by Hannah Jayne
“Normal is ice cream,” she said, tugging a sweatshirt over her head. “Normal is me having ice cream with Michael and Denise.” She paused, then tried out the words. “My parents.”
Three
Michael and Denise were standing at the kitchen counter when Bex got downstairs, a supermarket stock of Ben & Jerry’s pints set out on the counter in front of them. A gooey can of chocolate sauce, whipped cream, chopped nuts, and a half-eaten jar of electric-red maraschino cherries were also set out.
“I told Bex about our ice cream nightcaps,” Denise said, handing Bex a bowl.
Bex blinked. “You said you guys had a little ice cream at night. You didn’t say you were sundae masters.”
Michael grinned at that and drowned his two scoops of chocolate ice cream in whipped cream. “We do all right.”
After Bex finished creating her sundae—a stomach-stretching monstrosity of nearly every flavor on the counter—she followed Michael and Denise to the living room and took a spot on the couch, tucking her long legs underneath her.
The TV was already on the local news channel. From where she sat, Bex had a clear view of the news ticker running across the bottom of the screen and the concerned-looking newscaster standing somewhere that looked beachy.
“Authorities are reporting that another girl was found early this morning, her body discarded among the trash bags behind this local eatery,” the newscaster said. A picture of a grinning blond, head pushed back, blue eyes rich and dark, appeared on the screen. “There has been no official identification, but authorities are speculating that this latest body might be that of seventeen-year-old Erin Malone of—”
Denise clicked the TV off. “We don’t need to see that before bed. Are you excited about your first day of school tomorrow, Bex? You’re barely three weeks into the school year, so the ‘new kid’ thing shouldn’t be that bad.”
Bex tried to tear her eyes away from the now-black screen. The girl in the photograph… There was something about her that Bex recognized, even though she had never heard of the girl or the restaurant where she was found. Maybe this story had made national news?
Ice shot through her veins when the shard of a memory fell into place: the girl with the scarf. All those years ago in Raleigh… This girl, this Erin Malone, was a dead ringer for the girl with the scarf.
The girl her father had supposedly murdered.
Bex pushed her bowl away.
“Are you okay? Michael, get her a glass of water. Bex, are you okay?”
“Yes.” She pushed the word over her teeth.
It couldn’t have been her father. Her father was gone. He didn’t…
Bex was instantly shot to another evening in another time. She was seven years old, and her father had just been released from police custody. She was waiting at home, but over the years, with television and film and time, her memory blurred into her being at the police station, to her hearing the officer say, “Don’t leave town,” to her seeing her father tip his hat just slightly, never a true yes or no.
She had been lying in her postage-stamp-sized bedroom then, half-asleep while the fan lazed overhead. She should have been able to hear him. She should have been able to sense what he was going to do. But she didn’t stir that night. Not when he cleared out his closet, not when he pulled the front door closed, not when he drove away and left his baby daughter to wake up in an empty house the morning after.
She had waited for him until the sun set again. Until the moon came up, until pink fingers of morning light cut through the blinds that second morning. Crowds lined up on the street, yelling about a murderer. And when the police finally came back, they only found Beth Anne.
He had left, and the murders had stopped.
Bex’s eyes flashed toward the screen again, toward Michael and Denise with their drawn faces looking worried in front of her. Until now?
She reeled. No. There was no way.
For the first few years after her father left, there was nothing. When she was ten, there were signs, though Bex could never be sure if they were from him or if she had made them up—mumbled wrong numbers or hang-ups in the middle of the night. Blank postcards with Beth Anne’s name written in a scrawl she never recognized. There was nothing concrete that said that he was out there, that he was innocent and missing her and thinking of her—except that the killing stopped.
Girls went missing from Raleigh and the Research Triangle in those other years, sure. And girls were murdered. But they didn’t have his signature. Their names were never splashed across newspaper pages in thick, black headlines or run along the bottom of the screen news tickers with phrases like,
Wife Collector Claims a New Bride.
Beth Anne tried to believe that meant that he was innocent, that the real killer had moved on. The police believed that meant he was guilty and that he had moved on. When she had the stomach for it, she checked the Internet, doing blanket searches for sensational murders with victims missing digits. When nothing came up, a stripe of relief shot down her back because her father was out there and women were still alive. But nobody wanted to hear that. Nobody wanted to believe that, because Jackson Reimer was allegedly the Wife Collector—and even if he wasn’t anymore, Beth Anne Reimer would always be the Wife Collector’s daughter.
Heat prickled the back of her neck, and Bex prayed that Michael and Denise couldn’t see the sheen of sweat that popped out on her upper lip. Guilt or fear or doubt sped up her heartbeat, and she gripped the edges of the table before shaking her head quickly. “I’m sorry. I’m fine. I-I guess I’m just a little nervous to start school. You know, new place, new people, and all.”
Michael set the water glass down in front of Bex. He tried to look cool, but Bex could see him and Denise exchange a glance.
Great. They already think I’m a nut job.
She downed the water in one gulp and tried to put the news clip—and her father—out of her mind. “I should probably just get to bed. Jet lag and all.”
