by Jessie Rosen
If Laura hadn’t been so totally delighted by that fact, she would have felt sorry for him.
It was tempting to leave Charlie to run home in the cold, but she had to stay focused on the objective. It wasn’t time for the last phase of her plan to begin, so she couldn’t completely separate from Charlie. She needed one more piece of information from him in order to have all the necessary control. But his weakness made her realize that now was the perfect time for them to begin to rekindle their romance. Charlie was obviously in need of comfort, and with the suicide note just “found,” he might be more willing to talk about what really happened. From the looks of it, he was very close to cracking. Laura smiled at the thought of how much faster he would crumble if he knew she was the one who slipped in to her former bedroom and placed the note—which was written just for this occasion—under a barely loosened floorboard. She wondered if any part of him would be impressed.
“I don’t hate you, Charlie,” she said, “and you can’t blame yourself for everything that happened to Sarah. It seems like she had a lot of demons. I don’t think any of what you did was right, but I don’t think her death had everything to do with you.”
Charlie looked up at Laura. His eyes were tired, but still so clearly full of pain.
“Maybe,” he said.
“Maybe what?” she replied.
“Maybe it didn’t have everything to do with me.” With that confusing comment, Charlie started to walk in her direction. “I’ll take that ride,” he said, “if you’re still willing?”
Laura nodded. Then, together, Charlie Sanders and the entirely new version of Sarah Castro-Tanner walked away from the very spot where he thought he ended her life. Laura’s body tingled inside. It was all too perfect.
* * *
They made it back to Charlie’s house without him saying anything interesting. He was freezing cold and obviously exhausted, plus there was still some awkwardness between them from all the earlier fights. If Laura was going to take steps toward the two of them spending time together again, she would have to make the first move.
“Hey, Charlie,” she said as they pulled in front of his apartment building. “I know things have been weird between us but I need you to know that I’m here if you ever really need someone. I would hate for you to do something stupid or hurt yourself because you feel like you have no one to talk to.”
Charlie looked her way and nodded. It was like he heard her but the words didn’t fully process. “Thank you,” he finally said. “I’ll try.”
“You’ll try what?” Laura asked. It was the same kind of weird, cryptic response he gave her on the bridge.
“I’ll try not to do anything stupid.” He got out of the car and slumped up to the front door.
Laura waited until he made it inside before she let a wide smile creep across her face. Charlie was reacting to all of her work better than she could have ever anticipated. He seemed destroyed, which was certainly one of her intended goals, but she couldn’t have him fall apart quite so fast. She needed to be careful, considering his fragile mental state. She’d have to continue following him.
Laura had been following Charlie on and off over the months since she arrived back in Englewood, but nothing had proved to be particularly helpful to her cause until tonight. She already had all the information that she needed to create the VidBits and texted images she’d been prodding him with—she took them all the night it happened. They were plenty to scare the crap out of Charlie, setting her entire payback plan in motion, but following him felt like a smart move in case anything could speed the process of Charlie’s destruction along. Apparently that wasn’t necessary because “Sasha” stepped in as an unexpected accomplice.
Since the surprise discovery that Charlie’s second stalker was her sister, Laura still hadn’t figured out exactly how Lexi knew what she knew about the night Sarah “died.” She had received no response to the email she sent after running away from the park. But if Laura knew Lexi, then she knew Lexi would not give up. She was being careful, and rightly so. Laura would lie low for another day or so, then follow up with another email if she heard nothing. And if she never heard from Lexi again, then she would just have to let it go.
Laura didn’t like what seeing Lexi had already done to her focus. Finding out Lexi was involved had distracted her. She did not have the liberty to get attached; it was a decision she made the minute she chose to stay “dead” versus come out of the icy river injured, but alive that night. She had to give up everything about being Sarah Castro-Tanner, including her family.
Walking away from her parents was the easy part. Jim Castro and Alice Tanner had been her enemies since they day they started putting her through every single psychological screening under the sun. They couldn’t see past the fact that she was quiet, uncomfortable, and antisocial to appreciate that their daughter was a genius; they just saw everything wrong with her and wanted a one-pill solution to make it right. Laura told herself that they didn’t deserve to be her parents when she began to develop the original plan. Plus, this was what they wanted all along: to not have to deal with her. But Lexi was different.
As little girls, Lexi and Sarah existed in their own special world together. The backyard was their domain and they would play until it was too dark outside to see each other. There was Horses, Horses, the imaginary dude ranch they ran; Just Dance Academy, the pretend studio where they spent hours choreographing duets to N’Sync songs; and young Sarah’s favorite, The Two Sisters Café, which served a wide variety of salads made from every plant and weed in the yard.
Emotions had never come easily to her, but the thought of hurting Lexi always stayed with Laura. When it came time to decide whether or not to end her old life and return as this new persona, Lexi was the one and only thing holding her back. In the end she decided that her sister would be better off with her dead. Their parents would be happier, making Lexi’s world easier, plus Laura knew that she would never be a good influence. Lexi deserved better.
