One of Us Is Back (ONE OF US IS LYING)

Phoebe

Tuesday, July 21

When a key turns in the lock, Emma and I both jump as though a gun went off.

We’ve been on edge ever since finding Reggie’s necklace in Owen’s backpack Saturday night. “Whatever happened, we can’t cover for him this time,” I said, even while desperately praying that Owen would have a reasonable explanation for the necklace. He found it, maybe? He bought an exact replica? Because nothing else made sense: not Owen targeting Reggie Crawley, no matter how much he might have disliked him, and certainly not targeting me.

He wouldn’t, right? Even putting aside the impossible logistics of a thirteen-year-old boy masterminding all of this, Owen would never, ever do that.

“No covering,” Emma agreed. “But we can’t jump to conclusions either. We need to talk to Owen before we do anything.”

Neither of us slept Saturday night. Or the next night, after Mom told us that Owen was extending his sleepover until his friend Ben had to leave for a family vacation. And then, last night, Maeve sent a text to the Murder Club group chat: All-points bulletin for Chelsea Alton, who as it turns out is NOT in Oxford. I’m working on getting a yearbook photo or similar.

That set my thoughts spinning in a terrible direction. It had been comforting to remind myself that Owen couldn’t possibly pull off something like this without a Jared Jackson lurking in the background, calling the shots. But now…

“Do you think Chelsea Alton could be some kind of Jared?” I asked Emma, showing her Maeve’s text. “Pulling strings, manipulating vulnerable people, and—”

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” she said tightly.

That was the last she’d let me say on the subject before we flopped down onto our beds for yet another sleepless night. When Mom got up for work this morning, Emma and I were already at the kitchen island, yawning over massive cups of coffee.

“Why are you two up?” Mom asked.

“Early shift at the café,” I lied. I’m off today, but I don’t usually get out of bed before ten o’clock unless I’m working.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Emma said. At Mom’s worried look, she added, “Phoebe snored so loudly last night. I’m not used to sharing a room.”

“Oh well,” Mom said, relaxing. “It’s probably good that you’re up. Owen’s due back soon, so make sure he eats something, okay? Ben’s family is vegetarian, and you know how picky Owen can be.”

“I know,” Emma said.

Now Emma and I are sitting ramrod straight on stools behind the kitchen island, watching the lock on our dead bolt turn with agonizing slowness.

“Oh God,” Emma murmurs. “It’s like we’re in a horror movie, isn’t it?”

“For the past three months,” I say.

The door creaks open and Owen steps inside, a blue duffel bag slung over one shoulder. His strawberry-blond hair hangs in his eyes, and the T-shirt he’s probably been wearing since Saturday is a wrinkled mess. “Hey,” he grunts at Emma and me, shoving his keys into his pocket as he heads for his bedroom.

“Not so fast,” Emma says in her most commanding voice.

It used to make me snap to attention when we were younger, but Owen doesn’t even hesitate. “I’m tired; I need sleep,” he yawns, pulling his door open. When it clicks shut behind him, the tiny noise feels like a slap in the face after everything we’ve done for him. Even if he didn’t know we were doing it.

“The nerve of him,” I say, jumping to my feet and pulling Owen’s backpack off the floor. I stride for my brother’s room with Emma at my heels, then loudly rap on the door and shove it open before Owen has a chance to answer.

“What are you doing?” he yelps. He’s sitting on his bed with one sneaker off, and he glares at me as he unties the other. “Get out. I said I’m going to sleep.”

“Not till you explain this.” I drop his backpack onto the rug and settle myself down beside it, keeping a watchful eye on my brother’s face. Emma sits next to me, her expression grave.

Owen scowls. “What are doing with my stuff?” He lunges for the strap, but I lift the backpack out of his reach. Emma plucks it from my grasp and fishes in the front pocket. “You guys suck,” Owen complains, shoving at my arm. “Give it back.” He’s on the floor now, tugging at the backpack with both hands, and he falls backward when Emma lets it go.

“Why do you have this?” she asks, holding up Reggie’s necklace. The silver beads rattle against one another, and I turn my gaze to Owen to see his reaction.

“What’s that?” he asks, sitting up. And he looks…genuinely baffled.

“You tell us,” Emma says.

“Tell you what?” Owen asks. “Why’d you put that in my backpack?”

“We didn’t,” I say. “We found it there.”

The scowl returns to Owen’s face. “You can’t go through my stuff!”

“Too late,” I say, taking the necklace from Emma. “You need to tell us how you got this, Owen.”

“I didn’t get it,” he says irritably. “It’s not mine.”

Emma and I exchange glances. I’ve been bracing myself for all kinds of reactions from Owen, but I wasn’t expecting his typical sullenness. He doesn’t look guilty or afraid; he looks annoyed. “Are you telling us that you don’t recognize this?” Emma asks.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you.”

“Then why was it in your backpack?” she asks.

Owen shrugs. “How should I know? Maybe it was there when we got it from Goodwill and I never noticed.”

“Owen,” I say, carefully folding the necklace into my palm. “This necklace belonged to Reggie Crawley. It went missing when he did, and his parents have been looking for it.”

