The
Summer
THRI LLER SAMPLER
PENGUI N TEEN SUMMER THRI LLER SAMPLER LI ES YOU NEVER TOLD ME PAGE 3
ORPHAN MONSTER SPY PAGE 31
PEOPLE LI KE US PAGE 60
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Produced by Alloy Entertainment 1325 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10019 First published in the United States of America by Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2018 Copyright Š 2018 by Alloy Entertainment Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader. library of congress cataloging-in-publication data is available Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 9781595148520 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Interior design: Eric Ford This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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one Gabe
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torm clouds clot the edge of the night sky, stained purple from the city lights; but somehow, right over the yucca- fringed yard, the stars are still visible. I spot Orion there at the center of the sky. It’s the only constellation I can consistently pick out: the belt, the sword, the stars dripping away like blood. On the horizon, lightning flutters. It’s late September, the Austin air dense and heavy. I sit in my swim trunks, dangling my feet into the pool. The flagstone patio, the carefully tended native plants, and the high- end bourbon in the monogrammed glass tumbler next to me all belong to my girlfriend. To Sasha. Sasha, whose parents are out of town. Sasha, who’s swaying down the path from the house with a wooden tray of snacks, in a black-and-white bikini and a pair of flip-flops.
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“Need another drink?” She holds up the crystalline decanter, waving it enticingly. “Still nursing this one,” I say, taking her in. Her long, muscular legs. Her flat stomach and gently rounded hips. “Lightweight,” she says. Her blue eyes sparkle as she pops the stopper out of the heavy bottle and takes a huge swig. “Aren’t you getting in?” “I like to get used to the water first,” I say, splashing my legs up and down a few times. “Oh yeah?” She sets the bottle down on a patio table with a heavy clunk. “Yeah.” Without warning, she launches herself straight at me. At the last moment she vaults over my head, coming down in a cannonball right in front of me. A wave of cool water washes over me, a shock in the heavy night air. I shake out my hair, laughing, as Sasha surfaces. “You’re gonna get it now.” I slide into the water and push off the side. She shrieks and swims away. I launch myself across the pool, my stroke clumsy but strong, my heart racing. She lets me catch her. I slide my arms around her narrow shoulders, and every cell in my body wakes up with a jolt at the feel of her body against mine. Her skin looks so pale next to my light brown complexion. The strings of her bikini top press hard against my chest. She slides one of her long, smooth legs between mine, and my mind goes silent. Smiling, wordless, she reaches behind her neck and pulls at
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the knot of her halter, slowly tugging it free. Her bikini top flutters away and lands on the surface of the water, a black- and-white lily pad drifting aimless around us. “Sasha,” I whisper. It’s not my first glimpse of her small, perfect breasts. We’ve messed around plenty of times, in the backseat of my car, in an empty bedroom at a house party, anywhere we can find privacy. But we’ve never done this so openly, without worrying about time or exposure. Shielded by the foliage, we are open to the sky above. And then the phone rings. Sasha’s eyes go wide, her mouth flinching into a tight- lipped scowl. “They can leave a message,” I say, but she ignores me. She gently detaches herself from my body and wades back to the side of the pool, not even bothering to cover her chest with her arms as she climbs out. She scoops the phone up from the tray on the patio table, where it glows green between a bowl of tortilla chips and a plate of prepackaged cookies. The citronella torch gutters as she moves near it, the orange light leaving deep shadows across her face. “Mom,” she says. I swim toward the stairs, my stomach tight. Suddenly the idea of Mrs. Daley hovers over the backyard: her strained smile, her perfect red nails, the way she taps her foot. Sasha’s parents are lukewarm about me, at best. I’m not sure if it’s the mediocre grades, or the fact that I’m a Chicano skateboarder dating their very white daughter—never mind that I grew up in the
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same bougie neighborhood as them, never mind that my mom’s family has been in the U.S. for generations. They’re old money. They could find any of a hundred reasons not to like me. The dreamlike mood of a moment earlier starts to dissipate. I suddenly realize the clouds have rolled in overhead. Orion is gone, the sky glowering and low. Sasha still hasn’t covered up. I can see gooseflesh along her arms as I climb out of the pool. I pick up the towel hanging on the back of a deck chair, try wrapping it around her, but she pushes me away. “How’s Aunt Patty?” she asks. A ring of black surrounds her eyes where her mascara has smeared. She pauses, her eyes flickering quickly toward me and then away. “What? No, Gabe isn’t here. Yeah, I promise. Jesus.” Something in her face changes. Her mouth goes slack for one quick second, and then tightens to stone. She takes a few steps away, muttering into the receiver, so low I can’t make out what she’s saying. My fingers knot anxiously at my sides; I absently pick up the tumbler of bourbon and sip from it. But the biting, burning thrill of the alcohol is gone. Now it hits my stomach like acid. “Whatever.” Sasha’s voice rises again, clipped and angry. She ends the call, and for a moment she stands still, phone in one hand. Then she turns to the patio table and grabs the decanter, throwing it with all her might to the ground. Glass and whiskey explode at her feet, glittering in the moonlight. Before I
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can say anything, she launches herself across the patio toward the house, stopping just under the eaves and raising both middle fingers into the air. “Sasha!” I sidestep the broken glass and run toward her. “They’re watching us,” she spits. She nods up toward the roof. Sure enough, I can see a tiny red light. A camera. “She checked the security cameras on her laptop.” Watching? A sick, slimy feeling runs over my bare skin. I tug the towel more firmly around my shoulders, feeling exposed. “Holy shit.” She grimaces. “Perverts!” she shouts at the camera. I wonder if there’s an audio feed, or if she’s just hoping her parents can read her lips. I imagine her parents sitting in a darkened room, the light of the laptop bleaching their faces. Or maybe they’re at her aunt’s kitchen table, drinking red wine and laughing at the two of us. The whiskey churns in my gut. I walk back to the patio furniture and pick up my shirt. It’s halfway over my head when I feel Sasha tugging at it. “You don’t have to go,” she says. “They’re three hours away. What are they going to do, drive all the way back just to kick you out?” I pull the shirt down over my head and raise an eyebrow at her. “Do you want to spend the rest of your junior year grounded?” She snorts. “They can go ahead and try. It’s not like they can make me stay home.”
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Jennifer Donaldson
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Typical Sasha. She’s never been into picking her battles. She prefers conflict so she can show off what a badass she is. “Yeah, I’m not really feeling this anymore. Let’s just call it a night,” I say. “Look, tomorrow we’ll head out to the Greenbelt— get out of the house, go hiking. Steer clear of cameras.” She steps closer. “Come on, stay. We’ll go up to my room. I don’t think there’re any cameras in there.” She slides her arms around my neck. “And if there are, fuck it. We’ll give ’em a show.” I gently disentangle myself from her grip. “Yeah, that’s not really my thing.” I pick up my skateboard from where I had leaned it next to a potted agave. Last summer my best friend Irene painted a winged eyeball across the wood. At the time I thought it looked awesome. Now it makes me think of Mrs. Daley: one more unwanted eye, spying. “I didn’t know you were such a prude,” she mutters waspishly. I walk toward the gate at the side of the house. “It’s just not worth getting in trouble over,” I say, reaching out to push it open. She darts in front of me, her spine whip-straight. “Oh, I’m not worth getting in trouble over?” She’s working herself up—I can see it in the sharp angles of her limbs, the jut of her chin. If she can’t stick it to her parents, she’s going to stick it to me. I put my hands on her shoulders, but she jerks away. “Sasha . . .” “No, it’s okay. I guess I’m not worth the effort.”
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I glance up to see another camera, under the eaves of the house. Her parents are probably still watching, enjoying the little soap opera that they set off. “You’re worth sacrificing one stupid night for,” I say. “I’m leaving now so I can still see you later. I mean, you might not care about getting in trouble, but I care if your parents won’t let you see me.” She opens her mouth to say something, then shuts it abruptly. For a moment she stands there, her breath heavy, her face pale with anger. Then she grabs me by the collar and pulls me down, pressing her lips to mine. It’s rough and urgent, her tongue pushing forcefully into my mouth. I almost lose my footing but catch myself on the door frame. A part of me recoils deep inside, unnerved. She’s doing this to punish her parents; this is her flipping them off, one more time, for the cameras. The idea that they could be watching still makes my skin crawl. But something about her fierceness pulls me in, too, like it always does. She finally pulls away. Without another word, she walks back across the patio, toward the house. Out on the street, leaves catch in eddies of wind, skimming the roadway and then lifting off to fly away. It’s eerily quiet, and then I realize the crickets have gone silent. It’s going to rain. I throw my skateboard down onto the pavement and kick off. It’s a relief to get away. Sasha’s engaged in a lifelong war with her mom, a former debutante from an old Dallas family,
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prim and tight-lipped. I don’t like feeling like I’m just a prop in the melodrama. A sliver of lightning cuts across the clouds just overhead, and a moment later the thunder snarls. I hop up the curb and off it again. I’ll have to hurry if I want to get home before the downpour. I lean into the downward slope of the hill. It comes out of nowhere: a flash of light, and then impact. I am flying. The wind streams around me, seeming for an impossible moment to buoy me up. It’s in that infinite moment, caught aloft, that I understand: a car. I’ve been hit by a car. The headlights surround me like a nimbus, like the light that surrounds the saints in a religious painting. Then the second impact comes as my body hits the pavement. The first heavy raindrops splatter around me. An icy chill unfurls through my body, spreading along my arms and legs and coiling the muscles into shivering knots. I don’t feel any pain—just the force ricocheting through my bones—but there’s something weird about how my arm is twisted. The clouds overhead swirl and glitter, pops of color exploding in their depths now. Or is that just my vision? I try to lift my head, to get a clear glimpse of my arm. A black shape flutters into view over me, and I struggle to figure out what it is. A bat? A kite? No. An umbrella. The patter of rain on my face ceases as someone holds an umbrella over me. The someone is hard to make out; they keep splitting, dividing, merging back together, all in the strange and shimmery air. I squint up, trying to make out a face. 8
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A cool hand rests on my cheek. “Shhhhh.” The voice is a woman’s. A girl’s, maybe. “Don’t move.” I stare up at her, trying to blink my head clear. The shifting world seems to be tinged with flares of sickening color now, shades of bile and blood at the corners of my vision. I hear a cell phone’s key pad and then the girl’s voice again. “I need to report an accident.” Lightning streaks across the sky, and in its split-second illumination I see her. She’s young, a teenager. Maybe my age. Her face is thin and pale, sharp-angled. Her hair is long and dark. Then the lightning passes and all I can see is the glow of her phone against her cheek, the silhouette of the umbrella against the sky. And then that starts to fade, too. Her voice gets farther and farther away. She’s saying something about my arm, but I can’t bring myself to worry too much about it. The sickly colors at the corners of my vision close in, throbbing for a few beats of my heart before I slide away into darkness.
