Chapter 53 The Wrong Door

Chapter 53 The Wrong Door
POV: Eli

Eli didn't wait for Naomi to text back.

He left school the second the lunch bell rang, cut across the parking lot, and was in his car before Zara even made it out the side door behind him.

"Eli, wait"

"I have to do something," he said, hand already on the door handle. "I can't just sit in a hallway and wait for my sister to decide if she still trusts me. I'm going to Jade's."

"Jade didn't post the roof video. We don't even know if she's involved in this one"

"Then I'll find out." His jaw was tight, the calm, controlled anger that scared her more than yelling would have. "She's the only name I actually have, Zara. I'm not doing nothing."

He was gone before she could argue further.

Jade opened the door already smiling, like she'd been expecting a different kind of visit.

"Eli Maddox," she said. "On my porch. Twice in one summer. People are going to talk."

"Take down the comment chain you started on the new video."

Her smile flickered. "What new video?"

"Don't." His voice stayed level, almost gentle, which made it worse. "I know you didn't post it. I know that. But you've got three accounts feeding comments into it since seven this morning, and one of them is yours, and you know exactly which video I mean."

Jade leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, taking her time. "Maybe I just have opinions."

"Take it down. Today."

"Or what?" She laughed, short and sharp. "You going to threaten me again? It didn't work last time either."

"I'm not threatening you. I'm asking you to stop being part of something you didn't even start, because right now you're the only piece of it I can actually see."

Something about that landed differently than he expected. Jade's smile dropped half a degree, as he'd accidentally said something true that she hadn't wanted out loud.

"You think I don't know what I am to all this," she said. "Background noise. The mean girl who gets her comeuppance in chapter fifty of somebody else's love story." She shook her head. "I post comments. I didn't film anybody's roof at midnight. I don't even know who did."

"Then who does?"

"Why would I tell you?" Her eyes went hard again, defense rebuilding fast. "Why would I help the guy who showed up here once already and humiliated me on my own porch, over a girl who isn't even" she stopped herself, recalculated, found a sharper version. "Zara isn't the kind of girl boys like you end up with, Eli. You know that. Everyone knows that. This whole summer's just been you proving a point to your dad, and she's the prop you picked."

"You don't know anything about what kind of girl she is," Eli said, quiet and certain, no heat in it at all, which somehow cut deeper than shouting would have.

Jade didn't have a comeback ready for that one. For a second she just looked at him, something almost like envy flickering across her face before she covered it.

"Take it down," he said again. "Please."

"No," Jade said, and shut the door.

He sat in his car outside her house for a full minute before starting the engine, replaying her face in the half-second before she'd shut him out. I don't even know who did. She hadn't been lying about that part. He was almost certain.

Which meant Jade really was background noise this time. A loud, useless distraction layered on top of something much bigger and much quieter, something with access to district email accounts and confidential complaints and the exact right angle to catch a private roof from across a yard.

Someone who knew the house. Knew the schedule. Knew exactly when to point a camera and exactly when not to leave headlights behind as evidence.

His phone buzzed as he pulled out of her driveway. Naomi's name on the screen, the first message from her since the group chat disappeared.

He answered before it finished its first ring. "Naomi"

"Don't talk. Just listen." Her voice was tight, fast, scared in a way he'd rarely heard from her. "I figured out who's behind this. I went to confirm it myself before I said anything to either of you, because I didn't want to be wrong."

"And?"

"I wasn't wrong." A long pause, the sound of her breathing hard on the other end, like she was walking fast, or running. "Eli, I need you to come get me right now. I'm not safe where I am."

"Where are you?"

She said an address. He didn't recognize it.

"Naomi, whose house is that"

The line went dead mid-sentence, cut off clean, no warning, no goodbye, just silence where his sister's voice had been half a second before.