He studied my face for a moment and then smiled.
Oh God, was it obvious that my heart was pounding? It was like those scenes in movies where the girl thinks the guy’s going to kiss her, so she closes her eyes and puckers up. Except I wasn’t just puckering my lips— I was puckering my whole soul.
“I can’t help it, Alexis,” he said. “I want to make you think too much . . . and then I want to hear the things you’ve been thinking . . . too much.”
I was lying down, but that made me dizzy. This was all too much. I felt myself start to blush, so I raised my arm, intending to cover my face.
Carter grabbed my hand and held it.
Our eyes locked together. “You aren’t the person you try to make people think you are,” he said, sounding as though this had just dawned on him. “I feel . . . safe . . . when I talk to you.”
My heart could have exploded.
“Lexi.”
I grabbed my hand away and sat up as fast as I could. Carter sat up too, and raked his fingers through his hair.
Five feet away, still and wordless as a statue, was Kasey.
“Is something wrong with Dad?” I asked.
She shook her head. Then her gaze moved from me to Carter.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Kase . . . you remember Carter,” I said. Carter stood up and held his hand out to me. He pulled me to my feet and didn’t let go.
“It’s getting late,” Kasey said. She scowled, noticing our joined hands.
“Did Mom send you?”
“No.”
Anger rose up in me like a tidal wave. “Go home, Kasey. I’ll be there soon.”
“I’m hungry,” she said calmly.
“So cook something.”
“You’d rather be with him than with me?” she said, her voice small and hurt. “I’m your sister.”
Carter turned and touched my shoulder. “Go on,” he said. “We can continue this another time.”
I shook my head, more out of disbelief than protest. I could have strangled Kasey.
“Do you want me to drive you?” Carter asked.
“Thanks, but we’ll walk,” I said. I couldn’t risk exposing the only good thing in my life to my sister. What if she started talking crazy in the car? Stories, dolls, stealing stuff from school . . . Oh, maybe she’d steal something from Carter. That would be just fantastic.
I turned to Carter and felt a smile fight its way onto my lips.
“Walk carefully,” he said lightly. Then he bent down and kissed me on the cheek. “That’s for the nice things you said.”
“I didn’t even—”
“Can we go?” Kasey interrupted. “Walking home is going to take forever.”
I don’t care if she’s totally lost it, I thought. I’m going to murder her.
“Bye,” I said. Kasey had started walking away.
“Good to see you again, Kasey,” Carter called.
I looked at Kasey to see what she would do. She turned and glared at me, not even glancing at Carter.
Nice.
I ignored her the whole walk home. I was done trying to help her if she wasn’t going to try to help herself.
After making a sandwich, I went straight upstairs and locked myself in my bedroom with the stereo turned way up.
A half hour later, I heard Mom’s voice from the hall.
“Alexis?” she called. “Are you all right? Why is your music so loud?”
I went to the door and opened it, then went back and sat on my bed. She wandered in and sat next to me.
I switched off the music. “How’s Dad?”
“He’s fine,” she said. “Maybe you can stop by after school tomorrow.”
“I’ll try.”
“Are you feeling sick?” she asked, and put her wrist against my forehead. She drew back in surprise. “You have a goose egg.”
“I know,” I said. “Someone knocked me down at school yesterday.” Seeing the concerned look on her face, I added, “Not on purpose. With a door.”
Her brow wrinkled the way it does when she’s worried. “They didn’t call me.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” I said, and thinking of Carter made me smile.
“Okay,” Mom said, apparently not interested in the details. “Let me know if you want something for it. You don’t have a fever.”
“I think I’ll lie down.”
“All right, honey,” she said. It sounded so alien to hear her say something momlike. She stood up and awkwardly touched my forehead. Then she looked around my room. “You’re so tidy,” she said approvingly. “You must have gotten it from your father. Certainly not from me.”
True. She’s pretty sloppy for a mom.
Her eyes stopped on the bookshelves. “What’s wrong with your yearbooks?” she asked.
I looked at the shelf where all of my school yearbooks, from kindergarten up, are stored. The last one, my freshman yearbook, was missing, causing the whole row to lean at an annoying angle.
“One’s gone,” I said. Odd. My thoughts flashed to Kasey.
“It’s not lost, is it?” I almost heard an accusation in Mom’s voice—like I’d sold it for drug money or something.
“Well, technically,” I said. “But I’m sure it’ll turn up.”
She sighed. “Those things cost a fortune.”
Just as I was about to reply, a cell phone ring blared from across the hallway, and Mom sprang up off the bed.
“I’ll be right back,” she said.
I sighed and leaned back, hugging a pillow to my chest and closing my eyes.
A couple of minutes later Mom came out of her bedroom saying, “Okay . . . oh . . . thank you . . . yes . . . okay . . . yes, please do . . .”
She clapped the phone shut. Then she looked at me, but her eyes were unfocused.
“What?” I asked.
“That was a detective from the police department,” she said, fluttering her hands in the air. “He said they have reason to suspect foul play . . . They looked at the car’s brakes, and the wires had been . . . It looked as if they’d been cut.”
I sat straight up. “Someone sabotaged Dad’s car?”
