Two Can Keep a Secret

by Karen M. McManus

  “I’m going to get a drink. You guys want anything?”

  “No, I’m good,” I say, and Mia shakes her head. Ezra thuds down the stairs as I squeeze past Mia in the too-small space. It’s not until I sit down that I notice the flash of red hair beside me.

  “You certainly like to cut it close,” Viv says. She’s in a green corduroy jacket and jeans, a gauzy yellow scarf looped around her neck. Two other girls sit beside her, each holding steaming Styrofoam cups.

  I look at her and then at the stage, where Katrin, Brooke, and the other cheerleaders are lining up. “I thought you were a cheerleader,” I say, confused.

  Mia fake-coughs, “Sore point,” as Viv stiffens.

  “I don’t have time for cheerleading. I run the school paper.” A note of pride creeps into her voice as she gestures toward the aisle in front of the stage, where a man is setting up an oversized camera. “Channel 5 in Burlington is covering the vandalism story based on my article. They’re getting local color.”

  I lean forward, intrigued despite myself. “The school’s letting them?”

  “You can’t stop the free press,” Viv says smugly. She points toward a striking, dark-haired woman standing next to the camera, microphone dangling from one hand. “That’s Meli Dinglasa. She graduated from Echo Ridge ten years ago and went to Columbia’s journalism school.” She says it almost reverently, twisting her scarf until it’s even more artfully draped. Her outfit would look incredible on TV, which I’m starting to think is the point. “I’m applying there early decision. I’m hoping she’ll give me a reference.”

  On my other side, Mia plucks at my sleeve. “Band’s about to start,” she says. Ezra returns just in time, a bottled water in one hand.

  I tear my eyes away from the reporter as dozens of students holding instruments file through the back entrance and array themselves across the stage. I’d been expecting traditional marching band uniforms, but they’re all in black athletic pants and purple T-shirts that read “Echo Ridge High” across the front in white lettering. Malcolm’s in the first row, a set of snare drums draped around his neck.

  Percy Gilpin jogs onto the stage in the same purple blazer he wore to the assembly last week, and bounds up to a makeshift podium. He adjusts the microphone and raises both hands in the air as people in the stands start to clap. “Good evening, Echo Ridge! You ready for some serious fall fun? We’ve got a big night planned to support the Echo Ridge Eagles, who are undefeated heading into tomorrow’s game against Solsbury High!”

  More cheers from the crowd, as Mia executes a slow clap beside me. “Yay.”

  “Let’s get this party started!” Percy yells. The cheerleaders take center stage in a V-formation, their purple-and-white pom-poms planted firmly on their hips. A small girl steps out from the band’s brass section, squinting against the bright overhead lights. Percy blows a whistle and the girl brings a trombone to her lips.

  When the first few notes of “Paradise City” blare out, Ezra and I lean across Mia to exchange surprised grins. Sadie is a Guns N’ Roses fanatic, and we grew up with this song blasting through whatever apartment we were living in. An LED screen at the back of the stage starts flashing football game highlights, and within seconds the entire crowd is on its feet.

  About halfway through, as everything’s building to a crescendo, the other drummers stop and Malcolm launches into this fantastic, frenetic solo. His drumsticks move impossibly fast, the muscles in his arms tense with effort, and my hand half lifts to fan myself before I realize what I’m doing. The cheerleaders are in perfect rhythm with the beat, executing a crisp, high-energy routine that ends with Brooke being tossed into the air, ponytail flying, caught by waiting hands just as the song ends and the entire band takes a bow as one.

  I’m clapping so hard my palms hurt as Mia catches my eye and grins. “I know, right?” she says. “I lose all my cynicism when the band performs. It’s Echo Ridge’s uniting force.”

  I accidentally knock into Viv when I sit back down, and she shifts away with a grimace. “There’s not enough room on this bench,” she says sharply, turning to her friends. “I think we might see better farther down.”

  “Bonus,” Mia murmurs as the three of them file out of our row. “We scared Viv away.”

