Secrets, Lies, and Scandals by Amanda K. Morgan

Author:Amanda K. Morgan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Simon Pulse

Mattie

Friday, June 19

Dr. Stratford was everywhere.

Everywhere Mattie looked.

His picture was on the news three times a night. His face was pasted on telephone poles. He was on the radio of his new car as he drove it around the neighborhood, trying to fill his mind with something else.

He was on at least three posts on Facebook so far, and two of those were from people who didn’t even live here. They were from home.

That meant news of Stratford’s disappearance had traveled. It wasn’t just here anymore.

Mattie’d even posted it on his own page, thinking that if he didn’t he’d looked callous and awful. (And he wasn’t.)

(Only, he was.)

Just last night, his mother had called, worried about the effect that Stratford’s disappearance was having on her son. And she didn’t even protest when Mattie told her his aunt had purchased him a brand-spanking-new car. She seemed relieved that he wouldn’t be riding his bike anymore.

He didn’t tell her it was missing.

“Just be safe,” she pleaded. “No one knows what happened to your professor!”

“Can I come home?” Mattie asked. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

“But what about your class?”

“Who knows?” Mattie said. “The next few classes are canceled while they look for him. It’ll probably just be canceled altogether if they can’t find him. Or if they do, maybe he won’t want to finish it.”

“Don’t sound so hopeful,” his mother said, and laughed. The sound had made Mattie want to die.

Mattie felt that way a lot. The wrong word, the wrong sound, even, set him off. He felt that way right now, as he sat outside on his balcony, one leg dangling off the stone balcony.

If he fell, would he die when he hit the concrete below?

He looked across his aunt’s property toward Ivy’s house, crouched lower on the hill. He wanted to talk to her.

But he deserved to be alone.

His phone buzzed and for the first time since he’d moved, it was Derrick calling him. And not because Mattie had called him first, or because Mattie had texted him two thousand times.

He was just calling.

Mattie answered the phone and sat down on his window seat. The screen was warm against his ear. “Hello?”

“Hey, Mattie? Is that you?”

“Yeah,” Mattie said. “Hey, Derrick.”

The name sounded funny to him. Unused. Felt funny, in the way that although they hadn’t broken up, maybe they didn’t belong to each other anymore. But that didn’t matter to Mattie. He was thrilled to be talking to Derrick. He had a pins-and-needles feeling all over his body and he wished, so badly, that his mother had let him come home.

“What’s up?” Derrick asked.

“Not much. I missed you.” Mattie stood up and opened the door to his balcony. The air was still and hot and thick, and the faintest breeze ruffled the leaves on the trees.

“Yeah. Anything else going on? I hear your neck of the woods is pretty weird right now. Like, creepy, Texas Chainsaw Massacre weird.”

Mattie looked around the room, pretending not to know what he was talking about.

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