Piranhas in Pink: Piranhas in Pink Book One

by Nova Knightley

  Dad took a deep breath. “The police won’t start looking this early. We told them Piper was special, but they said to give it a few more hours because kids miss curfew all the time. Yasmin and Farrah claim that Piper left the party with someone. Some guy they didn’t know and had never met before. They say they asked her to stay, but she refused.”

  Anger washed over me. “Liars. They’re fucking lying! Piper would never have gone off with a stranger, and she would have never left Farrah and Yasmin behind.”

  “Exactly,” Mom said, pushing Dad away from her. “I know my daughter, and something is wrong.”

  Piper was missing for three days. The entire time, I felt like a zombie. My body was numb, and breathing became a chore. I knew in my gut that the worst thing that could ever happen to our family had happened. On the fourth day of my sister’s disappearance, one of Farrah’s friends went to the police station with a video Farrah had sent her. Two cops came over to give my parents the update—a female cop named Officer Kerry and a man named Officer Whittle. Kerry did all the talking. I listened from the bottom of the staircase as she spoke in a soothing voice, as if my parents were toddlers having a temper tantrum.

  Kerry annoyed me at first. She was speaking slowly and deliberately, like she didn’t want to get to the bad part. Just tell us what happened to Piper. We already know it’s not good.

  The officer cleared her throat. “The girls, Yasmin and Farrah, claimed they had a fight with Piper. They said she got drunk and started being hostile with them.”

  Lies. All the above was a lie. Piper would never drink. She hated the taste of alcohol like I did. It made her gag, and she had never been hostile in her life. She didn’t have a mean bone in her body.

  Kerry kept relaying their lies. “They said Piper was causing a scene.” Lie. “The party host got upset with Piper’s behavior and ordered the girls to take her home. Farrah says on the way home, Piper said she had to pee. There was nowhere to stop, so Farrah pulled to the side of the road. Piper got out to use the bathroom, but when she was done, she wouldn’t get back in the car. The girls claim Piper took off running down the road. They couldn’t find her, so they went home.”

  I wrapped my fingers around the bannister and squeezed as hard as I could.

  “What did those little bitches do to our daughter?” Mom demanded. I didn’t have to see her face to know she was furious. I could hear it in her voice. She sounded angrier than she had the last time Piper came home crying and she’d had enough of them torturing her.

  Everything was quiet for a moment, and Whittle took over. “A friend of the girls came forth with a video. We know that Farrah and Yasmin lied.”

  Yeah. No shit.

  Mom squeezed Dad’s hand. “We want to see it.”

  Officer Kerry nodded. “Okay. Come on down to the station, and we’ll let you see it.”

  Everyone stood, preparing to leave.

  “I want to come too,” I told Dad.

  Dad looked at Officer Kerry, who shook her head. “It’s up to you, of course, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  “No, absolutely not,” Mom said as she sprinted up the stairs for her shoes.

  I begged and pleaded as my parents rushed out the door, but my words fell on deaf ears. Just as Dad slammed the front door in my face, I got a text message from Abby.

  Holy shit! Go to Derek Broslin’s Facebook page now before he deletes it.

  Without even taking the time to respond, I clicked on the Facebook app. I didn’t know who this Derek guy was. When I put his name into the search bar, several Derek Broslins popped up. I clicked on the first profile pic that looked like it belonged to a high schooler. He had just posted a video an hour ago. The caption read WTF? I clicked on it.

  At first, everything was blurry, and the camera was shaky. Girls were giggling in the background. I couldn’t tell how many yet. After a few seconds, I realized they were walking through the woods. The only light seemed to be coming from cell phones.

  Finally, someone came into view, a girl who had long auburn hair and was wearing a maroon dress—Piper.

  Whoever was filming shoved her in the back and laughed. “Keep going, freak. We’re not there yet.”

