The Mary Shelley Club by Goldy Moldavsky (ebook reader for manga TXT) 📕

I was a nobody who she’d hated for months now. Then I realized that this was probably why she felt comfortable talking to me in the first place. Who would believe me?

 42

I WASN’T A zombie anymore. My brain had been fully resurrected and was working overtime, going through every detail Lux had shared with me. She must’ve realized she’d said too much—said something bad—about Bram. It fired me up that I wasn’t alone in suspecting Bram anymore. That Lux, the person who knew him best, seemed to think he may have been capable of hurting her. If that was what Lux had been hinting at.

Either way, I had a mission. I needed to get to the bottom of this.

At lunch I took my tray and avoided my usual table, with Saundra’s empty seat. I walked until I was standing in front of Sim Smith.

“Hi,” I said. “Can I sit here?”

He was sitting alone, but I wasn’t sure if it was because lunch had only just started or because he still couldn’t live down his breakdown. He nodded, eying me suspiciously. I sat.

Sim was the only other person I knew who had seen someone in a mask. This was recon. I needed to gather more info before I could just start accusing Bram. “Can I ask you something?”

Sim nodded again, though he looked like he was still afraid I’d start throwing napkins at him. Felicity had unfortunately started a trend.

“What happened to you that night you saw the guy in the mask?” Sim made a sound, something between a sigh and a groan. “I believe you,” I said quickly.

“You do?” He watched me like he was a bird and I was holding out a handful of crumbs. He wanted a nibble, but he also could’ve taken flight at any moment.

I nodded. “I know you saw someone in a mask. I was just wondering if you saw something else, something specific that you could tell me about?”

Sim thought for a moment, then shook his head and gave a half-hearted shrug. “Just a guy in a mask. He chased me. But I fought him off.”

“You fought him?”

“Yeah. He tried to kill me but I fought back.”

I deflated a little. He meant when he’d pushed open the car door—the move that had knocked Felicity to the ground. Maybe he did like to exaggerate after all.

“I did three years of karate in elementary school,” Sim continued. “I only got to orange belt but—” He curled his arm and flexed, as though there was some sort of evidence of his training in his bicep. There wasn’t. “Well. It was technically three summers, not three years, but the body never forgets. I kicked that sucker hard enough to knock him on his ass.”

A kick? “Where?”

“In my stepdad’s car dealer—”

“Where on his body, Sim?”

“Oh. In the ribs. The right side of his ribs.”

A memory came back to me, hard as a lightning bolt. “Thanks, Sim, gotta go.”

I found Freddie just as lunch was coming to an end. The cafeteria was thinning out, but there were still too many people around. I led him to the first private place I could find.

The janitor’s closet was filled with bottles and mops and the antiseptic stench of bleach. My head was starting to spin, but it wasn’t from the toxic fumes in this airless space. Being in a closet with Freddie teleported me back to that night in the cabin. Which was exactly what I wanted to forget and what I needed to talk to him about.

“Are you okay?” Freddie asked, but didn’t wait for me to answer. “Why aren’t you answering your texts? We can talk—I want you to talk to me. Is that why you brought me in here?”

“Saundra didn’t fall. And she didn’t jump either.”

The first bell rang out through the halls, triggering a speedy trample of feet beyond the closet door. But neither of us made a move to head to class.

“What are you talking about?”

“Bram pushed her.” As I said the words I felt a weird sensation of relief. It had been Bram, and now that I knew that, I could handle him. Face him. Take him down.

“What?” Freddie leaned back against a metal shelf overflowing with rolls of toilet paper. Some of the rolls wobbled, threatening to spill over the edge.

There was hardly room to pace, but I needed to expel all the energy I had pent up. I clenched and unclenched my fists while trying to put my thoughts in order.

“The night after Felicity’s Fear Test—the one with Sim Smith—I saw Bram trying to pick popcorn up off the floor.”

“Okay,” Freddie said slowly. “What about it?”

“He had to stretch to reach the popcorn and when he did, I saw him wince. Like he was in pain. He even held his side for a second.”

Freddie’s eyes clouded over with confusion, and it frustrated me that I couldn’t get this all out fast enough. “I just talked to Sim. He said that when he saw the Masked Man at the car dealership, he fought him off by kicking him in the ribs.”

The second bell rang out but we still didn’t move. I let my words sit there, searching Freddie’s face to see if they would sink in. I needed him to see that this wasn’t just a conspiracy theory. The rib thing was the most damning piece of evidence, but it wasn’t the only one—Bram had been shady since this all had started, even going so far as to point fingers at Freddie, probably to deflect suspicion from himself.

“Even Lux thinks he might’ve been the one to attack her.”

“What?”

I nodded vigorously, pleased that this seemed to shake Freddie. “How did Bram get to Lux so quickly after the attack and not see anyone running off?”

“You’re saying Bram got to that house early, put on a mask, and tried to attack his own girlfriend?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To mess with us. To mess with me. But it tracks, Freddie.”

“I’m not sure that it does.”

I didn’t