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Two Elyse
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is almost morning. I would have thee gone,” says Brynn Catambay, touching her cheek lightly. “And yet no farther than a wanton’s bird, that lets it hop a little from his hand like a poor prisoner in his twisted . . . twisted . . . shit.” “Gyves,” I say, reading off the script. “Twisted gyves.” “I don’t know why I can’t get that.” She knocks her forehead lightly with her fist. “What’s that even mean?” “It’s like a leash,” I say. She looks at me, eyebrows raised. I shrug. “I looked it up the other day. When I was going over lines.” “Only you would prep for an audition by doing research,” she says fondly. “Nerd.” It’s Friday, early October, and the theater swarms with activity. Last week the drama department announced that East Multnomah High’s fall production will be Romeo and Juliet,
“’
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and dozens of us have gathered for the auditions. Most of the drama club is here—Frankie Nguyen, Nessa Washington, and Laura Egan hang out in the wings, running lines, and Kendall Avery sits in the front row on one of the faded theater seats, eyes closed in meditation, which she always claims helps her “get in touch” with the character. There are people I don’t know, too. A goth girl with a septum ring sits on the edge of the stage leafing through the audition packet. And there’s a guy I recognize from the basketball team, sipping from a bottle of water and laughing in the middle of a gaggle of girls. Brynn looks around the room and sighs. Everything she does shows just how comfortable she is with the attention of the world on her. Today she’s wearing tights printed all over with cats under a puff-sleeved dress. She looks like she’s either ready to attend a mad tea party or catch a train at Harajuku Station. If she weren’t also unbelievably pretty it wouldn’t work. Lucky for her she’s got pillowy lips and thick black waves and the innate ability to contour without the use of a mirror. “Who are these people, anyway? They didn’t audition last year when we did Antigone or A Raisin in the Sun. Do something popular and every poser in Portland comes out of the woodwork.” “Hey, watch it,” I joke. “I’m vying for one of those poser spots myself.” “No way!” She frowns at me. “You don’t give yourself enough credit, Elyse.” Brynn’s always pushing me, always telling me I should go for better parts. She was the one who got me into theater 11
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Jennifer Donaldson
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in the first place, back in freshman year, back when I was so shy I couldn’t meet anyone’s eye. I don’t know how she looked at me and saw actress material, but she’s stood by that assessment ever since. “Hey, everybody, welcome.” The room quiets down almost immediately. A young, dark-haired man has stepped out onto the stage. His face is smooth and chiseled, his frame lean. He’s wearing a button-down shirt and a pair of black-framed glasses, glinting in the spotlight. My heart speeds up a little. I twist a lock of hair around my finger; the blond looks almost dark against my Portland- pale skin. “I’m Mr. Hunter. I’m the new drama teacher.” He smiles, revealing a dimple in his left cheek. “I know a few of you already, but I’m looking forward to meeting the rest of you. Thanks so much for coming out. Now, some of you are theater veterans by now . . .” A few people laugh, including Brynn. “But even if this is your first-ever audition, don’t worry. I want to give everyone a fair chance. So when you come on stage, tell me your name and what part you’re trying out for. You’ll start off with the monologue you’ve memorized, and then I’ll have you read a little from the script so I can get a good sense of how you approach different characters.” He claps his hands a few times. “Okay? Let’s get going. Break a leg.” We sit down in the creaky old seats. Next to me, Brynn jogs her leg gently up and down. It’s her only sign of nerves. She’s used to this by now. She got the lead in Antigone last year and starred as Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest 12
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the year before, the only time I know of that a freshman’s gotten such a big part. She’s almost certain to get Juliet. We watch the parade of would-be actors, some nervous and stuttering, some hamming up every line. A slouching girl with gum in her mouth starts giggling hysterically right in the middle of the “wherefore art thou” speech, and the goth I noticed before barely speaks above a whisper. But Frankie and Laura both nail their readings, and the basketball player does a surprisingly good Tybalt, pacing angrily back and forth across the stage. And when Brynn slides into the spotlight, I can feel the whole room catch its breath. She commands the entire stage, the warm glow picking up the gold in her skin. She somehow makes her Juliet both flirty and innocent, both lovesick and playful. When she comes back to her seat, I hug her with one arm, and she gives a sheepish grin. “Elyse McCormick?” Mr. Hunter says it like a question. For just a moment, I freeze, my limbs suddenly senseless. I hate going right after Brynn. I manage to get on stage without falling flat on my face, which feels like an accomplishment in and of itself. When I’m there, vertigo tugs at my body, turning my stomach over and over. Darkness billows all around me. It flutters in the wings, it wells up from the audience and threatens to overtake me. The spotlight lands on me and I feel, for just a moment, like I’ve erupted in flame. “Go ahead.” It’s Mr. Hunter. I can’t see him, but I know he’s a few rows back. His voice, coming so clear and so sure from the obscurity, feels like a tuning fork against my spine. 13
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I find myself imagining that he’s the only one there—the only eyes, the only voice, the only person in the audience. My focus sharpens to a razor’s edge. “Hi, I’m Elyse, and I’m reading for the part of the nurse,” I say. I take a deep breath, raise my chin, and begin. “Even or odd, of all days in the year, come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen . . .” I can feel the change come over me as I recite the words. It always happens—or it happens when I’m focused, when I’ve found something in the role to love. My shoulders round forward, my mouth quirks upward into a wistful grin, and I slide into character with ease. People always play Juliet’s nurse like she’s silly, but to me there’s something so sad about her. The first thing she talks about is her own dead child, and then she’s hushed and dismissed for speaking so fondly of little Juliet. There’s a whole tale of loss and longing beneath the surface, and it’s treated like a joke. I feel a little anger creep into my words, and I let it come—I let it flavor the warm, loving language, ever so slightly. I’m not like Brynn. She’s been doing theater since she was seven, a tiny diva in the making. I only started going to drama club because I was looking for something to do, for a way to avoid going straight home after school. I hadn’t intended to fall so head over heels in love with it. Brynn was right—there was something in me that wanted to perform, to speak loud and clear at the center of the stage. To be seen. To be heard. My monologue comes to a close. The air on the stage is almost stifling in the heat of the lights. The nurse fades away, 14
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and I’m just me again, awkward and exposed. My hands come together at my heart, anxious and fidgety. His voice returns. Deep, but light, agile. He must be an actor himself. Our previous drama teacher, Ms. Harris, was an old kook, a free spirit in caftans and shawls who had us pretend to be a leaf on a tree as a theater warm-up. But Mr. Hunter exudes a kind of articulate calm; it’s easy to imagine him on stage, speaking poetry to the darkness beyond. “Thank you, Elyse. Can you go ahead and pick up that script there . . . yes, right by your left foot . . . and read from page forty-two?” I pick up the packet, leaf through. Then I frown. “This is Juliet’s line,” I say. “I want to hear how you read a few different characters, please. Juliet’s just found out that Romeo’s been banished for killing Tybalt. Go ahead when you’re ready.” I scan the monologue briefly, wishing I could wipe the sweat off my forehead but not wanting to smear my makeup. Juliet, caught between loyalties. Juliet, who’s just now realizing the full weight of her decisions. I start to read out loud. “But wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin? That villain cousin would have killed my husband.” I take her on like a mask, and I turn into someone worthy of a spotlight. When my words finally fade, there’s a long silence from the auditorium. By now my eyes have adjusted a little, and I can just barely make him out, a faceless shape beyond the footlights. He 15
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Jennifer Donaldson
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shifts his weight; I hear papers rustling. But his voice betrays nothing. “Thank you, Elyse. Who’s next?” After everyone’s had a chance to audition, Mr. Hunter takes the stage one more time. Now that I can see him clearly again, the spell is broken—all the intensity of his voice replaced with mild-mannered cheerfulness. “There’s so much talent in this room! I’m going to be faced with a very difficult decision in the coming days. I plan to have the casting list up outside the ticket office by end of day Monday. Thanks so much.” The room breaks into scattered applause, and then the lights come up and we’re all rubbing our eyes and gathering our things. I pick up my backpack and turn to see Brynn, a slight frown creasing her forehead. She looks at me in mild surprise, as if she’s just now noticed something. “He asked me to read. What was I supposed to do?” I can’t quite keep a note of apology out of my voice, even though I know I shouldn’t feel bad. That’s how auditions work; everyone gets a chance. Even me. “I didn’t say anything.” She holds up her hands defensively. “I’m just annoyed because you were good. I didn’t realize I was about to get upstaged.” I’m spared having to answer by Mr. Hunter, coming down the aisle toward us. He’s smiling, eyes sparkling behind his glasses.
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“Elyse, can I talk to you privately for a moment?” he asks. Brynn’s eyes narrow slightly. I feel my cheeks grow warm again, my pulse a staccato beat against my temple. “Um . . . okay. Brynn, I’ll text you later, okay?” “Sure,” she says. She picks up her purse and slides it slowly over her shoulder, frowning a little. “Bye, Mr. Hunter.” “Good work today, Brynn. Thanks for coming out.” He watches Brynn make her way down the aisle. And then we’re alone. The theater suddenly feels cavernous, the two of us huddled close together against the echoing dark. His glasses catch the light just so, and for a moment I can’t see his eyes. My fingers twist anxiously around one another. Did I do something wrong? Am I in trouble already? But when he turns to look at me again he’s smiling. My throat feels dry and tight, but I swallow hard and force a smile back. “I’m not supposed to do this,” he says softly. “But I can’t resist. I wanted to tell you that you’ve got the part.” His words don’t make sense at first. I stare at him. “What part?” “Juliet.” He grins. “Don’t tell anyone else yet—I’m posting the final decisions next week. But I wanted to see your face when you found out.” My mouth falls open. I shake my head mutely. “But . . . but I auditioned for the nurse.” “You’d be wasted on the nurse,” he says. I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. A bright, warm
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feeling fills my chest. I don’t want to be this easy to flatter, but hearing that he thinks I’m talented makes me realize just how hungry I am for exactly that kind of praise. “I don’t know, Mr. Hunter. I’ve never . . . I’ve never carried a lead before. You probably want to pick Brynn. She’s good. And she’s already done some Shakespeare; at theater camp last year she played . . .” He’s shaking his head already. “Brynn is good. She’s quite good. But she’s not what I want in a Juliet. You, Elyse . . . you’re really quite remarkable.” Our eyes meet. This close I can see that his eyes are hazel, the kind that looks blue, green, and gold in equal measure. For a second I’m unable to move. “I . . . what if I can’t do it?” I whisper. “What if I’m not good enough?” “I’m not worried about that,” he says. He puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. It’s starting to sink in, starting to feel real. The lead. He’s giving me the lead. A smile spreads slowly across my face. “You’re actually serious?” I ask. “I’m going to be Juliet?” “Yes,” he says. I can’t help it. I throw my arms around his neck, squealing softly. He’s taller than me, so I have to stand on my tiptoes. “Thank you!” I say. “Mr. Hunter, thank you.” “Don’t thank me. You earned it. Congratulations, Elyse. I’m really excited to start working with you.” He gently disentangles himself from me. I look up at the stage, the scratches and markings on the wood intimately familiar by now. I can almost picture myself, 18
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limned by light, in Juliet’s dress. Standing on the balcony. Dancing at the masquerade. Dying in the crypt, heartbroken and beautiful. “I won’t let you down,” I say. He’s suddenly serious. He looks me in the eye again, appraising, intent. Then he smiles. “I know you won’t,” he says.
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Three Gabe
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arth to Gabe.” Sasha snaps her fingers in front of my face. “Hey, Jiménez, look alive.” I blink slowly, coming back to the conversation. It’s a Sunday afternoon, and a bunch of us are sitting at a picnic table in a gravelly food-truck court in south Austin, sharing brisket and white bread from Reinhardt’s. Sasha’s holding court, surrounded by her friends. I’m doing my best to look like I’m paying attention, but I’ve heard this story before. Something about a girl who forgot to take the tags off her leggings for dance tryouts. “Of course,” I say, leaning over to give her a placating kiss. She cups the back of my head a little too hard. “Ow,” I say, breaking away. “Careful.” But Sasha just smiles. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did that hurt?”
“
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I give her a look. It’s been two weeks since the accident. I got off lucky, with a mild concussion and a dislocated shoulder. They never caught the driver who hit me. They also never found the girl who dialed 911. She’d disappeared by the time the ambulance arrived. So there’s no witness, no evidence, no way to find out what really happened that night. I’m mostly recovered, but my head is still a little foggy, and focusing is hard. And yes, it hurts when someone presses their fingers into my skull. Sasha turns back to her friends. “So we’re all out on the floor going through the group audition, and I look down and I see it.” She pauses for dramatic effect. “The tag is still there, stuck to her ass. Like a sticker on an apple.” I take a bite of brisket, my eyes glazing slightly. The girls at the table are all eager little Sasha clones: Julia Sherwood dyed her hair Sasha-blond over the summer; Marjorie Chin’s got the exact same handbag as Sasha, in a different print. Savannah Johnston and Natalie McAfee watch her closely, hungrily, and when Savannah laughs she throws back her head, just the way Sasha does. They’ve all heard this story. Most of them were there for it; they’re all on the Mustang Sallys, our high school drill team. But you don’t interrupt Sasha without becoming one of the people she likes to talk about. My phone rings. It’s my dad. “I’ll be right back,” I say, unfolding my legs out from under the table.
