One of Us Is Next

Maeve Rojas is a junior in high school and spends most of her time at Café Contigo. Her sister, Bronwyn pesters Maeve about working on her college applications. As her sister nags Maeve about her future plans, she looks up from her phone and locks eyes with Knox Myers. Maeve tells him that Bronwyn suggested she apply to the University of Hawaii, two which the two joke about Maeve’s aversion to the ocean.

Maeve’s says that Knox was her first boyfriend and they dated last summer, but both were too inexperienced to realize they weren’t attracted to each another. After finishing their meals at the café, Maeve knocks over a jar of salt. She takes a pinch and throws it over her shoulder, thinking about lessons from her grandmother Ita about the importance of warding off bad luck. She explains that these superstitions helped her rationalize her leukemia diagnosis as a child.

Maeve and Knox notice Addy Prentiss, one of the Bayview Four students framed for Simon Kelleher’s suicide. She is a waitress at Café Contigo now and carries herself with poise and grace. Addy serves Maeve and Knox, and the three talk about Cooper Clay, who now pitches for the Cal State Fullerton Titans, and is another member of the Bayview Four. His college debut game is airing at Café Contigo, and Addy tells the two they better put in an order before the crowd arrives. Maeve fights the urge to give herself another superstition. She tells herself, “If Cooper wins, this year will turn out just fine” (16).

Nate Macauley, Bronwyn’s boyfriend, takes a seat next to Maeve as the game begins. Maeve reflects on how Addy and Nate wouldn’t be her friends if they weren’t Bronwyn’s friends first, as Nate and her sister are the third and fourth members of the Bayview Four. Since Bronwyn left for college, her relationship with Nate has become strained. Maeve thinks, “I get it, I guess. No matter how much you care about someone, things change when they used to be around all the time and then suddenly, they’re not” (18). Luis Santos, whose parents own Café Contigo, comes to watch Cooper pitch. Luis is Cooper’s best friend and Maeve thinks that Luis is irresistible.

Cooper pitches a flawless first half and Addy says that Cooper deserves this win after everything that happened last year. Maeve reflects on how Simon Kelleher framed her sister and the rest of the Bayview Four for his murder, and how a local investigative show recently rehashed the last year. Maeve remembers that Bronwyn was exposed for cheating, Addy’s infidelity was made public, and Nate was exposed for selling drugs. Addy’s ex-boyfriend, Jake, was Simon’s accomplice. Cooper was also accused of using steroids and outed as gay before he was ready to tell anyone. Maeve reflects on Simon’s tactics, how he knew everyone’s secrets and how he masterfully exploited them.

Maeve wonders what this night at the café would look like if the Bayview Four hadn’t banded together as they were being framed by Simon. Everyone raises a glass to Cooper and his success, yet Maeve thinks that Bayview hasn’t changed at all. Despite Cooper’s great pitching, he doesn’t win. Nate looks at Maeve with a shake of his head, as if to say that it’s just a game.

Phoebe’s mother is playing with wedding cake toppers for Ashton’s wedding. Ashton, Addy’s older sister and Phoebe’s neighbor, is engaged to Eli Kleinfelter. Eli runs the law firm Until Proven. Phoebe thinks about how Eli is a local celebrity. She remembers, “He was the lawyer who defended Nate Macauley when he was framed for killing Simon. People love the fact that he is marrying one of the Bayview Four” (23).

Phoebe can hear every move her family members make in their one floor apartment. She thinks that in their old home, each of them had a room, and more importantly, they had their dad. Phoebe and her siblings are redheads, but her father had the brightest, orange hair of all. In contrast, her mother has dark hair and olive skin. Phoebe thinks about how her dad made their family make sense, “And now, three years after he died? We don’t” (25). When he died, Emma buried herself in her homework, social activities, and boys. Owen retreated into video games. Phoebe reflects on how she treated Emma awfully at a Christmas party years ago.

Emma drives Phoebe to school and picks up her friend Jules. Jules is angry that Nate Macauley, who she has a crush on, was at Café Contigo and Phoebe did not text her about it. In the car, Phoebe gets a text from Brandon Weber telling her to meet at the bleachers. Her sister disapproves of Phoebe sneaking off with someone instead of going to class. While the two are making out, Phoebe pushes Brandon off to answer a text message from an unknown number that says, “Still missing About That? I know I am. Let’s play a new game” (29). Brandon reveals that he got the same text too and clicks the link before Phoebe can stop him. The page reveals the game to be Truth or Dare. The rules end with, “we’ll have a little fun and relieve the monotony of our tedious existence” (30). After the first text, Phoebe alone receives another message, telling her that she’s been selected to play first.

Knox leaves a store after picking up a new wallet for his mother and cuts through a construction site. He uses the shortcut to make it on time for his job at Until Proven, Eli's law firm. The path used to lead from the mall to Bayview Center but now is a half-finished parking garage.

Knox traverses through the construction zone, walking past tarps, haphazard landings, and a five-foot drop he must jump from to get through the garage. Knox thinks that his dad would kill him, especially since his family’s construction company is bidding to purchase the construction site. Knox reasons that his dad doesn’t pay any attention to him anyways, even less than Eli at the law firm. Eli fascinates Knox, “not only because he’s ridiculously good at his job but because he’s this guy you probably wouldn’t look at twice if you passed him in the street. Yet he’s so confident and, I don’t know, magnetic or something” (36). Knox thinks about how Eli was all over the news once he got Nate Macauley out of jail. Mr. Myer’s construction company hired Nate a few weeks later. He still works there, and now the company pays for his college courses. Knox thinks about how his dad never once asked him to work for the family company. When Knox clocks into work, he realizes that it has been well over the 24-hour deadline for the first player to select truth or dare.

