by Lily Sparks
“What else is new?” he says. “Kate asked me to track you down and make sure you hadn’t run into Dog Mask. How’s it going?”
“Well, hmm. I’ll probably just be another, like …” I squint at the hole speculatively, “Fourteen hours?”
He takes my shovel and indicates a pack of water bottles he’s dropped to the ground.
“Take a break, weakling.”
He gets no protest from me. I settle on a tree stump and empty two bottles, barely pausing for breath, as Erik sets the flashlight in the crook of a tree to illuminate the ground and begins digging. The flashlight’s beam cuts a stripe of color across his face: a flash of green eye, his flushed red cheek, the purple shadows cast by the constricted muscles of his clenched jaw.
“Everything okay?”
“What?” he starts, surprised, like someone pulled from a deep sleep. “Sorry if I’m not chatty, I just think I have a pretty good idea how to put Dave’s eye out without him figuring out I did it—“
“Don’t!” I laugh. “Dave is such a loser, he doesn’t deserve anything as cool as an eye patch.”
“It’s not a coincidence your mannequin turned up after your stand-off with Kate at Arts and Crafts. They had to make an example out of you.” Erik leans into shoveling. “But it’s my fault they got the opportunity. We should’ve buried it where they couldn’t find it and use it against you like that.”
“That’s not your fault. I’m just really bad at camp,” I sigh. “Anyway. Who won the screen time?”
“None of us. No dinner either. You really put Dave in a mood.”
“Wow … I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. If we’d done that Scavenger Hunt, camp would’ve been a dismal place to live. And we probably would’ve done it, if you hadn’t refused.” When I look up at this, Erik’s eyes flash away from me. “So. You remembered something?”
“Yes!” I cry, “Erik, I remembered inside the shed!”
* * *
The only light came from Rose’s phone; its dim blue glow slipped across a mattress on the floor as she crossed to the corner and kicked loose a floorboard: “He always keeps some potion in here,” she said, pulling out the Transformers thermos. She set her phone on a card table against the far wall, its surface mottled with candle wax, and I watched her silhouette pour something into the Thermos lid.
“You up for a little pre-party?” she said, holding it out to me.
I almost choked it all up, it was so bitter. She didn’t see—she was busy pulling things out of her backpack: the ends of two candles, two bowls, a hacksaw, and a package of Hostess cupcakes.
“Ugh. This is gross. How about we break into those Hostess cupcakes instead?”
“You can’t eat the cakes, but I might have a granola bar or something …” She fished around in her bag, pulling out a white plastic disposable camera left over from her parents’ long-ago wedding reception.
Two cupcakes. Two people. I could do the math.
“Does Mr. Moody know he’s meeting me tonight?”
“It’s a surprise. And it’ll be a good surprise if you’re fun, happy Signal instead of nervous, weirdo Signal! That’s what our little pre-party is for. Chug it, ho!”
I finished the cap, my mouth going weirdly numb. Rose put her phone in a bowl on the card table and pulled up a playlist, the music quickly filling the small shed. Then she stood two plastic figurines beside the bowl. They weren’t large, maybe the size of wedding cake toppers, yet the flickering candlelight sent their long shadows dancing around the room. One was a stiff plastic Elvis with a blank pink face, the other a plastic Marilyn Monroe, her feet splayed, her white skirt floating around her hips and her head thrown back. Her face wasn’t blank, but the paint was messed up; her red mouth was one scarlet blob that dripped down her throat.
I knew they were just junk souvenirs, but as I watched I realized they were pulling the light out of the candles, pulling the music from the phone. I tried to tell Rose, my words like cotton balls in my numb mouth, and she tilted her head back and laughed. And then all the light was coming from her. She was the light, and she was the music, and she wanted to dance.
* * *
“So, Mr. Moody didn’t drug you,” Erik says, leaning on his shovel and staring at me. “Rose did.”
“She didn’t know it was drugged.” I shake my head quickly. “We drank from the same thermos.”
“You’re sure she drank as much as you did?”
