But Cooper and Ryan were standing on the sidewalk, their angry faces illuminated by a slice of yellow streetlight.

“Did you see anyone?”

Cooper shook his head. “There’s no one around here.”

“We found this, though.” Ryan held a tire iron and Sawyer’s stomach lurched when she saw the black-red blood staining the metal.

Chloe’s blood.

“What was he doing out here? Breaking into Chloe’s car?” Sawyer scanned the makeshift parking lot in front of the Rutgers’ house. Cars were scattered everywhere, each one a better make or newer model than Chloe’s mother’s old, primer-colored Dodge.

“He didn’t want to steal anything,” Cooper said, pointing to the car. “You don’t get into the cab by going under the hood.”

“Well, what would someone be doing under the hood? Messing up the engine? Trying to pull some kind of prank?”

Ryan put his hands on his hips. “A prank is locking someone’s keys in their car or putting shaving creaming the windshield.”

“Sugar in the gas tank,” Cooper suggested before bending over the exposed engine, scanning. “Hey, Ryan, do you know anything about cars?”

Ryan shrugged but looked anyway. “I know that you shouldn’t keep tools under the hood.”

Sawyer rushed in and looked where Ryan was pointing, squinting. She reached for the tool and held it up to the light. “What is it?”

Cooper took it out of her hand, eyeing both Sawyer and Ryan. “It’s a tube cutter.”

“What do you use a tube cutter for?” Sawyer wanted to know. “And why would you stash it in someone’s car?”

Ryan shook his head slowly, his eyes wide and focused on the tube cutter in Cooper’s hand. “You wouldn’t stash it in someone’s car,” he said. “But you might drop it there if you were surprised in the middle.”

Sawyer swallowed. “In the middle of what?”

“Of cutting Chloe’s brakes.”

Sawyer’s stomach folded in on itself. “How could…? Someone…Chloe could have died! If she didn’t have brakes, she could have died!” The realization crashed like a cold wave over her and Sawyer was stunned, her breath tightening in her chest.

Ryan swiped a finger across his cell phone and pushed it under the open hood. The blue light from the screen washed over the engine, and he pointed. “Right there.”

Cooper let out a low whistle as he fingered the even cut along a thin metallic tube. “He cut clean through.”

The tears were rolling down Sawyer’s face now, hot tracks burning down her cheeks. “Why would someone do that?”

But she didn’t need to hear an answer because she already knew it: Sawyer’s secret admirer was after her best friend too.

Sawyer’s head felt all at once light and impossibly heavy, and suddenly she felt the cold concrete slap against her back, her head lolling. Her nostrils stung with the smell of dirt and grass, the damp coldness pricking at her head and neck. She blinked when a bright light pierced her eyelid.

“Cooper?” Her lips felt puffy and her head throbbed. “What happened?”

“You passed out.” He helped Sawyer up, and Ryan shoved the penlight he was holding into his back pocket.

“We need to call the police,” Sawyer said.

Cooper shook his head as he led Sawyer into the Rutgers’ living room. It had cleared out considerably. Only a few scattered students remained, wide-eyed and quietly clutching their red party cups. Chloe sat alone on the loveseat, her eyes red rimmed, her cheeks a deep pink. She pulled her knees up against her chest and hugged them.

“Chloe doesn’t want us to.”

Chloe looked up at Sawyer, fresh tear tracks glossy on her cheeks. “My parents don’t know I’m here. They’ll kill me.”

Sawyer sucked in a sigh. “Chloe, this is really dangerous. Someone attacked you, and”—she choked on a sob—“they cut your brake lines. They could have killed you. They—they wanted to hurt you—bad. You have to tell the police.”

Chloe shook her head. “No. I can’t.”

“I’m going to take her home,” Ryan said softly.

“I’ll go with you,” Sawyer said.

“Yeah, I drove Sawyer over here.”

“No problem,” Cooper said, “I can take Sawyer home.”

Sawyer looked from Cooper to Chloe. “I think I should go home with her. Chloe, your parents probably aren’t even home. You shouldn’t be alone.”

“Then how are you going to get home from her house?” Ryan wanted to know. “Here, I’ll take Chloe and hang out with her until her parents come back.”

Sawyer opened her mouth to protest, but Ryan held up his hands. “No argument. You had a hard night too.”

Cooper nodded. “You passed out. You probably should lay down or get an ice pack or something.”

Chloe held out her ice pack. “Room for one more.”

“Chloe.” Sawyer sat down next to her, gingerly touching the dried blood over Chloe’s eye. “Let me at least go with you.”

