Mark My Words

56 | Delaware Beware

Once they hit the freeway, Delaware was through Annapolis, across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and a short jaunt through Denton. Traffic was a nightmare in Annapolis, though, which supplied them ample opportunity for terrible songs at the hands of Ray and Juliana. Half an hour of One Direction interspersed between Post Malone and Kanye were enough to have Joanna sticking her head as far out of the window as she dared until Ray started closing the window on her neck.

All the while, Rosalie kept tabs on Sami and Isaiah's journey, which involved the rowdy party of Mark Villanueva, Woodrow Preece, and the accidental tag-along, Ashton Hartwood. Rosalie experienced the chaos secondhand through disruptive video footage sent from Sami's phone as the guys in the backseat screamed the lyrics to Brittany Spears and Backstreet Boys. Somehow, Mark had the displeasure of being stuck in the middle seat sandwiched between Ashton and Preece's massive upper body muscles.

Meanwhile, Rosalie had time to check in on less relevant things. The last days of school before the short break were tedious and exhausting. On top of studying for chem and outlining papers, certain things fell to the wayside. Her teachers were giving them fresh, new projects to mull over during the break, but they, like many of their peers, wouldn't devote their time to it. And, so, emails fell behind on top of social media and... other things.

Rosalie opened her text messages and scrolled through the last chat she had with Sami over what they were each bringing to Delaware—just to make sure she had everything she needed. Below that was a conversation with Ray, a short chat with Jamie-Lee about French homework, and... an unknown number.

Rosalie frowned at it. She looked over at Joanna, who had her eyes on the window, watching car next to them on the freeway.

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UNKNOWN: Hey I dug something up. More specifically, someone. No, it's not a corpse, and yes this is Mendoza. Compare notes?

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Rosalie took a deep breath, but caught it, holding back whatever words were on the tip of her tongue. She straightened up in her seat and looked at Juliana in the passenger's seat. Juliana made her stance perfectly clear, and with Ray driving, she had no one to share this with. Joanna had yet to realize how much they all knew, even if it was only a small detail about Kaiserslautern that Joanna entrusted with Blake Miles.

Rosalie added Drew as a contact on her phone before responding.

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ROSALIE: Hey sorry for the late response.
What makes you think I have notes to compare?

DREW: You looked clueless when I mentioned the psych ward.

ROSALIE: Noted.

DREW: Are you gonna be with the swim team this weekend?

ROSALIE: Why?

DREW: Deciding if I should go or not. We could just talk there, you know, face-to-face.
A bit of wine.
I hear he has a hot tub.

ROSALIE: Shucks. Too bad I'm not going.
Just tell me.

DREW: Fine. Have you heard of Nora Jacobs?

ROSALIE: No. Who's that?

DREW: She was in the newspapers last spring, but no one's mentioned her since. In Germany, I mean. I didn't think she correlated with Spencer until I asked someone at Kaiserslautern to dig up her admission report at the psych ward and compared the dates. She was admitted the next week.