Burden Falls

by Kat Ellis

  Like Mateo, maybe? Or Casper?

  But I don’t see Casper getting violent. From the way Dominic described Mateo’s aborted fight with Liam, I can’t picture him killing Freya and Ford either. It must take a special kind of sicko to mash a person’s eyes with an ice pick or whatever.

  Someone like my ancestors . . .

  Yeah. Not dwelling on that right now.

  I’m still churning this over in my mind as I leave the police station after handing in the phone. My pocket rings again just as I’m getting into my car. It’s Daphne.

  “Hey, Daph. What’s up?”

  “Oh, hey. I was worried when you didn’t pick up earlier. Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah . . . I mean, everything’s shitty, but I’m okay. Why?”

  She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Oh, you know. Just that kids keep dying.”

  Oh. Daphne was worried worried. “Sorry, I should’ve called you back. I was just in the middle of this whole thing with Dominic at the manor . . .” I explain what happened, and Daphne listens quietly while I lay it all out—up to the point where I found Freya’s phone in my damn pocket. I think I’ll wait to tell her about the whole kissing Dominic Miller thing until I’ve processed what the hell I want to do about it.

  “But that’s good, though, right?” Daphne says. “They’ll figure out who Freya was seeing, and that’s got to be who killed her. Except . . .”

  “Except what?”

  “Well, why would Freya’s secret boyfriend want to kill Ford? Unless . . . maybe Ford and Freya had a side thing going on?” she suggests.

  I frown. “I guess it’s possible.” But somehow, even though I considered this possibility myself, I just don’t think that’s it. “Can you really see Ford being okay with being a side thing, though?”

  “Yeah, maybe not,” Daphne says, and the silence stretches. “Sorry, I know now’s not the time to talk about all this. Do you feel like coming over tonight to watch a movie or something? We can make it like a pre-birthday celebration.”

  “Birthday?”

  Daphne laughs. “You know . . . your eighteenth? This Monday?”

  Two days from now. Jesus, with everything that’s going on, I forgot my own damn birthday. Who does that?

  Someone whose best friend just died.

  Or, like last year, someone whose parents just died.

  “I don’t really feel like celebrating,” I say honestly.

  “That’s cool. Come over anyway—we can just hang.”

  I think about it, but the prospect of making polite small talk with Officer Chavez while we both pretend he isn’t watching me like a hawk isn’t exactly enticing.

  “I’ll take a rain check.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Having to go to school on my eighteenth birthday is the worst, but even more so when I’m running late. I spent half the night having screwed-up dreams again. Sadie watching me and my parents in the car wreck. Sadie standing next to me in the pavilion as I stumble on Freya’s body. Sadie with her dead eyes fixed on the river as Ford’s corpse is pulled through the ice.

  Uncle Ty and Carolyn try to make a fuss with chocolate-chip pancakes and balloons all set up on the kitchen table, but I’m late, and it’s so weird to even think about celebrating. I barely eat a mouthful on my way out, almost barreling right into some old guy in a suit at the front door.

  “Miss Avalon Pomona Thorn?” he says stiffly, instantly putting me on guard.

  “Are you a cop?” I ask dubiously.

  “Lawyer, actually. Steele, Boothroyd, and Finch. I’m Mr. Steele.” I thought Dominic gave good glower, but he could learn a thing or two from this guy. He shoves a letter at me.

  “Am I being sued?”

  “No,” he sighs. I take the envelope from him, forefinger and thumb. “Good day.”

  The guy turns on his heel, heading back to his sleek gray car.

  “Hey! What is this?”

  The man pauses halfway into the driver’s seat. “A happy birthday, I should say.”

  Then he drives away without saying anything else. I get in my car and am about to tear open the envelope when I see the time on my dashboard clock.

  “Damn it!”

  I shove the letter in my bag to read once I’m not up against the tardy bell.

  When I get to school, I immediately hear everyone whispering. It has that same dark tang as when Freya was murdered, only now I see some kids are starting to look scared.

