The Mute and the Liar

by Victoria Best

  “No. Just me and Jayce, as far as I know. Why do you want to know about her anyway?”

  I am getting frustrated with writing messages. They take up too much time and I have so much to say. So I make a decision and I take the phone from Jeffrey, and I speak. My voice is shaky and uneasy, and my tone is completely off-key and all-over-the-place, like an out of tune guitar. But the words I say are clear.

  “Because she’s most likely been using you this whole time.”

  *****

  We explained everything to Sasha. Well, I say that, but it was really just Jeffrey talking over Sasha’s persistent threats, which continued escalating into increasingly violent and gory heights.

  We concluded that Jeffrey’s going to return his phone to him when he goes back to Bath. We don’t need it anymore; we’ve got the information we needed. That was it really, after Sasha vowed that our information changed nothing and he was still going to rip our limbs off.

  I’m at a loss. Sasha and Kaylie were both on my suspects list. Sasha knew enough about Becky and Jayce to have made a perfect suspect – he could have easily been sending those messages. And he had a motive as well; he could have been doing this out of the guilt of killing Becky. But now the messages prove that he’s not Becky. She was using him too. I suspected Kaylie, mainly because Jayce found that she was carrying Becky’s phone. The messages say that Sasha put the phone in Kaylie’s bag. If Kaylie was Becky, then that means she gave Sasha the phone just to give it back to her. That’s stupid. So I guess Kaylie might be innocent too.

  I can’t help feeling drawn to all of this.

  I’m going to solve this case myself. I’m going to find out why Becky needed Jayce to kidnap me. How she did everything. Who she really is.

  Everything.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  2:42 PM

  I’ve been sat here looking through the messages for the past couple of hours. I’m determined to work this out.

  “Can we just leave it now, Alicia?” Jeffrey unexpectedly pipes up after a long silence between us whilst I’ve been looking back through Sasha and Becky’s texts. “This isn’t healthy. You’ve been sat there staring at that phone for hours. You’ve only just got away from him and you’re suddenly obsessing over him and this Becky person.”

  I pay Jeffrey no attention. He is sitting on the other side of the bed. He was looking over my shoulder and reading the messages earlier, but then he started getting annoying with all of his rubbish theories about what must have happened and who Becky is, that are nowhere near the truth (“maybe Jayce is just texting himself pretending to be Becky! I knew he was crazy right from the start!”) So I sentenced him to a 'time out' on the other side of the bed for half an hour.

  He breaks his time out and comes over again.

  “Nope. Go back to your time out. You've still got another five minutes.”

  He laughs then grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me, making me looking up from the phone. He looks right at me with those bright blue eyes. I feel something fluttering in my stomach and feel my cheeks burning up.

  “It’s in the past; you need to forget about him.”

  He gives me a small smile, and something strange happens. That fluttering feeling is still going on in my stomach. I find myself twisting my hands together and I can feel my hands clamming up. I wish he’d look away; it’s giving me this strange prickling feeling all over.

  “Come on, let’s go out. I want to see more of Elmview. I'm not here for long.” I’m all too conscious of the fact that he’s still staring at me. I feel my cheeks burn up again and I quickly look away.

  *****

  7:20 PM

  It was nice, spending time with Jeffrey. We went to the High Street, drifted in and out of a few shops. We picked up lunch from the bakery and ate on a bench in Elmview Park. Sandwiches aren’t exactly pasta, and although at first I was hesitant, they actually tasted all right.

  I like listening to Jeffrey. He doesn’t blabber on like Jayce did at the speed of light about the most random and irrelevant things. He’s got a soft, quiet voice that always stays the same volume and he speaks calmly and slowly. He looks so carefree and relaxed, he’s got mountains of time and nothing to do with it. He talks to me about himself, about Bath. He told me he’s been singing since the age of four and was in the choristers at the Abbey for five years. He’s hoping to get a music scholarship at the end of this year. He talked about everything really. It was... nice.

  He’s walking me back home now.

