by L. E. Flynn
Text message from Tabitha Cousins to Mark Forrester,
August 16, 2018, 1:01 p.m.
40
BRIDGET
TWO DAYS BEFORE TABBY’S TRIAL, I bolt upright in bed.
I know why I can’t stop thinking about the Nikes.
I turn over and look at my corkboard on the wall. There are photos of me and Tabby in a photo booth from last summer. We had driven to Boulder for back-to-school shopping and she dragged me into the photo booth at the mall, forced me to make goofy faces with her. I stare at that girl, tongue stuck out, and wonder if I know her better than anyone, or if I don’t know her at all.
There are a lot of things I don’t understand.
I don’t know what it means that I found the map I drew Tabby, hours after she left for the hike. It was on her desk, in the same place I had left it months ago, not folded in her backpack like it should have been.
And I don’t know what it means that the picnic food she and Elle made that morning was still in the fridge that night, but the Gatorade was gone.
I don’t know what it means that she wanted to take a shower right away when she got home, how she said she needed hot water, how she went into the tub, huddled in a shivering little ball. I’ll never know what that water washed away.
I don’t know what it means that her phone was, in fact, not battery-dead, because it beeped when she came in the door, dirty and disheveled.
I don’t know what it means that her shoes were wet when she came home. I noticed, because I knew the woods weren’t wet that day, because I had been running earlier, willing the trees to swallow me up.
Here’s what I figured out about the shoes.
I usually need new ones every six months. I can tell by the tread on the bottom. But this time, I replaced them after four. Not the ones I lent Tabby that day, but my regular pair.
I haven’t been running any more often than usual. I do my fifty miles a week, same as always. But maybe someone else has been running, too. In my shoes. And there’s really only one other person that could be. And now I keep thinking back to the time I took her with me in the woods, how she seemed to know her way around, almost like she had been there before.
Maybe it’s just because of all the articles, always in my face, even when I try to ignore them. How can I help but read every single one? And it’s like other people knew a side of my sister I never did. The things they’re saying about her—that’s not the Tabby I know, the one who French-braids my hair before track meets and makes me a banana cake from scratch for my birthday, because she knows it’s the only kind I like. They know another girl, except she has my sister’s face.
It’s so twisted that maybe she only asked for that map because she knew I was watching, not because she needed it at all.
And just for a second, before I fall back to sleep, I wish I wouldn’t have told the police that the Nike footprint was mine.
41
KYLA DOVE
I’M SO STUPID. I mean, I knew the whole time, on some level, but I let myself believe the things I wanted to believe, because it was easier that way. Or maybe because I saw my own happy ending, as fucked up as that is. I’ve been called dumb my entire life. By my asshole stepfather, by boys who told me things I wanted to hear to get me to do things, by girls in high school locker rooms. I’ve been called dumb so many times that I was convinced they were right and I was hopeless.
But I’m not hopeless. I’m furious. Furious at everyone who has underestimated me, and furious at him. This time, I did something with my anger. They know my story now, and it’s going to change everything.
PART III
And Jill came tumbling
SHARP EDGES CRIME—
CUT TO THE TRUTH!
December 1, 2019
Step right up, folks
By Oberon Halton
Everyone is talking about Tabby Cousins’s trial, which starts tomorrow morning. I’ll be tweeting any updates at @sharpedgescrime, so be sure to follow along. Be honest—how many of you have made a drinking game out of this, or have money riding on the verdict? I might have made a couple bets myself. I also made a T-shirt. Team Tabby. Because something tells me that innocent or not, she’s going to walk.
COMMENTS
MangoSmoothie: Ten bucks says this guy created the stupid Tabby Cats in the first place
DisasterZone: Ten bucks says it’s a girl writing this.