  I edge nearer to the main huddle of people, trying to listen in. I’m right next to the Freya shrine—only it’s now a Freya & Ford shrine, with photographs and mementos of Ford hastily thrown in around the edges. Then my eyes fall on the item that’s got everyone whispering.

  It’s the doodle I drew in the assembly when the principal announced Freya had died. The one of Freya with no eyes. As if that didn’t look bad enough, someone’s added to it. Written above the sketch now are five words in block caps:

  SADIE MADE ME DO IT

  Someone nudges me, and I look up to find Yara giving me an odd look. She points at the drawing tacked onto Freya’s locker.

  “Did you actually draw that?” Yara gapes at me. “That’s so gross.”

  “I drew it,” I snap, “but someone else fucked with it. I didn’t write that, and I certainly didn’t stick it on her locker.”

  I don’t wait for Yara’s response. Instead, I push my way through to Freya’s locker and tear down the sketch. Mutters start up right away: “It was hers! Do you think she did it? Must be some kinda psycho . . .”

  Screwing the damn picture into a tiny ball, I turn and head to homeroom, face blazing.

  * * *

  * * *

  Daphne and Carla are lying in wait for me there. Daphne starts singing “Happy Birthday”—the superior Stevie Wonder version—while Carla pulls a party streamer right above my head. I force a smile for their benefit, hoping like hell none of the shrine-gawkers have followed me, but definitely not about to turn around and look.

  “Thanks. It’s gonna take ages to get all these little paper ribbons out of my hair.”

  “Look at that smile!” Daphne teases. “That joyful glow!”

  “Welcome to adulthood, Thorn,” Carla says, chucking me under the chin.

  “You’ll never guess what some asshole did just now,” I say, about to pull the screwed-up sketch from my bag. But I stop when Mr. Hamish appears next to us.

  “Ava, can I have a word?”

  “Uh, sure.”

  Shit. Has someone gone to the guidance counselor about the sketch? Definitely not this fast. I wonder how the hell someone had even gotten a hold of it . . . although I guess I take my sketchpad out of my bag and my locker a hundred times a day, so maybe it fell out then. Some sicko probably just picked it up and thought it’d be funny to stick it on Freya’s locker.

  I mean, that’s preferable to the alternative: that someone deliberately stole my sketch and put it there, knowing it’d make me look like a killer.

  Daphne, Carla, and I exchange see you later raised eyebrows, and I follow Hamish to his office.

  There’s a stack of papers littering his desk, and my eye is drawn to a handwritten sheet on top with lots of words scribbled out and notes added in the margins. The name Freya is on it a bunch of times. And I notice there’s a photograph on his desk that I’m sure wasn’t there last time I was in here. It’s of Hamish and the woman I guess is his girlfriend, set so it faces out into the room. He has an arm around her, and her small hand is placed on his chest to show off the engagement ring on her finger. Fiancée then, not girlfriend. I wonder if that’s a recent thing.

  The woman’s hair is more auburn than Freya’s vivid red, and her eyes are brown. But the overall shape of her features, her bone structure, is very similar. It’s creepy.

  “So here’
s the thing.”

  I look up from studying the photograph and find Hamish touching that weird parting in his mustache. It’s exactly as wide as the space between his eyebrows.

  “The deadline for nominating a student for the summer art program scholarship placement is this week.”

  I am instantly at attention. With everything that’s happened, I haven’t even thought about it in days.

  “After we learned about the over-eighteen rule, which automatically disqualified Freya, you were obviously in a strong position.”

  I blanch at how matter-of-factly he can talk about Freya being disqualified. A few weeks ago, I would’ve been doing a victory dance at this news, but now it feels sour and hollow. This wasn’t how I wanted to get my spot in the program. Not that I’m going to turn it down, of course. I’m not a martyr.

