by Kara Thomas
“Why’d you kill them?” I ask. “Did Juliana threaten to tell Allie?”
Brandon shuts his eyes, muttering, “Oh my God oh my God oh my God.” He probably thought this moment would never come.
I hit him in the kneecap with the bat, yelling over his moaning and cries of Oh my God. “Why did you kill them, Brandon?”
“It wasn’t just about Allie finding out. I was twenty-two, and Juliana was fifteen,” he says. “If she told anyone, I could have gone to jail. You should know that.”
The snideness that’s crept into his voice makes me want to hit him in the knee again, harder. “What happened that night?”
“I told Juliana we had to stop, the morning after Allie found the earring in my truck. Juliana was really, really mad. She’d thought I would break up with Allie for her—she didn’t get it, that I couldn’t be with a fifteen-year-old.” Brandon swallows. “She asked me to come to Susan’s house to talk. We sat in my truck. It was fine, at first, but when I told her again I wasn’t leaving Allie, she started crying and yelling about how she was going to tell her. She got out and slammed the door.”
“You followed her inside.”
Brandon closes his eyes. Tears drip down his face, over his lips. “She wouldn’t answer the front door. When she said she was going to call the cops, I freaked. I climbed the fence, and I saw the back door—she saw me and opened it and started yelling at me. When I followed her into the house she went nuts. I was afraid Susan would hear, so I covered Juliana’s mouth. She bit me, and when she jerked away, she fell back into the mirror. Her head was bleeding, and she came at me with a shard—I just panicked.”
“So instead of calling to get Juliana help, you killed her and Susan.”
“Susan heard. She came downstairs at the noise. She started running back upstairs when she saw everything, so I ran after her and grabbed her.” Brandon chokes out a sob. “I didn’t go there planning to hurt anyone. It just got out of control.”
“You’re disgusting!” I scream. “It was all an act with me, wasn’t it? You pretended sleeping with me was a bad idea because of my age, while you were really a fucking pedo—”
He lunges at me, mashing his fist into my mouth before I can lift the baseball bat. I stumble back, but he presses his forearm into my throat, pinning me to the wall. When he reaches for the bat, I throw it as far as my short reach will allow. It clatters when it hits the ground, but Brandon doesn’t go after it; his eyes are locked on me. I’m staring back at a cornered animal.
“Is this what you did to her?” I gasp.
Black spots are swimming before my eyes. Then, screaming. His screaming. He releases me, stumbling backward; I’m bent over, clutching my throat, trying to process the scene in front of me.
Ginny is standing over Brandon, the bat in her hands. She’s calm, her hands steady around its neck; Brandon is on his back, not moving.
“Where’s my brother?” It comes out garbled; my lips are swollen and my mouth tastes like blood. “Where’s Petey?”
“He’s at my house. We called nine-one-one, and Tom.”
I look from Ginny to Brandon. It’s just the three of us now. I don’t hear sirens yet. Brandon is watching me from the floor, his temple leaking blood. I realize that Ginny hit him in the head with the bat.
Brandon’s eyelids flutter. He needs an ambulance; he has a concussion, or worse. I look at Ginny again.
“Give me the bat.”
“Monica,” she says.
“Please.”
Ginny hands it over. Brandon’s eyes roll back. He’s finally passed out, either from the pain or from the sight of me standing over him with the bat. He must see it in my face—how badly I want to kill him. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life. It would just take a few swings.
My fingers tremble around the handle of the bat. I look at Ginny. Her face is calm. “If you do it, I’ll say whatever you want.”
She’ll tell everyone it was self-defense. That I had no choice but to kill Brandon.
“I want to.” A tear slips out of my eye. “I want it so bad.”
“I know,” Ginny says.
The thoughts swirl through my head, landing on what my mother said to me last night in her car. Even at your worst, I love you more than life itself. She will still love me if I execute Brandon right here. I know Tom would, too, and maybe even Petey as well.
But the Ruizes, the Berrys—all the people whose lives he destroyed—they deserve the chance to look Brandon in the face as well. If I take that from them, I won’t be able to live with myself.
Brandon’s eyes open again. I hold his gaze as I kick him in the stomach. I keep kicking and kicking until I’m out of breath, until a siren blares from down the street, until my foot’s gone numb and Ginny has to drag me away from his limp body.
“We can go home now.”
Tom’s voice snaps me out of my trance. He sets his phone down on his desk and rubs his eyes. My mother has pulled her seat so close to mine she is practically on top of me.
When Tom speaks, her grip on my shoulder tightens. “What about him?”
“Being treated. Won’t be able to talk to him until tomorrow, most likely.”
“Why is he getting medical care?” Mom demands. “He should be in a cell.”
Tom shuts his eyes. Holds up a hand. “Phoebe, please.”
I touch the tender skin on my neck where Brandon tried to choke me. The first responders said to expect nasty bruises there. They checked me for any serious injuries at the house and cleared me, which is the only reason my mother let me skip going to the hospital.
I saw them carting Brandon off to the hospital. I can’t be in the same building as him. I don’t even want to breathe the same air as Brandon Michaelson.
