I did not follow Jake to the emergency muster point. If this meant that my teachers and peers believed I'd been consumed by the unspecified reptile they were currently combing the building for, well, it would only serve as a distraction to whatever Aidan could be spreading. Student deaths tended to rank above their sexualities in gossip currency, as long as it was grisly enough. I hope it would give me enough time to set Caleb up with an appropriate defence.

I was armed with Caleb's actual number curtesy of Jake, and his blessing to pursue his brother as long as I took responsibility for explaining everything to their parents.

"Well, never mind then," I scoffed.

He slapped me lightly on the back. "You're cool, Miles. We're cool. We're cool, right?"

"We're cool," I reassured him weakly. He gave me a blinding grin, a little too shark-like to remind me of Caleb, and jogged off. I could only hope that my reconciliation with Caleb went as smoothly as my understanding with his brother. Part of me knew that it wouldn't be. Jake had a second child temperament, none of the intensity of the firstborn, and too laidback for his own good.

I texted Aaron first; I had a lot of making up to do after all the loops I had left him out of.

hey. not dead. looking for caleb.

He responded quickly.

I can ask Max to call him if...?

The implied if you're ready to tell him even a fraction of what I know made me feel ashamed all over again. But then again, Caleb's secrets weren't mine to tell Max.

thanks but no. best if i do this myself.

I'd just set off across the road when my phone chimed with an incoming call. I didn't bother to hope to see Caleb's name on the screen, which made the letdown much less painful when I glimpsed Aaron's.

"I appreciate your self-sufficiency at the best of times, you know I do," he was already saying when I answered, "But, have you considered that you'll cover a whole lot more ground with a car?"

"Wow," I drawled. "I appreciate your tough love at the best of times, but this is a really weird time to shame me for not having my license."

Aaron sighed a classic Aaron sigh, and the tension across my shoulders lessened somewhat. "Idiot. Meet me at my car."

"Aaron, I really think..."

"He's driving, you're on foot. Do you even know where to start looking for him?" he demanded. I spluttered out a less-than-confidence retort that only slightly resembled human speech. "We'll find him faster if we drive. I'm heading to the parking lot now."

"Aaron..." Click.

Well. I had a ride.

Aaron was right, I didn't have a clue where to start in my mission to find Caleb, but I thought a phone call couldn't hurt. Since all my previous communication had gone directly to Jake – a humiliation that I was sure would hit me eventually – I thought it was a better time than ever to start fresh. I entered his number into my phone, hit call, and held my breath.

It rang twice.

And then someone picked up. I could have cried, the exhaustion of my manhunt finally catching up with me.

"Caleb?" I tested.

No response. But that checked out for Caleb.

"Where are you?" I demanded, then softened my tone. There was a real possibility he was very distressed and very angry at me. "Are you okay? Please don't hang up on me, I just need to talk to you. Just for a second, and then we can go back to..."

"Miles?"

My heart stopped in my chest, and my throat constricted so rapidly that I couldn't even vocalise my shock. A little croak died in my mouth. I was surprised I didn't drop like a stone, spilling over into the grass like an 18th-century damsel. Instead, I stood, fixed in place like I'd turned to marble.

I recognised the voice, but it wasn't Caleb. It was the last person I'd expected to hear at the end of his phone. The last person I'd expect to hear at the end of any phone call because I generally avoided the sound of her voice with fervency.

"Mrs. Dodie?" I spluttered after she'd echoed my name three times, each repetition more concerned than the last. I put one hand on my knee and folded over myself, already feeling sick to my stomach although I wasn't sure why. My heart was hammering out the tune of 'Flight of the Bumblebee'.

"What a coincidence," my snooping neighbour said perkily - as if she wasn't answering her own phone and not the mobile of a teenage boy she had never met. "Aren't you meant to be in school? You know, education is a privilege that not everyone..."

"Mrs. Dodie," I choked again, feeling as if my throat has swelled closed. I was seconds from throwing up. "What... where did you get this phone?"

