by Kara Thomas
She isn’t in any of them. The girl must have been new the year of the murders; there’s no way she was younger than my sister.
I eye my phone where it’s resting on my nightstand. Before I can talk myself out of it, I call Ginny. She picks up on the second ring.
“Monica?” she says. She doesn’t sound surprised that I’m calling; it almost sounds like she was expecting it to be me.
“Yeah. Hi,” I say, suddenly nervous. “Is this a bad time?”
“No, not at all.” She pauses. “Are you looking at the pictures?”
“Yeah. I’m trying to figure out who else Juliana was friends with, who might know why she was upset when they were building the float.” I think about what Mrs. Ruiz told me about Susan and Jen fighting, and Juliana being in the middle, and I hesitate. I feel like some sort of gossip or voyeur, trying to dissect everything a teenager did and felt one night five years ago. “I talked to Juliana’s mom. She didn’t know why Juliana was crying that night. She thought maybe it was because my sister and Susan Berry weren’t talking to each other.”
“What were they fighting about?” Ginny asks.
“I have no idea. Jen never said anything.” I zoom in on the picture of Juliana and the blond girl. “I found a picture of Juliana with this blond girl, but she’s not in my sister’s yearbook from the year before. Can I come look at Mrs. Goldberg’s old books tomorrow at lunch maybe?”
“I have them here—at home,” Ginny says. “She gave me copies from the last five years so I could compare the layouts. What does the girl look like?”
“She’s tall and skinny. Her hair is super platinum blond, like it’s dyed.”
“Got it,” she says. “I’ll look and call you back.”
Ginny ends the call, but I don’t put my phone down. Mango drops his head on my knee and lets out a breathy snort. My heartbeat is gaining speed at the thought of finding the blonde—a Sunnybrook cheerleader who might be able to tell me things I don’t know about the girls. Or don’t remember.
When my phone trills, I press accept before it gets the chance to ring again. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Ginny says. “I think I found her in the cheer team picture. Super thin eyebrows, piercing above her lip, right?”
“Yeah. That’s her.”
“Okay. Her name is Carly Amato. She was a senior.”
Carly Amato. I turn the name over in my head, disappointed. I was hoping to recognize the girl’s name—for some long-forgotten piece of information to click into place. “I’ve never heard of her.”
“I looked her up already,” Ginny says. She sounds embarrassed. “I found a Facebook page for a girl who looks like her. She has dark hair now. And her tan is…less fake.”
“Hold on.” I click my laptop awake and do a Facebook search for Carly Amato. The top result is the girl Ginny described.
According to her posts, Carly Amato is a nursing student at Orange County Community College. The majority of her posts are about how many exams she has and photos of a Yorkie named Peanut whom she refers to as “her baby.”
I keep clicking until I get to her oldest photos and watch her transform in reverse until she’s blond and pierced. My heartbeat picks up. “This is definitely the same girl.”
“What are you going to say to her?”
“I don’t know. What should I say?”
Ginny pauses. “Maybe just tell her the real reason you want to talk to her.”
“Yeah. Okay. Thanks.”
She makes me promise I’ll update her if Carly responds, and we end the call. Ginny makes the idea of telling the truth sound so easy. Just tell her the real reason.
I think of the reactions Rachel and Tom had to my questioning the deaths. For a few moments, I stare at the empty Facebook message draft addressed to Carly before I start to type.
I slip my thumbnail between my teeth, reading the last sentence over and over. Such a brazen lie could backfire. Everyone who went to Sunnybrook High knows Mrs. Coughlin is a demon; my mentioning her name might make Carly send my message straight to the trash.
I delete the last line, replacing it with just I was wondering if you and I could talk.
* * *
—
When I wake up, I check my inbox. It’s empty; but there’s a check mark next to my message to Carly Amato.
She read it six hours ago.
* * *
—
Tom doesn’t have Saturday off, and my mother has to work at the playhouse, so I’m watching Petey, noise-canceling headphones on to drown out the sounds of him practicing his trumpet in the living room.
I’m slathering peanut butter on a slice of toast for his lunch when my phone starts shimmying across the counter, Ginny’s name lighting up the screen. I tug my headphones off and accept the call.
“Hey.” I try and fail not to sound too eager. But something about Ginny’s investment in all this has reinvigorated me, given me purpose. Not only have I told someone everything, but she believes me too.
Ginny’s response is drowned out by the sound of “La Cucaracha.”
“Hold on a sec,” I tell her. I duck out the door connecting the kitchen to the garage, shutting myself in. “Okay. What’s up?”
“I’ve been watching Carly’s Facebook page.” Ginny’s voice is barely a murmur, as if there’s someone near her, listening in. “She just checked into the library at Orange County Community College.”
I stand up straighter, my back against the door. “How far is Orange County Community College?”
“Twenty minutes.” A pause. “My mom doesn’t need the car until seven.”
“You have your license?” I ask. “I didn’t even know you were seventeen already.”
“Since last Monday.” Ginny almost sounds embarrassed.
