by L. E. Flynn
I slap down the tabloid, then I realize the checkout guy is Mark’s friend Keegan, the one who came to all the parties with Mark, obviously trolling for high school girls to hook up with.
“She did it,” I say, because I feel like I have to say something.
“Yeah,” he says, practically thrusting the tabloid back at me. “I know.”
I pay, like, five bucks for the crappy magazine. I’m sure Tabby would love that.
“Anything else?” he says, because I’m still standing here and there’s a guy coughing behind me, all impatient.
“Yeah. We should find a way to prove it.”
THE VANGUARD
October 2, 2019
Second suspect questioned in death of Princeton student
By Mason Livingston
Police in Coldcliff, Colorado, released a statement Tuesday evening that another suspect is being considered regarding the death of Mark Forrester, 20, on August 16.
Thomas Becker Rutherford III, known as Beck, is an ex-boyfriend of Tabitha Cousins, and while police wouldn’t elaborate on their lead, they have sufficient evidence to suspect Rutherford’s involvement. A source reveals that a call history between Cousins and Rutherford tipped police off to the fact that Cousins may not have acted alone.
The Coldcliff Tribune first broke the story of Forrester’s death when it was believed to be a hiking accident. Since then, it is believed that Forrester did not fall from the Split, the lookout point for the Mayflower Trail, as Cousins told police.
Rutherford, 17, has previously been arrested on charges of assault. He has had multiple suspensions from Coldcliff Heights High School, where he is a classmate of Cousins. Sources say the two were previously romantically involved, and that Rutherford would have done anything for Cousins.
“He loved her,” the source, who asked to remain unidentified, told the Vanguard. “That doesn’t just go away.”
30
KEEGEN
“YOU’RE ACTING WEIRD,” Kyla says. “Is this about Mark?”
We’re in my bed. We just—you don’t need to know what we were just trying to do. Anyway, it’s like Mark is in bed with us because Kyla keeps bringing him up, and yeah sorry, I don’t want to think about my dead best friend when I’m supposed to be able to get my dick hard.
“My best friend died. So yeah, there’s a lot on my mind. There’s a lot going on. I guess, yeah, it’s about Mark.”
She traces a circle on my chest. It feels like a bull’s-eye.
“That’s not what I mean.” She stands up and slips back into the dress she wore over here. “I know you’re upset. But this is more than that. Just be honest. Is there someone else?”
Kyla was supposed to be a party fling. You’ve seen her type. Hot, but kind of cheap-looking. I’m not saying that to be mean. It’s just how she is.
“No, there’s nobody else. Just you.”
Her eyebrows creep up. “Why don’t you stop lying to yourself, Keegan?”
I don’t know what else she expects. Last night I took her on a date. She dragged me to this expensive place downtown. Ordered champagne. Made me pay. She doesn’t seem to get that Mark is gone and maybe I’m having a hard time dealing. The police keep releasing more statements, like Tabby is one of those wooden dolls my mom used to collect, where you’d open one and there’d be a smaller one inside it. That’s what this case is. A whole bunch of layers, encased in something pretty. People are fucking salivating over it.
Now they’re deep into Tabby’s phone, and there are all these calls to that Beck Rutherford guy, but just calls, no texts. The texts were to Mark, and they show she was pissed off. It makes me happy they found them, actually. Tabby has been trying to make herself out to be this good girl, this sob story, and those messages show who she really is. A head case.
Maybe Beck did help her with it. I saw them together. Plus, I saw him get up in Mark’s face at Elle’s party. Now his girlfriend, this Lou chick, wants my help trying to figure out the mystery, probably so she can clear his name or whatever. Maybe I should go along with it, though, if I can prove Tabby did it. I told her I wasn’t interested, but now I’m kind of wishing I hadn’t been such an asshole. Anything to get the two of them the fate they deserve.
“I’m not sure how much longer I can keep doing this,” Kyla says.
Doing what? I want to ask. It’s not like we’re even a couple. I never asked her to be my girlfriend. She just kind of assumed that’s what we were. I mean, she goes back to college in January anyway. She told me she was deferring this semester, but I didn’t bother listening to the reason why. Come to think of it, I don’t even know which college she goes to, or what she’s studying.
“Okay,” I say. “I don’t know what else you want from me.”
“I want you to appreciate me,” she says. “You might be sorry if you don’t.” Then she turns and leaves, all dramatic, and there goes any semblance of a boner, and any chance of me being in a good mood today.
I have to see Detective Stewart again this morning. He left a message that he wants to discuss new evidence. I see the guy more often than my friends. It’s kind of sad, really, because I don’t exactly have any friends. Mark was my friend and now he’s gone and everyone else was just a party acquaintance, people who weren’t there when the hangover wore off.
Today Stewart asks me about Beck. The last person I want to talk about.
“Would you say Mark knew about Beck Rutherford?”
I hate hearing that little prick’s name. His grungy leather jacket. The cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
“Yeah. Mark knew. He told me Tabby was fucking around on him. Sorry, screwing around. You know what I mean. He wanted to find proof.”
