A Vicious Cycle

by Eliza Brookes

  “I think it’s time we looked through Penny’s things, don’t you?”

  James nodded slowly and walked out of the room. Allegra gave Ruby’s room once last look before closing the door behind her. To her surprise, Penny’s room was just a few doors down.

  “Here we are,” James said heavily. Allegra felt like she stepped into a whole other world. Penny’s room was ultra-modern with abstract art and band posters announcing her individuality from their place on her walls. It was messy, but not dirty. Her make-up lay strewn all over a table in the corner. What stood out was the abundance of camera equipment lying around.

  “Didn’t she like reading?” Allegra asked, commenting on the absence of books.

  “Sarah insists that all books be kept in the library. Although Penelope wasn’t very interested in all that.”

  Allegra poked around for a second before she started opening drawers and lifting things off the floor.

  “What are you looking for?” James asked in surprise.

  “This,” Allegra said triumphantly, holding an expensive looking laptop up.

  “I should’ve known,” James grumbled.

  “Stop being such a snob,” Allegra quipped, “a girl like Penny would have lived on this thing. Besides, if Sarah continued her father’s tradition, then she must have kept a diary.”

  “She didn’t” James told her, “I never saw her write in one.”

  “That’s because she didn’t write,” Allegra informed him, powering up the laptop. “Welcome to the age of the internet. I’m guessing she either wrote a blog or had some sort of video diary.” James couldn’t stop his curiosity and peeked over her shoulder as she systematically went through all the folders on the laptop.

  “I told you so,” he crowed when they didn’t find anything.

  “Hold on,” Allegra told him. She quickly pulled up Penny’s search history and followed a link to the last website she visited.

  “It’s just a movie poster,” James said in confusion as the image popped up.

  “I can’t believe it,” Allegra said in amazement.

  “What?”

  “It’s a secret website. This kid was smart.” Allegra clicked on the image and a password bar popped up. “Do you know what her password was?”

  “I didn’t even know the website existed. Of course, I don’t.”

  “We need to find it. If we find the password, we’ll have her diary.”

  Chapter Seven

  Allegra didn’t sleep well. Not only was she in a strange place, but the house creaked and groaned during the night. Her mind kept replaying the same information on a loop inside her head, preventing her from falling asleep. She had a feeling that she wouldn’t be able to sleep until she was back in her own bed with answers. By the time the sun rose, she was wide awake and very irritable.

  Deciding to get an early start, she threw the covers to one side and prepared to meet the challenge of another day in the Kinsleigh household. She quickly crept down stairs, careful not to make a noise. Unfortunately, the front door was locked, preventing her daring escape. It occurred to her that maybe someone was trying to make sure she didn’t leave without them knowing, but she dismissed that thought as paranoia. The family was odd, not psychopathic.

  She made her way to the kitchen. If she couldn’t leave yet, she might as well get some food. It took her a few wrong turns, but eventually she found her way to a massive kitchen. To her surprise, she wasn’t the only one there. James and an unfamiliar woman were furiously working, keeping an eye on the clock.

  “And here I thought I was an early riser,” she joked, taking a seat at the gigantic kitchen island.

  “Not in this house,” James explained shortly. “Sarah likes to keep us on our toes. If breakfast isn’t ready by the time she rings that bell, we’re in trouble.”

  “How charming,” Allegra grimaced.

  “You have no idea,” the woman quipped, looking more than a little harassed.

  “I’m Allegra, I don’t think we’ve met,” Allegra introduced herself to the woman who was now flipping an omelet like her life depended on it.

  “Scarlett,” she offered hurriedly, “but everyone calls me Red.”

  Suddenly a sharp ringing echoed through the kitchen and the two began working even faster. With practiced ease, James set a tray and Red quickly plonked all the food onto the tray as he finished. James finished the show by placing a metal dome over the tray and gliding out of the room as quickly as he could.

  “That was impressive,” Allegra complimented, her stomach growling.

  “You get things done when a dragon’s breathing down your neck,” Red quipped in amusement. “Now I get to relax until snack time. Can I get you anything?”

  “That would be great, but I can make my own food if you’d like to rest. I think you’re going to need it.”

  “No, I have to make food for the rest of the dragons. One more serving won’t hurt.”

  “You know, dragons seem like an appropriate animal for this family.”

  “Trust me, you have no idea.”

  “Well, I think you’re helping me get a good idea.”

  “So, you’re here to find out what happened to Penny?”

  “That’s right, did you know her well?”

  Red’s ruddy face lost some color and Allegra saw the emotion well up in her eyes. Red wasn’t the most attractive woman; her mousy brown hair was pulled back into a severe ponytail and her face was prematurely wrinkled from being out in the sun. Her most striking feature was her blue eyes that were surrounded by laugh lines. Red wasn’t conventionally beautiful, but her jolly personality made up for all that. It shone out of her like the sun, warm and comforting in the cold and foreboding house. Allegra had no doubt that Penny would have loved spending time in this part of the house.

  “I knew the little rascal. She was always down here and under my feet,” despite her gruff tone, love emanated from Red’s face. Penny was sorely missed by everyone she came into contact with.

