by L. E. Flynn
OFFICER OLDMAN: What were you and Tabby talking about at the party?
BECK: (cracks knuckles) I don’t even remember. Just small talk. I make small talk with a lot of people. Kinda like you and I are doing now.
OFFICER OLDMAN: Were you trying to get back together with Tabitha?
BECK: No. Just because I talked to a girl doesn’t mean I wanted to get back in her pants.
OFFICER OLDMAN: Mark didn’t file any assault charges against you.
BECK: Because he knew he was being an asshole and deserved it.
OFFICER OLDMAN: You claim you didn’t speak much with Tabby. But you talk to Tabitha’s best friend, Eleanor. Elle Ross. Isn’t that right?
BECK: (pauses) Not really. We’re not friends either. What does all this have to do with what happened to Mark Forrester?
OFFICER OLDMAN: We’re getting to that.
18
LOU
I DON’T REALLY HAVE TIME to talk about this right now. I do have a life, you know? And I’m waiting for Beck to pick me up. But whatever, he’s always late. And I do feel like it’s my duty to let people know the Tabby I know, not the angelic girl she’s suddenly trying to be. (Seriously, she wore lace to school the day before she stopped coming. Who does that?)
I remember where I was when I found out about Mark. On my bed, doing a face mask, waiting for Beck to text me back. I had sent the last text, and it had been almost three hours, not that I was counting. And I mean, Beck isn’t glued to his phone like everyone else. But when my phone went off, I pretty much expected it to be him. Sometimes he texted to tell me he was standing in my backyard and I’d get this thrill, sneaking down to meet him, careful to wear cute underwear.
But it wasn’t Beck. It was my friend Trish. Did you hear? It’s all over Facebook. Mark Forrester is dead. Some kind of hiking accident.
My first thought, as totally horrible as this is, and I’d never admit this to anyone else—I hoped Tabby was, too.
(Tabby. It sounds like someone’s house cat, right? If she’s a cat, she’s one of those feral ones constantly in heat.)
What you really want to know is what happened at Elle’s last party before Mark died. And honestly, I’m not totally sure what went down that night, and I don’t know why Beck got in Mark’s face, because he wouldn’t tell me. But I know it has something to do with Mark’s death, like some chain reaction.
If you’ve been to one of Elle’s parties, you know they get pretty wild. She has them only a couple times a year, when her parents go out of town and basically give her their blessing. They’re, like, teen-movie party clichés, complete with people doing it in the upstairs bedrooms. Not that I’d ever do it in an upstairs bedroom at a party. Even though Beck is super hot and we’re pretty much doing it every day.
Well, sort of. I mean, it’s really none of your business, is it?
And this isn’t about me and Beck. It’s about Tabby and Mark. What I saw. What I think I saw anyway. It was all kind of confusing. I’d had some wine. I don’t usually drink. Not like Tabby does. I hate how people like to use alcohol as the reason why they turn into somebody else. It’s exactly what my mom did last summer when she cheated on my dad with some random guy she met at the bar. She went away for this girls’ weekend with her mom friends, and apparently confessed the whole thing to my dad when she got back. She was all, I had too much to drink, I wasn’t thinking clearly. It’s such a convenient excuse.
Anyway, I was kind of tipsy and looking for Beck. You can’t miss him. He has this whole bad boy thing going on. Before him, I only ever dated jocks. Football, basketball, baseball. They were all the same. Boring and predictable, and into their balls—ha—way more than me. I didn’t want some guy to pick me up for a date in his polo shirt, driving his dad’s Honda. I craved something wilder, something to match the wilderness I know is inside me.
I couldn’t find Beck anywhere, which bothered me a bit, because we were supposed to be at this party together, and maybe more so because the fact that I couldn’t find him made it really clear that I didn’t know him as well as I should after almost six months of being together. (Well, I mean, not that we ever had the conversation about being exclusive, because bringing it up would just make me sound clingy, and I don’t want to be the kind of girl who needs a Facebook relationship status to have an actual relationship. Even though, between you and me, the validation would be nice.)
