The Cheerleaders

by Kara Thomas

  Next to me, Ginny pipes up: “Still waiting for you to explain what this has to do with the murders.”

  “Before the crash, Bethany and Colleen stopped at 7-Eleven,” Ethan says. “A bunch of people saw two guys in a pickup truck catcall them in the parking lot. Bethany shouted something at them, and they shouted back, and when Bethany turned out of the lot, the truck followed them.”

  “Who are these people?” I ask. “The ones who saw what happened?”

  “They were friends of mine,” Ethan says. At the look on my face, he adds: “Despite what you might have heard, I did have friends.”

  I think of the type of guys who hang out in the 7-Eleven parking lot. Potheads. “So you think some mysterious truck ran Bethany off the road?”

  “You make it sound like I came up with the idea,” Ethan says. “You really have no idea what it was like in the months after everything happened, do you?”

  I swallow. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not the only one who was skeptical about the accident and the murders,” Ethan says. “You were probably too young to be paying attention, but plenty of people were talking. Five girls, who all knew each other, gone in a matter of a month? It was too wild to believe.”

  I was too young, maybe, but also consumed by grief. All I remember from those days is mourning Jen and worrying about Tom’s job. Jen and Tom. Tom and Jen.

  Two dots.

  “Wouldn’t there have been tire marks from the truck?” I say.

  He cracks a knuckle. “No. It was raining.”

  “But tons of people in Sunnybrook drive pickup trucks,” I say. “The odds are almost zero that it was the same truck that you saw outside the Berrys’ house.”

  “And what are the odds that five girls from the same school, all friends, would die within a month of each other?” Ethan shoots back.

  Ginny makes a small sound in her throat, as if reminding us she’s still sitting here. “Sorry. But this sounds like a crackpot conspiracy theory.”

  “I get that it’s hard to believe the crash wasn’t an accident,” Ethan says, staring back at Ginny. “But think about it this way—isn’t it weird that Tom Carlino was the first on the scene in all three cases?”

  A sharp pain hits me in the stomach. I have to force out the words: “Do you realize what you’re accusing him of?”

  “Of being involved in all five deaths and orchestrating a grand plot to cover it up?” Ethan shakes his head. “No, I don’t really believe that’s what happened.”

  “Then why send the letters?” I say. “Why taunt him when you have no idea what really happened or whether he’s involved?”

  Ethan stares at me for a moment. Something in his face softens; I wonder if he’s seeing her. My sister. It makes my blood drain to my feet.

  He shakes his head, as if he’s composing himself. “The only thing I know for sure is that he’s the best chance at finding the truth. He just has to want to.”

  I think of what Mrs. Ruiz said to me on the phone: At some point, you have to choose to live in the light. Is that why Tom refuses to talk about the murders—because he can’t bear fumbling around for answers in the dark?

  Or is he just afraid of what he’ll find in there?

  When we’re back in the car and my heartbeat slows down, I turn to Ginny. Her fingers are drumming the steering wheel.

  “I don’t trust him,” Ginny says, letting her words hang in the air for a bit. “I don’t think he’s reliable. He was obsessed with your sister, and he obviously has a vendetta against your stepdad.”

  My throat goes tight. “What he said about Tom threatening him—I need you to know he would never do that.”

  “You don’t have to convince me.”

  A funny feeling settles over me. She’s never even met Tom. She must sense my confusion, because she takes a deep breath.

  “When I was a kid, I was in the car with my dad one night. He’d been drinking, and your stepdad pulled him over.” She picks at a raw cuticle, avoiding my eyes. “He drove us both to the station, and I was embarrassed and crying, like I’d done something wrong.

  “My mom couldn’t get someone to cover her at the hospital, so we had to wait at the station for a couple hours. Your stepdad…he let me hang out in his office. He brought me some food from the vending machine and showed me all this stuff, like how he filed police reports.” Ginny looks at me. “I didn’t realize until my mom picked us up that Tom did that so I didn’t have to sit in the lobby with people staring at me.”

