Shouting—so much shouting—someone grabs my shoulders, pins me to the lockers. Mr. White: “What is wrong with you?”
He drags me toward Gonzo’s office, past the SAS guard holding Jade back. Her nose is bleeding around her rhinestone stud. Gonzo trots out of her office, barking at everyone in the hall to get to class.
They all stare at me as they scatter. Mr. White won’t even look at me. I’m so incredibly fucked, but my pulse is steady. A calm settles over me, as if I’ve gotten something important out of the way.
My only regret is not drawing more blood.
—
“What on earth were you thinking?”
I stare back at Gonzo. Everyone keeps asking me that, but they don’t want the real answer. “I don’t know.”
Gonzo stands up and paces the room. Her eyes are red. “The only reason I’m not expelling you on the spot is that the sheriff’s office just called me.”
“What?” I look up, the bone above my eye throbbing where it connected with someone’s locker.
Gonzo looks at me, her upper lip trembling. “They’re holding a press conference this afternoon. I’m canceling all after-school activities.”
My stomach sinks to my feet. “Why? Did they find Bailey?”
“I don’t know.” Gonzo grabs a tissue from the box on her desk. “Go to the nurse and get a pack of ice for your face.”
—
The nurse lets me lie on the cot in her office instead of going back to Gonzo’s office where Jade is waiting for her father to pick her up. Thankfully, someone sees the indignity of having to face the person who just kicked your ass. I have a sweaty Ziploc bag of ice pressed to my temple.
The bell rings. At the beginning of the next period, Gonzo comes on the loudspeaker and announces that all after-school activities are canceled.
“Mrs. Gonzalo got in touch with your mom,” the nurse says when she comes to refresh my ice. “She and your dad are a bit tied up right now, but one of them will pick you up as soon as they can. Can you say your ABCs for me?”
This is her way of checking that I don’t have a concussion. The words a bit tied up pinball in my head.
With Andrew. At the police station.
When the nurse isn’t looking, I slide out my phone. Fire off a bunch of texts to Andrew.
What is going on
What are they asking you
I even text Ashley: Is everything okay??
But over an hour ticks by, and they never answer. At lunchtime, a pimply freshman comes in, puking into a plastic bag. The nurse skitters out of her chair to attend to him. I hear the SAS lady who escorted the puking kid say that the office called his parents, and no one can pick him up.
While the nurse is distracted, I fish my headphones out of my bag. Plug them into my phone and pull up the local news’s website. They’re live streaming the press conference about Bailey in ten minutes. I roll onto my side on the cot, brush my hair over the headphones. It doesn’t matter; the freshman has vomited all over the floor, and now the nurse is cleaning it up.
The press conference starts; my screen goes black as the video buffers. When it loads again, Detective Burke is standing outside the Broken Falls Sheriff’s Department. Cathy, Ed, and Ben Hammond stand off to the side of the lectern. Ben is sobbing so hard that Cathy has to hold him up.
Burke clears his throat. “At dawn this morning, we were informed of reports that human remains were found on a property on the Minnesota border.”
My blood turns to ice.
“It’s with difficulty that I can confirm the body belongs to Bailey Hammond.”
Senior Year
December
I always thought I could get away with murder. I’ve watched enough TV to know all of the stupid mistakes that will land you in prison for the rest of your life. (Cell records—how can people be so dumb? Or getting caught on a security camera at Walmart buying bleach and garbage bags and a shovel like no one will raise a fucking eyebrow at that.)
I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit plotting out murders, thinking about all the ways I could cover them up and ride into the sunset while the police scratch their balls. Having an accomplice can be the key—someone to muddy things up and cause enough doubt that the law can never really pin it on either one of you. Obviously this can backfire, if you’re sloppy, or if one person can’t keep her mouth shut.
But I think I’ve got it all figured out.
First you pick your kill site. It’s got to be somewhere easy to clean up, someplace where the smell of bleach will go unnoticed for weeks, or blood, if everything goes to hell and you have to get out of there pronto. Somewhere like a barn up on a hill where no one can hear her screams. You plan to lure her there under false pretenses, but it must be compelling, something you can convince her not to blab about. Because you don’t want her telling anyone ahead of time where she’s going or who she’s going to be with. You want everyone to believe she just climbed out her window one night and disappeared forever. So you invent a bullshit story about people doing séances in said barn, summoning the spirit of the Red Woman with five candles, because you know your victim won’t be able to be the girl who bitches out. And then you feel like a fucking genius, because you know she’s so desperate for friends that she’ll do whatever you say, she’ll follow you anywhere.