Sara Benincasa - Great

“As soon as I got my money, I left Florida behind and rented my house and my car and my new life. I went shopping for everything I should’ve had, everything I could’ve had if my father hadn’t been a criminal.

“It was the best summer I could’ve asked for. We were everything I wished we could’ve been, and more. We were in love. Real love. And when the accident happened, I thought Delilah would do the right thing and tell the police the truth: that she was the one who drove the car that killed Misti. It was partly my fault, too—I shouldn’t have let her drive. She said it would calm her down, so we pulled over by the side of Route 27 and we switched.

“I want everybody to know I don’t think it was her fault. She was scared and sad and yeah, she’d been drinking, but she wasn’t super -drunk. She was maybe a little tipsy. If anyone is still looking for the car, it’s in the woods near the Fairweathers’ house. Delilah knew where to hide it. I know now that she told the police I was driving. She’s not a bad person. She’s the best person I know. She really is. I wish you could know her the way I know her.

“Anyway. That’s the story. That’s all of it. And I want you to know that I’m sorry for everybody I hurt, for everybody I deceived. It’s not what I wanted. It’s not what I meant to do.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

And that was the end of the video.

I looked down at Jacinta’s note and saw that it was spotted with something wet. Then I touched my face. I’d been crying. I’d been crying and I hadn’t even noticed.

I read the rest of the note. And now I knew exactly what I had to do.

Very early the next morning, I waited at the end of the driveway for the passenger van to pick me up. It wasn’t as fancy as a chartered helicopter or as private as a town car, but it was cheap and would get me to JFK.

A black BMW convertible with the top up rolled down the wrong side of our street. It had tinted windows, and if it belonged to any of the neighbors, I’d never noticed it before. It came to a stop right in front of me. Slowly, the driver’s side window rolled down, and I found myself face-to-face with Teddy Barrington.

“Hey, Naomi,” he said.

I stared into the distance, not saying a word.

“Naomi, I’m sorry about what’s happening with your mother,” he said, just as if this were a normal conversation under completely normal circumstances, just as if I weren’t making a studious effort to ignore him.

He paused to see if his offer of sympathy would elicit any response from me. I gave him none.

“Years ago,” he continued, “my father almost got nailed with some insider trading bullshit. Some asshole prosecutor was trying to punish successful people so he could win points in the press. Dad beat it, though. So will your mother.”

I sighed loudly and turned my back to him. It was probably the rudest thing I’d ever done. And it really threw him for a loop, too. I don’t think Teddy Barrington, ex–child star and scion of one of America’s wealthiest families, was particularly used to being ignored.

“Naomi,” he said in a pleading tone. “You can’t still be upset about the other night.”

I whirled on him then.

“You mean the night your girlfriend murdered your other girlfriend? The night you’re helping her lie about? That night?”

Teddy’s eyes flashed with anger. “It was an accident,” he said. “If you didn’t listen to that psycho so much, you wouldn’t—”

“Her name was Adriana DeStefano,” I said. “And fuck you.”

Something truly unexpected happened then. Teddy’s handsome brown eyes filled with tears. They were angry tears, but they were tears nonetheless. He looked like the world’s tallest toddler. I stared at him in disgust until he rolled the window back up and screeched off.

The passenger van came not long after. I’m not a fan of being in close proximity to strangers, but it couldn’t be helped. I muttered an unenthusiastic “hello” to the other people in the van and squished in between the window and a woman with skin pulled so tight across her face you could practically see every single contour of her skull. She had a companion, a friend with similarly bad plastic surgery.

“That’s the suicide house,” murmured Skull #1 to Skull #2.

I glared at both of them with such undisguised hatred I’m surprised their fake skin didn’t melt.

I put my earbuds in and listened to my iPod on shuffle. When we got to the Shinnecock Canal, the only point on the trip with a momentary view of the ocean, Bill Withers’s “Ain’t No Sunshine” started playing. I stared at the distant waves and thought of Jacinta and Adriana. I’d barely known them, but somehow, I missed them both.

Holed up in a corner of Alan’s Coffee Shop, I hit refresh on the site over and over again. It was only 11:58, and I hadn’t set it to update until noon, but I was growing impatient. It had been a day since I’d arrived home in Chicago, and I’d done everything Jacinta had wanted. But I wanted to see it to know it was real.

I drank my double espresso and felt increasingly irritated. I guess caffeine doesn’t really help you stay cool, calm, and collected in situations like that, but Alan’s makes the best espresso in the world. And since I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, I needed it.

11:59. God, this was taking forever . I drummed my fingers on the communal tabletop, earning myself a sneer from the girl sitting across from me. I shot her a tight, insincere smile, which is how Midwesterners say “I hate you” to strangers.

And then finally— finally— finally it was noon, and I could see the results of my handiwork.

I hit refresh again, and this time the front page of TheWanted.com updated with a post labeled “THE TRUTH.” In the post, I’d embedded the video Jacinta had made—only this time it was public and accessible to everyone, just as she’d wanted. And that meant it was also automatically on The Wanted’s Twitter page (200,000 followers) and Facebook page (250,000 fans).

I hit refresh again and looked at the Twitter and Facebook widgets on the post. At first it had been tweeted and liked zero times. Within five minutes, the tweet count went up to 10, 20, 35, 50. The Facebook likes climbed similarly from nothing to dozens. As the minutes passed, both counts got higher and higher, reaching the triple digits within the hour. And the comments rolled in, one after another, also numbering in the hundreds within sixty minutes. I sat in that coffee shop all day, hitting refresh, reading the comments, the tweets, the Face-book posts. Other blogs picked it up, big ones—major gossip blogs, even a few big news sites. There was no question about it: Jacinta Trimalchio’s final act had gone viral almost as soon as it had appeared online.

As for what happened now—well, it was out of my hands. I’d done my job. I’d done right by Jacinta, something so few people had done in her short life.

I think I sat there for five hours before a breathless Skags banged into the place. She always did make a noisy entrance. She was holding hands with Jenny Carpenter, who looked at me with shy eyes.

“Naomi!” Skags shouted, earning her the ire of nearly every other resident of the coffee shop (including my across-the-table neighbor). “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to get a hold of you all day!”

I turned around and said, “Well, hello to you, too.”

“It’s discount day at the record shop!” Skags said. “They’ve got a mint condition bootleg of Liz Phair’s Girly-Sound songs. They said they’d only hold it for us for an hour. C’mon, we’ll split it!”