The Perfectionists

by Sara Shepard

  “Nothing,” Ava muttered.

  Mackenzie tugged on the handle of a drawer and found that it was locked. She crouched in front of it, fiddling with the pick.

  “This one’s tricky,” she muttered, shaking the shim in frustration.

  Outside the door, someone whistled the melody to “Low Rider” off-key. The girls froze. A set of keys jingled musically, and something scraped in the keyhole.

  Ava’s eyes widened in the dark. “We have to get out of here.”

  “I’ve almost got it!” Mac jiggled the pick one more time, and the drawer slid open.

  The doorknob on the door jerked back and forth without turning. The keys jingled again as someone looked for the right one. Ava dug her fingernails in Mac’s arm. “Come on!”

  “Look,” Mac murmured.

  The drawer had all the contraband from the past year inside. A Nintendo DS sat atop a comic book. A pearl-handled penknife, a Zippo, and a little silver flask were next to it. Ava dug through it, an anguished expression on her face.

  “There’s nothing here,” she mumbled. “Nothing even remotely suspicious.”

  There was another rasping sound in the keyhole. Mackenzie jerked Ava away by the back of her shirt and ducked under the office desk just as the door swung open.

  Randy, the school’s hippie janitor, stood in the doorway. His head was cocked, and he looked around as though he could sense someone was there.

  Mac pressed her lips together, trying not to breathe. Her heart pounded fast in her chest. What was he doing here so late at night? If Randy caught them here, digging around in Granger’s office, he would tell Granger for sure. And then Granger would tell the cops.

  Slowly, Randy walked toward the office. His footsteps thudded against the floor. His whistling had stopped. Mac couldn’t see him, but she sensed he was standing in the doorway. She closed her eyes and tried not to move. Ava clutched her hand tightly. Mac was almost positive she could hear Randy holding his breath, assessing the situation.

  But then he breathed out. She sensed him turn, and the footsteps started up again. There was the metallic clang of a trash can knocking against the big trash bin he pushed around school. Moments later, there were more footsteps, and the door eased shut.

  Slowly, Mac stood and stared at the empty classroom before them. As soon as she knew it was safe, she darted toward the door, eager to get the hell out of there. That had been close—too close. With the cops already onto them, one wrong move could be the end of everything they’d all worked so hard for—graduation, college, Juilliard. One wrong move and their perfect lives would be over.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  SATURDAY MORNING, PARKER SAT IN Elliot’s office, her hands gripping her knees. The room smelled faintly of a cinnamon candle, and a New Age song heavy on the wind chimes and didgeridoo tinkled faintly out of hidden speakers. The therapist offered Parker a gentle smile from across the room.

  “So,” he said, “how has this week been?”

  “Trying,” Parker admitted.

  “Can you tell me why?”

  Parker shut her eyes. “There have been a lot of police at school. It’s awful.”

  “Have any of them spoken to you?”

  She tensed. “Why would they talk to me?”

  Elliot held up two palms. “I assumed police officers talk to everyone in a case like this.”

  Parker let her hair fall around her damaged face and twisted her mouth. Way to go, idiot, she thought. Way to make yourself look super guilty. Why don’t you just confess what you did?

  She cleared her throat. Elliot was sitting across from her so patiently. She almost felt like she could tell him everything. She needed someone to listen, and she wanted it to be him. But then she thought of the other girls. They’d vowed to keep their secret.

  “The police did talk to me, yes,” she mumbled.

  Elliot tented his fingers together. “Did they ask you about your relationship with Nolan?”

  Parker raised one shoulder. “Actually, they didn’t.” The detective had gone through each girl’s motives one by one, but he’d barely looked at Parker. “Maybe he felt sorry for me,” she muttered. For all she knew, he remembered her from when her dad was arrested.

  Elliot crossed his legs and leaned forward. “Did you want him to ask you about Nolan?”

  “No,” Parker said quickly. But then she glanced at the ceiling. “Maybe.”

  “Is that because you want them to know what he did? That he was kind of responsible?”

