Hanging by a Thread

by Sophie Littlefield

  “I’m sorry for what your mom went through,” I said stiffly. I was sincere about that, at least.

  “Yeah. She worked with the lawyer Dad hired. She made sure he stayed on it. He did most of my talking for me. I had less than an ounce of pot, so they tried to get me on a felony charge of intent to sell, but the judge had to throw all the charges out.”

  “What about the vandalism?”

  Jack shrugged. “I was drunk and I wrecked a section of the fence at the high school with some kids. We spray-painted a shed and broke some windows.”

  Of course, that was only what he’d been caught doing. There was always the possibility that he’d done more than that, maybe a lot more, and not been caught.

  Jack had been driving faster as he talked, taking the dips and turns in the rural roads at a speed that spun gravel and made the tires complain against the pavement.

  “Hey, are you trying to kill us both?” I demanded, then realized how the question sounded and clamped my mouth shut. But Jack put on the brakes and concentrated on the road, his jaw tight.

  For a few minutes we rode in silence, and I thought about what Rachel had said. I was trying to protect you. And then, only a moment later, she had insisted that Jack didn’t kill Amanda. What did she know? Did she think Jack might be capable of more violence? Of hurting me?

  Was I crazy for taking a chance that he wouldn’t?

  “Listen, Jack, the thing is, something happened last night,” I said, determined to figure out what he knew, what part he had played, if any. “After I got home.”

  Jack glanced at me warily. “When you left the beach?”

  “Yes. It was late. There’s something … I mean, you’re one of the only people I’ve met so far who actually knew Amanda. You know things about her that could, I don’t know, help me understand.”

  Jack seemed, if anything, to grow even angrier. Up ahead was a boarded-up produce stand, the old and tired predecessor to a new one that had been constructed half a mile down the road at an intersection where drivers would be more likely to pull over. Jack coasted off the road, the truck jouncing over the shoulder onto the dirt parking lot and pulling up under the shade of a group of tall, leafy trees. A pair of wild turkeys squawked, scattering into the overgrown weeds behind the shed as Jack cut the engine.

  He turned to me, his frown deepening, his eyes narrowed. “So all of this—last night, on the beach, coming out with me today—was this all a way for you to get close to me so you could ask about her?”

  “What? No!” I couldn’t believe he would think that. “I didn’t even know who she was until yesterday. A few of us rode home together, they were talking …”

  Jack said nothing for a while, just stared out at the ruined shack with his arms folded tightly across his chest, breathing shallowly. He was furious, and I felt a range of emotions I could barely keep track of. Regret, certainly—a part of me wished I’d never brought up her name. Suspicion—wondering what Amanda had really meant to him, and whether he’d had anything to do with what happened to her. And underneath it, that thread of attraction I couldn’t ignore, even when I told myself this was a dangerous game to play.

  Except it wasn’t a game. Jack was willful and stubborn, moody, angry and passionate. And I was more than a little afraid of him. But last night, when he’d wrapped his arms around me as we stood in the ocean, the salt water caressing our feet, I hadn’t been able to pull away. I’d wanted him despite the danger, and I wanted him now.

  How much would it take to provoke him? He said Amanda had been too dramatic for him, but that was vague. Maybe it was something else. Had she done something to anger him? Had she led him on, then turned him down? Dumped him for another guy?

  All those things were possible. All of them had the potential to enrage him. I had hoped that Jack could help me understand who Amanda had been, and somehow relieve me of any responsibility so I could get rid of the jacket and sever my connection to her. Instead, I felt like my attraction to him made that connection both deeper and more dangerous.

  “Listen,” he finally said, still not looking at me. “There’ve been … others.”

  “Other what?”

  “Other girls … like you. Coming on to me, when what they really wanted was, I don’t know. They had some sort of sick fascination with Amanda.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No? You should talk to Maybeth Layne. You’ll meet her when school starts. She’s on some exchange program in Italy right now.”