  “Thank you, Mr. Hamish. I—”

  “But I’m afraid, what with the police investigation, and their continued interest in you, we’ve decided to nominate another student this year. I’m sure you’ll be happy for Yara.”

  “WHAT?” I think we’re both startled by the volume of my voice, but seriously—WHAT? “That’s not fair! Yara isn’t even interested in the summer art program.” I don’t know that for a fact, but it could be true. “And the cops are investigating everyone, not just me. I’m not an actual suspect.”

  “It’s not just about that, Ava,” Hamish says. I guess he’s aiming for a soothing tone, but it’s making me want to throat-punch him.

  I’ll go talk to Miss Shannon. She’s head of the art department—if I can convince her to change her mind, I can’t see Hamish being able to overrule her decision. Maybe I can even talk Uncle Ty into having a quiet word with her for me.

  I’m not losing my place in the art program because of this mustache-toucher. I’m not.

  “I was honestly a little concerned about how competitive you seemed to feel toward Freya,” Hamish waffles on. “She was such a lovely girl . . . you’re both so talented. Were. Are . . .”

  “Lovely?” I repeat.

  I bet I know some other parts of me you’ll think are pretty lovely too . . . Wasn’t that what Freya said that night on the phone?

  Mr. Hamish is still talking across his desk at me, but I’m barely listening. Instead, I’m thinking about what Carla told me over lunch last week—that she saw Freya coming out of Hamish’s office, looking upset. Was that when Hamish told Freya she was too young to be eligible for the summer art program? Or could that have been a lovers’ spat? Some kind of botched hookup, maybe?

  My eyes zero in on the woman in the photograph. She really does look the double of Freya. What does that mean? Does he have some kind of weird fetish for redheads?

  Was it you?

  I flinch when Hamish spreads his hands, but he’s just making a helpless gesture.

  “I’m afraid the decision has already been made. On a more positive note, I’m thrilled to see how your grades have been picking up . . .”

  If he was having an affair with Freya, and it somehow turned sour, maybe he was worried it’d go public. With her being so young, and a student under his care, that’d be jail time for sure, right?

  Bile burns the back of my throat.

  I study his hands, still spread on the desk. Did he wrap them around her throat and squeeze until the life went out of her? Grab an ice pick and smash in her eyes?

  What kind of sicko could do something like that?

  Fuck. It could actually be him.

  My pulse pounds, underscoring this new creeping sense of certainty.

  But what about Ford? Why kill him?

  Maybe Ford found out. He figured out the thing with the phones in the video—maybe he saw something else we all missed.

  Ford was acting pretty paranoid before he died, and he said someone was watching him . . . What if Hamish was watching him? I put it down to Ford being high, but maybe I was wrong?

  I stare at Hamish’s smug head bobbing from side to side as he talks. I can’t even remember what the conversation is about. Hamish’s rambling is lost beneath the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh behind my ears.

  I look down at my hands and try to focus on breathing. But the pink lines on my palms start to writhe in that same whooshing rhythm. Squirming, like there’s something under my skin.

  I think I’m going to throw up. But I can’t tear my eyes from the scars. One of them looks like it’s about to burst—

  And then it does. The scar opens, edges parting to reveal a pocket in the flesh. Then another scar opens, and another. Until they’ve all unpeeled themselves, these holes in my hands. They almost look like . . .

  Eye sockets.

  The moment that thought occurs to me, they blink. I scream, hands held out in front of me as if I can somehow escape them.

  “Ava? Ava! What’s the matter?”

  Hamish comes toward me. As he moves past the office window, his reflection changes into a dark-haired girl, her empty eye sockets fixed on me. I scramble backward, my chair falling over with a clatter.

  “My hands,” I gasp, holding them up, either to show him or to get him to back the fuck up, I’m not sure. But, when I catch sight of my left palm, the holes are gone. The lines aren’t moving. They’re just scars—thin pink lines that my doctors have told me will hardly be visible at all in a few years.

  And there’s no ghostly reflection peering at me from the window.

  I stumble over to his office door and bolt.