“Yes, but . . .” She shook her head and lowered herself onto the mattress. “No, Alexis . . . not his car—mine. He was going to drop it off to get my oil changed.”
I sat back against the headboard and looked at Mom, who was just staring down at the carpet.
“Oh my goodness,” she said, her voice shaky. “Listen, don’t tell Kasey about this. It would be too much for her.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sure.”
Mom touched my forehead gently before standing up and making her way out into the hall, dazed.
Thinking about Kasey made me think about the reports in her backpack.
Was it possible that the same kids who did that somehow came to my house and did this? Decided to pull a prank on our parents? If Mimi was mad enough about her arm, maybe she put part of the blame on Mom. . . .
But that would be, like, attempted murder. Even the most obnoxious eighth grader wouldn’t try to kill someone else’s mother.
Unless . . .
Unless she thought Kasey would be in the car.
A half hour later, the doorbell rang. Thinking it might be the police, I rushed to the top of the stairs and watched Mom open the door. But it was just a pizza delivery guy.
Mom looked up at me. “Are you hungry?”
I shook my head.
Mom looked tired. Her face was pale and her hair was tugged back into a sloppy bun.
“Can you get your sister, then?”
I swallowed hard, just as Kasey bumped into me from behind. It was enough of an impact to make me grab on to the wall, feeling a split-second panic that I was going to fall down the stairs.
“Oops,” she said.
Mom took the pizza into the kitchen, and Kasey took the steps at half her usual speed. Halfway down, she stopped and turned to look at me.
“
What’s your problem?” she asked.
Your friends are trying to kill you, I thought, but I forced my shoulders back and kept my voice strong. “I don’t have a problem. . . . Listen, do you think we should talk to Mom about those reports in your backpack?”
Her hand squeezed the railing so tightly that the muscles in her neck seemed to tense up.
“No,” she said. “We oughtn’t.”
“We what?”
She glared at me. “I said no. It’s done. Resolved. I already took them back to school.”
“You did?”
She made an irritated noise. “I’m not completely helpless, you know.”
She took the rest of the stairs two at a time and slipped into the kitchen.
I stared after her while my thoughts rattled around in my head.
Nope. I didn’t believe her.
I crept down the hall to Kasey’s room. Inside, the only light was a faint slant of yellow spilling in from the hall, illuminating a little display of threadbare rag dolls on the other side of the room. When my eyes had adjusted and the lumps of blackness had taken on furniture shapes, I looked around for Kasey’s book bag.
I found it on the floor between the bed and the doll shelves on the far wall, and as I crouched on the carpet I felt as if dozens of pairs of eyes were watching me, angry at my trespass.
The bag was unzipped.
And empty.
It had basic school stuff—pens, a couple of empty notebooks, the last two issues of Doll Fancy (no wonder she had no friends left, if she read that stuff at school)— but no reports.
I stood up and surveyed the semidarkness, trying to figure out where she would have stashed them. I even remotely considered the possibility that she was telling the truth.
And that’s when I saw my freshman yearbook lying open at the foot of the bed.
It was open to a page of last year’s seniors, and Kasey had made a red mark on one girl’s portrait. Why would she do that?
I turned the book so I could see it better in the light from the hall.
And then the light grew narrower.
Under my gaze, the door jerked a little, almost as if I’d woken it up.
And then slowly, an inch at a time, it began to close.
I grabbed the yearbook, and the door slammed shut in front of me, closing me in the dark.
Fear pulsed through me like flashes of light. I was paralyzed by shock, too frightened even to move, although some distant part of my brain was yelling at me, Get out!
And then came the worst part by far.
For a split second I thought it was my imagination, but I knew—I just knew it wasn’t.
A puff of cold, wet air on my neck. The smell of rotten eggs.
I yanked the door open, practically throwing myself at the wall across the hallway. I hardly had time to look back at Kasey’s door before it slammed shut again.
I ran into my room, switched on my light, and locked myself in.
After a few minutes I caught my breath and sat down on the floor near the wall opposite the door. I wanted a clear view.
What was that?
After a couple of minutes I convinced myself that I’d overreacted. The cold air could have been caused by an open window, which would also explain the breeze that slammed the door in my face. The smell was just musty old dolls.
I set the yearbook down on the floor and flipped through it. All in all, I saw probably eight girls whose pictures had red marks, just a little check mark in the corner of the photo. . . . Some of them I didn’t know, but a few I knew all too well . . . Pepper Laird . . . Megan Wiley—
But Megan’s was different.
There was a big, red X drawn through her picture.
In all fairness, it would make sense if you thought I drew the X myself, but I didn’t. My obsessive neatness pervades every aspect of my life; I was the kid who hung Barbie’s clothes on their little hangers at the end of every play session, and parked her pink Corvette in its space under the dresser. No happy-face stickers ever stuck to any of my bedroom furniture. And my yearbooks, though they represent some of the most miserable hours of my life, are pristine.
It was Kasey, obviously. But why would she do that to Megan’s picture?
I mean, how would she even know who Megan was?
And then I remembered the tacked-on ending to my story from the basement.
