Famous Last Words

I knew I had a choice now. I could either accept it, and her, or I could spend a ton of energy agonizing over the situation. Spending tons of energy agonizing over things was pretty much my specialty, after all.

I shrugged. “All right,” I said. “Apology accepted.”

Her eyes sparkled and she shot me a brilliant, empty smile. “I knew I liked you. Hey, what do you have for number twenty-two?”

I tilted my work sheet so she could see the answer.

When the bell rang, she got to her feet. “So … I guess you’ll probably want to find somewhere else to stay this weekend.”

Oh, right. I forgot about that. “Of course,” I said, my stomach sinking at the thought of ruining my mother’s honeymoon.

“Cool.” She nodded. “I have big plans anyway. I mean, a thing I’m doing later this week. And then I might have really big news. I just might be too busy to … you know, babysit you.”

Okay, ouch. But I forced myself to ignore the barb. I knew she was being deliberately mysterious, trying to bait me into grilling her. “What kind of big news?” I asked.

“Can’t tell you. Top secret.” She pantomimed zipping her lip. “Anyway, you and Wyatt do whatever —”

“It’s not like that,” I said.

“Suuuure,” she said, in her driest voice. “You talk about him all the time and hang out with him and look up pictures of him online because you hate him so much, right?”

Her musical laugh filled the hallway.

“The world’s full of skeptics. I know — I’m one myself.” She gave me an odd smile. “Just watch out for Wyatt. He’s no gentleman, see?”

Then she walked off, leaving me speechless.

“You look different,” Wyatt said.

“Free?” I asked, setting my tray on the lunch table.

“No.” He studied me. “A

“It’s been an interesting morning.” I started to sit down.

“Wait, don’t get settled here,” Wyatt said, ru

“But it’s raining,” I said.

“Even better,” he said. “More tables to choose from.”

“Why can’t we ever sit and talk like two normal people?”

He gazed at me evenly. “Because if someone hears what I’m about to say, I could go to jail.”

We ended up in a corner of the courtyard, sheltered by a slight overhang. The rain cooled the air, the clouds blocked the sun, and we sat side by side, shivering. I crossed my arms and buried my hands in my dark green Langhorn-issued cardigan, resisting the urge to huddle close to Wyatt for warmth.

“C-can you h-hurry?” I asked. “Before we f-freeze to death?”

“No one had seen Paige Pollan for four days before she was found,” Wyatt said, glancing down at his notebook for confirmation. “Her school assumed she was home sick, and her mother was in Vegas — she worked weekends as a blackjack dealer and sometimes just stayed the whole week there. She had no idea her daughter was missing. But when they found the body, the coroner estimated she’d been dead for less than twenty-four hours — not four days.”

I breathed on my hands and then tucked them inside my sleeves. “So she skipped school, hung out at home for a few days, and then killed herself?”

He shook his head. “She had a goldfish. It was dead when the police found her. People who are pla

I didn’t know exactly what Wyatt was hinting at, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like it. “Maybe the fish died accidentally — goldfish are pretty delicate, right?”

“All that,” he said, “I could rationalize away. If it were only that. But then I found this.”

He handed me his notebook, where he’d written out a paragraph.

I’M SORRY. I HAVE BEEN VERY LONELY AND STRUGGLED WITH A LOT OF THINGS. NO ONE UNDERSTANDS THE FEELINGS I’VE HAD. NO ONE IS ON MY SIDE. IT’S LIKE I’M COMPLETELY ALONE. I REALIZE THIS IS THE COWARDLY WAY OUT BUT I CAN’T STOP MYSELF FROM BEING A COWARD. MY WHOLE LIFE IS LIKE A BAD DREAM.

THE KIND OF DREAM YOU DON’T WAKE UP FROM.

PAIGE

I read the words over and over until they swam in front of my eyes.

“It’s her suicide note,” Wyatt said, a mite u

The kind of dream you don’t wake up from.

Suddenly I didn’t even feel the cold. “Paige saw the script,” I said. “Somehow she knew that line.”

“It makes sense, in a way,” Wyatt said. “We know she was a fan of Diana Del Mar.”

“But that line,” I said. “What are the odds?”

“The odds of any of this happening are astronomically slim,” he said. “I don’t think we should worry about odds anymore.”

I turned to him. “You said you found that. How is that possible? I want the truth about where you get your information.”

“Right. That’s why I brought you out here.” He cleared his throat nervously. “My dad’s a crime-scene consultant for the LAPD. Sometimes I take his security pass and access evidence storage. And occasionally I look at investigation information online.”

“You … what? Is that even legal?”

Wyatt sat back uncomfortably. “Not by the remotest stretch of the imagination.”

“Does your dad know about this?”

Wyatt shook his head, his lips pursed.

“How do you get in?” I asked.

He took a second to answer. “I know the guy who controls the access.”

“You know the guy who controls the access …?” I said. “Wait, do you mean you bribe the guy who controls the access?”

Wyatt sighed deeply. “He knows I’m not going to abuse the information I find. Listen, it’s not immoral — I’m not even sure it’s unethical. It’s just illegal. Don’t judge me, I don’t want to hear it.”

I shook my head, shocked. Perfect, precise, by-the-book Wyatt, breaking into the police archives and accessing information illegally.

Okay, it was pretty scandalous, but it was also kind of … audacious and cool.

Imagine that.

“That’s why you have to write everything down in your book,” I said.

He nodded. “When I go there, I leave my phone at the desk, and I can’t photocopy anything because it would show up on my dad’s records. So I copy it all out by hand.”

“Wow,” I said, trying to picture it. “And your dad has no idea?”

“None.” Now Wyatt looked extremely unhappy. “If he found out, he’d … I don’t even know what he’d do. Can we go back to talking about Paige, please?”

“Sure,” I said. “She obviously knew about the movie, right? Is it so hard to believe that she would use the line in her suicide note? If she liked Diana Del Mar enough …”

“She must have liked her a whole lot,” Wyatt said. “Diana Del Mar was found dead after taking sleeping pills and falling asleep in a full bathtub. Paige Pollan died the exact same way.”

“Like … in tribute?” I shivered, not because of the cold.

Wyatt frowned and didn’t answer.

“It’s not right,” I said. “I know there’s something we’re not co

“But we’ll keep working on it.” He looked at me, his expression somber. “Remember when you asked me when I’d be done, and I told you I felt like a piece was missing?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Of course.”

“Well … I don’t feel that way anymore. I feel like we found the missing piece. We just need to figure out how it fits into the puzzle.”

Mom spent the afternoon rushing around the house, packing for Palm Springs as if they were going on a three-month trek to Siberia and not a three-day trip to a city two hours away from home.