by E. E. Cooper
“Jesus, you freaked me out.” Brit stepped around the sofa and passed me a can.
“Thanks.” I popped the top and took a deep drink, glad that at least my hands weren’t shaking. Once I was sure I was in control of my voice I spoke. “So what’s up? You said you wanted to talk.”
Brit sighed. She reached into her bag and pulled something out. She placed it in the center of the coffee table, turning it so it was facing me. She sat across from me and waited for my reaction.
It was the Drink Me bottle I’d taken from this room when she was missing. At the time I’d wanted it because I knew it was Beth’s and it seemed wrong to leave it here. I’d been storing the anti-anxiety pills that I hadn’t been taking inside. I had hidden the bottle on top shelf of my locker, in a shoe box where I kept a spare set of runners, a place where my parents wouldn’t stumble across it, but it hadn’t occurred to me that Brit would go through my space.
My mouth was dry. I kept blinking as if the bottle might disappear. “Um,” I didn’t even know what to say.
“I went into your locker to get some gum,” Britney said.
I swallowed hard. No way had she gone into my locker because she wanted a piece of Dentyne. She’d suspected I’d been hiding things from her, and now she knew it.
“That bottle was my birthday gift to Beth,” she said. “I never had a chance to give it to her. The last time I saw it, it was here.” Brit pointed at the bookshelf, her lips pressed primly together. “You can imagine how surprised I was to find it in your locker.”
“I came here when you gone,” I admitted. There was no point in denying it: the proof was sitting right between us.
“Why? What were you looking for?”
I felt pinned in place. I wondered if we were talking about the bottle that was between us or if she had finally discovered that the apron wasn’t exactly where she’d left it. “I wasn’t looking for anything.”
“How do you think I feel knowing you stole from me?” Brit asked.
I sat up straighter. “I didn’t steal from you. When I took the bottle I thought you were dead.”
Brit sniffed. “And that makes it okay? Is that why you wanted to do the auction? You couldn’t find enough good stuff down here, so you wanted an excuse to get into my room and go through the rest of my things?”
Anger stiffened my spine. “I missed you. And Beth. I wanted to be here where we used to hang out. I know it was wrong to break in, but you don’t get it. Both of you were gone, and I was on my own.” I poked my finger at her. “You can sit there and judge me now, but you have no idea what it was like.”
“That doesn’t make it right to take things,” Brit said.
“I came here because I was alone. I took the bottle because it reminded me of Beth. That’s all it was.”
Brit leaned back in her seat. “You don’t need to be so hostile. I brought it up because I’m worried.”
I let out a slow breath. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“And I’m sorry you had to handle all of this on your own, but what I hate is that we have these secrets between us. That you didn’t tell me.”
“I don’t know why I didn’t tell you,” I said. “I came here because I wanted to make sense of things.” I kept my gaze steady.
Brit picked up the bottle and shook out one of my pills into her palm. “I looked up what these are,” she said.
I wanted to snatch the pills out of her hand, but there was no point. The cat was out of the bag. “I don’t take them because I don’t like how they make me feel. My parents don’t know.”
“These are pretty serious,” she said.
“I see Dr. Sherman too.” I watched her expression to try and see if she was shocked or if she already knew. “She prescribed them.”
“Because of how you felt when you thought I was dead?” Brit cocked one eyebrow.
Did she really think everything was about her, or had she done her research and knew that these kinds of meds aren’t for getting through a short-term crisis? I’d be better off to tell her the truth. Use it as a way to build her confidence back in me. The fact that she knew I’d been in her space when she hadn’t been here made her uneasy.
“Partly,” I said. “When you and Beth were both gone I started having trouble with anxiety, but I’ve had problems before. There was sort of a situation at my last school.”
I wiped my hands on my cropped jeans. I didn’t want to tell her, but I didn’t know how to get out of it. She would find some way to dig up the information if I didn’t tell her. I gave her a short summary of what had gone down with Madison. “So when I’d lost you and Beth, I fell apart a little.”
Brit moved so she was sitting right next to me and threw her arm over my shoulder. “You didn’t have to keep this a secret.”
“I didn’t want anyone to know.”
“You told Beth,” Brit said. I jolted in my seat. “She told me, you know.” I swallowed hard. Had Beth told her or was she only saying that now to cover herself? “You didn’t feel like you could tell me?” Brit asked.
“It wasn’t that,” I said.
Brit turned, pulling her legs up under her on the sofa. “Do you understand how that makes me feel? We’re supposed to be best friends, but I can’t trust you.”
“You can trust me,” I pleaded. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to think less of me.”
Brit’s face softened. “Kah-bear, I would never think less of you because you needed help.” She cocked her head to the side. “Did you forget what my parents do for a living? Or the fact I’m seeing Dr. Sherman myself? If anyone was going to understand, it would be me.” She made a waving motion with her hand. “I’m dealing with my own things, after all.” Brit let out an exaggerated sigh. “Well, I’m glad we cleared the air. I hated that there was all this between us.”