Bex stood and climbed the stairs, feeling Michael and Denise looking curiously after her, probably wondering how a quick jaunt across the state could cause jet lag. But Bex wasn’t in the mood to argue. The image of the girl on the screen was burned into her mind—because I’ve seen it before, that little voice protested. No. Bex shook her head. My father is gone and this is—what? A coincidence?
Every molecule inside her went white-hot and willed her to run: run downstairs and flick the TV back on, listen to the news, to the solemn cadence of the anchorwoman’s voice. Listen for the one detail that hadn’t been mentioned…
Bex remembered another living room, the light from the TV flickering silver over her father’s face as he watched the news at their house on Flame Court. In her mind, she heard the chime—bum, bum, BUMMM!—of the Raleigh Super Eight news.
Though the authorities are being understandably tight-lipped about the details surrounding the discovery of this most recent body, they are willing to say that preliminary reports suggest she is most likely another of the Wife Collector’s victims. Like the three previous, this current victim is female, blond, in her late teens to early twenties, and missing her left-hand ring finger—what has become known as this particular killer’s “signature.”
Bex remembered the fear that had trilled through her, that narrow knife slice of nausea as she thought about this poor, young blond woman—cold, dumped at the edge of Raleigh’s industrial district, and missing her finger.
“Daddy?” she had asked.
Her father had paused a beat before clicking off the television and turning to her. “Yes, Bethy?”
“That won’t happen to me, right? The Wife Collector. You won’t let him get me?”
Bex tried to think back—had thought back so many times to that moment when her childish voice called out and her father stared at her. How had he looked? Guilty? Pleased? Smug? Was there any tin
y nuance in his expression, in his voice that Bex could pick up on and point to as the aha moment as evidence of her father’s guilt or innocence?
Closing the door behind her, Bex slid to the floor, back up against her bed. Every calming technique the shrink in Raleigh had taught her washed over her. She couldn’t remember if she was supposed to let out deep breaths or hold them, focus on the good times she had with her father or let it all go, lie down and relax, or go for a walk. In the end, all she could do was slip between the cool covers of this strange bed in this strange room and try her best to be who she was now: Bex Andrews, a girl who didn’t have a father.
She tried to sleep, but everything inside her kept tingling and her ears rang with the whirr from the plane’s exhaust system, so she didn’t hear the plaintive buzz from her phone as it flashed a Raleigh area code on her screen before going black.
Four
Bex’s caseworker in Raleigh had told her that she would love Kill Devil Hills, despite the evil-sounding name. She had gushed about it being a tiny beach town where just about everything, including the high school, was on the beach.
But Kill Devil Hills High wasn’t anywhere near the beach.
The student lot wasn’t full of convertibles, the girls weren’t wearing bikini tops, and no one ran through the halls tossing footballs or beach balls or smelling like suntan lotion and sea air. It was just a regular high school.
Bex held her books tightly against her chest and surreptitiously tried to glance down at the school map. After two wrong turns and a near spin through the boys’ bathroom, she pushed open the first door she saw, praying that she was at least in the vicinity of her homeroom.
Every head snapped to look at her when she stepped through the door, and every muscle in her body tightened. She was ready to run until the door slapped shut behind her.
“Bex Andrews?”
Bex blinked, scanning the room. The kids didn’t look mean or menacing—just curious—and for that, Bex was relieved…almost.
“Bex Andrews?”
There were two empty seats in the front row, bookended on either side by girls with glossy ponytails and Kill Devil Hills High School cheerleading uniforms who had immediately lost interest in Bex and started checking their phones.
“Ms. Andrews? Are you Bex Andrews?”
The voice calling her name finally penetrated and Bex spun, her heart thumping against her chest. “Yes. Bex. Me.”
The man at the front of the room smiled warmly and spread his arms. “I’m your homeroom teacher, Mr. Rhodes. You can call me Mr. Rhodes.” He laughed at his own dumb joke. “Welcome to Kill Devil Hills High. Class, say hello.”
Bex stood, hoping the standard-issue school linoleum would open up and swallow her whole while the class muttered a sad hello. Some students still looked at her, but the majority had moved on to other things. She smiled thinly. “Hey.”
Mr. Rhodes, who was short and possibly nine months pregnant, given the strain of his shirt against his belly, rolled his eyes toward the students. “Don’t mind them. Now, Bex, you can take one of the empty seats.”
One of the cheerleaders glanced up from her phone. “That one,” she said, pointing. “This one is Darla’s. She’s just out sick today.”
Bex nodded and wondered if anyone would notice her dragging the empty desk to the back of the classroom or out into the hall, anywhere but smack in the front of the class.
“Actually, Bex, before you sit, why don’t you tell us something about yourself.” Mr. Rhodes smiled as if he hadn’t just asked Bex to splay her soul open to a group of bored teenagers.
“Um,” she said, feeling her skin burn from her calves to the top of her head. “There really isn’t much to tell.”
Except that my dad is a serial killer.
On the run.
He doesn’t know where I am. He doesn’t know that I’m Bex Andrews now because he hasn’t contacted me in ten years.
