Fake ID

Alone with Reya in her bedroom, Nick brings up the topic of Whispertown and explains that it might have something to do with Eli’s death. Nick asks if it’s possible that Eli’s laptop is in his room, but Reya’s mother is treating the room like a shrine—no one can get in there to see.

Just then, Zach enters Reya’s bedroom and starts talking to Reya. When he sees Nick, Zach is stunned. Reya is not happy to see Zach, who lashes out: “Hey! I came over here to be supportive. Stop acting bitchy and show some courtesy” (99). Reya asks Nick to leave so she can clear some things up with Zach.

As he goes out of the house, Nick encounters Pilar standing on the front porch, and they talk about Eli as a writer. She bursts into tears and dashes into the house.

In Monitor Park, Nick encounters Dustin and his friends. They’ve decided to have a party since school is out. Eli was also Dustin’s friend, so Dustin takes Nick aside to tell him what he knows about the night that Eli died.

Dustin explains how he and Eli became friends: Eli helped him with a pre-calculus class and they became close. However, recently, the two drifted apart: Dustin’s social life was more than Eli could handle, plus when Eli helped Dustin’s father with his computer, Eli placed a bug on the computer so he could download files from it.

As Dustin talks, Nick receives a phone call from Donna, who demands that he come home immediately. He realizes his mother and father are fighting and his mother is about to leave. Nick hurries home.

Nick comes home to find that his mother has her suitcases at the front door. She checked into James’s stories and found out that his job ends every night at six, meaning he’s been lying about where he’s been going at night. James insists that he’s playing fantasy football and asks Nick to back him up. Because Nick is afraid that Donna won’t be safe out of WITSEC on her own and because he wants to know the truth behind Whispertown, Nick covers up for his father. He says he saw James with a bunch of football fanatics after the game on Friday. His mother storms off in anger. Nick and his father call Bertram, who asks Nick how he’s doing after Eli’s death. When Nick hangs up, his father is also gone. Again, Nick finds himself alone in the house. He makes a solemn promise to the departed Eli that he will find out what happened to him.

The next morning, Nick wakes to the aroma of breakfast cooking. His mother has returned, but despite her gesture of apology, Nick does not speak to her—he is still angry. When he goes to school, Nick sees three grief counselors lined up ready to speak with students about Eli’s death. Nick is disgusted to see Zach in one of the counseling lines. He bumps Zach’s elbow when Zach is signing in so that his signature is scrawled across the registry.

A grief counselor and the assistant principal send a note to Nick’s third-period class telling him to come to grief counseling. He leaves the room, trashes the hall pass, and goes to his bicycle, only to be interrupted by Sheriff Hill. The sheriff insists Nick get in his squad car and drives to the police station, calling Nick truant. If Nick is cutting school, the sheriff can keep Nick until someone from the school or one of his parents claims him. At the station, in an interrogation room, Hill reveals that he knows Nick is in WITSEC.

As the sheriff grills Nick about his involvement in Eli’s death, Nick remembers the anti-interrogation tips that he learned as a child. First, assume you are being watched. Second, say things that make you sound innocent. Third, make them angry enough to strike you and you get out of jail free.

While they are talking, a knock comes at the door and the sheriff is instructed to allow Nick to go free. Rescuing Nick is a well-dressed white man wearing a blazer and khakis—Rich Burke, the mayor of Stepton. He tells Nick to get into his car, the same BMW Nick saw at City Hall. Nick realizes that this is the man James is afraid of.

Burke drives Nick out of town. The mayor came to get Nick because James works for him in addition to being a strip-mall accountant—Nick should be more appreciative of the work that his father does to support his family.

They drive to a dormant construction site—Stepton’s new municipal campus, to be named for the mayor. Burke claims that James is helping him come up with the funding to restart the project. When Burke tells Nick how much he appreciates James’s work and has his back, Nick interprets this as a veiled threat. Bravely, Nick asks, “[D]oes this have anything to do with Whispertown?” (135). This stuns the mayor, who wants to know how Nick found out this code word. Nick lies about what he knows. The mayor offers to drive him home. Nick asks specifically what the mayor wants him to tell his dad: Burke wants to be able to count on James to have his back.

When the mayor takes Nick to the school to get his bike, they encounter Dustin in his SUV. Dustin asks his father what he’s doing there, and the mayor points out that Dustin is grounded. Nick realizes that Dustin is Burke’s son and wants to get Dustin alone to ask many more questions.

Nick goes from the school to the strip-mall office where his father works as an accountant. He tells James that Sheriff Hill knows that Nick is in the WITSEC program. Nick also tells his father about his conversation with Burke.

James takes Nick to the Chinese restaurant next door and asks him about everything that Nick knows. When Nick brings up Whispertown, his father does not elaborate but tells him to go home and keep quiet. As Nick leaves the restaurant, an old car across the parking lot sputters to life and drives off. Nick notices but doesn’t pay real attention.

