by L. E. Flynn
Two days later, she and Beck were done. My poison acted fast. Tabby was a mess, of course. I took her for ice cream and dried her tears and listened to her talk, knowing I was the reason she hurt but saying nothing.
But Beck never stopped caring about her. I could tell. They weren’t friends, exactly, but something else. Two people who went through something together. One who had been screwed over by the other but still managed to care.
(There’s an analogy here for me and Dallas, but I’m choosing to ignore it. Because what I did to him is much worse.)
My phone buzzes when I’m in the middle of composing a message to Beck—something long and emotional that I know I’ll never send. The new text is from Dallas. I know you saw me today—just talk to me, please.
I delete it instantly and erase everything I was typing to Beck. I send something else instead. It doesn’t matter—they don’t hear anything I say anyway.
What I said to Beck two months ago—what I told him about Mark—I knew it would set something off. I’m not sure why I did it. I guess I wanted to see how far people would go for Tabby.
Maybe I can’t handle the answer.
26
KEEGEN
I THINK IT WAS HOMECOMING when it all started to fall apart between Mark and Tabby. Yeah, like, three months in, that’s when relationships start to get tough. I’m not being sarcastic. This is why I don’t do girlfriends. Although now Kyla keeps asking me what we are, and I know what she wants to hear, but I just want to tell her we’re humans, and we’re basically another kind of animal.
But at homecoming, Mark had this whole thing planned for Tabby, this romantic dinner the night before the football game. Then a few hours later I got a text saying he wanted to go out, so I figured they had yet another fight. We went to some house party. He drank, but not as much as I did. When I asked him what happened to his big date, he just let out this giant sigh. “She’s not returning my texts. I have no idea who she is.” He slapped his head. “I mean, where she is.”
“Tons of girls here,” I said, gesturing around. It was the same old crew, mostly seniors from Coldcliff Heights and some leftovers like me, trapped between high school and the Real World that comes after it, but they’d be new to Mark, at least a body to keep him warm.
“But you don’t get it,” he said, sitting on the arm of a dingy brown couch. His arms were giant, like they were about to hulk out of his shirt. My body used to look like that, once upon a time, when I swam and worked out with Mark. Not anymore. “I don’t want tons of girls. I want her.”
But why, I wanted to ask. Sure, Tabby was hot, but so were most of the girls there. She must have been magic in bed or something. Maybe she could unhinge her jaw. Mark was too good a guy to ever talk about shit like that with me, not like the guys at the Stop & Shop. Tabby came in a lot to get random stuff. Diet soda, makeup remover, sometimes girl shit like tampons. She always wore the same tiny pajama shorts and tank top with no bra, almost like she was daring the poor guy cashing her out to picture what she looked like naked.
I tried telling Mark once, and he just laughed. “Typical Tabby. She hates getting dressed if she doesn’t have to. Come on, haven’t you ever left the house in your pajamas because you were too lazy to change?”
That was when I knew he had picked a side. That was when I knew there were sides to be taken at all.
I’m not gonna say what happened later that night. I mean, I was pretty wasted, and I lost track of Mark. I have no clue how he got home, and apparently I left the party without my shoes, because I woke up the next day with the soles of my feet black, my socks in a wrung-out clump on the carpet, two dirty snakes. There was a strange girl in my bed, and I didn’t think about Mark at all until he texted me later to say he was heading back to school early to get more time at the pool.
When I got around to responding, I asked him if he’d ever heard from Tabby, and he answered with one word. No.
I figured they were over. I hoped they were. I wanted Mark to go back to Princeton and find a girl his age, maybe one who was also super into sports and understood him. Mark wasn’t a guy who complained, but he’d told me a few times that Tabby just didn’t get it, all the hours he had to spend in the pool, at the gym.
“She wants to talk every single night,” he said. “She doesn’t get that I’m in bed by nine and up at four. I woke up today to seventeen missed calls from her, and a nasty text.”
I asked him to read me the text, so he did. It was long. Something along the lines of I know you’re out with another girl and that’s why you’re ignoring me, well if you’re gonna do that to me I can do that to you too, two can play that game, motherfucker. You think you’re so smart but I’m onto you.