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Jennifer Donaldson
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lies you never told me
Sasha watches me with narrowed eyes. “While you’re up, get me an iced skinny mocha, no whip.” I nod distractedly. I hope my relief doesn’t show as I walk away from them. I don’t know if I can listen to another round of recycled gossip. “Hey, Dad,” I say into the receiver, once I’m out of earshot. “What’s up?” But it’s not Dad. It’s my little sister’s voice that comes blaring out of the phone. “Gabe!” Vivi shouts. “Merry Christmas!” Okay, so it’s October—we’re nowhere close to Christmas. But who cares? Vivi’s almost six, and because she has Down syndrome, her development is a little delayed. But that doesn’t mean she’s stupid. Who can resist a kid who thinks it’s Christmas every time she gets to talk to someone she loves? “Merry Christmas!” I boom, in my best Santa Claus voice. “What’s up, kid?” The giggle that comes through the phone line is pure gold. “I wearing tutu!” she squeals. “Tutu? You mean, like, you’re too-too cute?” Not my best work, but she’s a pretty easy audience. She shrieks with laughter, and there’s the sound of the phone hitting something. A moment later, my dad picks up. “She wouldn’t wait until tonight to put it on. I’m doing my best to steer her away from messy snacks, but I don’t know how long this will last.” Dad’s tone is joking, but I can also hear the exhaustion in it. Turning Vivi away from something she wants to do is a serious undertaking. 22
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Gabe
“Told you you should get two dance outfits for her,” I say. “One for eating peanut butter, one for performance.” “Thanks for the I-told-you-so. You’ll be home by three, right? We need to be at the theater by three thirty. Don’t be late.” I hang up the phone. A moment later I get a photo. Vivi grins toothily in her pale pink leotard, a stiff ridge of tulle around her waist. Next to her is her service dog, Rowdy; she’s been trying to teach him how to pirouette. Pink. Nice. That won’t show every single stain, I text to my dad. He texts me back a crying face. I roll my eyes. PhDs aren’t supposed to use emojis. Neither are dads, for that matter. I glance back at Sasha. She thinks I’m spending the whole day with her; I’d forgotten about the dance recital. I realize abruptly that my shoulders are tense, my jaw gritted, and I force myself to relax. She loves Vivi—so maybe it’ll be fine. But the truth is, I never know exactly how she’ll react to things. The food court is packed with people snacking on tilapia tacos, bánh mì sliders, chipotle cheese fries, Day-Glo snow cones. The coffee cart is at the other end of the lot, in the shade of a cluster of post oaks. I order the drink from the tattooed barista and stand to the side while she disappears into the truck to make it. I lean back against the trailer, idly thinking about how I can best break the news to avoid a shitfit. Hey, Dad reminded me of a thing I’ve gotta do. I don’t want to, but I’ll be in big trouble if I don’t. Or maybe: Come on, Sasha, do it for Vivi. 23
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Jennifer Donaldson
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lies you never told me
She’s so totally obsessed with you, it’d mean the world. No one ever went wrong banking on Sasha’s vanity. Then I see something that brings me up short. There, at a table just a few feet away, is the girl who saved my life. The sight of her rockets through my brain like a firecracker. A moment ago, I couldn’t have described her with any certainty; my memories of that night are murky and shapeless. But now it’s like some dark corner of my mind lights up with recognition. She’s alone, crouched over a heavy textbook. Her cheekbones are sharp, her skin wan next to a dark sheaf of hair. Her scuffed purple Keds are the only colorful part about her—otherwise she wears cheap jeans, a black tank top. For a moment I second-guess myself. It can’t actually be her. The night of the accident, it was too dark to make much out, and my brain had just been through a blender. For all I know, my savior was a seven-foot-tall dude in a bunny suit and I’m just remembering wrong. I watch for a moment, take in the way her toe taps slightly along with whatever she’s listening to on her headphones. Then she looks up from her book and meets my eyes, and all doubts are gone. Her eyes widen, and her whole body seems to recoil in a short, sharp gasp. She looks away again quickly, but I’m already sure of it. It’s her. Slowly, half-afraid I’ll startle her like some woodland
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creature, I step toward her table. “Uh . . . hi,” I say. Suddenly I’m not sure how to start. What’s the proper icebreaker for meeting a person who saved your life? She pulls one earbud out, but leaves the other in. I sit down across from her, giving a smile I hope is charming. “I think . . . I think you might be the girl who helped me after my accident a few weeks back. It was over on Briarcliff—a hit-and-run?” “Sorry. Wrong person.” She shoves the earbud back in, looks determinedly down at her book. But she’s lying. I can tell. Her mouth is a straight line, but her eyes are wide and almost frightened. I reach across the table and touch her hand to get her attention. She jerks her hand away like she’s been burned. Her pencil falls to the ground. “Sorry . . .” “No, it’s okay, just . . .” “Here, I . . .” We talk over each other for an awkward moment, both leaning down at the same time. I get to it first, and she snatches it out of my hand. “Look, I just wanted to thank you,” I say. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, clearly annoyed. “And I’ve got a lot of homework, so . . .” A shadow falls across the table. I look up to see Sasha, outline dark against the sun. A few feet behind her, the Sallys are standing in a tight group, glaring at me.
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Jennifer Donaldson
•••
lies you never told me
“Uh . . .” I say, stupidly. My heart drops. “Hey! I was just coming to tell you we’re going to the Springs. But I see you might have other plans.” Her voice is as bright as a blade, sharp with false cheer, her lips a blood-red slash on her pale face. “Hey. Sorry, I was just . . .” “Don’t I know you?” Sasha’s talking to the girl, not to me. “You’re in third-period computer lab, aren’t you?” I’m almost afraid to look at the girl. I don’t want to incite more of Sasha’s wrath than I have to. But out of the periphery of my vision I see her nod. “Yeah, you’re the girl that keeps throwing the curve.” If I didn’t know Sasha, I’d think she sounded impressed, but her eyes gleam dangerously. “What’s your name again?” The girl pauses for a long moment before she answers. “Catherine,” she says. “Yeah, that’s right.” Sasha turns back to me, smiling. “This one keeps getting perfect scores on the quizzes. We all want to kill her.” She says it almost playfully, like it’s all friendly teasing, but I know better. If they didn’t before, they will now, I think. But her words give me an idea. “Yeah, I’m in English with her. I was just asking about the homework.” It’s risky. She could fact-check pretty easily, catch me in the lie. But her eyes soften a little. “Like you’ll even do the reading,” she says. She brushes her hair back over her shoulder. “Where’s my drink?”
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Gabe
“Oh . . . yeah.” I jump to my feet. The barista long since called my order, and the drink is sitting there on the counter, the ice half-melted. “Here.” Sasha eyes it distastefully, then heaves a sigh. She plunges the straw in like an ice pick and swirls the cup gently. “So, are we going to the Springs or what?” I swallow hard. “The thing is, Vivi’s got a recital. I totally forgot about it, but . . . I have to go to it.” I hold up my phone quickly, hoping the tutu picture will derail her a little. “How cute is this?” Her eyes soften a little. I feel some of the tightness go out of my back as she takes the phone from me. “Oh my God, that’s out of control. Look, she put a little tiara on the dog!” She shows the picture around to her friends, and they all coo and croon in appreciation. “You should come with me,” I say hopefully, edging away from the girl at the table. “It’ll only be an hour or so, and then we can go to Kerbey Lane after.” Her gaze snaps up. “I’m not eating pancakes on our date night,” she says, her voice frosty again. I fight the urge to roll my eyes. “Okay, then, Asti Trattoria or whatever.” Never mind that a meal at Asti will clear out the last of my birthday money. “Whatever you want.” She sighs patiently, like I’m a little kid. “Of course we’ll go to Vivi’s recital. God, I’m not a monster.” She hands the phone back to me and turns to her friends. “You guys have fun at the Springs. We’ve got to get going.”
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Jennifer Donaldson
•••
lies you never told me
I finally exhale. Crisis averted. Barely. “Thanks, Catherine. See you in class.” I give the girl a wave and turn to follow Sasha. Halfway to the parking lot I risk a glance behind me. She’s hunched over her notebook again, her hair spilling down over her shoulders to hide her face. But I catch a glimpse of her eyes, wide and wary, as she watches us go.
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VIKING An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014
First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2018 Copyright Š 2018 by Send More Cops, Ltd. Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data is available ISBN 9780451478733 Printed in the USA 10
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Set in Bembo MT Std and Avenir Book 6
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one August 28, 1939
FINALLY, THE CAR came to a stop. With difficulty, Sarah opened her eyes, blinked to clear her vision, and looked up from her hiding place in the footwell. Her mother was slumped in the driver’s seat, her head against the top of the steering wheel. She was gazing through the spokes to where Sarah crouched. Her mother’s eyes were almost the same, wide and pretty. Her pupils were so big Sarah could nearly see herself in them. But now they seemed dull. Her mother was no longer in there. Sarah reached out, but something hot dripped onto her hand, and she snatched it back. Her palm was bright red next to her white fingers. Lauf, dumme Schlampe!
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Sarah could hear the voice in her head, but her mother’s lips weren’t moving. Her nose was blocked and her eyes hurt. The pain was a fog across her thinking. Again she heard it. Lauf! Run! She looked at her mother’s face once more, in time to see her forehead slide off the top of the wheel. The eyes, still staring, now regarded the floor. Lauf. Just run. Sarah thought the voice was her own. The door handle turned, but the door didn’t open. She tried again. It opened a crack, but she was pushing against the whole weight of the door, as if up a hill. Her hand was slick with blood, so she rubbed it on her coat and tried again. By sticking her shoulder against the door panel, she managed to heave it wide open, spilling the cold light of evening into the car. She scrambled up and out. The Mercedes had come to a rest in the ditch by the roadside, its nose buried in a warehouse fence. Sarah looked into the car and saw what the bullet had done to the back of her mother’s head. She fought a wave of nausea as the door swung shut, but she felt nothing else. Not yet. Her heart was beating fast and loud in her ears, the air stinging her nose. Her neck felt hot. Behind her, the soldiers from the checkpoint were just rounding the distant corner that she and her mother had careened around moments ago, just before the shot. There were voices, shouts, running feet on the asphalt. Dogs began to bark. They were closing. Where now? What now? Lauf.
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Sarah flung herself onto the warm hood and crawled across it toward the break the car had made in the warehouse fence. The shards of broken windshield tore at her hands and knees. She slid off into the brambles and then pushed through them on all fours, picking up splinters of wood, thorns, and broken glass. Don’t look back. Keep going. Ignore the pain in your hands and knees. Lauf. She let the voice run riot in her head as she broke through the fence. Her voice? Her mother’s? It didn’t matter. Onto your feet now. That’s it. Lauf, Lauf, run, run. She sprinted into an alley between two old buildings, kicking up the sludge deposited by overflowing gutters. Looking up she could see the rusting gutters hanging from the roof edges, the leaf litter that blocked the drains. About two meters high. Too high. Too precarious. But this claustrophobic corridor continued into the distance, and she could hear the dogs closing. Get up there, dumme Schlampe. Don’t call me that. Well, you’re being one. What kind of a gymnast are you? A Jewish gymnast. Not permitted to compete. You’re a dead Jewish gymnast if you don’t move. Are you hardy? Pious? Cheerful? Free? Sarah found herself laughing at the old saying. What would Jahn, the father of gymnastics, think of a Jew—Deutschlands Unglück, Germany’s misfortune—using his words as inspiration? So she put a skip into her step, ignoring the tightness in her
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calves, the pain in her neck, the chance of slipping, repeating, “Frisch, fromm, fröhlich, frei, hardy, pious, cheerful, free,” with her eyes on the gutter all the way. She launched herself into the air, caught the troughs neatly on either side, and swung herself up and to the right, the metal creaking and complaining as she went. She hit the corrugated iron roof with a crash, slid for a second, and stopped just shy of the roof’s edge. Beat that, Trudi Meyer. I’ll have your gold medal now, danke. She lay unmoving, staring into the vast and darkening silver sky, the sense of triumph slowly ebbing away like the light in the west. It was leaving a cold sensation in her stomach. If she couldn’t calm her breathing, they would hear her. She thought about that last look back into the Mercedes, then pushed the memory away. She put it in a special box and closed the lid. She looked at the emptiness above and listened. Over her heaving chest she could hear the dogs. The shouting grew closer. Then there were muffled footsteps—a soldier was walking between the buildings. The noise was too indistinct to work out how far away he was, and her breathing was too loud, much too loud. She counted two seconds, took one last long breath, and clamped her mouth shut. She realized she could just make out a star where the sky was darkest. She also discovered she couldn’t breathe through her nose, so all she had to do was keep her lips together. Footsteps, right below her. A star. Or a planet. Was it Venus? The feet stopped. Planet.
