Kendele’s frantic voice disabuses me of that assumption. “Tark, I’m at McNeil’s. Something’s happened. I think you better get here as soon as you can.”
The jock has been missing since Friday night. Everyone thought he’d stomped off to sulk, but he was supposed to meet his parents at the airport the next day, and they grew frantic when he didn’t show up. They couldn’t file a missing person report until at least twenty-four hours had passed, so they and some members of the football team had started searching the neighborhood. It was Sondheim who found him inside a small, abandoned shed on an overgrown lot only two blocks from McNeil’s house. I learned that most of the jocks hung out there some weekends, smoking where their coaches couldn’t see.
Kendele called me fifteen minutes later.
I brush past the crowd that has gathered, brush past Kendele’s next round of protests and stand in front of the shed, staring inside.
McNeil is all huddled up, curled in a fetal position with his hands over his head.
His face is bloated to twice its size and rotting, like he’d been held underwater for days.
My stomach clenches, and I suppress the urge to be sick.
His face…
It all comes back to me.
Blood splashed on the bathroom tiles.
I’m taken back two years—to when I was still in Maine and staring at Todd McKinley’s head sitting on the sink, his features so twisted that his mother would never have recognized him.
Todd McKinley was the first person the masked woman of my childhood killed in an attempt to free herself from me. Today, I see him clearly, as if it’s only been hours since his murder. McKinley’s dead face resembles Keren McNeil’s, the McNeil without his fake face of joviality or his fake face of anger, but his real face, gray and defiled and foul, his tongue hanging loosely out of his mouth like he’s a rabid dog that had to be put down.
The shadow of the masked woman who haunted my nightmares for so many years fades. Now there is Okiku in her place, staring down at her creation with quiet serenity.
Chapter Six
Aftermath
Okiku doesn’t approach me until Wednesday—after the news crews with their explosive headlines have wrung as much as they can from Pembrooke High and its so-called football heroes. After Keren McNeil’s body has been taken away—after reporters have deemed the pictures too disturbing for mainstream media.
After I’ve been called to the principal’s office to give my own statement to the police officers waiting for me there. After witnesses single me out as a potential suspect because of the fight I had with McNeil that Friday night. After Kendele, Trish, and the other football players who’d seen me leave—even the guys at Pho Junkies, observant enough to recognize me from photos—provide me with the alibi the cops ask for, confirming my whereabouts at the time of the murder.
After the police grill me about the similar circumstances of another jock’s death at my old high school. After I say, “You don’t have to beat around the bush, Officer. I didn’t kill McKinley. I didn’t kill McNeil either, and at least a dozen people can attest to it. Yeah, Officer, I’m pretty unlucky that way.”
After my father arrives at school, demanding to know why I’m being treated like a criminal.
Because I’m not a football jock, Dad, is the right answer. I may not have been smart enough to prevent McNeil’s death, but I’m smart enough to keep my mouth shut. The hunt to find McNeil’s killer is treated with such fervor that all these people clamoring for justice disgust me more than I can say.
Because nobody would ever believe that he was a scumbag.
He’s not who you think he is! I want to tell them, but I know that ship has long since sailed.
Kendele asks me how I’d known McNeil could be in danger that night at the party. The police have turned to other, more promising leads—rival teams, jealous friends, spiteful ex-girlfriends.
I shrug because nobody ever believes me, because Okiku is my secret to keep. “I don’t know. I just had a feeling.”
“That’s a pretty accurate feeling.” She was with me during the time McNeil was supposed to have died, so she isn’t suspicious. But she’s worried.
I don’t answer. I expect her to recoil, but she doesn’t let go of my hand. “I believe you.”
“You do?”
She blushes. “Trish told me everything. You were right. I feel stupid for not seeing it sooner, especially with the way he talked about other girls. I don’t think they’ll be able to do much about it now that he’s dead. Trish doesn’t want to say anything, and I don’t think the other girls will either. But for what it’s worth, I was right about you. I knew there was a reason you went to the party, which was because you suspected Keren. I just…I can’t believe someone I know could do something like that.”