Riding home from his father’s workplace, Nick calls Reya. He is embarrassed to find that she is at the funeral home, where she has taken a suit for Eli’s funeral. Reya explains that Dustin’s father is Stepton’s mayor. When Nick tells her that Eli tapped the mayor’s computer, Reya wants to go to talk to Dustin immediately. Nick puts her off, insisting that he’s take charge, which discourages Reya.

When Nick gets home, his mother is gone. She has left a note telling him not to wait up for her and Chinese takeout, exactly the food he just ate with his father.

Nick arrives at school, hoping he will not get in trouble for having cut class the preceding day. Before fourth period, the vice principal intercepts him in the hallway and walks him to a grief-counseling session, which Nick finds ridiculous and patronizing. He has heard rumors that there will be another Dust Off on Saturday, meant to be a celebration of Eli’s life.

Saturday morning, not having spoken to either of his parents in three days, Nick puts on nice clothes to attend Eli’s funeral. Donna meets him downstairs, dressed in a black dress with pearls. He realizes she is going with him. She has figured out that Nick lied for his dad and that his father is not playing fantasy football. Nick asks her if they are going to run, but she does not answer.

At the funeral home, Nick cries. At the cemetery, after the burial service, Reya approaches them. Nick does not know what to say. Reya is going to the Dust Off that night—partly to get away from her family, but also “so [they] can get the truth out of Dustin” (155).

Reya picks up Nick in her Volkswagen. Both have gone overboard in their preparations: “We smelled like we’d vandalized a Bath and Body Works” (157). They will pretend to be dating, which will make their being together logical to the other young people there. They pass by the house of Reya’s uncle Miguel, a local mobster and the father of Pilar. She has just gone into labor.

Nick and Reya hear the party at Dustin’s house before they arrive. They go separate ways once they get inside the house, with Nick agreeing to find Dustin. Because the house is huge, he does not know where to look. Not seeing Dustin, Nick begins to walk through parts of the house that seem off limits. He finds his way into the office of Mayor Burke. He sees a trophy in the shape of a boxing glove and a well-supplied gun cabinet made to look like a display.

While Nick is in the mayor’s study, a beautiful brunette, Callie, comes in; she is looking for the pond and seems drunk. As Nick helps her out of the house and leads her through the woods, Callie stops pretending to be drunk. When they are by the water she steps aside, and Nick sees Zach and his three minions.

Zach intends to assault Nick with a bicycle chain wrapped around his fist, but the sober Nick thinks faster than the drunk Zach. Nick punches Zach twice and knocks down another of the minions before running away. He runs into a tree limb, which flattens him, so the other boys catch up. As Zach is about to attack Nick, a golf cart arrives—it’s Dustin and his friends Carrey and Lorenz. The large Lorenz flattens Zach with one punch. Dustin tells Zach’s friends to leave.

Dustin takes Nick back to the house, where the crowd is breaking up. The four go up to Dustin’s bedroom, where Dustin explains what happened the night that Eli died. Eli confronted Dustin in the journalism room about Mayor Burke being corrupt. This upset Dustin, so he went home and told his father about all the information Eli had gathered. As they speak, Lorenz searches Dustin’s closet and his drawers.

Nick wonders whether Dustin realizes that what he is saying implies that his father might have killed Eli. Lorenz warns Nick not to believe Dustin: “That’s the thing about rich white boys […] they love hating their parents. It’s true, I looked it up” (171). Dustin grows increasingly annoyed with Lorenz, who continues to search through Dustin’s closet. When Reya texts Nick, Dustin encourages him to find her.

Reya and Nick drive to Monitor Park, where Nick shares what he has learned from Dustin. As they consider where the information Eli gathered might be, they realize that Eli would have kept a copy of everything—most likely in the journalism room. They make out, and then Reya drives Nick home.

As Nick sleeps blissfully, he misses a text from Reya—a classmate has been killed in an accident.

The next morning, Donna has the TV on as she prepares breakfast for the three of them. On the news, there is a report about a car accident involving three Stepton High School students, one of whom was dead on arrival at the hospital. The video shows a BMW that Nick recognizes as Mayor Burke’s. He rushes upstairs to his phone and finds that Reya has been texting him: Carrey is dead after a dark SUV or truck forced Dustin’s car off the road. Nick thinks instantly of the dark truck his father drives. He arranges with Reya to go to the hospital. They will go to see Pilar and her new baby but sneak in to see Dustin.

In a flashback, Tony—Nick’s real name—decides to secretly ride with his dad to see the mob business his father conducts. Tony/Nick fools his babysitter into thinking he has gone to bed and climbs into the back of his father’s SUV. There he discovers a pickaxe, a shovel, and a bag of lye. His father drives deep into the woods. From the front seat, Tony watches two men pull a young man in a T-shirt out of the mob boss’s car and drag him as he begs for his life. Maric, the mob boss, pulls out a gun and hands it to Robert, Tony’s father.