TalkNerdyToMe: Twenty bucks says this girl gets rich after she walks
YOU
A COURTROOM, like the ones you see on TV, lit up with camera flashes, circled with news vans parked at haphazard angles, stretching down the streets like scarabs. Her fans—yes, fans—are the ones with cat ears and glittery signs, chanting loudly. Reporters huddle outside, eager to get a glimpse of her. They’re paparazzi and they’re waiting on their star.
There’s a roar outside but a buzz inside, where it’s too hot, people fanning their faces with their hands. Everyone sits in rows. She hasn’t arrived yet. There are Mark’s parents; and his older brother, back from Australia; and there’s Keegan; all lined up in a row near the front. The Forresters have District Attorney Anthony Paxton on their side. You’d recognize his face from the news. You’ve probably heard about his near-perfect conviction rate. He’s supposed to be a pit bull, relentless with questions. Tabby will crack and admit what she did.
Her defense attorney is the woman in black, the one with her blond hair swirled on top of her head in a butterscotch bun. Marnie Deveraux. She graduated top of her class from Harvard, and behind her back, her classmates called her Law School Barbie. But she’s smart. Maybe she’s perfect for Tabby Cousins, because she might just know what it’s like to be that girl, the one everyone hates.
Paxton and Deveraux came prepared to give you clashing versions of the same girl, and that very girl is about to go head-to-head with Mark’s ghost and all the people vouching for him. But Tabby has people willing to speak up for her, too. Maybe not just the expected ones, but other allies in her corner.
There she is now, the girl of the hour. She’s being led out in her handcuffs, but there are those blue eyes, that hair, that hint of a smile. She has been beaten up in the news over that smile, what one outlet called “Satan’s smirk,” but the truth is, it’s just the shape of her mouth. Her lips naturally curl up that way, like they’re doing now.
She takes her seat, turns around to see who is behind her. Her parents, of course, and Bridget, and Elle, and maybe a few rows back, someone else who she looks surprised to see, if she even notices her at all.
Everyone is here. You can sit down in the back, if you can find a spot.
Let the circus begin.
1
BRIDGET
SHE TURNS AND LOOKS at me every time she sits down. She knows where to find me—nestled safely between Mom and Dad. But there’s nothing safe about being here.
It’s hard to explain, unless you have a sister, but you just know when her world has been tilted. And now it’s like she can see the slant of mine. I wish she’d get out of my head. I used to want to open it up like a coconut so we could share all of the same thoughts.
I don’t want to anymore. Not only because I’m afraid of what I’ll find in her head, but because I’m scared of what she might see in mine.
2
ELLE
THE POLICE EVIDENCE is presented first, and I have to admit, it doesn’t look good for Tabby. They have photos of Mark’s caved-in head. Strands of Tabby’s hair. Half a footprint. The angry text messages. Tabby’s erratic behavior, her jealousy and possessiveness. The map. And worst of all, the backpack, the rock-filled one Mark went over the edge wearing.
He wasn’t dead when he hit the water, Paxton says, but considering what happened next, he wished he was. His lungs filled up, and he probably died slowly. A forensic expert Paxton calls as a witness confirms it.
That detail makes my body quake. I hear Tabby sob, just a little sound, more like a squeak. She used to ma
ke that noise if we watched a horror movie and an animal got hurt. Tabby doesn’t have the stomach for any of this.
“If Ms. Cousins watched Mr. Forrester fall, and it was all one big accident, this doesn’t explain why she didn’t go down to the creek to see if he was still alive. Instead, she fled the scene, although a disputable footprint was left behind.” Paxton gesticulates for the jury like an actor.
During cross-examination, Tabby’s lawyer fights back. “My client was sure Mark was deceased and that there was nothing she could do, and she couldn’t see in the dark. She thought the best course of action was running for help. Which she did. The footprint is no longer evidence, as it belonged to her sister, who wore the same shoes on a run earlier that day.”
Bridget is within arm’s reach of me, but when I look over, her eyes are fixed firmly on her lap. Since when did the shoe print belong to her?
