On the ledge, there’s an envelope. I almost don’t want to touch it. How long has the person I’ve been texting been coming here? Has he or she been watching us? Two hours ago, he/she texted me saying they could prove they were friends with Jen. Somehow they made it here between sending me that text and before I got home from Rachel’s without my mother noticing a car pulling up outside the house and getting suspicious.
Petey’s soccer game. He and my mom wouldn’t have gotten home until after four. Plenty of time for him or her to come here, drop the envelope off, and leave without being seen.
A piece of loose-leaf paper, folded in half. I swallow away the dry lump forming in my throat and unfold it.
At the top of the page is a sentence written in neat cursive.
I’m not okay.
Beneath it, in block letters formed by a black felt-tip pen:
DO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT?
Yes.
I cover my mouth. Trace the rise and fall of my sister’s handwriting with the tip of my finger.
I don’t want to go home, but I can’t stay in this creepy-ass house either. I slip out the way I came, nudging Mango toward the wooded area behind the house.
When I get back to my house, I tell her I ate a late lunch at Rachel’s and I’m not hungry, that I’ll eat the leftover chili in a couple hours. She makes a sound of acknowledgment, mid-argument with Petey about how he can’t go to his friend TJ Blake’s house, because even though there’s no school tomorrow TJ’s parents still have to go to work.
I sit at my desk and take the envelope out of my sweatshirt pocket.
I’m not okay.
I think of the furry purple diary with a flimsy lock that I kept under my bed until middle school. The things I scrawled on the pages in a fit of anger. Jen is soooooooo mean sometimes. Mom likes her SO MUCH better. Everyone thinks she’s perfect and it’s so annoying.
Why wasn’t she okay?
Was Jen the diary-keeping type? I don’t know.
If Jen had a diary, Mom would have gotten to it first.
No—my mother hadn’t even gone through Jen’s things after she died. My sister’s bedroom door had stayed shut for almost a year before my mom said she was going to hire someone to pack up all of Jen’s things and get rid of them. I told her that I hated her. She closed herself in her room, and Tom left the house and returned an hour later with a stack of storage tubs from Walmart and packed up everything himself.
Jen’s stuff is in the basement now, which is somewhere I have no good reason to be. Around ten, when the laugh track of the evening sitcoms Tom watches in the living room quiets, I wait for him to come upstairs.
When his bedroom door clicks shut, I slip out of bed and inch down the hall, down the stairs, and straight down the basement steps off the garage entrance.
The heating system is making noises like fingernails tapping against a tin can. I feel around on the wall for the light switch.
The fluorescent bulb overhead hums to life. I step down.
The storage bins of crap from our old house are stacked in the corner, next to the hot water heater. I climb over the box that holds our fake Christmas tree to reach them.
There are three tubs with JENNIFER written on the sides in Sharpie. I take a breath, the loamy smell of the basement filling my nostrils. Pop the lid of the box closest to me.
A cardboard shirt box rests on the surface of the contents. I lift the top off, delicately pushing the tissue paper aside. A white lace dress and a bonnet. Jennifer’s christening outfit.
I snap the top back on and move on to the next. Pick through art projects, graded research papers, programs from her honor society induction ceremonies and wind ensemble concerts. Her flute case.
I pull out a marble notebook labeled English 10H, Mr. Ward. English, tenth-grade honors. I thumb through it, reading Jen’s haphazard script, a writing prompt copied at the top of each page. Five years from now, I see myself…Write a paragraph convincing a friend not to take drugs…Which character from a book would you like to meet and why?
A copy of Wuthering Heights. I remember reading this in Mr. Ward’s class last year, and my chest tightens. Jen was reading it when she died, and it didn’t occur to Tom to return it to the school when he came across it in her things.
I thumb through the book. She was a few pages into chapter fourteen, her place marked with a folded piece of loose-leaf paper. Green writing shows through.
I unfold it.
I WATCH YOU CHEW ON YOUR PEN CAP WHEN YOU ARE THINKING
I WATCH YOU IN THE HALL, LAUGHING, YOUR EYES MISSING MINE
I WISH I KNEW WHAT YOU WERE THINKING
I WISH I WERE IN ON THE JOKE.
The hair on the back of my neck pricks as I skim the rest. It’s more of the same. A demented poem. A stalker’s manifesto, written in the same handwriting that’s on the note resting on my desk.
* * *
—
In the morning, I wait until I hear the clanging of cabinets in the kitchen before heading downstairs. Tom is spooning cereal into his mouth, both eyes on a copy of the Daily News.
“I think we should get security cameras,” I say.
“Oh yeah?” Tom doesn’t look up from his bowl of Cheerios. “Why’s that?”
“This house is too big. I don’t feel safe when I’m here alone.”
My mother shuts the fridge door with a thud. “You’re rarely here alone.”
Tom and I follow her with our eyes as she exits the kitchen. Moments later, she shouts for Petey to come down and eat or she’s taking the iPad away.
When the clomping of Mom’s feet on the stairs fades, Tom sets down his bowl and levels with me. “Is this about Juliana and Susan?”
My spine straightens. I haven’t heard him use their names in years. “Maybe.”
“I didn’t know this still scared you.”
A flash of me, five years ago, curled up at the foot of my mother and Tom’s bed like a dog. Too scared to sleep in my own bedroom after the murders. “Of course I get scared. I can’t just forget it ever happened.”
“I didn’t say you should. You haven’t brought the girls up in a long time, that’s all. Why are you thinking about it now?”
I don’t know if I’m imagining the note of suspicion in his voice. “It’ll be five years soon.”
“Mon,” Tom says. “Nothing like that is ever going to happen again.”
“You can’t say that for sure.”
“I can’t say for sure that a tornado won’t hit us tomorrow. But it’s still unlikely it’ll happen.”
I wonder how he thinks that’s supposed to make me feel better.
“I’ll look into cameras.” Tom stands and squeezes my shoulder. “Try to enjoy today. It’s nice out. Maybe take that fat pig of a dog for a walk.”
Hearing the W-word, Mango trots into the kitchen. Tom heads into the living room and tells Petey that he’d really better put the iPad down and eat before Mom finishes her shower.
I sit at the island. My brother plods into the kitchen, eyes glued to Clan Wars as he slides onto the stool across from me, where Mom has left an empty bowl next to his box of Cocoa Puffs.
When the sound of Petey’s crunching becomes unbearable, I stand up. I need to think; there’s nothing I can do about figuring out who wrote that poem to Jen until tomorrow morning, when I’m able to talk to Mr. Ward.
My thoughts settle on the house across the street. He or she said that I don’t know them, but he or she knows where we live. He or she is also confident that Tom is a liar, among other things. So there’s a possibility that the letter writer knows Tom—and knows him well enough to have our new address.
It’s almost as unsettling as the idea that some random creep is stalking us.
The cigarette butt by the bay window. He or she might have left something else behind.
Mango is still splayed out on the kitchen floor like a frog, his tail flicking back and forth. I grab his leash from the hook on the wall.
“Tell Mom I’m walking the dog,” I call to my brother as I steer Mango out the door. I stop short when we reach the street.
A van is parked in the driveway of the house. Next to it, a man is leaning against a shiny black SUV, in conversation with the van’s driver. Mango starts to bark; the man looks up at me.
I haven’t seen anyone outside that house since we moved in; it can’t be a coincidence that the owners or contractors or real estate agents—whoever the hell those guys are—have returned the day after I prowled on the property.