CHAPTER 7: It Pays to Know

"What do you know about Kaye Montgomery?!" Louie grilled Sage while practically blinding her with a desk lamp in dressing room.

He's turning this into one of those police interrogation things.

"You won't get anything from me!" Sage exclaimed in an overly dramatic tone. Now, I get how she got a part at a local play. Girl's great at impromptu!

She's actually going along with Louie's bullshit?

"Stop it," I told both of them. I was leaning on the door frame, watching how silly Louie was grilling Sage, who was still in her costume – blue shirt, pink jogger pants, white kicks, and a snapback that she got on backwards on top of a brown wig. The scene actually looked like a crossover of Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Step Up 2.

"Okay. What do you need?" Sage asked.

"Do you know Kaye Montgomery?" Louie asked her.

She nodded. "Of course," she snorted as if the question was stupid.

"But do you know a lot about her?" I queried, quirking a brow.

She nodded again. "I'm a gossip writer in our school paper. It's my job to know a lot about my schoolmates."

Louie had this amused reaction as he sat next to Sage. He draped his arm over Sage's shoulder and a smirk crept up his lips. "Really? Do you know a lot about me?"

I rolled my eyes.

Really? And he calls me the slut.

Sage responded by picking his arm off her shoulder and said, "I know that you put super glue on your hand once and got it stuck to your crotch the whole day."

I doubled over laughing. That happened back in junior year, when he lost a bet with me. "Man, that was the stupidest thing you've done in your entire life!" I wheezed out in between laughter.

"Not as stupid as what you did to Emma Grange," he said. Ooh, that sly asshole.  His retort had sobered me up, and got Sage curious at the same time.

"What happened to Emma?" she questioned.

"Alright. Alright. Can we go back to Trevor's issue now?" I quickly changed the topic.

Sage softly threw her hands up with a shrug.

I exhaled. "Do you happen to know who took Kaye's virginity?"

"What?!" she exclaimed. "That's not something that I can actually tell you guys."

"Why not?" Louie and I asked at the same time.

"Because of this thing called the girl code?" she answered. "Look, I can tell you anything but nothing too private. I mean, come on! I have principles."

Louie and I exchanged gazes. "Okay," I said.

"But!" Sage chirped, a mischievous grin creeping up her lips. "You're gonna have to pay for every question."

"What?"

"3 bucks per answer," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. Yep, principles. 

Both Louie and I scoffed. "You can't be serious," we said at the same time. Louie and I were so in sync that we tend to be synchronized even in the stuff we said.

"It pays to know, Jettison," Sage replied. "Now, do we have a deal or are you just wasting my time?"

"This is ridiculous!" Louie exclaimed.

"This is business, babe," Sage retorted, winking at my wingman.

"Alright, alright," I said. "Louie, get your wallet."

"What?!" my best friend exclaimed.

"I left mine at home. I swear I'll pay you back," I pleaded.

He mumbled something under his breath but pulled out his wallet nonetheless. "I only have 12 dollars."

"Four questions," Sage informed.

"That'll do," I said, snatching the greens from Louie's hand. Sage immediately snatched them from me.

I thought for a while. I only had four questions and they had to be PG. I had to make sure each question would give us more clues about the diary writer.

"Does Kaye play FIFA?" I questioned.

"Yes, she does. She sucks at it, but she enjoys playing."

I smiled wider. "Does she write poetry?"

Sage nodded. "She does. We go to poetry workshops together. She's obsessed with Shakespeare, Marlowe... You know, the classics. She loves them so much, she actually writes in Old English."

"Third question," I stated, feeling more confident than ever. "Does she own a diary?"

She nodded vigorously. "She's obsessed with them," Sage answered. "Ever since we watched Diary of a Teenage Girl, she has been drooling over Alexander Skarsgård and scribbling about her life. She even convinced me to make one once."

As Sage rambled on, Louie and I were giving each other knowing grins. At three questions, I was 90% sure that Kaye was the one. So I only had one question in mind: "Where's Kaye? I haven't seen her all week, and I think I have something that belongs to her."

Sage shrugged, "She's been in the hospital for the past few days. It's nothing serious but her mom's a hypochondriac. She made Kaye stay at home for three days because of a broken fingernail once."

"Oh," I mused. "How do you even know all these things?"

Sage laughed dryly, her eyes slimming down for a second. "Because I'm Kaye's best friend," she answered simply. "You really should start paying attention to girls."

Oh. "I think I will now," I said.

"Okay," Sage said, "if that's all you need, I'm needed back on set."

She stood up and made her way out of the dressing room. The moment she disappeared from sight, Louie high-fived me, a shit-eating grin on his face.

"Your mystery girl is Kaye! Case closed!" he screamed as he celebrated by picking me up.

My mystery girl's Kaye! I thought... or more accurately, I tried convincing myself.  I repeated it like a chant in my head, hoping that if I repeated it enough, I'd actually believe it.

My mystery girl is Kaye! Case closed!

My mystery girl is Kaye!

My mystery girl is... Kaye.

My mystery girl is... Kaye?

"Louie, put me down," I told him when the chant didn't work.

Case opened.

"What's wrong man? The search is done. Kaye's your girl. I thought this was what you wanted to happen. Why are you not celebrating?" he asked as he let me go.

"We're still not sure. I mean, Emma could still be the girl, we don't know," I rambled. "And besides, Emma and Kaye aren't the only girls left on the list," I murmured, earning myself a confused look from him.

"What?" he questioned. "No, we went through the list together. There was Melissa, Leslie, Cass, Em--"

He stopped enumerating when he noticed something was off with me. His eyes narrowed down as he asked, "Is there something you're not telling me?"

I sat down on a prop chair and sighed. I had a slight debate whether I should tell him or not.

"There's still one more girl."