by A. M. Taylor
People I barely know have gathered here, have been gathering here for days, and even though I hate spectacle in general, and the spectacle of grief even more, I have to admit, there’s something pretty about it. Tealights guttering in the cold air, protected from the wind in used jelly or mason jars, making the snow glow in an eerie fairytale-like way. Real fairytales always have tragic endings, of course, is what I’m thinking. It’s not all glass slippers, true love’s kiss, or marrying a handsome prince. It’s getting lost in the woods only to realize you’re not lost, just trapped.
I hear footsteps crunch behind me, and I’m surprised when they stop just to my left. Everyone else has been walking past me, standing on the edge of the gathering, heads down, a tight grim smile or terse nod of the head sent my way as they continue towards the gathered crowd. I turn my head and see Hale’s gold-amber eyes glowing out at me from beneath a fake fur-trimmed hood. She doesn’t smile, just reaches out to grab my hand, refusing to let go.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
Her eyebrows pull together. “Same thing as you, Mads. Paying my respects.”
“To who? The manufacturers of Yankee Candle?”
Her look reminds me so much of Nora I have to look away.
“You’re not the only one who’s scared, Mads. You’re not the only one who’s sad.”
“But your brother …” I can’t finish the sentence but, luckily, I don’t have to. She knows what I’m trying to say.
“Don’t you dare,” she hisses, and her hand holds on even tighter to mine, so much so that it hurts when I pull it free. “You know he didn’t do this. He has an alibi.”
“I don’t know anything, Hale. Not anymore.”
Just then, through the shadowy silhouette of people I barely recognize, I spot one I’d know anywhere. Elle. She’s looking around her with an unreadable expression on her face, her hood pulled forward, gloved hands holding a jar with a flickering candle inside it. The girl standing next to her leans forward to say something, and Elle just grimly nods in response, her baby face made suddenly old, mature.
I make my way towards them, knowing they aren’t meant to be there.
“Elle,” I say quietly, only just managing to keep the quiver of fear and anger that stabbed through me when I first saw her out of my voice, “what are you doing here?”
She shares a look with her friend, shifting her weight from foot to foot, not meeting my eye until I grab her shoulder, turning her to face me.
“Leia’s sister brought us here,” she whines. “It’s fine, Maddie, I promise.”
“And do your parents know you’re here?” I ask, already knowing the answer. There’s no way in hell the Altmans have let their youngest daughter come here unattended. I look to Leia, recognizing her from innumerable visits to the Altmans’.
“Where’s your sister? Point her out to me,” I demand.
Leia looks shifty, her eyes anywhere but on me, and points towards a group of girls who have gathered together to gossip in hushed tones, their eyes wide in fear and delight at the ready-made drama they’ve managed to find themselves living through.
I recognize them in a vague way, figuring them to be freshmen. I shake my head, but mostly to myself, and say to Elle: “Come on, I’m taking you home. You shouldn’t be here.”
“This isn’t fair, Maddie,” Elle protests, “she was my sister.” She looks around at the crowd, eyes welling with tears, her mouth a twist of scorn. “If anyone should be here, it’s me,” she says obstinately, finally sounding her age again.
“I know, but you’re way too young to be here without your parents, Elle. You both are.”
Elle closes her eyes against the tears that are now falling silently down her pale cheeks, and I meet Leia’s gaze in the flickering dark. She looks terrified, but I don’t know if it’s of being out here, where Nora went missing just days before, or of this new, scared, grieving Noelle. Gently I take Elle’s hand and she allows herself to be led away, towards my father’s car, Leia following on behind us. Hale watches as we all clamber into the Explorer, and it’s only when my headlights scrape over her as I turn the car around that I realize she’s crying too.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Something drew my attention to the main doors as a small group of guys walked in. One of them I quickly recognized although it took me a couple of seconds to realize why. I’d been staring at his photos and his Facebook posts all day. “Hey,” I said into Ange’s ear, “try and keep an eye on that guy.”
“Why?”
“I think he’s Adrian Turney. One of the guys Jenna told me was always hitting on Elle. I want to talk to him.”
Ange glanced at me, her brow a little furrowed. “Okay … although I don’t really see why you want to talk to him.”
“I think there might have been something going on with Elle.”
“Like what? You think she was seeing this dude?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, thinking about that stream of messages in Elle’s inbox from John Smith, “but I want to find out.”
Ange shook her head almost imperceptibly, and just then all the lights in the arena went out, an eerie hush descending over the assembled crowd. A beat started up over the loudspeaker and it only took a couple of seconds for me to realize it was the beginning of “Firework,” by Katy Perry, which had been one of Elle’s favorite songs growing up.
Then, instead of the team of burly hockey players I was imagining were about to invade the ice, the slight silhouettes of three girls glided onto the rink, their blades slicing through ice, their bodies performing torturous-looking moves, and their feet twisting, turning, twirling them through the air, as they, all three of them, performed the routine Elle had created and taken to the state championships. Flashes of green, red, blue, and white lights filled the arena, until at the very last moment, when each girl threw herself into a Y-Spin and the whole room erupted in gold, flashing lights. I felt Serena’s arms go round me, and I leaned against her shoulder as Katy Perry’s vocals ended and a deep silence filled the room before the applause began.