  That was Farrah’s voice. Where Farrah was, Yasmin was too. Sure enough, Farrah turned the camera on her best friend walking beside her. Yasmin smiled, baring her perfect white teeth. “Our friend Piper here has decided that she wants to go for a little swim.” She threw her head back and laughed, as if she had just said the funniest thing in the world. She and Farrah were obviously drunk. With slurred words, she went on. “She told us that she was going to kill herself if we didn’t stop being mean to her, so we told her to put her money where her mouth is.”

  Piper did that when she was extremely upset. When she and Mom had terrible fights, she would scream, “Leave me alone, or I’ll kill myself.” Dad would get upset whenever she said it, but Mom told him it was attention-seeking behavior and we needed to ignore it.

  Farrah turned the camera on Piper and pushed her again.

  “Leave me alone!” Piper screeched. It broke my heart. I would have given anything to climb into the video and save my sister from those monsters.

  Farrah and Yasmin laughed cruelly at her. The sound of flowing water made it harder to hear them. Piper stopped walking.

  Farrah aimed her phone at the creek before them. “Well, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and kill yourself like you said you would.”

  Piper turned with tears streaming down her face. “I want to go home. Please just take me home.”

  “You’re not going home, you big-ass baby,” Yasmin snapped. “Now jump.”

  Piper faced the water again.

  Farrah turned the camera on herself, rolling her eyes and laughing, then aimed it back at Piper. “You might as well do it, loser. If I were you, I would have offed myself a long time ago. Everyone hates you. Boys think you’re a creepy weirdo. All they do is make fun of you. You’re never going to have any real friends. Do the entire world a favor and just end it.”

  “Jump! Jump! Jump! Jump!” Yasmin chanted. Farrah joined in.

  That went on for almost a minute, but it felt like hours to me. A raging fire was burning in me. I held my breath, waiting to see what Piper would do. She took one last look at the camera and wiped her tears away with the back of her hand, then she faced the creek again, bent her knees, and jumped.

  The girls stopped chanting, and the only thing that could be heard was the running water.

  Farrah lowered her phone so that it focused on her black boots and the dry leaves covering the ground. “Oh shit.” She was breathing hard. “She actually jumped.”

  “Piper!” Yasmin screamed. “Piper!”

  “Yasmin,” Farrah said, her voice quivering. “Do you see her?”

  “No!” Yasmin shouted. “Turn that shit off.”

  The video ended.

  I could never put into words the way I felt watching that, only that it awakened a demon in me.

  ***

  Blue and battered by the stone-filled creek, Piper’s body had washed up two days after that.

  My parents pressed criminal charges. We had evidence of all the messages Farrah and Yasmin had sent my sister, telling her she was worthless and that she should kill herself. If it had not been for them, Piper would never have jumped into that creek. They deserved to go down for murder. The way I saw it, what they had done was no different from them pushing her into the creek themselves.

  The case went to trial and lasted three months. Farrah and Yasmin cried on the stand and talked about how sorry they were. Their lawyers argued that they were intoxicated at the time and that technically Piper had done it to herself. They tried to paint her as being suicidal before she even met Farrah and Yasmin. The prosecution had warned us that because the girls were young and beautiful and great actresses in the courtroom, they were likely to get a slap on the wrist. She was correct. They got off with a year of community service and a temporar
y ban from social media. Since they’d been receiving so much hate from the public, the social media ban was actually a gift to them. What I felt after that was something way worse than anger. They had killed my sister and destroyed our lives, and they’d gotten away with it. I couldn’t stand that. I thought about all the kids who had left the earth because they’d been pushed to their breaking point by the cruelty of their peers.

  I was angry with myself for not seeing it coming. Piper had issues, more issues than most, but she would never have ended her life without their influence. I asked myself why I hadn’t fought harder to keep her from going with them. They were evil. I blamed my parents too and wondered why Mom and Dad had been so forgiving. They should have forbidden Piper from having anything to do with Farrah and Yasmin after they had harassed her on social media. I didn’t have to ask myself that question for long. They’d forgiven them because Piper seemed so happy, and all any of us wanted was for her to be happy.

  I had to get back at Farrah and Yasmin. The system had let them off, but I wasn’t about to. They had to pay for what they’d done to Piper, and I would grant no mercy.