Monday was the day I met her in the yearbook office to look at the pictures. We talked for over an hour and Ginny never mentioned it was her birthday. Sadness slices through me; I wonder how many other things I don’t know about Ginny just because I never bothered to ask. She speaks before I can work out what to say next.
“We don’t have to go if you don’t want. I just thought since Carly’s there, and she hasn’t responded to you…”
My mom isn’t going to be back from the playhouse for another couple of hours, and I can’t leave Petey here alone. Carly will probably have left the library by the time my mom gets home. “I’m stuck watching my brother.”
A faint tapping, as if Ginny’s drumming her fingers against her phone. “Can you bring him?”
I hadn’t thought of that, but…“It’ll take some bargaining. Can you be here in fifteen minutes?”
“See you then,” Ginny chirps.
I end the call and let myself back into the kitchen. In the living room, Petey has given up on “La Cucaracha” and splayed himself out on the sectional. I come up behind him and rest my hands on the back of the couch.
“I have to go somewhere quick,” I say, treading carefully. “I need you to come with me.”
Petey turns his head up at me. Blinks. “Why can’t I stay here?”
“Because Mom will kill me. You can wait in the car.”
“What car?” Petey says. “You can’t drive.”
“My friend is coming to get me.”
Petey’s eyes light up. “Rachel?”
“No,” I say. “But this friend is nice too.”
Petey thinks for a minute. Shakes his head. “I just found something to watch.”
I grit my teeth. “You can download Clan Wars on my phone and play in the car.”
“Mom said no Clan Wars today.”
“Yeah, well, I won’t tell her if you won’t.”
Petey watches me, calculating. He may be a fifth grader, but he knows a raw deal when he sees one. I sigh. “I’ll give
you twenty dollars if you come and don’t tell Mom where we went.”
Ten minutes later, I’m shooing Petey out of the house and locking the front door behind us as Ginny rolls into the driveway. She’s wearing her Jessie’s Gym warm-up jacket, her hair coiled in a bun.
I climb into the front, Petey into the back. He takes a long look at Ginny. “Who are you?”
“Don’t be rude,” I say. “This is Ginny.”
Petey settles back in his seat. Meets Ginny’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Do you play Clan Wars?”
Ginny smiles and shakes her head. “I don’t know what that is.”
I try to be patient as Petey explains the nuances of village building and pillaging to Ginny. Once he falls silent, legs drawn up to his chest, my phone balancing sideways on his knees, I turn to Ginny and speak softly. “Seriously, thanks for doing this.”
She shrugs. “It was my idea.”
I realize that it’s part of the reason I like her so much: Whenever Ginny says something, it sounds like she means it. It’s enough to ease my worry that she doesn’t really want to be doing this—that I’ve somehow roped her into a mess she feels like she can’t get out of.
We listen to the radio and steer the conversation toward dance team, just in case Petey is eavesdropping from the backseat. When the exit for Orange County Community College appears, we make a right onto campus and follow the signs to the library.
As Ginny is parking, Petey pipes up: “Why are we here, anyway?”
It takes me a beat to come up with something. “I need a book for school. Our library didn’t have it.”
“Do I have to come in?” Petey asks.
I hesitate; I want Ginny with me, but I can’t leave Petey in the car by himself.
Ginny’s voice is barely above a whisper when she says, “Maybe your brother and I should wait out here. So Carly doesn’t feel ambushed.”
I nod. Once, twice, three times like a bobblehead. “Yeah. Okay. You’re right.”
I climb out of the car and head for the library entrance. Paranoia hits me as the automatic doors open for me. What if the librarian asks me for my college ID? What if Carly left already?
The library is one floor. I do a lap, heading past the circulation desk and a café. At the far end of the library are several long tables, peppered with people slumped over laptops or open textbooks. A sign on the wall overhead says STUDY AREA ONLY.
I wend my way through the tables, spotting a girl with a long raven-black bob that grazes her bare shoulders. My pulse quickens. Carly Amato turns her head toward me. She yawns and picks up her phone. From where I’m standing, I can see that the screen is full of cracks.
A textbook is open on the table in front of her, displaying a gruesome two-page diagram of the human digestive system. She’s not reading, though. She’s on her cell phone, playing some sort of bubble-breaking game.
I want to bolt, but Ginny and I didn’t come all the way here for me to bitch out at the last minute. I inch toward Carly’s table. Rest a hand on the back of the chair across from her, and say, “Hi. Can I sit here?”
She looks up at me. Blinks. Carly Amato looks about twenty years older than her yearbook and profile pictures, even though she’s only twenty-two, if I’m counting right.
Carly nods at the chair, as if to confirm it’s free. Not looking at me, she leans back and yawns so loudly that the guy next to her sets his book down and gives her a nasty stare.
“Are you Carly?”
Carly Amato looks like the type of girl who would answer that type of question in a smoker’s growl: Who’s askin’? Maybe I watch too many movies, because instead, Carly stops playing her game. Gives me a head tilt. The voice that comes out of her is husky. “Yeah. Do I know you?”