I bit my tongue. “I’m glad too,” I said.
“No more secrets, okay?”
“No more secrets,” I echoed.
“Anything else I should know?”
I worried she could hear my heart beating through my chest. Maybe she actually knew that I’d found the apron. Maybe she had been in East Lansing too. But why hadn’t she said anything?
“Nope,” I said. “Any deep dark secrets you’ve been keeping from me?” I held my breath in the pause, the silence around us felt almost electric. What would I do if she actually whispered quietly that she’d killed Beth?
Brit smiled after a beat. “Why would I keep anything from my best friend? We are besties, right?”
“Of course,” I said.
Brit thrust out her hand, her pinky crooked. “Pinky swear.” She shook her finger waiting for me. “C’mon, it’s a vow. I used to do this with Beth all the time.”
I linked fingers with her.
“Best friends forever,” Brit said.
“Forever,” I echoed.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“What’s on?” I flopped on the sofa.
“True crime,” Dad said.
My dad loved these shows. The ones where bad actors reenacted various villainous acts interspersed with moody shots of the real crime scenes. I watched an expert explaining how the blood evidence told them who the killer was. Seeing the still photos of the blood smear made me vaguely nauseated. I wondered if every time I saw a TV crime scene or read a mystery novel, my first thought would be wondering how it compared to Beth’s death. I knew there was still evidence in Brit’s basement that could be found if people just looked for it. If these shows had taught me anything, it was that murder was messy. You might think you’d cleaned up, but there was always still something to be found. “I like that they always catch the bad guy,” I said to my dad.
“Truth is most of the time it’s not too much of a riddle. When in doubt, it’s almost always the spouse. The only ones who are really hard to catch are the sociopaths.”
I sat up straighter. “Why?”
“They don’t care.” Dad popped a handful of pretzels into hi
s mouth. “It’s usually guilt that trips people up: they act in passion or rage and then make mistakes.”
I turned over what he said in my mind. I’d tossed the term sociopath around before, I’d even thought of Brit that way, but I didn’t really understand what it meant. It was a real condition, not just an insult. “What do you know about sociopaths?”
Dad leaned back as if he were about to give a lecture. “I have the vast knowledge of two psychology classes when I was in college.” He winked. “And a total obsession with mystery novels and these shows. Basically, sociopaths, or psychopaths, have no empathy. It’s like other people only exist for their amusement. They could hurt someone and not feel a shred of guilt.”
“So they don’t feel any emotion,” I said.
“Not exactly. They aren’t robots. They still can get angry or hurt, but it’s like they never got out of the stage of thinking the world revolves around them. They forget that the rest of us are people too.” Dad popped another handful into his mouth, crumbs and loose salt sprinkling down on his shirt. “It doesn’t mean they would kill someone, just that if they did, it wouldn’t bother them much.”
Brit.
As soon as I could I sprinted upstairs to my room and my laptop. A half hour later I had over ten pages of notes on sociopaths and a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. There was research showing that one out of twenty-five people met the definition of sociopath. That meant Britney likely wasn’t even the only one we had in our school.
Brit ticked off all the warning signs: lack of feelings of shame when they do something wrong, constant lying, charming, intelligent, manipulative, capable of violence, and huge ego. She was basically a poster child for the disorder. It wasn’t just a term, it was a real condition, and I was certain she had it.
I was no closer to proving Brit had murdered Beth, but I still felt like I’d taken a step closer. I knew my enemy better. I checked my email account again, but there was still no message from Nicole. I was still counting on the fact that she would have seen something when Brit lived with her. Nicole was apparently still wandering around Italy or something acting out her own vapid version of Eat, Pray, Love. I was going to have to do something else if I wanted to move this forward, and knowing this about Brit had given me an idea.
I sat across from Dr. Sherman. I tapped the side of my chair in beats of six to keep myself calm. I had to wait for just the right moment to put my plan into action. It had to seem natural.
“Have you ever heard the term ‘confirmation bias’ before?” Dr. Sherman asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
“A British psychologist, Wason, came up with the theory. It’s the idea that even though we tend to think of ourselves as open-minded, it’s human tendency to seek out evidence that supports what we already believe and either ignore or downplay information that disagrees with our belief structure.”
“You think that’s what I do?” I asked. “Why I don’t always see things clearly?”
“I think most people do it. This bias is especially strong when the topic is something that is highly emotional, things like politics, or abortion, or a memory of a traumatic event—”
“Like Beth dying,” I finished for her.
“Exactly. What I want you to understand is that this is science, not conjecture. We can see this bias show up on MRIs. We know that for some people, even if they are faced with proof that what they believe is wrong, it won’t change their opinion. I think it would be useful to look at how things went with Madison again to question if you always saw those interactions clearly, or through a filter.”
I shifted in my seat. I wish I could believe she was right, that I’d simply gotten a wrong idea in my head and was unable to let it go, and maybe even with Madison I had, but that wasn’t what was happening now.
Or was it? I bit down inside my lip. It wasn’t the first time that this had occurred to me. I’d always pushed away the thought.