Please, please, I begged the universe. Let Jake have dated Mrs. Dodie's daughter and accidently given me his ex mother-in-laws number. Please let this have ridiculous and far from malicious explanation.

Mrs. Dodie hesitated, which was far from regular. She hadn't paused for breath in the entire time I'd lived next door to her. If only made me feel sicker.

"I'm not a total snoop," she protested, and I would have laughed at the outright lie if I didn't feel like my heart was about to explode. "I heard it ringing as I walked past, and well, you should know it's just irresponsible to leave a phone just lying around. That's just asking for trouble. My daughter is just attached to hers, I have to shout the house down to get her attention these days..."

And on and on. Chatting as if we were on a house call. My hand was shaking so hard that I nearly dropped my phone.

"Where are you?" I demanded, running right over whatever it was she was saying. She tutted me for this. I'd apologise for my temporary rudeness later; for the moment, I needed her to shut up and explain. Again, I pleading to the universe for an impossible coincidence. Maybe Mrs. Dodie had woken up on the right side of the bed and taken her arthritic knees down to Whitley Park and discovered Caleb's car there. Maybe she'd walked all the way to the Proust residence, feeling especially spry after the rain from the other day had cleared.

Please, please. Make it another coincidence One last unlikely scenario, and I'd live the rest of my life as predictable and bland.

"Just outside your place. Is the phone yours?" she said breezily, and my heart sank. "You can pick it up from mine this afternoon if you stay for tea. Although I'm afraid it's cracked something awful. Must have slipped out of your pocket on your way out the door. Or is it Reece's? Yes, it must be, I suppose it would be odd of you to have a photo of yourself as a background. No judgement here of course..."

I hung up without really hearing what she was saying. Nothing after outside your place. I felt the instinct to collapse rise in me like a wave and fought it off. I didn't have time to wallow.

I started to run, rather instinctively, and made it to the perimeter of the school before I was kneeling over, coughing my lungs up. Alright, there was no way I was going to run the bus route to my house, as much as I was itching to.

My concern for Caleb had shifted quite harshly to self-preservation. Fear, of what Caleb meant to do. Was this his idea of fair retaliation? Telling Reece... I couldn't even think of it. But my brain supplied helpful images quicker than I could bat them away. Caleb, texting Jake as he pulled up on my street. Important. Forgetting it on the roof of his car in his hast to spoil something equal to what I had destroyed this morning, through Aidan. Walking up the steps to my front door, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched in shame of what he is about to do, yet in my imagination he still reaches the door, still knocks hastily.

But Reece would not answer. Reece worked on Tuesday.

All the air rushed out of me, relief knocking out the breath I'd been holding. Suddenly I had time to spare, and it did wonders for my clarity. I pinched the bridge of my nose hard until my breathing stabilised, and tried to think. Tried to place myself in Caleb's shoes, follow him along his path of revenge. The idea that he saw it like this, as fair retribution, sickened me. But it wasn't like he hadn't threatened it when we'd first crossed paths. He'd withdrawn once we started to see more of one another, but it was foolish and pathetic of me to believe he didn't have it in him to go nuclear when backed into a corner.

Caleb was on a mission to ruin my life. His first stop had bought up nothing. Where to next?

"Miles? Can we hustle in this escape from school premises?"

I jerked back to the present. I'd made my way to the parking lot on autopilot. Aaron was standing a few feet away, wearing sunglasses, and the collar of his jacket popped up as if he were Ferris Bueller himself. He was trying to look relaxed, but he was shifting on his feet and bobbing up and down urgently. Aaron didn't ditch school. The one time he'd tried to with me, the year before, we'd been caught the second we'd crossed the carpark. Teachers could sense a nervous truant from halfway across the school building.

He was too twitchy to notice my expression until I was practically in front of him. When he did, he frowned and snatched off the sunglasses. "What's happened?"

My mouth opened, but all that came out were a series of hollow gasping noises. Aaron looked rightfully concerned. He stopped jingling his keys and grabbed my shoulders. "What?"