“Mr. Forrester’s time of death was marked as nine thirty-six p.m. Ms. Cousins didn’t get out of the woods until after midnight, at least according to what she told police, a story her sister corroborated. My expert confirmed the time of death was correct based on the state of Mr. Forrester’s body. It couldn’t have taken Ms. Cousins three hours to get home, even if she was walking slowly.”
They’re dueling sharks, both trying to find blood in the water. And there’s plenty of it.
“My client was lost,” Deveraux says. “The sun set at seven fifty-nine on that date. She wasn’t familiar with the woods. She ran in circles trying to get out.” She turns to the forensic expert. “Dr. Sims, can you confirm with certainty that the footprint was made by Tabitha Cousins?”
Bridget shifts. She looks like she wants to say something, but she bites her lip, like she’s struggling to keep the words inside. The world inside. I know the feeling, but not now. All I want to shout is that Tabby didn’t do it. That she isn’t perfect, but she isn’t a killer.
“No,” says Dr. Sims. “The footprint belonged to a wearer of size seven-and-a-half Nike shoes. We can’t confirm anything beyond that.”
Paxton interjects. He keeps doing that, even when it’s not his turn. Typical man. “Dr. Sims confirmed that the hair at the crime scene belonged to Ms. Cousins.”
Deveraux touches her own hair. “One hundred strands, Mr. Paxton. That’s the average number of hairs a woman loses per day, with long hair being even more noticeable.”
With each witness, they go over the itinerary for the hike. That’s what they call it. An itinerary. Like it was some kind of vacation. Paxton argues that Tabby planned the hike, and Deveraux maintains that it was Mark’s idea. I guess there aren’t any text messages to prove anything. It was a verbal agreement, the kind of plan regular couples make, like going out for dinner or to see a movie.
I’m getting called to the stand as a character witness but not today, probably not anytime soon, because this trial could go on for days, weeks. It’s a nauseating game of back-and-forth. The prosecution goes first. Paxton gets to call his witnesses, then Deveraux can cross-examine them. I learned all of this from Google. I wanted to be prepared, but I’m not prepared for Tabby up there, sitting so close to me, but still so far away. I wonder who did her hair, how she managed to put makeup on. Maybe Deveraux did it for her. She seems like the kind of woman who understands us.
I zone out. I stare at Keegan, across the aisle, and a twisted part of me sucks in a bubble of laughter, because this is like a really fucked-up wedding where he’s on the other side. I wonder what would have happened with Tabby and Mark if he hadn’t died. Maybe they would have gotten married someday, and I would have been the maid of honor. Probably not.
Mostly I just watch Tabby. She keeps stealing glances at Keegan, or maybe she’s looking at someone else in his row. Mark’s brother, who I remember seeing once at a party over Christmas break and thinking he was cute. Mark’s parents, who Tabby never even met while they were dating, because Mark tried to keep them apart, feeding her some line about how he liked to keep the different areas of his life separate. As if his life was a closet with dividers, shirts on one side and pants on the other and Tabby on a third, secret side, a flap he could open up when he felt horny and in need of validation.
I’m scared of what Keegan is going to say. He always hated Tabby. It’s like he wanted Mark all to himself.
I’m scared of the jury, the twelve people sitting and watching, some of them taking notes. They’re people I might have passed on the street, at the mall, in the Stop & Shop, and now they’re deciding if Tabby did it. I can already see one of the women—middle-aged and scowling—jotting something down. Women like that hate girls like Tabby. There’s a man beside her who looks like he could be softer, more willing to believe a girl over all this noise. I guess Deveraux thought it was best to have Tabby tried as an adult because a jury would be more sympathetic. That’s what Tabby told me, methodically, one of the last times I visited her.
“I trust her, but it’s, like, Russian roulette,” she said. “My whole future is in the hands of a bunch of people I don’t know. If even one hates me, it’s all over.” She cocked a finger to her head.
