SECRETS, SECRETS EVERYWHERE 3 страница

“Just helping out an old friend,” I explained.

As if on cue, Lexi and Heather walked by at that very moment and stopped. They smiled at us and I smiled back, getting ready to ask them if they knew Sunshine. But Lexi’s voice interrupted my intentions.

“Well, if it isn’t Emo Girl,” she snarked.

Heather giggled, tossing her long, highlighted locks over one shoulder. “Hi, Emo Girl.”

My mouth dropped open. Well, this was certainly a side of Lexi I hadn’t seen before. I felt Sunshine shifting uncomfortably next to me, and I wanted to do something to help her. Still, I was curious to see where this was all going. I told myself to grit my teeth and let it play out and tried to communicate the same to Bess wordlessly. She looked ready to jump out at Lexi and throw her to the ground. Bess hated bullies more than anything.

“Is it just me,” Heather said to Lexi, “or is Emo Girl getting tanner? Are you tanning, Emo Girl?”

Lexi burst out laughing, taking in every visible square inch of Sunshine’s pale skin.

“Pale is the new sun-kissed tan,” Bess put in, obviously unable to stop herself.

Heather frowned and looked at Bess like she was a harmless new breed of bug she’d never seen before.

“Excuse you?” she said to Bess.

“I’m just saying,” said Bess, sizing up Heather and her golden tan, “tanning causes wrinkles.” As if to mimic Heather, she scrunched her nose. “And wrinkles aren’t super attractive. I’ll take my skin porcelain over leather any day.”

Lexi shot me a look, as if telling me to control my friend. I elbowed Bess, but only because I wanted to see more of the interaction between Sunshine and the two other girls, not because Lexi wanted Bess to stop talking. If it hadn’t been for the case, I would have let Bess continue all day. I loved listening to her put rude people in their places.

“Anyway,” Lexi hissed, “your ring-toss stand is rockin’.” Her beachy waves bounced as she walked toward the stand.

Sunshine took a step back.

“Mind if we test it out?” Heather asked innocently.

“Yeah, I sort of do,” Sunshine said in a sarcastic tone that didn’t sound nearly as practiced as Lexi or Heather’s.

“C’mon, Lex,” said Heather, turning and rolling her eyes. “Let’s go take a look at that parade route.”

Sunshine snorted.

Lexi shot a pointed look at me and then walked away with her friend.

“Friends of yours?” I asked Sunshine once they were out of hearing range.

She slumped back into a chair behind the table. “Hardly,” she said.

Bess and I walked behind the table to stand closer to her.

“Are they always that nice?” Bess asked.

“Actually, that wasn’t too bad,” Sunshine admitted. “It’s been like this all four years of high school. I’ve never done anything to those girls — Aly and I were actually friends in middle school. But then when we got to high school she met Lexi and Heather, and suddenly…” She trailed off.

I felt awful for her. I had kind of lived in my own world in high school. Ned, Bess, and George had always been my closest friends, and I tried to be nice to everyone else around me. The thought of torturing someone just for fun or to impress other friends — or worse, being the target of ridicule — was almost too much to bear. I started wondering why I’d agreed to help Lexi Claremont in the first place.

But the detective in me wouldn’t quiet down. Something had just been handed to me on a silver platter: motive. What could be a stronger motive for hurting someone than being hurt by them for four straight years?

“That must have been very difficult for you,” I said carefully. “Have you ever tried to… do anything to stop them?”

Bess glanced my way, picking up on my line of questioning.

“Like what?” Sunshine asked, sounding a little defensive. “Girls like that will never change, no matter what anyone does or says.”

Bess and I exchanged a look. Validation for writing a spiteful blog? Check. Plus, we’d both seen Sunshine with her laptop at Club Coffee — which, according to the information George was able to hack into, was the same place that the IP address indicated.

I stared at the black laptop behind Sunshine, wondering — and then something else caught my eye. Next to Sunshine’s laptop was a larger black box. A cash box, I realized, leaning closer. And on top of it, a little stack of sky blue pieces of paper.

Just like the paper Lexi’s note was written on.

 

SUPAMOM

 

Where did you get these?” I asked, holding up a couple of squares of the paper.

Bess’s eyes widened.

“The receipts? Everyone has them. Mrs. Stanfield is handing them out with the cash boxes to every vendor. Why? Is something wrong?”