  As we draw in closer, my eyes suddenly focus on a familiar figure in the distance: a curvy girl just a little taller than me, with her bright blue hair tied up in her usual high ponytail with perfect ringlets tumbling right down her back. She’s clad in her signature black leather jacket with black jeans and biker boots. Kaylie. Stone cold dread rushes right through me.

  There’s only one thing different about her: she’s holding a sleeping toddler. The toddler looks no older than two and her black hair is pushed up into two high pigtails. She’s wearing a bright pink duffel coat and pink trousers and there’s an old, dirty and tattered rabbit toy hanging from one arm.

  I try to shuffle around her, hoping I can escape without her seeing me, but she turns around just when we pass. I expect her to start yelling at me or to hit me or do something to show me how much she hates me. But instead, her face remains unchanged, completely impassive.

  “Alicia,” she says coolly. She has said my name in a way I can’t escape from – loud, so I can’t pretend I didn’t hear it. There's a hint of provoking in her voice, like she's challenging me. Seeing whether I will reply to her or not.

  My eyes meet hers for a few seconds. We just stand there, watching each other. Her eyes narrow. I feel those familiar shivers crawl down my back, the way I always feel around Kaylie. I know full well she’s tying to stare down, trying to get me to show that I’m the weaker one and look away first. I stand my ground and eventually she falters and her eyes flicker away.

  “Is Jayce all right?” she eventually asks. I stop for a moment, not expecting those words to come out of her mouth. I seriously thought she was going to do something else, like… scream at me? Or hit me? Anything but ask me a question.

  I shake my head.

  “No one has heard from him since the party. I think he’s home; the lights are on in his and Nick’s apartment, but no one answers the door. I just… I thought maybe you might know something. Do you think they’ve found out about the kidnapping? Do you think he’s already in prison?”

  I don’t think so. My father let him go when he came to get me.

  Relief visibly washes over her face. I can almost see it relaxing every muscle in her face and softening her coal eyes. It’s brought a rare, out-of- place ghost smile to her otherwise emotionless face. “Thank God.”

  Can I ask you a few questions? It might help Jayce.

  I don't think she will say yes, but surprisingly she mumbles: “Okay. What?”

  You know when I tried to call home and you picked up the phone? You said something about tying up my father to threaten me to go along with Jayce’s plan. Was all of that true?

  “No. Jayce told Jory and I that your dad would leave the house soon and we had to wait until he was gone and then go inside and wait for a phone call from you. He told us there were a spare pair of keys this girl Becky had left for us under the plant pot outside, so we waited for your dad to leave the house like Jayce said and used those keys to get inside. You phoned, I picked up, and made up that whole story about having him tied up. We left straight after that.”

  Did you know about Becky?

  “The girl the phone belongs to? No. And before you ask, I was telling the truth; someone put her phone in my bag at the start of the party. I’m not this Becky-imposter Jayce was going on about. I don’t even know who Becky is.”

  I try to find any flickering of lies in her eyes. They’re almost bending from the weight of the thick, spiders-legs fake eyelashes she’s tra
pped them in, and the heavy black eye make up she’s smothered around them. Though her eyes are empty and unrevealing, just like the rest of her expressionless face, there’s nothing there to say she's lying. She looks slightly different. Even her hair looks defeated - black strands the same colour as her perfectly plucked eyebrows are now creeping their slimy way into the roots of her hair, and her signature high ponytail is much lower and messier than usual. Her eyes, which have always been a shocking sky blue, have slithered into a blue-tinted grey; still the colour of the sky, but now on a cloudy day.

  The girl in her arms stirs slightly and moves her head to the other side.

