It All Started With The Butterflies

Chapter 21

Chapter 21: Janet

As the school day passed I avoided Caspian like he was a bee who had left his hive just to sting me. It suddenly hit me that although he was a Stinger, I was the one who had stung him. The only time I saw him was during lunch, when I passed by the cafeteria window. He only looked at me for a second, before he firmly pressed his lips to Amber's; she was sitting on his lap. I know he did it to hurt me, because he glanced at me when he was done. The familiar ache resurfaced, but this time I was the one who had put the ache there. I had dumped Caspian and there was no going back. At least I had the double date tomorrow night to take my mind off Caspian.

"I broke up with Caspian," I told my mother.

"You two were together?" she fumed, smoke dispersing from both her ears.

Oops. I should have just kept my mouth shut. "Well, not anymore." I tried breathing normally, but my breath came out jagged and uneven. When you tell someone else about your breakup, that's when it's made official. "Can I have a sleepover at Chrissie's tomorrow night?" I asked.

My mother sighed. "If I say 'no' you're going to go anyway."

I opened my mouth to argue, but my mother resumed talking too quickly.

"So, I'll say 'yes'." She looked at me in the review mirror. "But no more associating with the Stingers." I almost jumped out of the car seat with glee. My passage to the double date was set!

Back in my room, I threw the phone on my bed. Of course Janet's phone would have a password. I picked up the phone and realised there was a thin crack that started at the top right corner and stopped somewhere close to the middle of the screen. Had I done that? Who manages to break a phone by throwing it on a bed? I should really be in the Guinness Book of World Records. 'Madelyn Cote of Sunset Coast found the quickest way to break a Samsung: throw it on a bed,' or even better, 'Madelyn Cote dumped her boyfriend of two seconds, a time never before achieved.'

I sighed and smoothed my finger over the crack, only to realise that it wasn't a crack at all, but a line of dirt. I made another feeble attempt to guess Janet's password, but had no luck. Maybe James could help me now that I already had the phone.

I decided to make one last attempt before involving James again. I couldn't remember when Janet's birthday was, but I knew Asher's birth date. People often put their loved one's birthdays as their passwords. To my surprise the phone unlocked. Huh, she hadn't gotten a chance to change her password after she broke up with Asher. Or maybe she was feeling guilty for dumping him, since she still thought he had committed suicide.

I opened Janet's chat with Asher. Well, whoever she was talking to now. Luck was on my side: she hadn't deleted any of the messages.

I scrolled up until I got to the day Asher was murdered.

The first message was from Janet. 'The Cotes don't know anything.' The Cotes don't know what? That Asher was murdered? Janet was talking to the person responsible for my brother's death. I forced my eyes to keep reading. The rest of the messages were things like 'I love you', 'I'm missing you'. Nothing really stood out.