  “What about her?”

  “After I got arrested, she started acting really interested in me. I mean, I got used to that fast—there’s always going to be girls who want trouble, who like guys their parents will hate. At first I thought that was what it was and I just kind of ignored her. But she kept it up. Asking me all these questions about what Amanda and I had done together.

  “Finally I figured out that she thought I was guilty, that I really had done something to Amanda. And that she was going to figure it out, maybe be a hero. Maybe get the attention she wanted. I don’t know, I guess she thought I’d confess to her if she was nice enough to me.

  “For a while it got better. Then one weekend she asked me to help her study at her house, which I should have seen right through, because she didn’t ever care about her grades—and in her room she had all these pictures. She had access to them from being on yearbook staff. Amanda on the cheer squad, Amanda with her friends at Kitty’s Korner, Amanda in chem lab. She had them pinned up on her bulletin board. I asked her about it and she gave me this funny smile. ‘I just thought maybe if you saw this you’d want to tell me what happened,’ she said. And I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about, and she said she thought we had a special connection.”

  He shook his head, as if trying to dislodge the memory. “Some special fucking connection. Her dad ended up calling Detective Kostelic and telling him I was harassing his daughter. So I got to go through it all again—cops at my house, getting hauled in, Mom calling the lawyer. All of it.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I felt sick to my stomach—I couldn’t imagine what that girl had been looking for, if it had been a game to her, satisfying her curiosity, or if she’d been interested in Jack all along.

  I also had no proof that he was telling the truth. What if he’d made it all up? What if he really had been harassing Maybeth?

  But he wasn’t harassing me. He hadn’t done anything that crossed any lines, yet. I tried to consider him objectively, but in the soft morning light that filtered into the truck, it was impossible not to notice the glints of red-gold in his black hair, the deep brown skin, the muscles tight in his neck, his arms, his broad shoulders. His eyes in this light were darker than they had been earlier, almost a cloudy gray-blue, and with his features tight with anger, the traces of his adolescent self were almost entirely gone. His was the face of a man, not a boy.

  Of course girls would notice him. Of course they would want him. And the mystique around him, the trouble he’d been in, made him more attractive—at least to certain girls. So he questioned everyone’s interest in him, wondering if it was genuine or merely a cover-up for sensationalism and attention-seeking.

  “You don’t have to believe me,” I said. “But I’m just trying to understand.”

  Jack didn’t look at me. He was staring straight out the windshield at the leaning shack, at the shelves that held a few empty berry baskets and a lot of cobwebs.

  “When Dillon disappeared, it was really sad, but I didn’t pay all that much attention,” I tried to explain. “It had been a long time since I lived in Winston. I was busy. But then after Amanda disappeared, when they started saying it could be a serial killer, that her body might never be found, suddenly it was all over the news. It was like you couldn’t get away from it. But it still wasn’t real, you know? It wasn’t until we moved back here and I started meeting kids who knew her. Then it started to affect me more.”

  “Why, Clare?” His voice was
quiet but intense. “Why can’t you just let it be? She’s not coming back. It’s been almost a year. People don’t talk about her and Dillon anymore. The town … the town is finally starting to get over it. It’s been months since Detective Kostelic has even driven by my house.”

  I wasn’t about to tell him why it was different for me, about what I could do. I’d only told two other people about my gift, and it hadn’t exactly gone well. My mother had forbidden me from ever mentioning it again. It had gone better with Nana; she’d helped me understand why I was the way I was, and made me feel less like a freak. And she’d told me I had a choice. But there was still so much I didn’t understand, and with the jacket, I felt like I’d been given a task I couldn’t refuse. To find out what had really happened to her and, maybe, to make it right.

  I didn’t think Amanda was alive. But someone had been responsible. Someone who was out there now, who had possibly killed a little boy, who maybe would do it again if he wasn’t caught.