I flipped one of the papers over, and sure enough, there were lines for TOTAL, CASH, and CHANGE printed on the paper.

“No,” I mumbled. “Sorry, I was just — that’s my favorite color, and I was wondering if you knew where to get them?”

“Sorry,” Sunshine shrugged. “I don’t know where they got the paper. But you could always check with Supamom.”

“Supamom?” asked Bess.

“Mrs. Stanfield,” Sunshine said, laughing. “Or, I’m sorry, ‘Mara.’ You’ve really never heard anyone call her that before?”

Bess and I shook our heads.

“It’s a joke — president of the PTA, the DRH, skirt-suit wearer, mother of the girl whose aspirations include Harvard, Oxford, and eventually law school? The other mothers in the PTA call her that too, and I guess their kids found out and it just spread. Supamom — like Supermom?”

I laughed, remembering how that very same thought had come to my mind earlier at the fro-yo stand. But something else had caught my attention too. “Wait a minute,” I said. “You said Aly Stanfield wants to go to Harvard?”

Sunshine nodded. “And then Oxford. Or Oxford, and then Harvard. Or something. Anyway. It was nice meeting you guys, but I’m going to get packed up and head out. There’s only so much work to be done setting up for a ring toss.”

Bess and I said good-bye and then wandered away. I pulled out Lexi’s note and turned it over. There it was. The printer must have been running out of ink when this one was printed, because you wouldn’t even see it if you weren’t looking for it — but there, in very faint grayed-out ink, you could see the receipt lines on the back of the paper.

“I don’t know how I missed it before,” I said, more to myself than to Bess.

“Earth to Nancy Drew!” Bess was waving her hands in front of my face.

“What?” I asked.

“You didn’t hear a word I said, did you?”

Oops. “Sorry,” I confessed. When I was knee-deep in a mystery, I could sometimes be accused of zoning out and being wrapped up in my own thought process.

“I’m used to it,” said Bess, sighing dramatically.

I nudged her shoulder with mine. “Go ahead,” I said. “You’ve got my undivided attention.”

“I was saying,” Bess continued, “that we’ve got our girl. She has a motive to get back at Lexi and her friends. We even saw her at Club Coffee, and she brings her laptop with her everywhere she goes. Plus, she’s got access to the blue paper.”

I hesitated.

“What?” Bess asked, surprised. “You don’t think it’s her?”

“She definitely has the motive and the means to be our mystery blogger. But everyone goes to Club Coffee to get their caffeine fix — and most students bring their laptops with them to do their work. I’d like to get to know Aly Stanfield a little bit better — it seems suspicious to me that she’s such a great student and has such high aspirations, yet her own mother didn’t endorse her for this year’s DRH. Plus, this note,” I said, waving it in the air. “It goes way beyond burn book blog gossip. It’s a serious threat.”

“Maybe it was just meant to scare her,” Bess suggested.

“Maybe,” I said. “But I don’t think we have enough on Sunshine to pin everything on her just yet. And I want to be sure before I go ahead and start pointing fingers at —”

“Nancy!”

I turned to find Lexi standing beside me, all traces of mean girl gone from her face. This girl looked more like a little girl who wanted her mom than a girl capable of terrorizing a classmate for four consecutive years.

“I found another one,” Lexi said, handing the sky blue note to me.

I took the note and looked at it. Call off the detective, or else. A closer look revealed that this note too had chalky black smudges around the edges — and the reverse side had the same faded receipt lines as the first. I rubbed at one of the black smudges, and it came off on my fingers but stayed on the page as well.

“Lexi, I need to know — did you tell anyone about hiring me? Heather, maybe? Or Aly? It’s okay if you did, but I need to know.”

“Of course not!” Lexi declared. “Like I need anyone thinking I’m a freak show being stalked by some lunatic.”

Ohhh-kay.

“Anyway, why were you talking to Emo Girl? Is she a suspect?”

“I was talking to Sunshine,” I said, putting emphasis on the fact that I was using her real name, “because I need to look at anyone who might have a grudge against you. I need to rule people out.”

“Well, did you talk to Scott?” she huffed. “He’s taking this whole breakup thing super harsh.”

I could feel Bess holding in a retort beside me, so I responded quickly. “Yes, we’re taking a look at everyone who we think might have reason to do this. But my main concern right now are these notes.”