  “I’m sorry she’s gone,” Allegra said sincerely and Red nodded.

  “So am I,” Red mumbled sadly. An awkward silence settled over the room as Red started chopping some onions. “You know,” she said suddenly, “she was rarely in the house. She was always in that tree on the edge of the property.”

  “Please tell me it’s not the one where we found her,” Allegra said, dread clouding her voice.

  “The very same. I went down there this morning. I think you should check it out. She was always climbing up there, if you climb up a bit there’s a hollow in the trunk that supports your back nicely. She’d always scamper up there to read. I’d have to pull her down some days.”

  “James says she wasn’t an avid reader?”

  “Shows you what he knows,” Red scoffed, “she didn’t read the books approved by her grandmother. She also hated the thought of having to keep her books in the family library. She kept all her books in the tree. In a waterproof bag.”

  “She sounds like she was a bit of a rebel.”

  “A bit?” Red chuckled, “She lived to cause trouble.” Suddenly the shrill bell rang again and Red sucked in a sharp breath. Allegra looked at her sympathetically and Red shook her head in annoyance. “You know what? You might as well go have a look down there. This is going to take a while. Once the old dragon lady starts complaining, it takes about an hour for her to stop.”

  “I’ll be on my way,” Allegra decided, saluting Red as she left.

  Memories of the previous day swirled in her head as she made her way down the same path they followed the previous day. Allegra had to suppress a shudder as she ducked under the police tape and stood over the double grave at the base of the tree. She didn’t waste any time digging around, since the police were very thorough in that area. Instead, she focused her energy on climbing up the tree.

  She struggled to climb up, since the dense tree didn’t have many branches and had very thick foliage. At one point her foot slipped and she fe
ll against the wall that was right next to the tree. Cursing her bad luck and feeling a few bruises forming, Allegra finally made her way to the spot that Red had told her about.

  Suddenly she understood why Penny would use this spot to hide away from her family. If you didn’t know it was there, you never would have found it on your own. A sturdy branch made for a comfortable seat, and thanks to a strange dip in the tree’s trunk, you could put your back to the trunk and balance yourself nicely.

  Allegra sat there for a moment, just enjoying the solitude for a bit. Even though she had just been in the house for a day, she already felt like it was suffocating her. The atmosphere was tense, and she could feel Sarah’s overbearing presence wherever she went. With each passing minute, it became more and more evident why Penny chose so many hiding places.

  With that thought, Allegra sprung back into action. Sitting up in the tree made it easy to forget that it had been Ruby’s tombstone for more than fifty years. The beautiful resting place was now forever tainted by the fact that it was where two young women met their end. Allegra carefully crouched and began looking for the books Red said were hidden up in that spot. At first, she couldn’t see anything. But the more she looked, the more she found signs of Penny’s presence. A few crushed twigs here, a hidden Tupperware dish full of jellybeans there. Penny had even hidden a water bottle up there.

  It had a camouflage design and was suspended with a small piece of twine. Penny was nothing if resourceful. She was about to give up when she saw that the branch she was sitting on extended down to the wall that surrounded the property. By moving very carefully, she managed to shift her weight onto the wall and sit there comfortably. There, hidden in the space between the wall and the branch was a small bundle covered with a plastic bag.

  She cheered silently and pulled the bag out, eagerly looking through the contents. Unfortunately, there was no diary in the stack of books that Penny kept up there. To her surprise, the books were all romance novels with dramatic heroines gracing the front cover.

  “You weren’t just a rebel, Penny, you were a romantic,” Allegra mused to herself. She picked the first one and quickly skimmed through the pages. One passage caught her eye and she read through it. Her cheeks went blood red and she quickly shut the book. “You were a serious romantic,” she chuckled, shaking her head slightly. Allegra paged through the rest of the books, but they revealed nothing except for Penny’s steamy guilty pleasure. She quickly put the books back, although she wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as if the owner was going to come back for them any time soon.

  It just felt like the right thing to do, she told herself as she climbed back to the reading spot. As she was about to sit, she noticed something strange about the hollow. She brushed her fingers over the carving in the tree. Someone had carved two sets of initials into the tree. They were deep, and the carving looked fresh. Unless someone brought a serious carving knife up the tree, she guessed that someone had repeatedly gone over the carving.

  She traced her finger over the two sets of initials. RA+MS. Over and over again. There were a few clumsy hearts carved into the tree as well, but someone had given up on them and focused on the initials again.

  “RA?” Allegra asked out loud, staring at the initials that bugged her memory. Suddenly, it hit her. Ruby Allerton. Was it possible that Ruby also spent most of her time hiding in the tree? A stiff breeze rushed through the trees, raising goosebumps on Allegra’s skin. How was it possible that Penny knew so much about Ruby? And that they were connected in so many ways?

  Allegra pulled her phone out of her pocket and used the light to see if there were more carvings. To her surprise, there were a few more carvings in the branches around her. One branch that was within eye level bore the inscription “1938-1956”. Another spelled out “Penny” in clumsy lettering. And one, hidden away by a few leaves held the word “sorry” engraved deeply into the bark.

