Bad Like Us, page 1
Praise for The Last One to Fall
“Full of twists and turns, The Last One to Fall kept me guessing until the final pages. A delightfully deceptive, cleverly crafted mystery!”
—Chelsea Pitcher, author of This Lie Will Kill You
Praise for This Is Why We Lie
“Starts with a shock and keeps you guessing to the end. Moody, atmospheric, and swirling with secrets, you won’t know who to trust the entire time—and you’ll cling to every word of Lepore’s gorgeous writing.”
—Diana Urban, author of All Your Twisted Secrets
“This fast-paced novel will keep teens guessing until the very end... Perfect for fans of One of Us Is Lying, this is highly recommended for thriller shelves.”
—School Library Journal
GABRIELLA LEPORE is a YA author from South Wales in the United Kingdom, where she lives with her husband and two kids. When she isn’t reading or writing, she can usually be found exploring the coastline or perusing a bookstore. She enjoys autumn days and cups of tea and is always searching for the next mystery. Visit her at www.gabriellalepore.co.uk or follow her on Instagram @gabriellalepore_books.
Bad Like Us
Gabriella Lepore
For Sophia and Hayden, with all my love.
Contents
EVA
ARTICLE BY LOUIS MATTHIAS
TWO DAYS EARLIER EVA
PIPER
EVA
COLTON
DMEA GROUP CHAT
EVA
EVA
COLTON
PIPER
COLTON
EVA
FAMILY GROUP CHAT
COLTON
COLTON
GIRLS GROUP CHAT
EVA
PIPER
COLTON
EVA
EVA
GOOGLE SEARCH: MILES BRYNNE
EVA
EVA
NOW EVA
EVA
COLTON
COLTON
TITLE: AUDIO FILE_EVA PORTA INTERVIEW
EVA
COLTON
PIPER
COLTON
TITLE: AUDIO FILE_COLTON DEMARCO INTERVIEW
COLTON
TITLE: AUDIO FILE_JAVIER RAMOS INTERVIEW
EVA
TITLE: AUDIO FILE_DANNY DEMARCO INTERVIEW
COLTON
DMEA GROUP CHAT
EVA
EVA
PIPER
EVA
NOTE
EVA
COLTON
EVA
EVA
COLTON
EVA
TITLE: AUDIO FILE_ALICE MOLOI INTERVIEW
EVA
GIRLS GROUP CHAT
COLTON
COLTON
TITLE: AUDIO FILE_KARLY DAVIS INTERVIEW
PIPER
EVA
TITLE: AUDIO FILE_MILES BRYNNE INTERVIEW
EVA
EVA
COLTON
PIPER
TITLE: AUDIO FILE_NOAH LAUDER INTERVIEW
EVA
DMEA GROUP CHAT
COLTON
TITLE: AUDIO FILE_PAUL LAUDER INTERVIEW
EVA
COLTON
EVA
EVA
COLTON
TEXT CONVERSATION
EVA
EVA
COLTON
EVA
EVA
COLTON
EVA
COLTON
EVA
EVA
COLTON
EVA
COLTON
PIPER
COLTON
EVA
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
EVA
The flash of the camera stuns me for a second. Yellow spots dance in my vision, and I blink them away.
“I like this one,” Karly says. The glow from her phone illuminates her face as she inspects the photo. It’s pitch-dark out, apart from the amber blush of the fire. “I’ll send it to you, Eva,” she says, tapping at the screen. “Your hair looks good.”
I comb my fingers through the ends of my windswept and salt-air-frizzed hair, untangling the light brown strands. “Really?” I reach over and angle her phone so that I can see the image on her screen. I looked dazed, too bright against a black background.
Darkness crept up on us quickly. We’ve spent the evening around the firepit, in a cage of tall firs—all nine of us, together. The fire paints our faces with long shadows, warping expressions. Beer bottles clink, and voices are getting bigger.
“Okay, me next.” Piper leans over Karly’s shoulder, all glossy black bangs and scarlet lips. “When you take my picture, have the fire just at the edge of the frame,” she instructs, extending her fingers wide. “I want it to look arty.”
As Karly hops to her feet and starts lining up the shot, I stand, too. I brush the sand off my jeans and step away before anyone notices. As much as I’m enjoying this newfound comradery with Karly and Piper, I think I’ve reached my limit. Besides, I’ve got somewhere I need to be. Plans that I intend to keep.
Across the crackling fire, my gaze lands on Colton—his dark hair is curling onto his brow and his broad frame is half lost in shadows. He’s sitting next to Javier on salt-bleached driftwood. Their words are drowned out by the louder voices and laughter coming from the others, but the conversation looks heavy. Javier is bowing a twig, curving it into a crescent, then letting it pop back. His hood shades his face, but I can see his downturned mouth.
My friend Miles is next to them. He isn’t paying any attention to them, though; he’s far too engrossed in animated conversation with Colton’s twin brother, Danny.
“...have you even seen the original movie?” Miles is saying. He presses his palms together and shakes his slim hands skyward. “How can a film be marketed as a reboot when it’s so shamelessly inaccurate?”
