Ollie, Haley.
Ollie, Matt.
Ollie, Me.
At noon, she was surprised to discover yesterday’s shoes still at the bottom of the stairs. She grabbed them before Grandma Young could scold her.
Ollie, Haley.
Ollie, Matt.
Ollie—
NO.
Makani threw the sneakers, hard, onto her bedroom floor. Yesterday’s socks were already lying beside the closet door, but the strangeness of this did not register to her.
She had to believe that the mistakes of Ollie’s past didn’t guarantee that he would make even worse mistakes in his future. She had to believe that every mistake was still a choice. She had to believe that Ollie was a good person, because she had to believe it about herself.
He arrived in the early afternoon. After the cycle of beverage options, they settled into the living room, because—as Makani learned—it was against house rules to have a boy in her bedroom. As her friend, Darby was the only exception. Back in Hawaii, she’d spent plenty of time in her bedroom with her ex-boyfriend. Her parents either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care.
The television was tuned to the closest physical station, which was broadcasting a basketball game. Neither Makani nor her grandmother followed the NBA, but Grandma Young was anxious to see the local news bumpers. Makani slouched beside her on the sofa while Ollie resumed his position in the easy chair.
Ollie hadn’t been kidding. He really did like jigsaw puzzles. A countryside harvest festival was spread across the coffee table, and its repeating autumnal patterns held him and Grandma Young in a matching trance. Perched on their seat edges, they bonded over etiquette and strategy: start with the border. Then any sections that contain printed words. If someone is searching for one specific piece, but the other person finds it, it must be handed over, because it means more to the first person. And always save the sky—the hardest part of any puzzle—for last.
Makani tried to join in, but the tediousness made her hungry, so she brought out snacks and ate snacks and brought out more snacks. She wondered if her ex would have entertained her grandmother without complaint. Before the incident, she would have said yes. Jason was wild, but she had been wilder. And he was a decent guy.
He was also a coward who’d never bothered to ask for her side of the story. A coward who’d ignored her instead of dumping her outright. A coward who’d treated her like the highly contagious carrier of a deadly plague. Though, in a way, she was. Makani was a social plague. She hated Jason for his cowardice, but she understood it.
“You know, we’ve just been praying for their families, day and night.”
They looked up at the sound of the young, country voice. A square-faced boy with a cross necklace and LION PRIDE sweatshirt—the de facto spokesperson for the various local youth groups—was on television. The text at the bottom of the screen read: CALEB GREELEY, FRIEND OF THE VICTIMS.
The bumper cut to a blandly handsome man in a navy-blue suit. “Osborne reacts to the slayings and to a killer still at large. Details at six.” Creston Howard enunciated with the practiced air of a professional, managing to sound both solemn and upbeat.
The basketball game resumed. Grandma Young turned to Ollie. “That was Pastor Greeley’s boy, wasn’t it?”
Ollie nodded. “He works with me at the grocery store.”
It was a familiar conversation, Ollie and her grandmother swapping information about mutual acquaintances. Makani hadn’t recognized many of the names until now. “Oh. Greeley,” she said. “Caleb is related to the owner?”
“Caleb is the grandson of the original Mr. Greeley,” Ollie explained. “His uncle runs Greeley’s Foods now.”
“And what does Caleb do there?” Grandma Young asked.
“Weekend supervisor.”
Makani couldn’t hear it in his tone, but she wondered if Ollie was bitter that Caleb was a supervisor when Ollie was the one who worked more hours. If it were her, she’d be bitter. “Caleb wasn’t actually a friend of the victims, was he?”
Ollie smirked. “As friendly as I was.”
Makani nudged her grandmother. “See? You have to turn off the news. It’s not even telling you the truth.”
“You grieve in your way,” Grandma Young said, “and I’ll grieve in mine.”
Despite the outside world, their living room was at ease. Makani wondered why discussing a tragedy—consuming every single story about it—was often comforting. Was it because tragedies manifested a sense of community? Here we are, all going through this terrible thing together. Or were tragedies addictive, and the small pleasures that came from them the signal of a deeper problem?