  A few minutes later, a shadow falls across Viv’s vacated seat. I glance up to see Malcolm in his purple Echo Ridge High T-shirt, minus the drums. “Hey,” he says. “Room for one more?” His hair is tousled and his cheeks flushed, and he looks really, really cute.

  “Yeah, of course.” I shift closer to Mia. “You were great,” I add, and he smiles. One of his front teeth is slightly crooked, and it softens the moody look he usually has. I gesture toward the stage, where Coach Gagnon is talking passionately about tradition and giving your all. Photos are still looping on the LED screen behind him. “Will you play an encore?”

  “Nah, we’re done for the night. It’s football talk time.”

  We listen for a few minutes to the coach’s speech. It’s getting repetitive. “What happened six years ago?” I ask. “He keeps bringing it up.”

  “State championship,” Malcolm says. “Echo Ridge won when Declan was a junior.” And then I remember the yearbook from the library, filled with pictures of the team’s huge, come-from-behind victory against a much bigger school. And Declan Kelly, being carried on his teammates’ shoulders afterward.

  “Oh, that’s right,” I say. “Your brother threw a Hail Mary touchdown with seconds left in the game, didn’t he?” It’s a little weird, maybe, how perfectly I remember a game I never attended, but Malcolm just nods. “That must have been amazing.”

  Something like reluctant pride flits across Malcolm’s face. “I guess. Declan was bragging for weeks that he was going to win that game. People laughed, but he backed it up.” He runs a hand through his sweat-dampened hair. It shouldn’t be attractive, the way his hair spikes up afterward in uneven tufts, but it is. “He always did.”

  I can’t tell if it’s just my own nagging suspicions of Declan that make Malcolm’s words sound ominous. “Were you guys close?” I ask. As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I realize I’ve made it sound as though Declan is dead. “Are you close?” I amend.

  “No,” Malcolm says, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. His voice is quiet, his eyes on the stage. “Not then, and not now.”

  Every once in a while, it feels like Malcolm and I are having some kind of sub-conversation that we don’t acknowledge. We’re talking about football and his brother, supposedly, but we’re also talking about before and after. It’s how I think about Sadie—that she was one way before the kind of loss that rips your world apart, and a different version of herself afterward. Even though I didn’t know her until Sarah was long gone, I’m sure it’s true.

  I want to ask Malcolm more, but before I can Mia reaches across me and punches him in the arm. “Hey,” she says. “Did you do the thing?”

  “No,” Malcolm says, avoiding Mia’s gaze. She glances between us and smirks, and I get the distinct feeling that I’m missing something.

  “And let’s not forget, after we defeat Solsbury tomorrow—and we will—we’ve got our biggest test of the season with the homecoming game next week,” Coach Gagnon says. Between his perfectly bald head and the shadows cast by the Big Top’s stadium lighting, he looks like an exceptionally enthusiastic alien. “We’re up against Lutheran, our only defeat last year. But that’s not going to happen this time around! Because this time—”

  A loud popping noise fills my ears, making me jump. The bright lights snap off and the LED screen goes black, then flashes to life again. Static fills the screen, followed by a photo of Lacey in her homecoming crown, smiling at the camera. The crowd gasps, and Malcolm goes rigid beside me.

  Then Lacey’s picture rips in two, replaced by three others: Brooke, Katrin, and me. Theirs are class photos,
but mine is a candid, with my face half turned from the camera. A chill inches up my spine as I recognize the hoodie I wore yesterday when Ezra and I walked downtown to meet Malcolm and Mia at Bartley’s.

  Somebody was watching us. Following us.

  Horror-movie laughter starts spilling from the speakers, literal mua-ha-has that echo through the tent as what looks like thick red liquid drips down the screen, followed by jagged white letters: SOON. When it fades away, the Bloody Big Top is utterly silent. Everyone is frozen, with one exception: Meli Dinglasa from Channel 5. She strides purposefully onto the stage toward Coach Gagnon, with her microphone outstretched and a cameraman at her heels.

  MALCOLM

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28

  The text from Declan comes as I’m walking against the departing crowds at Fright Farm Saturday night: In town for a few hours. Don’t freak out.

