Mom loved giving support. I think it was a major reason why she took over my father’s business after he died—so she had permission to hold hands and coo, “There, there.”
“All right,” she conceded reluctantly. “Go get dressed. Sara will be here any minute.”
A half hour later, I reappeared in my favorite body-hugging black dress with bell sleeves. My shoulder-length hair, the shade and silkiness of ravens’ feathers, hung steel straight, with a strip of blue for pizazz. A pair of Doc Martens added the necessary heft.
The only thing missing was the Persephone cameo, my absolute favorite accessory that I had somehow lost swimming last summer. Matt may have poked fun at it, but I loved the Persephone myth—how she came to rule the Underworld yet also remain a loyal daughter. As stupid as it might seem, I felt stronger with Persephone around my neck, and I suspected that this was going to be one of those days when I would need all the strength I could muster.
Mom lifted her gaze from the iPad and emitted a sigh of maternal suffering. “Really, Lily? Today when you’re going to police headquarters you can’t compromise on—”
“Mom?” I warned.
She went back to reading. “I’m just saying.”
A crunch of gravel followed by a quick beep in the driveway announced Sara’s arrival.
“Got to go!” With a kiss on her forehead, I sailed out the door and into the refuge of the McMartins’ blue Mercedes.
Sara greeted me with an approving assessment. “Good. That sends the right message.” She waved to the chrome coffee mug in the cup holder, the one we called the Cup o’ Bling because it was covered in plastic diamonds. “I made you a cappuccino before I left. Three shots of espresso.”
“Thanks,” I whispered, taking a deep sip.
Sara brewed the absolute best cup of coffee. She started learning the tricks of the barista trade when she was young, around eleven, after her mother stopped getting out of bed to make breakfast in the mornings. Dr. Ken was always at the hospital by five for rounds, so it was up to Sara to rouse her brother, Brandon, and make sure he washed his face, brushed his teeth, and didn’t leave for school in his Pokémon pj’s.
Sara cut her teeth on instant, moved to drip, and eventually mastered the frothy cappuccino, complete with swirls of steamed milk in the shape of a heart, like they do down at the café.
“Okay,” I said, curling my fingers around the warm cup. “Brief me, counselor.”
Her gaze flitted to the rearview. “I first heard the rumors yesterday when Dad and I brought a casserole over to the Donohues. They only had, like, twenty there on the counter already.”
I could have told her that. Soup-based casseroles were so synonymous with death. Campbell’s should consider placing a picture of the Grim Reaper on its cream of mushroom.
“Anyway, Kate Kline was there with her family too.” Sara stopped at a crosswalk to let a group of little kids pass, their backpacks bouncing as they marched to school with amusing seriousness. I had a sudden image of Kate and Erin at that age, prancing into second grade with their own matching pink Britney Spears backpacks, queens of the class even then.
The crossing guard waved us onward and Sara continued. “As soon as we were alone, she grabbed me by the arm and started grilling me about you and Matt.”
“Me and Matt? What’s there to know? For the thousandth time, we’re friends. Nothing more.”
“Not to the TNs. They’re convinced you two were cheating behind Erin’s back.”
My jaw dropped. Matt and I hadn’t much as held hands or kissed or . . . anything.
Well, that wasn’t exactly technically true, I thought guiltily, thinking back to a couple of times when we nearly crossed the line.
“Here’s what else,” Sara said, flicking another glance at the rearview. “Kate got that stuff about you and Matt from Erin on Saturday, the day she died. That’s why everyone’s putting the blame on you, Lil. Don’t get me wrong. It’s totally unfair. But that’s the deal.”
Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. It was as if someone had physically socked me in the solar plexus. Cramps radiated through my middle, and I had to lean over to stop them. I wanted to stay that way forever, invisible and hidden, until my existence was forgotten.
“You okay?” Sara asked.
I gripped my waist and tried sitting up. “Yeah. I don’t know what’s wrong. Nerves.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you. I knew you’d get upset, especially since—”
“Erin didn’t kill herself.”
Sara’s eyes went wide. “Excuse me?”
