by Dana Mele
Then I go the only other place I can think to go, Nola’s room. I only have half a hope that she’ll be home, and the cold has frozen my clothes and rattled me so severely that I can’t run anymore, so I walk across campus stiffly, like a creature from a horror movie. I can’t sign myself in at the front desk because my fingers are not only still shaking, they’re now frozen into a stiff red little claw. I croak out my name to the security guard through chattering teeth, and she writes it down, giving me a pointed side-eye.
I don’t feel like I have an ounce of energy left for the stairs, but I can’t separate my fingers to push the button for the elevator, so I manage the stairs by pressing my back against the wall and pushing myself up one step at a time, with minimal bending of knees. When I get to her door, I lean against it and take a moment to catch my breath and then tap my forehead against it three times.
Nola opens the door and I let my muscles rest, sliding to the floor.
“Kay?” She sounds alarmed.
I gaze up at her from the floor and my eyes focus, unfocus, refocus. She’s dressed in a silky black nightgown with a retro velvet robe and her makeup is scrubbed off. She hurriedly shuts the door. “I was so worried. Did you get my texts? The cops forced me to go home. Do you want me to call student health?”
I shake my head. “Frozen.”
“Take your clothes off,” she orders. She flutters around the room, and in a moment, hot water is bubbling in a forbidden electric teapot, and I am stripped down to my soaked bra and underwear, staring down at a tiny black long-sleeved shirt and matching pajama pants. At best, they will graze the top of my ankles. The top is printed with the words O GOD, I COULD BE BOUNDED IN A NUTSHELL AND COUNT MYSELF A KING OF INFINITE SPACE, WERE IT NOT THAT I HAVE BAD DREAMS. I hold the T-shirt up against me and cringe.
“Those are the biggest clothes I have,” she says.
I reluctantly begin to pull the T-shirt on but she interrupts me.
“You can’t leave your soaking wet bra and underwear on. I’ll turn around if you’re a prude.”
“Please do, and I’m not.” I resent the name-calling. But I don’t feel comfortable with her staring at me.
She rolls her eyes and turns around, and I quickly shimmy out of my underthings and into the pajamas. They are skintight and the pants reach only mid-calf. The shirt exposes an inch of my abs and pulls at the shoulders. But it’s dry. She tosses me a black fleece blanket, and I sit on her bed and cocoon myself in it gratefully.
“Are you okay?” Her tone softens as she pours the steaming water into two mugs and drops a bag of chamomile into each. I don’t particularly care for tea but am grateful for something warm to drink and hold in my hands.
“Thanks.” I take the mug and relish the feeling of the scalding ceramic. “Yes. I guess. No. Maddy is dead. Are you okay?” I suddenly look down at my teacup and feel sick to my stomach. I push it away.
Nola sighs and presses her lips against her cup. When she removes them, they are bright pink. “I’m not great, but I barely knew her.”
“It wasn’t suicide. It’s too big of a coincidence. The blog described her death. That means Jessica didn’t write it. Either she never wrote any of it, or someone hacked in and added Maddy’s poem.”
Nola shudders. “Those rhymes are all written in the same style. Same voice.”
“Why would someone pretend to be Jessica, use me to get back at her enemies, and then kill Maddy?”
“Because you’re at the center of it, Kay. You’re a top suspect, you were the one Fake Jessica chose to carry out her supposed revenge, and you’ve decided to solve her murder. To the police, you probably look like a textbook serial killer inserting herself into the investigation.”
I falter. Textbook. Why does everyone know these things except me? “We don’t know that the blogger killed Jessica. Just Maddy. To all outward appearances, the blogger wants to avenge Jessica. It just doesn’t make sense that he would kill her. All we know about Fake Jessica is that he wrote the blog and either killed Maddy or knew about her death as soon as it happened. It’s like he knows everything that goes on at Bates the second it happens. Everyone’s secrets, every move we make.” They even knew about Maddy’s nickname. Not Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Rebound Girl. I hadn’t even known she was dating anyone.
She takes a contemplative sip. “You keep saying he.”
“Do I?”
“What did you tell the cops?”
“That it was suicide. And that Greg probably killed Jessica.”
Nola nods, but she doesn’t look convinced. She looks like she’s humoring a child. I feel my heart double its rhythm and my face grow hot.
“They had that huge fight right before she died. He has the best motive.”
She places her mug down and crosses her room to retrieve the laptop from her backpack. “When that was your motive, it was the worst motive. Right?”
“Can we not talk about this for one night?”
“Of course.” She settles down next to me and puts her head on my shoulder. “We can watch the walls peel.” She points to a corner of the ceiling where the paper she’s taped up is beginning to curl down. For some reason this makes me giggle, and she does, too.
“Or a movie or something?”
She pulls up her Netflix account and we watch a mindless romantic comedy. I usually like sci-fi and action, and all of Nola’s recent shows are classics and noir, but I can’t take any more suspense than wondering whether the adorable female lead will fall for the unattractive and stalkery male lead before or after he destroys her business venture.