I picture Rose’s lips pulling away from the lid, their gloss undisturbed.
“Even if she wasn’t aware the thermos was drugged,” Erik goes on, “she was trying to get you drunk. Why? If she needed something from you, why not ask while you were sober? Especially considering you did everything she told you to—”
“That’s not true.”
“Yeah, it is.” Erik shovels faster, as though to burn away some building energy. “You’re bending over backwards every week so she can get high with a ghost. Why did you put up with all of it? Were you in love with her or something?”
“What?! No! Rose was like my sister. It was just …” I screw my eyes closed and say it. “Sometimes, in high school, a terrible friend is better than no friends, okay?” The sadness of the confession flattens me. “The article got that right at least. I was a loner. A sad virgin loner ‘seemingly obsessed with the macabre.’”
“Signal.” Erik frowns sternly. “Please stop hitting on me.”
And I laugh. In the dark, beside a mock grave, he makes me laugh.
“So the hacksaw Rose brought … Was that the same one that was used on her?”
I nod. “It was a really common type, brand new. The police thought it was shoplifted.”
“And it was under your hand when you woke up.”
“Where Mr. Moody planted it.”
He steps out of the beam cut by the flashlight, his face disappearing for a long moment.
“Have you been thinking about the newspaper stuff?” I ask.
“Yes. A lot,” Erik answers, sending another shovelful of earth into the grave, “Especially about the Windward trust. Rose was a Windward as in, like, Senator Windward?”
“Sort of. Rose’s mom was from a branch of that family. But when she got pregnant at sixteen they pretty much disowned her and cut her off. That’s how she and Rose ended up next door to us in the trailer park.”
“And her real dad?”
“He parted ways when Janeane found out she was pregnant. Rose always wanted to find him but …” All the things Rose will never do bump up at the back of my throat.
“So Janeane was cut off, but Rose had a trust, right? The newspaper said something about trustees and a scholarship.”
“Yes. The Windwards set up a trust for her, but she couldn’t touch it until she turned eighteen.”
“Interesting,” he says, then: “I wonder if it’s set up to exclude spouses …”
“What, like what if Rose secretly married Mr. Moody? I mean, it’d be very out of character. But it would explain the secrecy.”
“The secrecy was because Rose was banging Mr. Moody,” Erik says flatly. “Considering what you’ve remembered about the shed, let’s review her possible admirers: there’s her churchy boyfriend, his violent best friend, and the local drug dealer. You see any obvious overlap?”
There’s something about him putting it so cleanly that makes me see it in a flash. The tension. The love triangle.
“Vaughn,” I say breathlessly. “Vaughn was Mr. Moody!”
Erik walks toward me, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, and grabs a water bottle. “Nope. The guy most likely to stash an old thermos full of liquor in a shed is Jabberwocky Whatshisface. He’s our guy.”
“Jaw Itznicki?!” And then, feeling prim, “No way. He wasn’t Rose’s type.”
“Bad boys are every girl’s type.” Erik grins.
“Where do you get your girl information, a T-shirt from 2002?”
“Come on, Signal. How hot was Jaw?”
Erik’s grin gets wider. “Rate him on a scale of one to me.”
I roll my eyes, but guiltily remember seeing Jaw at work on Rose’s lawn, looking much the way Erik does now: shirt plastered to his chest, clipping hedges or taking smoke breaks by the planter. I once pointed out the bruises on his neck and Rose cackled: “Um, you mean hickies?”
“Look, I get that the shed is more of a match for Jaw,” I concede. “But what if Rose went to the shed to get drugs from Jaw’s stash … for her and Vaughn? Vaughn said he was getting high with Mike that night, right? I still can’t see Mike doing drugs, but Vaughn? Absolutely.”
I get up and start pacing.
“So what if, after I passed out, Rose went to meet Vaughn at the party, and when they’re high, Mike finds them. And it all comes out.”