My mother would have had a fit if she’d found out I was violating her specific order not to tell Sara, but I was sick of lying to my best friend. Besides, this suicide business had gone on long enough. “She was murdered.”
Sara slammed on the brakes just as the light turned red. “Where’d you get that?”
“I saw an internal memo Perfect Bob faxed to Mom. Then Mom confirmed yesterday when she told me I had to go to headquarters today to get my cheeks swabbed so they could separate out my DNA from whoever else’s is under Erin’s fingernails.”
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Sara gripped her right temple. “Information overload. Back up and tell me everything from the beginning.”
So I told her about snooping in Mom’s office and seeing the fax—conveniently omitting the part about Bob’s instructions to keep me away from Matt. Then I explained about the buccal smear and how Bob had convinced Mom that the test didn’t mean I was a suspect, though I couldn’t help feeling like one.
Sara was so stunned she didn’t even notice the light had turned green until a car behind us leaned on the horn, whereupon she flipped him the bird and floored it. We sped along silently for a bit. I lowered the window for some fresh air, and then she said in a dull monotone, “Why would anyone have murdered Erin?”
“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?”
Chilled, I raised the window and turned my attention to Sara. All color had drained from her already alabaster complexion and her lips were a pale blue. For a crime junkie who spent her free hours glued to Investigation Discovery, her worst nightmare had just come true: a girl her age in her neighborhood had been murdered in her own upstairs bathroom while her parents had been out of town.
Creepy things like this weren’t supposed to happen in Potsdam, especially not in the supposedly safe and suburban Pinewoods development where Sara’s and Erin’s parents ponied up for monthly security on the naïve assumption that something as flimsy as an electronic gate could protect their kids from evil.
“Three streets away, Lil,” she said, her voice hoarse. “The same railroad track runs through our backyards. The killer could have been freight-hopping. Or maybe he’d been stalking her from the woods and just waiting for the moment when her parents were out of town to get her unaware.”
“I know. I know. It’s freaky.”
The knuckles of Sara’s right hand were white against the black steering wheel. “Do they have any idea who it might have been?”
“I don’t think so.” In an attempt to calm her, I added softly, “According to the fax, there was no sign of forced entry, which means most likely it wasn’t a freight-hopper or some stalker, but that Erin probably knew her killer.”
Matt. I immediately shook this thought out of my head.
“Or,” Sara added, “he’s a supersmart psychopathic serial killer like Israel Keyes, who lived in Alaska and traveled to the lower forty-eight states and rented cars under an assumed name so there’d be no connections to the victims he picked at random. God knows how many people he killed before he did himself in.”
I had to resist the temptation to roll my eyes. Sara needed to curb her TV habits or it was going to warp her mind, if it hadn’t already.
Sara hooked an abrupt right into someone’s driveway and scrutinized her driver’s side mirror.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, thinking maybe she needed a chance to pull it together.
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“I want this jerk behind me to pass. He’s been on my tail since Evergreen.”
We both turned around to see a nondescript gray Ford sedan. It stopped, waited, and then pulled a U-ey, speeding off in the opposite direction with a screech of its tires, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Sara and I exchanged glances. “You don’t think . . . ,” she said.
“That he was following you? Nah.”
“Then why did he . . . ?”
“Maybe he was lost. You’re just being paranoid.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Sara flicked on her turn signal and headed out to the road.
We didn’t say another word until we got to school.
Potsdam Regional High was built in the 1970s when three towns merged into one school district and bought up a bunch of farmland for a new, modern facility. The building itself was an eyesore, the brainchild of the open-concept system, when it was fashionable to teach in classrooms without walls. That lasted for all of five minutes before they rolled in paper-thin temporary partitions that were never replaced, so what was being taught one room over was crystal clear.
My main gripe, however, was the lack of windows. The same professionals who decided it was a good idea to remove walls also thought the same applied to glass. Supposedly this was to keep students from being distracted. The result was that, unless you were in the cafeteria (windows galore) or in the atrium (skylights above), Potsdam High seemed an awful lot like a high-security correctional facility.
