by Hannah Jayne
“I’m not a freakin’ hairdresser. Are you ordering or what?”
Brynna hung up the phone without answering.
Darcy drugged me, Brynna thought. She waited to be overcome with anger, but all she felt was a deep, aching betrayal. Was Darcy responsible for everything else too? Were they all in on it?
SEVENTEEN
“Bryn, we’re leaving in ten,” her father yelled from the downstairs landing.
She turned, still stunned, and scanned her closet again. Darcy was there when we were dress shopping. She suggested I go to the locker room and change my clothes when I found the purple crepe paper.
She felt sick and groped through her closet blindly, pulling out anything dark to reflect her mood. She finally selected a retro black dress with shiny gold buttons that Erica would have hated and pulled on a pair of black tights and black shoes. She yanked her hair back into a severe-looking bun and glanced at herself in the mirror. She looked like a cross between a schoolmarm and a ninja and the look wasn’t flattering, but that was Brynna’s point. She didn’t want to be noticed. Not that she didn’t want to be recognized—she didn’t want to exist at all. She was back to being a loner, back to being punished. Brynna tucked her purse under her arm and grabbed her phone when her mother called.
Her parents were solemn-faced and stayed that way through most of the journey into Point Lobos. She knew when her father offered to pull over at a Starbucks that they were getting close, and Brynna’s chest started to tighten. She glanced down at a discarded newspaper while she waited for her family’s drinks, and her skin started to prick. A three-inch column on the bottom left corner had a black-and-white picture of Erica, head thrown back, grinning. Brynna knew that picture; it was from a water park they had gone to their freshman year. She tried not to read the headline but couldn’t stop herself.
Point Lobos Teen’s Remains to Be Interred Today
The next few lines gave a short blip about Erica and then directions to the memorial and where donations could be sent. Brynna’s stomach churned and when they called her name, she dropped her latte into the trash.
She couldn’t get the words out of her mind: remains. They weren’t going to bury Erica; they were going to bury her remains.
Brynna handed her parents their coffees and clicked herself into the backseat while her father started the engine. Her mother leaned over the seatback and squeezed Brynna’s hand, offering one of her mom looks—this one soft and apologetic.
“You know, if you don’t want to do this, the Shaws will understand.”
Brynna’s mother had said that before they left too, and Brynna was beginning to wonder if the Shaws had called and said that they didn’t want Brynna there. They didn’t want the girl who survived—when their daughter didn’t—to celebrate Erica’s short life.
Brynna breathed deeply, feeling the butterflies flapping madly in her stomach. “I want to be there,” she said, not sure if she meant it.
Her parents tried to make conversation as they passed the Point Lobos sign. They asked trivia questions and her dad sang badly to Beyoncé, which should have mortified Brynna, but she was too busy studying every inch of the passing landscape to notice.
It seemed like something should be different now that Erica had been found. But nothing was. Chow Foo’s heavy red and gold embossed doors still stood out among the clapboard shops and swinging glass doors; street signs still looked like they sprang out of the little piles of sand at their bases; tourists with chubby-cheeked toddlers still looked each way while crossing the street, dragging a string of Donald Duck rafts behind them. There was a line at the ice cream shop, and Brynna narrowed her eyes, recognizing a few kids from Lincoln High and wondering, with a growing heat, if one of them was playing with her, pretending to be Erica.
Her heart started to slam against her rib cage as her father steered the car through the big iron gates of the Point Lobos Cemetery. The place should have been calming with its gently sloping green hills and carefully manicured bushes with the last of the fall flowers, but Brynna was on edge, clenching her fists so hard that her nails dug little half moons into her palms.
Her father steered them to a tiny road that was suddenly lined with cars, and Brynna watched people walking from all directions. They spun as the car crept by, squinting to see inside. Brynna shrunk.
I shouldn’t be here.
She sucked in deep breaths but it did nothing for the trembling.
