All Eyes on Her

by L. E. Flynn

  August 15, 2019, 5:33 p.m.

  7

  BRIDGET

  SHE NEVER GOT MARK’S MESSAGE. That’s the other thing I did, the thing that might have been worse than lying about the shoes. She texted him—we were sitting in the living room, and I could tell she was obsessing about something. Then she put the phone down in a huff and said she was going for a walk.

  I doubt she forgot the phone. She was pissed off at whatever she had just read on it, or the lack thereof. I waited until she was gone and picked it up. I knew her passcode—she never changed it. It was 1313, her unlucky number.

  I saw her message to Mark. He hadn’t written back. And as I was staring at it, the phone rang. It was Mark, calling her, just like she asked him to do.

  I answered. I have no idea why I did it. I wasn’t planning to, and I wasn’t planning on doing what I did next. I wasn’t planning to be Tabby.

  “Hello?”

  I was sure he would know it wasn’t her. We sound extremely similar—Dad used to get us confused when he’d call the landline from the office to talk to Mom. But if Mark really knew Tabby, he would know he wasn’t talking to my sister.

  He didn’t.

  “Tabs, I know I fucked up, but can’t we fix it? You know you’re the only girl who means anything to me.”

  “I don’t believe you.” My voice, ice-cold. “All you ever do is hurt me.”

  “Come on. We’ve been through too much to just throw it all away because of one night.”

  I wanted to scream. I wanted to ask, What night? What did you do? But I couldn’t, because if I was Tabby, I would know already.

  “If you love me so much, prove it,” I said. “Prove it, or let me go.”

  “I’ll prove it,” he said. He sounded so pathetic, in that moment, that I almost felt sorry for him. If I hadn’t known anything about their relationship—if I hadn’t seen my tearstained sister—maybe I would have felt bad for him. But instead, I was disgusted. With him, for reducing my sister into a girl he could carry in his pocket. Tabby, for letting it happen. Me, for stooping this low, for invading her privacy.

  I hung up without saying goodbye. Then his text message came in. I deleted it, and I deleted his call from her call history, and I hoped he never mentioned it again.

  I don’t know if what I did played a role in what happened in the woods. Maybe Tabby figured it out. Maybe Mark knew all along. But things might have been different if she had seen that message. If I hadn’t answered the phone. I guess none of us will ever know. And it looks like Keegan is going down for his role, but part of me wonders if they got the wrong person.

  8

  KEEGEN

  YOU WANT MY VERSION of the story? Well, I’m on my way to the courthouse to tell it, but whatever. I’ll give you a sneak peek. I swear, I’ve been honest with you the whole time. I never killed anybody. And if Mark didn’t need to literally have everything he wanted, he might still be around.

  “She’s hot,” I told him. She wasn’t dressed for mini golf. She had barely anything on, just this tiny skirt and a top that showed her boobs. And she kept looking over at us. Not smiling exactly, but kind of smirking.

  “She’s too young,” Mark said. We were one hole behind them. I wanted to catch up, but of course he wanted to do everything by the rules. Each stroke had to be recorded, even though it was just a group of us guys, me and Mark and a couple high school friends we had more or less lost touch with. It was supposed to be for fun, but Mark was like the stern dad, right down to the obnoxious little pencil behind his ear.

  “Suit yourself,” I said.

  But she started kicking the ball in with her foot, and when I went to take a leak, he took it upon himself to give her commentary on her form. By the time I got back, they were flirting. Two hours later, they were making out. It was like he knew I was going to make a move if he didn’t. Mark not only wanted the things he wanted, but he wanted the things everyone else did, too.

  You know he only took up swimming because of me? Because my mom was bugging me to do a sport, and I sucked at all the usual team shit, so I joined the swim team. And Mark joined with me. He said he had always been interested in it, but I think he couldn’t possibly let me have something that he wasn’t part of.

