by L. E. Flynn
“Thank you,” Tabby said. She knew about the shoes.
Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I think about the shoes. If it would have made a difference if I had told the truth, or if I would have wanted it to. They weren’t mine, I imagine myself saying. I never got that close to the creek.
Sometimes I wonder if the worst things people thought about my sister weren’t even the worst things she’s capable of.
I wear Sauconys now. And I run faster than ever. Most of the time, my thoughts can’t keep up.
4
LOU
MY MOM’S COMPUTER is password protected now, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to guess the password every time she’s in the shower or at the gym or getting coffee with a girlfriend. I’m not even sure why I care so much about hacking into her computer. It’s not like I’m expecting to find something about Tabby. I guess I’m just bored, and bored girls usually have very interesting appetites.
You can’t really blame me. I mean, yes, Keegan did it, and I have no idea why I didn’t see that he was a psycho sooner. (I was alone in the woods with him! Honestly, I’m never doing that again.) He knew where he was going, and he had that map, and he lied to me about when he printed it. Plus, there was the Gatorade bottle with some of his DNA on it, buried by the creek, and all that stuff on his internet search history. I thought he was kind of a sad loser, but he’s so much creepier than I ever thought. He keeps saying he didn’t do it.
It’s not like I believe him. It’s just, something he said in his last interview kind of got to me. It feels like he was trying to talk directly to me. I had nothing to do with Mark Forrester’s death. I know somebody out there must believe me. Yeah, I made mistakes, but Tabby was the mastermind. She pulled it off. There has to be proof somewhere.
There has to be proof somewhere. And I’m maybe the only one who can find it. I don’t owe it to Keegan, or Beck (God, I have no idea what I ever saw in him—we are so over!), or even my readers at Sharp Edges. I owe it to myself, because the truth is what really keeps me warm at night in a way no boy ever will.
There are a few holes in Keegan’s story, but I keep coming back to the Gatorade. Why not take the bottle with him? Why leave it there? People are saying it was some kind of trophy, but Keegan seems smarter than that. Pretty much it’s assumed that he panicked and had nowhere to put it—there aren’t many garbage cans in the woods, and he was meeting Kyla and didn’t want to take any evidence with him.
He claims he didn’t even drink Gatorade that day. He says Tabby must have taken an empty bottle from his apartment and had Mark drink out of it, too, because that explains how both their DNA ended up on it. I’m not sure what I believe, but, like, he’s pretty fucked, excuse my language. The odds are most definitely not in his favor.
I got coffee with Tabby once during the summer, at the Starbucks downtown. It was like having a celebrity friend—well, what I imagined it would be like. People stopped to talk to her, to tell her they always knew she was innocent. A couple girls wanted her autograph and asked about her book. She was so patient with everyone, the smile never leaving her face. I wondered how she did it.
“Everyone is so nice,” she said when it was just the two of us, iced coffees sweating on the table between us. “When you’re not a threat anymore.”
It was a weird thing to say. But who am I to judge? I mean, I’ve never been in juvie. I’m sure it messes you up. There were a lot of things I wanted to say to Tabby, about being sorry for being a bitch and stuff, but I never said a single one. Maybe because I wasn’t, and I’m not. Maybe because she hasn’t apologized for taking Blanche and messing with my head about the scout.
That night was when I thought of a place that Keegan’s somewhere might be. My mom’s computer. I have no idea if my mom still sees Tabby or not, but she got to meet one-on-one with her. She must have some kind of opinion.
I’ve tried every combination of password. My mom’s middle name, her maiden name, her favorite wine, all the place names she talks about wanting to visit. Today, I’m just about ready to give up when I try a name I haven’t yet. Mine. Louisa.
And just like that, I’m in. Kind of embarrassing that it took me that long, right? Don’t tell my Sharp Edges readers.
My mom is out for a run, which means I probably don’t have much time left. Luckily, she has file folders for each patient labeled with their last name. I click on Cousins and see the same document I saw before—same format—but totally different content. This doesn’t even sound like the same girl.
