Chapter Three: The Name I Wouldn't Give Him

The phone kept buzzing against my hip like it had a heartbeat of its own.

"Answer it," Eli said.

"Eli."

"Answer it, Mia, or I will."

I pulled it out with a hand that didn't feel like mine anymore. A name lit up bright on the screen even in the sun, sitting above two green buttons, one I hadn't seen in six months.

I turned my body before Eli's eyes could land on it. Not far. Just enough that the screen faced the parking lot instead of him, my shoulder a wall between his face and mine.

"Who is that," he said.

"I have to take this."

"Who is that, Mia."

I didn't answer. I hit the green button and put the phone to my ear and stepped away from him, one step, then another, until there was a car's length of hot asphalt between us.

"Hey," I said, quiet, my back half turned to Eli, my whole body angled like I could physically block the conversation from reaching him.

"Mia, hey. Sorry, I know this is out of nowhere." His voice sounded rushed, breathless, like he'd been pacing a room somewhere. "Have you checked your phone today? Like, actually checked it?"

"Kind of a bad time," I said.

"I know, I'm sorry, I just, there's this bug going around, PhoneGate, it's been all over the news, it's sending old drafts, texts people never actually sent. I got hit with one about twenty minutes ago and it went to you, and I panicked. I've been trying to call for like ten minutes."

My stomach dropped somewhere below my knees.

"You got hit too," I said, low enough that I hoped it wouldn't carry.

Behind me I heard Eli's footsteps on the pavement, not rushing, just closing distance, patient in a way that scared me more than if he'd come at a run.

"Yeah. I don't even fully remember what I wrote, it was a bad stretch, I said some things I never should have hit save on, and I just wanted to explain before you saw it and thought I was still, I don't know, stuck on something. I'm not. I swear I'm not stuck on anything."

"I have to go," I said.

"Mia, are you okay? You sound..."

"I have to go."

I hung up before he could finish the sentence. My hand was shaking hard enough that I nearly dropped the phone into my own tote bag trying to shove it away, out of sight, out of reach, like putting it somewhere dark could undo the last ten minutes.

Eli was right behind me when I turned around.

"Who was that," he said.

"Someone from school."

"Don't."

"Eli."

"Don't stand there and lie to my face after everything you just told me. I watched your whole body change the second that name lit up. You turned around so I couldn't even see the screen. People don't do that for someone from school."

I hugged my arms across my stomach, across the shape of everything I was trying to protect that had nothing to do with him standing in front of me right now, demanding an answer I had decided, in the two seconds it took to hit the green button, that I was not going to give him. Not like this. Not in a parking lot with the sun beating down and half my dignity already stripped off me for the day.

"I'm not telling you," I said.

"Mia."

"I'm not telling you, Eli. Not because I'm trying to protect him, whoever he is, but because I don't actually know for certain, not the way you want me to know, and the second I say a name out loud it becomes real in a way I can't take back, the same way that text becoming real today wasn't something I could take back. I need time. I need to think. I need to not have this entire conversation happen in a parking lot with my heart rate doing whatever it's currently doing."

"You expect me to just walk away from this."

"I expect you to give me time. That's all I'm asking."

He stared at me for a long moment, jaw working, hands flexing open and closed at his sides like he didn't know what to do with them now that there was nothing left to grab onto, no phone, no name, nothing solid in front of him except a girl who wouldn't give him the one thing he'd driven here for.

"You know I'm going to find out eventually," he said. Quiet. Almost gentle, which was worse than if he'd yelled it. "One way or another. Whether you tell me or not."

"I know."

"I mean it, Mia. I'm not the kind of guy who just lets something like this sit there unanswered. I need to know who I'm supposed to be angry at. I need to know who I'm supposed to be scared of losing everything to. You not telling me doesn't make the question go away, it just means I find the answer some other way, and you might not like how."

Something about the way he said it settled cold in my chest, a warning dressed up as patience, and I didn't have an answer for it that wouldn't have made everything worse.

"I have to go home," I said instead.

"Yeah." He stepped back, finally, giving me the space I'd been asking for since the doors of St. Andrew's. "Go home. Take your one day."

I got three steps toward my car before he said one more thing, low, almost to himself, like he'd forgotten I could still hear him.

"I'll figure it out with or without you."

I didn't turn around. I got in the car, locked the door out of pure instinct, and sat there with my hands shaking against the wheel until the parking lot blurred at the edges, replaying his voice in my head, that last sentence, the certainty underneath it that had nothing to do with anger anymore and everything to do with something far more dangerous.

He wasn't asking a question anymore.

He was making a plan.