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Star. There was movement, the sound of material scraping against the brickwork. The gutter creaked. Her chest began to throb as the pressure grew. There was loud breathing and the sound of boots against the wall. More pressure, more pain, the urge to spring to her feet and run away. She turned her head very slowly to see thick, dirty fingers gripping the lip of the gutter. Inside her head she started to scream. She wanted to open her mouth and let it out. So, so much. At that moment there was a snap, a tearing, and a shriek. The gutter, the dirty fingers, and the heavy breathing vanished in a cascading crash. There was swearing. Shouting. Catcalls. Laughter. Footsteps receding. Quiet. Distant barking. Sarah opened her mouth and let the breath explode out of her lungs. She gulped down the cool air. Her shoulders rose and fell and rose again because she couldn’t stop them. She began, quietly, to sob.
Sarah was good at hide-and-seek. In better days, when she could still play with other children, she was always the last one to be found, long after the others had grown bored and moved on. She lay there watching the stars emerge and brighten, listening to the sounds of the docks. She could still hear the dogs, soldiers, and shouting, far-off but ever present, like the other children running round the house calling out for her.
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So, you’re just going to lie there? the voice hectored her. I’m waiting for it to get dark. No, you just don’t know what to do, it crowed. Sarah turned her head. She could see a crane and the funnel of a ship. In the background, the vast lake, the Bodensee, was vanishing into the coming night. In the other direction, the rooftops of Friedrichshafen spread out below her, and she couldn’t be seen from its distant church spires. Beyond her feet, a crumbling, old warehouse regarded her with derelict eyes, dark and deserted. Safe. This was as good a hiding place as any for now. Then what? A Jew with no papers, stuck in a German port with no money. Sarah ignored herself. Or her mother, whoever it was. There was no future, just the now. Her mother had driven them here, so she must have had a plan to cross the Bodensee by the ferry or private boat to Switzerland and safety, away from the beatings and starvation and abuse. But all that was gone. That was, if she’d had a plan at all. That level of organization had been beyond her mother for years. It was no wonder that it had ended in disaster, in her death . . . Sarah pushed the thought away, into her box. It was all too raw, like the aching in her nose. That special box deep within Sarah had started out tiny, like something her mother would keep expensive jewelry in. There had rarely been time to be frightened or cross in the past six years, since the National Socialists had come to power, so
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Sarah had locked each humiliation and injustice carefully inside. That way she was free of the dread and anger. But now the box was like a traveling trunk, varnish blistered and swollen, the wood turning green and the brass tarnished. The contents oozed under the lid and dripped down the sides. Worse still, she had begun to imagine herself becoming the box, with everything inside, everything she had hidden, free to slosh about inside her, ready to take shape and eat her alive.
Her heart was racing again. She calmed herself by imagining she really was playing hide-and-seek. She was deep in a cupboard under the stairs, covered in a hanging winter coat, the open door inviting the other children to take just a swift and cursory look inside. Invisible, waiting, invulnerable. Exhaustion spotted its chance and wrapped its arms around her. In the twilight, on the mossy metal ridges, Sarah dozed. She is walking next to her father. He was tall, but now he seems huge. She must be very small. She looks up along her red-coated arm to where his enormous hand cradles hers. The ground is soft underfoot, and the bright sun, too intense to look at, is bathing everything in a golden glow. “Can you see, Sarahchen?” “See what, Papa?” He laughs and stoops to scoop her up into his arms. She
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is a long way up but feels safe, strapped into position by limbs like tree trunks. “Can you see it now?” Sarah screws up her eyes and peers into the dazzling sky. It hurts and she has to shade them with her hand. A low buzzing is beginning to fill the air. “What is it? Another laugh. “Wait and see.” The noise grows, one drone overlapping with another like a beehive, the sound of a million insects at work. “Daddy, I’m scared.” “Don’t be.” The drones become a throbbing that begins to pound at her chest. She clings to her father’s black jacket out of fear or excitement, unable to decide which. Then she sees it. Huge, silver, shining in the sunlight, filling the sky, bigger than the biggest thing she’s ever seen. In its shadow, boys are running, pointing, trailing streamers. Sarah cranes her neck back to watch this giant rippled cigar block out the sun and rumble overhead. She starts to giggle and then laugh. She looks into her father’s eyes and he into hers. He starts to laugh, too. Everyone is laughing . . .
Sarah’s eyes opened. With a jolt she remembered where she was and understood what was happening. The moon had risen, and
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everything was illuminated with a rime of silver light. The metal roof was shaking, and the nose of the zeppelin was already overhead. She had nowhere to hide. Instead she lay there and let the massive airship roll past, a Jewish girl on a rooftop, a glittering outline just a few meters from prying eyes. They aren’t looking for you, they’re doing something else, they’ll look right at you and it won’t mean anything, because they aren’t looking for you. You’re just a winter coat in the cupboard. She was close enough to see the windows in the zeppelin’s fabric and the dim light from within. She could see the roughly stitched repairs, the name hidden underneath the hastily repainted dope, and the shafts of yellow light extending along the curve of the balloon from the control car’s windows. She gripped her vibrating bed. I am a winter coat, she repeated to herself, as the gondola slid past. Windows covered the whole front end of the observation car, and the electric light was almost blinding. Inside, two figures stood watching. It was impossible to believe that they couldn’t see her, and yet, as they drifted past, they remained static. The droning rose in volume until the power cars roared past on their spindly pylons, their propellers a blur. The body started to thin out, leaving only the vast tailfins to pass. They had been painted black, but the swastikas were still visible in their white circles, a wolf in a poorly made set of woolen robes, fooling no one. Finally, the airship had passed. Sarah exhaled loudly. It was as if the other children had opened the cupboard door and seen
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nothing out of the ordinary. She sat up, the muscles in her legs and back complaining. The swarm of bees receded as the zeppelin sailed away and the rooftop settled. As it passed over the deserted warehouse, she spotted a figure on the building’s flat roof, visible in the moonlight. Someone was standing and watching the airship through a pair of binoculars, like he was looking for a rare bird. She watched him follow the curve of the zeppelin until he was looking at the tail. He was all in black, silhouetted against the bright darkness of the sky, barely visible but absolutely there. So lost in her curiosity was she that she didn’t move from her sitting position, even when he lowered his glasses and stared off past the end of the airship into space. Why was he there? The airfield must have been three kilometers away. He started and pulled the binoculars back to his face. Deep in her belly something dropped away, and she had to suck her next breath in. She was not invisible, and he was looking right at her. The man slowly let the glasses fall, and, after a second, he waved. Go, just go, she ranted at herself as she exploded into life, rolling over toward the edge of the roof and pushing herself off. It was dark down there out of the moonlight, just two little windows of silver at either end of the alley. To one side, the larger warehouse and the man with the binoculars. To her left, the way she came: the fence, the ditch, the car. So she pushed
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herself right, driving her stiff legs forward, her fingers trailing against the brickwork on either side to keep her balance. Through the fog of dull ache in her face, she was conscious of a growing stabbing pain deep in her head. She was desperately thirsty. She ran her tongue over her lips. They were broken and chapped. Her tongue made a noise like a cat’s, rough and dry. It had been more than a day since she had drunk anything. Her mother hadn’t wanted to stop on the way from Vienna but had brought nothing to eat or drink. A terrifying 630 kilometers under the eyes of the whole Fatherland, through the birthplace of National Socialism itself. It seemed inconceivable that they’d made it so far. The waterfront to her left was poorly lit but looked small, not vast and anonymous like she had imagined. She pushed straight on into the maze of buildings in front of her. Just keep moving. Where? Always with the why and the where. Concentrate. It’s like an accent, a gymnastic routine, a piano piece. Fix your mind on the task at hand. I’m tired. I don’t know what to do. So now you’re going to cry like a little baby? No. Indeed not. Did I raise you by myself so you could just give up? Sarah swallowed down a sob. Had it been her mother’s voice all along? Oh, Mutti, she murmured to herself, oh, Mutti.
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Stop it. I can’t. What I saw in the car . . . all too much . . . No, STOP. She froze. Over the distant hum and noise, she could hear running water. She followed the sound to an old and peeling door. It was ajar, revealing a dark interior. Sarah needed to use her shoulder, and as it scraped open she was hit by the smell of ammonia and sewage. She took an uncertain step inside, but the blackness was absolute. Closing her eyes to let her night vision improve and using the slimy wall as a guide, she crept into the room toward the sound of water. She opened her eyes but couldn’t pick out any details. The room couldn’t have been that big, but it felt like a cavern, or the giant mouth of some stinking beast. The dark is your friend, she told herself. Big arms to hide you. Love the darkness. Her fingers brushed up against something that moved. She wanted to snatch her hand back but resisted and reached out again. She touched the thing, and it vanished once more. She waited and it returned to her. It was a thin chain, with a knot at one end, the other disappearing upward. She grasped the knot and pulled down. There was a click and then a light so blinding that Sarah lost her balance. She was in a squalid bathroom with a broken toilet bowl in the corner behind a rotting wooden partition. A long trough ran the length of the far wall at floor level. Everything was filthy, but next to Sarah a rusting tap spat brown water into a low, long basin.
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She grabbed the edge of the sink and thrust her mouth under the tap, opening it up to full. The liquid tasted warm and rusty, but it was wet and it didn’t stop. Sarah gulped and swallowed, gulped and swallowed, ignoring the sense of smothering when it went up her nose. After a minute, she stopped and stretched out her back, letting the water drip down her chin, feeling the life seeping back into her body. “Oh, look, it’s the little girl from the roof.” A man’s voice. Sarah froze. Dumme Schlampe! You left the door open. The man was between her and the doorway. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do. That helplessness took the weight from her shoulders. She felt oddly calm and light. So light that she felt herself rise above the sea of panic. She grunted an affirmative noise and bent down to drink again, trying not to imagine the next few hours.
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two “WHAT ARE YOU doing here?” said the man. “Drinking,” she replied between gulps. “What were you doing on the roof?” His delivery was flat, almost emotionless. Don’t be fooled. That just means you can’t read him. “Looking for someone.” She stood up and wiped her chin. It seemed to be covered in brown dirt. She purposely avoided looking straight at him, buying time to think of something without her eyes giving anything away. “On the roof?” Trap. “Yes.” She was just delaying the inevitable. It didn’t matter what she said, and this made her feel free. Bold. “What were you doing watching the airship?”
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“I’m asking the questions.” The merest hint of tension. Not anger. “Yes, you are.” She cocked her head to one side and waited. The man was dressed in black, with a woollen hat and a dark knapsack. His face looked dirty. Not what she’d expected. He just stared back at her like he was trying to work something out. Sarah wondered if she really could just brazen this out. “Well, I shouldn’t take up any more of your time, so . . .” The man pushed the door shut behind him. Sarah took a step back. He leaned against the door and folded his arms. “And you’re going where, exactly?” Colder. Almost icy. Sarah wanted to shiver. “Home, now. I couldn’t find . . . my father. He’s a dockworker.” “Why were you looking for him?” She was definitely being interrogated now. “His dinner was ready.” “At four in the morning?” “He’s working nights.” “On the roof?” “I was looking everywhere.” “And what happened to your face?” Sarah reached up and touched her nose. It stung like she’d been slapped. Something flaky peeled off in her fingers, and she looked down to see what it was. It was then she noticed that the front of her light brown dress was stained a dirty red brown. Congealed blood had crumbled off on her fingers.
