by Marlowe Blue
Toby stuck his head out of the water. “Hey. What’s the yelling about?” I’d almost forgotten he was there.
“Mind your own business, Toby,” I screamed. He looked hurt and swam to the other side of the pool.
Morgan held her hands up. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. That was an incredibly stupid thing to say. The Hex was great. They were my friends and I loved them too—I just feel like I fit in better with these guys, that’s all. It came out wrong.”
I was still stinging from her comment, but I settled down. I didn’t think she meant to be hurtful.
Shana and Peyton came back out with a tray of chicken salad sandwiches and a pitcher of lemonade. They were giggling about something. Maybe Shana had finally guessed which rah-rah girl was preggers.
Peyton set the lemonade on the small table beside me. “We were just remembering what happened at the mall last December, Morgan. Wasn’t that the funniest thing. We should tell Lela the story.”
I looked to Morgan. “December? That was four months ago. I thought you’d just been hanging out with them for a few weeks.”
Morgan shrugged and reached for a sandwich. “What difference does it make?”
I guessed it wasn’t important, but if she had been hanging out with them, I thought she would have mentioned it. When she wasn’t hanging out with me or the Hex, I assumed she was with her family, not another group of friends. Not wanting to ruin a perfect afternoon, I brushed my concern aside.
Morgan was right even though her comment angered me. With this group, there was no constant vying to stay on top and earning the right to wear that shark tooth necklace. There was no wondering when the next tragedy would happen—when one of us would end up like Zander or worse. Most importantly, there was no Coach blackmailing me to remain part of a group that I wanted out of. Hanging out with this new group was stress free and I wanted to keep it that way.
Once it got late, Toby left and Shana and Peyton drifted up to Shana’s bathroom to shower. Morgan and I decided to take a quick soak in the hot tub before heading home.
Shana’s parents were at a PTA meeting, where according to a teachers’ conversation I’d overheard in the hallway, they would be discussing the murders and what type of safety and emotional support students would receive. My parents were going to the meeting too.
The contrast of the cool nighttime air and the toasty water soothing my body was exhilarating. I rested my head against the edge of the hot tub and allowed my mind to drift off. Just as I had fallen into a peaceful bliss, Morgan shook me. “Lela, wake up. You hear that?”
“Huh?” I yawned and forced my eyes open. Morgan’s tiny face was twisted in fear. “Did I hear what?”
She put her finger to her lips. “That noise. Footsteps.”
I sat still and listened. Even over the soft murmur of the bubbling water, I heard heavy footsteps on the grass. They came from the left side of the house.
“It’s okay,” I said, trying to calm Morgan. “Maybe the meeting ended early. It’s probably just Shana’s parents.” Even as I said the words, I was as frightened as Morgan looked.
We sat still, waiting. I gasped as a form emerged from the shadows—someone wearing a long, black robe that reached the ground and a bunny mask identical to the one I’d worn for challenges. As far as I knew, that mask was at home tucked in the black backpack I always carried on Saturday nights.
Morgan grabbed my arm, digging her fingernails into my skin. “W-who is that?”
Trying my best to hide my fear, I squared my shoulders and glared at the person in the bunny mask. “What do you want?”
It stood motionless.
I swallowed hard. “You think you’re scaring us? Because you’re not.”
The bunny used one hand to reach up its billowing sleeve. Slowly, it retrieved a hatchet with a sharp gleaming head. Morgan gasped and I pushed her toward the edge of the hot tub.
Dripping wet, we ran across the concrete patio to the other side of the house. Morgan made it to the gate before me. She threw her body against it, but it wouldn’t budge. She moved out of the way for me to try, but I could see between the wooden planks of the fence that someone had padlocked the gate from the outside.
I was going to climb it when Morgan shrieked. I turned to see the bunny standing before us. We were trapped between the sinister rabbit and the gate. It stood there with its head cocked to one side.
“Morgan,” I whispered. “It can’t get both of us. You run right and I’ll run left.” Shivering, she nodded. “Okay,” I said. “Go!”
We took off running as fast as our damp bare feet would carry us. When I passed the bunny, it made a grab for me and missed.
We headed for the other gate which turned out to be a big mistake because it was locked too. I tried to climb it, but the fence was way too high and there was nothing for me to grab as leverage.
The bunny appeared again, but this time it didn’t keep its distance. It rushed toward us, hatchet raised in the air. Morgan and I crouched against the fence, huddled together.
The bunny stood over us and took a wild swing. I ducked and the hatchet slammed into the wood just above our heads, sending splintered pieces raining over us. We screamed for help, as loud as our throats would allow. The houses in Shana’s neighborhood were pretty far apart, but someone would have to hear us.
The bunny took another swing and missed. I wasn’t about to roll over and play the sitting duck while this sicko hacked me to death. I grabbed Morgan and barreled into the rabbit. It grunted as it stumbled backwards, caught off guard. We raced for the sliding glass door but it was locked from the inside. We banged on the glass, shouting for Shana and Peyton to let us in.