“And Mike kills her?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. But I could see there being a fight. I could see Rose denying everything and Vaughn losing his temper. And lashing out.” My hands are shaking, my voice trembling as it all slides together. “Erik, that would explain Vaughn covering for Mike! Because Vaughn would need an alibi too. But Mike has a conscience. He couldn’t live the lie. He had to leave town …”
Erik watches me silently, leaning on his shovel.
“Don’t you see? One of them hurt her, and they both covered it up. Maybe initially Vaughn thought he could throw off police by leaving her in Jaw’s shed. Make it look like an overdose. But when he gets there … there I am!” It’s so obvious. How had I not seen it before? “The only person who knew about Mr. Moody!”
Erik tilts his head. “So why let you live?”
Cold shoots through me, though it doesn’t come from the air or ground.
“So he could frame me instead.” Obviously.
But Erik frowns. “Framing someone is hard, Signal. A spur-of-the-moment framing? Before I met you, I would’ve said impossible. Put yourself in the killer’s position: you’ve just killed Rose.”
My chest tightens.
“Your reflexes are on a hair trigger, the woods are full of your classmates, and then you stumble across the only person alive who can tie you to the victim.”
I hold very still.
“He’d kill you. I’m sorry, nothing personal.” Erik puts a hand on his chest in a gesture of feigned apology. “But you’d be gone. But you’re saying instead, Mr. Moody decides to use his precious getaway time … posing Rose in your lap? Planting false evidence? Who even does that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I snap. “A homicidal maniac, maybe?”
“A homicidal maniac might have the urge to frame you, but they couldn’t pull it off. Only a psychopathic mastermind would be capable of that. So if Mr. Moody framed you—”
“If?” My voice breaks. “What do you mean, ‘if’?! There’s no if. He either framed me, or I killed her.” And there they are, the words I never thought I could speak out loud. “I killed her and then blocked it out. Is that what you’re trying to say?”
Chapter Twelve
The Slumber Party
“That’s what the prosecution thought. And the jury too.” Erik takes the flashlight from the tree. And then the world disappears as he turns its beam directly on my face.
“No evidence anyone else had been in the shed. You were found soaked in her blood, the weapon in your hand.” Erik’s voice for once is painfully slow. “No thermos was found. No drugs in your bloodstream. The only evidence we have Mr. Moody even existed is that Rose told you he did. And she lied to everyone.”
The world is a haze of blinding white, my eyelashes refracting into dark rainbows at the edge of my vision as my eyes fight to close. But I stare at him through the light, hands balled into fists.
“But I don’t buy it,” he says, and the flashlight cuts away.
“Why not?” I ask the dark.
“Call it instinct,” Erik says. “I see the angel and I want to set her free.”
So he still doesn’t believe I did it. I could sob with relief. But why does it matter what Erik thinks? When did he get so much power over me? Erik’s pop idol dimples flash as he keeps talking, but I’m not listening anymore. I’m remembering one of the first things he said:
“You find a person’s weakness, right … Then you get friendly and slowly make them believe that weakness is gone. Once they believe that, boom. You break right through it, right into their heads.”
Erik said he wanted to talk over my case because he was bored. But maybe what he saw in me wasn’t a new puzzle, but a new victim. He never believed I was innocent. He thinks I killed Rose and she’s his way into my head. Why else would the deadliest guy in camp spend so much time with me?
“So, Watson, here’s the questions we need to ask to solve this crime,” Erik goes on. “Why did Rose keep Jaw such a huge secret? Why did she need to get you drunk? And who drugged the thermos?” He looks over his shoulder toward me. “Any thoughts?”
“No,” I say, gripping the other shovel. “Look, I can take it from here. You can go back to camp.”
“Uh, what?” He frowns. “Why?”
“Maybe because you just stuck a flashlight in my face and interrogated me?” I snap.
“Yeah? And? I wanted to see your face.” Now he’s acting baffled. “I told you. Everything comes through in your expressions.”
“How stupid do you think I am? This whole time you’ve just been trying to get in my head!”