I have no idea why I opened the door to the pool house. Maybe because I had already opened every other door. I’ve seen people hot box the pool house at one of Elle’s other parties, which is so gross. But I cracked the door just a bit, and that’s when I saw Tabitha’s back. She was straddling someone whose face I couldn’t see—like, it was really dark, and I only know it was Tabitha’s back because there was a bit of light coming from a lantern in the garden and it lit up the ugly ivy tattoo she has creeping up her spine. Hands were cupping her ass and her hair was falling down, mostly out of the fishtail braid she’d started the night with.
Anyway, I turned to leave—I’m not a pervert who watches other people do it—but I heard what she said. I heard it and I can’t unhear it. This doesn’t mean I still love you.
It’s a weird thing to say to your boyfriend, right? I mean, at first I figured they were in a fight and that doing it somewhere they could be caught was their kinky way of making up. But then, like, a few minutes later I saw Mark inside the house, making a drink. It was definitely him—he had this pink shirt on. (Although I heard him say it was salmon.) So I went back outside and the pool house door was still closed and there was no Tabitha anywhere.
So maybe my timeline is a bit fuzzy, but I really don’t see how Mark could have gone from doing it with Tabitha in the pool house to doing shots in the kitchen in less than five minutes, unless he’s actually two people, like Clark Kent and Superman. Which only means one thing. She was cheating on Mark with someone else at the party.
Of course, my mind rounded up the usual suspects. There was Keegan, Mark’s friend, who always tagged along to parties, which meant he must have thought he had a good chance of getting laid. (And I mean, he probably did, because he’s pretty hot, although he’d look hotter if I didn’t know he worked at the Stop & Shop.) I always wondered if he and Tabitha had something going on. Just the way he looked at her sometimes, like he was some kind of animal hunting for prey. A snake, and if he opened his mouth wide enough, he could swallow her alive.
There was Dean Hanson from the football team. Someone apparently saw him and Tabitha sneaking out of the boys’ locker room together after the Red Flags game sophomore year. And Reid Carter, who everyone knows Tabitha hooked up with right before she got together with Mark. Or maybe it was during. I wouldn’t put it past her. Oh, and Dylan—I forget his last name because he doesn’t go to our school, but one time at the Fall Fair, Katie Saunders saw them on the Ferris wheel and his hand was totally in her shorts.
Then it was like, something in my brain shifted and the entire night was ruined, because what if it was Beck?
Don’t get me wrong. I trust my boyfriend with all my heart. I trust Beck. I just don’t trust Tabitha, and girls like her have a way of making boys do just about anything.
And besides, as much as I totally hate to admit it, Beck has history with Tabitha. He doesn’t talk about it. But before Tabitha deleted her Facebook account, when I was friends with her on there, I creeped her old profile pictures and found one of the two of them from sophomore year, before she and Mark were a thing. Her sitting on his lap, them kissing at some party. They were just, like, all over each other all the time, then suddenly they weren’t.
I kept looking for Beck at the party because I could feel myself getting frantic, and I needed to know he wasn’t with her. I went back outside. There were a bunch of people in the pool, and the door to the pool house was open. I didn’t see Beck anywhere but I did see Tabitha, sitting beside the pool with her feet dangling in, staring into the water with her hand covering her mouth.
Then there was Beck. Of course I recognized his back. I mean, he has this long blond hair and always wears a leather jacket and it’s pretty much the sexiest thing ever. He was on a lawn chair by the fence, staring up at the sky, smoking, which he’d told me he quit doing. Did you know Beck started smoking when he was, like, twelve? And when we got together and I asked him to quit, because I didn’t want him to kill himself, he just said Sure, sweetheart, and did it, like it was the easiest thing in the world. That was when I knew he loved me. Even though if we’re being honest here, the real reason I asked him to quit is because I hate the smell.
So I went over to him and tapped him on the shoulder. He took my hand in his, as if I hadn’t surprised him. Beck never lets you know when he’s surprised. Or happy, or sad, or anything, really. He’s just, like, super good at hiding his emotions.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he said. He always calls me sweetheart. Which I used to think was really cute, but sometimes I wish he’d say my full name, like guys do on TV. Louisa Maria Chamberlain, I love you.