Lexi’s eyes flitted over to Bess for a minute, and she inched closer to me, speaking into my ear. “Can I talk to you alone for a minute?”

I nodded, holding out a finger to Bess to let her know I’d be right back.

“Look, I’m not trying to be rude or anything…,” Lexi started.

In my experience, when people begin sentences that way, rude is exactly what they’re trying to be.

“But,” she went on, “my friends have to believe that we’re hanging out. And when they see you talking to people like Emo — Sunshine,” she corrected, noting my scowl, “it’s bad for business. I told them that you were one of us because you said you needed to get close to my friends, but they’ll never believe me if you start playing ring-toss with E — with people like Sunshine.”

She was right. She was being rude. But back when I was undercover as a pageant girl, I’d met a girl named Portia, who’d taught me that sometimes arguing wasn’t worth it. I was just going to have to bite the bullet and play along.

“I’ll try to be more covert,” I acquiesced.

“Good,” Lexi said, satisfied. “I got you an invite to Aly’s sleepover tonight? It will be totally fun. A girls’ night in to celebrate the Celebration this weekend.”

I made my best attempt at a sincere smile at this news. Because like these girls or not, a sleepover at Aly Stanfield’s would give me a full-access pass to one of my top suspects.

“I guess I’m… sleeping over!”

 

For whatever reason, when Lexi told me there would be a sleepover at Aly’s tonight, I’d mentally blocked the idea of Deirdre being there. But there she was, opening the front door to Aly’s house.

“Um,” she said by way of greeting, “is that a pink sleeping bag?”

“Is this your house?” I countered, though my cheeks had warmed at her comment. It had been a long, long time since I’d had a sleepover with anyone other than Bess and George. We were so close that we felt comfortable wearing anything we wanted to bed — even our old cartoony flannel PJs. And we’d either share a bed or sleep on the couches downstairs. Were sleeping bags passé?

I knew I should have asked Bess more questions! She’d loaned me a cute pink rhinestoned velour tracksuit — supposedly the “hottest new trend in loungewear” — that she’d gotten for a song at an outlet mall just outside River Heights.

“Are you going to invite me to come in?” I asked Deirdre’s scowl.

She rolled her eyes, opened the door wider, and made an impatient “hurry up” gesture with her manicured hand.

When I walked in, I suddenly realized why my sleeping bag was probably unnecessary. As large as the Tudor-style home looked from the outside, it looked infinitely larger inside. Like, mansion-size. There was a long, winding staircase done up in marble. Oriental rugs ran down long hallways. Even the foyer chandelier was impressive — what looked like real crystals hung teardroplike from the gleaming gold embellishment on the ceiling fixture.

I took my shoes off right away and placed them on a shelf with several other pairs. I hadn’t realized how dirty my tennis shoes looked until I saw how perfect and clean the others were.

Deirdre had already deserted me while I was gaping at the palace laid out before me, so I followed the giggles and squeals coming from upstairs, and when I entered what I was now sure was Aly’s bedroom, I was struck once again by the size and elegance of it all. The bed was a maplewood, intricately carved four-poster with a deep maroon-and-gold-colored comforter dotted with several golden throw pillows. The walls were painted the same deep maroon as the comforter — and several felt Harvard pennants were framed and hung throughout the room, along with artful black-and-white posters of the campus. The floor was gorgeous dark hardwood accented with cream-colored rugs here and there, which gave the otherwise very adult-feeling bedroom a cozy feel.

There was a walk-in closet to the left of the door, where Lexi, Heather, and Deirdre were flipping through Aly’s designer-label-laden wardrobe and trying on various selections from the rows upon rows of shoes in every shape, heel, and color imaginable. In the center of the closet was a makeup station the size of a kitchen island that contained all my favorite makeup brands — plus, I noted, a large selection of CandyApple glosses and sparkly shadows.

I wondered what Mr. and Mrs. Stanfield did for a living, other than Mara being “Supamom.”

“Welcome!” Aly said from a corner of the room I hadn’t even seen yet — on the opposite wall from the closet. She was sitting at her enormous flat-screen computer, checking her FacePage, and she swiveled her chair to smile and wave at me. We noticed at the same time that we were wearing the same exact outfits in different colors — mine was pink and Aly’s was charcoal gray.

