INSTALOVE

Chapter 38: Pick Your Battles

Is that really true?

My stomach keeps clenching and unclenching, reviewing every interaction I've ever had with him. Searching for some clue to what's been real and what's been fake...

The boy with the easy smile who rescued me from a swimming pool... who made me laugh and blush and shiver when he grazed my shoulders with his fingertips... who reached out to me when I had no friends... saved me from weeks of partner-less loserdom... the boy who invited me on an InstaQuest to tell me how he really feels...

"I'll explain. For real. I promise. But not here. Later. Somewhere private."

Or the boy I spied in Eleanor Winthrop's dorm room the first week of the program... doctoring the campus security system... scheming with his so-called ex... showing me a totally different side to his character if I'd had enough sense to pay attention.

"Because she'll do all the work and let me coast."

It's like he's two different people—to different versions. The real Maddox and the avatar. I don't know which is which.

A sigh escapes my lips. There's something else—some tiny bubble of anxiety floating around my brain. I give my head a shake to bring it to the surface.

The visors...

My spine goes ramrod straight. Whoever took mine from my backpack didn't just steal it—they switched it for another pair. Was that Eleanor's visor in my bag?

That would explain some things... Like why Maddox's account had that weird creepy avatar and username.

Maddox didn't change that. Eleanor must have done it from her end. She deleted his name, and gray-ed out his image. But why?

There's only one reason I can think of: Because she couldn't bear to look at him any longer.  She couldn't bear the sight of his deceitful, conniving, game-playing face.

Honestly, I can't say I blame her.

***

M A D D O X

I pace my room like a jail cell. It might as well be. I'll trade it for a jail cell soon enough.

To think, I was so concerned about Eleanor ruining my future... Spending my senior year in a public high school? As if that was the worst fate that could befall me? What a joke.

The walls of this room are closing in. It's only a matter of time before it all comes crashing down. The unaltered security footage is archived for 72 hours. It's all been turned over to the investigators. They have analysts combing through it. It's only a matter of time until they find what they're looking for—if they haven't found it already.

I still don't completely understand what went down the night Eleanor disappeared. I only know how it looks for me.

Bad.

I haven't slept for couple days. Maybe I'd think more clearly if I grabbed a nap. My eyes feel hot and gritty, but I can't seem to make my brain shut off. I keep rehashing that afternoon and evening in my head, going over it again and again and again, like a broken bit of code stuck in an endless loop. I keep trying to shut down my brain—force quit—but it so far it hasn't worked.

It's like if I only think about it hard enough, I can turn back time and make the whole mess go away. But I can't. I know that.

The present can be gamed, but the past is unalterable.

And yet here I go again, rehashing it...

I spent most of the day in the Assembly Hall with Ellie until Eleanor walked in on us. That was the last time I saw Eleanor alive, and I'll never forget the final words I said to her: "Have it your way. Have everything your way."

Then I let her walk away, with Ellie's backpack slung over her shoulder.

Pick your battles, I told myself at the time. Looks like I picked wrong.

I failed to consider that Ellie's visor might be in that bag. How I could have overlooked that detail, I'll never know.

I sent an InstaQuest invitation to Ellie that night, and I altered all the camera feeds on the path from the dorms to the edge of campus so no one would see us breaking curfew. But it wasn't Ellie who accepted the invitation... not Ellie who broke curfew. And it isn't Ellie's face in the unchangeable archived footage, storming down the path and climbing the locked gate at the western edge of campus.

Eleanor.

She must have found Ellie's visor in the bag and confiscated it. That's the only way she could have intercepted the InstaQuest I sent.

She got up there before me. I found the clifftop empty, and I waited at The Overlook all night for Ellie to arrive. I thought she blew me off. It was until the following morning that I realized what must have happened. Eleanor was missing. And when I went to check the archived footage, there she was in black and white... headed to The Overlook, ten minutes ahead of me.

I press my palms against my temples and wipe them down the length of my face. I wish it were so easy to wipe myself clean of guilt.

There's no way to change those archives. No way anyone will believe that I had nothing to do with her fall. I've known it since that morning she went missing, and I spent that whole day praying I was wrong. She'd faked somehow, I told myself. She'd pop up any second, laughing that maddening laugh. She was merely playing a prank—a sick prank to get me kicked out of school.

The INSERT GIF statements are still there now in the source code where I left them. I didn't dare hack in to take them down and revert to the unaltered feeds. Not with Eleanor missing, and campus security on high alert.

There's a knock at my door. Game over. I jump to my feet, raking my fingers through my hair. It must be Dr. Carlyle—or maybe that investigator from the Medical Examiner's office, back to question me in a far less friendly tone. I can only hope it's not the police here to arrest me.

I feel nauseated, as my eyes fly  around my room. There's another way out—a fire escape beyond my window. I could try to make a run for it... but honestly, how far could I expect to get?

No. No point delaying the inevitable. Time to face the firing squad. I take a deep breath and square my shoulders. Then I swing the door open.

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