Dear Diary

15. GONE BOY

Friday, September 27th

S A M A R A

It's been days.

Nine days since Tori's body was discovered.

Eight days since Rome was named the prime suspect in her murder.

People are convinced he's evading police to escape prosecution, since he hasn't had contact with anyone. His absence is building a case against him, but I can't bring myself to believe it. As angry as I know he was, as hurt as I know he was . . . he wouldn't have done that. I've explained this to authorities and confided my knowledge of the affair between Tori and Mr. Rhodes. In a town like this word gets around fast. A student-teacher relationship is a whole new world of scandal. So the affair isn't a secret anymore, and while Mr. Rhodes is a person of interest, my friends and I don't think it's him either. We have our own suspect in mind: D.T.

First Sidney, then Tori.

Two girls connected to each other. Connected to us. And someone out there has been harassing us claiming to be Sidney's killer. We can't ignore it. We can't brush it off as a sick joke. Someone's after us and if we don't keep our mouths shut about it, any of us could be next.

Ms. Rosten, my American Literature teacher, is going on about how much a society can be understood by analyzing its writing. Or something like that. I'm not paying much attention. It's hard focusing when I'm too busy fearing for my life.

"There's a test two fridays from now," Rosten says. "Study well."

I lean over and whisper to Kelly seated in the desk next to me. "Study at your place later?"

She looks at me through the corner of her eyes. "Maybe another time."

We're all shaken up after seeing Tori's body, but Kelly is taking it the hardest. She's the timid kind, so she couldn't even gather her wits enough to coherently talk to the cops when they arrived on the scene. I wasn't much better. We weren't that close to Tori, but you can't just bounce back from seeing something like that. I was upset with her, but she didn't deserve what happened. And now all I can see are her lifeless eyes when I try to remember her. I couldn't imagine being her parents. They were out of town at the time and had to come back.

Come back to their dead daughter.

"I'll study with you," Brandan says, leaning forward slightly in the desk behind me. "My dad's gonna cut me off if I don't bring my grades up."

"I'm surprised he gives you money at all. What exactly do you do to earn it?" I say.

"He gives me cash and I stay out of his way. That's how it was before, anyway. Now he calls himself putting his foot down. I have to maintain a 'C' average in all classes or no green for yours truly." He makes a cutting neck motion with his hand.

"I thought it was weird you showed up today," Kelly says. "How did you even make it this far in high school?"

"A lot of cheating," he says with a flash of a grin. Then he looks back at me. "So will you help or what? Unless you still think I'm a killer?"

I'm about to respond when Rosten calls for our attention. "Hey. Hold the sidebar conversation."

Kelly and I apologize. Brandan rolls his eyes.

When the bell rings and the hour's over, I pack my stuff and leave with Kelly. Brandan invites himself to walk with us.

"So you don't want a study buddy?" he asks me.

"I don't think so," I say. "And by the way, I never thought you were a killer."

"Dry humor. Look, it's gonna be a shit show getting grades up by myself. Sorry for the joke, but I do need a tutor."