Owen blinks. “Reggie? But that’s…I don’t get it.” It’s as if he’s so confused that he’s forgotten to be irritated with us; he looks at Emma and me in turn with wide, guileless eyes. “Reggie’s never been near my backpack. How could he put it there?”

“We thought you did,” Emma says. Owen’s mouth opens to protest, but before he can, Emma takes a deep breath and adds, “We thought that you might be involved, somehow, in what’s been happening in Bayview lately. The flyers about playing a game, and maybe even—”

“Me? Are you serious?” Owen swings his head between Emma and me, his voice pitching up so high that he sounds like a preteen again. “Why would you think that?”

I pin him with my gaze, my heart cracking as I stare into his light-brown eyes, so similar to mine. And to our father’s. “Because we know you were involved in the Truth or Dare game, Owen. We know you stepped in when Emma bowed out and kept the game going with Jared. When we read the chat transcripts with Emma’s lawyer, there was a message that spelled the word bizarre as B–A-Z-A-A-R. Just like you did when we practiced for your spelling bee.” Owen doesn’t say a word, but his eyes get shiny and his cheeks flame. “Emma and I protected you. We pretended not to understand what it meant, and we let Emma take the fall. And—”

But before I can get out another word, my brother bursts into noisy sobs that make his entire body shake. He draws his knees to his chest and wraps his arms around them, crying like he used to when he was an overtired toddler. Harder, even, than he did at Dad’s funeral. For a few beats, Emma and I are both too shocked to move. Then we’re on either side of him, propping him up as he sags against us.

“I’m s-sorry,” he chokes out. “I d-didn’t mean…I never wanted B-B-Br…”

He’s sobbing too hard to continue, but I understand his meaning. I never wanted Brandon to die. It’s what Emma and I believed all along, and it’s why we were willing to lie to protect him. I think Emma always understood the burden we were taking on, and she did it willingly, as penance for her own part in Brandon’s death. I was a lot more naïve; I thought that once Owen was safe I’d be able to go back to normal, not realizing that the secret would start to feel like a ball and chain wrapped around my neck. And I never fully processed—even when Knox tried to tell me—what keeping silent would do to Owen.

“It’s okay,” Emma murmurs.

“It’s not,” Owen rasps. “It’s all my fault. Everything. Brandon dying, that bomb going off, Nate getting hurt, you having to move away—”

“That was Jared’s fault,” I say. “He used you, just like he used Emma.”

“B-but I let him,” Owen chokes out. “I w-w-wanted him to.”

“You didn’t know what you wanted,” Emma says. “Neither did I.”

It takes a long time for Owen’s sobs to die down, and when they finally do, he can’t look at either of us. “I guess you’re gonna tell, huh?” he asks.

“I think we have to,” Emma says. “Starting with Mom. She’ll know what to do next.” Emma meets my eyes over Owen’s bent head. “We should have done that as soon as we realized you were involved. We didn’t do you any favors, Owen.”

“I don’t want to go to jail,” he whimpers.

“You won’t,” Emma says with so much confidence that I almost believe her.

Maybe I would, if it weren’t for the brand-new problem that we have. “Owen, we need to figure out what happened with Reggie’s necklace,” I say. “How could it have gotten into your backpack?” I believe, one hundred percent, that he didn’t put it there—there’s no way he could have faked that kind of surprise or the breakdown he had when we finally confronted him about Jared. “Who else had access to your backpack?”

“I don’t know,” Owen gulps, wiping his eyes. “It was here all weekend.”

“What about before that?” I ask. “Did you leave it anywhere?”

He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I mean, sometimes I leave it on my chair in the library when I go to the bathroom. Same for Café Contigo.” His brow furrows. “Those chairs don’t have anything to hook onto, so it falls onto the floor a lot. Ahmed picked it up for me once, and then then last week…” He trails off.

“Last week what?” I prompt.

“A girl was holding it when I got back from the bathroom. You know her. That kind of hippie-looking girl who lives with Nate?”

“Sana?” I ask, blinking in surprise.

“Yeah. She was like, ‘Oh, some stuff fell out of your bag; I put it back in,’ ” Owen says. “Then she zipped up the front and handed it to me.”

I catch Emma’s eye. Her face is a confused blank because she doesn’t know Sana, and mine is the same because I do. I never imagined for one second that Nate’s roommate could be involved in any of this—but then again, she was Reggie’s roommate too. “When exactly was this?” I ask. “Was it after Reggie died?”

“Yeah. It was…” Owen scrunches his face. “Last weekend, I think?”

“Nate knows this girl?” Emma asks.

“Nate lives with this girl. And Reggie did, too,” I say. What had Maeve’s latest text said again? All-points bulletin for Chelsea Alton, who as it turns out is NOT in Oxford.

“What’s her deal?” Emma asks.

“I don’t know, she’s just…” I’m not sure how to finish that sentence. She’s just there? I don’t know much about Sana, and I wonder if Nate does either. Is there any possibility that she’s not who she says she is? I know she’s lived in Nate’s house for only a few months, and she’s never mentioned family during our infrequent conversations. She doesn’t look much like the pictures I’ve seen of Chase or Christopher, but she’s around the right age. And she was arguing with Reggie the night he disappeared. At the time I assumed she was lecturing him about being gross, but maybe there was something else going on.

“I think I need to talk to Nate,” I say.