My phone buzzes halfway through and I look down to see Brie calling. I silence it. I can’t think of what to say, and one more ounce of pressure will split me in half right now. Nola glances at me curiously and I shrug it off. But I’m pretty sure she can guess.
“Nola.” She looks at me. “What would you do if you found out I killed Jessica?”
She looks stunned and a little suspicious, as if she’s trying to figure out what trap I’ve set for her. “Call you a liar?”
“Play along.”
She studies my face. “Ask you why.”
I shake my head. “Not allowed to ask. Just react.”
She laughs nervously. “What new devilry is this?”
“I don’t know who to trust anymore. Everything is strategy. School, soccer, relationships, the police. What do you say, how do you say it, when do you say it to get what you want. I’m worse than anyone. Greg trusted me and I told the police to look at him. Brie was my best friend and she stabbed me in the back. And I think Spencer tried to get back together with me today and that is the opposite of what needs to happen.”
Nola raises her head with interest. “Perfect Brie is a backstabber?”
I pick up an amaryllis plant and stroke the silky petals. It’s the first time I’m saying this out loud and I can’t bear to see Nola’s reaction. “She set Spencer up with Jessica. I have no idea why she did it.”
Nola slips her hand into mine. “I’m sorry.”
I swallow the lump in my throat and finally look up. Her expression is soft and sympathetic. “Let’s make a pact. Our friendship is strategy-free. No bullshit. I need that right now.” My lips feel wobbly and I tighten them. I thought I had that with Brie. I was wrong.
Nola reaches behind her and grabs a pair of hair scissors and slices a small cut in her index finger and then offers it to me. “Blood promise,” she says eagerly. “It’s tradition.”
I look distastefully at the reddened tip of the scissor. “Do you have anything to disinfect it?”
“Just use the other blade,” she urges.
I hesitate. “Sorry, I have a germ thing.”
She spins the scissors around her finger skeptically. “The whole point of a blood promise is sharing blood.”
“We unburied and reburied a cat t
ogether,” I remind her. “That’s a bone promise. Way more hard-core.”
She wipes her finger on a tissue, seeming satisfied. “Fair enough. But we have to seal it with something.”
“I know a kick-ass handshake,” I offer.
But Nola crawls toward me, and before I can respond, she presses her lips against mine. They are delicate, waxy with Chapstick, and her breath is sweet like honey and chamomile. The smell of baby powder deodorant mixes with her citrusy perfume as she scoots closer and presses her body against mine, softly and seductively. Not like the way we usually touch, not even like the way Brie and I touch. It might feel nice except for the terrible guilt, the dark feeling that drops like a panic from my chest down to my gut and floods me with memories, the sounds of Tai and Tricia screaming with laughter, the sound of my laughter, of Nola’s glossy eyes, of words, words, words. Necro. She touches my face with her cold hand, and I spring back from her, feeling like I can’t breathe.
“Sealed,” she murmurs, brushing her lips once more against mine.
“Nola?”
She looks at me, something like fear flashing in her eyes.
“Let’s not do that again.”
She shrugs. “Fine by me.”
She switches the light off, and I curl into a corner of the bed. She faces the other way and we lie back to back silently. I feel her pull her robe off and toss it onto the floor and then curl her body up into a little ball, and the guilt washes over me again. It’s now or never.
I clear my throat. “I’m sorry we were such bitches to you when you first came to Bates.”
She is silent for a long moment. “How so?”
“You know.” I grope for the right words. “What Cori said. Sometimes jokes are funny for the person telling it, not so funny for the person it’s about.”
“You’re not that funny, Kay. None of your friends were funny, either.”
I pause. “I agree. I was just trying to apologize.”
“I appreciate it.”
My entire body relaxes. But it’s hard to get those images out of my head now that they’ve been revived. And they’re mashed up now with the scent of Nola and the feeling of her lips on mine. And that awful image that keeps revisiting me of Spencer and Jessica together. The longing I feel to see him mixed up with the pain that results every time I do. My last memory of Megan, slamming her door in my face, and of Todd, a coffin closing on his. A dozen envelopes, sealed and labeled Dear Valentine, that would set this nightmare in motion. And Brie. Brie when she was so close, I could never imagine her being lost. The shock and pain of her betrayal. But I’m grateful for all of it. Because it pushes Maddy out of my mind. In the morning, I’ll have to face her death again.
15
When I wake up, Nola is seated at her desk, staring gravely at her computer screen.
I sit up groggily, and she brings me a mug of chamomile tea. “Stay sitting,” she says.
“What’s going on?” I wipe my eyes, trying to orient myself. I don’t remember right away that I fell asleep in Nola’s room, and then last night rains down on me in fragments like shards of broken glass. Maddy, Spencer, Greg, that awful note I left Brie, the kiss, my conversation with Detective Morgan, every horrible emotion I had. My head is pounding painfully, and my nose is stuffed and itchy. I sneeze violently, and Nola hands me a box of tissues. I blow my nose and look instinctively at the Matisse calendar hanging on her wall. I’m sick, the murder investigation is still on, and there are only a few scheduled games left before the end of the season. They won’t start up again until the investigation ends. I need to keep running, keep my speed up.