  Parker peeked at him. Tears began to fill her eyes, thinking how Nolan wouldn’t even look at her when she’d returned to school after her time in the hospital.

  “I just wish he would have said he was sorry,” she said. “We wouldn’t have been friends after that, but I could have let it go.”

  Elliot nodded thoughtfully. “Have you ever considered forgiving Nolan?”

  Parker made a face. “I could never.”

  “Hear me out, Parker. What happened has already happened; you can’t take it back. Your dad is gone, Nolan is dead. Now you need to find a way to move forward.”

  Parker cocked her head. “How do I do that?”

  Elliot stood and held out his hand. “How about we take a field trip?”

  “Don’t you have another session?”

  Elliot shook his head. “You’re all I’ve got today, Parker Duvall. So you’re stuck with me.”

  He led her down the gray-carpeted hall and out a heavy door to the parking lot. Parker’s bike was chained to the rack, but Elliot bypassed it, heading to a silver car with a couple of bumper stickers for car-racing companies on the back.

  “Let’s go for a drive,” Elliot said, opening the passenger door for Parker.

  “O-okay,” she said, but her heart was thumping. She knew Elliot in the context of one safe room. Venturing out felt different—somehow foreign. But she trusted him.

  Elliot slid behind the wheel and started the engine. In moments, a fast-paced, hard-rock song by a band Parker had never heard blared through the stereo. Elliot turned down the volume, casting Parker a sheepish grin. “Sorry.”

  “It’s cool,” Parker said, pushing her hair off her face for one moment. She caught a glimpse of herself in the side mirror and nearly gasped. The way the shadows angled, she almost looked . . . normal. She almost couldn’t see her scars.

  Elliot pulled onto the main road and drove a few miles over hilly terrain. They passed the main square and all the shops, several developments, the high school, and then the road Nolan had lived on, a road Parker had once known well. She looked at the turnoff, then back at Elliot.

  “Uh, where are we going, anyway?” She’d thought they were going to park outside Nolan’s house, and maybe Elliot would ask her to say good-bye to Nolan on his front lawn or something.

  “You’ll see,” Elliot announced, hitting the gas.

  Parker shrugged. Maybe they would keep driving all the way to the sea. All the way out of her life.

  But Elliot was slowing to a stop. Parker frowned at the rolling green hills in front of her, then at the wrought iron gates to the left. In scrolled writing along the top read MCALLISTER CEMETERY.

  Her heart froze.

  Elliot shifted into park and cut the engine. He got out of the car, then swung around and opened Parker’s door.

  She stared at him. “What are you doing?” Her voice was flinty, sharp. Parker shook her head violently. “No. No way.”

  Elliot frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’m not going in there.” Parker got out of the car and took a few big steps away from him.

  “Why?” Elliot cocked his head. “What’s happening in your mind right now?”

  Parker wasn’t sure what was happening—all she knew was that warning bells were going off like crazy. She saw flashes of light, then felt the painful twinge of an oncoming migraine. Nolan’s face swam in her mind, his eyes narrowed. Then she saw her father’s face above her. His hand coming down ag
ain and again. She heard someone screaming and only realized later that it was her. How she’d lain there, limp, lifeless, on the floor.

  When she looked at Elliot, all she could do was shake her head. Pain seared from temple to temple. “I can’t go in there,” she whispered, her eyes closed tightly. “I just can’t.”

  A crow flew overhead. Elliot’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Okay,” he said faintly. “It’s just that—”

  “Parker?”

  Parker whirled around. Julie stood behind her, looking angelic in a white diaphanous blouse and with her hair strewn around her shoulders. Her eyes were round with concern. “I was just on my way to town to get something for my mom and saw you here. What’s going on?”

  “Thank god you’re here,” Parker said, collapsing against Julie.

  “Come on,” Julie said, reaching out her hand. She glanced at Elliot. “I’m taking her home. We’ll catch the next bus.”

  Elliot blinked. “Uh, sure,” he said, stepping aside. “I was just trying to help.”