Danny pushes back some of his unruly brown hair. “Miles, come on,” he says. “The original sucked, and you know it.”
Miles scoffs at that.
On the other side of the fire, Piper and Karly have begun the photo shoot. Karly is holding her phone high and Piper’s full lips are drawn into a pout. She’s tilting her head to different angles and playing with the end of her ponytail.
Only Alice catches my gaze as I slip away. She’s huddled close to Noah, watching something on his phone. It must be funny because Noah booms with laughter every couple of seconds. “You’re going?” Alice mouths, her eyebrows pulling together.
I nod, and she waves.
No one else seems to notice me leave; everyone’s too caught up in conversations. I tap my phone’s flashlight and start making my way across the beach, aiming for the tiny flickering porch light marking the log-walled lodge—our home for one more night, and the sole property standing on this little stretch of rugged Oregon coastline. Piper and Karly’s shrieks of laughter drift after me as I head toward the blinking light.
Alone and away from the fire, the darkness is a little more disorienting, but I keep going. Soon, the voices fall away, and the surge and crash of waves becomes louder. My shoes sink into the soft sand as I bypass the lodge and continue along the moonlit bay, heading for the shoreline with its sea caves and rocky projection hanging over the ocean. At the water’s edge, I come to a stop, and I wait in the darkness.
For him.
But the minutes keep ticking by, and the battery on my phone is already down to one red bar.
I glance over my shoulder toward the flickering orb of light emitted by the lodge. The tide is starting to come in, bringing in knots of seaweed and pebbles.
I check the time again. It’s nearly midnight.
My stomach tightens. This was a bad idea. Bad, bad, bad. I shouldn’t be here.
But just as I turn to leave, a bloodcurdling sound steals the air from my lungs—a strangled scream ripples over the bay.
My heart slams in my chest. I spin around, stumbling into the darkness. My eyes dart toward the glow of the lodge, but the scream came from the opposite direction, where a hollow sea cave is lost in shadows.
Somewhere in the darkness, stones click against each other and the waves shh in response.
I press my hand to my racing heart. “Colton?” I call.
But no one responds.
“Hey!” I try again, gripping my phone a little tighter. “Is someone there?” I sweep my flashlight across the bay.
This is a private cove, way off the beaten track, and there’s no one here but us. They shouldn’t be fooling around out here. Especially with the rising tide.
Gingerly, I begin heading toward the cave, moving my light over the sand and boulders that fringe the thick black ocean.
“Hello? Is everyone okay?”
Treading carefully over the slippery stones, I forge a path to the mouth of a cave. The ground is puddled with seawater, and tide pools have formed in the depressions between the rocks. I cling to my phone as I navigate a path into the hollow.
A shiver crawls down my spine. I don’t feel safe exploring caves in broad daylight, let alone in the middle of the night.
“Is someo
ne here?”
My voice bounces around the hollow, a phantom in the darkness. I move the light over the damp walls as I edge forward, my shoes slapping through saltwater pools.
And then I notice it—a phone on the ground.
“Is anyone here?” I call.
When only the echo of my own voice returns to me, I rescue the cell and wipe the damp case on my sleeve as I back out of the cave. The case is familiar, and a chilling thought nudges at the very back of my brain.
The phone’s dead, but it’s still warm, as though it was just in use. Whoever was in here must have dropped it without realizing. They must have left pretty fast, too.
It’s not until I run my flashlight over the abandoned cell that I notice the screen is shattered.
Article by Louis Matthias
The body of a teenager was discovered at a beach in Tillamook County. Police were called to the privately owned land in the early hours of Saturday morning, April 16th, and the victim was pronounced dead at the scene.
Eight Seattle high school students are being questioned in connection with the incident. Local police have declined to comment at this time, but it’s reported that a seventeen-year-old has been arrested in connection with the death.
TWO DAYS EARLIER
EVA
Karly Davis drums her pastel-polished nails on the steering wheel as she sings along to the song on the radio, her ruby-red hair fluttering in the breeze from the open window.
This is the first time I’ve been in Karly’s car—a mint green Prius with a Starbucks air freshener hanging from the mirror and a couple of empty soda bottles rolling around the footwell in the front passenger seat.
A rogue bottle bumps against my shoe. I nudge it aside.
“So, we’ve been on the road for nearly four hours, you guys...”
I can hear Piper’s voice above the radio as she films an Instagram Live in the back seat. I steal a glance at her in the vanity mirror. Her sleek black hair is pulled into a topknot and her silver hoops are jiggling in the breeze.
“Four hours,” she says to her phone, extending her fingers wide. A myriad of silver rings glint in the sunlight. “That is no joke, you guys. But we’re high energy, loving life, and down for some fun...”
Beside her, my best friend, Alice Moloi, gazes out the side window, sunlight flickering over her deep brown skin. She’s fiddling restlessly with the end of her braid, probably trying to avoid the path of Piper’s video. I’ve noticed how Alice cringes and smiles awkwardly whenever Piper points the camera her way. She keeps her long legs crossed and her arms folded around herself like a shield.