But that day there were other reasons to call it a prison.
“Are they serious?” Sara asked as we approached the front entrance, where not one but four Potsdam police officers waited to greet us with wands and metal detectors.
Annoyed students rummaged through their backpacks to remove laptops, iPads, phones, and anything else that might set off alarms.
“Was there a bomb threat?” I asked a chinless patrolman, who scrutinized my outfit with a disapproving scowl.
“Do you have any knives, guns, weapons of any sort?” he responded, ignoring my question as he pawed through my bag.
“Not unless you count the pins in the voodoo doll.”
He didn’t even crack a smile. “Step forward, please, and hold out your arms.”
It was humiliating, being scanned in public. I don’t know why I considered it such an invasion of privacy, but I did, especially when he ran the wand up and down my legs and across my crotch.
Cleared for education, Sara and I slipped on our shoes and gathered our stuff. The whole experience was decidedly Orwellian.
“This is because of Erin, you know,” I said as we crossed the atrium.
“Kind of gives credence to your theory that she was murdered.”
“You had doubts?”
Sara stopped. “Lil. This is the Potsdam PD we’re dealing with here. Did you take a good look at those dudes? The crossing guards we just passed are more qualified.”
Over her shoulder, I spied a sheet of pink poster paper that had been tacked up outside of Guidance on Monday so people could write their condolences to Erin. Every inch was covered in ink.
MISS YOU!
LOVE YOU!
I KEEP LOOKING FOR YOUR SMILE AT PRACTICE.
(DON’T FORGET SKITTLE BUMPS!)
MY HEART IS DARK KNOWING YOU HAVE GONE.
I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S TRUE.
I CAN’T STOP CRYING.
PLEASE, NO. NO. NO. NO.
There were many random lyrics from various songs, too many of which quoted “The Wind Beneath My Wings.” But it was the dedication at the bottom that stopped me short.
I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU, E. PEACE.
It was signed simply M, which I knew had to be Matt.
He was back.
Picking up a Sharpie, I hastily scribbled Rest in peace, Erin. I’ll find him, and signed it Lily G.
Sara stooped to read it. “You meant you’re going to find the killer, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Because people might take that the wrong way.”
“Good.”
They were waiting for me upstairs. Blond and petite Cheyenne Day, dark-haired and almond-eyed Allie Woo, and their new queen, Kate Kline, Erin’s presumed successor.
An ambush.
“There she is,” Kate announced as Allie and Cheyenne whipped out their cells to document in texts and photos whatever was about to go down.
Kate was shorter than I was by a good five inches. But what she lacked in height, she more than made up for in self-righteous indignation. Below the adorable widow’s peak that defined the part of her straight brown hair were equally pointy eyebrows that highlighted her mesmerizing blue eyes. Guys in school were secretly intrigued by Kate but few asked her out because they felt intimidated. I never understood that—before.
“Excuse me,” I said, gesturing to my locker, which she was blocking.
Kate didn’t move. “I bet you’re glad Erin’s dead.”
“Don’t be stupid, Kate.”
“Don’t be lying, Lily. You’ve been jealous of her since elementary school.”
Not jealous. More like resentful for the way she made fun of Sara’s disability and my family’s profession, as if we were subhuman for not being symmetrical specimens whose parents worked in the brewery’s headquarters.
A teacher passed by and wished us a good morning. I used the reprieve to spin my combination—25, 9, 33—while Sara positioned herself on my other side, just in case things got out of hand.
The teacher disappeared. The locker popped open. Kate slammed it shut. “I hope you’re satisfied.”
“With what?” I stuck my finger in the handle and opened it again. Sara leaned against the door so Kate couldn’t close it.
“With what?” Kate shook her head so her hair rippled like a Pantene commercial. “With pushing Erin to the edge, that’s with what. She’d be alive today if it weren’t for you.”
Sara rolled her eyes. “Oh, please.”
After depositing my heavy calculus book on the top shelf, I closed the locker and gave the combination lock a quick flick. “I didn’t do anything to Erin. With all due respect to the dead, whatever she told you about Matt and me is wrong.”