  I almost text back I’m at the scene of your alleged crime. Don’t freak out, but manage to restrain myself to a simple What for? Which he ignores. I stuff the phone back in my pocket. If Declan’s been paying attention to the local news, he knows about last night’s pep rally turned stalker sideshow. I hope he was in New Hampshire surrounded by people when all that went down, or he’s only going to make the speculation worse.

  Not my problem. Tonight I’m just the chauffeur, collecting Ellery and Ezra after work. There was no way their grandmother was letting them walk through the woods after what happened last night. To be honest, I’m a little surprised she agreed to let me pick them up, but Ellery says closing is two hours past Mrs. Corcoran’s usual bedtime.

  I expect the House of Horrors to be empty, but music and laughter spill out toward me as I approach the building. The entire park was built around this house, an old Victorian at the edge of what used to be another wooded area. I’ve seen pictures of it before it became a theme park attraction, and it was always stately but worn-looking—as if its turrets were about to crumble, or the steps leading up to the wide porch would collapse if you stepped on them wrong. It still looks like that, but now it’s all part of the atmosphere.

  I haven’t been here since I was ten, when Declan and his friends brought me. They took off when we were halfway through, like the assholes they were, and I had to go through the rest of the house on my own. Every single room freaked me out. I had nightmares for weeks about a guy in a bloody bathtub with stumps for legs.

  My brother laughed when I finally stumbled out of the House of Horrors, snotty-nosed and terrified. Don’t be such a wuss, Mal. None of it’s real.

  The music gets louder as I climb the steps and turn the doorknob. It doesn’t budge, and there’s no bell. I knock a few times, which feels weird, like, who do I expect to answer the door at a haunted house, exactly? Nobody does, so I head back down the stairs and edge around to the back. When I turn the corner, I see concrete steps leading down to a door that’s wedged open with a piece of wood. I descend the stairs and push the door open.

  I’m in a basement room that looks like it’s part dressing room, part staff room. The space is large, dimly lit, and cluttered with shelves and clothes racks. A vanity with an oversized bulb mirror is shoved to one side, its surface covered with jars and bottles. Two cracked leather couches line the walls, with a glass-topped end table between them. There’s a closet-sized bathroom to the left, and a half-open door in front of me that leads into a small office.

  I’m hovering a few steps inside, searching for a way upstairs, when a hand pushes open a frayed velvet curtain on the opposite end of the room. The sudden movement makes me gasp like a scared kid, and the girl who steps through the curtain laughs. She’s almost as tall as I am, dressed in a tight black tank top that shows off intricate tattoos against brown skin. She looks like she could be a few years older than me. “Boo,” she says, then crosses her arms and cocks her head. “Party crasher?”

  I blink, confused. “What?”

  She tsks. “Don’t play innocent with me. I’m the makeup artist. I know everybody, and you are trespassing.” I half open my mouth to protest, then close it as her stern look dissolves into a wide smile. “I’m just messing with you. Go upstairs, find your friends.” She crosses over to a minifridge next to the vanity and pulls out a couple bottles of water, pointing one toward me like a warning. “But this is a dry party, understand? Whole thing’ll get shut down if we gotta deal with a bunch of drunk teenagers. Especially after what happened last night.”

  “Sure. Right,” I say, trying to sound like I know what she’s talking about. Ellery and Ezra didn’t say anything about a party. The tall girl sweeps aside the velvet curtain to let me through.

  I climb a set of stairs into another hallway that opens into a dungeon-like room. I recognize the room immediately from my last visit inside, with Declan, but it looks a lot less sinister filled with party guests. A few people are still partly in costume, with masks off or pushed up on their foreheads. One guy’s holding a rubber head under his arm while he talks to a girl in a witch’s dress.

  A hand tugs at my sleeve. I look down to see short, bright-red nails and follow them up to a face. It’s Viv and she’s talking, but I can’t hear what she’s saying over the music. I cup a hand to my ear, and she raises her voice. “I didn’t know you worked at Fright Farm.”

  “I don’t,” I say back.