“I guess I’m just pretty regular.”
“Where did you transfer from?”
Bex didn’t want to announce that she had been homeschooled since the third grade when kids started coughing things like “socio” or “psycho killer” into their hands whenever she passed. She didn’t want this new class to know that she had never been invited to a birthday party. No one wanted to have anything to do with the serial killer’s kid.
“I went to school in Raleigh, North Carolina,” Bex said, her voice sounding weird and tinny in her own ears.
“And you came here why?” Mr. Rhodes coached her.
Bex’s throat was dry but she tried to swallow anyway, coughing into her hand. “My dad got a new job,” she lied.
“And he is…”
Bex wanted to run. Her entire body thrummed with the overwhelming desire to dart for the door and through the hall, out of the school and out of North Carolina. Where she would go, where she would end up, she had no idea. All she knew was that she didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to be Bex Andrews, the foster kid. She didn’t want to be anyone.
“He’s a college professor.”
She slid into her chair and busied herself, pretending to look in her backpack before Mr. Rhodes could continue the trial.
Bex made it through the entire homeroom period staring straight ahead. Every once in a while she could see a flicker out of the corner of her eye as the two cheerleaders gestured to each other around her, but she didn’t dare look. Even if they didn’t know anything about her, she was still the new kid—and if movies and television had taught her anything, it was that cheerleaders were to be avoided at all costs.
So when the homeroom bell rang and the two girls cornered Bex, she knew that her fate was sealed. Images of being shoved into lockers and covered in pig’s blood at prom swam in her head as one of the girls tightened her already-perfect ponytail and the other studied her.
“I’m Laney,” the dark-haired one said. “And this is Chelsea.”
Chelsea, with a sun-gold ponytail and blue eyes that took up half her face, nodded.
Bex said a low hello to each of them while her stomach quivered. She waited for claws or teeth or a biting remark about her hair or her clothes.
“Do you know where you’re going next? It’s easy to get lost around here,” Chelsea said, her ponytail bobbing. “KDH is a pretty big school. Was your old school very big?”
“‘Big’ isn’t really the right word for it,” Bex said, hiking her backpack over one shoulder. “And I have—uh—ethics with Mrs. Chadwick next.”
“Oh, she’s great. Basically you just sit and she reads the paper and asks stuff about what it’s in it. It’s a pretty cool class until she makes you do that stupid newspaper log. Ugh.”
Chelsea rolled her eyes. “That was torture. I had black fingers for weeks.”
Bex’s eyebrows rose. “Black fingers?”
Laney nodded. “Yeah, you have to follow something that has been in the headlines for a month and cut out all the articles and write a bunch of crap about them.”
“But she makes you use real newspapers. The paper kind.” Chelsea looked absolutely mortified. “Chadwick’s weirdly old-fashioned and slightly decrepit.”
“Come on,” Laney said. “I’m going in that direction. I can walk you over there.”
Laney and Bex chatted the whole way, and by the time they entered the junior hall, Bex was breathing normally—laughing even.
“Okay, you’re right there,” Laney said, pointing to a door over Bex’s shoulder. “I’m down there. Find me later. We’ll have lunch.”
Bex pressed open the classroom door without any of the trepidation she’d had before. There were only a few kids already in class, and the teacher—a youngish-looking woman with her dark hair clipped back in a low ponytail—was chatting with a kid in the front row. He was hinged forward, his shaggy, black hair dragging across his eyes
as he shook his head against everything she said.
“No, no, no. It’s art.”
Mrs. Chadwick—possibly fifty years old and nowhere near Chelsea’s description of “decrepit”—shook her head but was smiling. “It’s illegal.”
“Oh, jeez, this again? You’d think the guy would give it a rest already.”
Bex spun, stunned, and found herself nearly nose to nose with the kind of guy who showed up in all those California high-school-on-the-beach movies. He had wide, brown eyes and brownish-blond hair that looked like it had been colored by the sun. When he smiled, the entire room brightened and Bex felt her temperature rise at least ten degrees. She was sure she was blushing; probably so much that her eyeballs were red. She took a fumbling step back. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“No, that’s okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. You must be new, or I must really have been sleeping through this class. I’m Trevor.”
“I’m new.” Another ten degrees. “Not new. I mean, I’m new here but my name is Bex.” She paused and bit her lower lip. “That was really smooth, wasn’t it?”
“Nah, you did great. The name question is a hard one for a lot of people.” He gestured toward two empty desks. “Here.”
“Thanks.” Bex sat next to Trevor, her eyes going over his head to where the student and the teacher were still engaged in heated debate. She jutted her chin in the student’s direction. “So what’s that all about?”
Trevor glanced, then shook his head with a low groan. “That’s Zach. He thinks he’s some big feature filmmaker because he’s the camera guy for the school news channel. He’s really just a huge pain in the ass. Argues about everything.” Trevor held up his hands. “Wait, sorry. Not argue, debate. He likes to debate everything. Probably hoping for an all-out brawl so he can whip out his GoPro and win a Pulitzer or something.”