“Just dump her,” I said. It was like talking to a kid, trying to explain the multiplication tables to somebody who just didn’t get it. “She’s crazy, dude.”
“But she’s not,” he said. “She’s just … had a rough past. Guys have lied to her a lot. And I love her. I just wish she trusted me.”
I knew—seriously, mark my words—I knew then that the rough past was bullshit. Tabby is the type of girl I know well. Basic upper-middle-class suburban white trash, made up of Starbucks cups and makeup and diet drinks and size-two dresses that are too short. She’s the type who likes to claim bad stuff has happened to her, but let’s face it, the so-called bad stuff—she’s the root of all of it. She’s the common denominator. And Mark fell for it. Weird, because usually I’m the one whose type is bad-news girls. He was new to it, didn’t know he was trapped, which was maybe why he didn’t even want to find a way out.
Now, they’re saying Tabby didn’t do this alone. That there was another guy, some poor sucker who was in on it with her. And I think I might know who it was.
27
BRIDGET
I’M THE ONLY ONE WHO SEES Tabby now. I mean, me and my parents. She’s here, but she’s not here. There are news vans camped outside. I wonder about the people inside them, if they have anything better to do. Tabby stands at the window and watches them.
“They’re making this my fault,” she says tonight, when we’re watching Tabby’s beloved Housewives in our pajamas. “They were always going to make it my fault. I have too many demons.”
“Everyone has a past,” I say. “They can’t hold it against you.”
She runs a finger over her eyebrow. “Not only can they hold it against me, but they’ll make it into a weapon and impale me with it.”
I don’t laugh, until she does, and she feels like regular Tabby again, not the girl I see online. Not the Blue-Eyed Boyfriend Killer, the face that launched a thousand comments. She’s makeup-free, hair in a neat bun, and she doesn’t look capable of hurting anyone.
“It’s about time something about this was funny.” Tabby gets up and grabs our empty popcorn bowl. “This house is like a tomb. Mom and Dad don’t even know how to act human in front of me anymore.”
She’s right. Mom and Dad are more like apparitions than people lately. Their heads are constantly down and they speak in hushed tones about everything that happened. They vacillate between ignoring Tabby and overcompensating by sucking up to her—Mom takes her Starbucks order pretty much daily, and today she came home with a new pair of fleece slippers. You’re stuck in the house, but at least you’re properly caffeinated with warm feet! Sometimes I catch Dad staring at Tabby like he has no idea who she is. I guess he hasn’t for a long time.
There were flowers on our porch today. I read the card. Can we talk?? I don’t know who sent them, or who needs to talk to her. I suffocated the bouquet in a big black garbage bag and stuffed it in the garage before anyone could see.
They reminded me of the flowers that showed up for Tabby last fall. They were orchids, blue and purple ones that weren’t found in nature, that had to be dyed to look that way. Tabby’s favorite. I saw them lined up on her dresser, the orchids, like little soldiers. They were cheap, the kind that came from a grocery store, and they were alread
y wilting, even the newer ones. There was a note on her desk that must have gone with one of the bouquets. Because u know why.
I rolled my eyes. Mark was prelaw at Princeton and couldn’t even bother to spell out the word you.
Then I went back into my own room and started a list that I would continue adding to for months to come: How to get rid of Mark, which I tore up when the police first came to our house. In confetti form in my wicker garbage basket, it didn’t seem so threatening anymore.
“I meant to ask,” Tabby says now, shuffling into the kitchen to open the fridge. “What did he want to talk to you about? Stewart. What did he ask?”
I stare at my feet, my socks dingy against the light hardwood of the living room floor. “I already told you. Just like, the sequence of events. Basic stuff. I didn’t tell them anything.”
She shuts the door hard, clutching a Saran Wrap–covered bowl of the macaroni and cheese Mom made for dinner last night. “There’s something I have to talk to you about.”
She makes me promise it’ll stay between us. And I’m good at keeping promises.
