Very Bad Things

by Susan McBride

  “Tessa,” her friend called, her voice quavering. “Tessa!”

  “I’m right here,” she said, flying across the room and grabbing Katie’s trembling hands. “It’s okay. Everything’s all right.”

  “No.” Katie shook her head, hair falling in her face. Her eyes welled with tears. “I smelled roses again. Someone was in the room.”

  “No one’s here but us.”

  “They stood by my bed, Tess!”

  “Okay, okay, let me look around.”

  Tessa got up and made a big show of peering into the hallway and checking their closet. She even got down on all fours and peeked beneath the beds. “I swear, no one’s hiding,” she said, and sat down beside Katie. She brushed dark hair from Katie’s face, hating the fear she saw in her friend’s eyes. “Scoot over,” she told her. “I’ll stay here so you can get some sleep.”

  Katie moved nearer the wall and Tessa settled into the twin bed beside her. She turned her face so their foreheads almost touched. “You’ll protect me from the psycho?”

  “Like a pit bull in Joe Boxer.”

  Katie cracked a smile. “More like a Chihuahua.”

  “Ha,” Tessa said. “Now go to sleep.”

  “Okay.” Katie found Tessa’s hand beneath the covers and squeezed.

  Tessa didn’t dare move for the longest time, not until Katie closed her eyes and her breathing became slow and deep. Tessa’s heart still beat too quickly. She would never admit it, but she was shaken, too. Bad things were happening that she couldn’t control, like before, with the fire.

  You were just a child, the school shrink kept telling her. You’re not responsible for what happened.

  But Tessa knew differently. She was responsible, and she had to live with the aftermath every day of her life. Yeah, she’d been a child, but she’d done nothing to stop it. She’d known something was wrong, and she’d never spoken up. Wasn’t keeping quiet sometimes a very bad thing by itself?

  Katie sighed in her sleep, and Tessa whispered, “I’ll be more careful this time. I can’t lose anyone else.”

  She’d lost too much already.

  When Katie cracked open her eyes the next morning, Tessa was already dressed and sitting at her desk, fingers tapping on her laptop.

  Katie glanced at her alarm clock. It was half past eight. “Oh, God, I’m so late,” she groaned, throwing off the covers.

  Tessa turned her head. “Hey, you. I thought you’d never getup.”

  “I’m missing Nineteenth-Century American Poets,” Katie said, hopping on one leg as she pulled on black tights beneath her sleep shirt. Where had she put her bra?

  Tessa flashed a rare smile. “The dead poets can do without you for one morning. The headmaster gave us a pass today, too, remember?”

  “Oh, crap, you’re right.” Katie sank onto the bed. She sighed and wiped the grit from her eyes. “I feel like I hardly slept.”

  “You snored like a freight train.”

  “I was asleep for five minutes.”

  “Then it just seemed like forever,” Tessa teased.

  Katie gave her a look that said thanks. If it hadn’t been for Tessa, Katie wouldn’t have slept at all. Every time she’d closed her eyes, she saw the hand, the red-rose tattoo so bright against the gray flesh.

  Blech.

  “What’re you doing?” She pushed the ugly thought from her head and crossed the room, peering over Tessa’s shoulder. “Making friends?”

  “Hardly.” Tessa moved her laptop screen so Katie could see the Facebook page she was looking at.

  It was for a girl named Rose Tatum.

  “That’s her,” Tessa said. “The one with the rose tat.”

  “Rose,” Katie said, and her guts twisted. Seeing the page made the girl seem more human. She had dark hair hanging past her shoulders, almond-shaped brown eyes, and a wide mouth curved in a cryptic half smile.

  “She does look like you,” Tessa said.

  “I don’t see it.”

  “You just don’t want to.”

  Okay, yeah, Katie guessed there was a vague resemblance. But it creeped her out to think she looked like a girl who was missing and probably dead. So she focused on the differences. Rose wore a lot more makeup, had crooked front teeth, and had piercings up and down her ears. Plus, there was the matter of the rose tattoo on her hand and wrist.