  “You have to be careful with her,” Julie said protectively, carefully taking Parker’s arm. The headache had come on full force, blocking Parker’s vision, turning her stomach, sending waves of pain down her back. “It’s okay,” she could hear Julie’s voice above her. “You’re going to be fine.”

  “I couldn’t do it,” Parker moaned, though every word she spoke hurt. “I just couldn’t.”

  “I know,” Julie said, seemingly understanding even though Parker didn’t quite get it herself. Maybe it was another hole in her memory: Maybe old Parker had hated cemeteries. Maybe something bad had happened to her in one.

  But she didn’t care about the reason right then. All she wanted to do was sit on the bus bench with her eyes closed. All she wanted was to never think again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THAT AFTERNOON, CAITLIN SAT ON the edge of the paper-lined bed at her orthopedic clinic, pushing her foot into her physical therapist’s palm for her weekly appointment. “Okay, now flex,” the therapist, a tall, strapping Russian whose name was Igor, said, watching her face as she moved her ankle around.

  “It feels pretty good,” Caitlin said.

  “Good.” Igor kept rolling her foot in different directions, his hands cool and careful.

  In the corner, a local news station played, muted but with closed captions. A breaking-news alert rolled across the bottom of the screen. LOCAL BOY KILLED WITH CYANIDE.

  She flinched. Igor looked at her sharply. “Did that hurt?”

  “No.” She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. Igor gently let go of her foot. “Um, could you turn that up?” she asked. Igor looked confused for a second, then grabbed the remote from a nearby table and handed it to Caitlin. The sound came on instantly.

  “Let’s talk a little more about cyanide,” the reporter was saying, her voice strangely chipper. “And for that, I’d like to introduce Dr. John Newlin, forensics expert. Dr. Newlin?”

  The doctor cleared his throat. “Cyanide poisoning is a classic method of both murder and suicide, mostly because the drug acts so quickly and looks like a cardiac event. The poison impedes the victim’s ability to use oxygen, making the victim feel as though he is suffocating.”

  “And cyanide isn’t a common substance, right?” the reporter interrupted. “In the Hotchkiss case, how could a murderer have gotten hold of it?”

  “Well,” said the doctor, “there are several professions that would allow access to cyanide in one form or another: chemists, photographers, pest control, mineral refining, dyeing, printing . . . The investigators are likely looking at people who have connections to those industries.”

  Caitlin stiffened. She assumed cyanide would be hard to come by, but it sounded like there were a million ways to get it. What if she or the other girls had it in their garage or basement, without even knowing it? What then?

  “What about the chem lab at school?” the reporter asked.

  John Newlin paused. “A chemistry professor would know how to obtain potassium cyanide—old chemistry sets used to include it, in fact. But it’s difficult to imagine a teacher introducing such a dangerous chemical into the classroom.”

  “Thank you for joining us, John. There continue to be no new leads in the Hotchkiss investigation. Now, at the top of the next hour—”

  Caitlin turned off the TV and leaned back on the table. Her heart was racing.

  “Were you friends with him?” Igor asked, a sympathetic look in his eyes.

  Caitlin chewed on the corner of her lip. “I didn’t really know him that well.”

  Igor nodded. “Well, a crime like this affects everyone in the community, whether or not you were friends with him. It’s terrible. I hope whoever did it rots in jail.”

  Rots in jail. Her heart thudded in time with the words. That might be her future. Caitlin thought back to the police interrogation and the detective’s face grinning when he said she clearly had motive. She shuddered at the idea that the cops were sitting around, talking about her.

  About them.

  She glanced at her phone. Ava had sent a message last night: Just looked thru Bogie’s shit at the lighthouse. Nada. It was a code: Bogie was their name for Granger, after Humphrey Bogart, whom he was always talking about, and the lighthouse was Beacon Heights High. Where could they go from here? How could they pin this on Granger? Did he have access to cyanide? The reporter had said photographers used it, and Granger ran a photography club.

  She quickly sent a group text. Photographers use cyanide.

  Her phone buzzed almost instantly. She expected it to be from one of the girls, but instead it was from . . . Jeremy.

  Dragon Ball marathon on. Thought you should know . . .