  Viv frowns. She’s drenched in some kind of strawberry perfume that doesn’t smell bad, exactly, but reminds me of something a little kid would wear. “Then why did you come to the staff party?”

  “I didn’t know there was a party,” I answer. “I’m just picking up Ellery and Ezra.”

  “Well, good timing. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.” I eye her warily. I’ve seen Viv almost every week since I moved into the Nilssons’, but we’ve barely exchanged a dozen words the entire time. Our whole relationship, if you can call it that, is based on not wanting to talk to one another. “Can I interview you for my next article?” she asks.

  I don’t know what she’s angling for, but it can’t be good. “Why?”

  “I’m doing this ‘Where Are They Now?’ series on Lacey’s murder. I thought it would be interesting to get the perspective of someone who was on the sidelines when it happened, what with your brother being a person of interest and all. We could—”

  “Are you out of your mind?” I cut her off. “No.”

  Viv lifts her chin. “I’m going to write it anyway. Don’t you want to give your side? It might make people more sympathetic to Declan, to hear from his brother.”

  I turn away without answering. Last night, Viv was front and center in the local news coverage of the pep rally stunt, getting interviewed like some kind of Echo Ridge crime expert. She’s been in Katrin’s shadow for so long, there’s no way she’s letting her moment in the spotlight go. But I don’t have to help extend her fifteen minutes of fame.

  I shoulder through the crowd and finally spot Ellery. She’s hard to miss—her hair is teased into a black cloud around her head and her eyes are so heavily made up that they seem to take up half her face. She looks like some kind of goth anime character. I’m not sure what it says about me that I’m kind of into it.

  She catches my eye and waves me over. She’s standing with a guy a few years older than us with a man-bun, a goatee, and a tight henley shirt with the buttons undone. The whole look screams college guy trolling for high school girls, and I hate him instantly. “Hey,” Ellery says when I reach them. “So apparently there’s a party tonight.”

  “I noticed,” I say with a glare toward Man Bun.

  He’s not fazed. “House of Horrors tradition,” he explains. “It’s always on the Saturday closest to the owner’s birthday. I can’t stay, though. Got a toddler at home that never sleeps. I have to give my wife a break.” He swipes at his face and turns to Ellery. “Is all the blood off?”

  Ellery peers at him. “Yeah, you’re good.”


  “Thanks. See ya later,” the guy says, and starts pushing his way through the crowd.

  “So long,” I say, watching him leave with a lot less venom now that I know he wasn’t hitting on Ellery. “The blood he’s referring to is makeup, right?”

  Ellery laughs. “Yeah. Darren spends all night in a bloody bathtub. Some people don’t bother washing their makeup off till they get home, but he tried that once and terrified his child. Poor kid might be scarred for life.”

  I shudder. “I was scarred for life going through that room, and I was ten.”

  Ellery’s giant anime eyes get even wider. “Who brought you here when you were ten?”

  “My brother,” I say.

  “Ah.” Ellery looks thoughtful. Like she can see into the secret corner of my brain that I try not to visit often, because it’s where my questions about what really happened between Declan and Lacey live. That corner makes me equal parts horrified and ashamed, because every once in a while, it imagines my brother losing control of his hair-trigger temper at exactly the wrong moment.

  I swallow hard and push the thought aside. “I’m kind of surprised they’d have this after what happened last night.”

  Ellery gazes around us. “I know, right? But hey, everyone here works in a Halloween theme park. They don’t scare easy.”

  “Do you want to stay for a while?”

  She looks regretful. “Better not. Nana didn’t even want us to work tonight. She’s pretty freaked out.”

  “Are you?” I ask.

  “I…” She hesitates, pulling on a strand of teased hair and winding it around her finger. “I want to say no, because I hate the fact that some anonymous creep can rattle me. But yeah. I am. It’s just too…close, you know?” She shivers as someone squeezes past her in a Scream mask. “I keep having these conversations with my mother where she has no idea what’s going on, and all I can think is—no wonder she never wanted to bring us here. Her twin sister disappears, her favorite babysitter’s daughter is murdered, and now this? It’s enough to make you feel like the whole town is cursed.”