Erik’s eyebrows shoot up. “Oh. Okay. I see.” He stabs his fingers into his chest in a flash of anger. “I’m out here burying your mannequin, trying to help with your wrongful conviction, and you still think I’m just some creeper out to get you, right?” He lets out a sharp, exasperated laugh. “I’m sorry, Signal, but if you’ll let me just make myself a little vulnerable here, you’re starting to hurt my feelings.”
“Come on, Erik.” I roll my eyes. “We both know you don’t have feelings.”
His mouth contracts and some unnameable expression flares up and is gone before I’m sure it’s there, the air going stiff as he turns away and tamps the earth down on the grave. He doesn’t say anything, won’t look at me as he finishes. Like he’s actually offended. Like he was really being sincere, as if he’s even capable of sincerity. Everything he does is a manipulation.
“You know those scars on Javier’s knuckles?” Erik says at last, kicking leaves across the packed-down dirt. “He tore them open on his victim’s skull. Javier banged his victim’s head on an asphalt drive so many times they had to identify the dude with dental records after they picked his teeth out of the pavement. You should ask him to tell you about it the next time you’re mooning over each other in a dandelion patch.” I open my mouth, then close it. He snatches the flashlight from the tree, catches up the two shovels, and starts sauntering back through the birch grove toward the woods. I fall in beside him, the silence between us extended and uncomfortable.
Then he starts in again once we’ve returned the shovels to the obstacle course shed, blurting: “Your silence speaks volumes, by the way.”
“There’s a reason I didn’t want to do the Scavenger Hunt today, Erik.” I stare icily straight ahead as we cross the obstacle course field. “I’m trying not to judge everyone by their past. Only by how they act here and now.”
“Except for me,” Erik says viciously. “Everyone gets a fresh start except mean old Erik.”
“You’ve been calling me a weakling and telling me I don’t belong since I got here!”
“Yeah, and I’m right!” he says with cold fury. “Maybe that’s what really bothers you about me. I don’t pretend either of us is something we’re not. I don’t ask you to make me daisy chains in a meadow or tell you you’re a flower. I’m just myself with you, terrifying though I may be, because I trust you can handle it. But you can’t. You’re determined to think the worst of me!”
“Erik, you killed ten people!”
“And you haven’t even asked my side of the story!”
“E
rik!!” I almost laugh at the audacity of the statement, yet his stung expression is completely serious.
“I asked you, at least,” he says, and now the cabin and Kate’s glowing cigarette are in sight, he strides head of me without a backward glance.
“You finish with the body?” Kate extends her arm, blocking me before I can follow him into the cabin.
“Of course.”
“Then get right in bed. No talking, straight to sleep.”
I guess she’s still mad about me ruining their stupid Scavenger Hunt. My head is buzzing with everything I still want to say, but Erik’s vanished up to his bunk, and I know everyone is lying there awake and starving and at least a little angry at me. So I shut up and go to bed.
* * *
Night bird sounds, the rustle of dry leaves overhead. I’m in the shed.
Dark lines of Rose’s hair trail over my knee in one slow, steady pull, tickling the back of my hand. Because Rose’s head is rising. It floats up from my lap and her body like a balloon. Her face is turned away, I stare at the bluish white of her scalp through her thick hair. And then once her head is level with mine it slowly, slowly starts to turn.
I can’t move.
For a moment Rose’s profile is cut out against the dark in perfect detail, and then those blank eyes lock with mine. Her lips part, her bloodstained teeth clatter, her thick tongue worms in the dryness of her mouth, but no voice comes out. She will never speak again.
In my lap, her body twitches. Her pale hands walk themselves like spiders up to her neck and clutch there, fingertips digging into the red meat. The body rolls into a kneel across from me.
I watch, paralyzed, as Rose’s hands rake the air, catch her head and awkwardly pull it onto her neck. Rose, back together, kneels across from me, a line of red across her throat.
There’s a figure behind her, and at the sight of it a burning scent fills the shed. The figure is too tall, too thin, saggy gray skin hanging from its bony frame. It doesn’t have a face, just a flat flap of pale skin. It ducks behind Rose and then starts crawling around the room, hands moving back and forth, the burning smell so harsh I squeeze my streaming eyes closed.