Ollie handed over a puzzle piece to Grandma Young. She exclaimed with delight and snapped it into place. They high-fived.
No, Makani decided. It was impossible that this boy who was so kind to her grandmother could ever be a murderer.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
There was a machete wedged behind the empty watercooler. He couldn’t believe that someone had hidden it here, of all places. He yanked out the large plastic bottle and threw it at the woman, gaining the precious seconds necessary to reach back and fumble for the weapon. The bottle hit her head with a satisfying thonk. As she staggered, his hand clasped around the wooden handle. The machete came loose with just enough time to thrust it forward between her ribs. She fell against the copy machine. Planting his boot on her chest, he tugged out the blade before lifting it over his head and swinging it back down through her neck in a single, swift motion. Her head splattered against the cubicle and then dropped into a recycle bin. He held out the machete to admire it.
Yes. This will do nicely.
But to keep it, he had to discard one of his other weapons, so he placed the tire iron behind the watercooler for someone else to find. That made him smile.
Rodrigo Morales paused the game and tossed aside the controller. He took off his headphones. Rubbed his eyes. It was midnight. His parents were carousing in Vegas for their silver wedding anniversary, and he wasn’t about to let a single minute of this glorious weekend go to waste. He’d spent Friday night and all today fighting the zombies in Battleground Apocalypse with only one short nap, and he’d fight them all Sunday, too.
He was the youngest of four children and the only son. His last sister had moved out in mid-August, and now with his parents out of town, this was the first time in his entire life that he’d ever been truly alone. He relished it.
Rodrigo stood, and his spine cracked from bottom to top. He rolled his neck in a methodical circle. Stretched his arms toward the ceiling. Wake up, he ordered himself.
He slumped out of the living room and into the kitchen for an energy drink. It was a new brand—JACKD, in aggressive all caps—and it came in a lurid green can. Despite the marketing campaign’s flagrant promises, it wasn’t better than any of the others. He’d been building up his tolerance for years. He chugged a full can. Half a sausage pizza had congealed on the stovetop from earlier, so he finished it off while checking his phone.
Kevin still uses Ubuntu lol
It was a text from David. He was binging classic anime with their other friends at Kevin’s house. Anime sucked, and Rodrigo was glad to be missing it. Except, he didn’t totally think it sucked. He liked Attack on Titan when they forced him to watch it last year, but he couldn’t help it. Something inside him made him pretend that he didn’t.
I wouldn’t even put that distro on mi abuela’s computer, Rodrigo replied.
David lol’d again. Their friends were a joke when it came to operating systems. Not that David was much better. He tried to keep up with Rodrigo, but nobody around here could. In elementary school, Rodrigo had jailbroken iPhones and Kindles for extra cash. Now he had eight different PAYware games on all the app stores. His latest—a dumb game about popping rainbow bubbles—was raking it in.
Binge so lame you need me to keep you entertained? Rodrigo asked.
Nah we’re watching cowboy bebop. It’s coo
l.
Rodrigo had vaguely heard of it, but he researched its plot as he moved into the bathroom to take a piss. It was some space cowboy bullshit. He didn’t bother replying. He checked his favorite message board, but the usual torch-and-pitchfork crowd were still up in arms over this new company of video game developers that was run entirely by women. His insides shrank with a familiar shame as he quickly left the page. Not that long ago, he’d been one of them.
He cringed as he remembered what he’d said to Makani Young. I’ll give you a ride home, sweetheart. If his sisters had heard it, they would have kicked him in the cojones. But the line had just slipped out. A knee-jerk, base-level wisecrack. He wasn’t that guy anymore. He still didn’t understand how he’d ever been that guy.
He walked back into the living room and found that his gaming rocker was facing the wrong direction. Strange. He didn’t remember tripping over it.
