LeeAnne shakes her head as her gaze sweeps up toward the ceiling of her trailer. Dear god, deliver us from these idiots. Then she swings the door closed with a thump. I hear the click of a deadbolt, the scratch of a chain.
Standing on the porch, afraid to move, I wish I could beam myself back to my bedroom. It feels as if moving even an inch on this redwood deck would open up a deep cavern beneath the Coral Creek Mobile Village and swallow us whole, pressing us into fossils, the wreckage of this moment left petrified for a future generation of Iowans to puzzle over. Then, I hear Stacey’s voice muffled through the wafer-thin walls of the trailer.
“Why did you even open the door?”
“I got rid of her.”
“She’s one of them, Mom.” Stacey sounds frantic, a thunderhead just before cloudburst. My feet move on their own, trying to outrun a storm. I race down the stairs as Stacey starts to sob. “She’s one of them.”
There are tears in my own eyes now, as I struggle to open the latch on the front gate. A light flashes on across the hard-packed gravel drive, and I can see the lever more clearly for a moment. I swing the gate open and closed before I hear a familiar voice.
“Are you a friend of the victim? Do you have time for a few questions?”
Sloane Keating strides toward me, the brightness I’d assumed was a neighbor’s motion sensor hovers behind her, a floodlight mounted to a camera, the glare hiding the face of the man operating it as both of them quickly close the distance between us.
My first instinct is to freeze. On TV or across a crowded gymnasium, Sloane Keating seems small, mostly hair and shoulder pads—somehow inconsequential.
In person, she is different altogether.
She is taller than I realized, and confident. She powers across the gravel in high heels without the slightest wobble, her blond hair free and flowing behind. She seems to float toward me surrounded by harsh white light, a trailer park Galadriel, her piercing eyes discerning the truth. There is something physical about the force of her presence, and I now understand a term I often see on those Entertainment! blogs with the pink logos.
This is star power.
I’m terrified she’ll pin me against Mrs. Stallard’s white plastic pickets if I don’t go now, but as I make a lateral move toward Dad’s truck, Sloane grunts a throaty “three o’clock” to her cameraman. Both of them pivot, and somehow he’s out in front of me now, Sloane coming in from behind, pelting me with questions:
Are you a friend of the victim’s?
Did you attend the party on Saturday night?
I curse myself for wearing my bright blue Buccaneer zip-up. I pull the sweatshirt tightly around me, my fists jammed in the pockets, my arms wrapping around my stomach. A fleece straitjacket somehow fits the crazed feeling of panic knotted in my chest, but offers no protection from the rapid fire of Sloane’s inquisition. The words LADY BUCCS emblazoned over the canary yellow soccer ball on my back burn like a brand. Sloane may be stabbing in the dark here, but I’m clearly a good guess.
Do you know who was there?
I stare at my feet as I walk, trying to avoid looking at the camera.
Did you see what happened?
I have to glance up to see if I am even headed in the right direction. I shield my face with my hand for a quick peek, but the camera is two feet away, practically up my nose, and anyone watching in Coral Sands will recognize me. If Sloane can run iPhone video on the air, god only knows what she’ll do with this. Now everyone will know I was here. How will I explain this?
As I get to the truck, I fumble through my pockets for the keys. The cameraman stands next to the bed, shooting my profile as the key ring spills from my fingers and falls to the ground. Sloane’s hand is on my arm now, a warm, firm current. I jerk away, grab the keys from the ground, and turn on her.
“Leave me alone!”
Even as I say the words, I realize it’s too late. I’ve handed her a victory. I see it flash across the whites of her eyes: contact.
“I just want to get the whole story from someone who was there.”
The sincerity in her voice startles me as I scramble to find the button on the key fob to click open the locks. I stare back at her for a split second, and Sloane holds a hand up to her cameraman. The light clicks off. He slides the evidence of my visit off his shoulder. Black holes float in front of my eyes, and I wish for a moment they would suck me into a different dimension.
“You were there, weren’t you?”
My father’s voice rings in my ears: As far as this family is concerned, you don’t even know where that Doone boy lives.