Laura still felt that way, but seeing Lexi desperately made her want to tell her sister everything that she’d done to get to this point. Not a single soul in the world knew that Laura Rivers was Sarah Castro-Tanner—not the person she got the money from to make the transformation possible, not the surgeon who built her an entirely new face, and certainly not anyone back in Englewood, from the random old lady whose house Laura rented with a fake ID to every single student at EHS. Laura knew that this whole plan would be worth it someday, and someday soon, but she didn’t expect to feel so lonely at this point in the process.
Maybe Laura Rivers’s first annual Friendsgiving Bash would help with those blues. A house full of people who worshipped her easy, breezy Cali-girl ways would be nice, and it would provide a reminder of one of the most amazing things that becoming Laura had given her: reign over Charlie, Amanda, Kit, and Miller. The party would solidify that fact. None of the old EHS court was invited, which had to be a first in all four of their lives.
November 25
Sasha
Sasha spent the entire day after her failed meeting in the park searching online for CO. She paid Syke and some of his guys everything she’d earned from babysitting at the Hunters so they could help, but nothing turned up beyond a now-dormant VidBit account with no user profile. CO was like a ghost.
Sasha wondered if he or she was just jumping on the Sarah Castro-Tanner bandwagon to try and get as much information as they could. Maybe it was a journalist or a detective with the EPD? Technically CO hadn’t done anything illegal.
Either way, Sasha decided that she didn’t need CO to finish her job. It felt too risky to let some stranger in on all the work she’d done up to this point. As far as Sasha was concerned, she had a checkmate against Charlie and Amanda; she had innocently overheard them talking about their involvement in Sarah’s death, and not so innocently recorded it on her cellphone, plus she had the trump card to top them all: the baby secret.
All Lexi needed to do was w
alk that three seconds of audio into the Englewood Police Department and their lives would be wrecked forever. Sasha could save the truth about Amanda and Charlie’s child for any problems that might arise if they ever found her out. The fact that she was Sarah Castro-Tanner’s sister wouldn’t matter. She would say that she had no idea Amanda was involved in her sister’s suicide until she started working for the Hunters, a random job she took because she missed living in Englewood. Once inside the house she became suspicious about some of the conversations she heard between Charlie, Amanda, Kit, and Sean. That’s why she followed Charlie up to Amanda’s bedroom when he rushed into the house one afternoon, clearly upset. She was worried for Amanda after everything she’d witnessed prior. But when she heard them start to talk about Sarah, she decided to record the conversation. In legal speak, that was plenty of probable cause to record without consent. Sasha looked it up to be 100 percent sure.
So then why hadn’t she gone to the police yet? It was a question Sasha asked herself every time she replayed the Charlie-and-Amanda recording. Maybe Sasha didn’t make a move because she wasn’t ready to know the entire truth?
There were days when Sasha wondered whether her sister was truly sick or whether she became this way because of how they both grew up. Sometimes it was impossible not to blame her parents as much as she blamed Charlie and his crew. They pushed Sarah to see doctor after doctor about her closed-off personality, poor social skills, and struggles to make a single friend in school. But Sasha couldn’t destroy her parents. They were literally all she had left in the world. So now she had the piece of the puzzle she needed to ruin Charlie and his crew; why was she waiting?
It wasn’t until Sasha arrived home to find her parents sitting at the kitchen table with a tall, handsome man in khakis and a blue button-down that she realized waiting had been the right instinct.
“Hi,” he said. “You must be Alexandra Castro-Tanner?”
“Who are you and what are you doing here?” she replied.
“Easy, Lexi,” her mother said. “This is Detective Pierson with the EPD. We’re just signing some paperwork.”
“About what?” she asked, but Lexi already knew the answer from the look on both her parents’ faces.
“We’re closing the investigation now that Sarah’s note was found,” her father said.
“No!” Lexi yelled, “You can’t!”
“Sweetheart. Please. We all need this to be over,” her mother said.
“Now that we know what really happened, there’s no need to continue investigating people,” the detective added.
“But what if someone made Sarah do this? They need to pay! I want them to go to jail for the rest of their lives!”
Lexi thought about rushing up to her room and grabbing the tape of Charlie and Amanda. Now was the moment to confess everything. The police would have to keep the case open, and the people involved would finally be brought to justice.
“I understand,” the detective said, “But even if some extreme bullying was the reason Sarah took her own life, it’s hard to lock someone up for that. Your family would need to press charges, which they do not want. And unless there was a premeditated plan, it’s impossible to get a murder conviction. Do you understand what all of that means?”
Sasha nodded. Detective Pierson wasn’t saying anything definitive, but all she could hear was, Charlie and his friends will get away with whatever they did. Releasing her information would likely result in nothing. He must have registered that disappointment in her face.
“I’m sorry to tell you this,” he said, “but you seem like a very smart girl, and I want you to know all the facts so that you’re prepared. A legal battle will probably not result in a conviction, and it could take years and tens of thousands of dollars to complete.”
“We don’t want that, Lex,” her dad said. “We need to close this chapter of our lives. It’s what Sarah would want us to do.”