“Where were you?” I blurted out. “I looked for you everywhere.”
“I’ve been here the whole time,” he said.
“You’re smoking.”
He dropped the lit cigarette and snuffed it out with his boot. “Not anymore.”
“You told me you quit,” I said, trying to stay mad at him, but I could feel my mad becoming something mellow, just like it always did with Beck.
“I did quit. But sometimes I get in a mood and just need one. You don’t understand because you’ve never been addicted to something.” He slung his arm around my shoulders, kissed the top of my head.
I’m addicted to you, I wanted to say, but it was the kind of cheesy line that belonged in a rom-com. I kept my mouth shut. You know, boys get scared off when your feelings get too big.
He didn’t apologize for smoking after he’d told me he quit. Beck never apologizes for anything. Maybe because he really isn’t sorry. I burrowed into him, tucked my hands against the bare strip of skin where his jacket had ridden up. I sucked in his smell, leather and sweat and, kind of gross, the cigarette. But there was something else there, too, I swear. Perfume. And Tabby must be trying to cover up the rotten stench where her soul should be, because she always wears a shit ton of it.
I know what you’re thinking. That I’m paranoid, and making things up in my head because of how the media is slamming Tabitha. I’m dogpiling on her, projecting my own insecurities. That’s what my mom would say anyway. She’s a psychiatrist, one of the many reasons why I never tell her anything.
But here’s the thing. Beck couldn’t just quit smoking that easily, even though he told me he had. Maybe he never quite gave up Tabitha either. And sometimes when I’m feeling really pissed off about everything, I wonder if he could have had something to do with Mark’s death. If Tabitha and Mark weren’t the only two people in the woods that day.
I know, it’s ridiculous, and it doesn’t even make sense. Beck is with me, and I’m sure he wasn’t the one in the pool house that night. But somebody was, and I just have this feeling Tabitha wasn’t working alone. A girl like that always gets someone else to do the dirty work.
THE DENVER ZODIAC
September 17, 2019
Dead Princeton student’s alcohol level high at time of death
By Madison West
Autopsy reports show that Mark Forrester, 20, had alcohol in his system on the day he died. Forrester and his girlfriend, Tabitha Cousins, 17, were hiking to the lookout point of Coldcliff’s Mayflower Trail, known as the Split, when Forrester fell from the forty-foot lookout. His cause of death was determined to be drowning, with Cousins as the only current suspect.
It is unknown what District Attorney Anthony Paxton and his team will do with the new evidence. Cousins has maintained that Forrester got too close to the edge and fell. However, a weighted backpack was found in Claymore Creek, which was later confirmed to be the backpack Cousins purchased for Forrester at an REI in Boulder.
Cousins’s family has hired powerhouse defense lawyer Marnie Deveraux to defend their daughter. Deveraux told the press yesterday that the truth would be uncovered, and that her client’s innocence is indisputable.
19
BRIDGET
BLINK AND YOU’LL MISS US. We’re the people who make up Coldcliff, all seven thousand, eight hundred of us. Let me situate you. You’re standing in Coldcliff Heights, which is on the north side, and it’s the area the high school is in. It’s pretty, you’re probably thinking. Look at the view of the mountains.
Do you feel safe? You probably do, all nestled in like this, framed by mountains and thickets of trees. The air probably smells better here than where you come from. Fresh and crisp. Maybe you think our girls look wholesome.
There’s no reason to come to Coldcliff. Not really. We don’t have any of the Fourteeners protruding from our land, so we get passed up by most of the serious climbers. Our shopping leaves something to be desired—most of us buy everything online anyway. The one mall we have, Forest Glen, is pretty tiny, with more shops getting shuttered by the year. Most people get their groceries at the Stop & Shop, which is in the same plaza as my dad’s orthodontic office and the optometry place where I get my glasses.
We have nice neighborhoods, suburbia bordered by wilderness. Most people here are solidly upper middle class, living in two-stories just like ours. Most of us have big backyards. Most of us never use them.