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“I . . . walked into something in the dark,” she tried to say, but the words were lost as she choked, then coughed and finally sniffed, wincing with the pain. The man laughed. It was a joyless thing, full of scorn. Sarah found a wellspring of anger and defiance deep inside. She stared into his eyes, a girl on the verge of a change, covered in dried blood, rust, mold, and rotting leaves. Be the duchess, darling, said her inner voice, her mother’s voice. You’re on stage; they are not. They are yours to command. They are ready to be convinced. So convince. “Yes, I got lost and walked into a broken piece of guttering. Shall I show you?” He had watery-blue eyes with dusky edges. Don’t blink, she told herself. “What’s your name, girl?” he asked more softly. The creases around his eyes seemed to smile. There was something odd about his accent. He was Bavarian, she thought, but odd words seemed different . . . “Sarah, Sarah Gold . . .” Think. “G . . . Elsengrund.” Dumme Schlampe. Sarah slumped against the sink. The man laughed again, this time not so hollow. “Oh, oh, oh, you were doing so well. You’ll have to do better than that, Sarah Goldberg, Goldstein, Goldschmitt— whatever you are.” Sarah began to wash her face, hoping it would hide the tears that pricked the corners of her eyes. The man came very close, then sat on the edge of the basin. He spoke quickly. “Wash your dress, wash it clean, it can stay wet if need be . . . and wipe
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your coat down. You’re from Elsengrund, right? Right?” Sarah nodded. “That’s good, stick with that . . . and use Ursula or something. Sarah—doesn’t get more Jewish than that. You have anywhere to go?” Sarah shook her head. She had been defeated, but now she was uncertain what was happening. “And no papers? That’s good. If they were stamped, they’re useless for Switzerland anyway. Ferry is your best bet. Littlegirl routine, like you’re meant to be there. Wait for dawn, but not here. That roof is as good as any.” He paused. “One more thing . . .” He caught her face and grabbed hold of her nose. Sarah managed to seize his wrists, but before she could do anything, he pulled. Sarah squealed despite herself. The pain was all-consuming. Then there was a loud crack and it was over. She staggered backward, too scared to touch her face. “Don’t touch it, it’s straight now . . . definitely less noticeable.” He wiped his hands on his trousers. “You didn’t know it was broken?” Sarah’s hands trembled in front of her. She inhaled through her nose: it was sore but clear. The voice in her head was silent. She looked up from the floor to see the man in the open doorway. “And trust no one. Good luck, Sarah of Elsengrund.” Then he was gone. Sarah watched her hands. It took a full minute before they were still.
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17
Dawn was cold and gray. After a clear night, dirty clouds had rolled in from the lake to turn the sunrise into a faded photograph. Sarah stood in the shadows, her damp dress wrapped around her legs like moldy curtains. It rubbed against the cuts on her knees and thighs until it was all she could think about. She let the irritation eat her up as it kept the voice in her head quiet. Right now she didn’t need it. The blood had washed out to leave an ugly stain on her dress, so she had buttoned up her dark coat to hide it. Around her neck was a piece of dark sacking that could be mistaken for a scarf. It smelled of stale milk, but it was dry. It was the only thing she was wearing that was. She had pulled her hair into some kind of order with her last hair clip and braided the rest at the back of her head, tied off with a piece of wire. She would look fine at a distance, but, as with a scarecrow, a close-up view would fool no one. Sarah hadn’t let herself sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw blood and chasing dogs. Conscious, she was able to control them, but when she drifted off, they ran her down and leapt at her. She woke barely able to breathe for sobbing. Awake she could keep her mind on the here and now. The ferry horn sounded. That was her cue. She stepped into the light and, ignoring the gnawing pain in her legs, began to skip down the road toward the harbor. She might be fifteen but she could pass for eleven, or younger if she acted the part. Sarah had always been small for her age, something that
18
Matt Killeen
years of poverty had made more pronounced, and this was a role she had played before—staying small, unobtrusive, childlike. The town was starting to make its way to work across the cobbles, staring at its own feet or making a swish-rattle bicycle noise as it passed. Tired and disgruntled and uninterested. Sarah kept the rhythm of her movement going, resisting the urge to break into a run. Instead she began to hum a tune she’d heard the Bund Deutscher Mädel, the League of German Girls, singing when they marched past her house. She felt the beat in her head, drawing strength from its bounce and thrilled by taking the song over for herself. “Uns’re Fahne something something, skip, skip, uns’re Fahne something Zeit! . . .” She struggled to remember the words. The banner something. She was nearly at the entrance. “Und die Fahne führt uns something something . . .” What was the next bit? Yes, yes . . . our banner . . . banner? “Our banner means more to us than death!” shouted the soldier as he loomed in front of her. Sarah shrieked as she bumped into his chest and stumbled backward, the smell of sweat and leather thick in her nose. He towered over her, a gray monster with brown straps. “I mean, what is your youth leader teaching you?” He shook his head, hands on his hips and rifle slung over a shoulder. He was young, maybe twenty, his brow furrowed with theatrical disapproval. Sarah made herself smile, pushing the corners of her mouth up until her cheeks hurt.
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“. . . more to us than death . . . than death!” she shouted back and giggled, almost hysterically. “Oh, she’s very good really. Sorry!” she called over her shoulder and waved hurriedly. She watched the soldier smile, shaking his head as he turned away. “Death. . . . death . . .” she breathed, trying to slow her pounding heart. She waited for strong hands to grab her shoulders, but nothing happened. They’re not looking for you, the voice said. Then why are they even here? Keep singing. Keep smiling. The voice changed the subject. You play the part all the way into the wings, on into the dressing room. You don’t stop until the final curtain. The ferry was drifting toward the dock, and beyond it was the blurry horizon. Above it Sarah could see the jagged shapes of the mountains across the lake, mountains that meant . . . freedom? Safety? She had only the vaguest notion of what she would do even if she got on board the ferry to Switzerland. Keep your mind on the show. Everything else—the party, the fame—those are for afterward, not now. The show is where you earn them. On the right, a line of passengers was forming. To the left a horse and cart had been parked, waiting for the boat to dock. Everywhere else, there were soldiers and police, checking, looking, talking, guarding, watching. Sarah slowed her pace. She would have to time this just right. The ferry stopped, lines were thrown to the dock, a few
20
Matt Killeen
passengers hopped off the ramp. Wait. The line began to shuffle on, the cart and horse trotted forward. Momentary chaos . . . Crying, my love, is an art. It’s about control. Not keeping it in— any fool can do that. Taking it inside and storing it until you need it, that’s the secret. No leaks, just a tap that goes on . . . and goes off. Crying? Take the horror and use it. Sarah recoiled. She had kept the image of her mother in the car at arm’s length, until now. No. Yes, the voice insisted. No, it hurts. That’s the point. Look back into the car. Sarah pleaded. Mutti, no . . . LOOK INTO THE CAR, DUMME SCHLAMPE. The blood. Yes, the voice whispered. So much blood . . . Tears streamed down Sarah’s face as the emptiness wrapped itself round her stomach. She threw up in her mouth but swallowed it down. Now. She ran along the waiting passengers, shouting, letting the rage and fear take over. “Vati! Vati! Daddy! Daaddee! Where are you! Vati!” The people in the line shuffled uncomfortably and looked at one an-
Orphan Monster Spy
21
other. Sarah accelerated toward the ramp. “Vati!” “Whoa, stop, Fräulein. Miss, please.” The sergeant took a step back, thought about raising his gun, and stopped, uncertain. Sarah skidded to a halt and raised her hands to her face. “Where’s Vati? He said he’d be here!” she wailed, and squeezed her eyes shut. “He must be here . . . Vati!” She looked up at the sergeant’s face, opened her stinging eyes, and snorted snot down her face over her open mouth. “He’s on board? Is he? . . . Just . . .” The sergeant looked around helplessly and his troopers looked back dumbly. He shouted to a policeman deep in conversation on the other side of the ramp. “Wachtmeister! Some help here!” “Vati!” howled Sarah. “Is he on board?” “Yeah, like I’m your slave, Scharführer,” the policeman called back. The sergeant turned back to Sarah. “Ticket? Who has your papers?” “Vati . . .” Keep going, keep crying, keep screaming. “But . . .” “Excuse me, can we get on board?” Polite voices getting agitated. “VATI!” “Just go, okay, go find your father . . .” The sergeant raised his arms and made a shooing motion to Sarah, who ran past him and climbed aboard, taking one look back to see the horse and cart block her view. She waited a moment and then ran for the
22
Matt Killeen
staircase to the top deck, wiping her nose and mouth with her coat sleeve. Good girl. I’m sorry. You’re not dumb. Ignoring the voice, she shoved the crash and her mother’s absence back down into the dark, regaining control. She went toward the bow and squeezed herself behind a life buoy, out of sight. She leaned out and looked back at the harbor with a feeling of extreme triumph. This was better than a gymnastics medal, better than a curtain call, better than getting home without being called names. Finally, after all this time of being endlessly starved, harassed, and attacked, the dirty Jewess Sarah was the Königin, the queen, the boss. The National Socialists, their marches, their window-breaking, and their vicious hate could go take a giant jump. She felt like screaming to the sky with the gulls and taking off after them. The sense of victory, of raw howling satisfaction, didn’t last long. When that thin seam of passion had been exhausted, Sarah felt oddly hollow, like chocolates raided, eaten, and then the empty box rewrapped. She looked at buildings, the twin spires of the church off to the west. She was looking at her country. Her country. She had been running scared so long, she’d forgotten what she was actually running from. She belonged here. She was not a stupid J stamped in a passport. She was German. They were making her leave her country, like they made her leave the house in
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23
Elsengrund and the apartment in Berlin, and when she and her mother fled to Austria, they made her leave there, too. The victory was now hollow and filled with bile, ringed by fears and doubt. She sniffed and spat over the rail. This drew a reproving glance from one of the passengers, but Sarah didn’t care. They couldn’t get her now. Could they? She looked back at the dock. The soldiers were busy, disorganized, distracted. Two of them had drifted to a corner for a smoke. The sergeant was arguing with the policeman. Nobody was in charge, like they didn’t know what they were looking for. Didn’t they know what they were looking for? A girl, an escaping Jew, a blonde Jew at that, whose mother had panicked and plowed through a roadblock, because everything she did was a disaster. Why hadn’t they caught her? Unless . . . they weren’t really looking for her in the first place? She watched the last few stragglers coming on board and a man running along the quay. He had a long black coat and a carpetbag trailing behind him. The sergeant moved to head him off, arm outstretched. The smokers finished their cigarettes and approached the ramp. The roadblock that her mother had driven into: it was unexpected. Everything else had gone according to plan. Was there a plan? They’d gotten to a border in a car they shouldn’t have had, but after that?
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Matt Killeen
Her mother might have described the plan in detail, but Sarah hadn’t been listening. She was angry at the National Socialists, even the other Jews for whatever they’d done to bring this on them all, but she reserved her deepest, seething, suppressed resentment for her mother, for her drinking, her failures, and her hopelessness. Worse still was the endless line of fantasy and optimistic delusion. Crashing the barriers and getting herself shot, that was typical. But if the roadblock hadn’t been for them, if they hadn’t been the target, what were these soldiers here for? Maybe there were checkpoints everywhere now . . . They wouldn’t let the man on board. Sarah leaned out for a clearer look. The policeman was now taking an interest. The man took off his hat and ran his fingers through his blond hair. The ferrymen began to untie the lines, impatiently coiling the wires and watching. The man now had soldiers on three sides. He retreated a step and gestured back into town. He tried to reclaim his papers, but the sergeant pulled them away. Sarah watched the shoulders of one of the onlooking soldiers, the coarse material of his uniform stretching as he shifted his gun into his right hand. Sarah looked out over the lake to the mountains. To safety, maybe. No visa, no friends, no money, no mother—Switzerland didn’t want Jewish refugees, so she’d have to be careful on the other side, but she had no choice . . . Then she looked back to the harbor. This man, she real-
Orphan Monster Spy
25
ized, was the reason for the roadblocks and soldiers. Hunted. She knew what it was to be hunted. The policeman circled behind the man and waited about ten meters back, blocking his retreat. The ferrymen started to shout at the soldiers. Late. The sergeant turned to them and shouted back, just as the man looked up toward the ferry. Sarah saw his watery-blue eyes and recognized him. He had the look of a cornered animal, so different from the face he had used the night before. A man without friends. Without a choice. The departure horn sounded above her. Sarah was at the top of the stairs before the sound finished. She slid down the banisters on either side on her hands and hit the deck running, her palms burning. The ramp was now up, so she took a half step and leapt over it. She saw the sliver of dirty water beneath her, and then it was gone. “Vati! Vati! Daaa-ddiee!” she screamed as she landed and charged into the group of soldiers. She saw the tiny flicker of recognition in those blue eyes and bounced into his arms. He staggered from the unexpected weight and then hefted her up to his hip with difficulty as she wrapped her legs around him. “Oh, Vati, Vati!” she cried. “Oh, Ursula. There you are. There, there. Safe now,” he muttered. He looked up at the soldiers. “Look, can I just . . .” “Vati! Home now!” wailed Sarah. “Look, can I just take my daughter home now?” He reached out for his papers. “Please? It’s been a horrible morning.”