Suddenly, a text from Unknown appears. It says that Phoebe forfeits the game for refusing to play and now one of her secrets will be revealed. Knox wonders what it is, since Phoebe is an open book and liked by everyone. Then another text arrives, “Phoebe slept with her sister Emma’s boyfriend” (37). The anonymous number reminds everyone to pick dare.

Maeve is at Café Contigo where Phoebe is waitressing. Phoebe’s sister Emma barges in and asks Phoebe if the gossip is true. Mr. Santos takes the girls back into the kitchen, and Maeve doesn’t see how the confrontation ends. When Maeve gets home, she wonders if she should check in on Phoebe.

Maeve’s mom reveals that she got Into the Woods tickets for when Bronwyn is back in town. Maeve tries to get out of going to the play by lying and gets a nosebleed. She begins to tremble, thinking that her leukemia has returned. Maeve does not want to show her mom the bloody napkin because then her face will “do that thing again” (42). She thinks that her dad will come home and his “cheeriness from the morning will be gone” (43). Her nose stops bleeding, and she decides to not tell anyone.

The anonymous texter reveals that another player has been contacted and Maeve concedes that she doesn’t really mind the distraction. Sitting at lunch, Maeve and Knox wonder who the third party is in Phoebe and Emma’s love triangle. Lucy Chen, a drama club member, says that Matthias Schroeder is obviously to blame for this new texting game. Matthias was an About That copycat, creating a gossip blog entitled Simon Says. He never really fit in and the blog was tame for Bayview standards. The group hears Sean Murdock, the school’s biggest bully, tell Phoebe that if she and Emma are looking for a new guy to share, that he would be happy to offer his services. Phoebe insults Sean in return. Maeve defends Phoebe, to which Sean calls her Cancer Girl (45). Lucy Chen wonders aloud if they should tell Principal Gupta about the game, but Phoebe tells her that it’s not worth everyone losing their phone privileges.

Phoebe is helping her little brother Owen study for his middle school spelling bee contest. She’s shocked back to reality when Owen gets his first word wrong: he spells bizarre, meaning strange, bazaar, like a marketplace. Phoebe knows that Owen wants more attention from his older sisters and often hovers around them. She thinks that it would be “easy to invite him in, but we don’t. We stay in our lanes” (49). Phoebe thinks about how, despite Owen being a genius, he was emotionally stunted at nine years old, when their dad died. Phoebe thinks back to when Mr. Santos pulled her and Emma into the kitchen at Café Contigo and suggested they go home to talk. Instead, Emma spent the night at her friend Gillian’s house. She hasn’t answered any of Phoebe’s texts.

Abruptly, Emma enters the apartment. Owen tells Emma about his spelling mistake and leaves to play video games. Emma asks Phoebe “Why?” to which Phoebe apologizes (50). She goes through reasons for why she slept with Emma’s boyfriend, Derek, in her head but none are good enough. She thinks about how she’s tried to get Emma’s attention ever since their dad died but never could. Phoebe wonders if she just wanted to force her sister to see her. Emma yells at Phoebe after she says Derek’s name and says she hates them both.

Phoebe walks to the park across the street. Sitting in the park, she gazes at her phone and wishes that she had realized this copycat was the real thing. She looks at messages from Jules, who tells Phoebe that she could have told her about Derek. She sees a text from Maeve and wonders what to say, since Maeve is perfect: the perfect parents, the perfect sister, and the perfect relationship with her ex-boyfriend. A text from Brandon says that his parents are gone, and she should come over. Phoebe thinks,

Unlike Emma, I’ve had a lot of boyfriends. And while I haven’t slept with all of them, I did whenever it felt right. Sex always felt like a positive part of my life until last December, when I slipped into Jules’ laundry room with Derek (54).

She thinks that she went from Derek to Brandon because she felt like she didn’t deserve any better. “But I do. One mistake shouldn’t condemn anyone to a future filled with Brandon Webers” (54). She deletes Brandon’s contact from her phone. She thinks that, even though she hates Unknown, she can’t help but be curious.

Knox and his older sister Kiersten play a game Bounty Wars, when Knox wins and convinces her to eat with him at Wing Stop. The two walk upstairs into the kitchen, where their dad is working. He gives Knox papers to take into work saying that his company will be hiring some exonerees. As his dad sings the praises of Nate, Knox thinks, “I don’t have anything against Nate, but I can’t shake the feeling that he’s the son my father wishes he had” (57). Their dad asks if Knox heard anything about kids cutting through the construction site and Knox responds more anxiously than he intends to. Kiersten pulls Knox out of the kitchen and tells him to work on his poker face.

In the car, Kiersten talks on the phone with Katie, Knox’s second oldest sister who is suffering from a wedding malfunction. Knox looks at his phone and is sad when he notices that Unknown hasn’t texted. He feels bad for being so interested in this new game. He thinks that anyone could just block the texts and be done with it, but no one has. Knox answers a text from Maeve, and when they arrive at Wing Stop, Kiersten asks who he was messaging. He responds and Kiersten says she thought Knox and Maeve were a perfect couple. Knox wishes he had an older brother to talk to about his life.

Kiersten and Knox notice a large gathering at the restaurant, with Matthias Schroeder standing in line in front of them. Matthias tells them to look at the chicken on the roof and Knox notices that the head is covered by the Bayview Wildcat mascot costume. Matthias says he thinks it was someone’s dare from the game. Knox looks at his phone and his texts reveal that this was in fact a dare completed by Sean Murdock. Knox doesn’t like the positive reaction Sean is getting from completing the dare, because Sean and Brandon used to bully him. He thinks, “There are no consequences for guys like him and Brandon. Ever” (62).