  You know how that ended. How he ended up being the best. How he got all the glory, all the medals, the records, the scholarship. And the girls—always ones he knew I was into.

  I asked him about Tabby, the day after they met. She was already texting him nonstop, and I could tell when he was messaging her back, because he had this goofy grin on his face. Already in the goddamned honeymoon period.

  “I said she was hot,” I said after a few beers on my shitty little apartment balcony. “Then you went after her.”

  He had the nerve to act shocked. “Dude, I thought you meant her friend. Actually, you and Elle would be a good couple. I’ll make sure she’s there next time we all hang out.”

  It was only when he left that I said to the door, “I didn’t mean her friend, and you fucking knew it.”

  Maybe everything that happened next was as much my fault as his. I never really stood up to the guy. I think because I knew he’d argue his way out of it, do that thing he did where he made me feel like I was making shit up in my head. I heard him do it to Tabby, too, when they fought. Make her seem like the crazy one. He would have been a good lawyer.

  I mean, I’m not innocent. I did stuff. I put ideas in her head about Mark having girls at Princeton. She’d see a picture on Instagram and flash it at me in the grocery store, demanding to know who it was, and I’d make up some story, just because I knew she was already jealous. She was an easy fire to feed.

  Just remember, though. He knew I saw her first, and he didn’t care. And I think that was the moment he stopped being my friend. Most people just see the surface. But there was another side of Mark. A monster who never got full, no matter how much food you gave it. Kind of like how his swimming diet made him eat a ton of calories every day. His appetite for everything else was just as hard to fill.

  9

  ELLE

  IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW. Me and Keegan in the front seat of Mark’s car that night. I wish I never would have taken the Groupon from my dad. I wish Tabby and I would have gone to a movie, like I really wanted to.

  But it all makes sense because—and I never told this to anyone—I tried to kiss Keegan. I was a bit tipsy from the raspberry vodka Tabby snuck inside her purse, and he was cute, and he was there. I figured he’d kiss me back for the same reasons, but he just stared ahead, through the windshield, like there were lasers in his eyes.

  “No,” he said. “Not you.”

  Not me, because he wanted her. I still remember how his jaw looked like steel, the kind of tension that makes you less person and more machine. That’s what not getting what you want does to a person. I coiled up like that around Beck whenever we were at school, my shoulders migrating up to my ears.

  I tried turning on the music, because it was awkward in the car, hearing Tabby and Mark make out and paw at each other in the back seat. But Keegan pushed my hand away.

  After that, I just thought he was an asshole. I still think that, of course, but there’s more to it than that. Not only the obvious, that he’s probably the one who killed Mark. I think he’s a cautionary tale. He’s what you turn into when you’re so used to falling short that it becomes a science. He could have been me.

  10

  KEEGEN

  DEVERAUX LOVES THIS. She has this annoying, dramatic pause thing she does right before asking a question, like she wants you to freak out over what might come out of her mouth. And it’s working.

  “Tell me what happened the weekend of homecoming,” she says.

  “Nothing,” I say. It’s a lie.

  The whole weekend was just a reminder of everything that went to shit after I flunked out of college. If I had tried harder, not let girls derail me, I would have been like Mark. Parading back into town, going to the
parties, girls falling all over me. Instead, I was the guy who sold them their candy and tampons and told them to have a nice day.

  The weekend had sucked. I didn’t even get Mark to myself. It was all Tabby, all the time. He even invited her with us to the homecoming game. She rode shotgun in his car with blue numbers painted on her face and legs, even though I’m sure she never watched a football game in her life. I stared at her ponytail, bobbing along to the shitty pop music Mark had let her pick out, and had this sick thought that it was long enough to wrap around her neck and strangle her with.

  “Did you come on to Tabitha the night of the homecoming game?” Deveraux asks now.

  “No,” I practically shout. “I mean, no. If anything, she came on to me.”