Erica’s death was an accident, she said to herself.
Everyone is looking at you.
The Shaws walked up at the same time the Chases did, and Brynna was glad for that. All eyes went to Mrs. Shaw and hands went out to Mr. Shaw. Brynna was steering her parents toward a group of folding chairs half obscured by the weeping willow when she heard, “Oh, Brynna, you look so wonderful.”
Brynna turned and blinked at Mrs. Shaw. She was an older version of Erica, her shoulder-length black hair more gray than Brynna remembered, but still with a mix of that stunning blue-black that Erica had. Staring at Mrs. Shaw was both comforting and unnerving, knowing what Erica would have looked like, knowing that sentence always ended with, “had she lived.”
Brynna leaned into Mrs. Shaw’s hug and held her tight, silently trying to convey her apologies.
“I like your dress,” she said, nodding at Brynna’s black sheath. “You know Erica would have hated it.” Mrs. Shaw smiled and Brynna smiled back.
“Anything born before 1990,” Brynna said, remembering Erica’s distaste for anything vintage.
“You and your parents will come sit with us.”
Mrs. Shaw pulled Brynna through the crowd, and the whispers started scratching at her skin.
“Can you believe Brynna’s back?”
“I heard she went to jail.”
“I heard she went crazy.”
None of Dr. Rother’s exercises could stave off the looks, the hands cupped over mouths and heads leaning in. Nothing that Dr. Rother taught her could quell the guilt and the sadness that welled up inside her.
Mrs. Shaw shuffled Brynna and her parents down the aisle then took a seat.
Brynna nodded and tucked her hands in her pockets as people took their seats. She started when she felt her phone vibrate. She glanced down, seeing the little tweeting bird. Her breath hitched and her stomach plummeted when she swiped the screen.
@EricaNShaw has a message for you!
Finger trembling, Brynna swiped the screen.
Lovely day for a memorial. What do you remember, Bryn?
Brynna gritted her teeth and pushed out the keyboard on her phone.
I know this is u, Darcy. I talked to Steve.
There was no response by the time the service started, and Brynna felt stung. She hoped that Darcy would at least acknowledge what she’d done, at least own up to what she put Brynna through.
Everyone assembled stood when the priest asked them to, and Brynna started when she saw the casket in front of her. She had noticed it when she and her family came to the site, of course, but now, with a priest at the head, flowers draped on top, and a smiling picture of Erica at the foot, it became real to Brynna, unmistakable evidence that Erica was never coming back.
A sob lodged in her chest, and she was not only overcome with guilt for being the one to survive, but for knowing that Erica had been out there, somewhere, all this time while Brynna was jumping at her own shadow, thinking horrible things about her best friend.
How could I have thought that she hated me?
Mrs. Shaw’s hand found Brynna’s. She squeezed, and the last several months crashed over Brynna in an aching wave and every inch of her was filled with sorrow. She sat back on one of the metal chairs, crying huge, body-wracking sobs over Erica.
When the memorial ended, someone began collecting chairs. Brynna watched Mr. Shaw slowly turning, his red-rimmed eyes scanning t
he horizon as though he were expecting Erica to come walking in from the woods.
When he turned to Brynna, he was pinching the bridge of his nose and sighing. “Christopher’s not here,” he said to his wife.
“We can at least thank God for that.”
Brynna split away from the Shaws, from her own parents, standing on the edge of Erica’s grave. The coffin had been lowered in, and off to her left, two workmen with shovels stood half-hidden in a clutch of trees, waiting to finish burying her. Brynna couldn’t help but think they were like vultures, circling their prey.
“Honey?” Her father’s touch was gentle on her shoulder. “We’re going to get going over to the Shaws now.”
Brynna nodded numbly, offering Erica a final good-bye in her head.
“I’ll meet you out at the car. I’m going to stop by the ladies’ room first.”