  That sounds like the Tom I know. The man who’s always nearby to put a calming hand on my mom’s shoulder when she’s going apeshit on my brother or me. The man I’ve always felt cared about me more than my own father, a virtual stranger who calls me on my birthday and Christmas for molasses-slow conversations of people who have nothing to say to each other.

  “So I don’t trust Ethan at all,” Ginny says, interrupting my thoughts. “I think all that stuff about Tom not taking him seriously is a lie. He must have had a convincing reason not to believe Ethan.”

  My throat tightens. “The shooting…His job—”

  Ginny cuts me off, shaking her head. “I don’t think your stepdad is the type of person to let a killer walk free just to save his own job.”

  Her words have a calming effect on me. The debris clouding my thoughts starts to settle, and another possibility emerges, one where the police and Tom aren’t hiding anything.

  “Ethan didn’t think to go to the police right away,” I say. “If someone else saw or heard something that night, maybe they didn’t think it was unusual. If that makes any sense.”

  “It does,” Ginny says. “Smaller details could have been overlooked if they didn’t fit the bigger picture. Someone other than Ethan may have even seen the pickup truck and told the police.”

  A funny feeling washes over me. Nerves, maybe, but also a shot of clarity. “There’s one way we can find out for sure what the neighbors saw.”

  Ginny stops tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. Raises her eyebrows.

  “Witness statements,” I say.

  * * *

  —

  The house is empty when I get home a little after four. My mom won’t be home until five, and I know Tom took half the day off to see Petey’s soccer game.

  Ginny and I are sitting at the kitchen island, a hunk of cheddar on the cheese board between us. Ginny arranges a slice of cheese neatly on a cracker from the box I dug out from the pantry, while I wolf mine down and slice another chunk for myself.

  We spent the ride home brainstorming ways to get our hands on the witness statements from the night of the murders. My laptop is on the counter in front of us, next to the cheese board, a PDF about the Freedom of Information Act open on the screen.

  Ginny reads off the page silently, lips moving. “It looks like civilians are allowed to request police records, though the police departments have to approve the release of information through FOIA, and the person requesting the information has to provide a compelling reason for needing it.”

  I deflate. “ ‘I need witness statements for a five-year-old murder case because I think you screwed up the investigation’ is bound to raise some red flags with whoever is in charge of records at the Sunnybrook PD.”

  A smile quivers on Ginny’s lips. I slice her another piece of cheese, but she doesn’t take it. “What about the reporter?” she asks. “The one who gave you some of those details, like Jack Canning getting arrested when he was younger?”

  “I don’t know. I assumed a cop told her about that,” I say. “But I guess there’s a chance she saw the record herself.”

  “It’s worth trying,” Ginny says, but I’m already unzipping my wristlet. The business card Daphne Furman gave me at Starbucks is wedged between my debit card and the inside of my wallet.

 
; I tap her number into my phone, but hesitate with my finger over the call button. Daphne did say I could reach out at any time.

  The line rings and rings, and I’m ready to end it when a harried voice answers. “Hello, this is Daphne.”

  “Hi. This is Monica.”

  “Monica?”

  “Rayburn. We talked a couple weeks ago.”

  “Oh, of course. I’m sorry. I’m on a deadline and I can’t remember what day it is. What’s up?”

  “I had some more questions about what we talked about.” I hit the speaker button so Ginny can hear Daphne. “The stuff you told me about the crime scene—like the forced entry stuff—did you get that from the police report?”

  “Not exactly,” Daphne says. “I had a source in law enforcement who was willing to sneak me little bits and pieces.”

  “I figured.” I pause. “Is there any way he can get you the witness statements from my neighbors?”

  Daphne is silent for a moment. “After my story was published, the Sunnybrook Police Department realized someone was leaking from the database. My source got fired, and the police sealed the file.”