Moments later, the bunny stood behind us watching, probably getting off on how scared we were. What was it waiting for? We were trapped and at its mercy. I imagined the rabbit sinking the hatchet into my back before help could arrive. Thankfully Shana and Peyton came charging down the stairs looking alarmed.
Shana slid the door open and pulled us inside. “What the hell is going on?”
I slammed the door closed and looked out into the darkness. The bunny was gone.
Morgan bent over trying to catch her breath. “Someone . . . in a bunny mask . . . was trying to kill us.”
The girls’ eyes grew wide. “What? No way!”
Foolishly, against all our protests, Shana stepped outside to investigate. I pleaded with her to come back, but she wouldn’t listen. She returned a moment later. “There’s no one out there, but what the hell happened to our fence? My parents are going to be pissed.”
“Don’t you see?” Morgan screamed. “The evil bunny did that with the hatchet.” She hurried over to the couch where she’d carelessly thrown her purse earlier and fished for her keys. “I’m leaving right now. I have to get out of here. I’m going to the police.”
I grabbed the keys from her. “No. Morgan, if that thing wanted to kill us, it would have. It had more than one opportunity. Obviously, it just wanted to scare us and it worked.”
Shana and Peyton looked at each other, confused but I didn’t have it in me to explain. “Let’s just go.” Then I turned to Shana. “I’m sorry about the fence.”
I had no idea what she would end up telling her parents but that was the least of my worries. Morgan was such a wreck that I had to drive her car. I kept telling her it was just some stupid person playing a sick joke, but the more I said it, the less I believed that myself.
21
I’m not the boy bound to his seat
Or the one locked in the pen
Better figure me out real fast
Or game over, I win!
I found the note in the front pocket of my backpack Friday afternoon. I racked my brain trying to figure out how it had gotten there. Since I couldn’t remember leaving my backpack unattended, I guessed it was possible someone could have slipped it in there while it was on my back. If they had done it carefully enough, I wouldn’t have noticed. I didn’t bother
telling Morgan because I feared another note would send her straight to Detective Nichols and then the clues would stop. No matter what the note said, Zander was still number one on my list of suspects.
Later that afternoon, as I lay stretched across my bed studying the latest note I’d received, the doorbell rang. Immediately, I wondered if it were Charlotte or the twins, or Coach, until I remembered they were gone and would never ring my doorbell again. Maybe it was Morgan or one of her new friends.
I looked through the peephole to discover I was wrong. Standing on the other side of the door was a face that would have rivaled her sister’s beauty in a couple of years—Charlotte’s thirteen-year-old sister, Marcella.
Wrapping my fingers around the doorknob, I took a few deep breaths. The resemblance was uncanny, almost like Charlotte had grown her hair out and returned from the dead. I remembered Marcella trying to tag along with us when we were in junior high and she was seven or eight. I used to call them Char-and-Mar. Charlotte hated it.
Forcing the brightest smile I could manage, I swung the door open. “Marcella, hey. Long time, no see.” The last time I’d seen her had been at Char’s funeral. Marcella had spent the entire service with her face buried in her older brother’s suit jacket.
She grinned nervously. “Hey, Lela. Can I come in for a second?”
I realized I was still holding the note. Quickly, I folded it and slid it into the back pocket of my jeans.
“Sure.” I let her in and offered her a seat on the couch.
She sat down holding a small rectangular box between her shaking fingers. I lowered myself into the love seat a few feet away wondering what I should say. Charlotte had been my friend, but she was Marcella’s sister. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to you after everything . . . I’m so sorry, Marcella.”
She nodded, staring down at the box. “It still doesn’t seem real. Every day I keep looking at the clock wondering when she’s going to come in until I remember she’s never coming home again.”
I had no idea what to say to that. I didn’t know what it felt like to even have brothers and sisters, much less what it felt like to lose one.
Marcella pulled her long, dark hair over her shoulder. Her hair was thick and lustrous just like Char’s had been. Marcella laughed to herself. “I was so mad at her when she’d cut her hair. I thought she did it just so we wouldn’t look so much alike.”
“No, that wasn’t it at all. She saw this model in a magazine—it was an ad for some face cleanser, I think—she thought the cut would look good on her too and she wanted to try something different so she chopped it all off.”
Marcella shook her head, her dark eyes sparkling at the remembrance of her sister. “That was Char, crazy and impulsive. I always wanted to be more like that.”
“Char was special.”
After an awkward moment of silence passed, Marcella held the box toward me. “I wanted you to have this.”
I took the box and lifted the lid. Inside lay a dainty gold chain with a lioness charm. Lions were her favorite animal. She even had a cat named Simba. I’d forgotten about Simba until then—I hoped Marcella was taking good care of him.
Charlotte had worn that charm and necklace every single day.
Marcella watched me stare at the charm. “She didn’t wear it that day. I had . . . borrowed it. It went perfectly with this gold-sequined shirt I was wearing. It was picture day and I wanted to look special.”
I ran my finger over the golden lioness and laughed. “Char was always complaining about how you kept taking her things.”
Marcella smiled for a moment and then her face crumpled. Tears streamed down her pale cheeks. I sat beside her, wrapping my arm around her shoulder.
“I was always annoying her,” she cried.