  THIRTY-TWO

  I’ve been sitting in my car for around ten minutes, and I’m already starting to shake with cold. That or shock, I guess. I could turn on the engine for warmth, but Bessie takes ages to heat up. I should probably go back inside anyway. My initial plan—to flee school and possibly cut off my own evil hands—struck me as being slightly impractical once the cold air hit me. I mean, aside from the obvious downside to removing my own hands, I’m not sure someone who’s clearly not seeing things as they really are should be driving.

  All of which is to say I’m freaking out. First of all, about those holes in my hands. Some rational, Carla-esque voice in my brain reminds me that I’m under a lot of stress right now. Coupled with my high caffeine levels and lack of sleep, that might be making things a little . . . fuzzy. But I should really go see a doctor. If I’m losing it, I need help. Therapy. Meds. Whatever they can give me to stop freaky shit like what I just saw in Hamish’s office.

  I turn my palms over slowly, half expecting to see them blinking at me again. But everything is as it should be. Scarred but normal. When I check my rearview mirror, there’s no sign of Sadie.

  There’s also a louder voice that says, If the cops find out you’re seeing things that aren’t there, that’s only going to make them think you’re an even better prime suspect.

  I’ve tried ignoring that voice all my life. Never worked.

  So, maybe I should just wait until the cops catch the killer, then go give Dr. Ehrenfeld a call?

  Which leads to the other giant elephant I’m freaking out about: Hamish.

  Hearing that one word—lovely—isn’t a lot to go on, but the more I consider him as a possibility, the more things seem to fit. The fact that he’s older and works in our high school would be a hell of a reason to keep a relationship secret. He’s always fawned over Freya, so keen to put her forward for the summer art program. And there was that day when Carla saw Freya coming out of Hamish’s office, looking upset. And something about that photograph appearing on his desk . . . like he has something to prove. Look at me! I have a fiancée! I can’t possibly be a creep who’s murdered two teenagers!

  I reach down for my bag and fumble around for my water bottle, noticing as I do that the screwed-up drawing from Freya’s locker is no longer there. I check my pockets, but no dice.

  Shit. Did it fall out in Hamish’s office? In the hallway?

 
My search becomes more frantic as I haul out the contents of my bag. Then my hand lands on the letter that weird lawyer guy gave me this morning.

  I stop throwing my crap around and stare at it. Then I tear it open.

  Dear Miss Thorn,

  Pursuant to the recent sale . . .

  on behalf of Mr. Madoc Miller . . .

  share of proceeds . . .

  advent of your eighteenth birthday . . .

  the sum of $250,000 . . .

  What.

  WHAT?

  I must be seeing things again. Because there’s no way this letter says what I think it says. I look in the envelope and, sure as hell, there’s a check in there. An enormous check—with my name on it.

  Signed by Madoc Miller.

  There’s a knock at my window. I jump so violently, I almost tear the check in half. The glass is fogged when I look up, and my heart pounds at the sight of a blurred figure outside. I don’t move.

  “Leave me alone!”

  “Ava? Open the window.”

  I heave out a breath at the sound of Dominic’s voice. The window button doesn’t work, so I just open the door.

  “Happy birthday,” he says with a grin, holding out one of my favorite coffees.

  “What the hell is this?” I say, waving the check at him. Dominic glances at it, gives the briefest raise of his eyebrows, then takes my free hand and pulls me out of the car. “Hey!”

  “You’re freezing,” he says, tugging me along toward his Porsche, which I now see is parked just a couple spots down. “And my car is not an icebox on wheels. If we’re going to fight, I’d rather do it where it’s warm.”

  He opens the passenger-side door for me. I glare at him for a long moment, then get in. There’s a paper bag with a prescription label on it sitting in the footwell. Maybe that’s why he’s late getting to school.

  Dominic climbs in the driver’s seat and turns on the heaters. Immediately, a wave of warm air floods the car, and I notice my butt’s getting warmer too.