“Glam Couture?” Aly guessed.

“What else?” I giggled, once again glad to have someone like Bess in my life.

“I’m glad you could make it,” Aly said. And once again, I got the feeling that if we’d met at a different time in our lives, we could have really been friends. I wondered how she fit in with the other girls, how she’d found them or how they’d found her.

“Yeah,” said Deirdre, emerging from Aly’s closet with a fistful of nail polish. “We’re overjoyed.”

Heather and Lexi came out with nail polish remover and what looked like various creams and sharp-looking manicure tools.

“Oh,” Aly said. “Are we doing manis now?”

Lexi stared at her for a moment, and a look passed between them.

“I just thought,” Aly said, “maybe we’d wait to do them before the movie so that our nails can dry while we’re watching.”

“Al,” Lexi purred. “You know I put together sleepovers better than anyone. Why don’t you let me handle the planning?”

Aly shrugged. But suddenly, unexpectedly, Heather spoke up. “I agree with Aly. Face masks and makeovers now, then we go downstairs for pizza, then nails and the movie in the screening room.”

Screening room? I thought. As in, home movie theater. Seriously, what did Aly’s parents do?

There was an uncomfortable moment when we — except for Deirdre, who was lounging on Aly’s bed, texting away on her phone — just looked between Lexi and Heather. Apparently, Lexi wasn’t used to anyone opposing her suggestions.

“I agree,” I said to break the silence, but I also thought this plan would give me a chance to get a feel for a dynamic among the girls — and maybe even pull Aly aside to get her candid thoughts on her friends. Then, when everyone was downstairs doing their nails and about to watch a movie, I would run upstairs to look through more nail polish selections and take a peek at what was on Aly’s computer.

“Cool!” Heather chimed in. And, with a sideways glance at Lexi, “It’s settled then.”

After having my face smeared with green goo and wearing it around for twenty minutes, only to wash it off and then have layer upon layer of makeup caked on my face by Heather, I had begun to realize something: Sleepovers with these girls were always group-centric. I doubted I’d be able to get Aly alone for enough time to dig up any real dirt about her friendship with Lexi.

I also realized that being around these girls was like a real-life burn blog. All they did was gossip, talk about their classmates’ hideous sense of fashion, and discuss who was dating whom behind whose back.

“Did you hear that Mr. Steele had, like, a mental breakdown over the summer?” Lexi asked. “I heard he was in the loony bin for months. My mom said he had to beg the school board to let him back.”

Aly wasn’t so much into the gossiping, I noticed, but occasionally she’d come out with something that surprised me.

Such as, “Did you hear that Tara Rockefort left school for a month to get a nose job?”

Lexi, Heather, and Deirdre giggled, tilting their heads back like it was the funniest piece of gossip they’d ever heard. “And guess what she told people she was out for?” Aly went on. “I’ll give you three choices: A, she went to visit her sick grandmother in Chicago. B, she had a bike accident and was in the hospital recovering. Or C, mono. Who wants to guess first?”

While the girls answered her question, I felt my blood go ice-cold in my veins. A, B, C… it was almost exactly what had been written on hatethesegirls.com earlier today! I thought back to what George’s PDA had displayed on-screen, back to those first couple of sentences: Is Lexi Claremont so pathetic that she had to hire an amateur detective to find out who the author of this blog really is? (A) Yes, or (B) No. If you’ve guessed the letter A, you win a prize.

Could it just be a coincidence? And if not, why would Aly use the exact wording, almost as if she knew Lexi was trying to find out who the blogger was?

Lexi shot a look at me, eyes worried. Looked like we’d had the same thought.

“What’s your guess, Nancy?” Aly asked.

I looked up, startled. “My guess?”

“It’s been narrowed down to sick grandmother and mono. You’re the tiebreaker!”

Oh! Phew. “Um, grandmother?”

“Ding ding ding!” Aly called out. “We have a winner. She totally lied about having a sick grandmother and got a nose job instead. How gross is that?”

“I’m hungry,” Lexi announced. “Can we please go downstairs and ask your mom to order us pizza?”

“Mara’s not home, and neither is Dad,” said Aly. “They’re at some fancy fundraising event. But we can go down and order it ourselves.”