What we do have are some good hiking trails. They draw people here in the fall, when the leaves are changing, a smattering of outdoorsy types with waterproof clothing and bear spray for the black bears that they think are the greatest danger around.
If you’ve read the news lately, you might think there’s another danger now.
We have a new tourist attraction. My sister. They’re flocking to the trails with maps made by this one website—Outwit the Split, they’re calling it, trying to re-create Tabby and Mark’s last walk. Isn’t that sick and twisted? I have no idea who was morbid enough to come up with it, or who is morbid enough to actually take the time to do it. But I see them in the woods, because I’m there, running.
And today, along with those lemmings and their maps, I see somebody else. Mark’s brother. I recognize the hair—blond curls, so different from Mark’s meticulous buzz cut. Also, he’s wearing flip-flops. Who hikes in flip-flops? Except I guess I know he isn’t hiking at all.
He sees me. I freeze, like a deer caught in crosshairs. I’m not scared, though. Like I said, he’s in flip-flops, and these woods are my domain.
“What are you doing here?” he says. “Don’t tell me you’re one of them.” He aims his middle finger at a man and woman in matching khaki shorts with walking poles.
“I’m a runner. So I’m running. Do you honestly think I’m one of them?” I jog in place next to him. I hate losing momentum.
“I don’t know. Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude, but these idiots get under my skin. I’m Alex. You’re Bridget, right?”
I know what he means by You’re Bridget. You’re Tabby’s sister.
“I’m Bridget.” I gesture to his feet because I don’t want to look at his face. He looks too much like Mark, once you get past the hair and the stubble. Same eyes, same mouth. “Not the best choice of hiking footwear.”
“I’m not hiking,” he says. “I’m—whatever. Never mind. I just feel closer to him when I’m here. And apparently so do all these other people who never knew him at all.”
I stop jogging on the spot and glance up, then drop my gaze, because it’s hard to look directly at him. Maybe I read Alex all wrong, the hardened boy I saw at the funeral who hates my sister. Right now he just looks sad and lost. I think about Tabby at home, probably stretched out on the couch watching the Real Housewives. Maybe this whole thing isn’t as shrouded in mystery as everyone wants it to seem. Maybe it’s just a dead boy and the people grieving for him.
“I’m sorry,” I say, wiping damp hair off my
face. Why do I sound so guilty? I didn’t push Mark.
But I did something else, and if I hadn’t, things might be different now.
“Let me ask you something, and please be honest,” Alex says. I look around, aware that we’re utterly alone. “You saw them that day, right? Did anything seem off?”
I shake my head and make the mistake of meeting his eyes, and the intensity there makes me hold my breath. He looks especially like Mark now—Mark when he wanted something. “No. They seemed totally normal.” I don’t mention that their normal was anything but.
“I’m just trying to make sense of it,” he says. “I mean, I know what I’ve been hearing. And I saw the video. This has been hell for my family. Mark and I didn’t talk often. Last I knew, he had a girlfriend, but I had no idea if they were serious.”
They were too serious. I think about Tabby’s locker, the words scrawled there. Alex has no idea.
“I didn’t know much either,” I say. “Tabby had her own life, and I have mine.” I stare at my watch, at the timer that has kept going. I don’t want to stand here, because I’m afraid of what he’ll ask next.
“I’m heading back to Australia next week,” he says. “But if you remember anything, let me know. You know where we live, because I see you running by.”
I swallow. My throat is dry.
“I should go.” I turn and start to jog, willing him not to follow me.
“Mark mentioned his girlfriend’s sister didn’t like him,” he yells, his voice rising. “Why didn’t you like him? Everyone liked Mark.”
I break into a sprint.
Coldcliff doesn’t feel that safe anymore.
Excerpt from Tabby’s Diary
October 18, 2018
How do you stop yourself from loving someone? I seriously need to know. Now Mark is upset at me because he knows I talked to Beck about us. Nothing else happened, but Mark doesn’t believe that. Yet I’m supposed to believe him that nothing happened with all the Instagram girls. I even called him out on it, just to see what he’d say. He made me think I was the paranoid one. You’re the only one, he told me, but keep this up and you won’t be. I feel so alone.