  “Wait. Your source was fired from Sunnybrook PD?” I know Daphne will never give me his or her name, but I could easily figure out who it is.

  “No, he didn’t work for Sunnybrook,” Daphne says. “He worked at another department. There’s a statewide database, so other departments can share information and work together.”

  “When you say the file is sealed, do you mean no one at all can get it?”

  “I don’t know. I’m assuming people who work in that department could access it, if they really wanted to.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Daphne. Sorry I wasted your time.”

  “No, no, not at all. I wish I could be of more help.”

  I pause. “Is there any way your source—”

  “Oh, Monica, you know I can’t give you his name.”

  My heart sinks, even though I knew what the answer would be. “Got it. Figured I’d try.”

  Daphne pauses. “He works as a private investigator now, though. If you ever need info on a specific person, he owes me a favor.”

  Ginny catches my gaze. Mouths, Ethan?

  I cover the speaker with my finger. “I don’t want to waste the favor digging stuff up on him. We might need a bigger favor down the line.”

  Ginny nods, and I remove my finger from the speaker. “Thanks, Daphne.”

  “No problem. Talk soon.”

  When I end the call, Ginny says, “That police database. How could we get on it?”

  I pause with a hunk of cheese halfway to my mouth, taken aback. “I don’t know.”

  “Everything would be on there,” Ginny says quietly. “The witness statements, the report, the crime scene…”

  She stops short of saying “photos.” My stomach turns over. Below the kitchen island, Mango is scratching at my calf, his eyes on the block of cheese. I break off a crumb and feed it to him.

  “Tom’s ID card,” I say. “He uses it to get on the database at home. There’s a thing he sticks it in—some sort of reader.”

  Ginny nibbles the edge of her cracker, watching me over it.

  “It’s a lost cause, though,” I say. “He keeps it in his wallet, and he never lets his wallet out of his sight. Even if I got it somehow, I wouldn’t be able to access the database and replace his card without him noticing.”

  At my feet, Mango perks up. A car door slams, and he takes off, barking. I snap my laptop shut. Moments later, my mother calls out to me from the hallway. “Monica? Whose car is that?”

  There’s an edge to her voice, as if she’s worried that whoever inseminated me has come back for round two. She comes into the kitchen, several strands of hair falling out of her bun.

  She stops short when she sees Ginny, who looks equally uncomfortable.

  “This is my friend Ginny,” I say. “She’s on the dance team.”

  My mother does a little head tilt. “Hello, Ginny.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Rayburn.”

  “It’s Carlino,” my mother says, and even though her voice is gentle, Ginny’s face turns a deep shade of red.

  It hits me, why Ginny is so embarrassed; she told me my mother had given her a ride home from gymnastics once, when her father never showed up to get her. It looks like my mother doesn’t even recognize her.

  “I was going to order a pizza,” Mom says. “You’re welcome to stay, Ginny.”

  Ginny’s eyes flit to me, as if she’s asking if it’s okay. I give her an encouraging smile, but she says, “I’m supposed to eat with my mom tonight. Thank you, though.”

  My mother moves along to her office and luckily Ginny misses the way my mother looks her up and down, the ghost of a frown on her face. I walk Ginny to the front door, Mango weaving between our legs, afraid we’re going somewhere and leaving him behind. I can’t stop thinking about Ginny’s face when she talked about getting on the police database. The way she seemed to come alive at considering doing something so obviously illegal, when less than a month ago she was too scared to talk to me on the bus ride home.

  “What is it?” Ginny asks. “You’re looking at me weird.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “You’re good at this stuff. It’s like you’re secretly a badass.”

  She just shrugs. But as she waves goodbye and heads down the driveway, I catch her smile before she turns her back.

  I watch her walk all the way to her mom’s car, wondering what happened to the girl on the bus.