I catch Alice’s gaze in the mirror and smile. When she smiles back, I cross my first two fingers. Our secret sign that we agreed on before we left Seattle. Our code for I’ve got you.
She copies the gesture, then mouths, “Danny owes us.”
I stifle a laugh. Honestly, I don’t think I could have faced this trip without Alice. I wouldn’t have wanted to.
This isn’t exactly how either of us had imagined spending our senior year spring break, heading for some remote beach lodge with this group of people—half of whom we haven’t hung out with since middle school.
Along with Alice, Miles Brynne and Danny Demarco have been my ride or dies since elementary school. We spent a little crossover time with Piper and Karly when Danny was dating Piper, and I know Danny’s twin brother, Colton, and his friends Javier Ramos and Noah Lauder enough to say hi when we pass in the hallways, but none of that warrants a group trip. And yet, here we are. Danny, Miles, Colton, Javier, and Noah in the Demarcos’ Ford truck, and Alice, Karly, Piper, and I in the Prius.
“We’re just a couple of hours from our exclusive resort,” Piper’s voice floats through the car, and I catch Alice’s gaze in the mirror again. She quirks an eyebrow at Piper’s choice of wording.
“Exclusive?” she mouths.
Alice and I don’t entirely fit in with the popular cliques that Piper and Karly flit between; we prefer to coast under the radar. But when Danny and Piper unexpectedly hooked up over the summer break after junior year, Alice, Miles, and I were befriended by association. I think our entire grade was surprised by the random pairing of Danny Demarco and Piper Meyers. Even now, I still can’t wrap my head around how they managed to stay together for so many months. I can’t think of a single thing they have in common. But for a while, it worked. Kind of.
They officially called it quits over winter break and appeared to be sworn enemies for a little while with Piper posting slanderous videos on her socials, calling out Danny for being selfish and emotionally unintelligent. Flash forward a few months, Piper has moved on with Javier, and now that she and Danny are friends again, we all got pulled into spending spring break at Noah’s uncle’s beach house in Tillamook County.
“It’s a completely private retreat right on the waterfront,” Piper gushes into her phone, “not even open to the public yet. So keep checking my page because I’ll be posting sneak preview pictures of my luxury cabin over the next few days.”
My brow creases. Luxury is not how this place was described to me.
But I’m excited. Judging by Noah’s social media, the Colton-Noah-Javier trio regularly drive out to the coast to surf and wakeboard, and it looks like they have the best time on these kind of trips. My dad taught me how to surf when I was a kid, and I get a little jealous when I see their pictures sometimes. I secretly want to be out on the water with them.
“Love this.” Piper starts miming the words to the song playing on the radio, moving one hand in time to the beat whilst holding her phone in the other. She flips the camera toward Alice for a second, and, right on cue, Alice cringes. When the camera is back on Piper, Alice finds my gaze in the mirror and widens her warm brown eyes. “Send help,” she mouths slowly.
I grin in response.
“Shit,” Karly mutters from the driver’s seat. She starts tapping at the GPS on the dash. “Did I miss a turn somewhere?”
The road markings on the map have disappeared from the screen. Now, our little blue dot seems to be traveling through nothing but vast green space.
I reach over to the display and zoom out. “I don’t think so. Maybe the GPS just lost signal or something.”
Karly glances at me and crinkles her petite nose. “Oh, that’s reassuring,” she says with a half laugh.
We came off the highway about an hour ago, and we’ve been winding through a forest of firs ever since. The sky is steel gray, and tall shadows bend along the narrow snaking road. It’s super quiet out here, apart from the occasional RV heading in the opposite direction.
Karly glances at me again and purses her rosebud lips. “What should I do? Should I just keep going?” She sits taller, trying to see farther along the zigzagging road. She suddenly looks tiny behind the chunky steering wheel.
I tap on the map display again. “I guess,” I answer, frowning at the screen. “Noah said the place is off-grid, right? Maybe some of these roads just aren’t recognized.” Another soda bottle rolls against my foot.
Piper leans into the front, propping an arm on each of our seats. Her phone is still in her hand, but she’s stopped filming. “What’s going on? Are we lost? Do not tell me we’re lost. I can’t deal with that kind of energy.”
Karly keeps her focus trained on the road, but her brow furrows and her fingers tighten around the wheel.
“I think it’s okay,” I tell Piper. “We’re heading in the right direction. We’ll just have to keep going until we see some road signs.”
“Okay, good,” Piper breathes. “We cannot get lost out here. Seriously.” She curls her lip at the towering trees that line the road. Then, she brightens, placing her hand on my shoulder. “So, Eva,” she says, her perfect smile gleaming and red lips bold against her pale skin. She angles her camera toward me and bats her long lashes. “Tell me everything,” she says in a singsong voice. “Are you into anyone from school?”
I stiffen at the question. “No comment.”
“Are you dating?” she presses.
“No comment.” I try to avoid the path of the camera. Unsuccessfully.
Piper pouts her full lips and tilts her head in what I assume is sympathy. “But what about Miles? You two were always together.”
I grit my teeth on impulse.