Excerpt from Tabby’s Diary
October 24, 2018
I’m pretty sure I’m not just paranoid. There are other girls. Keegan basically admitted it. I’m sure that’s why homecoming weekend was so awkward. Part of me is kind of relieved that it’s not just in my head, but the rest of me is devastated. I guess I was his summer fun. I don’t know why he doesn’t just break up with me.
UPPER HAND CRIME
September 30, 2019
New evidence rocks case of fallen hiker
By Angie Watts
Police have uncovered new evidence in the death of Mark Forrester, 20, who was killed last month when he fell from a lookout point in Coldcliff, Colorado’s Queen Anne’s Woods. Strands of hair were found on the creek bed of Claymore Creek, where Forrester drowned. DNA testing of the hair is expected to definitively link Forrester’s death to his former girlfriend, Tabitha Cousins, 17.
Police are currently investigating footprints near the creek bed and on the surrounding trails, a task that will likely be fraught with challenges given the popularity of the Mayflower Trail circuit. The trails draw hikers to Coldcliff, a town thirty miles south of Boulder, especially in the spring and fall seasons.
28
ELLE
SAINT FUCKING MARK. Death made him a martyr. I guess that’s one thing he and Tabby had in common. She never minded being a martyr either. I know that better than anyone.
His Instagram account is gone now—the police must have shut it down as part of the investigation—but there were other girls in the pictures he used to post. He’d be at a party when he told Tabby he was studying in his dorm. He’d say he forgot his phone at home when he didn’t respond to her messages, but pictures would magically be posted from his account. And she didn’t believe Mark, but she let him get away with it.
I know they had some sort of fight during homecoming, but she didn’t want to talk about it, and I didn’t press. A few weeks later, when Mark was back at Princeton, we went to the Stop & Shop to get microwave popcorn, me in my ratty pajama bottoms and Tabby in little terrycloth shorts and the red lipstick she suddenly felt the need to wear everywhere. Mark was changing her in myriad ways. Maybe she didn’t feel him in all the different places he now took up space, but I did. The invisible weight on her shoulders. The reluctance to drink a whole milkshake. The need to straighten her hair, even though she saw him only through a computer screen.
“We should get some vegetables or something,” Tabby said. “Maybe with hummus. Mark says it’s a superfood.”
Mark says. Mark says. Whatever Mark was doing, I doubted he was saying, Tabby says. Tabby says I shouldn’t drink so much. Tabby says I have a girlfriend.
“You get hummus,” I said. “I’m getting ice cream. And chips.” We always got ice cream and chips. She headed into the produce section, and I went into frozen foods with a lump in my throat. I hated the Mark-shaped wedge between us.
When I walked back with my pint of Rocky Road, Tabby was bent over a display of refrigerated goods, her ass practically sticking out of her shorts. Then my eyes flitted over to the checkout lines behind us. Maybe it was instinct, to see who was looking. I like to think it was me being protective of Tabby, but it was probably more me being jealous of her. I always feel as if Tabby is a lot harder to overlook than I am, even though so many people tell us we look like sisters. Maybe it’s true, but even with sisters there’s always a pretty one.
Someone was watching that day. Keegan. The way he stared at Tabby, it was like—he was taking notes, or something. That was when I knew. He was watching her, keeping an eye on her. And he wouldn’t have done that unless somebody asked.
She was his prey, and she had no idea, hinged over reading the label on a container of hummus, probably making sure there weren’t too many carbs. He was staring so intently that he had no idea I was there, so intently that I stopped being jealous of Tabby and actually felt scared for her. She was in something with Mark, something bad, and she had no idea. As much as she pretended everything was fine between them, it wasn’t fine at all. She didn’t trust Mark and it was making her paranoid. Mark didn’t trust her and instead of letting it make him paranoid, too, he sent in Keegan to do what he couldn’t. Watch her, and make sure she didn’t step out of line. I was sure he would report back to Mark later: She looked like a slut. If that’s how she dresses when she’s out buying food, can you imagine what she dresses like at school? At parties? Dude, you’re in trouble here.
As I stared, he pulled out his phone. Started typing something. I held my breath. He wasn’t reporting back to Mark later, he was doing it now.