People were leaving slowly, milling in clumps around the cemetery grounds, and Brynna tried to avoid them all. She wound around the stone pathways that cut through the grounds, keeping her eyes on the path rather than the headstones that surrounded her. She didn’t want to think that they were leaving Erica there, among hundreds of people she didn’t know.
The crowd had thinned considerably when she came out of the little chapel’s restroom.
“Hello there.”
Brynna gasped then grabbed her chest and finally looked up, a relieved smile on her face. “Mr. Fallbrook! Sorry, you scared me. What are you doing here?”
He cocked his head in something that looked like amusement, but there was a weird, almost sinister smile on his face.
“You don’t know?”
Brynna fell in step with him, and they moved toward the parking lot. “I don’t know what? Did you know Erica? I know you were at a different school before you came to Hawthorne.”
He nodded, his smile still fixed. “I did know Erica. Rather well.” He paused and Brynna waited for him to go on. He didn’t.
“Um, from another school or something?”
“Not exactly. We were much closer than just a teacher and student.”
Brynna glanced up, a dark pit forming low in her belly. “I—I don’t understand.”
“She was a very, very special girl, Erica.” There was a slight, faraway look on Mr. Fallbrook’s face, and Brynna’s nerves started to hum.
“I—I don’t think I know what you mean.”
Mr. Fallbrook snapped toward Brynna. “You don’t think she was special?”
“No, of course she was. She was my best friend. My best friend in the world. How did you say you two knew each other?”
A slow smile spread across his face. “We were very close. Like family.”
The pieces started to fall into place, but Brynna had to shake off the fog that covered them.
“I know you too, Brynna. Really well.”
Brynna swallowed, her fear growing. “You’re—are you—her stepbrother?”
“Ding, ding, ding!”
The look on his face was chilling. His ice-blue eyes were shooting daggers. His handsome face morphed into a mask distorted in anger. Hate rolled off him in waves, and Brynna stepped backward, ready to run.
But Mr. Fallbrook already had her.
She twisted over her own feet as he flipped her so her back was firm against his chest. His one arm clapped both of hers down, his other hand tight against her mouth. She could taste the blood as her teeth dug into her cheeks each time he gripped her harder.
“You’re going to stay very, very quiet, do you hear me, Brynna? As quiet as my sister is over there in that big pine box.”
Christopher.
He jammed her against the door of his car, pinning her there with a knee to her back. He moved his hand from her mouth, but her scream died in the air when he pulled the glistening silver blade in front of her eyes, then held it against her neck. She could feel her skin give into the blade, could feel the hot itch start as her blood started to bubble.
“I’m just holding the knife here, Brynna. If you move, it’s probably going to cut you. It’s probably going to slit your throat. But it won’t be my fault, will it? It’ll be yours.”
She felt him lasso her hands with a zip tie, then he pulled it so tightly she winced. The blade cut into another layer of skin while the tie cut into her wrists.
“Why—why—why are you doing this?”
Fallbrook pulled Brynna’s head back by the hair; she could feel the individual strands breaking in his grip. She pinched her eyes shut, waiting for the feel of the cold, steel blade as it ripped into her flesh.
But it didn’t happen.
Instead, he wound a long length of duct tape over her mouth and another over her eyes. Before her eyes could adjust to the relative dark behind the duct tape, Fallbrook picked her up and shoved her, headfirst, into what Brynna assumed was his SUV. She tried to struggle and kick, but he looped her feet with the zip ties just as easily. He shoved her to the ground, and she landed on the itchy interior carpet with a heave when her ribs crashed against the center hump.
When she tried to scream—a pathetic, muted cry—he threw something soft but heavy over her and said, “We’re going to play a game, okay? It’s called you scream and I kill you. There’s only one rule: you scream, kick, or make any sound, and I kill you. Maybe I’ll take the tape off your eyes so you can watch it. Maybe I won’t so you have no idea when it’s coming. Wanna play? Of course you do.”
