There were only three of us living here, and my parents were never home long enough to leave an impression.
Knowing that no one would care, or bother to say anything even if they did, I didn’t think twice about dumping my cargo in the living room in a haphazard pile before strolling into the kitchen.
The long drive had left me hungry and what little of the waffles and syrup was still churning in my stomach surely needed a replacement.
I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I soon discovered that it definitely wasn’t in the fridge.
The parents must have left around the same time I did—either that or their next overpriced pep talk was going to be on cleaning out moldy refrigerators.
Making a face, I slammed the nasty thing closed and scowled at it.
I had the maid service’s phone number and I knew the parents paid for on-call services as well as weekly clean-up.
I also knew that I would be embarrassed to admit to anyone, even the cleaners, that the family that lived in this million-dollar house didn’t actually do much living in it.
We weren’t much of a family, either, to be honest. I think that part held more shame for me, but I would never admit it.
I was eighteen now. A legal adult, as Mom was so fond of reminding me—when she remembered to talk to me—and I didn’t need mommy and daddy around all the time anymore.
Hell, I hadn’t needed them around for the last five years—as long as they kept my spending account full.
“Because money solves everything,” I muttered sourly to myself as I glared at the refrigerator. “Fuck that.”
I scrubbed the damn fridge out myself, choking and gagging the whole time, but too stubborn to quit.
I wouldn’t be telling the girls about this little adventure.
They wouldn’t understand.
I barely understood it myself, honestly.
Stepping off the bus alone, with no one older or wiser to tell me why I felt badly about things I shouldn’t logically feel badly about, coming home to an empty house where nobody missed me except the leftovers, just set me off.
I’d mostly worked off my anger by the time I set the security alarm and went to bed.
Mostly.
Chapter Four
I wasn’t supposed to meet the girls at the mall until noon, but being home alone was only agitating me.
Even looking at the newly-glistening fridge made me angry, because there was no one to share my victory with.
It was worth sharing, trust me. I’d battled the mold monster and won by the skin of my teeth.
When I got bored with anger, I started feeling sorry for myself, which wasn’t really any better.
Eventually I decided that being lonely at the mall was better than being lonely at home. Maybe I could even do some intel myself before the girls got there. It would give me enough time to find a suitable replacement for the tiny backpacks Julianne was going on about—a replacement that could, at the very least, contain a chemistry textbook.
The mall was already busy when I got there. It wasn’t surprising. The Saturday before school starts is almost as busy as the week before Christmas at Starline Mall—mostly because it’s the only mall in town, but also because the August sun is brutal in Texas and the mall has the best air conditioners in town. Good enough to make it feel like you’ve stepped from a summery outside right into the winter.
I walked past crowds of vaguely familiar faces and tried not to meet anybody’s eyes. Everybody looks familiar after a while if the town is small enough and I wasn’t in a ‘hello’ kind of mood. That’s not to say I could completely ignore the chattering going on.
I listened to friends, young and old, squeal in happy recognition as they saw each other from across the hall. I listened to mothers scold their daughters about too-short of skirts and implausible hair colors, and ached for battles I would never have the chance to lose.
Maybe showing up early was a bad idea. Drowning my sorrows in Cinnabon didn’t even seem to help.
I strolled past Spencer’s and fought against that stupid twinge of guilt, the one made stronger by the massive gaping melancholy in my core. It was Julianne’s fault, I decided with a scowl. She was the one who decided that the Seymore boys were guilty of everything and anything, she was the one who brought the stupid Ouija board to seal the charges against them in the court of—well, us, I guess.
“You should have seen their faces.”
If I hadn’t been thinking about her, I don’t know if I would have been able to pick out Julianne’s voice through the general noise and chatter.
I froze, then moved closer.
Thomas—who had forced me to kiss him last year and earned a slap for it, the same Thomas who was now dating Julianne—laughed in response.
They were sitting in the food court, right at the edge. I sidled over casually, careful to stay out of their direct line of sight.
Their table faced a potted palm which stuck proudly up out of the little half-wall surrounding the food court. Benches lined the wall, and I chose the one nearest their table, hiding myself behind the palm.
Thomas would have been looking in my direction, if he hadn’t been restlessly scanning the room, making sure that he was drawing enough attention to himself.
I didn’t have to see him to know he was doing it. The man was a peacock, through and through. He and Julianne, they kinda deserved each other. Two peas in a pod, needing attention just as much as they needed air.
“You still haven’t told me what you did,” he said, sounding bored and more than just a little impatient.
“I’m getting to it,” Julianne said airily. I didn’t see it, but I was sure there was an eye-roll to accompany her words. “Okay,” she continued, “so you know how Joan and Kennedy always need a reason to go after people who deserve it, right?”
“I guess,” he said, not any more interested than he was a moment before.
“It was easy when Kitty May was around. That bitch was so soft and pure that it didn’t take much to rile up Kennedy’s protective instincts. Joan was a little harder. To be honest, I don’t think she liked Kitty all that much. Competing redheads, you know how it is.”