I jogged over to Tabby, my flip-flops smacking the ground. “Did you find what you’re looking for? Because my ice cream’s melting.”
She stood up and tossed her hair over one shoulder, put her phone in her purse. “Yeah. This stuff’s premade. Turns out it’s a hassle trying to make it yourself. I was just googling it. You need tahini, whatever that is. I’m just gonna take the easy way out. Now I need to get some cucumber to dip in it, because otherwise I’ll pig out on chips.”
We went through Keegan’s checkout line. He acted distant, like he was some guy who barely knew us at all, not someone who had drank and played video games with us. “Hey,” he said as he bagged our groceries.
“Hi,” Tabby said. When he put the hummus in the bag, she added, “I’m trying to eat healthy.” As if he cared. As if eating healthy was going to tell Mark to call off his watchdog. I bored holes into his head with my eyes, not even offering a smile as I gave him my debit card.
“You guys up to anything tonight?” he asked as we waited for the transaction to be approved.
“Girls’ night in,” Tabby said at the exact same time I said “You never know what we’ll get up to.”
He didn’t flinch. Just gave me my receipt. I didn’t look back when we left the store, but I knew he was still watching us. Watching her.
“He’s so weird.” The words tumbled out when we were safely outside. “He was, like, staring at you. Like he was planning something.”
She looked at the ground. There were fossilized wads of gum embedded in the cement like some kind of ugly mosaic. “I just don’t think he likes me,” she finally said. “He thinks Mark can do better.”
Instead of being jealous, I felt sorry for her in that moment. Mark, with his perpetual buzz cut and broad shoulders, the possessive way he grabbed her hand in a crowd, like he wanted everyone to know she belonged to him. She had decided that his affection was the benchmark for her worth.
“You’re the one who can do better,” I said.
Tabby wrapped her arm around my waist, then started laughing. “I don’t think so. Have you seen any other contenders?” I laughed, too, but it wasn’t funny at all.
29
LOU
I’M AT THE STOP & SHOP today when I hear a couple people in front of me in line ta
lking about Tabby’s case. Two women, probably midthirties, carrying Michael Kors bags. Literally everyone is talking about Tabby, and that’s when I see it—her eyes, staring out from one of those tabloids that usually have stories about, like, Meghan Markle’s baby or Justin Bieber’s married life. But there’s Tabby, up there with them, a picture from her Instagram. The headline is what really slays me. Girl, 17: Guilty or Innocent?
She’s not just Colorado news. She’s national news. This is different than seeing her on People’s homepage, because I stumbled onto that when I was online stalking her (come on, you do it, too), so I guess I deserved to find it. This feels like a violation, like she’s the one seeking me out. Here she is, taking up the spot of a perfectly good celebrity with cellulite. And you know what? She would love it. A bunch of us were talking about Amanda Knox once at lunch, about whether she did it (um, definitely, without a doubt). And there was Tabby, hovering over us, saying something like, “Don’t believe everything you read.” Like anyone asked her opinion.
That’s why she did this. To become infamous. To be the next Amanda Knox, the next pretty girl accused of something. I mean, she’s not good enough at anything else, right? She’s the kind of girl who has probably been told a hundred times that she needs to apply herself. I’ve seen her in front of Mr. Mancini’s office, tugging the waistband of her skirt up. I’m sure she wasn’t really in there looking for advice on what colleges to apply to. No, she didn’t want to study or apply herself like the rest of us, which sounds like we’re stick-on decals that just need to find the right surface to cling to.
Tabby may not get the best grades, but I’ll give her this. She’s resourceful. She knew she wasn’t smart enough to get into a good school on her own, and she knew Mark was going to get tired of her drama and dump her eventually, so she had to do something else. And now she’s in a tabloid, right next to the Kardashians. She’s graduated from the local news and crime blogs to People and TMZ. Her pretty face, those blue, blue eyes. Now, I’m sure somebody will make a movie about her life. She’ll hire some doormat to ghostwrite her memoir. She’ll end up rich and men will be terrified of her but they’ll want to sleep with her anyway. And nobody will ever know the truth about what happened to Mark in the woods.