Chloe leaned in, dropped her voice to a low whisper. “Sawyer, everyone’s looking at me. I’m embarrassed. I don’t care who’s at the house. I just want to go home.”

“But your car—”

“It was probably a stupid prank,” Chloe said, her eyes defiant, “and I caught the guy by surprise.”

“A prank?”

“We’re going to get going,” Ryan said, pulling Chloe from the couch.

“I’ll call you later,” Chloe said, shielding the cut above her eye with her sleeve.

A prank.

The word burned on Sawyer’s tongue. The sliced brake line, Chloe’s black-red blood—both burned into her mind’s eye. If this was a prank, then someone at Hawthorne High had a really bad sense of humor.

FIVE

Sawyer watched Ryan as he gingerly settled Chloe into his car. Chloe gave a slight wave when he pulled away from the curb, and the gash on her eye caught the light from the streetlamp. Sawyer shivered and hugged her arms.

“Here,” Cooper said, pulling off his zippered hoodie and settling it over her shoulders. “Better?”

Sawyer nodded. The sweater would have helped if the chill hadn’t been bone deep.

“Can we get going now?”

Cooper nodded. “Yeah, of course.” He dug in his pocket for his keys and Sawyer touched his wrist gently, her fingers cold on his warm skin. “Are you okay to drive?”

He smiled. “Only had half a beer and that was”—he squinted at the clock—“over an hour ago.”

“Didn’t seem that long ago.”

“Well, there was the thing with Chloe, and before that—” Cooper bit his bottom lip in a way that shot fire crackers through Sawyer’s system. “The thing with us.”

Heat—and guilt—pulsed through Sawyer. She had been making out with a guy—a guy who was not Kevin—while someone was trying to murder her best friend.

What kind of girl are you? Her insides roiled.

“Ready?”

Sawyer nodded, and when Cooper rested his arm across her shoulders, she slid out of the half embrace. She hoped to make it seem as nonchalant or as innocent as possible, but the hurt look in Cooper’s eyes was unmistakable.

They drove in awkward silence until Cooper’s car hit the freeway.

“I’m really sorry about your friend.”

“Chloe,” Sawyer offered.

“Chloe. Have you guys known each other long?”

Sawyer smiled, remembering. “Remember when I said I was friends with Maggie?”

“I remember, but I still don’t believe it.” Cooper grinned in the darkened car, but his eyes sparkled sweetly. Sawyer punched down the warmth that rose inside of her.

“It was the three of us. Best friends. We were five—Maggie didn’t know how to be evil yet.”

“Ah, there’s the missing piece.”

Sawyer started to feel more comfortable, letting her shoulders sag forward as she sunk into the car seat. “We met at dance class. Nothing special, but we used to do everything together. Everything. The three of us.”

“So when was the huge falling out?”

Sawyer frowned. “I don’t really know what started it. We were in junior high and Maggie started to get popular. Chloe ended up having to quit dance class, and Maggie just kept nagging at her to tell everyone why. It was like she wanted to prove to everyone how cool she was by throwing Chloe—our best friend—to the wolves.”

Cooper flipped on his blinker when Sawyer showed him where to exit. “So what was Chloe’s big secret? Or is that still privileged information?”

Sawyer smiled at Cooper; she couldn’t help herself. “Chloe’s parents—I think it was still her parents, maybe a stepdad already—just couldn’t afford it.”

Cooper furrowed his brow. “That’s it? Not like every time she danced a puppy died?”

“No!” Sawyer laughed.

“Parents not being able to afford dance lessons doesn’t seem all that tragic.”

“Well, when you’re eleven, whatever makes you not the same as all the other girls is tragic. I told Chloe I didn’t care, but she was so terrified someone would find out. They moved into this crappy trailer park, sold their car. Maggie found out from her gossipy mom or something, and she pounced. Chloe’s new status went viral overnight. People made fun of her, called her trailer trash or ghetto girl.” Sawyer shook her head, remembering. “She was crushed.”

“But you stood by your friend.”

“Of course.” Sawyer smiled faintly. “She’s my best friend.”

“So that was, what? Five, six years ago?”

Sawyer nodded. “Something like that.”

“And you haven’t spoken to Maggie since?”

Sawyer gritted her teeth. “Nothing nice.”

Sawyer remembered the day the news broke that she and Kevin had begun dating. Maggie was Kevin’s ex-girlfriend; they had been apart for a little over two months, but from Maggie’s bulldog expression, one would think Kevin had walked out on the one for the other. “I don’t think Maggie’s really the making-up type, regardless.”