Sasha understood what her parents needed, but she didn’t feel the same way and she was pretty sure that Sarah would take her side. Regardless of what the suicide note said, Sasha knew that years and years of being an outcast contributed to all her sister’s feelings. She could not let Charlie and his friends win. Sasha would have to find a way to make them pay without police involvement.
In four short weeks, it would be the two-year anniversary of the night her sister died. That felt like plenty of time to prepare a final surprise for the people responsible—something to leave them with a memory they’d never be able to erase. She’d come this far. Now was not the time to give up on Sarah.
Chapter 14
Laura
Laura wondered if she should have used Thanksgiving break as a long weekend to recharge instead of planning what she suspected would be the most epic party in Englewood history. It always took a lot of energy out of her to play the character she’d created for hours and hours on end, but it was too late to cancel now. Laura Rivers could not disappoint. Besides, she had to admit that the lines between Sarah and Laura were getting blurrier by the day, which made it easier to maintain. Laura began as a character that Sarah invented to accomplish her goals of coming back to Englewood and ruining Charlie, but any good actress could explain that when she’s fully immersed in the part, she becomes the character—she has to in order to be completely convincing. I’m technically an actress, too, Laura thought, only my job is full time.
As that realization hit, Laura was transported back to her summer at Camp Mackinack in the Berkshires, when she first became the version of Sarah capable of all that she’d done to become this new girl. The nostalgia inspired her to go grab the camp yearbook out of the giant, plastic memory bin she kept in the far corner of her closet. Then she hopped onto her bed and began to leaf through the pages. Of course she couldn’t stop herself from opening up the book to one very specific section: the picture of her sitting on the shoulders of Andrew Craig as they chicken-fought another counselor and camper in the lake. Andrew marked the start of everything that led her to this very day, in more ways than one. It felt appropriate to take a trip down memory lane with him in honor of what was about to happen.
That summer at Mackinack was when Sarah Castro-Tanner learned the power of playing a part, and she had cranky old Dr. Joyce—the fifth, or sixth, or maybe tenth shrink her parents insisted she see because of her "antisocial tendencies"—to thank.
Just before she left for camp that summer, Dr. Joyce suggested something that finally made sense. “What if you spend your experience at this new camp being a different version of yourself? You can take the old ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ approach and pretend that you are a friendly, gregarious girl who loves to smile and chat and never meets anyone she doesn’t like. Do you think that might make you feel better, or help you have a better time?”
To the first question Sarah’s answer was a resounding no. She didn’t feel bad being quiet and closed off. That’s who she was and how she felt natural. Why was everyone so obsessed with being friendly? Couldn’t someone just prefer to be a quiet thinker without being considered sick in the head? But regarding the question of whether or not she might have a better time, ultimately, the answer was probably yes. Sarah was well aware of the fact that if she was kind and inviting, people would return the treatment, which would be a welcome change from the way they typically treated her: like a weird, loner freak. She had never thought about pretending just for the sake of social ease, but the idea sounded like an interesting change from the previous summers she’d spent alone in her bunk at other camps, and she figured she really had nothing to lose now that she was starting over at Mackinack.
Sarah spent the three weeks before camp watching every single movie about a smart, friendly, loveable, or kick-ass girl she could get her hands on—classics like Funny Girl and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and more recent ones like The Notebook, Mean Girls, and The Hunger Games. There were a thousand different types of characters she could play, but the girl she loved the most was the lead in the r
emake of a classic: Sabrina.
The gorgeous British actress Julia Ormond plays Sabrina, a shy, misunderstood girl who has been overlooked her entire life—a life she mostly spent pining after David, a boy who barely looked her way. But after a few months living in France, she picks up a sexy, new haircut, brand-new wardrobe, and far more confident attitude, and becomes the object of David’s affection. He has no idea that she’s the girl he’s known since they were both very young. Playing Sabrina would be perfect because Sarah also had a boy of her dreams who had ignored her since the first grade: Charlie Sanders. If Sarah could hone her skills over the summer at camp, she thought, come September she would be ready to have her own Sabrina moment with Charlie.
As it turned out, Sarah was a better actress than she could have ever imagined. She arrived at camp as Sass Castro-Tanner—a nickname she said her friends back home had given her because of her snarky personality—and the very first person she connected with was Andrew Craig, the hottest counselor that summer, if not in all of Camp Mackinack history. Andrew was only eighteen—the youngest you could be as a full counselor —but he already had the scruffy, five o’clock shadow of a man and the arm muscles to match. Those were obvious perks, but it was his crazy blue-and-green eyes that caught Sarah’s attention first. One was literally the clearest-day-in-the-sky blue and the other was green like the most perfect part of the Caribbean ocean. Those eyes were the inspiration for the eyes Sarah gave herself as Laura Rivers—a little homage to everything that Andrew had given her.
With Andrew, Sarah’s Sabrina dream came true in an even more magical way than she could have imagined it happening with Charlie. Andrew initially thought Sarah was a counselor, and even though he was quickly corrected, he still treated her like she was his equal. Within a week they were spending the kind of time together that made everyone at camp talk, but Sarah didn’t care. Andrew was the first person who had ever been interested in her, and he quickly became her very first kiss.
