One of Us is Lying: Chapter 18 Summary & Analysis

The narrative switches to Bronwyn’s point of view. Just seconds after Nate recognizes his mother at the front door, Maeve pulls up; Bronwyn hurriedly gets into Maeve’s car. When Maeve asks who the woman at the door is and Bronwyn tells her it’s Nate’s mom, she’s confused; they’d both heard through the grapevine years ago that Nate’s mom had died in a car accident.

Maeve drops Bronwyn at the police station—when she walks inside, her mother, her lawyer Robin, and Detective Mendoza are seated at a table. Neither Addy nor Cooper is there, and Bronwyn feels a flash of anxiety as she realizes investigators are focusing just on her. The detective asks Bronwyn if she is aware that Simon had a “companion website” for About That, where he collected longer posts. Robin tells the detective that Bronwyn won’t answer any questions until she knows why she’s here, and the detective pushes a laptop towards Bronwyn, asking her to determine whether a post that’s pulled up looks “familiar.” As Bronwyn pulls the laptop closer, she already knows what she is about to read—and wishes she had said something about it earlier.

The post reveals that at the end of last school year, Maeve attended a party where she got drunk and hit on a varsity basketball player before throwing up in the host’s washing machine. As the adults discuss the post, Bronwyn’s mother grows upset and demands to know what the detectives are trying to accomplish by bringing it into the mix. The detective asks Bronwyn directly if she resented Simon because of his revelation of Maeve’s embarrassment at the party, and her reluctance to participate in the social scene at school since. Robin states that Bronwyn has “no comment,” but Mendoza insists she does—or at least she did—before revealing that the post’s history includes a violent comment left by Bronwyn which reads “Fuck off and die, Simon.”

That afternoon, Addy rides her bike over to Jake’s house and rings the doorbell. He welcomes her in, and they sit down in the living room. Jake asks her about the investigation, but Addy doesn’t want to talk about it, and she deflects his question, stating that things have become so cliché that she caught one of the detectives eating doughnuts. Addy says that the detectives should really be looking at Simon himself, and the many others who wanted bad things to happen to him as a result of About That. Knowing that Jake and Simon were friends when they were little, Addy attempts to ask what Simon was like as a child, but Jake accuses Addy of using him for her own little investigation, and says he didn’t invite her over so they could argue.

Addy asks Jake why invited her over—he claims that he “deserve[s]” to know what’s happening. Addy asks Jake if he’ll ever be able to forgive her, though she admits to herself that she isn’t even sure what “kind” of forgiveness she wants from Jake. He replies that he will never be able to forgive her. Addy is overcome with anger; moments later, as she pedals away on her bike, she congratulates herself for taking control of the situation and refusing to allow Jake to be the arbiter of her own feelings.

Monday afternoon, Cooper laments that his life has become a media circus. News vans are outside his house more often than not, and he doesn’t even go on the internet anymore for fear of encountering slanderous articles about himself. Even weirder than all the negative attention, though, is the positive attention; paparazzi clips of the Bayview Four go viral on Youtube, remade as music videos, and Cooper’s little brother has discovered a Facebook fan page about Cooper with over fifty thousand likes.

Cooper heads out to meet Luis at the gym, and is surprised and miffed when a reporter accosts him at the door. After their workout, Cooper is nervous to leave the building again; Luis offers to dress in Cooper’s clothes and exit first, drawing the reporters so that Cooper can exit safely. The boys switch clothes and car keys, and Cooper is pleasantly surprised when the plan works.

Cooper, high on the feeling of freedom, heads to downtown San Diego and parks in front of an expensive condominium. He gets out of the car and enters the building, riding the elevator up to the top floor and knocking on the penthouse apartment’s door. A man named Kris opens the door and envelops Cooper in a kiss. Cooper feels the world fade away as he relaxes into Kris’s embrace.