  Kaylie notices me looking at the girl and snaps: “she’s not mine. I’m not stupid enough to get knocked up at sixteen like my sister.” Her voice softens a little as she looks at the rosy-cheeked girl sleeping on her shoulder. “This is Cathy, my niece. Although I might as well be her mum. I’ve spent way more time looking after while her real mum is out being… stupid.” I guess I’ve got some kind of pitying look on my face because she immediately snaps: “don’t look at me like I’m a one-eyed cat. Like I’m inferior to you. I don’t give a damn what my sister does; I just don’t want Cathy to have a crap life just because of her. God, you don’t know anything. You don’t know what it’s like to spend your life looking after someone else’s child. Or what it’s like to have to grow up fast for the sake of your family. Or to have to keep lying nonstop because social services will find out and take her away otherwise.” There’s a slight jerk in her voice at the end. But the rest of her words are cold, flat and impassive, as always.

  She doesn’t look as tall and dangerous and scary-looking as I always thought she did. I don’t squirm in discomfort when she looks at me anymore. In fact, now with the little girl in her arms and her hunched over shoulders, she just looks kind of… small.

  “And you definitely don’t know what it’s like when the only person who really matters to you, who you actually give a damn about, only ever talks about some completely plain, short, bony, flat-chested nobody who can’t even talk.” Her words string themselves out fluently and without a single break or hesitance, like a cursive line of handwriting.

  Jeffrey clenches his fists and lowers his head. He watches her carefully and hard-heartedly with a harsh, scolding glare. Kaylie notices this and turns her full attention to him, shooting him with a mocking smile.

  “Already onto the next one, Alicia? Jayce just wasn’t good enough, was he?” she taunts, taking on a dead, matter-of-fact voice, which is really just hiding pure lava-blooded hatred. “What kind of magic perfume are you using? You’ve got more boys around you than a strip club.”

  That does it. Jeffrey lurches in, teeth gritted, fists clenched.

  “Don’t.” I’m shocked to hear my own voice, shaky and uneasy and painfully off-key. I can’t let him do something he’ll regret. Kaylie looks at me incredulously. Kaylie’s slightly parted mouth, tilted head and quizzing eyes are about the closest thing to emotion I’ve ever seen her show. “Please. She’s not worth it.” I’m almost whispering this last part for fear of how stupid my humiliating, out-of-tune voice sounds. But it works. Jeffrey sends Kaylie one last warning glare and then storms off the other way.

  Kaylie pauses for a moment and then her frozen, impassive expression is suddenly shattered out of nowhere by crazed, hysterical laughter that rips right through her throat. It’s painful, ear-piercing, like barn owl screeches and witch cackling meshed together. I step back a little, heart pounding. I can’t help it; I have barely seen her smile, let alone laugh.

  “I knew you could talk!” she manages to say through her fits of manic laughter. “Ha, it was hilarious, like how those squeaky toys sound when you’ve had them for too long! Say something else! Go on!”

  “Alicia!” Jeffrey’s distant voice calls from somewhere behind me. I turn around and start walking towards him, when Kaylie suddenly starts shouting.

  “You fucking, cheating cow! This was all some pathetic trick to make everyone feel sorry for you, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? You lying bitch! You ruined everything! Steve is in rehab, Jory’s off his head, Mel and Tyra have gone off with another group and God knows where Jayce is. I could rip you apart you fu-”

  Her shouting startles the sleeping girl, who jerks away from her shoulder and starts crying.

  Kaylie rocks her for a minute. The little girl stops crying and looks at her.

  They watch each other for a second, and a slight, hardly-noticeable glimmer of a smile tweaks the corners of Kaylie's lips.

  “Not that I care, though. I hated them all anyway.” And with that, she turns around and walks away.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Hey.” I take in the tall, thin boy with tousled blonde hair and a perfect posture and smile in the doorway. I give him a weak smile. He leans over my shoulder to speak to Father, who is standing in the corridor a little further behind me.

  “Hi, Mr Lewis. Is it okay if Alicia and I go out for a bit?”

  Father grunts. It’s the only thing he says on the matter, so we take it as a yes. Actually, Father’s expression is quite odd. He’s almost… glaring at Jeffrey. He’s really burning right through him, narrowed eyes and furrowed eyebrows. There’s even a quivering in his lip that he only gets when he’s really angry. What has Jeffrey done wrong?