Ummm, okay. So Aly called her mother “Mara” and her father “Dad.” That was certainly interesting enough to follow up on. Could Aly be so angry with her mother for endorsing Lexi for this year’s Daughter that she refused to call her “Mom?”

“I’m hungry too,” I chimed in, eager for a chance to have a peek at Aly’s computer alone (and take off the pounds of makeup that had recently been added to my skin).

Once the pizza was devoured in the “great room” — a room I could only describe as palatial — the girls sifted through the pile of nail polishes to pick their colors. Deirdre chose blood red, then went back to texting (according to Lexi’s taunts, they were going to a new boyfriend, whom Deirdre was being uncharacteristically quiet about). Lexi chose a pretty raspberry pink, Heather chose hunter green — “this season’s hottest color” — and Aly chose a soft baby pink.

This was my opportunity.

“Aly, do you mind if I go upstairs and check out some of your other colors? It’s hard to match a color to my skin tone.”

“True,” Deirdre said derisively.

“Of course!” said Aly. “Do you want me to come with you and show you where they are?”

No!!! “No — I mean, thank you. But I remember where they are. And I don’t want to hold you up — you guys get started on your manis and I’ll be back down in a few.”

When I got to Aly’s bedroom, I turned on the light in the walk-in closet where the nail polish was, but decided to keep the lights to the rest of the room off, just in case anyone happened to walk by. I sat down at Aly’s computer. Her desktop wallpaper was, surprise, the Harvard crest, and everything was saved neatly into several folders.

I looked behind me, making sure no one had suddenly decided to join me, then pulled the flash drive George had given me out of my pocket. I plugged it into the computer’s USB port and followed the instructions George had given me earlier in order to copy everything on the hard drive into the flash.

I watched the “copying” progress bar as it crawled across the screen. “Come on,” I whispered, wondering how long it would be before someone noticed that I’d been missing for a while.

I jumped when I heard a creak in the floorboards and froze, ready to make a dash for the closet at the next sign of noise — but no other noise followed the first. Guess it was just house noises, I thought.

While I was waiting, I figured I’d do some poking around. Doing something always made me less anxious than sitting still and waiting.

I went through various folders and saw nothing helpful. Papers dating back to the beginning of high school. A flow chart of her GPA in each class and what GPA she needed overall to become valedictorian. Plus, downloaded applications to nearly every school in the Ivy League.

The girl was driven.

I clicked on the web browser and searched through her history, but it had recently been cleared. I wish George was here! I thought, closing the browser.

Then I came across an Internet icon labeled “Alymail.”

With one more glance behind me, I opened it, ignoring the thumping sound in my chest.

I could feel it… I was going to find something in that file that didn’t look good for Aly. But when the folder finally opened, a little box popped up, asking for a password. Unlike any other file on her computer, this one was password-protected.

Suddenly the room was flooded with light.

 

BRICK BY BRICK

 

My heart nearly leaping from my body, I whipped around in my seat… to find Mara Stanfield standing in the doorway of her daughter’s bedroom.

“You girls, always on the computer!” She shook her head. “I thought you could use a little light.”

As soon as I caught my breath and talked my body out of the heart attack it had begun to have, I sputtered out a thank-you and explained that I’d just been checking my e-mail.

I glanced at the flash-drive status on the screen: COPY COMPLETE. Phew.

“Where are the other girls?” Mara asked.

“Um…” I ejected the flash drive on the screen, and then pulled my borrowed shirt sleeve over the flash drive sticking out of the USB, careful not to allow Mara to see what I was doing, and pulled it out of the computer. “I think they’re painting their nails downstairs — I just came up to find a different color and —”

“Oh!” Mara exclaimed. “Let me help you pick. I love fashion and all things related!”

I followed behind her to the closet, tucking the flash drive neatly into the deep velour pocket of my track pants. I noticed for the first time how dressed up Mara was. She wore a long black cocktail dress with a glamorous deep V neckline and a slit up the side to her knee. Silver strappy heels poked out from underneath, and her neck was adorned with a huge diamond pendant necklace that shone in the track lighting of Aly’s closet. Her hair was pulled back into a perfect chignon, with a few well-placed wisps hanging delicately down.

“So,” I said, as Mara sifted through the polish bottles, “your home is really lovely.”

“That’s so sweet!” she said, making brief eye contact. “What a polite young lady you are. Carson Drew’s daughter, correct?”