  It brought an unexpected smile to her face. She hadn’t talked to him since he’d driven her to practice last week, but they’d seen each other in the halls at school, and smiled shyly at each other.

  Nerd. ☺, she wrote back.

  Takes one to know one. ☺, he texted.

  “Well, everything’s healing up nicely,” said Igor, taking a pen out of his pocket. “The good news is you probably only need to see me a couple more times.”

  “Great.” Caitlin nodded.

  “And Caitlin?” he said jovially.

  She looked up at him. “Yeah?”

  “Kick some butt in your big game, will you?” He gave her a conspiratorial wink.

  “Thanks,” she said, suddenly aware that she’d barely thought about the upcoming semifinals that Wednesday. With everything else going on, it felt almost . . . trivial. She gathered her bag and walked outside. When she heard a honk at the curb, she looked up. Josh sat in his Jeep Cherokee.

  “How’s Igor?” he said.

  Caitlin straightened up. She’d forgotten he was waiting for her. “Russian, as usual.”

  She got into the car and buckled her seat belt. Josh leaned over to kiss her hello. But when she closed her eyes and kissed him back, she imagined herself sitting on the back of Jeremy’s Vespa, her arms wrapped around him. She flinched, horrified.

  “So where to? Dirk’s?” It was their favorite burger place, famous for its sweet potato fries.

  Caitlin made a face. “I just ate.”

  Josh waved his hand. “Well, I’m starving, so do you mind?” He started the car without waiting for her answer. “Once you smell those fries, you’ll totally want some.”

  I said I wasn’t hungry, Caitlin thought as they pulled away from the curb.

  Jay Z’s “Empire State of Mind” came blasting out through the speakers. Caitlin jumped at the sudden noise, slamming her palm against the dash as if to brace herself. Josh cranked it up even louder. “This song always makes me think of the Cape Disappointment trip,” he yelled. “Remember? We listened to it on the way there, like, five hundred times?”

  The bass shook so hard it felt like an extra heartbeat vibrating through her body. The Cape Disappointment trip had been right after their sophomore year. Josh had just gotten
his driver’s license and they’d gone to the coast for a week with a bunch of other soccer players. She still remembered the sun-dappled trees whipping by outside the car window, all of them singing at the top of their lungs without a care in the world. She remembered Josh’s hand on her knee, and little charges of electric attraction shooting between them. That was when Taylor was still alive, when Caitlin was still happy and innocent. That was before she’d known how much the world could hurt a person.

  It felt like so long ago.

  A heavy weight settled on her knee, and she looked down to see Josh’s hand resting on her pant leg. She was shocked at how foreign and clumsy his hand felt on her leg. Almost annoying, in fact.

  She stared out the window, thinking about what she and Jeremy had talked about the other night—wandering the world like Jack Kerouac, having crazy and unexpected and unpredictable adventures. She couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  She looked over at Josh. “Do you ever think about what you’d do if you couldn’t play soccer anymore?” The question came out in a tumble.

  “Huh?” Josh shot her a confused look.

  The seat belt felt tight across her throat and she tugged at it. “If you got hurt or something. Or if you burned out.”

  Josh frowned. “Why even worry about something like that? Your ankle is fine, Cate. You’re definitely playing soccer.”

  “Yeah, but . . .” She gave a little grunt of frustration. “I mean, what if you hurt yourself really badly or something. Or what if you didn’t feel like it anymore? What would you do then?”

  Josh almost ran a stoplight turning to look at her. “Are you quitting?”

  “No.” She turned to look out the window. “I’m just playing devil’s advocate.”

  He gave her a blank, almost nervous look, shaking his head. “I just don’t see the point in thinking about something that isn’t going to happen. Soccer is life.” He grinned. It was a slogan on one of the bumper stickers plastered on the back of his car.

  “But actually, Josh, it is going to happen.” Caitlin’s heart started to beat faster. “We’re not going to be playing soccer forever. After UDub, if we both get in . . . well, the pros are a long shot, even if you are one of the best. We have to have some sort of plan.”