But this time there were clear signs. If Brit hadn’t killed Beth, then why had she run? I knew Beth had been over at Brit’s the night she disappeared and Brit lied about it. I’d found Beth’s sweater there. Britney had stacks of lies. The skin on the back of my neck prickled.
I guess all of that could be explained away and I just couldn’t see it. Had my love for Beth, and my inability to let go of thinking about her, built up everything in my mind until it formed a huge blind spot? Did I have this bias that Dr. Sherman was talking about and not even know it?
“Kalah?”
I looked up. I’d lost track of what she was saying. “Sorry.” I could see she was waiting for me to say something. I had to act now. The only way I was going to find out the truth was if I found it for myself. I pretended to lean forward as if I were about to spill my guts and deliberately knocked over the coffee I’d asked for at the start of the session, watching the liquid splash onto her cream silk blouse. Dr. Sherman jolted back, pulling the fabric away from her skin.
“Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry.” I leapt to my feet and grabbed a wad of Kleenex, passing them to her.
“It’s okay, accidents happen,” Dr. Sherman said with a wince, blotting at her shirt.
“You should rinse it out so it doesn’t stain,” I said. I had to clench my fists so I wouldn’t start tapping. I could see her hesitate—I was entitled to my fifty-minute session—but the desire to save a designer blouse was strong.
“I’ll be just a minute.” Dr. Sherman headed to the waiting room and the washroom just beyond.
As soon as the door clicked I remembered something else. I wasn’t the only one who knew Brit was a liar. The reporter’s anonymous source had seen her in Ann Arbor. That had nothing to do with me and gave me the assurance I needed that I wasn’t crazy.
I bolted over Dr. Sherman’s desk and sat in her chair. I yanked open the file drawer in the credenza. My heart was beating so hard it felt as if it were able to rip free of the arteries that held it in place and fly out into the room like some kind of disgusting alien creature from a sci-fi movie.
My fingers flew over the file tabs, searching for Britney’s patient file. I had to see what Dr. Sherman had in there. There was a chance she had a diagnosis written down so I could confirm my suspicions. It was also possible that Brit had let something else slip, something that Dr. Sherman might not realize was important. I might resent Dr. Sherman at times, but she was good at wheedling things out of a person.
There was no file. But that wasn’t possible. There had to be a patient file. Brit told me herself that she had been coming here. My eyes shot around the room, looking for some other place Dr. Sherman might possibly keep it.
Why would Brit tell me that she was seeing Dr. Sherman if she wasn’t?
An ugly idea, like a malformed creature, began to dawn on me. I slammed the cabinet drawer closed and looked down at my own file, which was still on the desk. I swallowed hard and then made myself start flipping through the sheets.
Anxiety
Delusional pattern
Passivity
Destructive Tendencies
That’s when I saw that Brit’s file was tucked into the back of mine. I pulled it out, skimming the pages. There was a lot about posttraumatic reactions, but then my name on the page popped out at me.
Patient expresses concern regarding her relationship with Kalah. When pressed to describe the emotion, she states she is frightened and feels Kalah may be obsessed with her. Is Kalah repeating behaviors?
What had that bitch told Dr. Sherman about me?
“Kalah?”
I jumped. Dr. Sherman was standing in the door, her shirt wet, looking at me horrified. I looked down at the file as if I had no idea how it had gotten there. My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth. I slowly shut the file, tucking the pages inside. Busted.
When I walked into the house my mouth started watering at the smell. My mom had made her famous green curry. I thought all the acid in my stomach still rolling around from the conflict with Dr. Sherman would
ruin my appetite, but my body betrayed me. I followed my nose in the kitchen and lifted the pan lid to give the sauce a stir.
“I’ve got some oven-roasted veggies to mix in. Do you still hate eggplant?” Mom asked as she looked up from the book she was reading at the counter.
I nodded.
Mom shook her head. “You get that from your dad.”
“That’s my girl,” Dad said, looking up from where he was setting the big wooden table. “‘Never trust an eggplant lover’ is one of my mottos.”
Mom threw a towel at him and motioned for me to scoop up rice for our plates. I knew my parents were working up to something. They were both geniuses, but they would score a zero on hiding what they were thinking. All through dinner they kept shooting glances at each other and then filling any silence gap with a bursts of random small talk.
“How was school?” my mom asked.
I took another bite of the curry. “Okay. Busy.”
The two of them did another round of meaningful eye contact. “How was your appointment?” Dad asked.
Ah, now we were getting down to things. Dr. Sherman must have called them as soon as my appointment ended. She had been alarmed when she caught me—for obvious reasons—and I knew she would contact them. She couldn’t legally tell them what happened, but she could tell my parents she was worried about me. I knew she was going to, but I hadn’t expected her to do it so quickly. “Fine.” I rested my fork on the plate.
Dad took a deep breath. “I know we agreed that we would allow you to discuss anything with Dr. Sherman and that we wouldn’t pry,” Dad said.