“It’s not what she said, it’s what I saw,” Kate spat back. “Those scratches you gave her? You are one sick puppy to do that to her.”
Sara dropped her jaw. “Lil, you can’t let her get away with that.”
No kidding. “Um, for the record,” I said, “Erin attacked me.”
“Another lie!” Kate smiled triumphantly at Cheyenne and Allie. “For the record, Lily, I went to Erin’s house, since she didn’t meet me at the game like she was supposed to and she wasn’t answering her phone. Matt had just broken up with her—”
“Because of you,” Allie chimed in—a mistake, because this was Kate’s show. Kate glared at her reprovingly. Allie retreated.
“Anyway, when I got there,” Kate continued, “I found Erin on the couch, a total mess. I asked what happened and she told me that you’d finally managed to turn Matt against her just so you could get him for yourself. You broke her heart, Lily. She killed herself because of you.”
Sara said, “You don’t know anything.”
I sucked in a breath because, although I appreciated Sara’s defense, I didn’t want her to blow it so soon. The murder theory was still supposed to be a secret. If it got out via us instead of the cops, Mom would kill me.
“Sara . . . ,” I said, smiling. “Remember?”
“Screw it, Lil. Kate’s talking out of her ass.
Kate sneered. “Shut up, Shrinky Dink.”
Instinctively, I lifted my hand, this close to slapping her hard enough to send that stupid adorable widow’s peak of hers to the back of her head. She hadn’t dared call Sara “Shrinky Dink” since I overheard her whisper it to Erin when Sara missed an assist in volleyball back in middle school gym class. It had been worth detention just to see the fear in Kate’s eyes as I pushed her against t
he gym wall and threatened to mess up her widow’s peak forever if she ever mocked my best friend again. Ms. Seidel had to forcibly drag me away, I was so enraged.
“Yeah, go ahead and hurt me,” Kate said defiantly. “Just like you hurt Erin.”
Sara lowered her eyes, a signal that I should lower my hand. Reluctantly, I did.
“You’re an awful person, Kate,” I said. “Selfish, vain, and cruel.”
“Like I care,” Kate replied with a defiant lift of her chin. “Insulting your friend hardly compares to what you did to my friend, Lily.” Kate lightly raked her own cheeks. “I saw the blood.”
Bull. I hadn’t even broken skin. Rolling up my own sleeves, I thrust out my arm to reveal the scabbed streaks. “This is what Erin did to me Saturday afternoon. Look.”
All four girls plus Sara leaned in for closer inspection. Then Kate turned to Allie and Cheyenne. “Didn’t I tell you guys Erin tried to defend herself?”
“Unreal,” Sara said.
Cheyenne snapped a few shots of my arm. In a matter of seconds, the pictures were circulated throughout the school as proof of my complicity in Erin’s supposed suicide.
“It’s so like you to trash Erin after she’s dead,” Kate sing-songed as the second bell rang. “By the way, in case you were wondering, you’re on Matt’s shit list too.”
I swallowed and hugged my books tighter.
“You know what he calls you, Lily?”
Sara gripped my elbow, while I tried desperately to keep my face impassive.
“Pathetic.”
I walked off before my tears gave me away.
My class lineup that day was calculus, English lit, physics (in which we had a pop quiz), and World Cultures. So I decided to exercise my prerogative and skip the afternoon to hang out in the school library reading up on handy uses for chicken blood in Haitian death rituals. Besides, the last thing my psyche needed was to be surrounded by my haters. Also, let’s be honest—what was the point of sitting through a droning lecture about the European Union when my future was already set in stone? Literally.
After high school, I would major in mortuary science at Center Valley Community College, where Mom got her degree and which conveniently required no more than a 2.5 for admission. There, I’d study anatomy and physiology, embalming theory, mortuary law, and chemistry, as well as the more lucrative “Mortuary Marketing” and the squishier “Understanding the Grieving Process.”
The Secrets of Lily Graves Page 6
