When we reach the corner of Main Street, someone shouts my name from the crowd. My brother is jumping up and down, waving at me. He’s camped outside of Alden’s grocery with TJ Blake and his mother. The sidewalks are packed, and the police have the side streets blocked off. The crowd goes wild at our high kicks. While they’re clapping, I sneak a wave at my brother.
A flash of blond hair, and our eyes connect. Me and Allie Lewandowski. She stares back at me, coldly, and I stumble, sashaying forward with the wrong foot.
What is she doing here?
She didn’t go to Sunnybrook High School; she hasn’t coached here for years. Paranoia wallops me as I entertain the idea that Allie being here has something to do with our meeting.
I screw up the routine and add in an extra step, colliding with the dancer in front of me. We’re at the end of the route, in the CVS parking lot. I can’t think over the buzzing in my ears.
Ginny. I have to find Ginny and tell her Allie is here. I wade through the crowd at the end of the route, looking for her strawberry-blond bun. We all look the same in our uniforms, our identical hairstyles.
Someone grabs me by the shoulder, pulling me back.
“Monica,” Alexa says. “We have to go to the float for homecoming court.”
I open my mouth to give her an excuse, but the crowd starts going wild. The class floats are approaching the end of the route, a police officer directing the trucks pulling them into the parking lot.
Alexa tugs on my hand, and we follow the junior class float. It’s a giant papier-maché of a shark head. Hanging between two palm trees is a banner reading GRAB SHREWSBURY BY THE JAWS.
The other court members are already on the float, plastic leis around their necks. The driver—one of the juniors’ parents—slows to a stop in front of CVS.
“Come on, come on.” Mrs. Lin hurries over to Alexa and me, passing us each plastic leis. This part always annoys her, how all the girls on the team who make homecoming court choose dancing in the parade over riding on the float. Or at least, she thinks we have the choice.
One of the guys on the float holds a hand out to Alexa, helping hoist her up. Once she’s settled, he reaches for me. I balk.
“Monica,” Mrs. Lin snaps. “I need you on that float so we can start the ceremony. The police have to reopen the road in fifteen minutes.”
“I decline the nomination,” I say. “Give it to someone else.”
Alexa stares from me to Mrs. Lin. “Can she even do that?”
Before I can open my mouth, two guys on the float reach down and grab me by the forearms, pulling me up.
Mrs. Lin hurries off to make sure the Kelseys, both on the homecoming court, have made it onto the senior class float behind us without incident. I rub my forearms, the skin smarting from where the guys grabbed me.
The sight of the crowd gathering in the parking lot waiting for the coronation sends a shot of panic through me. I drape my lei over my head, heart hammering, scanning the throng of people for Allie Lewandowski.
I finally spot her in front of the post office adjoining the CVS. She’s standing next to a tall guy wearing a beanie and a Sunnybrook cross-country sweatshirt. He’s almost a foot taller than she is; his head is turned to the soccer coach standing next to him, but his arm is around Allie’s waist.
Brandon. Brandon and Allie.
Somewhere, someone is shouting into a bullhorn.
“And now, your junior class homecoming court!”
More cheers, nearly drowning out our names. When they get to mine, I try to duck behind Alexa, but it’s too late; they’ve both seen me. Brandon is clapping, slowly, a deer caught in the headlights. Allie’s arms are folded across her chest. They both seem oblivious to the fact that the other is staring straight at me.
Kelsey Butler and Joe Gabriel win homecoming queen and king. While they’re being crowned, I hop off the float and wend my way through the dispersing crowd. The cop manning the end of the route is having little luck shooing people out of the street.
I pass through the CVS parking lot and out onto the sidewalk. Keep walking until I spot them in front of the playhouse. Ginny and my brother. Petey is talking a mile a minute, and she’s smiling down at him, nodding along. Always a good sport.
“Where’s Mom?” I ask Petey when I catch up with them.
“At home doing work. TJ’s mom brought me.”
Ginny’s eyes meet mine—she can tell I’m upset. I shake my head. Not here.
I put a hand on Petey’s shoulder. “Can you go find TJ? Ginny and I have to be somewhere for dance team.”
“But she downloaded Clan Wars. I was telling her about the update,” he whines.
“Petey. Please.”
He gives me a frosty look and trudges off to where TJ and Mrs. Blake are chatting with a woman outside of Alden’s. Ginny’s voice is in my ear: “What’s the matter?”
I nod to the alley walkway between the playhouse and the library. Ginny and I slip down it and emerge in the rear parking lot.
“Allie Lewandowski’s here,” I say. “With Brandon, the cross-country coach.”
I can’t tell if she’s putting two and two together—seeing me inside Brandon’s office and my reaction to seeing him here with Allie today. My calling him Brandon and not Mr. Michaelson, like everyone else does.
If Ginny knows, she doesn’t say anything. But her face is grim. “Last night…I poked around online a little. I tried to find the names of guys from the Sunnybrook area who also graduated from Hamilton the year before the murders.”
My mouth goes dry.
“There were only three guys who met the criteria. One of them is Brandon Michaelson.” Ginny eyes me. “I looked into him more and found him on Newton High West’s athletic records website. Allie was on it too. She graduated the year before. She got a scholarship to Oneonta for cheerleading.”
I lower myself to the curb, sit, and lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. If Brandon was dating Allie at the time of the murders, it doesn’t mean he’s involved. Carly had said Allie’s boyfriend’s friend was the one who was selling pills. He was the one Juliana was afraid of.
But Brandon knew. If Carly was telling the truth, Brandon was in the car when the other guy stopped to make a deal. Brandon helped his friend beat the shit out of the guy who ratted him out.
It was five years ago. People change.
A dueling voice in my head jumps in. He was still older than you are now. He knew better.
“It doesn’t matter,” I whisper it, as if saying it out loud will make it true. It doesn’t matter who Brandon was back then, because nothing is going on between Brandon and me anymore.
You made out with him in his car during the memorial.
I bury my face in my hands. Breathe deeply for a minute before I look up at Ginny. “Brandon was Allie’s boyfriend, and his best friend was the drug dealer. Carly didn’t say which one the pickup truck belonged to.”
“So what do we do?” Ginny says.
“I don’t know. We have no proof of anything. We have a rumor from Carly that Brandon was friends with a drug dealer who may have possibly killed Juliana and Susan. We have a dead man’s statement that he saw a pickup truck that night. And then a story about someone fighting with Juliana on the deck that the cops already think is a lie.” I rub my eyes. “Who’s going to believe us?”
Ginny’s mouth forms a line. Shouts of excitement echo in the alley behind us. People are filtering through it, heading for their cars parked in the lot.
“Congratulations!” A man accompanied by a trio of kids gives me a thumbs-up. It takes me a moment to remember the lei around my neck. When he and the kids are loaded into their car, I tear the lei off.
“I can’t do this,” I tell Ginny. “I can’t go to the game or the dance and act like everything is normal.”
“You have to,” she says. “There’s nothing we can do right now. You’re just going to make your mom and stepdad more worried about you.”
She’s right. My eyes prick with tears. “Can you come? I know you didn’t get a ticket to the dance, but you can come to Kelsey’s party.”
The faintest trace of a smile passes over Ginny’s lips. “Monica. That would be the exact opposite of acting like everything is normal.”
* * *