It wasn’t late, but I felt completely drained. The previous two nights’ meager sleep hadn’t been enough to keep me going, especially not when faced with a little sister dabbling in vandalism and parents being targeted for assassination.
After I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and put on my pajamas, I went downstairs to check the dead bolt on the front door. It was locked.
I checked the back door too, and then went through the kitchen to check the door that led from the side yard into the garage. This is where someone would have had to come in, to mess with one of the cars.
Dad’s car was parked in its usual spot.
As I neared the door, I stopped short.
There was a chain lock.
No way could someone have come in through this door.
That meant that whoever had come inside had been through the house. Or . . .
A strong chill went through me, making my hands shake, as I recalled Kasey’s dirty socks.
Had my sister, in a last-ditch effort for popularity, actually joined in on some twisted scheme to sabotage our mother’s car?
Had she come out here and opened the chain lock, to let someone in?
It didn’t make sense. She insisted that she hadn’t been in the garage—
But then, she insisted that she hadn’t been in the hallway that morning, either.
I trudged upstairs and closed my bedroom door behind me, hesitating for a split second.
“Shhhh . . .”
I opened my eyes to see Kasey sitting on the edge of my bed, luminous in the blue moonlight.
“Shhh . . .” she repeated.
“Kasey,” I said, “what . . . ?” Behind her, the door gaped open into the dim hallway.
“Hello, Alexis,” Kasey whispered. “I saw you in the dark.”
“What are you talking about?”
In the low light, everything seemed drained of color, like it was happening in black-and-white. Even Kasey’s eyes shone bright black with flecks of white.
But she didn’t answer.
Now I was wide awake. “What do you want, Kasey?”
But her attention had wandered away from me. I followed her gaze to my desk, where the yearbook lay open.
“Why did you draw in my yearbook?” I asked.
She ignored the question. “Come play with me, Alexis,” she said, and her eyes burned even brighter. “Come outside and play with me.”
“Are you crazy?” I kept my eyes on her monochromatic face and reached my hand out toward the lamp on the nightstand. “I don’t want to go outside.”
I switched the light on.
She ducked her head away, but I swear, for the split second I saw them—her eyes were green.
“GET AWAY FROM ME!” I ordered.
She stayed hunched over, facing the door for a few seconds, and then she turned around and looked at me through blank eyes—blue eyes.
“What is that?” I asked. “Some stupid contact lens thing?”
She seemed puzzled. “No, Lexi . . . I have twenty-twenty vision.”
“Go to bed, Kase.”
“Why did you want me to come in here?” she asked, looking around.
Was she kidding?
“What are you talking about? I didn’t want you in here . . . It’s the middle of the night!”
She slumped and leaned away. Her hand brushed the hair back away from her face. It was a gesture of elegance, practiced and casual.
Then she reached out to my arm. Her fingers brushed my skin. “We can be friends,” she whispered.
I felt a sharp burn and looked down to find four red marks acros
s my skin, where she’d touched me.
“You know what?” I said. “I’m sick of this. Get out of here.”
Kasey stood up suddenly, and grabbing the yearbook from my nightstand, threw it at the wall as hard as she could.
“What—?”
Then, with hard eyes, she backed away and hit herself in the face.
It took me a moment to process what I was seeing— my sister with an angry red mark on her jaw—and by the time I realized what she’d done, she was huddled on the floor screaming at the top of her lungs.
A second later Mom came running in, bleary-eyed. She looked at my sister crying on the floor, and then up at me, and the look in her eyes sent a chill through my body. I sat in a ball on the far corner of the bed. I couldn’t find any words to explain.
Mom reached down and touched Kasey on the shoulder.
Kasey looked up at her, the red mark on her jaw getting brighter by the second.
Mom and I both gasped at the sight.
“Kasey . . .” Mom whispered, kneeling down to get a closer look.
My sister huddled down tighter and shied away from Mom’s hand.
“Mommy,” Kasey sobbed.
“What, baby? What happened?” Mom cooed, putting her hand on Kasey’s back.
“Mom—” I said urgently.
Mom held up her hand, and I knew there was no use. There would be no “baby” for Alexis tonight.
“Lexi hit me,” my sister said between choking sobs.
Mom took a moment to study the mark on Kasey’s face, then looked up at me.
“She’s lying,” I said. “She did that to herself.”
“To herself?” Mom repeated. “That doesn’t make any sense!”
“And she threw that book at me,” Kasey added.
Mom glanced over at the yearbook, which of course had fallen open to Megan Wiley’s page, displaying the scribbled red X over her picture-perfect smile.
“Mom, can we talk about this?” I asked. “Alone?”
Mom looked up at me incredulously.
“You don’t understand . . .” I said, even though I knew it was useless. She didn’t believe me. Not in the slightest.
“You’re right, Alexis,” she said. “I don’t understand.”
“Don’t be mad, Mommy,” Kasey said. “Lexi knows she oughtn’t hit people. She’s just sad.”
“Do you know what kind of day I’ve had?” Mom exclaimed. “Alexis, I know you’re angry, but you don’t have to take it out on your little sister!”
Bad Girls Don't Die Page 10