  Jeffrey and I shuffle out of the door and hit headfirst the fresh, cool air outside. But I still can’t shake the strange look on Father’s face. Jeffrey doesn’t seem to have noticed and he automatically starts chattering away about what we should do.

  We stroll aimlessly. He talks. I listen. I like listening to him talk. He’s got a soft, gentle voice, one that if I listened to before going to sleep, I’m sure I would fall asleep to.

  Now we’re sitting on a bench together, just watching the rest of the world spin past.

  “I love that you’re starting to speak again. It’s great. You’re doing so well.”

  It’s hard though. I can’t get the tone right. It sounds awkward and off-key and weird.

  “You just need practice. Start small; you know, small sentences, short words. Then just build it up from there. How long haven’t you spoken for?”

  Seven years. I haven’t spoken since I was eight.

  “Why though?”

  I freeze up, looking down.

  “It’s okay, you don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to.

  My mum committed suicide. I was the last person she saw. Everyone was asking me all these questions. I felt like I had to lie about everything. So I just stopped talking altogether.

  Jeffrey puts his arm around me and for a moment we just stay like that. I like it. It’s makes me feel safe.

  “You don’t need to keep writing things down. I’m not going to judge you if you think your voice sounds strange. It doesn’t, I promise you. I’m just happy you’ve started talking again. Let’s play a game. I say something, and you have to repeat it. What do you think?”

  “Okay.”

  “Great! But you lose ten points for speaking when I didn’t speak first. You’ve got minus ten points now.” That brings a smile to my face. A real one. One that warms you up inside. I playfully hit him on the shoulder and he laughs. “Okay. My name is Alicia Lewis.”

  “My name is Alicia Lewis.” “I’m sixteen.”

  “I’m sixteen.”

  “I have an unhealthy obsession with solving mysteries.”

  “I have an unhealthy obsession with solving mysteries.”

  “Jeffrey is mega-super-ultra-hot.”

  “Jeffrey is mega-super-ultra-vain.” I correct him, and he grins. “And I kind of like him.”

  “And I kind of…” I trail off, realising what he’s trying to make me say. He’s sitting too close to me; he must have edged in closer without me seeing. And he’s looking at me, his face pushed in slightly. I mean he’s really looking at me, his dark blue eyes locked right into mine.

  He’s going to…

  For a mome
nt I’m sure I hear movement up ahead. I look up and nearly jump at the sight – I swear I see Jayce looking at us. Or rather, I swear I see him looking right at me, with his eyes lowered and looking distanced and defeated and his lips straightened into a faint, thin line. It’s only for a second and then the illusion of Jayce is gone; there is nothing there. It’s just my mind playing tricks on me. But why did I have to think about him? Why right now?

  Jeffrey leans in closer. But I can’t.

  I stand up, suddenly and sharply, a jarring movement that stuns Jeffrey. He looks at me shocked, eyes narrowed. His cheeks go red and he looks down with a crumpled up, almost grimacing expression.

  “I have to go,” I mumble, my voice just above a whisper.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  It smells of burning when I get home. Our house is a Victorian terraced house and we have old fireplaces in most of the rooms. They take ages to clean and get working, so they’ve been out of use ages before we moved in thirteen years ago. Only the large marble fireplace in our living room still works and Father puts it on every now and again when he’s in the mood to aimlessly sit and watch the fire. The smell of burning coal hits me as soon as I walk through the front door. Sure enough, the fireplace is alight with just a couple of small, dimmed flames that illuminate the coal and black, dead soot underneath. It seems Father lit the fireplace a quite a few hours ago and now only these subdued flames are left.

  That’s when I notice the remains of burned paper smouldering a few centimetres from the flames.

  I move the grate and pick up the largest piece. The sides have been singed off and only black lines remain around the curling edges. Assuming it’s just an empty piece of paper, I throw it back. As it falls, it flips over – there’s handwriting on the other side.

  This is familiar handwriting. I know this handwriting. This small, almost unreadable, scribble-like handwriting.