  I could ask Jack to take me home. I could pretend we never talked about Amanda, pass him in the halls without speaking to him when school started, and he’d fade into the background where he evidently spent most of his time anyway. It was the smart thing to do, the least risky. I’d throw myself into life with Rachel’s crowd, maybe walk on the beach with Luke next time—with any luck I’d have a boyfriend this fall. I could throw out the box of clothes, carry it down the hill to the Dumpster behind the Seagull Inn.

  But as I stared at Jack’s profile, in the pleasant warmth of the old truck, I knew that wasn’t what was going to happen. The jacket had come to me because some … spirit, some force, wanted me to have it, to touch it, to find out what happened. Or at least that was what it felt like. And the choice did not feel like mine to make. Just as I had never asked for the gift in the first place, I had not asked to be drawn into a girl’s disappearance, but something had been put into motion and I had a strong feeling I had to follow.

  I wasn’t going to walk away from Jack, even if it was the smart thing to do. I could trust him—or I could be careful, and trust myself to stay a step ahead.

  And what I wanted, right now, despite all my suspicions and fears, was to touch him.

  He said nothing as I slowly reached across the seat and touched his sleeve, lightly at first, my fingertips brushing against the soft flannel. The shirt had been washed dozens of times; I could tell from the worn nap, the puckering along the seam where the thread had shrunk more than the fibers in the fabric.

  I felt so many emotions when I touched Jack. Desire. Doubt. Suspicion.

  But this shirt had no stories to tell.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  JACK SLAMMED HIS HAND OVER MINE, so fast I barely saw him move.

  “Don’t start this. Not unless you’re serious.”

  I caught my breath, pulling my hand back, as though his touch burned me. And, in a way, it had; it ignited something inside me that I’d never felt around a boy before.

  I knew if I’d left my hand where it was, things would have gone farther. Maybe a lot farther. And suddenly I wasn’t sure I was ready.

  “So there’s one other thing,” I said, acting like it hadn’t happened. “I saw this picture of Amanda online, where she’s wearing a Ripley Couture denim jacket. I bought the exact same jacket from a junk dealer the other day. It was pretty torn up and dirty but I am positive it’s hers. Decorative stitching on the front, silver buttons—do you remember it?”

  Jack regarded me skeptically. “I mean, yeah, she had a denim jacket she liked, but so does almost every other girl. How can you be sure it’s the same one?”

  “Jack, this is what I do,” I said. “I know fashion, and that was a really expensive jacket that you can’t get down here. You’d have to go to San Francisco or L.A. I was just wondering … was she wearing it the day she disappeared?”

  Jack scowled at me for a moment. “You’re not going to let this drop, are you.”

  “I just … can’t.”

  He sighed. “That week, the weather was good. Not too hot during the day, no rain, but it got chilly at night. Amanda kept that jacket in her car, and she wore it over whatever she had on when she got cold.

  “You know, when they took me in for questioning, they asked me what she was wearing that day. I couldn’t tell them. I don’t notice shit like that. I mean, she always looked nice, I guess. I’d seen her earlier in the day—we had lunch in town—and she wanted to get together that night but I couldn’t. Mom had invited Arthur over for dinner. But Amanda didn’t take no for an answer.”

  “Did you tell the police that?”

  “Of course I did. The problem was, Arthur left early and my folks went to bed, so the cops said I could have left the house any time that night.”

  “But why did they think … you know, that you did it? I mean, just the fact that you were dating, that doesn’t seem like enough.”

  Jack didn’t answer me for a moment. His mood seemed to turn even darker as he stared out the window at nothing.

  “She had texted me. A few times. Eight times, between that afternoon and evening. The last one was around ten-thirty, so they said I went to meet her then. Her mom went to the police that night to report her missing, but it wasn’t until the next morning that they came to our house. Dad was out on a job. They asked for my phone and I gave it to them. They asked to search our house, and Mom and I let them. Dad …”

  His voice trailed off and he paused for a moment, anger gathering in his eyes again. “Dad called the lawyer, after they left. He didn’t trust the cops. He’d had some bad experiences with them, a long time ago. But they had my phone.”