Standing across the rink from us, with her face slightly warped by the protective glass that surrounded the ice, I spotted Jenna. I swear our eyes caught for a second but I doubt she could see or recognize me through her wall of tears. There was another girl, much taller than Jenna, with her arm around her shoulder, and she was also crying.
It soon became apparent that the memorial was over and the hockey game had, in fact, been cancelled as people started drifting and then pushing themselves towards the exit.
“Keep an eye on Adrian,” I said to Ange, but she just gave me a sideways look and let out a derisive laugh.
“Okay, okay,” I said as I raised myself up onto my toes and scanned the tops of heads, looking for curly black hair, but the only people I could pick out were Louden and Bright, both of whom were tall enough to tower over everyone in the room. Bright caught my eye and gave a little nod before turning to his left and talking to someone slightly shorter than him. A second later, Leo popped up next to Bright and sent me something halfway between a wave and a salute. I waved back and continued my scan for Adrian. He was about a hundred people back from the entrance, so I leaned down to Ange again and said: “Okay, so he’s way behind us. We’ll just wait outside for him to appear and ambush him there.”
“You’re not supposed to use words like ‘ambush’ at a memorial service, Mads,” Ange said.
But I’d never been good at figuring out how I was supposed to behave at those things, so I just shrugged and continued to slowly push my way out through the crowded arena.
“Hey, Adrian!” I called, when we finally got out to the carpark and I could see him through the crowd, my voice sounding stiff in the cold, dark air. The boy stopped and turned towards the sound of my voice, his face peering through the light streaming out through the open door to the hockey arena. I raised my hand and he ambled over to me and Ange.
“Do I know you?” he asked, looki
ng us both up and down.
“Not yet,” Ange replied.
“I’m Maddie Fielder. I was friends with Noelle.”
“Oh right. You were Nora’s friends.” He looked between the two of us. “What can I do for you two ladies?” A sly smile whipped across his face, and I wanted to peel it right off him.
“Jenna mentioned to me that you might have some information about Noelle. Where she was before …” I let my sentence trail off, not quite being able to bring myself to say “killed” or “murdered” yet.
A crease formed in between Adrian’s dark eyebrows and he looked back out towards the dispersing crowd, as if he could maybe spot tiny Jenna and her comically red hat in it.
“Jenna said that, huh? Well, no offense, but Jenna doesn’t know shit. I barely knew Noelle. I mean it’s sad and everything, but we didn’t exactly move in the same circles.”
“But you wanted to?” I asked.
“I wanted to what? What does that mean?”
“Jenna said you were always hitting on Elle.”
Adrian rolled his eyes and looked backed towards the crowd again, this time probably trying to spot his buddies in the melee, bored of us. “Yeah, she was hot, okay? Noelle Altman was hot and everyone knew she was bi and yeah, okay, I hit on her a few times.”
“A lot. You hit on her a lot.”
“What’s a lot, man?”
“Jenna said you were pretty persistent,” Ange interjected. “That Elle told her she found you threatening.”
I raised my eyebrows at her.
“Threatening? Jesus. No. No, I wasn’t threatening.”
“My guess is that Elle was probably a better judge of whether you were threatening or not than you. No offense,” I said.
“Well, then I didn’t mean to be.”
“Did you mean to kill her?” I asked, and Ange kind of took a step back, and shook her head.
Adrian let out a shocked bark of laughter before saying: “Fuck you, man. I didn’t kill anybody, let alone Noelle Altman. You’re fucking crazy though.” He pointed both his hands, gun-like at me. “No offense.”
“Offense taken, asshole,” I called out to his retreating back, unable to think of a better retort in the blur of anger.
“Well,” Ange said after Adrian had disappeared into the crowd, “we pretty much blew that.”
“You mean I blew it,” I said.
“I was trying to be nice,” Ange said.
“I don’t think he did it anyway. He’s not smart enough for one thing.”
“Yeah, but if you hadn’t accused him of doing so, we could have got a little more out of him, Mads. Maybe got a better idea of how other people felt about Elle, or whether anyone else thought she was seeing someone other than Jenna. Besides, you don’t exactly have to be smart to kill people.”
Serena and Cordy caught up with us then, having hung back while we struggled after Adrian in the crowd. Cordy was looking down at her phone as she said: “I’m going to head to the bar to meet Keegan. Do you want to come, Mads?”
“Keegan? Blogger Keegan?”
“Yeah, I texted to let him know I was here, but we thought it would probably be easier to find each other at the bar. You should come; he’d really like to talk to you.”
“I already know that, Cordy.”
“So, you’ll come?”
Keegan could be helpful, of course I realized that. He’d also be willing, happy even, to talk to me, unlike Adrian had been.
“I overheard Adrian talking to a couple of his friends,” Ange said, “they’re all going to CJ’s now. I was going to head over there to get some interviews and quotes for the paper, but if you came with me we could ask around about Elle as well if you wanted?”
I agreed that that was a good idea and arranged to catch up with my sisters at the bar later, before the four of us parted ways.