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Matt Killeen
Sarah stared into the man’s shoulder and told herself not to look up. Expensive soap. No cologne. The ferry horn sounded again. “Bring the right papers when you’re going anywhere. Wastes everybody’s bloody time. Even when you’re looking for your snotty children, which, by the way, you forgot to mention.” “Thank you, thank you. Sorry.” The man took the papers and turned. “And remember your ticket, you cheap git,” one of the soldiers spat. The others laughed. “Of course, thank you. Excuse me.” He walked away. “And where were you, young lady? I said wait at the train station.” “Sorry, Vati.” He walked on in silence until they passed the harbor entrance and were halfway up the hill. “That was incredibly stupid.” He exhaled. “A simple thank-you will do,” Sarah murmured.
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G . P. P U T N A M ’S SONS an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 375 Hudson Street New York, NY 10014
Copyright © 2018 by Dana Mele. Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader. G. P. Putnam’s Sons is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Mele, Dana, author. Title: People like us / Dana Mele. Description: New York, NY : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2018] Summary: “When a girl is found dead at her elite boarding school, soccer star Kay Donovan follows a scavenger hunt which implicates suspects increasingly close to her, unraveling her group of popular friends and perfectly constructed life”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2017028973 (print) | LCCN 2017040563 (ebook) | ISBN 9781524741761 (Ebook) | ISBN 9781524741709 (hardcover) Subjects: | CYAC: Mystery and detective stories. | Murder—Fiction. | Boarding schools— Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Secrets—Fiction. | Treasure hunt (Game)—Fiction. Classification: LCC PZ7.1.M4692 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.M4692 Peo 2018 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017028973 Printed in the United States of America. ISBN 9781524741709 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Design by Jaclyn Reyes. Text set in Bodoni LT Pro. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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1. 2. 3. 4.
1
b
5. 6. 7. 8.
eneath the silvery moonlight, our skin gleams like
9.
bones. Skinny-dipping in the frigid waters of North
10.
Lake after the Halloween dance is a Bates Academy tradition,
11.
though not many students have the guts to honor it. Three years
12.
ago, I was the first freshman to not only jump, but stay under so
13.
long they thought I’d drowned. I didn’t mean to.
14.
I jumped because I could, because I was bored, because
15.
one of the seniors had made fun of my pathetic dollar-store cos-
16.
tume and I wanted to prove I was better than her. I kicked down
17.
to the bottom, pushing past clumps of moss and silky strands
18.
of pondweed. And I stayed there, sunk my fingers into the soft,
19.
crumbling silt until my lungs twisted and convulsed, because
20.
even though the freezing water cut like knives, it was sound-
21.
less. It was peaceful. It was like being encased safely in a thick
22.
block of ice, protected from the world. I might have stayed if I
23.
could. But my body didn’t allow it. I broke the surface and the
24.
25. (
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upperclasswomen screamed my name and passed me a bottle of flat champagne, and we scattered as campus police broke up the scene. That was my official “arrival” at Bates. It was my first time away from home, and I was no one. I was determined to redesign myself completely into a Bates girl, and as soon as I took that dive, I knew exactly what kind of girl I would be. The kind who jumps first and stays under ten seconds too long. Now we’re the seniors and no first-years have dared to tag along. My best friend, Brie Matthews, runs ahead, her sleek trackstar body cutting through the night air. Normally, we would strip under the thorny bushes that line the lake next to the Henderson dorms. It’s our traditional meeting spot after we pregame in one of our rooms and stumble across the green together, still in costume. But Brie received an early-recruitment offer from Stanford tonight and she is on fire. She ordered us to meet her at ten to midnight, giving us just enough time between the dance and the dive to ditch valuables, load up on refreshments, and deal with significant-other drama. Then she met us at the edge of the green wearing only a bathrobe and an exhilarated grin, her cheeks flushed and breath hot and sweet with hard cider. She dropped the robe and said, “Dare you.” Tai Carter runs just ahead of me, her hands pressed over her mouth to cram her laughter in. She is still wearing a pair of -2-
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angel wings and they flutter with her long silvery hair twisting
1.
in the wind. The rest of our group trails behind. Tricia Parck
2.
trips over a tree root, nearly causing a pileup. Cori Gates stops
3.
running and falls to the ground, cracking up. I slow, grinning,
4.
but the air is freezing, and my skin is covered in goose bumps.
5.
I still get a thrill from the icy plunge, but my favorite part now
6.
is snuggling together with Brie under a mountain of blankets
7.
and giggling about it afterward.
8.
I am about to make the final sprint across the patch of
9.
dead moss stretching from Henderson’s emergency exit to the
10.
edge of the lake when I hear Brie scream. Tai halts and I push
11.
past her toward the sound of frenetic splashing. Brie’s frantic
12.
voice escalates in pitch, repeating my name over and over,
13.
faster and faster. I tear through the bushes, thorns etching
14.
white and red stripes in my skin, grab her hands, and haul
15.
her up out of the lake.
16.
“Kay,” she breathes into my neck, her dripping body shiv-
17.
ering violently, teeth clicking and chattering. My heart batters
18.
my rib cage as I look her over for blood or cuts. Her thick black
19.
hair lies damply over her skull; her smooth brown skin, unlike
20.
mine, is unbroken.
21.
Then Tai grabs my hand so hard, my fingertips go numb.
22.
Her face, usually caught between a genuine grin and mocking
23.
smirk, is arranged in a strange blank stare. I turn and an odd
24.
25. ( -3-
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sensation creeps over me, like my skin is turning to stone one cell at a time. There’s a body in the lake. “Go get our clothes,” I whisper. Someone scampers away behind us, kicking up a flurry of dry leaves. Fragments of moonlight lie like shattered glass over the surface of the water. At the edge, tangles of roots reach down into the shallows. The body floats not far from where we’re standing, a girl with a pale, upturned face under about an inch of water. Her eyes are open, her lips white and parted, her expression almost dazed, except that it isn’t anything. An elaborate white ball gown blooms around her like petals. Her arms are bare and there are long cuts up and down her wrists. I grab my own halfconsciously, and then flinch as I feel a hand on my shoulder. Maddy Farrell, the youngest of our group, hands me my dress. I nod stiffly and pull the loose black shift over my head. I am Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby, but my dress was repurposed from the costume Brie wore last year and it’s a size too large. Now I wish I’d chosen to dress as an astronaut. Not only is it freezing out, but I feel stripped and vulnerable in the gauzy fabric. “What should we do?” Maddy asks, looking at me. But I can’t tear my gaze away from the lake to answer her. “Call Dr. Klein,” Brie says. “She’ll contact the parents.” -4-
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I force myself to look at Maddy. Her wide-set eyes are
1.
glossy with tears, and dark, uneven streaks run down her
2.
face. I smooth her soft golden hair reassuringly but keep
3.
my own expression even. My chest feels like bursting and a
4.
siren is blaring somewhere deep in my mind, but I silence
5.
it with imagery. A room of ice, soundless, safe. No crying. A
6.
teardrop can be the snowflake that starts an avalanche.
7.
“The school comes first. Then the cops,” I say. No point in
8.
someone seeing on their newsfeed that their kid is dead before
9.
they get the phone call. That was how my dad learned about my
10.
brother. It was trending.
11.
Maddy takes out her phone and dials the headmistress’s
12.
number while the rest of us huddle in the darkness, staring
13.
at the dead girl’s body. With her open eyes and lips parted as
14.
if mid-sentence, she looks so close to being alive. Close, but
15.
not quite. It’s not the first dead body I’ve ever seen, but it’s
16.
the first one that’s almost seemed to look right back at me.
17.
“Does anyone know her?” I finally ask.
18.
No one answers. Unbelievable. The six of us, separately,
19.
probably hold more social capital than the rest of the student
20.
body combined. We must know nearly every single student
21.
between us.
22.
But only students are allowed at the Skeleton Dance.
23.
At other dances, we are permitted to bring guys and other
24.
25. ( -5-
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off-campus dates. The girl in the lake is our age and elaborately dressed and made-up. She has a familiar face, but not one I can place. Especially not like this. I lean over, clutching my arms to try to keep from shivering too hard, to get another look at her wrists. It’s a grisly sight, but I find what I’m looking for: a thin, glowing neon tube. “She’s wearing the wristband. She was at the dance. She’s one of us.” I shudder at the words as they leave my lips. Tricia studies the ripples in the lake without raising her eyes quite high enough to look at the body again. “I’ve seen her around. She’s a student.” She twists her silky black hair absently and then lets it fall over her perfect replica of Emma Watson’s Beauty and the Beast ball gown. “Not anymore,” Tai says. “Not funny.” Brie glares at her, but someone had to break the tension sooner or later. It knocks me back into myself again a little. I close my eyes and picture the ice walls doubling, tripling in thickness, until there’s no room for sirens in my mind, no room for my heart to thump chaotically off rhythm. Then I stand up straighter and eye Maddy’s costume, Little Red Riding Hood with a scandalously short dress and a warmlooking cape. “Can I borrow your cape?” I hold out one finger, and she slips the warm shrug off her pale, bony shoulders and hands -6-
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it to me. I only feel a little bad. It’s cold and I’m a year older.
1.
She’ll get her turn.
2.
A wailing sound fills the air and a swirl of red-and-blue lights hurtle toward us from across the campus.
3. 4.
“That was fast,” I murmur.
5.
“I guess Klein decided to notify the cops herself,” Brie says.
6.
Cori emerges from the darkness clutching a bottle of
7.
champagne, her catlike green eyes seeming to glow in the dim
8.
light. “I could have called Klein. But nobody asked.” Cori
9.
never misses an opportunity to mention her family’s connection
10.
to the headmistress.
11.
Maddy hugs herself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”
12.
“Typical Notorious,” Tai says, shaking her head. Maddy
13.
glares at her.
14.
“It doesn’t matter. She’ll be here soon.” Brie wraps an
15.
arm around Maddy. The bathrobe looks thick and soft, and
16.
Maddy nuzzles her cheek to it. I narrow my eyes and toss
17.
the cape back to her, but overshoot, and it lands in the lake.
18.
Tai stabs the waterlogged mass with a stick and fishes it
19.
out, dumping it at my feet. “I remember her. Julia. Jennifer.
20.
Gina?”
21.
“Jemima? Jupiter?” I snap at her, wringing the cape out as well as I can.
22. 23.
“We don’t know her name, and no one recognized her at all
24.
25. ( -7-
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at first,” Brie says. “It would be misleading to tell the police we knew her.” “I can’t look at her face. Sorry. I can’t. So . . .” Maddy pulls her arms inside her dress, making her look like a creepy armless doll with her chalk-white skin and smudged dark eye makeup. “We should lie?” Brie looks to me for help. “I think Brie means we should simplify by saying we didn’t recognize her and leave it at that.” Brie squeezes my hand. Campus police arrive first, braking in front of Henderson and thundering out of the car toward us. I’ve never seen them move like that and it’s scary in a sort of pathetic way. It’s not like they’re real cops. Their sole job is to drive us around and break up parties. “Stand aside, ladies.” Jenny Biggs, a young officer who often escorts us across campus after hours and turns a blind eye to our private soirees, ushers us out of the way. Her partner, a hulk of a male officer, barrels past us and wades into the water. A bitter taste forms under my tongue, and I dig my fingernails into my palms. There’s no real reason for it, but I feel protective of the body. I don’t want his hairy-ass hands touching her. “I think you’re not supposed to disturb a crime scene,” -8-
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I whisper to Jenny, hoping she’ll intervene. She’s been really
1.
nice to us over the years, joking and bending rules almost like
2.
an older sister.
3.
She looks at me sharply, but before she can say anything,
4.
the real cops arrive along with an ambulance. The EMTs make
5.
it to the lake before the cops, and one of them dives into the
6.
water after Jenny’s partner.
7.
“Do not approach the victim,” barks one of the officers,
8.
a tall woman with a strong Boston accent, jogging toward the
9.
lake’s edge.
10.
The campus police officer, now waist deep in the water, turns and crashes into the EMT.