“So that’s where you came in.” I’m starting to hate Stewart, how he’s picking up steam, getting more comfortable the more I sweat in this chair.
“I guess so. I mean, he just asked me to keep an eye on things.”
“To spy on Tabitha?”
“Not spy. Just if I saw anything, to let him know.”
“So you never spied on Tabitha Cousins. You never followed her home.”
It’s not like that—I didn’t follow her home. It’s just that I saw her, on the back of his bike. He dropped her off down the street. I was in my car, inching up, trying to stay hidden. Beck Rutherford with his stupid long hair. He doesn’t even wear a helmet, although she did. They didn’t kiss, but I’m sure he wanted to, because he stood there and watched her go inside.
I watched, too. I texted Mark and told him she was with Beck. I wanted to confront her myself, to knock on her door and ask her what the hell she was doing with him when she had a guy who loved her so goddamn much that he would do anything for her.
Mark wrote back right away. Thanks man I’ll talk to her.
I almost chucked my phone. I’ll talk to her? He was so calm, so together. I wanted to run the guy and his bike right off the road. But I guess that was the difference between me and Mark.
“No,” I say, staring Stewart down, picturing him as my prey instead of my predator. “I never spied on that girl.”
He switches lanes, pushes his hands out in front of him in a rubbery knot. “According to our records of Mark’s whereabouts, you were the last person to see him before he died. Besides Tabitha. What did you and Mark do the morning of the hike?”
“I already told you guys. We went out for breakfast. At this diner we used to go to when we were in high school. It never changed.” I don’t know why I throw in that last part. It’s important, somehow. Rita’s never changed, even though we did. Same soggy French toast, same greasy bacon and eggs.
“Did you talk about Tabitha? Did Mark seem nervous, angry, or out of sorts in any way?”
They already asked me all this, way back at the beginning. I said no, just like I do now. He was his regular self. He had the protein plate, ate every last scrap. Mark never wasted food.
I said no, but it wasn’t the whole truth then, and it isn’t
now. There was something he said to me. Something that made all the difference. But I can’t tell Stewart. I can’t tell anyone.
I can tell he doesn’t believe me, and I also know he’s turned into the enemy. He’s on her side now. Tabby. She got in his head somehow and she’s spreading her lies like some kind of disease. The thing you have to remember about Tabby is this: Her poison, or whatever it is, tastes so good you have no idea you’re being slowly killed until it’s too late.
31
LOU
THE INTERNET HAS such a massive hard-on for her. Did you know they have Tabby makeup tutorials on YouTube? People are, like, copying her look. The dark hair and blue eyes. There was even one chick trying to make freckles with an eyeliner pencil. All of it makes me sick. She’ll probably end up getting color contacts named after her, and all she had to do was murder a guy to get there.
And now she’s taking Beck down with her.
Everyone thinks he’s involved because he dated Tabby. (God, it was, like, almost two years ago.) They think the entire thing was this get-rid-of-the-other-guy scheme so they could be together. Maybe I’m spending too much time on Sharp Edges, because murder basically runs through my brain the way song lyrics used to. Or I just eavesdrop on too many of the conversations happening at school. But I know Beck didn’t do it.
I’m not expecting him to come over tonight, but he does. Texts me from outside just as I’m falling asleep. You home?
I pull a hoodie on, but keep my legs bare. He’s standing in front of the tree out front, pacing, which isn’t like him. When I come outside, he grabs me by the shoulders.
“You know I didn’t do it, right?” he says. “Even my parents think I did it. They’re walking around me like I’m some kind of monster living under their roof. My mom leaves me dinner in the fridge, like she can’t even look at me.”
I slip my arms under his jacket, where I know his skin will be warm. This is the most I’ve heard Beck talk about his parents ever. I guess I can thank Tabby for this, in some twisted way.
“I know you didn’t do it,” I say. And then I say something else, because I can’t help myself. “But where were you, the night it happened? You never texted me back.”
“I was just out riding,” he says. “Sometimes I do that when my head gets complicated. I stopped at Pacers and got a beer, but nobody remembers me being there. It’s like this whole thing is coming down on me.”
He’s never like this with me, never frantic, never loses his cool. I sink into him and he lets me, cupping my head with his hand.
“I knew you weren’t with Tabby,” I say. “But why did she call you all those times? You never told me about it.”
He sighs, rubs his eyes. “I mean, I don’t know. She just wanted someone to talk to her.”
I pull away. “She has Elle for that. Why does she need you?”
“I guess she thinks I understand her. I can’t really explain it.”
My voice is shaking like it does when I know I’m about to cry. “But you dumped her. I didn’t know you still talked to her.”
“I don’t tell you everyone I talk to. What does it matter? And who told you I broke up with her anyway?”
I literally don’t know if I want to laugh or cry. Sometimes Beck is not worth the effort. He’s a puzzle with too many pieces missing.
“Why did you actually hit Mark? At the party?” I’m not even sure why I’m asking, other than that it seems important, suddenly.