  “What were the text messages? Was it something that made them think you were, that you had had a fight or something?”

  “Amanda … took pictures of herself. And the messages were explicit.”

  “Oh.” My face went hot again. I had never sexted anyone, but there was a lot of it going on at Blake, where, of course, they had their own special way of doing things—when girls took pictures of themselves, they were likely to be artful shots with props. Lincoln thought it was hilarious; he loved to make me uncomfortable by forwarding me the pictures that went around. He said I was the last virgin at Blake, a fact I’d sworn him to keep secret forever.

  Suddenly that seemed like such a long time ago.

  “The police … they never come out and say exactly what they think,” Jack muttered. “I mean, it was obvious they were trying to put a case together, but they never found enough evidence. Because there wasn’t any. I didn’t even text her back after the first time. All I said was I’d talk to her later. And I erased the messages. They got records from AT&T but they couldn’t prove anything.”

  Yet another time when I had to choose whether to believe him. “Did the lawyer help?”

  “He told my mom there was no case. The cops tried to make a thing about the fact that my dad called him right away, like that meant I was guilty or something. But they backed off pretty fast.”

  “I’m … sorry. For what you went through.” And I was—if he was telling the truth.

  “You know, Clare, if you really think that jacket was hers, you should take it to the cops.”

  I hadn’t even thought of that. There might be evidence—the dirt, the tear, who knew what the cops would be able to find out. Probably nothing, but the suggestion meant Jack was innocent, right?

  Except I was pretty sure the jacket wasn’t done with me yet. It was like it was … alive, almost, in my room. I could feel its dark energy, even from miles away—or maybe that was simply my own fear.

  “Yeah, I should do that,” I said noncommittally. “You’re sure you don’t know if she was wearing it that night?”

  “I never saw her again after lunch. Look, we were already kind of headed toward splitting up,” Jack clarified. “I think she knew I wasn’t really into her the way she wanted.”

  “What way is that?” I couldn’t help asking.

  “Amanda was al
l about the drama. I liked her at first because she was so passionate about books, but then she got that way about, well, us. She wanted to spend all her time together, she wanted it to be really intense. We’d have a fight, and I’d back off for a while, and then we’d start seeing each other again. I think … sometimes it seemed like she wanted to block out everything by having this big relationship that would just kind of take over.”

  “How bad was it, really? I mean, was her dad abusive?”

  “No, not like that, though they questioned him too. He was just older, and he was gone a lot for business. I met him—he was in his office, and he was kind of a dick. He barely looked up from his computer. Amanda said he hardly ever came out of his office and when he did, he was always on them for one thing or another.”

  It sounded kind of like Rachel’s dad. He was always in his office or flying off somewhere. Rachel didn’t even know exactly what his latest company did—something about collecting consumer information for online businesses.

  But Rachel’s dad wasn’t mean. Even if he was always in a hurry, even if he used money to make up for his guilt, he did try. When he was in town, he made time for Rachel and her mom. She’d canceled plans with me once or twice when he wanted to take them to dinner or out on his sailboat. She asked me along sometimes, but I didn’t think I could handle it—seeing her with her dad reminded me too much of what I was missing. Even seeing my own father a few times a year would have been a huge step up from what I had.

  But I’d never stopped to consider that having him around could have been even worse. Amanda’s parents’ fighting must have been really hard on her. At least with my mom, it was mostly normal. We fought, she got on my nerves, but we always made up right away.

  “Do you think there’s any way it could have been him?” I asked.

  Jack thought for a minute. “No,” he said finally. “If it was Amanda’s mom who had disappeared—maybe. He really seemed to hate her. Amanda said he criticized everything about her.”