  16

  Vengeance Is Mine

  I would never be able to rest peacefully unless I set things right for Piper and our family. After the girls got off for murdering my sister, I’d decided to take matters into my own hands.

  By that time Abby was the only friend I had left. Piper’s death and that unfair trial changed me into a different person. I was always angry and freaking out over the smallest things. Abby tried to talk me out of what I was going to do, but she couldn’t. No one could. I didn’t feel bad about any of it. We had tried to do things according to the law, but the law had failed us.

  Farrah Wyatt was an evil, vapid bitch, she had a thing for blond boys with beards, and she had a sweet tooth. She was notorious for juggling several guys at a time. Piper had once told me that Farrah had a boyfriend at every school in the county. On a stock photo site, I found a picture of a cute blond boy who looked like he was about nineteen or twenty. He had striking blue eyes, a handsome smile, and a neatly trimmed beard. I set up an IG account using his photos and gave him the name Easton Bradley. He was a freshman at a nearby college. Easton told Farrah that he had stumbled across her photos and wanted to meet her.

  She fell for it hook, line, and sinker. I purchased a burner phone to send her text messages. Every morning, she would receive a message from me that said, “Hey, beautiful,” and every night, I would tell her to have sweet dreams. I downloaded a voice-changing app to make myself sound like a guy. Whenever she called, I tried to keep our conversations short and surface level. I worried that if I talked to her for too long, I would give myself away. Farrah wanted to video chat with Easton, but I kept telling her that it wasn’t a good time. She was disappointed, but she bought it. After three weeks, she dropped the L word and told me that she loved me.

  I figured it was time for her to meet Easton face-to-face, so I sent her a text asking her to join me for a romantic picnic by the lake. It was late November, and no one in their right mind would be picnicking at a lake, but Farrah was too stupid and too eager to meet Easton to question it.

  I chose a Monday in the early evening, just before dark. That weekend I had borrowed—or stolen, since I never gave it back—my little cousin’s candy factory that she’d gotten for Christmas. It was this bright-yellow contraption that took way too long to make a single piece of candy, but it was exactly what I needed. I followed the instructions to make mini chocolate bars, adding my own secret ingredient—rat poison with loads of strychnine from the local hardware store. From the drug store, I purchased a heart-shaped box of chocolates. I dumped the chocolates and filled the box with the candies I had made. To help speed things up, I made a thermos of hot chocolate filled with marshmallows and a healthy dose of the poison.

  After grabbing a blanket and stuffing it into my family’s picnic basket, I took the bus to the lake and arrived an hour before I’d told Farrah to meet me. I had to make sure she didn’t get there before me. Everything was riding on me being well hidden by the time she got there.

  Just as I’d expected, the place was deserted. The early-evening air was harsh and bitter. It would probably have hurt my skin if I had any feelings, but I had been numb since the day Piper didn’t come home.

  I laid out the blanket, which had a red-and-black checkerboard pattern, then placed the picnic basket on the center, and I set the box of chocolates and the thermos of cocoa on top of that. On the box of chocolates, I placed a typed note that read “For the sweetest girl in the world.”

  Once everything was set up, I hid in the darkness of the trees and waited. The whole time, I prayed that no one showed up except Farrah. The sun had begun to set, but there was still enough light to see. Headlights washed over my picnic setup, and my heart bolted as I recognized Farrah’s little red sports car. It took her a minute to get out of the car. She was probably giving her makeup one last look and wondering where I was.

  The burner phone in my pocket vibrated. It was a text from Farrah.

  I’m here. Where are you?

  I didn’t respond.

  A car door opened and slammed shut. Farrah stepped slowly toward the picnic basket with a huge grin on her face. Long blond curls flowed from underneath her knitted cap. She wore a gray wool coat with fitted black jeans and high-heeled leather boots that were ridiculous to wear to a picnic.