A flutter of panic. “They can’t let him go, right?”
“They have enough to keep him for assault.” Tom doesn’t look at me as he says it, but my mother moves her hand to mine. “They’ll move to charge him for that and the statutory rape as soon as possible.”
My mother flinches at the last part.
“What about the murders?” I ask. “I have him recorded practically confessing.”
“Once they finish up interviewing Ginny about what happened today, someone is going to talk to you again. After that, the DA will want to hear from you.” Tom massages his beard. “I’ve been asked to step aside while they investigate.”
My eyes go prickly. If Brandon is charged with Juliana’s and Susan’s murders, the department will reopen the inquiry into Jack Canning’s death. Tom could lose his job.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “All of this is my fault.”
My mother moves her hand to my knee and squeezes. “Stop it.”
She’s crying and I’m crying, and soon Tom is crying and wrapping his arms around both of us and we’re all crying.
“What if Jen knew it was him?” I manage to choke out. “What if she knew and he found out and he made it look like she did it herself—”
“Monica.” My mom tightens her grip on me. “She left a note. Jen left a note. She mentioned you. She wanted you to see California for her—”
“Stop,” I say. “Please stop.”
“Honey, no. You have to understand.”
I’m sobbing too hard to get out what I want to tell her: I’ll never understand.
* * *
—
I wake in my bed to my mother’s hand on my forehead and sunlight assaulting my eyelids. “Ginny’s here, if you want to see her.”
I sit up. “What time is it?”
“Almost ten. I wanted to let you sleep. Do you want me to send her up?”
My head is throbbing. “No. I’ll come downstairs.”
Ginny is on my living room couch. She cranes her neck. Stands when she sees me.
I w
ave a hand. “Sit, sit.”
Ginny lowers herself onto the couch and I plop down next to her. “God, this hurts so bad.”
“Your neck?”
That, and everything else. “Yeah.”
“I just wanted you to know—I didn’t tell the police anything,” she says. “Well, obviously I told them stuff. But not the last part of yesterday.”
“Thanks. But you don’t have to lie for me anymore.” I pinch the bridge of my nose until I see white. “Everyone’s going to find out about Brandon and me. My life is pretty much over anyway.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.” Ginny’s voice is soft. “He used you, like he used Juliana.”
“I used him. I was tired of being numb and I wanted to prove to myself I could feel something.”
Ginny is quiet for a moment. Then: “Did you?”
“I do now.”
I don’t realize I’m crying until Ginny throws her arms around me.
* * *
—
Tom said to expect the murder case to move slowly. When the news breaks Brandon is being charged with statutory rape and assault, there’s no mention in the news of Juliana’s and Susan’s murders.
There’s no mention of Brandon Michaelson’s unnamed victim, but everyone at school knows it’s me.
I’m not sure who figured it out, but it doesn’t take a detective to put everything together. My two-day absence starting the morning that Brandon was fired from Sunnybrook High, rumors already swirling that he’d been arrested.
Rachel and Alexa are the only ones I’ve told outside of Ginny and my family. They shield me on the way inside the school building; when the news broke last night, my mother said I could stay home today, but there’s something I’ve been meaning to do.
Instead of nasty looks and a scarlet letter painted on my locker, I arrive to sympathetic smiles. I suspect Rach and Alexa did damage control.
I am a victim, whether or not I feel like one. Maybe one day I will wake up crushed under the weight of what Brandon did to me. For now all I feel is the memory of that baseball bat hitting his body and my foot in his ribs.
At the end of the day, before dance team practice starts, I find Coach in the athletic office, filling out registration forms for the upcoming competition. She looks up at me; she doesn’t seem surprised to see that I’m not dressed in my dance clothes.
“I quit,” I say. “I should have done it sooner. But you have a week before regionals to rework the spots.”
Coach works the top of her pen with her thumb, giving it a click. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
I couldn’t eat the morning after dance team tryouts freshman year. I tried to strike a deal with God: If I make the team, I promise I’ll be nicer to Mom and Petey and give all my Christmas money to the animal shelter. I’d never wanted anything so badly.
Freshman-year Monica would want to punch me in the face.
“Yes,” I tell Coach.
She blinks at me, the ghost of a smile on her lips, before going back to her paperwork. “You’re all right, Rayburn.”
I don’t know which way she means it. But when I leave her office, I feel lighter than I did when I stepped inside.
* * *
—
I catch the three-thirty bus home from school. The days are getting shorter. It feels strange, being home before dark. As I climb the driveway, I see my mother’s silhouette in the window, hanging a strand of orange holiday lights. The outside of the house looks different too; she’s stretched cotton cobwebs over the bushes, and a skeleton in a top hat hangs off the hook on the front door.
When the door clicks shut behind me, Mango starts barking. My mom pops her head into the foyer, the tangle of Halloween lights in hand. “You’re home.”
“I quit dance team.”
She comes to my side, draping an arm around my shoulder and pulling me in for a hug. I’m almost as tall as she is now. I let her squeeze me for a solid minute before putting my hands on her shoulders and gently pushing her away. “Do you need help with the lights?”