  She quickly scrolled down to her contact list, but before she could call Greta, she noticed that she had no signal up in the tree. Deciding that it would be best to show her friends what she found, she quickly snapped a few pictures of all the carvings that she found in the tree. It would be easier and more comfortable to study them when she was safely on the ground.

  Allegra was about to climb down when she looked at the biggest carving, RA+MS, again. It was the deepest carving and she couldn’t figure out what the MS stood for. It didn’t make any sense to her. Sarah had mentioned that a local boy had been infatuated with Ruby and she briefly wondered if his initials matched those carved into the tree. But if this was Ruby’s hiding place, then why would she carve his initials into the tree?

  She quickly climbed down from the hiding place feeling annoyed that she now had more questions than when she started. It looked like Penny wasn’t going to make it easy to find out what happened.

  Chapter Eight

  Allegra sat on her bed with Penny, her laptop opened in front of her and a few of the pictures she took in the tree displayed on her phone screen. Greta and Ashlee were on the other side of the screen, also puzzling over the pictures she had sent them.

  “This is just unsettling,” Ashlee remarked, frowning at one picture in particular.

  “And no one knows what her password could be?” Greta asked, frowning as she stirred a pot on her stove.

  “I only asked James, but Penny doesn’t seem like she was the type of person who would tell people about her super-secret website. She made the thing for a reason, there was no way she was going to share it with anyone else.”

  “The kid did have a flair for the dramatic,” Ashlee mused, “I mean, a secret hiding place and a secret website? That’s just overkill.”

  “Not really,” Allegra pointed out, “I had a lot of secrets as a kid. It’s just part of the fun, you know? Whenever I was mad at my mom I’d go hide in my secret place or come up with a secret code to vent about it.”

  “I remember when you tried to teach us your secret language one year,” Greta grinned fondly. When Allegra was a child, her mother sent her to Llewes Cove to spend time with her great-aunt. It was during those vacations that she met and spent time with her current friends. By the time she was sixteen, they had an unbreakable bond, which was a good thing because after that she wasn’t allowed back. The friends only saw each other ten years later when she came back to find out what happened to her great-aunt.

  “That was very lame,” Ashlee winced, shaking her head at the memory.

  “I remember you also had a few secrets of your own,” Greta pointed out defensively.

  “You try living with my mom for sixteen years and see what happens to you,” Ashlee quipped smartly. Greta grimaced and shook her head apologetically. No one wanted to do that.

  “I don’t think she would have chosen a complicated password. I mean, it looks like she visited the website often enough. If you want to get in quickly, you’re not going to choose a password with that many characters.”

  “Have you tried the title of one of those romance books?” Ashlee asked her.

  “Romance?” Greta chuckled, “Those are full-on bodice rippers. I can’t believe you found those. I mean, you can practically smell the filth on the pages. I didn’t know people were still into those.”

  “What’s wrong with liking them?” Ashlee asked in an icy tone.

  “Nothing,” Greta laughed, oblivious to Ashlee’s tone and expression, “I just thought that the kid was smart. That’s not exactly intellectual reading, if you catch my drift.”

  “I happen to know plenty of smart, sophisticated women who enjoy that particular genre.”

  “Yeah, as if. I’d like to meet one of these smart, sophisticated women who enjoy a good damsel and toxic masculinity. Come on, it’s the age of female empowerment, who would enjoy such degrading drivel?”

  “I do.” An awkward silence settled over Ashlee’s admission and Allegra quickly studied the pictures again to escape Greta’s pleading looks for help.

  “You’re j
oking,” Greta pleaded, blushing furiously.

  “Why would I be joking?”

  “For all the reasons I just mentioned? Those books are trash. They don’t do anything except portray women as mindless objects who will fall for any man who promises to be possessive and manly.”

  “How would you know? You don’t even read them.”

  “I have standards.”

  “And I don’t?”

  “No, obviously not.”

  “I can’t believe you’re read shaming me!”

  “Read shaming?”

  “Yes, shaming me based on what I read. You’re such a snob.”

  “You’re making that up.”

  Allegra ignored them as their fighting escalated and their insults became more inventive. One picture that kept catching her eye was the one of the initials. Why would someone keep carving over them? Wouldn’t one carving be enough? Why would someone carve Ruby’s initials so recently? On the other hand, they were so deep that they could have been carved by someone a long time ago and someone else kept tracing them into the tree again. Something in Allegra’s mind clicked and she cautiously reached for Penny’s laptop. She typed the five characters into the password bar and nearly had a heart attack when Penny’s face popped onto the screen.

  “Welcome weary traveler,” Penny greeted cheerfully. Allegra jumped in surprise and her friends stopped arguing and gaped at her in surprise. She quickly pressed pause and gazed in wonder at Penny’s excited face.

  “What was that?” Ashlee demanded in surprise.

  “That was Penny,” Allegra said in breathless excitement.

  “You guessed her password?” Greta asked, her eyes wide.

  “I didn’t guess,” Allegra said triumphantly, “it was those initials.”

  “How did you figure that out?”

  “Well, it was Penny’s hiding place, I don’t think anyone else was up there tracing over Ruby’s initials. It was only five characters long, and I had nothing else to put in.”