Juliana’s sister, Maria, was younger than I was when Juliana was killed.
“My name is Monica Rayburn,” I say. “Can I talk to your mom?”
I wait for Maria to decide I’m a scammer, then lie and say that Mrs. Ruiz isn’t home. Instead she says, “One second.”
There’s shuffling on her end. I catch a faint “Who is it?” followed by Maria huffing, “I don’t know!”
“Hello?” Mrs. Ruiz’s voice is guarded. A go-away-if-you’re-selling-something voice.
“Mrs. Ruiz,” I say. “Hi. This is Monica Rayburn.”
Silence. The quick rush of breathing.
“Jennifer’s sister,” I add, feeling my insides shrink.
“No, of course. Monica. I’m sorry.”
“Is this a bad time?”
“Oh, no, I was just putting the baby down. Hold on one moment.”
Baby?
The sound of a door clicking. I picture Mrs. Ruiz shutting herself in her room. Sitting on the edge of her bed, Juliana’s photo staring at her from the dresser. I nearly hang up.
“You had a baby?” I say.
“His name is Matthew,” she says.
“Congratulations.” Matthew. The name means “gift from God.” It was my ex Matt’s favorite fun fact about himself.
“Thank you. We adore him. How are you, Monica?” Mrs. Ruiz sounds brighter. “It’s been a while.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I should have stayed in touch.”
“You were just a kid. It’s good to hear from you now.”
“I just— I wanted to see how you were doing.” I can’t bring myself to tell her why I’m really calling.
“That’s very sweet of you,” Mrs. Ruiz says cautiously. “Is there something else you wanted to talk about?”
Her voice is gentle, patient. As if she’d known that at some point she would get this phone call from me.
“I’m on yearbook now,” I lie. “I was looking at some old pictures and I saw one from the night…the night before homecoming. Juliana looked really upset.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Ruiz says. This is new to her.
“Do you know what might have been bothering her?”
Mrs. Ruiz is silent. Probably wondering why I need this information so badly that I had to call her at dinnertime on a Monday night five years later.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just…I don’t know. I thought it might have something to do with my sister.”
“I honestly don’t know,” Mrs. Ruiz says. “I hadn’t seen Jen in over a week at least.”
That can’t be right. Jen spent half her weekends at Juliana’s house. “Are you sure?”
“I asked Juliana about why Jen wasn’t there,” Mrs. Ruiz says. “She said that Susan and Jen weren’t speaking to each other. Juliana wanted to stay out of it.”
My mouth is dry, my skin buzzing. “What were they…Do you know why they were fighting?”
“Juliana didn’t want to tell me.”
“Was that weird for her? Not telling you?”
“Monica. I know why you’re calling.”
I don’t know what to say. When Mrs. Ruiz speaks again, her voice is gentle. “None of it had anything to do with what happened that night. It was a terrible, horrible crime, and I can’t imagine how it must have haunted your sister.”
“I just have so many questions, still.”
“I do too,” Mrs. Ruiz says. “But after a while, searching for the answers felt like grasping around in the dark. At some point, you have to choose to live in the light.”
After I say goodbye to Mrs. Ruiz, promising I’ll stop by and meet the baby sometime once I get my driver’s license, I turn back to my laptop. All the pictures have loaded by now.
I start with the ones in the folder marked Sunnybrook vs. Shrewsbury. The game where the infamous picture of the five Sunnybrook cheerleaders was taken.
I click through them, pausing on a picture of Juliana and a blond girl. Their cheeks are painted with blue and yellow Ss. They’re blowing kisses at the camera. The other girl is about a foot taller than Juliana, her white-blond ponytail so high it looks like it’s sprouting from the top of her head. Her upper lip is pierced, and she has an edgy look to her that clashes with her cheer uniform.
I’d forgotten I took Jen’s freshman yearbook upstairs with me after I raided her things the other night. I dig the book out and arrange myself among the pillows on the bed. Flip through all the class portraits. Mango trots into my room, sniffing the air. When he sits at the foot of my nightstand, I scoop him up and plop him on the bed. While he’s circling, trying to find a comfortable spot, I turn to the front of the yearbook and search the other photos for the blond girl: team portraits, candid pictures from dances, Spirit Night.
She isn’t in any of them. The girl must have been new the year of the murders; there’s no way she was younger than my sister.
I eye my phone where it’s resting on my nightstand. Before I can talk myself out of it, I call Ginny. She picks up on the second ring.
“Monica?” she says. She doesn’t sound surprised that I’m calling; it almost sounds like she was expecting it to be me.
“Yeah. Hi,” I say, suddenly nervous. “Is this a bad time?”
“No, not at all.” She pauses. “Are you looking at the pictures?”
“Yeah. I’m trying to figure out who else Juliana was friends with, who might know why she was upset when they were building the float.” I think about what Mrs. Ruiz told me about Susan and Jen fighting, and Juliana being in the middle, and I hesitate. I feel like some sort of gossip or voyeur, trying to dissect everything a teenager did and felt one night five years ago. “I talked to Juliana’s mom. She didn’t know why Juliana was crying that night. She thought maybe it was because my sister and Susan Berry weren’t talking to each other.”
“What were they fighting about?” Ginny asks.
“I have no idea. Jen never said anything.” I zoom in on the picture of Juliana and the blond girl. “I found a picture of Juliana with this blond girl, but she’s not in my sister’s yearbook from the year before. Can I come look at Mrs. Goldberg’s old books tomorrow at lunch maybe?”
“I have them here—at home,” Ginny says. “She gave me copies from the last five years so I could compare the layouts. What does the girl look like?”
“She’s tall and skinny. Her hair is super platinum blond, like it’s dyed.”
“Got it,” she says. “I’ll look and call you back.”
Ginny ends the call, but I don’t put my phone down. Mango drops his head on my knee and lets out a breathy snort. My heartbeat is gaining speed at the thought of finding the blonde—a Sunnybrook cheerleader who might be able to tell me things I don’t know about the girls. Or don’t remember.
When my phone trills, I press accept before it gets the chance to ring again. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Ginny says. “I think I found her in the cheer team picture. Super thin eyebrows, piercing above her lip, right?”
“Yeah. That’s her.”
“Okay. Her name is Carly Amato. She was a senior.”
Carly Amato. I turn the name over in my head, disappointed. I was hoping to recognize the girl’s name—for some long-forgotten piece of information to click into place. “I’ve never heard of her.”
“I looked her up already,” Ginny says. She sounds embarrassed. “I found a Facebook page for a girl who looks like her. She has dark hair now. And her tan is…less fake.”
“Hold on.” I click my laptop awake and do a Facebook search for Carly Amato. The top result is the girl Ginny described.
According to her posts, Carly Amato is a nursing student at Orange County Community College. The majority of her posts are about how many exams she has and photos of a Yorkie named Peanut whom she refers to as “her baby.”
I keep clicking until I get to her oldest photos and watch her transform in reverse until she’s blond and pierced. My heartbeat picks up. “This is definitely the same girl.”
“What are you going to say to her?”
“I don’t know. What should I say?”
Ginny pauses. “Maybe just tell her the real reason you want to talk to her.”
“Yeah. Okay. Thanks.”