  I kept my hands to myself. I sat on Tabby’s other side at the game, rolled my eyes when she asked Mark a thousand questions about football, the dumbest shit you’ve ever heard. It was like I wasn’t even there. Until Mark got up to get the popcorn Tabby had seen other people eating and kept saying she wanted some. She leaned over and put her hand on my leg and said, “Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten about you.”

  I had no idea what that meant, but I looked at her, actually looked at her, and realized maybe she didn’t hate me at all.

  “Tell us what you mean by that. Did Tabitha flirt with you?”

  “Yeah. It was definitely flirting. She was—” She was playing me. I can’t bring myself to say it out loud.

  “What did she do, exactly, to make you think she was interested in you?”

  I squint at Deveraux, like the answer is hidden in her Botoxed face. Tabby was all over me without being on me at all. It’s like she knew this would happen. That we’d end up here. Because every rebuttal that comes into my head sounds flimsy as hell.

  “It was just how she acted,” I settle on. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “It’s important to explain, Mr. Leach.”

  So I do.

  Mark dropped Tabby off first after the game, which I could tell she hated, but I could also tell she was trying to keep her cool, so she let it slide, blowing him a kiss from her front lawn. Then on the way to my apartment, he dropped this bomb.

  “I think I need to break up with her. You were right about her getting clingy. It’s suffocating me.”

  I was relieved to hear it, but also felt this validation. That Mark was as big a phony as the rest of us. He sat there all day cheering for the home team with his arm around his girlfriend, rubbing circles on her back. He was an asshole, keeping up a charade. Girls liked to shit on me for leading them on, but Mark did it, too. Everyone uses each other.

  “You should do it,” I said. “Do it before you go back to school. That way you can have some freedom for the rest of the year.”

  Mark laughed. His hands were at ten and two. His shirt was buttoned right. Everything Mark did was just right. “It’s not about being with other girls. I just want to be with the girl. You know?”

  Yeah, I know, I wanted to say. But I couldn’t tell the guy that all the girls he deemed worthy were ones I saw first. Mark always said he didn’t have a type, but he did. Mine.

  “I don’t think she’s right for you,” I said instead. “It’s good to break things off before it gets too serious.”

  When he dropped me off, I went up to my place to take a shower. When someone knocked on my door, I knew it was Mark. I put some sweatpants on and got two beers out of the fridge.

  It wasn’t Mark. It was Tabby. Still wearing that shit she had on earlier, with the neon bra.

  “Mark’s not here,” I said through gritted teeth. Tabby and I had never been alone together. Unless you counted the times at the Stop & Shop, but we were never really alone there either. This was just the two of us, and it freaked me out.

  “Good,” she said, letting herself pass me, grabbing a beer off the counter. “We should get to know each other, don’t you think? We’re the two closest people to him, and I feel like you don’t like me.”

  Deveraux nods when I’m done talking. Her skin is stretched so tight that I have no idea what’s going on behind it. “So you’re saying Tabitha tried to make peace with you because she sensed your animosity.”

  “No—it wasn’t like that.” Sweat clings to my back, just like it did that night. Deveraux is trying to make it sound like Tabby was just being nice. It was a hell of a lot more than that.

  “Did you have any sexual contact with Tabitha that night?”

  “Well, no,” I say.

  “Did she try to initiate anything?”

  “Uh, I guess not.”

  I swear, I can hear the entire courtroom judging me. But it wasn’t like that. She would have hooked up with me, if I had made a move. She was waiting for it. But I didn’t.

  “What do you want?” I asked her, then followed it with, “I think you should go.”

  She took a drink of beer. The paint from the football game was still on her face. “What do you want, Keegan? Because I have a feeling nobody ever asks you that, do they?”

  They didn’t. Ever. Other kids got asked what they wanted for Christmas. I got whatever my mom felt like shelling out for—my mom, not Santa, because she was too lazy to keep up the charade. I never got what I wanted, but Mark did. There was Mark the day after Christmas, bringing over whatever he got, which just so happened to be exactly what I had wanted, and of course he’d let me play with it, but he’d bring it home with him at the end of the day, and I was left feeling like I shouldn’t have played with it at all, because now I knew what I was missing.