He tugs on the ends of his hair. “We got into it. I told him I was watching him. He just looked at me like he had no idea what I was talking about. He’s manipulative, Lou. He knows what he’s doing.”
“Was. Knew. He’s dead, Beck. And they don’t think Tabby did it alone.”
This time when he pulls me in, I resist, but only for a second. I remember what his hands are capable of, the good and bad. That’s the essence of Beck. Tough with other people. Knuckles that have been covered in blood, a mouth that smokes and spits out swear words and threats. But gentle with me. A mouth that calls me sweetheart, sweetheart, as it presses into my skin, and hands that worship me.
“Just believe me,” he says. “I didn’t have anything to do with it. And neither did she.”
Why didn’t you text me back that night? I want to say. Where were you really? But I don’t ask, because this part of me that won’t be quiet is saying I don’t actually want to know.
“I believe you,” I say. “I’ll figure out a way to prove it.”
I make him think it’s just for him. But I’ve always been the kind of person who just needs to know. I have an investigative mind, my mom once said. I used to want to write for the school paper, until I realized nobody read it, and nobody cared about cafeteria food exposés. So I did my own thing instead.
This isn’t for Beck, and it’s not for Tabby. It’s for me. And you, really. Because the truth shall set us all free.
32
KEEGEN
SOMETIMES I’M HAUNTED by Mark’s final scream. How it might have sounded, the last noise from the guy who thought the world was in his hands. A lot of these nights I wake up disgustingly sweaty, hearing him in my head, all the different versions of him. Happy Mark at parties, the guy everyone talked to. Sad Mark, when he had a sluggish day in the pool. Even drunk Mark, the good-time guy, belting lyrics to old bands I had never heard of. He knew the words to practically every song.
I wonder what he was thinking in those final moments, before he put the backpack on. Before she hugged him, kissed him, and shoved him over the edge.
Maybe he didn’t scream at all. Maybe he was too shocked to make a sound. I have no idea how long that fall would take, but the Split is high up. I went there once when I was a kid, the summer my stepdad tried to get us to become active. My legs were rubber and I got queasy looking down and I was too shit-scared to stand that close to the edge. I’m still scared of heights.
I wonder if his head made a sound when it hit the rocks. I wonder a lot of morbid shit. Mostly how Tabby looked staring down at what she had done. Her face when she realized he was still alive.
I should have been a better friend to Mark. I let that girl get in the middle of us, just like she was trying to do. She had a birthday party for him and didn’t even tell me about it. Who does something like that? She was doing everything she could to distance him from the people who actually cared, but he didn’t see it at all.
It bugged Mark that Tabby and I didn’t get along. “I don’t expect you to be best friends,” he said. “But can you at least try? She’ll be around for a while.”
He said that over Christmas break, I think, and literally a week later, when he was back at school, Tabby was in the Stop & Shop, wearing leggings and those weird slipper boots girls wear, makeup perfectly done. She didn’t bring her regular shit to the counter. No diet soda or candy or tampons. She brought a box of condoms. Magnums, if we’re keeping score.
Mark wasn’t due back from Princeton until the end of April.
She was totally daring me to say something as I rang her up, but I didn’t. She wanted to get a rise out of me, and I wasn’t giving it to her. I stuffed the condoms in a plastic bag and made sure to charge her the extra five cents for buying a bag. Sometimes I let the hot chicks get away without paying for one.
“Any plans tonight?” she said. She was baiting me. She didn’t give a shit about my plans.
“Yeah, and they’re none of your business,” I said.
“You don’t like me,” she said, then laughed. “That sucks, because he’s going to pick me every time.”
“I don’t give a shit one way or another,” I said. “Sixteen seventy-five.”
She traced her belly button through her shirt, stuck her debit card in the machine. I wondered what she looked like under all the shit she always wore, if that makeup was hiding a hideous monster underneath.
I stuck my middle finger at her back as she walked away. She looked back and winked at me. It was all a game to her. Life. Mark. E
ven me.
I texted Mark as soon as she left. Your gf was just here buying a giant box of condoms
He wrote back a couple hours later, when I was home. He never used to take so long to respond. I know he always wrote back to Tabby right away, always called her exactly when he said he would. If you looked up boyfriend in the dictionary, Mark’s picture would be right there.
She likes to be prepared, can’t complain about that;)
He had such a gigantic blind spot when it came to that girl. It was less a blind spot and more a goddamn eclipse.
I scrolled through my texts with girls I’d hooked up with recently. Most of them were one-night stands who insisted on swapping numbers because this was fun. I never had a reason to text them again. I was done with girlfriends, but I was also bored as hell and needed something to do.
Then there was a knock on my door, and I didn’t have to text anyone after all.
THE COLDCLIFF TRIBUNE
October 10, 2019
DNA found near dead hiker a match for girlfriend
By Julie Kerr
DNA found near the body of Mark Forrester, 20, has been positively linked to his former girlfriend, Tabitha Cousins, police indicated in a statement released yesterday. This evidence, along with a half footprint matching Cousins’s Nike shoes, near the creek bed where Forrester was found, is enough for police to formally charge Cousins.
