Free Backlash by Sarah Littman

she leaves the room, I ditch the rest of the yogurt in the garbage can, making sure to hide it under something so Mom doesn’t see. If there’s one thing being in the Shrink Hospital of Horrors taught me, it’s that I have to play the game.
    When Mom comes back, she’s followed by a police lady and a guy wearing a worn jacket and khakis instead of a police uniform, but you can still see the gun holstered under his arm and the badge at his waist.
    “Lara, honey, this is Detective Souther and Officer Hall. Officer Hall was here the night you were … taken to the hospital. Officer, Detective, can I get you anything? Coffee? Water?”
    “No thanks,” Detective Souther says. “Are you most comfortable chatting here, Lara?”
    I’d be most comfortable not chatting at all, but nobody is giving me that option.
    I shrug. “Whatever.”
    We all sit down at the kitchen table. Detective Souther takes out a little black notebook. Something tells me he doesn’t have to make useless Gratitude Lists in it.
    “We’ve been looking into the activity on your Facebook profile the night of your …” He hesitates for the briefest second. “Hospitalization. We’re here to ask you about a young man named Christian DeWitt.”
    If there is one thing in the world I don’t want to talk about to the police, especially in front of my mom, it’s a young man named Christian DeWitt.
    Math equation: Christian + talking = pain.
    But if I show that I’m freaked out by the idea, Mom will get even more freaked out, creating a vicious vortex of freaked-outness.
    “Oh? Like what?” I ask with pretend nonchalance.
    “How long have you been friends with Mr. DeWitt?” Detective Souther asks.
    Before he turned on me? Two months, four days, eleven hours …
    “About two months.”
    “Have you ever met him in person?”
    I avoid looking at Mom.
    “No. But he was friends with a bunch of kids from my school, so I figured he had to be okay.”
    Mom exhales her disapproval.
    Yes, Mom, I know. I broke the rules. Don’t you think I’ve learned my lesson?
    “Did he friend you or did you friend him?”
    This guy clearly must have forgotten what it’s like to be in high school. Like I ever would have had the courage to friend someone as good-looking as Christian.
    I couldn’t believe when I got the friend request from him. He’s so gorgeous, like, seriously, he could be an Abercrombie model. I looked at his profile picture for ten minutes, unable to believe that he actually wanted to friend me.
    “He friended me.”
    “And how did you develop a relationship?”
    What relationship? There is no relationship, Detective. Somehow — I don’t know how or why — I screwed it up.
    “We started chatting. You know, by IM.”
    “Did you ever video chat?”
    “No. I wanted to, but the camera on his laptop was broken.”
    “Did you ever speak to Mr. DeWitt on the telephone?”
    “No.”
    “And on the night of your hospitalization, he sent you this message?”
    Detective Souther nods to Officer Hall and she takes a piece of paper out of a folder. It’s a printout of the Facebook direct message Christian sent me. The one that said the world would be a better place without me in it. The one that said, “GOOD-BYE, LOSER!!!”
    I realize, horrified, that they’d been reading my chats and my emails. They know everything. How stupid I’d been. How I believed someone like Christian could actually like someone like me.
    But they’re still asking me questions instead of giving me answers. Like everything else that’s supposed to be helping me, this is just another royal waste of time.
    I’m beyond sick of it. I’m furious.
    “Why are you even bothering to ask me questions when you’ve already pried into my personal life and read everything?! When you already know !” I snap. “Huh? Why don’t you answer my questions for a change?” I stand up and grab the paper, crumple it up into a ball, and throw it on the table in front of the spying