Page 56 of That's Not My Name

“Doing what?”

“This,” he says, gesturing to my phone in my lap. “The station and the map and the recordings and the posters—everything you’re doing for Lola.”

“I’m doing what anyone would for someone they care about.”

“Maybe. But not everyone cares this much.”

I roll his words around in my head as I climb out of the car and watch him drive off.

Shit, I hope he’s wrong. I hope he’s wrong more than anything because I can’t imagine doing less than this.

I creep around the back of my house. All the lights are off, so I’m in the clear. I use the tree in the backyard to climb up, and I slip back through my window. My room is undisturbed. Fake-pillow-Drew is still under the blankets, and there’s no sign my dads ever came in. I slide the window shut behind me and lock it to ward off any more surprise visitors.

The heat pumping from the vent under the desk makes my hands prickle as they warm. I kick off my shoes and pants and shove the pillows aside to climb into bed, dropping my phone on the nightstand, with a relieved sigh.

I can’t believe we actually did it.

It’s so late. I need to sleep and give my brain a break, but when I close my eyes all I can see is Lola. Waiting for me to find her.

I open my eyes again and grab for my headphones. The voice of another caller fills my ears, insisting she saw Lola flying through the air yesterday morning, before they bust up laughing and hang up.

I know I need to sleep. But I can’t let go.

SIXTEEN

DREW

I wake up with a jolt and almost smack my head on the nightstand. Fragments of whatever dream I’d been having fade from my mind—rough dirt floors, fingernails scratching against the earth. A shiver raises all the hair on my arms, and I force myself to sit up.

A cord tangles around my arm. When I tug on it, my phone pops out from beneath the blankets. I blink at it, slowly scrubbing at my eyes until I remember the night before. I must’ve fallen asleep listening to the recordings.

I roll over to grab the end of the fast charger from the floor, hoping my dead battery will juice up enough to get through the day while I get ready. I set the phone on the nightstand and squint past it out the window. Sunlight streams through the glass. Alotof sunlight.

The clock on my nightstand says it’s almost twelve thirty.

Fuck. Dead phone means no alarm. I’msuperlate for school.

I press the heels of my hands into my eyes and swear. A lot.

I don’t know if there’s any point now, since my dads haveprobably gotten that automated, “Your child…Andrew Carter-Diaz…has been marked absent from school today” call from the attendance office. I also feel like total shit. My eyes hurt, my head hurts, my muscles hurt. All I want is to pop in my headphones and not move all fucking day.

But Roane’s face flashes in my mind. Thegoodsheriff doesn’t give a shit about what I want. If he hears I’ve missed school, he’ll be knocking on my door to make sure I didn’t skip town.

I throw on a clean pair of jeans, a dark blue T-shirt, and my black “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” Beastie Boys hoodie, a Christmas present from Lola last year. The “no sleep” part seems fitting for today.

I move my phone to the outlet by the bathroom sink. It’s already up to fifteen percent. If I can get it to twenty-five before I leave, it might last until the end of the day, but I’ll have to charge it again if we’re going to listen to the rest of the recordings after school. I type in my passcode and all my missed calls and text messages flood in.

There’s a call and voicemail from each of my dads, asking why I’m not at school. I stick my toothbrush in my mouth and send them each a text saying I overslept and I’m getting ready now. I have similar messages from Max and Autumn. Max’s first message is from this morning, saying he’s outside my house, wondering if I still need a ride. Looks like he waited about fifteen minutes, and climbed up and tapped on my window, before he gave up and went to school.

Shit. I quickly type out an apology, with about a dozen head-smacking emojis, and almost immediately those three little dots appear on the screen.

Max: Dude u were sleeping like the dead

Me: sry. i didn’t even hear you

Max: clearly. i feel you tho. i barely got up myself. My mom barged in after I hit snooze the second time.

Luckily both my dads are at work long before I have to leave for school or I’d have suffered the same fate.

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