Page 98 of Dead Girls Don’t Forget

Cassidy blinked between them. “Okay. What did I miss?”

“Nothing,” I said.

She squinted at me. “You’re lying.”

“Jackson’s just happy Harper finally likes him back,” Rick said smugly. “Like, a lot.”

Cassidy’s jaw dropped. She leaned in close, cupped a hand around her mouth, and whispered — not nearly quietly enough for wolf hearing, “This is exactly the kind of secret-language behavior cults do.”

Jackson’s shoulders shook silently against me. Rick choked on a fry. Jason snorted into his drink.

“Cassidy, eat your sandwich,” I said.

She took an aggrieved bite, still eyeing Rick with suspicion.

Jason pointed his fork at him. “Congrats, man. You’ve officially become the villain in her documentary.”

Rick threw his hands up. “Why am I the villain?”

“Because you have villain eyebrows,” Jason said.

Jackson huffed a quiet laugh beside me. The table dissolved into familiar bickering and half-hearted insults, the kind that only came from people who had known each other for years.

Their easy noise stirred something in me I usually kept buried. What would my life have looked like if that night had never happened? Maybe I would have stayed softer. The kind of girl who apologized when someone bumped into her. The kind of girl who believed people before she suspected them.

“Harper?”

Jackson’s voice pulled me out of the spiral. I blinked and forced a breath. “Sorry. Long day.”

His hand tightened once on my hip, but he didn’t push.

Jason leaned forward. “Half the school is talking about the tiny demon who can hold her own against a guy twice her size.”

Jackson’s expression darkened at the reminder.

“You really did a number on him,” Rick said around a fry.

Cassidy perked up. “Wait. Is this about the video everyone’s whispering about? The one I still haven’t seen because I apparently have the worst cafeteria Wi-Fi on the planet?”

“You don’t need to see it,” I said.

“Which means I absolutely need to see it,” she countered.

Across the table, Lia finally spoke up. “Everyone’s trying to tag you in it, but you’re basically a ghost online. You don’t have any social media at all?”

I felt the shift at the table. More ears tuned in. I shrugged. “I don’t like the fakeness of it.”

“That’s it?” Lia pressed.

“Do I need more?” I countered. “People post their entire lives. They post pictures of their kids without thinking twice about privacy. It’s dangerous.”

I stole one of Jackson’s fries.

Rick frowned. “Dangerous how?”

“Take a picture of your dog and post it,” I said. “If you don’t strip the metadata, anyone can pull the GPS coordinates and find your house. Zoom in on Google Maps, and suddenly some creep knows exactly where you live.”

Rick looked genuinely horrified. “No fucking way.”