11. 12.
“It’s like the incompetence Olympics,” Tai murmurs.
13.
Another officer, a short Tony Soprano look-alike, nods
14.
dismissively to Jenny like she’s a servant. “Get this guy out of
15.
here,” he says.
16.
Jenny looks a little miffed, but she waves to her partner,
17.
who reluctantly takes the EMT by the arm. They escort him up
18.
the bank, shooting daggers at the townie cops.
19.
The woman officer, the one who called off the rescue mis-
20.
sion, looks at us suddenly. She has a sharp chin, beady eyes,
21.
and over-plucked eyebrows that make her look sort of like a
22.
half-drawn Intro-to-Art exercise. “You’re the girls who found
23.
the body.”
24.
25. ( -9-
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She doesn’t wait for a response. She leads us over to the water’s edge as more officers arrive to rope off the area. Brie and I exchange questioning glances and I try to catch Jenny’s eye, but she’s busy securing the scene. Students are beginning to filter out of the dorms. Even housemothers— the adults in charge of each dorm—have drifted out and to the edges of the newly erected safety barriers and lines of police tape. The tall cop flashes a tight-lipped smile. “I’m Detective Bernadette Morgan. Which one of you girls made that phone call?” Maddy raises her hand. Detective Morgan whips a cell phone out of her pocket and shows the video screen to us. “I’ve got a terrible memory, girls, do you mind if I record this?” “Sure,” Maddy says, then darts her eyes to me with an apologetic expression. Detective Morgan seems to note this with interest and flashes me a crooked smile before turning back to Maddy. “You don’t need your friend’s permission.” Tai glances down at the cell phone. “Oh my God, is that an iPhone 4? I didn’t know they still made those. Or that it was legal to record minors making statements on them.” The detective’s smile brightens. “Witness statements. Do I have your permission, or shall we go to the station and call your parents in?” - 10 -
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“Go for it,” Tai says, hugging herself and shivering.
1.
The others nod, but I hesitate for just a nanosecond. Jenny
2.
is one thing, but I don’t have much faith in cops otherwise.
3.
I spent half of eighth grade talking to various police officers
4.
and it was a hellish experience. On the other hand, I would go
5.
to extraordinary lengths to avoid involving my parents.
6.
“Fine,” I say.
7.
Detective Morgan laughs. The sound is nasal and abrasive.
8.
“Are you sure?”
9.
The cold is beginning to wear on me and I can’t help im-
10.
patience and annoyance from saturating my voice. “Yeah. Go
11.
ahead, Maddy.”
12.
But Bernadette’s not finished with me. She points to
13.
Maddy’s soaked, balled-up cape in my hands. “Did you remove
14.
that from the water?”
15.
“Yes. But it wasn’t there when we got here.”
16.
“How did it get there?”
17.
I feel my face growing warm despite the cold of the night.
18.
“I threw it in.”
19.
The detective sucks her cheek into her mouth and nods. “As one does. I’ll need to take it.”
20. 21.
Shit. This is how it starts. Little things like that. I extend
22.
the cape to her, but she calls over her shoulder and a short man
23.
wearing blue nitrite gloves appears and places it in a plastic bag.
24.
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She turns back to Maddy. “From the beginning.” “We came out here to go swimming. Brie ran ahead. I heard her scream and—” “Who’s Brie?” Detective Morgan points the cell phone camera at us one by one. Brie raises her hand. “—and we found a body floating in the water next to her. Then Kay told me to call Dr. Klein before the police,” Maddy finishes. “No I didn’t.” My voice comes out hard and shivery. “Brie did.” Detective Morgan turns to me and runs the camera over me slowly from head to foot, scanning carefully over my scratchedup skin. “You’re Kay,” she says, with an odd smile. “Yes. But actually, Brie said to call Dr. Klein.” “Why does it matter?” That catches me off guard. “Doesn’t it?” “You tell me.” I press my lips together tightly. I know from experience how police can take statements and then twist the words into something you didn’t mean to say. “Sorry. Are we in trouble?” “Did any of you recognize the body?” I glance around at the others, but no one jumps in. Maddy is stiffly rocking from side to side, her arms still folded up inside her dress. Cori is watching the police down at the edge - 12 -
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of the lake with an odd expression of fascination. Tricia’s eyes
1.
are downcast and her bare shoulders are trembling. Tai just
2.
watches me blankly, and Brie nods for me to continue.
3.
“No. Are we in trouble?”
4.
“I hope not.” Detective Morgan makes a signal over our
5.
heads to another officer, and I glance at Brie. She actually looks
6.
worried and I wonder if I should be. She makes a lock-and-
7.
key gesture over her lips and I nod very slightly and raise my
8.
eyebrows at the others. Tai nods evenly and Tricia and Cori link
9.
pinkie fingers, but Maddy looks seriously spooked.
10.
Just then, I see Dr. Klein cutting a path through the
11.
crowd, a short but formidable woman, somehow impeccably
12.
dressed and composed even at this hour and under these
13.
circumstances. She brushes aside a police officer with a tiny
14.
wave of her hand and marches straight up to us.
15.
“Not another word,” she says, laying one hand on my
16.
shoulder and one on Cori’s. “These girls are in my care. In
17.
their parents’ absentia, I am their guardian. You may not
18.
question them outside of my presence. Is that understood?”
19.
Detective Morgan opens her mouth to protest, but it’s no
20.
use arguing when Dr. Klein has gone full headmistress.
21.
“These students have just witnessed a horrific event and
22.
Ms. Matthews is soaking wet and at risk of hypothermia. Unless
23.
you’re going to question them indoors, you will simply have to
24.
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come back another time. I’ll be happy to accommodate your schedule during school hours.” Detective Morgan smiles, again without showing teeth. “Fair enough. You girls have been through a lot. You go get a good night’s sleep, huh? Don’t let a tiny little tragedy ruin a great party.” She starts to walk away and then turns back to us. “I’ll be in touch.” Dr. Klein ushers us back toward the dorms and darts over to the water’s edge. I turn to Brie. “That was a bitchy thing to say.” “Yeah,” Brie says, looking troubled. “It almost sounded like a threat.”
- 14 -
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1. 2. 3. 4.
2
b
5. 6. 7. 8.
y the next morning, the news has infected the entire
9.
school. My dorm is on the other side of campus and I
10.
still wake up to the sounds of sirens outside and muffled sobbing
11.
from above. I open my eyes to see Brie perched at the edge of
12.
my bed, her face pressed to the window. She’s already showered
13.
and dressed and is sipping coffee from my I ♥ Bates Soccer Girls
14.
mug.
15.
Looking at it sends a jolt of energy down my spine. We have
16.
a crucial game on Monday and I’ve scheduled a long practice
17.
this morning to prepare. I jump out of bed, pull my thick, wavy
18.
ginger hair into a tight ponytail, and throw on a pair of leggings.
19.
“Jessica Lane,” Brie says.
20.
A glacial frost laces over my skin, and my shoulders twitch.
21.
“What?”
22.
“The girl in the lake.”
23.
“Never heard of her.” I wish Brie hadn’t told me her name.
24.
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It was nearly impossible to get her still, placid face out of my head last night as I lay awake next to Brie in my narrow dorm bed, and now I need to focus. I want to scrub every particle of last night from my mind. For three years I have been solid, and I will not crack and shatter over this. One snowflake. “I did. She was in my trig class.” I get a rotten, gnawing feeling in my stomach. “Maybe it wasn’t the greatest idea telling the police we didn’t know her.” “Don’t overthink it.” She sits next to me and winds one of my curls around her finger. “I mean, I barely, barely know who she was. We couldn’t tell the cops everything. They’d zero in on that and completely ruin our lives.” Brie has her own, very different reasons for being wary of law enforcement. For one thing, her parents are top criminal defense attorneys, and she’s heading in that direction. She probably knows more about criminal law than most first-year law students. Everything you say can and will be used against you. Since winning debateclub regionals last year, she has made a mantra of the quote “Dance like no one is watching; email like it may one day be read aloud in a deposition.” For another, Brie has experienced racial profiling firsthand. Never at Bates, she said. But even I’ve noticed how different things are off campus. Once, when an off-campus party was broken up, a cop walked right past me, a minor holding an open bottle of beer, and asked Brie to take - 16 -
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a Breathalyzer. She had a can of soda in her hand. They still
1.
made her do it.
2.
I sigh. “And you can’t tell Maddy anything unless you want
3.
the entire school to know.”
4.
“That’s not fair.”
5.
Fair is beside the point. Last year, Maddy accidentally
6.
released the names of the new soccer team recruits online before
7.
we could “kidnap” them from their rooms in the traditional initia-
8.
tion ceremony. That tradition cements us as a team, and besides
9.
that, it’s fun. When you take the fear out of initiation night, you
10.
take the exhilaration out of the moment you learn you have been
11.
chosen. You are good enough. But no. Maddy leaked the names I
12.
emailed her for the website and I learned Brie’s mantra the hard
13.
way. Email like it may one day be read aloud in a deposition. Or
14.
posted in a school-wide community forum.
15.
Maybe we’re not completely fair to Maddy. A few weeks ago,
16.
Tai started this new “Notorious” nickname that I honestly don’t
17.
get, but I’m not going to be the only person to admit it. Even Brie
18.
has been a little standoffish about Maddy lately, and I haven’t
19.
been able to pin down exactly why. She isn’t as witty as Tai or as
20.
studious as Brie, but she has a reputation among our group as be-
21.
ing sort of the stupid one, while she’s actually fairly brilliant. She
22.
has the second-highest GPA in the junior class, is field hockey
23.
captain, and she designs websites for all of the athletic teams.
24.
25. ( - 17 -
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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.
25. (
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She puts her arm around my shoulder, drawing me into her warmth. “I know, sweetie. It’s not over. It’s just on hold.” I drop my keys on the floor and bury my forehead in Brie’s shoulder, my eyes stinging. “I’m not allowed to be upset, am I?” “You’re supposed to be upset. You just haven’t fully processed what you’re actually upset about. Last night was traumatic.” “You wouldn’t get it.” I pull away from her and press my knuckles into my eye sockets. “I can’t go home. Even if you weren’t already signed, you have absolutely nothing at stake.” “That’s not fair, or true.” I study her earnest mahogany eyes and perpetually furrowed brow. Her soft, cloudlike hair frames her face almost like a halo. She’s always so neat and together. She doesn’t belong in my nuclear mess of a room, or my life. She has brains, looks, money, and a perfect family. “You wouldn’t get it,” I whisper again. “It’s going to be open and shut,” Brie says firmly, rising and gazing out the window again. “Clearly a suicide.” “What exactly are they investigating, then?” “Whether there was foul play, I guess.” “Murder?” “That’s generally what they look into when someone dies a violent death.” The words echo in my brain. It was a violent death. She - 20 -
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looked so calm, so serene, but death is sharp and severe. It is
1.
violent by definition. “Here?”
2.
“There are killers everywhere, Kay. In nursing homes and
3.
emergency rooms. Police stations. Everywhere you’re supposed
4.
to be safe. Why not a boarding school?”
5.
“Because we’ve been here four years and we know everyone.”
6. 7.
Brie shakes her head. “Killers are people. They eat the
8.
same food and breathe the same air. They don’t announce their
9.
presence.”
10.
“Maybe they do if you’re listening.”
11.
Brie weaves her fingers through mine. My hands are always
12.
cold; hers are always warm. “It was a suicide. In a couple of
13.
days, athletics will be running again. You’ll be recruited. No
14.
question.”
15.
The way the word suicide keeps rolling off her tongue with
16.
such ease is jarring. There’s poison in it, eroding parts of me
17.
barely stitched together that I don’t want Brie to see. “Now
18.
they’re going to blanket bomb us with assemblies on warning
19.
signs and how not to kill ourselves and shit. Because that’s so
20.
helpful after the fact.” Which I guess it is to a point, when you
21.
consider Bates’s history. It’s better than nothing. But it does
22.
fuck all for the person who’s gone and everyone who cared
23.
about them.
24.