  “It’s too bad I can’t friend her,” Tessa said. “We could find out more about her, like which Whitney hockey jock she liked partying with most.”

  Katie ignored Tessa, reading Rose’s public info: she was single, worked as a waitress at the Barnard Diner, and had 267 friends. Her favorite quote was attributed to Snooki: “I’m not trashy unless I drink too much.”

  “Typical.” Tessa sniffed. “Girls like her ask for trouble. Doesn’t it seem like they always end up OD’ing or something?”

  Katie flashed back on the hand in the box and shivered. “Nobody asks for that, Tessa. No one.”

  But Tessa wasn’t done. “Why would a nineteen-year-old waitress want to party with prep school jocks?”

  “Um, because they’re rich and cute,” Katie said, stating the obvious.

  “They’re spoiled and conceited,” Tessa countered. “Girls like Rose are Kleenex to guys like Steve Getty. They use them, then toss them.”

  “Even if that’s true, she and Steve still could have had a thing. Maybe she helped him set up Mark. Except we might never find out,” Katie said, and reached over Tessa’s shoulder to close Rose’s Facebook page. “I can’t look anymore.”

  “Well, you’d better get used to seeing her picture. The police posted a missing-persons flyer downstairs and they’ve got it up on the school’s website, too. They’re nosing around again this morning, asking if anyone’s run into her since last Saturday.”

  The Barnard police had shown up yesterday before Dr. Capello left, wanting to fingerprint Katie and Tessa and Mrs. Gabbert. “So we can rule you out when we examine the box,” the cop had explained. But it had made Katie feel like a criminal, having her fingers rolled in ink and pressed onto an index card. She could still see the purple residue on her skin.

  “Everyone’s talking, you know.” Tessa hesitated, though she looked fit to burst. “Word is that Mark was the last one to see Rose alive.”

  “Stop,” Katie said sharply, and wrapped her arms around her stomach. Maybe the school gossips were getting off on this whole mess but Mark was scared out of his mind. He’d sent her text after text last night, telling her about the police showing up at his dad’s office and how he was under suspicion.

  i didn’t do anything! i didn’t hurt that girl. you have to believe me!

  Katie could only text back:

  I want to.

  At the moment, she wasn’t sure of anything. Her world had turned upside down again, just like when her dad died. But Katie wasn’t about to shut down this time. She didn’t feel depressed. She wasn’t even scared anymore. She was angry. Right when she’d found a guy she really loved—when she’d opened up her heart—someone seemed to be trying their best to take it all away.

  Within hours after Katie had opened The Box, the headmaster had shot an email to the student body and their parents about a “disturbing item” having been sent to a student and requesting that anyone with any information contact campus security. He’d instituted a nine p.m. curfew as well. Katie’s mom had called her right after hearing directly from the headmaster about the incident.

  “Are you okay?” she’d asked, clearly upset. “Should I come and get you? Do you want to come home?”

  Katie was tempted to pack her bags and leave this whole mess behind—to forget about the hand and Rose Tatum and Mark and that disgusting photo she couldn’t get out of her head. But Katie knew she couldn’t go. As confused as she was about Mark, she wouldn’t bail on him, not when the Barnard police considered him the prime suspect in Rose Tatum’s disappearance. If she really loved him, she owed it to him to stick around until Rose was found. And she
would.

  “I want to stay,” she’d told her mom. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”

  “Oh, baby, this makes me so uneasy! Text me every day, all right? And if you change your mind, I’ll fly up there.”

  “Okay,” Katie had told her, but she hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Graduation was only six weeks away. It would suck to take off before then. The police are doing everything they can to find whoever’s responsible, the headmaster had told her. The campus police are cooperating fully. You’ll be as safe here as anywhere.

  Katie hoped he was right.

  “Where is she?” Tessa asked, drawing Katie back to the present. “You think they’ll find her on campus?”

  “I don’t know,” Katie said, but she wondered, too. If Rose was dead, where was her body? What had gone on the night of the party? Who had hurt her, and why had they cut off her hand and left it for Katie at Amelia House? Was it some kind of threat?