  That’s how it would be with Tabby, I was sure. I was determined not to play with her.

  “I just want to be alone,” I said.

  Tabby hopped up on my counter, legs dangling. I could see up her skirt. I tried not to look.

  “But you’re always alone, aren’t you? Mark worries about you, you know.”

  “Does he know you’re here?” I asked.

  “Does it matter?” she said. “I don’t need his permission to have a conversation with you.”

  “We just talked,” I tell Deveraux, because it’s like she’s waiting for me to say more. “That’s it.”

  There’s no point explaining, but it’s the truth. We just talked, sure, but it was what Tabby didn’t say that showed her real intentions.

  “Wait,” I say. Deveraux turns around. “Tabby asked me if Mark was going to break up with her.”

  Shit. I said it wrong. She didn’t ask. She’s the one who told me.

  “He’s going to break up with me anyway,” she said, all matter-of-fact. “Isn’t that right?”

  As if she was in the car with us the whole time.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Probably.”

  Then she leaned over and I thought she was going to kiss me, but she just drained her beer and hopped off the counter. “I hope you’re wrong,” she said.

  “And what did you tell her?” Deveraux asks.

  This time, I sound sure. “The truth.”

  The truth was, I told her I was tired, and she got kind of pouty, but kissed me on the cheek and left. She wanted more. I knew she wanted more. But I didn’t trust her yet.

  The next day, I texted Mark. Did you break up with her?

  He didn’t respond for a few hours, and when he did, it was a selfie of the two of them, tongues sticking out at the camera, almost like they were making fun of me. Nope. Changed my mind!

  And it was just like every shitty Christmas morning all over again, except a thousand times worse, and I realized the ache in my gut was because I could love her, and Mark never would, but he had her anyway.

  11

  BRIDGET

  AFTER EVERYTHING THAT happened with Keegan on the stand, the cops go to his apartment, get a warrant to search his computer. They find all this in his search history from before Mark’s death: the Mayflower Trail, the height from the Split to the creek, and the likelihood that a person would survive the fall.

  There’s his credit card statemen
t. The flowers he bought my sister. The picnic basket he ordered online. The motel room he booked the same night Tabby tried to run. It all paints a story, an obsession. A girl he couldn’t have, but wanted anyway, and all the ways he manipulated her into wanting him back.

  It all fits together, and still, there’s a piece missing. Maybe it’s because I know my sister, and I know she isn’t a pawn. Whatever Keegan did to Mark in the woods, she must have known it was happening, and still didn’t do anything to stop it.

  Maybe it’s the map. The fact that she had one before Keegan ever did.

  I need Tabby herself to tell me she didn’t have anything to do with it. But I guess she’ll get her turn to tell everyone that soon enough.

  12

  KEEGEN

  I TRY TO TELL DEVERAUX about how Tabby started showing up at the Stop & Shop when she knew I was working.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” she says, “but did you not say yourself that the Stop & Shop is the only grocery store in town? I don’t suppose Tabitha had any other options. Presumably, she didn’t go there just to see you.”

  “But—” It’s impossible to explain. Tabby waited in my line, even when it was busy. One time, she was eating a Popsicle she didn’t even pay for and she wasn’t wearing a bra.

  “Do you have any proof that Tabitha was there to see you?”

  “She told me she loves a man in uniform,” I say, and I swear, the entire courtroom holds in a laugh, and I don’t blame them. It sounds ridiculous, like I’m grasping for an excuse that doesn’t exist.

  The one person I can’t look at is Tabby. I have to pretend she doesn’t exist. I should have done that from the start.

  13

  LOU

  I MEAN, AFTER EVERYTHING, it’s a fucking piece of paper that makes me take Tabby Cousins’s side. Makes me want to laugh. It’s ridiculous, right?