After the lights are strung, I head up to my room and shrug out of my jeans, replacing them with pajama pants. I plop into my desk chair and open up my email, bracing for anonymous hate messages about what a life-ruining slut I am.
I only have one message, and it’s from Daphne Furman. My heartbeat skips; there’s no way she knows that I’m the Sunnybrook High victim. There was no mention of Brandon’s connection to the cheerleader murders in the media—
The gears in my head grind to a halt when I see the subject line.
Phil Cordero.
I pull my feet onto my desk chair and tuck them under me.
Hi Monica—
My contact had a tough time with this one. He couldn’t find any record of employment, taxes, or incarceration for Phil Cordero in the last five years.
Four years ago, his wife filed a request to have him declared dead, but it looks like the judge denied it. The record shows that Phil’s wife posted a five-thousand-dollar bail for a previous DUI charge he was set to appear for before he disappeared (unrelated to the domestic violence charge—this guy seems like a real winner). If a defendant dies before a case goes to trial and bail is paid in cash, whoever posted the bail can get the money back. It’s pretty difficult to provide proof of death without a body or evidence that a person met foul play.
Anyway, the motion to have Phil declared dead states that the last time his wife saw him was the morning of October 27. Several other people saw him at a bar that evening. I’m sure you’ve realized that this means Phil Cordero was last seen a full week before the murders.
I’m sorry—I know you were hoping this would turn into a viable lead. I’ll admit that I was too. My guess? Phil Cordero was facing upward of fifteen years in prison for the domestic violence charges and the DUI and fled. Wherever he’s hiding, he’s doing a good job of it. Probably shacked up with some poor woman who has no idea what he did.
Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.
Best,
Daphne
I read it again to make sure I have it right. Ginny said her father left on October 18, a full three days before this report says he was last seen.
Either Ginny has the date her dad went missing wrong, or she lied about it.
Ginny’s father was last seen the night of Bethany and Colleen’s accident.
* * *
—
I wake up on the morning of the anniversary of Jen’s death feeling different than I did last year. The numbness that I always feel is still there, but I can feel too.
I can cry, so I do, in the shower. Rachel texts me that she’s outside while I’m still dabbing concealer over my dark circles. I stick the wand back in the tube. Stare at myself in the mirror, watching the rise and fall of my chest as I exhale.
No one at school, aside from Rach and Alexa, is delicate with me today. They don’t know what today is, and that’s fine by me. I don’t want to be treated as if I’m breakable.
When I stop by my locker at the end of the day and find Jimmy Varney waiting for me, my breath gets caught in my throat. His older brother was in Jen’s grade; he must remember. He must be here to say how sorry he is, how he’s been thinking about my family and me today.
The last thing I’m expecting him to say is, “Do you want to go to Big Hero’s?”
“Now?”
“Well. Rumor has it you quit dance team, and seeing how I don’t have a cross-country coach anymore, I figured we’re both free this afternoon.”
He must sense how I stiffen at the mention of Brandon. “Monica,” he says softly. “I don’t care about that.”
I meet his eyes. “This is just a sandwich among friends?”
“A sandwich among friends. That’s it. As long as it’s a Louisi
ana Lightning.”
I smile. “Obviously.”
Jimmy doesn’t needle me at all for details about the events of the last few weeks. In fact, he seems to be going out of his way to prove that he doesn’t care about anything that happened between Brandon and me.
Once our sandwich is ready, he must be able to tell that I don’t want to eat in the busy deli, because he asks if I want to go somewhere quieter.
“What about Osprey’s Bluff?” I say.
He agrees, and we spend the ride talking about his college options. He’s being scouted by SUNY Binghamton, where Matt goes, but Jimmy doesn’t want to go there because Matt says it smells like cows.
Jimmy turns onto Osprey Road; on the other side of the street, I spot several wilted bouquets of flowers, including a hot-pink bunch of tiger lilies. Bethany’s favorite.
“Can you pull over here?”
Jimmy parks on the shoulder, a safe distance from the road and the sign reading IN MEMORY OF BETHANY STEIGER AND COLLEEN COUGHLIN. Jimmy stands, his back against the car, feet crossed at the ankles. Arms folded. He doesn’t ask what I’m doing as I cross the street to the side overlooking the lake.
The guardrail is weathered, but there’s the faintest trace of red paint on it. The steep embankment slopes all the way to the edge of Osprey Lake. It would be so easy for a speeding car to fly over that guardrail and roll down into the lake.
I think of Ginny’s visceral reaction to Mrs. Coughlin in the yearbook office that day. The way Ginny went out of her way to avoid Rachel that fall. I swallow, shoot one last look at the lake before rejoining Jimmy at his car.
“What’s the matter?” Jimmy says, seeing my face.
“Absolutely nothing at all.”
* * *
—
When I get home and search the mail, there’s no letter from Ethan McCready. There is no reason for him to write to Tom, asking if he cares about the truth. The truth is out there now.