Rodrigo turned it around, plopped down, and put on his headphones. The game’s death-metal pause music blasted in his ears. Had Makani told Alex what he’d said? Probably, which sucked. Alex was smart and sexy and kind of mean, but mean in the same way he was. And sometimes it seemed like she might like him back.
A powerful buzz hit his system. At first, he thought it was from imagining Alex in her torn fishnets, until he realized it must be the energy drink. His bloodstream glowed electric.
Rodrigo unpaused the game. A zombie shot out from the closest cubicle, but he was ready, and he hacked off its emaciated head. He ran through the dilapidated office with his machete aimed high. He was invincible.
An hour later, Rodrigo was asleep.
Somehow, he’d managed to pause the game before he crashed. But he didn’t get up. He fell asleep with his headphones still on, the music still pulsing and thrashing.
The sunlight streamed in through the glass back doors. It was so bright that it was painful. Rodrigo squinted, blocking the assault with his hand, and knocked over a full can of JACKD. The chartreuse liquid spilled across his mother’s immaculate Mexican rug.
“Shit!” Rodrigo uprighted the aluminum can, but the liquid had already stopped beading. It was seeping into the threads. He lurched to his feet, but the headphones cord yanked him back down, and he fumbled to throw off the whole contraption.
His ears rang in the emptiness of the house. Death metal pumped quietly from the headphones on the floor. He didn’t even remember grabbing another energy drink. He only remembered the one that he’d chugged in the kitchen.
A headache ruptured his brain. Was it possible to get a hangover from energy drinks? He turned off the music, and the silence was a cathedral. Rodrigo rubbed his eyeballs through his lids with the palms of his hands. When he opened them, the pinpricks disappeared but . . . something wasn’t right.
He was in his living room. Except he wasn’t. Or was he turned around? Instead of facing the television, his gaming rocker was facing the couch. Rodrigo looked behind himself. The television was sitting on its stand in the middle of the room. Dead center.
There was a pause of incomprehension.
And then his mind snowballed with panic.
All at once, his gaze absorbed the rest of the room. The two chairs that flanked the couch had been switched. The coffee table was blocking the sliding doors. The fiddle-leaf fig had been moved from beside the doors to the opposite wall, and the floor lamp, usually nestled beside the couch, had been placed beside the fiddle-leaf fig.
His rocker was the only piece of furniture in the correct place.
Rodrigo’s heartbeat pounded inside his ears as he tried to piece everything together. Tried to make sense of it.
David. It seemed like the sort of prank he’d pull. He had a weird, unpredictable side that Rodrigo didn’t always like. Or maybe Sofía, his youngest and most irritating sister. The one who’d finally moved into an apartment at the end of summer.
“Sofía?” He rose to his feet. “David? Are you still here?”
The house didn’t answer.
“Ha-ha. Very funny. You got me.”
The house still didn’t answer.
“What the shit,” Rodrigo mumbled as he stepped straight into a puddle. In his shock, he’d forgotten about the spilled drink. He jogged to the kitchen for paper towels, but they weren’t in the holder underneath the high cabinets.
They were sitting on the center of the island.
Rodrigo knew that he should laugh—whoever this was, they’d gotten him again—but he couldn’t. Not yet. Maybe because no one had jumped out to yell gotcha and point their finger.
Had he moved everything last night?
It was possible. Maybe.
He checked all the doors, just in case. They were locked. He jogged a little faster as he checked the windows. The one in the guest bathroom was open. His blood turned cold.
Not Sofía, then. She still had a key.
David? Or Kevin? Rodrigo released a foul stream of expletives, realizing it was probably all his friends, those fucking assholes, getting revenge on him for turning down their stupid animefest. That’s why David had texted him at midnight. They were checking to see if he was still awake. Rodrigo circled the interior of his house, waiting for them to appear. But the rooms were empty.
Rationally, Rodrigo knew that this prank was genius. Breaking into someone’s house in the dead of night to rearrange their furniture while they slept? He wished he’d thought of it. It would have scared the hell out of Sofía.