Speaks about her paranoia and has nightmares. Trouble sleeping, feelings of isolation and guilt. Afraid to admit to anyone that she thinks her sister played a role in Mark Forrester’s death. Scared her sister isn’t who she says she is.
I pause on the last line, then scroll back up to the top. The file isn’t about Tabby at all. It’s about B. Cousins. Bridget. I don’t see the other file at all and now I’m wondering if I misread the name, or if my mom sees both Cousins girls.
That doesn’t matter. What does is that Tabby’s own sister thinks she did it.
I’m dizzy, slumping against the back of my mom’s chair. The sun shines in hard from the street, slanting into her office window and making yellow pools on her desk. A familiar laugh makes me jerk up—she’s back from her run, chatting with our neighbor. I click out of Bridget’s folder and watch my mother, in her spandex tights, put a hand on Mr. Roth’s shoulder. Maybe he’s the one from the bar. Or maybe he’s the one now, and there will always be a one.
I close her laptop and slink out of her office, leaving everything exactly where she left it. I think about visiting Bridget Cousins, about somehow finding a way to ask her everything. But Tabby lives there, too, under the same roof, guarding her sister like a dragon. Maybe Bridget is just troubled, just confused. Or maybe she’s the only one close enough to understand what we all missed.
5
KEEGEN
I KNOW WHAT EVERYONE THOUGHT about me when I hung out with Mark. That I was his charity case, the stray dog taken in by the Good Samaritan. Turns out, it’s that way even when he’s not around. Except I’m not stray anymore. I’m the exact opposite. Caged.
Don’t bother asking me if I did it. I told the truth, what happened between Tabby and me. If you didn’t believe it then, you never will. Not after she went up there and fucking lied in front of everyone. I hated that girl, then I loved her, and now I hate her all over again, and I don’t even know what was real for her.
I know what she told me. I guess that’s what I’m stuck holding on to for the rest of my goddamn life.
Just take my advice—don’t talk to her, don’t listen to her, don’t even look at her for too long. That’s what did me in. No fucking comment on everything else.
Hello America: Anne Leon Interviews Tabitha Cousins
Tuesday, January 5, 2021
The camera loves her. It hits her black hair, raven-shiny, zooms in on her face, because it’s a face so easy to get close to. She wouldn’t be this famous, nowhere near this known, if she wasn’t pretty to back it up. Girls get wronged every day of their lives, but sometimes pretty girls get to make it right.
Today she’s on Hello America, talking about her book. The movie. Her life, since That Day in the Woods. She’s sitting down with Anne Leon. Rumor has it, she’d been offered sit-down interviews with just about every television news station in America, but she specifically wanted Hello America, wanted Anne. Rumor has it they paid six figures for her.
“Sometimes it feels like it happened last night,” she says, staring straight into the camera. “I wake up sweating, thinking I’m still out there, lost in the woods, trying to find my way out. Sometimes I still wear his sweatshirt, because it’s all I have left of him.” Even her tears, when they fall onto her cheeks, are pretty.
“You’ve become a role model for a lot of girls,” Anne says. “About being strong in the face of adversity. The storm you weathered last year—that wasn’t easy. How did this affect
your relationships with family and friends?”
Tabby sighs, a quick little intake of air. “It really let me know who my real friends are, and who really cares. And those people will be in my life forever.” She cocks her head at the camera. “You know, sometimes you find out people are lying to you, and the only thing you can do is cut them from your life, and realize you’re better off without them.”
“Wise words,” says Anne. “Especially when so many girls feel the need to be people pleasers. Tabitha, we’ve already talked about your book and what it means to you. Now there’s going to be a movie based on your life. Instead of retreating, you’ve really put yourself out there. Do you think there’s a reason why?”