  Someone knocked on the door, and Katie nearly jumped out of her skin.

  “Katie?” Mrs. Gabbert poked her gray head in. “There’s a police detective downstairs to see you. If you want me to tell him to come back—”

  “No, I’ll come down,” Katie said. She’d been expecting it. They’d interviewed Tessa the day before after fingerprinting her, but Katie hadn’t been up to it.

  She finished dressing and pulled her hair into a ponytail.

  “I’ll go with you.” Tessa started to get up, but Katie shook her head.

  “I should do this alone.”

  The detective was waiting for her in the den, underneath a portrait of Amelia Whitney, who frowned down at him. He stood as Katie entered. “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said. “I know you’re upset, but I have a few questions to ask you if it’s okay.”

  “It’s okay.” She wasn’t going to puke on anyone’s shoes today.

  Katie took a seat, and he passed over a photograph. It was the profile picture from Rose Tatum’s Facebook page.

  “Did you ever see her around campus?” he asked. “Maybe with another student?”

  “No, never,” Katie told him. It was the truth.

  “But you have seen her before, haven’t you?”

  Katie squirmed. “Not in person.”

  He cocked his head. “But you did see a photograph?”

  Oh, God. Katie’s hands went cold. Of course he knew about the sex pic. Everyone on campus did. “Yes,” she admitted. She could hardly meet his eyes.

  “You know about the party she attended at the headmaster’s house last Saturday night?”

  “Yes,” Katie said, though the word seemed to stick in her throat.

  “You’re dating Mark Summers.”

  The way he said it wasn’t a question.

  Katie almost said “I was” but caught herself.

  “Yes.” They’d been together three months. She’d planned to follow him to whichever university he picked from the half a dozen dangling scholarships. If she had to, she’d attend community college just to be near him. But what would happen now? Would all those plans fall apart?

  “What did he tell you about Rose?” the detective asked, watching her so intently that Katie was afraid to twitch. “About what happened last Saturday night?”

  “Nothing.” Katie’s mouth was so dry. “He barely knew her. He didn’t even meet her until the party. You should be talking to Steve Getty. He’s the one who snuck her onto campus. He’s the reason Mark blacked out and can’t remember.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Didn’t the police believe that Mark was drugged? Had they talked to Steve or Charlie? Had they interviewed the other hockey players at the party? Katie needed to know more about what was going on.

  “Tell me that at least she was dead before her hand was cut off,” Katie said.

  The detective nodded. “It was definitely postmortem.”

  “Did you find any fingerprints on the box?” she asked. “Anything to help you solve this fast?” On CSI, they were always pulling up matches in a blink.

  “All I can safely tell you is we’ve taken your prints out of the equation, as well as Miss Lupinski’s and Mrs. Gabbert’s.” He shifted in his seat. “As for other prints on the box and the wrapping, it’s very much an ongoing investigation. Things take time,” he insisted.

  “So that’s it?” Katie said. “Are we done?”

  “For now.”

  “I hope you find her,” Katie told him, and stood. “And I hope you catch the twisted person who sent me her hand.”

  “I intend to,” he said, and tucked the photo back into a manila folder.

  Katie started to walk away.

  “Do one thing for me?” the detective asked, and she stopped. “Keep your eyes and ears open. If you see or hear anything that might help us, call straightaway.”

  “I will.” Katie was determined to find answers, one way or another. She reached for the handle on the French door.

  “Oh, and Miss Barton—”

  “Yes?” She turned around.

  “One of our guys will patrol campus until this thing’s over. So if anything odd comes up, someone will always be close.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and meant it.

  Katie definitely kept her eyes open, wide enough to see the Barnard cop car roll past Amelia House several times that day and every day after throughout the next week. She was on the alert for “odd” things, too, like the comments on her Facebook page by a few of the school’s better-known jerks, saying things like, u need a hand with ur lit essay? And hey k8e i’ll bet ur bf is a real handyman!

  Much as Katie wanted to pretend things were normal, her nerves were on edge.

