Page 38 of That's Not My Name

Two things happen at the same time.

The light illuminates a figure sitting on the edge of the mattress.

And the blanket hits them in the face.

I leap back with a half-strangled yelp. The figure rips the blanket off and I sag against the door. “Autumn?”

She stands and throws the blanket on the floor, the sparkles on her sweatshirt catching the light and dancing reflections across my ceiling as she puts her hands on her hips. “Don’t throw shit at me!”

I stare at her, heart pounding in my throat. I about peed my pants and she’s angry about getting hit with a blanket? Aftershebroke in?

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I whisper yell.

“Looking for clues,” she says, too loud.

I hold a finger to my mouth. “Unless you want my dad to find youin here, you better lower your voice. I doubt the sheriff would like that call.”

She flinches but lowers her voice. “Like you care what happens to me anymore. You’re done with me, remember?”

“How did you get in here?” I look around the room. Everything on my desk is messed up, stuff is pulled out from under my bed, the pockets of all my sweatshirts are flipped inside out, and the closet door is open. Clothes and shoes are everywhere. “And who’s going to clean this shit up?”

She points a thumb toward the window. “Climbed the tree outside. You left the window unlocked. And the mess is all yours—you’re lucky I didn’t take a knife to the mattress.”

Murderer.

My blood boils. “Get the fuck out.”

She casually plucks my whiteboard from the wall and props it up on my desk chair, waving at the evidence of my investigation like a game show host. My sticky notes flap in the airflow from the heating vent like they’re waving at me. “Not until you explain what the hell this is.”

Shit.

It feels like a violation for her hands to be all over Lola’s board. That’s mine. It’s work I’ve been doing while Autumn’s spent her time making empty accusations.

I clear my throat. “What does it look like?”

“It looks like a creepy wall of a stalker.”

She snatches the picture of us at the boat launch from the board and I lunge forward to take it back. She holds it away from me, toward the window. “Is this from that night? Did you take this? Before you…”

I glower at her. “Before I what, Autumn?”

“Before you did what you did.”

“I didn’t do anything to Lola.”

“You’re a liar.”

“And you’re a criminal. Get the fuck out of my house before I call your dad. I mean it.”

Her entire face turns red. Not the embarrassed kind, but the Autumn kind. Where she’s literally boiling inside. “I have the proof already, so stop lying.”

“Then give it to your dad. Don’t let the stairs trip you on the way down.”

She smirks. “I did give it to him. A few days ago.”

She’s full of shit. Shehasto be. “Nice try. If you had anything useful, you would have given it to him weeks ago.”

“Want me to prove it?” She fishes her phone from her pocket. The screen lights up and I see she was recording our whole conversation. Which doesn’t surprise me. Wannabe Nancy Drew over here probably thought she’d get me to confess and then backflip out the window or something.

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