"He's going to tell Reece." I managed, barely audible. I hated to say the words because it meant I believed them. Shock raked through me like a wire, right up my middle. Splitting me in two. Aaron's hands on my shoulders were the only things holding my two halves together, as usual. His fingers were digging into my skin a little uncomfortably, which I guessed meant he had heard me.

"What," it wasn't a question. I'd never heard Aaron's voice sound so cold. It scared me a little. A little part of me had hoped he'd respond with a reasonable explanation as to how Caleb's phone had ended up in front of my house without betraying everything I thought I knew about him.

"He's..." I started again anyway, less to answer him and more to solidify it for myself. He's going to tell Reece. Everything you learned about him was a clever act. This is who Caleb really is. Vengeful. Malicious. Hateful. None of it was sitting right. I had to say it again. "He's going to tell..."

"No, he fucking isn't," Aaron said viciously, and I was stunned into silence. I thought he might say, Caleb wouldn't, but instead he said, so candidly that I was a little concerned, "I'll kill him before he does that."

It bought me a little back to myself, hearing Aaron talk like that. "Sorry. Am I talking to Max? When did you get your ears pierced?"

He grimaced, but I could see he was relieved to see me out of my state of shock. "Get in. Quick."

I barely had my seatbelt on before he was screaming out of the parking lot, face pinched in focus. I braced on hand against the dashboard to stop myself from going sprawling. 

"He went to my house, Aaron. Where the fuck does he get off?" This was good. Angry was good. It distracted my heart from all the other icky emotions threatening to shred it apart.

"Is that where we're heading then?" Aaron's hands were firm on the steering wheel.

There was no point if Caleb had already left. "He wants to ruin everything. Like he thinks I've done for him at school. Aidan must have got to him, told him..."

"Not. A. Fucking. Excuse." Aaron growled.

I blinked. "I'm a little worried that if we do catch up to him, you're not going to stop the car until he's underneath it."

Aaron pressed back into his seat. "Where would he go? The club? Tell them about your age?"

I hadn't even thought about that. I could see it now, as Aaron said it; Caleb phoning Crescendo under the alias of a concerned citizen and asking Jamie if he was sure about the legality of his rising star and friend Sephora Utah. Hell, he could have called every club in the city by this point. He didn't need the proof, he could just plant seeds and leave me to fumble with all the excuses and lies I'd made over the years. The first domino falling, and Sephora Utah would be cast from the public eye faster than I could blink.

My safe haven, ripped from underneath me. If Caleb wanted to hit where it hurt, the clubs weren't a bad place to start.

But I thought about him going directly to my house. If he'd thought about it for more than a few seconds, he could have guessed Reece would be at work. He must have been in a blind rage, and he wanted this to be as personal an attack as I'd made on him with Aidan.

Oh god, what did Aidan say to him? What kind of game did he make out of Caleb's secret? Did he drop it into conversation casually, hinting at the blackmail he had on him, or did he announce it in front of a group? What depraved language had he used to break Caleb's defences? Had Caleb responded? Had he run? Was there a new ripple in the crowd back at school, of people bored of the story behind the evacuation and clinging to new gossip?

Caleb? Wouldn't guess it. Are you sure? Aidan is his best friend. He never dates. I don't think I've ever seen him with a girl. Oh my god. He totally is.

"Miles!"

"The garage," I said automatically. "He knows where Reece works, we went there once... Aaron!"

Aaron nodded and skipped across three lanes, a manoeuvre that had my heart leaping into my throat. "Are you sure he'll be there?"

"I don't know!" I snapped, my anger at the entire situation spilling over. "I don't know what Aidan said to him. I don't know what's going on in his head, I never have. I don't know him at all, evidently."

Aaron swallowed. His lips seemed to be trembling, almost imperceptible. I thought at first that he was upset at me for yelling, and I felt immediately bad. But then he turned, taking his eyes off the road for way too long.

"Miles," he said gruffly, emotion thick in his throat. "Just so you... just so you know, no matter what happens... you'll get... you'll be okay. You'll be okay. You'll be okay."

I hated the way he said it. Like he was already preparing me for the worst. Like it was already done.