“Mm.”
“Ugh, pay attention, Thomas. Seriously! This gets good.”
“Say something interesting then,” he shot back.
I could almost feel her glare, but I got where he was coming from.
Julianne had a way of dragging out a story, filling it in with details from years and years and years ago until she finally got to the point.
“Well,” she said and batted her eyelashes at him, once again, pausing for dramatic effect. I felt it in my own bones, the anticipation of what she was going to say rising me on a wave of intrigue. “I made them think the Seymores killed Kitty May and her family.”
Thomas choked.
I did too, but at least I didn’t have anything in my mouth.
It sounded to me like he shot his soda all over the table. I hoped it came out his nose and drenched Julianne in sweet, sticky, snot.
“You what?”
She giggled, clearly delighted that she had his full attention now. And, of course, one hundred-percent pleased by his reaction.
“I bought this ancient-looking Ouija board at the flea market and convinced them that it was Grandmother Bird’s, super magical, super creep board. Ugh, you should have seen their faces. They were terrified to even touch the thing. But, you know me. I made them play with it for a while until they were convinced—it was super easy. God, they’re so stupid sometimes. And Stew,” she laughed, “you should have seen him. He was already freaked out before we even started.”
Only because Joan was practically riding his nuts, I thought ungraciously.
“Then I was all, Spirits!” She dissolved into giggles as she reenacted the ominous voice she’d used during the fake séance. “Did the Seymores have anything to do with Kitty May’s disappearance? Then I pushed the pointer to ‘yes’ and screamed a
nd slammed the box shut. Oh, god, I deserve an award for that performance.”
“And they bought that?” Thomas snorted, trying to get the last of the soda out of his nose, I hoped.
“Hook, line, and sinker, baby,” she crowed. “It was so fucking funny. You should have been there.”
“Summer camp’s for kids,” he said with a sneer in his voice.
“It’s better than Pretend to be a Ranger camp,” she sneered right back.
Their conversation was going to dissolve into bickering. It always did.
I didn’t have the patience to sit around and listen to it, and anyway, I’d heard enough.
If I was going to keep the shopping date—and I really should, if I wanted this school year to be anything short of hell—I would need to calm down before I met her face to face.
She’d made it up.
All of it.
When she told us all at the beginning of summer that Kitty May had disappeared under mysterious circumstances, we’d mostly believed her.
I always took what she said with a grain of salt—but when we went to Kitty May’s house and found it empty, with windows broken in front and a weird stain in the driveway, I’d been ready to believe her.
She’d kept pushing the narrative all summer, too—lots of “I heard” and “they don’t know” without ever saying who she heard what from or who “they” were. Classic misdirection, and I hadn’t even questioned it.
I’ve never liked feeling foolish—it was one of the primary reasons I never made much of an effort to make friends—and now I felt like a complete fucking idiot.
It took the better part of two hours of walking around for me to get my temper locked away where she wouldn’t see it. It didn’t help that the girls were already talking about the Ouija board when I finally joined them for lunch.
“Did she miss it?” Joan was asking as I approached the table.
Julianne had moved out of the corner, taking over the table right in the center of the food court instead. The better table to see and be seen—and heard from, for that matter.
“Grandmother Bird didn’t even know her Ouija board was missing,” Julianne answered a little louder than was strictly necessary.
It had the desired effect. Glances followed by whispers radiated out across the food court, poisonous ripples across the social pond. Julianne hid her triumphant smile behind her soda.
“I still can’t believe how fast it whipped to ‘yes’ after you asked that question,” Macy said.
“You mean when I asked it if the Seymores were the ones responsible for Kitty May’s disappearance?” Julianne asked.
Of course that was what she meant, but Julianne’s question whipped the ripple into a frothy wave of speculation. God, people around here were starving for a good story.
She looked up at me with a big smile as I approached.
“Kennedy! I almost thought you were going to ditch us,” she said. “We were just talking about how Grandmother Bird’s Ouija board accused the Seymore brothers of making Kitty May and her family disappear.”
Effective and subtle as a club to the face.
I smiled back at her the way I’d smile at a snake under my boot. If I knew where and how to apply pressure, I might have crushed her—as it was, calling her out on her bullshit in public was as good as a suicide note.
“Yeah, that was pretty insane,” I said evenly. “I already ate. You guys ready to shop yet?”
Julianne pouted at me, clearing wanting me to pump up the enthusiasm. There was that threatening glint in her eye that couldn’t be missed.
Even then, I chose to pay it no mind.
I wasn’t in the mood to play pretend.
Not after what I’d heard.
Framing them for murder was one thing. Like Renard had clearly pointed out, no cop was even going to listen to what a damn Ouija board had to say.
The thing that really irked me, was how happy go lucky she was bragging to Thomas about how readily we bought her bullshit. Like throwing your friends on the stupid train was somehow funny.
“Are you serious? We were all supposed to have lunch together,” she said in pink-frosted tones, heavy on the sprinkles.