But the reality of it wasn’t funny. There were no silly notes, no Are you awake? texts, no red-lipsticked warnings on his bathroom mirror. The whole situation felt off.
Instinct told him to call the police, but . . . that was dumb. Wasn’t it? He checked his phone for the hundredth time, and when there weren’t any messages, he sent a text to the whole group. LOL you got me. Who did it?
There was an electronic ding, and Rodrigo spun around, yelling and tripping over his feet as he stumbled backward in fear. A slender figure stood motionless in his kitchen. Their slouched back was facing him, and they were wearing a hoodie with the hood up.
“H-hey.” Rodrigo’s voice came out as a croak.
The figure didn’t move.
Rodrigo hated that he felt so terrified. Whoever this was, he was about to be pissed at them. The person was too skinny to be one of his sisters.
He crept forward. “David? Is that you?”
The figure didn’t move.
“Emily?” She was the smallest in his group of friends. He felt ashamed to think about her hearing the tremor in his speech, but the figure . . . it was so unnaturally still.
What if it wasn’t someone he knew?
His white socks touched the edge of the kitchen floor. His T-shirt was damp with sweat. He reached out to touch the figure’s shoulder—
The killer spun around and lunged. The knife went straight into Rodrigo’s heart and back out, a shuck-shuck that sunk him to his knees, and then the blade stabbed him in the back again and again and again. Rodrigo gasped. And then gurgled.
And then nothing.
The body lay on the floor like a slaughtered calf. Blood pooled beneath it. The white cabinets were sprayed with a gory red, and the thickest drops trickled down the doors like tears. The killer lifted the deflated carcass under its arms and dragged it to the living room. Propped it in the rocker. Sawed off its ears. The ears were stuffed into the headphones, and then the headphones were placed onto the head.
The killer sat on the rug—crisscross applesauce—picked up the abandoned controller, and unpaused the game. There was no hurry.
No one would be home for hours.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Rodrigo Morales changed everything. In the early hours of Monday morning, the students of Osborne High were instructed not to come to school. Classes were canceled until further notice. Students were urged to stay home or, if their parents would be at work, stay in the home of a trusted friend. It wasn’t safe to be alone.
In the wake of this develop
ing tragedy . . .
The official texts, emails, and voicemails all repeated this same illogical and clunky phrase. No information was provided regarding the third victim, but the town’s collective mind was many tentacled and far-reaching. The Morales family had neighbors, several of whom had been startled awake by flashing police lights shortly after 2:00 a.m.
At breakfast, everybody followed the story on two screens—phone and television. Makani jumped as a plate was set down in front of her. She’d only been tangentially aware of Grandma Young, still in her pajamas and plush robe, mixing ingredients and cooking on the stovetop. Makani blinked at the short stack of pancakes.
“Oatmeal pumpkin,” her grandmother said.
Their usual breakfast was whole-wheat toast or a bowl of fiber cereal. Makani didn’t need to ask why the change. Pancakes kept her grandmother occupied while they waited for information. Pancakes gave her a task to do with her hands in a world that seemed more and more out of her control. And pancakes showed Makani that, even though the world was frightening, she was loved.
If only Makani had an appetite. The cloying sweetness of the maple syrup made her nose ache and her stomach turn.
Rodrigo.
That was the rumor. The guy who’d insulted her five days ago on the quad. The guy she’d spoken to three days ago in physics class. Alex’s weird crush.
Rodrigo.
He couldn’t be dead, because he was still so alive in her mind.
Makani had already texted Alex. It was her first attempt to contact her since Darby’s confrontation, and she had yet to receive a reply. Now she felt guilty for ignoring their texts over the weekend.
“Well?” Grandma Young asked.
“Thank you,” Makani said automatically. She’d forgotten about the pancakes.
“I meant, is there anything new?”
“—just in, we can confirm a third victim in the Osborne slayings . . .” Creston Howard said from the living room, and they lunged toward him. “. . . a seventeen-year-old senior, Rodrigo Ramón Morales Ontiveros.”
His full name. Makani’s knees buckled.
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