Helpless, terrified, and unable to move, Brynna stayed pressed against the floor, her forehead resting on the carpet as the tears started to fall. She heard Fallbrook slam a car door then open another; once he slammed that too, she heard him start the car and gun the engine.
A song she used to like—something she and Teddy had even danced to last night—filled the car and Fallbrook hummed along. Brynna tried to remember anything she’d learned from the litany of public safety assemblies the schools had made her attend, but the only thing that stuck with her, the only thing she could remember was a female officer telling the students, “If he gets you in his car, you’re as good as dead.”
After a few short minutes, Fallbrook slowed the car and Brynna lifted her head, trying to listen to everything. She heard his window roll down and the muted voices of the funeral procession floating through the car window. She could make out Mrs. Shaw thanking someone for coming.
Brynna’s heart went crashing against her chest.
“We’ll be right over,” Brynna heard in the distance. “We’re just waiting for Brynna.”
Her whole body seized. It was her father’s voice.
“Shhhh,” Christopher said from the front seat. “Remember our game.”
Sweat and rage poured through Brynna and she struggled, trying to scream. If he was going to kill her, he could do it right now. But Christopher simply rolled up the window, stepped on the gas, and went right along humming to the radio.
They could have driven for minutes or possibly hours—time ceased to exist in the blackness where Brynna lay pinned—when Christopher turned down the radio.
“You know,” he said, “I am being so rude. You asked me a question and I didn’t even answer it. What was the question again now? Oh, right, don’t trouble yourself; I remember. You asked me why I was doing this.”
Brynna winced, tasting salt tears and metallic blood on her lips.
“Well, obviously you’ve figured some of it out by now, haven’t you, Brynna? I mean, I know you’re relatively smart. You were doing pretty well in my English class. Too bad you won’t have a chance to bring that grade up. It did take you a long time to catch on, and I left you so many signs. Well, Erica did. If she can’t speak, I figured I should speak for her.”
Brynna gritted her teeth, trying to pull her palms apart, trying to will the plastic tie to loosen.
Christopher clucked his tongue. “Nice room, by
the way. You might want to remind your pops to lock the doors the next time he goes on a bender.”
Heat exploded in Brynna’s cheeks, and she found herself feeling strangely ashamed, as if impressing a psychopath was something she should do. Then she thought of Mr. Fallbrook—Christopher, whoever he was—walking around her house when she wasn’t around. Sweat broke out on her brow. Or had he been there when they were asleep? Had he been in the house while her mother worked upstairs, painting, oblivious to the world outside?
Fallbrook went on, and Brynna wished she couldn’t hear him. “My name is Christopher. Shaw, not Fallbrook. Fallbrook was my stepfather.” Christopher’s voice tightened into a low growl. “Talk about an evil son of a bitch. Bastard paid me no mind unless he was beating the snot out of me.” His voiced lightened again, the quick change eerie. “Don’t worry; he paid for it. I made sure of that. See, that’s kind of what I do. I make sure that the people who are responsible for things—bad things—don’t get away with it. The world would be a very fucked up place if we let people get away with murder, wouldn’t it be, Brynna? Don’t answer that; I know you’re listening. So why did I do this…”
Brynna pressed against the floor as the car shifted. She felt the motor slow down, and her fear became a striking terror.
If he slows down, he’s going to stop. If he stops, he’s going to kill me.
Brynna worked against the restraints on her hands and ankles, not caring as the thin plastic tore into her skin.
“Remember when I put up that one daily topic? It was, Write about a time you were really scared. Do you remember that, Brynna? I remember. I remember what you wrote. You wrote, ‘I don’t remember ever really being afraid.’ And I got your paper and I thought, hmm, that’s funny. Because I would have been scared in the ocean at night. I would have been scared if someone I loved went into the water and was left there to die. Don’t you think that’d be scary? I know it was scary for Erica. I know, because I saw it.”
Brynna’s stomach dropped.