“Oh, absolutely.” Her hands rest in her lap, unmoving. She knows exactly what she’s going to say. “They expected me to retreat. But stories like mine need to be told. I lost months of my life being accused of something I didn’t do. I missed my senior year, because I couldn’t go back after the trial, with everyone talking about me. I missed having a prom. I know they seem like silly little things, but they’re the moments that make up a life. Putting myself and my story out there are ways of getting that life back.”
Anne smiles sagely. She knows millions of people are watching this show. She knows this interview is headlining every website. “Tabitha, we’ve talked a lot about forgiveness, and about learning to move on. To leave it all behind, to quote your book. You said something so memorable in that searing first chapter. ‘When all eyes are on you, there’s nowhere else to look but in. I saw a girl there, young and scared. She’s not there anymore, but I am.’ What do you have to say to the people who didn’t believe you? All the people who had a role in changing your life and perception of yourself?”
Tabby smiles at Anne, then stares directly at the screen, to the millions of viewers in America and beyond, at the legions of people who either believed her or didn’t. It takes a minute before she speaks. Maybe she doesn’t know what to say. Or maybe she has been waiting to address them all this time.
“I’d tell them not to believe everything they hear,” she says, her voice measured. “I’d tell them I’m just a girl, just like some of them.” The corners of her mouth turn up, her signature smirk. “And I’d say that unless they were me, they’ll never possibly know the whole story.”
6
TABBY
NEVER FORGET WHOSE STORY THIS IS.
You’ve either been waiting to hear from me, or you don’t even care what I have to say, because you’ve already made up your mind about me. And if you’re in that second camp? Congratulations, you’re everybody who perpetuates what every girl already thinks about herself. That people look at us and judge before we can even open our mouths.
Let me just say this: the boys are still in my head. They’re shacked up in there, almost like they’re Ken dolls, playing house, except they’re boys, and nobody wants to cook or clean. They all expect someone else to clean up their messes.
If you’ve been waiting for me the whole time, well, that’s sweet. Except really, it’s not, because you’re expecting me to spill. You want me to unzip myself and take out all my secrets, one by one, polish them and put them on a shelf and explain them. Maybe Exhibit One would be the Nikes, the footprint left behind. Exhibit Two, the map. Exhibit Three, the rock-filled backpack, which nobody has really been able to explain very well, have they? And good old Exhibit Four, the fact that someone saw me packing a picnic basket full of rocks the day before it happened. I know people online are talking about all that, even urging the police to keep investigating, because there’s something they missed.
I mean, if you really want the whole story, you’ll buy my book, right? Did you know it’s always been a dream of mine to have a New York Times bestseller before I hit twenty? Why twenty, you ask? Well, because life puts girls in a pressure cooker, and everybody wants the teenage sensation. I always knew I could write. Well, now the world knows it, too. (Yes, Aria helped, but I did the heavy lifting. Like I said, never forget whose story this is.)
I’m going to assume you’ve already bought my book, or are going to buy it, so okay, I’ll give you some bonus content. I’ll tell you a story about a girl who loved not just one boy, but more than one. She liked how they looked at her, how they touched her, how powerful she felt when they worshipped her body. Is that so wrong? If you’re nodding your head, well, nobody’s making you keep reading.
But let’s say that something got in the way of every single boy. That the first one you really loved made you promises, then went back to his girlfriend, every time, then got drunk and crashed into a tree and blamed you when his football career was over, so everyone else did, too. That the next one found out about one thoughtless kiss that meant nothing and broke your heart. That the next one you trusted was just a glorified college playboy, and you trusted the one who came with him, who didn’t just throw you under the bus so much as tie you to the road and watch the bus run over you. Again and again.
I spent almost two months in juvie. Maybe you don’t think that’s a big deal, but have you been there? It’s a truly awful place, but it gave me time to think. My brain went to some dark places. Sometimes, when things were really bad, I turned on myself, the same way the rest of the world turned on me. I thought of myself as guilty, even though I had done nothing wrong except trust my heart with the wrong people. I plotted how I would have done it, if I were capable of that kind of thing.