I tightened my embrace. “That’s part of being a sister, I guess.”
“The last time we talked she was screaming at me about not being able to find this necklace. I’d tucked it into my shirt and lied to her. That was the last thing I told my sister—a lie.”
I held her hand and squeezed it. “Marcella, I’m sure we all have regrets, but Char loved you and she knew you loved her.”
Marcella sniffed and pulled some tissue from her pocket. “I guess. I don’t know how to feel. I’m sad about my sister being gone but then I’m also so angry. How could Neil do that to her and the others? What had she ever done to him?”
“I don’t know. We may never understand.”
She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “I want to kill him, Lela. Him and whoever was with him. Sometimes I’m almost glad the other person wasn’t caught because maybe I can find them and . . .”
She didn’t have to finish her thought. I knew exactly how she felt. There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t want to play vigilante. The Hex was like family to me and someone had taken them away.
“Owen says the same thing. He wants to find them and do to them what they did to Charlotte. Does that make us bad people?”
Owen was Charlotte and Marcella’s twenty-year-old brother. He’d been home from college ever since the tragedy. “No, Marcella. It makes you human. It’s perfectly normal to want to hurt someone who hurt the person you love, especially when they’ve taken them away from you and in such a brutal way. But that doesn’t mean we can act on these feelings. Let the police do their job.”
Marcella sniffed, thinking that over. “Mom talks about you all the time.”
My heart sunk thinking about Mrs. March. I should stop by and check on her sometimes. “Really? What does she say?”
“Well . . . she doesn’t really believe you when you say you don’t remember anything. She says you were there so you have to know who the other person was. She says it’s strange that you were the only survivor.”
I hadn’t been expecting that. Was Mrs. March insinuating that I had something to do with it? Part of me was angered at being called a liar but the other part of me understood. “Marcella, if I knew anything else, I would have told the police immediately. I want the other person caught more than I want anything.”
She bit her bottom liplike she wanted to believe me. “But how can you not remember anything?”
“I was drugged and that caused me to be out of it for a few hours. What ever happened during that time—I have no idea. I wish I did.”
She looked down at the lioness charm again and nodded. “I believe you. You were Char’s best friend, that’s why you should have that.”
I placed the lid over the box because I couldn’t stand to look at it anymore. “I’ll cherish this forever.”
I stroked Marcella’s hair. “I promise you, I’m going to find the person who did this to them. I promise that on my life.”
She stayed with me and cried for a long time. I hoped she believed what I told her because I’d meant every word of it.
Hunter and I sat on the hood of the Rover eating tacos I had picked up. He’d had to work that night and after the last note and everything that had happened with Zander, I really needed to see him. I’d stopped buy Hunter’s favorite taco place, grabbed a few and then headed out to the site where he was working. Clark Construction was working on a new office building complex.
As we ate, there were a few guys left packing things away, but everyone was mostly gone.
I told Hunter about the bunny attack, my visit from Marcella and the notes—all of them. He stayed quiet and I wasn’t sure what I wanted him to say.
I took a bite of my chicken taco and chewed slowly. “So, whoever’s writing these notes is following us. They know we’ve been to Shawn’s and Zander’s houses.” Sudden chills ran through my bones at the thought of someone watching me. Were they watching me then?
“Of course Zander would have known that we were at his house—but as for the other stuff, if Zander is involved, that means someone is working with him.”
Hunter was unusually quiet. The only sounds coming from him were the crunching of his taco. “You really think it�
��s Zander? I have to say, I just don’t see it.”
He also hadn’t seen the anger in Zander that day at his house. “Finding those papers folded into hexagons in his room is too much of a coincidence.”
Hunter had no answer for that. Even though I was leaning toward Zander, I couldn’t stop looking. I remembered how it felt to be accused of murdering my friends. Detective Bloom was so sure I had done it that the detectives weren’t going to put forth much effort looking into other suspects. If Neil hadn’t confessed, I would have gone down for it all and he would have gotten away with it. I had to keep looking into other possibilities.
I kept talking because Hunter’s silence had grown uncomfortable some time ago. “So, if it’s not Shawn or Zander, who could it be?”
“Maybe you were right,” Hunter said finally. “Maybe it does have something to do with the officer. Think about it. Shawn’s in prison. He could have bragged to someone. Those guys are always taking information back to the police at the chance of getting time off their sentence. Maybe Shawn told another inmate who told a cop. Maybe one of them went too far trying to get revenge for their own.”
The more I thought about that, the more it became a possibility, but there was an important detail missing. “Let’s say it was a cop trying to get back at us. How would they have hooked up with Neil? How would they have known about his connection to us?”
Hunter shook his head. “I don’t know. You need to go to the police, Lela. We’re really not equipped to be figuring this stuff out.”
I wrapped my half of taco up and placed it in the bag. “I want to, but if I do, the clues will stop and then we’ll never find out who did this. The police won’t learn any more than they already do unless Neil finally breaks and tells them.”
Hunter had that faraway look in his eyes again and I wondered what he was thinking about. “What is it?”
He looked down at the last bite of his taco. “I don’t know . . . this is just a lot.”