“I’m Jennifer Rayburn’s sister.”
“No shit.” This time Carly actually puts her phone down. She leans back on two chair legs, bumping into the chair behind her. The guy sitting in it turns around and scowls, but Carly ignores him, her eyes focused on me. “You’re, like, big now. I remember you from our games.”
I don’t want to tell her that she’s probably thinking of someone else’s little sister—that I rarely went to watch Jen cheer because I was always at dance class or at Rach’s or Alexa’s house. “I think I remember you too,” I lie. “You were blond then.”
Carly rummages in her purse. Produces a long tube made of bright pink metal. “You wanna go outside for a sec? I need a vape break.”
“Yeah. Sounds good.”
She leaves her textbook on the table and taps the shoulder of the guy sitting behind her. “Can you watch this?”
He nods, looking grateful for our exit.
Carly leads me out one of the emergency exit doors and leans against the side of the building. Sucks on the tube and blows out a stream of smoke that smells like fake strawberries and vanilla. After a few moments she breaks the silence.
“So, do you cheer?” she asks.
I shake my head. “I’m on dance team.” Carly must not remember that the cheerleading team was disbanded. She doesn’t look like she remembers what she did yesterday.
“Cool, cool.” She takes another drag from her vape, bored of me already. “What brings you out here? You’re not in college already, are you?”
“No.” I don’t know what else to say. I nod awkwardly to her vape: “How is that different from a cigarette?”
“There’s no tobacco or tar and shit.” Carly considers the device in her hand as if someone stuck it there without her noticing it. “Honestly, I don’t know why I bother. I’ve been smoking since I was fifteen.”
“It’s hard to quit,” I say. “It took my stepdad like twenty years.”
Carly eyes me as a white cloud billows around her lips. “So are you checking out the campus or something?”
The look on her face is clear: What the hell are you doing here?
“Yeah,” I lie. “I recognized you and figured I’d say hi. Were you friends with my sister?”
“I mean, we cheered together. But I was new that year, so I never got to know her or anything,” Carly says.
The cold nips at my fingers. I stick my hands in the pockets of my North Face jacket. “What about Juliana Ruiz?”
Carly eyes me. “We went to the same cheer camp that summer. We hung out a bit. Why?”
“I saw a picture of you two at a football game. Were you close?”
“I barely knew her. I mean, I hate to say it, but your sister’s friends were kinda conceited.”
She doesn’t sound like she hates to say it at all. In fact, it sounds as if she’s been dying to say it to someone. My annoyance is colored by an unpleasant thought—were my sister’s friends conceited? I try to remember a time when Susan and Juliana actually spoke to me beyond an obligatory hi.
Everyone likes to talk about how adored the dead girls were. I never stopped to consider the alternative—that Juliana and Susan and maybe even Jen herself had enemies.
“Do you remember Ethan McCready?” I ask Carly.
Carly turns and looks at me. “Who?”
“He made a hit list that year and got expelled. The cheerleaders were on it.”
“Oh.” Carly gives a small shudder. “Him.”
“So you know him?” I ask.
“Nuh-uh.” Carly brings her vape stick to her lips. “I never said one word to the kid, and then I find out he wants to kill me? Fuck that.”
I have to clamp my mouth shut to keep my jaw from dropping, because it seems totally lost on Carly that Ethan wanted to kill all the cheerleaders—and five of them actually wound up dead.
“Why would Ethan hate you if he never even talked to you?” I say.
“Kids like that always hate cheerleaders.” She moves her vape stick away from her lips, eyes on me. “Except one cheerleader.�
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My stomach goes all slippery. “You mean my sister.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Carly’s still watching me, her spidery eyelashes unblinking. It’s deeply unsettling.
“A lot of guys liked Jen,” I say. “Ever since middle school, all the guys liked her.”
“Well. I don’t know if it was one-sided.” Carly’s razor-thin eyebrows arch up. “With Ethan, I mean.”
My heartbeat quickens. “What are you talking about?”
Carly’s eyes sparkle. I know something you don’t know. I decide right there that I hate her.
“She was the only one who wasn’t on his hit list,” Carly says. “You didn’t know that?”
“That doesn’t mean she liked him.”
“Well, they were friends as kids. He lived around the corner from her,” she says, as if she’s forgotten Jen and I were sisters and lived in the same house. “The two of them, like, went off into the woods together all the time.”
That’s impossible. My sister would have never hung out with someone like Ethan. I never even saw him on our street. “Who said that?”
Carly’s mouth pinches, as if she’s holding back a smug smile. “Let’s just say it came from a reputable source.”
I feel another fissure in my patience. “Who?”
“Susan Berry,” Carly says. “The same day she saw Ethan writing the hit list, she saw Jen slip something inside Ethan’s locker. When she told some senior on the cheer squad, they convinced her to tell Heinz.”
Bullshit. The word zips around my head like a pinball. “Susan thought Jen had something to do with the hit list?”
“I don’t know what she thought,” Carly says. “But she told Principal Heinz everything she saw.”