Let’s get something straight. I never slept with Keegan Leach. But I trusted him in another way—with my mind. We were friends, or so I thought. I didn’t really tell anyone else about the friendship, because I knew what they’d think. Oh, there’s Tabby, screwing her boyfriend’s best friend. It was so not like that. We both missed Mark, and at first I think we were jealous of each other. I was Mark’s new shiny thing, and Keegan was Mark’s constant.
But Keegan has convinced some people otherwise. That I wanted to break up with Mark to be with him instead. Did you believe him? (If so, really?)
I don’t owe you the truth about what happened that day in the woods. But here, I’ll humor you a bit. I’ll mess with your head the same way everyone else tried to mess with mine and make me think the worst things about myself.
Maybe the hike was my idea. It was as simple as Mark saying something righteous like, Where is there to hike around here? And I told him I’d heard of this place called the Mayflower Trail, and that I’d wanted to check it out. With him, of course. Guys are suckers for being the protector. As if I need to be protected from anything.
Okay, okay, so let’s just say I already knew those woods well. I didn’t tell Mark I’d been there before. I didn’t tell him that I knew every single path. I didn’t tell him I knew where the ground was hard and where it was soft, that I knew how to practically dance over the roots to avoid a sprained ankle. I let him think it was all his idea. He got all macho, telling me I needed to get hiking boots and proper gear. I let him play the man role, knowing it would be the last time he ever played it.
Shh. This is all hypothetical, remember? It didn’t really happen this way, and you’ve made your mind up about me anyway.
In this scenario—where I’m guilty—I used Keegan, the sad loner who was not-so-secretly in love with me.
We researched everything together—on his computer, of course. He thought we were going on a hike to the Split. He said Mark was afraid of heights and would need a good shove to make it up there. I joked that the shove would be better at the top, because that way I wouldn’t have to break up with him and endure the aftermath.
“Anything for you,” Keegan said. It had been pitifully easy to get him to fall for me. He was so desperate for human contact. “I’ll do it, you know.”
But we don’t actually need boys, do we? We’re capable of doing things on our own.
Mark put up a fight. Well, technically, we fought the entire way up to the Split. We argued about last year, about now, about what was going to happen next year. He a
ccused me of being jealous and overbearing. I called him an asshole. I stared at his back—of course I was behind him, exactly where he wanted me—and the backpack there. He’d bitched when I asked him to carry it, of course—don’t believe everything you read, folks, because Mark was no gentleman, just your average horny frat bro minus the actual frat house.
Anyway, when Mark asked what was in the backpack, I just said “Stuff we might need. Why, can you not handle it?” And he scowled and put it on his back, because of course the great Mark the Shark, (former) swimming champion, could handle a goddamn backpack.
Mark got way ahead of me, because he was six inches taller and probably also because he was pissed off and wanted to show that he could do that. He could leave me there if he wanted to. The Split loomed in front of us, this big dark mass, and I was basically one giant heartbeat.
When we stood at the top, I realized I was terrified of heights. Mark sensed it, softened toward me. He liked me weak.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Nothing will happen to you.”
I put the picnic basket down. I stared at the view—we had earned it, right? The trees were everywhere, a green and brown swirl, some of the leaves orange and red at the very tops, like they were getting a sunburn.
Mark sat down. Started to shrug out of the backpack, which wasn’t part of the plan. The backpack would make him drop fast, pull him under, kill him quickly. It would be okay, though. When he stood up and put it back on—then I’d do it.
But instead, he opened it. My mouth became an O of shock when I saw his eyebrows come together like they did when he was confused.
“What the—” he said, launching to his feet. “Why are there rocks in here?”
Oh, Mark. Dense to the very end.
I had thought a lot about what my last words to Mark would be, but in that moment, I forgot them all. He still hadn’t put it together, and time was slipping past. Any second he would really figure it out, and any second he would move, because he was standing so close to the edge.