  She sped up once she spotted the box of chocolates and the thermos. Giggling like a little girl, she knelt on the blanket and grabbed the box. “Easton!” She set the box down, and my heart thumped harder. Just eat the damn chocolates.

  I hadn’t counted on her not eating the chocolates. If she didn’t, I was going to have to take her out some other way, and that could get messy. Sighing, I pulled the burner phone from my pocket.

  Sorry, babe. Forgot something and had to make a run to the store. I’ll be back in ten. Enjoy the chocolates and cocoa.

  She read the message and held the phone to her chest. My heart fluttered as she lifted the lid of the box and devoured chocolate after chocolate. Her eyes closed as she moaned and savored every single bite. Farrah screwed the cap off the thermos and filled it with hot chocolate. She drank everything in the cap before setting it down and going back to the chocolates.

  After eating about half of them, she stopped and coughed. The occasional cough here and there turned into a full-blown coughing fit. She threw open the top of the basket, probably looking for water, but nothing was there. She grabbed the thermos and took deep gulps, completely unaware she was only making it worse. Farrah dropped the thermos, and the small amount of hot chocolate that was left inside dribbled onto the blanket. On all fours, she puked in the grass. The sound of her vomiting up her guts was music to my ears. I let that go on for a little bit more, maybe twenty minutes. When she reached for her phone, I sprinted toward her.

  Before Farrah could even acknowledge my presence, I kicked her hand, sending the phone flying. She looked up at me wide-eyed. I knew she wanted to ask what I was doing there, but something in her eyes told me she knew. She tried to crawl toward her car, but each time she made it a foot, I kicked her as hard as I could in her rib cage. I kept thinking about how she’d shoved my sister closer and closer to the creek that night. All Piper wanted to do was go home where she was safe, but they wouldn’t let her do that. They taunted her until she couldn’t take it anymore. She’d jumped to get away from them.

  Farrah finally gave up on crawling and lay on her back, reaching for me. It was a beautiful sight.

  I smiled at her. “I know you can’t talk right now, so I’ll fill in the words for you.” Mocking her stupid high-pitched voice, I said, “Please, Lennox. Please help me. I’m so sorry about Piper. We didn’t mean for her to die.”

  “Well, Farrah, your apology means nothing to me. Nothing you do or say will bring Piper back. You’re not sorry. After she was dead, you sent the video to your friends like you were prou
d of what you’d done. You didn’t even feel bad. That judge let you get away with murder, so now I’m giving you what you deserve—a slow, painful death.”

  I sat beside her. She looked disgusting. Her face was smeared with chocolate vomit. It had run down the front of her pretty coat. Her pink lips had turned a sickening purple, and her eyes were red and bulging.

  So that she could look at me, I brushed her hair away from her face. “I warned you over and over to leave my sister alone. That was all you had to do—leave her alone. Have you ever put yourself in Piper’s shoes and tried to imagine how she felt that night? I do. I imagine how terrified she must have been plunging into that dark creek. She probably couldn’t see a thing. But as scary as that was, she preferred that over being with you and Yasmin. I imagine how her body must have felt hitting the cold water. How she probably reached for things to hold on to out of desperation. Piper was a good swimmer, but that doesn’t matter when the creek is dragging you wherever it wants to take you. I wonder how long it took her to drown. I hope not longer than it’s taking you to die now.”

  Farrah grasped her throat, gasping for air. It wouldn’t be much longer. It was almost completely dark. I braided a lock of her hair while I waited then took a knife from my backpack, cut the braid off, and slid it into the pocket of my coat. Farrah didn’t protest at all. She was dead.

  Cleanup was easy. I tossed the burner phone and all the remnants of my fake picnic into the lake. If it were ever found, it would be too water-logged to get anything useful from it. I left Farrah and her car right where they were and headed back to the bus stop. That time, the cold stung me like ice needles.

  When her body was found, the only lead the cops had was the new boyfriend Farrah had been bragging about. Of course, he didn’t exist, so everyone was stumped. Yasmin was next, but before I could get to her, Mom and I moved away. She wasn’t off the hook, though. Yasmin was on borrowed time.