CJ’s was full of high school kids, the booths stuffed full with brightly colored coats and scarfs, the air hot and almost syrupy with the sound of spitting bacon and the smell of coffee. I spotted Jenna stuck over in the corner with a few friends gathered round, by far the most subdued group in the place. One girl with a waterfall of strawberry blonde hair kept scanning the room with bright brown eyes, but none of them were talking. The blonde seemed to be surveying the scene, perhaps deciding when an appropriate amount of time had passed and they could all leave without being too heavily judged and go grieve somewhere a little less boisterous.
“Hey, there’s Jenna, maybe she can point out the other guys she mentioned to me,” I said to Ange in a low voice. As the only non-high school aged people in the place other than the waitress, the two of us were drawing some looks. Jenna, who had been staring down at the plate of food in front of her, listlessly pushing something around with her fork, looked up suddenly and caught my eye, nodding ever so slightly in recognition. I looked at Ange and she just shrugged as if to say “okay then” and we headed over to where Jenna was sat with her friends.
“Hey, Jenna,” I said when we reached them, and all five of their strained faces turned towards me.
Jenna shifted in her seat so she was sitting up straighter. “Hey. Guys, this is Maddie. She’s friends with Elle’s brother,” she said to the group of teenagers hunched in her booth. “And sister,” she added after a brief pause.
“And this is Angela,” I said, jerking my thumb towards her. “She’s friends with Nate as well. And Nora.”
“We both knew Noelle pretty well. We’re really sorry for your loss,” Ange said to the group.
The girl with strawberry blonde hair, who I now saw bore a striking resemblance to Jenna, had cocked her head and was staring at us both with interest.
“Jenna, do you think you could point out those guys you were telling me about? Are they here?” I asked. I explained that we’d already spoken to Adrian Turney, but I either didn’t recognize the other two from my internet stalking, or hadn’t yet spotted them.
“Sure,” she said, her voice dull, trying to peer around the room, “can you guys see Johnny or any of those guys?” she directed at her friends.
A tall black girl twisted in her seat, her eyes directed to a booth across the room from us, and I realized suddenly that it was Leia, one of Elle’s oldest friends. Her hands were covered in stacked, silver rings, and were wrapped around a mug, bangles and bracelets clinking and twinkling against the ceramic, while in front of her was a plate of halfheartedly eaten waffles. “Johnny and Mike are over there,” she said, her mouth twisting in barely disguised disgust. “Johnny’s the one laughing too loudly, and Mike is … pouring out all the sugar onto his plate.”
Ange and I shared a look but before heading off to the offending booth I pulled Jenna aside and asked about the messages from John Smith I’d found on Elle’s Facebook.
“Who?” she asked, clearly unaware of what I was talking about.
“John Smith. It looks like a fake account, but he was messaging Elle before she died. I was wondering if she mentioned any of this to you? I messaged you about it.”
She looked at me a little blankly and gave a small, defeated shrug. “Sorry, I haven’t been on Facebook much at the moment. It all just feels so … fake. What were the messages about?”
“They were creepy. Stalker-y, I guess. They mentioned Nora, and how Elle was the same age as her now, how they looked alike, stuff like that.”
Jenna’s face came alert then, a shot of surprise blowing through her grief, but she still shook her head. “She didn’t mention any of that to me.” Her voice croaked with an extra layer of sadness, another wave of loss to deal with.
“Okay, well it was worth a shot. Sorry for bringing it up,” I added, because I hated seeing her look so lost and broken. “I just wanted to be sure.”
“It’s fine,” Jenna said, swallowing, lifting her chin in that same act of defiance and determination I’d noticed when we first met. “I’ll be fine.”
She didn’t quite convince me, but I left her to her friends and follow
ed Ange over to the boys in question, who were both blonde, although of wildly varying shades. Mike, the sugar pourer, had a coppery, almost gold quality to his, while Johnny was ash blonde, with pale blue eyes that looked like they held absolutely no depth. He was the first to speak.
“Hey, I know you,” he said, his finger jabbing its way towards us. “You guys were friends with Noelle’s sister, right? The one who went missing.”
It surprised me a little that he’d recognize us as Nora’s friends. Her disappearance was the biggest thing to ever happen there, of course, but still—ten years was a long time for a face to ding his memory so instantly like that. Or maybe he’d been looking into Nora’s disappearance recently too, in light of Elle’s murder, and recognized me from his research.
Ange gave me the subtlest of glances and introduced herself. “Angela Cairney. I work for the Journal, and we’re writing a kind of editorial piece about Noelle Altman, trying to get a better picture of who she was, what she liked, who she hung out with, that kind of thing. This is Maddie Fielder.” She tipped her head towards me, and the group of young men eyed me with interest.
“I’m right though, right?” Johnny continued. “You knew Noelle’s sister?”
“Yeah, we knew her,” Ange said reluctantly. “We’re just trying to learn a little more about Elle though.”
“Well, you were better off where you were, man. That booth over there is full of all her friends. And her girlfriend. Jenna Fairfax. You know that was her girlfriend, right?”
“Yeah, we know, thanks. We’re just trying to get as wide a view of Noelle as possible.”