  She slept like crap and woke up in the dark every night, seeing shadows and smelling roses. She went to class, studied in the library (though she avoided the upper stacks), and let Tessa drag her to the student center for bad coffee and stale doughnuts. She texted her mom every day to say I’m OK, and she watched people in a way she hadn’t before.

  She noticed that Charlie Frazer was suddenly going out of his way to avoid her. Whenever she saw him and waved, he’d cross the grass or duck into a building so he wouldn’t have to pass her. Every time she turned around in AP Biology, she caught Steve Getty watching her with a barely there smile on his face, like he knew something she didn’t know. One day, Katie lingered at her desk after class, waiting for Steve to leave first. Then she’d followed him as he’d crossed campus and snuck up on Joelle Needham while she sat on a bench near the library. He’d slipped his arms around her, and Joelle had jumped, spilling books from her lap. She looked fit to cry and pushed Steve away. Whatever she said to him made his face screw up, and he’d stomped away, hands in pockets, looking truly pissed.

  Tessa seemed to be even more out of sorts than usual, too. Several times when Katie’s weird dreams had awakened her in the middle of the night Tessa wasn’t in her bed. When Katie asked where she went, Tessa got defensive. “I watch TV down in the media room. Is that all right with you, or do I need a permission slip?”

  Weird, maybe. But nothing worth reporting to the police.

  Katie hardly saw Mark the entire week after The Box, but he texted her all the time. Under orders to lie low, he told her. I miss u.

  She missed him, too. They hadn’t broken up, but they weren’t together, not the way they had been. And all because of this mess with Rose.

  No one’s seen her in a week, Mark texted. Where is she?

  I don’t know, Katie replied. But someone must.

  Yeah, but WHO???

  Katie wondered the same thing. Because someone had to know what had happened to Rose. But whoever it was obviously wasn’t talking.

  The only talk Katie did hear was gossip. She couldn’t even go to the toilet without getting an earful. One night when she was just about to flush, she caught two girls dissing Mark.

  “If it happened by accident, you know, like rough sex, why wouldn’t he just dump her somewhere no one could find her?” one of them said. “W
hy would he chop off her hand and give it to his girlfriend?”

  “He plays hockey,” the other remarked. “Those guys are vicious.”

  Katie was about to flush the toilet and throw open the door to confront them when she heard the tip-tap of heels across the tile floor and then Joelle Needham’s angry voice.

  “Mark Summers might be a smug bastard, but he doesn’t rough up girls. Ever. So maybe you should just shut up.”

  “Sorry, Joelle,” the girls murmured.

  “Yeah, you are.”

  When it was quiet again, Katie flushed and stepped out of the stall, thinking she was alone in the bathroom.

  Only Joelle was still there, staring into the mirror, tears bright on her cheeks.

  Katie was about to ask if she was okay when Joelle sniffled and wiped the damp from her face. “So you heard that?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Stupid frosh. They don’t know which side of their butts to wipe.” Joelle leaned toward the mirror, using her pinky to clean up smeared mascara.

  “Thanks for sticking up for Mark.” Katie went to the sink and washed her hands. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  Joelle tugged her auburn hair over her shoulder. “Mark might not be mine at the moment, but I know who he is. He may be vicious on the ice, but he wouldn’t hurt that girl, not even if he was ripped out of his mind. He’s not the one who likes it rough.” She stopped and held on to the rim of the sink. “Tell Mark something for me, okay? He won’t listen to anything I say.”

  “Sure.”

  Joelle pursed her lips for a moment. “Tell him I didn’t want it to happen. That it wasn’t what he thought.”

  Katie shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Mark will.” Joelle’s hands were shaking. “Look, it’s late. Go to bed, Katie. You’ve got bags under your eyes. You need sleep.”

  Joelle walked out with a clip-clop of heels. The bathroom door slapped closed, leaving Katie standing there wondering what the heck had just happened.

  He’s not the one who likes it rough.

  Who was Joelle talking about? There were at least forty guys in their graduating class alone. But the first name that came to mind was Steve Getty.