I have it planned, what I’m going to say. But it feels like it’s not enough. It doesn’t feel like proof, but speculation. Because the truth is, I don’t have any proof that Mark did anything bad to Tabby. I only have the story of my best friend, the girl who turned into a ghost while she dated him. I have a grainy video that Paxton will undoubtedly tear apart. I don’t have dates or times, just memories of Tabby’s tear-streaked face and the dull thud of her “nothing” when I asked what was wrong.
Since Tabby’s being tried as an adult, she’s facing life in prison. Paxton wants to lock her away. His big bellowing voice, all the gesturing he does with his hands. He’s supposed to have this reputation for ripping witnesses apart during cross-examination, and I’m terrified of him.
If I’m this scared, I have no idea how Tabby feels.
3
LOU
IT’S THE THIRD DAY of the trial and they’re still calling the witnesses for the prosecution. So far they’ve called the forensic guy and someone who saw Tabby stuffing rocks into a picnic basket at the beach the day before Mark died, but of course, he has no proof. He didn’t take a picture or anything, so Tabby’s lawyer pretty much shreds him to pieces.
Today they call up some guy who works at REI (he’s kind of hot, actually, in a lumberjack way), who says Tabby came in and asked questions about different outdoor stuff, which Tabby’s lawyer says proves nothing, only that she was in the store, which was normal for a girl going on a hike, out of her element. Paxton had led with the fact that Tabby went to the store back in May, way before the hike was even supposedly discussed.
“She said she was planning a hike with her boyfriend,” Hot Outdoorsy Guy mumbles. “I didn’t ask her when.”
But she left without buying anything anyway. Tabby’s lawyer asks him a bunch of questions and figures out that he apparently went to high school with Mark’s older brother, so duh, of course he’s going to make up a story.
“The only thing this proves,” Tabby’s lawyer says, “is that my client was at the store, looking at products. Cameras show that she was in the store, but not what was discussed.”
Keegan is up soon. I was so wrong about him. And I mean, there’s a reason I left his apartment that night, and a reason I wake up every night freaked out that I was alone in the woods with him.
I take out my phone and start tweeting. I don’t think I hate Tabby anymore.
I don’t think she wanted to take anything of mine after all.
4
KEEGEN
I’M THE LAST CHARACTER WITNESS. I have to follow up this douchebag from Tabby’s past who claims she got him drunk and convinced him to give her a ride home. Lawyer lady Deveraux has already punched a bunch of holes in his statement and mentioned that it has nothing to do with this, but he argues it did. “Mark was drunk, too,” he says. “He’s not here to say what happened, but maybe what
ever she did to me, she did to him.”
I put on a tie this morning and it’s strangling me, like some kind of noose. I want to rip it off, but I try to sit still, like I did at high school graduation, my shiny black shoes tapping the floor, wanting it to be over with. I don’t look at Tabby, even though I know she’s looking at me. She asked for all this. I’m not going to say anything she can’t already expect.
When Paxton summons me, I walk up to the stand. My armpits are sweating through my shirt. I bet that makes me look guilty. I don’t need to feel guilty. I have the text message, the last one Mark ever sent.
“Did Mr. Forrester—Mark—did Mark tell you he was planning on breaking up with Ms. Cousins on the hike?”
I’m stone-faced. “Yes. He did. Said he’d been wanting to do it for a while, but was afraid of her.”
“Afraid of her how?” His hair looks plastered on. There’s never a piece out of place. That must take real effort.
“Her temper. She’d go off on him. She threw a sandwich at him one day while we were eating.”
“I was aiming for the garbage.”
I gape at Tabby. I’m pretty sure everyone does. A couple people laugh, a couple more gasp. She knows she’s not supposed to talk. She sat through everything else, through everyone else shitting on her, but a fucking sandwich reminds her she has vocal cords after all.
Paxton clears his throat while the judge reminds Tabby that this isn’t her turn to speak. I swear, Tabby winks, but maybe it’s just the light in here.