  * * *

  —

  The long weekend is washed away by my teachers’ revenge for the days off—five-page papers in both English and history, a take-home test for pre-calc, and several practice quizzes for chem, thanks to my deplorable average. We have a three-hour dance team practice on Saturday to make up for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and Sunday is spent icing a pulled hamstring.

  Monday morning, my mother comes into the kitchen while I’m eating breakfast. She watches me as she guides an earring into her ear. “Would you be able to stay at Rachel’s or Alexa’s Friday night?”

  I let my spoon rest against the side of my yogurt container. “Why?”

  “Tom and I are going to the PBA annual dinner and we won’t be back until late. Your brother is staying with Grandma Carlino. I’m assuming you don’t want to go with him.”

  Tom’s mother is nice enough, and she always has her freezer stocked with our favorite ice creams—Rocky Road for me, Cookie Dough for Petey—but I’m too old to sleep on a pullout bed with my little brother while our parents are out partying until two in the morning.

  “Can’t I just stay here?” I ask. “I’m sixteen. I can handle it.”

  “You just told us a little while ago that you don’t feel safe here alone.”

  “Fine,” I say. “I’ll talk to Rach.”

  “Thank you.”

  My mother is turning on her heel when I think of something. “Mom. Who’s going to be at the station if everyone’s going to the dinner?”

  “Not everyone is going,” she says, still battling with the stubborn earring. “Mike will be around if anything comes up.”

  I turn back to my yogurt. Use the head of my spoon to put pressure on a stray strawberry until I crush it, staining the surface of the yogurt red. When my mother leaves the room, I text Ginny.

  I send the text off, throw out what’s left of my yogurt, and finish getting ready for school.

  * * *

  —

  It’s evident during homeroom that homecoming fever is setting in. The game and parade are still more than two weeks away, but people are lobbying for homecoming court already. Campaigning was outright banned when I was a freshman, after a group of seniors on the guys’ soccer team made a calendar out of seductive photos of them
selves, and one fell right into the lap of Mrs. Zhang, the student council advisor.

  Mrs. Barnes announces that student council is having an open meeting for anyone who wants to participate in class Spirit Night, and also, the library is reopened.

  At lunch, Rachel is absent from the table. I slide onto the bench next to Alexa.

  “Where’s Rach?”

  “Getting extra help,” Alexa says, kneading a pouch of low-fat ranch to get the dregs onto her salad. “She has until Friday to drop pre-calc, and she’s freaking out.”

  Behind us, there’s a commotion. A pack of senior guys is horsing around. One of them drops a carton of punch; it forms a red river on the tile. Mrs. Brown shouts at them to clean it up or someone is getting sent to the ISS room.

  Joe Gabriel bends down to mop up the fruit punch, but the guys are still hanging close by, sneaking glances at us.

  I turn to Alexa. “Why are they hovering?”

  “Because Jimmy wants to ask you to homecoming.”

  I’d completely forgotten that homecoming tickets are going on sale this week. In my periphery, I catch Jimmy Varney staring at me. He gives me a sheepish smile and holds up a hand.

  I wave back. Jimmy is cute, and sweet. He’s the type of guy who could blunt my sharp edges. But even when I was dating Matt, Alexa, Rach, and I went to the dance as each other’s dates.

  “I don’t want to get involved with anyone right now,” I say.

  Alexa spears an anemic-looking tomato slice. “Babe, Matt is gone. A really cute guy is into you. Let yourself have fun.”

  I don’t want to tell her that I haven’t even thought about Matt in weeks. She’ll pry, and there’s no way in hell I’m telling her about Brandon. I hate feeling like I can’t talk to Rach and Alexa, but there’s not a single thing I could tell them about the last few weeks that wouldn’t horrify them.

  “Jimmy’s signing up for male kickline,” Alexa says, oblivious to the way I’ve become overly interested in my sandwich to avoid the looks from the guys. “So he’s gonna be at the meeting today.”