25. ( - 21 -
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Brie hesitates. “Well, before the fact, we should definitely be nicer to people. You should think about that.” I gaze into her eyes and look for my shadow self somewhere in the depths. Maybe there is a better version of me somewhere out there, and if it exists, it is in Brie’s mind. “Nice is subjective.” “Spoken like a true Bates girl. We are such a self-involved species. How into yourself do you have to be to not notice someone who’s about to implode?” For just a split second, I think she’s talking about me. But she isn’t. She’s talking about Jessica. I breathe again. “You’re not running for president yet. It’s not your job to be everyone’s best friend. Just mine.” I grab her into a big bear hug and tackle her. She sighs and nestles her forehead into the nape of my neck. I allow one moment of serenity, breathing the scent of her hair, one moment in the alternate universe where I’m a good person and Brie and I are together. Then I force myself to sit up. “Did you try to call Justine?” She pulls her cell phone out of her pocket, dialing as she speaks. “She isn’t picking up. She sleeps late on Saturdays.” Justine is Brie’s girlfriend. Brie and I never date Bates students as a rule, so we mostly end up with students from Easterly, the local public high school. I recently split with my Easterly Ex, - 22 -
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the eminently unfaithful Spencer Morrow. Tai had come up with
1.
that moniker while passionately disavowing him after we heard
2.
that he’d cheated, and for some reason it had cracked me up and
3.
become his nickname. I hear a faint, gravelly morning voice on
4.
the other side of the line, and Brie’s face brightens. She pushes
5.
me off her and the room suddenly feels colder and emptier as
6.
she scrambles up, grabbing her coffee and darting into the hall.
7.
I wish Justine would sleep later on Saturdays. I wish she would
8.
sleep all weekend. I pick my way over to the window, careful not
9.
to trip on the land mine of clothes and textbooks and practice
10.
equipment. Laundry day isn’t until tomorrow.
11.
Outside, people swarm like it’s moving-in day, but it’s not
12.
just students and their families. A row of news vans lines the
13.
curb, beside which a handful of women holding clipboards pace
14.
anxiously and bark orders at tall guys with Steadicams strapped
15.
around their torsos. There are dozens of people wearing matching
16.
bright-blue T-shirts with a logo that looks like a cross between
17.
an infinity symbol and two linked hearts. Throngs of disheveled,
18.
homeless-looking townies mill around, bleary eyed, some of them
19.
crying. It’s total chaos. It looks like the T-shirt people have set up
20.
a table and are providing coffee and bagels. Maybe I should head
21.
down to them instead of to the dining hall. It will be impossible
22.
to get to it in this mess, anyway.
23.
I take the stairs two by two, hoping not to run into Jessica’s
24.
25. ( - 23 -
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family, who I assume are here to clear out her room. At the front door I find Jenny standing guard and I flash her a smile. “Get any sleep?” I ask. She shakes her head. “Be safe, Kay.” “You want a coffee or anything?” She smiles weakly. “That’d be great.” I hop over to the table where the people wearing the blue shirts are pouring coffees and handing out bagels and I grab two empty cups. I’m about to fill them when a guy standing behind the table yanks the cups out of my hand. I stare at him in shock. I know his face, but not his name. He’s a student from Easterly, like Spencer and Justine, and a regular at their cast parties. Since Justine stars in most of their theater productions, I’ve seen him around quite a bit, but never onstage. He’s probably a techie. Sleeve tattoos cover his bare, muscular arms from wrist to elbow. His lower lip is pierced and his wavy dark hair tumbles over his eyes like he’s just rolled out of bed. In skintight jeans and a torn-up black sweater, he looks like a washed-up rock star, complete with coke-chic sniffle and bloodshot eyes. Then I notice the balled-up tissue in his hand and wonder if he’s not so much doing lines bright and early on a Saturday morning as he is crying. My momentary sympathy dissolves the moment he opens his mouth. - 24 -
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“Bye-bye, now.”
1.
“I’m sorry, was I supposed to pay for those?”
2.
He just glares. This guy’s antisocial, a complete weirdo, even
3.
if he would be kind of hot without the tortured-artist vibe and
4.
holier-than-thou attitude. “They aren’t for you,” he finally says.
5.
I look around, confused. “Who exactly are they for?”
6.
He gestures wordlessly to the crowd.
7.
“What?”
8.
He sighs and his dark eyes narrow. He leans in close to
9.
me and whispers, looking embarrassed. “We’re here for Jessica’s
10.
people. The homeless.”
11.
“Oh.” I straighten up. “I thought this was because of the crowd.”
12. 13.
“That is the crowd,” he says.
14.
I look around again, and realize he’s right. The people filling
15.
the parking lot don’t just look homeless, they are homeless. Most
16.
of the people here are probably from shelters. I look back to
17.
sleeve-tattoo guy. “Why?”
18.
“They’re mourning a lost friend. Unlike some people.” He flicks his hands. “Back to your lair.”
19. 20.
I eye the coffee cups he took from me and then glance back at Jenny. “Could I just have one of those?”
21. 22.
He looks at me with contempt. “No. You can’t. Go to Starbucks.”
23. 24.
25. ( - 25 -
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“Starbucks is a five-mile walk. And it’s not for me.” I point to Jenny. “That’s Officer Jenny Biggs. She was on duty when the body was found. She hasn’t slept since then. Can you imagine being up that long after finding a girl dead, a girl you’d sworn to protect?” He sighs and pours a coffee, then hands it to me. “Fine. If I see you drinking that, I’ll blacklist you.” I roll my eyes. “From your shelter?” “Luck flips hard, Kay Donovan.” “Okay, Hank.” He looks confused. “My name is Greg.” I wink. “Now I know. And pull your sleeves down, it’s freezing.” I weave through the crowd and hand the coffee to Jenny, who knocks it back like a shot. “I hope they figure this one out fast, kiddo.” She flashes me an encouraging smile but doesn’t look me in the eye, which is a little unsettling. I notice her tapping her phone against her thigh and wonder if she got news while I was talking to Greg. “Is that likely?” I ask, knowing she won’t answer. She shrugs and gestures to the dorm. “Thanks for the coffee.” I head back to my room, wolf down a couple of energy bars and a Vitaminwater, then open up my laptop to google the news story. I learn that Jessica’s family is local, and she started a nonprofit that helps the homeless find jobs and gives them basic computer training through an online learning program she - 26 -
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designed herself. Pretty impressive for a high school student,
1.
even at Bates. Other than that, there isn’t much. The news stories
2.
report that she was found in the lake shortly after midnight, cause
3.
of death undetermined. I read several more articles. No mention
4.
of her wrists.
5.
None of the articles say foul play is suspected, but one says
6.
that her death is under investigation. I glance at the remaining
7.
match dates circled on my calendar. The clock is ticking. Each
8.
one of those dates is a desperately important deadline, and there
9.
is no reason to believe an investigation is going to be wrapped up
10.
in time for our games to resume so I can be scouted. My parents
11.
are going to flip.
12.
As if on cue, my phone buzzes and I glance down at it. It’s my father. I hesitate, but pick up.
13. 14.
“Hey, Dad.”
15.
“How was practice, buddy?”
16.
“I had to cancel.”
17.
“Why?”
18.
“Someone died. A student.”
19.
“Oh, buddy. One of your teammates?”
20.
“No, someone else.” I sit on the bed and draw my knees up
21.
to my chest. I usually check in with my parents on Sunday and
22.
it makes me a little nervous that he’s calling off schedule. As if
23.
he’s going to drop a bomb about something.
24.
25. ( - 27 -
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“Hmm.” “Is everything okay?” “Maybe you should just stick to the routine. Keep up that stiff upper lip. You know, for the sake of the younger girls. To set an example.” It suddenly occurs to me that he probably read about Jessica’s death already and that’s exactly why he’s calling. “It wasn’t up to me, Dad. The school suspended athletic activities while the death is being investigated.” “What?” I hear my mother’s voice in the background. Great. I should have known she was listening in. You can’t mention death around my mother. I dig my fingernails into the back of my neck to punish myself for making that mistake. “Ask her about Monday.” I hear her take the phone. “What about Monday’s game?” I curl into a ball and squeeze my eyes shut. “It’s canceled. There is absolutely nothing I can do about it. I am no happier than you are. Believe me.” I hear my father curse in the background. “That is unacceptable,” my mother says. “Have you talked to Dr. Klein?” “No, Mom. I did not reach out to the headmistress. I can’t just call her and demand change. She’s not Congress.” “You didn’t even try? Do you want me to try? This is not the time - 28 -
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to just sit back and hope for the best. We need to follow the plan.”
1.
“Someone did just die,” I say quietly. But deliberately.
2.
Because I need this call to end.
3.
She starts to say something but the words melt into a low sigh.
4.
I bite my lower lip. There’s a long silence. Then my mother
5.
speaks again, her voice unsteady. “Is there anything else you
6.
want to talk about, sweetie?”
7.
“No,” I say, holding my breath until it feels like my face is going to explode.
8. 9.
“Let’s talk again soon,” she says.
10.
My father gets back on the phone. “Time to brainstorm,
11.
buddy. Make phone calls, write letters. Whatever it takes to get
12.
your offers locked in. You’ve worked too hard to let it all slip
13.
away. You ride this out like everything else. Right?”
14.
“Right.”
15.
I hang up and let the breath out finally in an enormous
16.
whoosh, then punch my mattress and hug my pillow tightly to my
17.
chest. I wish Spencer wasn’t eminently unfaithful. I wish Justine
18.
hadn’t finally woken up so I could call Brie and vent. I wish my
19.
parents would just shut up and listen for once. None of that is
20.
going to go down the way I want it to. I can’t play on Monday. I
21.
have no control over that. Damn you, Jessica Lane.
22.
Then I sit up and force myself to take a deep, calming breath.
23.
I know the manner of death, I saw the body, and I know the family
24.
25. ( - 29 -
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and her business are local. Cut wrists, high-pressure school. If the police can’t open and shut a suicide case, it’s because they’re spread too thin. But I’m not. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve stood there helpless while it swirled around me, too slow to stop the moving pieces until everyone was in ruin. My best friend and my brother dead, my father devastated, my mother prepared to throw her life away, too. And me, encased in ice. I close my fingers over my phone and turn it to silent, my mother’s voice echoing in my head. I can fix this. I can. Before the next game is canceled. A ping alerts me to a new email, and I glance over at my computer screen. The subject line reads “Athletic Scholarship Update.” My heart begins to race and I pull my laptop over and open the message. Dear Kay, I regret to inform you that certain unsavory activities in your past have come to my attention and your eligibility for winning an athletic scholarship is at risk. I myself will be unable to attend college, so you have my sincerest sympathy. Therefore, if you agree to help me complete my final project, I may be able to overlook your transgressions. Click on the link at the bottom of this email and follow my instructions. When you have completed each task, a name will - 30 -
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disappear from the class roster. If you fail to complete any
1.
task within 24 hours, a link to the website along with proof of
2.
your crime will be sent to your parents, the police, and every
3.
student at Bates Academy.
4. 5.
If you succeed, no one will ever find out what you did.
6. Most cordially yours,
7.
Jessica Lane
8.
P.S. At the risk of sounding cliché, talking to the police would
9.
not go well for you, Kay. It never has, has it?
10. 11.
The email was sent from Jessica’s Bates account. For
12.
a moment the thought that she’s still alive runs through
13.
my mind and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe
14.
it’s all been one massive, surreal mistake. Of course, that
15.
would also mean we left a bleeding victim alone in a lake.
16.
It would be a miracle, but we’d probably be guilty of at-
17.
tempted homicide or something. Oh God, I am dead meat.
18.
Then I talk myself down. I know, without a doubt, that she
19.
is dead.
20.
It’s possible that someone else sent the email from her
21.
account. But the idea is so twisted, I can’t even entertain
22.
it. She must have written the message before she died and
23.
timed it to be sent now. The wording makes it look like she
24.
25. ( - 31 -
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knew she was going to die. Her final project. Not attending college. Or maybe I’m reading into it. Finals are looming and there are tons of reasons people don’t go to college. This email might convince the cops that she wasn’t murdered after all. I could take it to the police and possibly end the investigation right now. But the postscript sends a chill down my spine. There is a link at the bottom of the page that says jessicalanefinalproject.com. I click on it. The screen goes blank for a long moment and then an image of a rustic country kitchen with a cast-iron stove appears. Letters slowly fog up on the glass window of the stove until the name of the site is crystal clear: Revenge Is a Dish: A Delicious Guide to Taking Down Your Enemies.
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