The Follower by Kate Doughty (ebook reader with built in dictionary TXT) 📕

them all over the Cole forums, among other internet celebrities. She tries to imagine whoever took this photo entering the hospital, finding Cecily’s room, taking the photo from the busy hallway as nurses and doctors and patients pass by. Posting that shot of her sister at one of her most vulnerable moments for likes.

“I’m so sorry.” Jada tries to pull the phone back, but Amber reaches out for it.

Amber scans the comments for the follower, but there’s nothing—this must have been someone local, someone who recognized them in the ER and snapped a photograph, turning Cecily’s pain into their thirty seconds of internet fame. She swallows hard and fights the sadness rapidly turning to anger in her chest.

Jada must see this, because she squeezes Amber’s free hand, drawing her attention back. “Are you sure you want to do the sponsored posts? I’m—I’m worried about you. Have you thought about going dark online?”

Amber shakes her head. “We can’t. The follower stuff is scary, but Cecily . . . she’s going to need serious medical treatment. They’re trying to save her eye, Jada. We earn most of our money through sponsors—I don’t know how we’ll pay for anything otherwise.”

“What about the house?”

Amber bites her lip. The house, which was already more work than they could handle before the murder-suicide and Cecily. “We have to sell it before we make anything, and even then we have to pay Joseph, the crew, cover what we’ve already spent . . .”

Jada nods and reaches her other hand across the table to trace a thumb across Amber’s face. “Hey, Amber, it’s going to be okay. I’m here for you.”

Amber leans into the touch. “Thank you.”

“Do your posts,” Jada says with a small smile. “Maybe you can make something good come out of this.”

“Maybe,” Amber says. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right.”

And when Jada leans across the table to kiss her, Amber almost forgets that anything is wrong at all.

CHAPTER 18

Rudy

Several days later, Rudy scrolls through internet forums, sites, and archives until it feels like his eyes are going to bleed. He’s been at this for hours, sifting through the digitized archives of the Norton Community Star. At first, he was looking for contact information for Alex’s dad—after all, only she and her mother had died—but the man had vanished, so he had switched to community history. He scrolls through page after page, paper after paper, and then—

He finds something. The next document on file is a scanned PDF entitled “Class of 1997.”

He sits up and forces himself to focus as he scrolls through the pages carefully, reading every single name until—there she is. Alex. Smiling up at him through a low-res school photo. Her eyes crinkle slightly at the corners, and a dimple graces her left cheek. She looks so happy, so carefree. So not like someone who would kill her mother.

This feels huge. If Amber were here, he would bounce ideas off her, but she’s out with Jada, shooting more content for Instagram.

The doorbell rings, jerking him out of his focus. He doesn’t think much of it until Mom shouts his name. He texts himself a PDF of the yearbook before tearing himself away from the document. Downstairs, Bella is waiting in the doorway.

“Hey,” she says. “I just wanted to drop by, you know, to check on things. I know that Cecily still isn’t taking visitors at the hospital, but . . .” She looks so hopeful.

“How sweet of you!” Mrs. Cole says. “Come on in. I have to get back to paint swatches, but Rudy, why don’t you fill Bella in on how Cecily is doing?”

“Uh, sure,” Rudy says, even though part of him is itching to get back to the book, back to Alex.

He leads Bella into the kitchen. “How are things?” she asks. She looks so sad, so concerned for Cecily, that he feels the urgency around the yearbook deflate. After all, it will be online and waiting for him long after Bella leaves. He takes a deep breath.

“It’s been . . .” He searches for the word. “Quiet.” He doesn’t need to fill in the rest of the sentence: Quiet, since Cecily went to the hospital. Rudy doesn’t know what’s harder to believe: that she’s been in the hospital for just over a week, or that the Coles have only been in the Tremont Street house for three weeks. To Rudy, it feels like years. “Do you want some, I dunno, Coke or something?”

Bella’s brow furrows. “Sure—but, quiet? I was actually expecting you to have a ton of crew around.”

Rudy shakes his head and rummages around for the soda. “We decided to let the crew go. Mom and Dad figured that if there was any chance someone on the crew was responsible for . . . what happened . . .” He finds a Coke can and hands it to her, then opens one for himself.

“So it’s just you now?” Bella asks, clearly shocked.

“Well, we kept our head carpenter and handyman on,” Rudy says. “But aside from him, yeah. Amber and I pitch in as much as possible, too.” The Cole parents didn’t have much choice other than to trust Joseph. They can’t finish the renovation on their own.

“How are you?” Bella asks.

Rudy takes a drink and shakes his head. He thinks about the last several days, about his feverish search for more information, about the picture someone had posted of Cecily in the hospital. He’d had to stop himself from going online and shouting at their fans. He shakes his head. “I’m . . . I don’t know.” He goes for honesty. “I’m pretty pissed off, I guess.”

“And . . . Cecily?”

Rudy swallows. “I know she wants to see you, it’s just—” What can he say? His sister wouldn’t want him tossing around words like “level-three burn,” “plastic surgery,” and “trauma therapy.” But Bella waves him off.

“I understand. Just tell her that I’m here whenever she needs me, okay?” Bella asks. She hesitates. “You’ve . . . heard the rumors, right?”

He has. Rumors that the Coles are faking Cecily’s injury for attention had spread