh’s?”“I hadn’t contemplated that perplexing question.”Dizzy misses the sarcasm.“Call me if you want to talk about it more,” she says ardently.“Anytime.”I hang up the phone and decide to give up on real food.I take M&Ms and a glass of iced tea to my room, flopping on my bed and narrowly missing my open laptop.I set my food and drink down and pull the computer to my lap, arranging myself against the headboard with two old pillows.My fingers take on a life of their own.I don’t even think—I just let them move across the keyboard.It reminds me of the time that my childhood friend Sarah and I found a Ouija board in her basement.We delicately touched the plastic planchette, asking the board to tell us the names of our future husbands.One second, I was fully aware of moving that piece to spell out the letters of Sarah’s current crush, T-A-Y-L, and in the next, I felt like my fingers were moving of their own accord.There was nothing I could do to control them.And the board ended up telling Sarah that her future husband would be named Taylwart.The message is short.I was wrong about you.I don’t know how to tell you I’m sorry.I stare at the screen until I fully realize what I’ve written.I go back to the top of the email window and type his address.I hit send before I have the chance to change my mind.chapter 26It might be weird for you to get this message from me.Honestly, it’s kind of weird for me writing it.I’m Jesse’s ex-girlfriend.I got your email address from my brother.I’m sorry if this makes you feel awkward or whatever.You’re probably a really nice person, and I have no reason to lie to you, so trust me when I say that you are getting in over your head.He has two sides.You’ve only seen the good side.And I, of all people, know how easy it is to get sucked into the bad side.Be careful.—Email message from Brit Gormley to Daphne WrightLike a pathetic loser, I get up at five o’clock on Friday morning just to check my email.No answer from Jesse.But there are a fair number of people who want to enlarge my penis, sell me porn, or introduce me to hot singles in my area.No wonder old people think the Internet is a cesspool.I check my email about three hundred more times before I leave for school.During French, Madame Ada sends me to the main office to pick up a stack of handouts.Or maybe she’s sent me to Paris for a loaf of bread.I can never tell because my French is so bad.I take the long way, walking just to the entrance of the Zoo.“Sightseeing?” Nate asks me, his face almost obscured by the hood of his sweatshirt tied tightly around his face.“Phone home,” I say, a dumb reference to E.T.It just confuses Nate.He follows me through the cafeteria as I head to the office.“What are you doing?” he asks.“Errands,” I respond, giving it a thick French accent.“Aren’t you supposed to be back there?” I point to the Zoo.“The cages were left unattended,” he tells me, matching my stride.Just before we get to the glass doors of the main office, he asks, “So you going to Josh’s thing?”I stop.“You are?”“Yeah.”“I thought after the gun incident—”“There was no gun,” Nate grunts at me.“You’re turning into one of them.” He holds his hands up.“Want to send me back to the internment camp?” Nate’s reference to World War II surprises me.I guess I assume his knowledge begins and ends with pot and Star Wars.“You were invited to Josh’s party?” I ask skeptically.“An invitation is optional.” He pulls his hair back into a slippery, girl-like ponytail.“I’ll see you there.Unless you want to drive together?”I can’t tell if he’s serious or not, so I don’t answer.That’s just what I need: to pull up to a party that I’m only sort of invited to with Nate Gormley.That would do wonders for my already tenuous social status.“No, thanks,” I say.“I’m good.”***Josh’s house is up a winding road behind the Walmart.(That’s what the locals say here: the Walmart, never just Walmart.) The road leads past a large group of new luxury townhouses and single-family homes.No Christmas lights or old toilets left to rot outside these doors.Definitely not college housing.These homes are too expensive for the college professors in town—this is Quiet’s top-of-the-money heap.At the crest of the hill sits a stately house that can only be described as a mansion.It’s white and dignified, with green-painted plantation shutters.A delicate picket fence (green, not white) hems the giant house in.Without the fence, it seems like the house would probably spill its guts all over the circular driveway.Dizzy has pulled in directly in front of me.She rolls her window down and motions for me to pull up next to her.“Just leave your car,” she says.“Somebody will be here to park.”I raise my eyebrows.There’s a valet?I follow Dizzy to the front door, but at the last minute she changes course and we go around the house to a gated courtyard where she uses a key fob to open a shining, white wrought-iron gate
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