I shrugged. “Big breakfast.”
It wasn’t really a lie. The cinnamon bun had been massive. The fact that I’d only eaten a quarter of it before losing my appetite was irrelevant.
“Okay,” she said doubtfully. She assessed me with quick, intelligent eyes, then changed the subject. “So there’s these little Ouija board necklaces,” she said. “I think it would be fun for us to all get matching ones, you know, like a callback to our last ever night at summer camp.”
And a subliminal message to everybody who saw us, subtly reminding them of the rumor you’re spreading right now - I thought the words, but didn’t dare say them.
I didn’t know whether to be more impressed or appalled. I settled for a little of both and made a mental note to keep a sharper eye on her. Her manipulations were masterful. Even lying at the top of her lungs sounded convincing, because her volume naturally went up and down depending on her excitement.
Or did it? A sick thought made my stomach twist. She’d pulled me into a lot of drama over the last couple of years.
How much did I have any proof of?
How many people had I tormented on her word?
How many of those people had been innocent?
I didn’t want to think about it, so I thought about anything else instead.
“I saw some of those tiny backpacks on my way in,” I said. “They come in four colors.” I winced as I said it. I still couldn’t think of a good use for a tiny backpack.
Chapter Five
I didn’t even bother taking my bags out of the car when I got home. I’d been getting angrier and angrier the whole time we shopped, which had been hours. Julianne can run a mall marathon like an Olympian gold medalist.
Fortunately my parents had topped up my spending account in anticipation of the school year, or I’d have been twelve hundred dollars over budget for the month.
I didn’t even like half the stuff I bought, which irritated me like it had never irritated me before.
Shopping trips with Julianne always went this way. We’d buy the whole mall, usually in matching styles and different colors, and I’d spend all of my money at once.
Then, the next day or the next week, I’d return most of it and get my money back before my parents got the bank statement.
They wouldn’t care if I spent all of the money—I know, because I tried to get them to come home one month by blowing through five thousand dollars in a day.
There were no fits thrown.
Not many shits given, either.
They had topped up my account before I’d even gotten a phone call asking me what the hell sent my spending through the roof. But at least there was that small reminder for me to be more careful with my spending.
Even with parents who didn’t give a hoot, I didn’t like spending a bunch of money on crap I didn’t want. It only gave my parents ammunition; well, we have to work this hard and be gone this much, how else are we going to provide for you?
Though they never came right out and said it, I could make the connections. The more I spent, the harder they worked. The harder they worked, the longer they were gone. The longer they were gone, the more important dates they missed.
Sometimes I would spend time with my purchases in front of the mirror to truly decide what I liked and what I didn’t.
Today, I had something else on my mind.
Kitty May. Now that I knew, or at least suspected, that she hadn’t really disappeared after all, I needed to backtrack through all of the “proof” Julianne had presented.
The first of which was that Kitty May hadn’t posted on her Instagram since the last day of school, and hadn’t popped up on any other social media either. I started there; Kitty May and I were friends on Instagram, and it was true that she hadn’t posted in a while.
Her old posts were still there, so I started scrolling through them until I found a picture of her mom that she had tagged. Her mom’s account was private, but I had her name now. April Leison.
I opened a new tab and pulled up Facebook, then searched the name.
There were five April Leisons and I clicked on each of them, one after the other.
The first four were definitely not Kitty May’s mom—they were way too young. The last one said she lived in Alaska, so I wasn’t hopeful, but I clicked on it anyway.
And there, in the background picture behind the rose that was April Leison’s profile picture, sat Kitty May. Bundled up in a thick coat and knitted cap, roasting marshmallows around a campfire under a purple twilit sky, grinning up at the camera.
I wasn’t satisfied.
There was a chance it was an old picture even if it looked pretty recent. I scrolled down April’s page, just to see.
The most recent post was from that morning. It showed a picture of Kitty May standing at one end of a boat with a fishing pole in her hand. She looked happy—and very, very much alive.
There was a light in her eyes I couldn’t remember seeing before, as if her worries had all gone away. Her dad sat behind her in the boat, wearing a matching grin.
Feeling like I was maybe intruding on something private, I shifted my eyes away from the picture and read the caption.
You can tell Leon’s doing better! Kitty May would have given him an actual heart attack if we were still living in the Texas heat. It’s amazing up here. Kitty May loves it too, and look at that smile!
There were more pictures, and I scrolled through them all. I’d liked Kitty May a lot.
I’d grieved for her when I thought she was dead, panicked for her when I thought she was missing.
Julianne had insisted that she’d already filed missing person reports on Kitty May and her family, and told us all to leave it at that since she, according to her, had already built personal relationships with the investigators and they were more likely to tell her the truth than us.
In retrospect, it had been idiotic to believe that lie—but Julianne had a way of asserting control which did not invite challenge.
Them Seymore Boys: An Enemies to Lovers Bully Romance (The Seymore Brothers Book 1) Page 3