Nola hands me her laptop, opened to a local news website. “First of all, you were right about Maddy. The police are investigating it as a homicide. Possibly linked to Jessica’s.”
I pull the comforter around me, shivering. “The police think it’s the same killer?”
“Same place, same pattern. Maddy overdosed, but she died by drowning. No note, no indication that she wanted to die. Jessica didn’t leave a note either. That’s today’s breaking news. If the same person killed Jessica and Maddy, that proves that the killer wrote the revenge website. F. J. has been masterminding this whole thing and manipulating every move we’ve made.”
“F. J. is?”
“Fake Jessica. The blogger.” There are dark shadows under her eyes, and I wonder whether she slept at all last night. She’s no longer wearing the silky nightgown. Instead she’s dressed in a conservative black button-down shirt with a white Peter Pan collar and a knee-length wool skirt and knee socks. I’m embarrassed about the short-circuited kiss from last night, but it’s suffocated by the shock and numbness I feel about Maddy’s death and guilt about the message I left Brie.
“We can’t just assume Maddy and Jessica were killed by the same person.” I try to keep my voice steady. “They’re two very different people. They had nothing in common. And what about Greg? He has no connection to Maddy.”
“Well, maybe Greg didn’t do it,” Nola says quietly.
I take Nola’s laptop without a word and open the revenge website. We unlock the password and click on the link to the main course. It goes dark and the oven opens, revealing the final recipe poem.
Oh Kay Dead Meat Pie
Chop her, mince her, grind her up
Call the cops to drink and sup
The recipes are writ and posted
Hope you’ve liked the meal I’ve hosted
Two things left—to book and cuff
Katie can’t suffer enough.
I suddenly notice the kitchen timer flying at breakneck speed. “What’s going on?”
She clicks on it a few times but it keeps moving. “Hold on.” She types something into the password box, but nothing happens. “Um.”
Fifteen seconds. I grab the laptop from her. “What happens at zero?” I shriek.
“How am I supposed to know?”
I watch helplessly as the timer ticks to zero, and then the website disappears and the words Server not found appear on the screen. “What just happened?” I ask, a panic rising in my stomach.
She stares at the computer incredulously. “The site’s been taken down. It must have been set to expire a certain amount of time after the password was unlocked. It’s gone. For good.”
I sink back against the wall. “I’m being set up. And that was the only evidence.”
Nola takes a deep breath. “I think I have an idea who F. J. might be.”
I close my eyes and cover my face with my hands. “It’s not Spencer.”
She gapes at me. “How did you know?”
“He’s the only one who calls me Katie. He knows every person on the revenge blog. Plus Jessica. Intimately. He even has a reason to want to hurt me.”
“The incident Cori mentioned, I presume.”
“Obviously. But if Spencer wanted to get back at me, he could have just killed me. And he had no reason to hurt Maddy.”
Nola rolls her eyes. “You’re a revenge amateur.” She tosses me her phone. “And Spencer had every reason to hurt Maddy. To shut her up. Funny how she dropped dead hours after he tried to get back together with you.”
I look down at an unfamiliar Instagram account showing pictures of Spencer and Maddy cuddling and making out at a party, dated shortly after our breakup. And then everything makes sense. Maddy being so nice to me. Constantly asking if I’d spoken to Spencer. Brie acting cold toward her all of a sudden, and Tai and the others giving her that new nickname, Notorious R.B.G. Rebound girl. Maddy and Spencer. This doesn’t just strengthen Spencer’s motive, though. It pretty much doubles mine. And when you consider that Spencer and I met alone the day she was found dead, it’s absolutely damning. But I know I didn’t do it, and the fact is, Spencer might have.
I am suddenly hit with a vivid memory of the night we met, the moment that cemente
d our friendship. I had finally relented to his suggestion that we find an unoccupied bedroom, and we really did stay there all night drinking and playing I Never, no funny business, at least much less funny than our public display for Brie’s benefit. The game had started so blandly and rapidly escalated until the final three.
“I never broke a person’s heart.” Neither of us drank.
“Liar,” I said, watching the ceiling spin in circles as I hugged a flannel pillow to my chest.
“Appearances can be deceiving. No tears shed over me, Katie.”
I already regretted telling him my nickname from back home earlier in the game. I Never had a nickname.
The next one slid off my tongue before my waltzing mind had time to process it.
“I never committed a felony.” I crawled over to him on my elbows and took a swig of his gin and tonic before the better part of me, the smarter part of me, had time to shut it down, to scream at me to stop and go home. He stared down at me, took the drink out of my hand, and drained half the glass.
“I obstructed a police investigation,” I said dizzily, nestling my head into his lap. It felt so good to say, and I was so sure I would never ever see this boy again. It was the perfect confession. He was warm and fun and irresistible, and it was so easy to talk to him. Tomorrow I would go back to Brie and she would have forgotten about that bitch she was ignoring me for. Brie would never go for a theater girl. Too much drama.
“I framed my father for grand theft auto.”
I opened my eyes and gazed up at him, his face gently rotating with the rest of the room. “That’s impressive.”