“Yes,” I said. “Nancy.” A lot of people in River Heights knew my father from his work as an attorney in our sleepy little town. “You know,” I continued, “before I saw Aly’s room, I hadn’t realized that she was so interested in going to Harvard.”

Mara picked up a bottle of nail polish, a deep, smoky purple. “Here it is. This is the one! It will look absolutely perfect with your —”

But she was interrupted by the sound of a huge crash downstairs — glass, from the sound of it, and then nothing but the sound of a group of girls screaming their heads off.

We dropped everything and ran downstairs to the great room, where Aly was standing, pink-faced, in front of a huge broken window, tears in her eyes.

“What happened?!” Mara nearly screamed as she took in the sight of broken glass sprinkled over the carpet, coffee table, and part of the couch.

“I don’t know —,” Aly sputtered. “There was a crash and then — glass spraying everywhere — and —”

“It was a brick,” said Lexi, as if in shock. Her eyes were wide, her face ashen.

“Omigosh!” Heather exclaimed from her hiding place behind the couch. “I can’t believe anyone would do something like that! What is wrong with people?”

“Okay,” Mara said. “Everyone stay calm and go upstairs. I’m calling the —”

“Wait a minute,” I said, surveying the room. “Where’s Deirdre?”

“She went outside to call her boyfriend!” said Heather. “Do you think she’s okay?”

“I’ll go check on her,” Mara said. “Go upstairs.”

Lexi and I lingered while everyone else filed upstairs. Lexi pointed to an object below the window, in the middle of a pile of shattered glass. I carefully tiptoed over, shook the glass off the brick, and examined it. Around it was a rubber band, and beneath the rubber band, a message. Written on a sky blue piece of paper.

 

“What did it say?” Bess said, a slight waver to her voice.

The next morning Bess, George, and I had gathered at George’s house so I could fill them in on all the details before the Celebration officially began.

Once we were all sitting at the breakfast table, George invited us to help ourselves to a basket of fresh-baked muffins, scones, and bagels her mother had left out for us. Everything smelled delicious.

I pulled the note out of my purse, as well as the flash drive. I handed the flash drive to George and the note to Bess.

“‘Next time, there will be no warning,’” Bess read aloud. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing good,” I admitted. “But things have definitely escalated. Whoever is doing this could have seriously hurt someone last night. We’ve got to figure out who’s behind all this before… I don’t even want to think about what else could happen.”

“We can do this,” said Bess. “How many mysteries have you solved, Nancy? And you’re not in this alone. You’ve got us.”

I nodded, then looked at George. “I looked through a bunch of files on Aly’s computer — and they should all be there. I didn’t find anything but progress charts, goals, and applications to Ivy League schools. But there was one file that was password-protected.”

“I’m on it,” George said.

“Isn’t that pretty incriminating by itself?” Bess asked, taking a bite of a blueberry muffin. “I mean, this girl wants Harvard bad, right?”

“True,” I said.

“And her mother has the ability to put something impressive on her college applications.”

“This year’s Daughter of River Heights,” George confirmed.

“Right,” Bess agreed. “But she passes over her own daughter and helps her daughter’s supposed best friend, who, let’s face it, doesn’t exactly exemplify the qualities I would think they’re looking for.”

“My thoughts exactly,” I said, breaking off a piece of a cinnamon-raisin scone and stuffing it in my mouth. “But we were at Aly’s house, and she was in the room when the brick was thrown through the window.”

“She could have an accomplice,” suggested George.

“But would she have had someone throw a brick into her own window?” I asked.

“If she was working with someone else,” Bess put in, “maybe she did it to throw you off her track. Or at least Lexi.”

“Possibly. Someone like Deirdre,” I said, thinking it over.

“Deirdre?” Bess asked. “But do we really think she’s capable of throwing a brick through a glass window?”

“Not really,” I agreed. “No matter how nasty she may seem, I don’t think she’d actually want to physically hurt anyone. But the weird thing is… she was the only one of us outside the house when it happened.”

George perked up. If the situation hadn’t been more serious, I would have laughed. Not so secretly, I think she’s been waiting for Deirdre to be the culprit for a long time.

“Where was she?” George asked. “I thought you were all at the sleepover together?”

“We were,” I said. “But apparently, she went outside to call her boyfriend right before the brick got thrown through the window.”