Bad Girl Gone

by Temple Mathews

  He checked himself in the mirror, slicked his hair back, and went out the front door carrying the Bible. I followed him.

  Saint Augustine Church was the oldest church in Kirkland, boasting a tall, carved gray-stone bell tower topped with a white cross. I went in and slipped into a back pew. It was an early service with not too many parishioners in attendance. The priest was fit and young looking with a shaved head and a hipster goatee. He was a smiler, a joyful-looking man who spoke in a robust voice, and after giving Communion, wrapped things up. After a brief hymn, people began filing out. Hank watched them, then caught the priest’s eye and made a beeline for the confessional.

  I looked up at the statue of Jesus and wondered if he would forgive me for eavesdropping on a confession. I figured that with all that had happened to me, the Big Guy would cut me some slack.

  The confessional was dark and cool. A latticed grate separated the priest from Hank.

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  “Only the Lord can forgive you. I can help lighten your burden. Tell me. What’s going on?”

  “I have been mistreating my son. He’s … distraught … filled with grief over this girl. He was in love with her. So in love.”

  Hank sniffed back a tear. I thought I might fall over. In my mind, this brute never cried.

  “I see,” said the priest.

  “I don’t think you do. She’s dead. Murdered. You probably heard about her. Echo. Echo Stone?”

  “Yes. Your son’s grief is normal, a necessary process.”

  “I know, and I’ve been riding him about it, real hard. You see, she was an amazing girl, one of a kind.”

  I was taken aback. Hank thought I was one of a kind? Then why on earth did he—

  “I watched her grow up. She was a clumsy little girl.”

  I was not!

  “And she blossomed like a flower, the most beautiful flower I’ve ever seen. I loved her long before Andy ever even gave her a second look.”

  The eeeewwwwwfactor was rising exponentially with every word Hank uttered. So the old guy had been perving on me! Yuck!

  I flashed back to a memory involving Hank. I must have been about thirteen. He was working on his roof and I was in my room, dancing, doing my best impression of Katy Perry, with a tied-up blouse and foofy skirt and stockings, singing “I Kissed a Girl” over and over.

  I didn’t see him watching me at first, but when I did—just caught him out of the corner of my eye—I didn’t stop. I should have closed my curtains and shut the whole silly schoolgirl act down, but I didn’t. I flipped my hair and danced like a fool. Every time I looked at Hank, he looked away quickly, pretending he hadn’t seen me. But I knew he had. And yet … I kept on dancing. The good girl trying to act bad. So stupid. That didn’t mean he wasn’t creeping on me; it just meant that I could have stopped and didn’t. Because some warped part of me thought if I could get Hank to like me, by any means, then Andy would, too. The memory put yet another smudge on the sterling image I’d had of myself. Hank continued with his confession.

  “I haven’t been honest with Andy. I don’t know how to tell him how I thought about her so much. When Andy’s mother died, it left a hole in my heart. In some stupid way, I thought that girl could fill that hole.”

  “So you had desires?”

  “I … just wanted to hold her. I guess those are what you’d call desires. I know they were wrong, and I fought them. I never acted on them. Not once. But they haunted me, and I feel like if I just told my son…”

  “Some things are best confessed only to the Lord. Not all things must be said to everyone, especially if they would do harm,” said the priest.

  “And you think it would harm Andy if I told him?”

  “I can’t make that judgment. Only the Lord can do that. Ask the Lord for guidance. It will come to you.”

  “Thank you, Father. I feel so bad inside. So filled with guilt. See, the night she was killed, she should have been with Andy, but I was half in the bag and ornery so I made Andy go to the library and do homework. Maybe if I’d let him go out with her, she’d still be alive. I hate myself for it.”

  So Hank wasn’t my killer. When I’d entered him, I’d misinterpreted his rage. He didn’t hate me, he hated himself. The priest spoke to him with great compassion.

  “The first thing you must do is forgive yourself, as God forgives you.”

  “I don’t think I can do that, Father. The only way I can make this right is to find the son of a bitch who killed her and make him sorry he ever walked a single day on this earth.”

  “Vengeance is not the path to salvation.”

  “We’re going to have to agree to disagree on that one, Padre. Thanks for your time. I’ll say some Hail Marys.”

  I waited outside the confessional. Hank emerged, looking sideways, both directions, like a criminal. I had a lot of thoughts about him. I was disgusted but also felt sorry for him. He’d loved and lost his wife. He loved Andy. Mostly I was relieved. He wasn’t my killer. It was time to move on to suspect number four. There was just one problem. I didn’t have a suspect number four. I had to think back. Who was at my funeral that was so evil they would kill me? How could anyone do that to me? I had no clue. Then I thought, maybe I had to go at it a different way. Maybe I had to start asking, What did I do?

  THEFT

  I followed Hank back to his and Andy’s place. I told myself again that I was just doing surveillance but the truth mocked me. I wanted to be around Andy. I waited in the woods behind his house, sitting on a tall branch, listening to the birds and feeling the sun on my body. The sun’s rays were different than when I was alive, but I could still feel them. Maybe it wasn’t real, like the phantom pain someone feels in a missing limb. But I didn’t care. It felt good to imagine.

  I sensed movement above me to my left and thought for a second it was a bird. But it was too large for a bird. And there’d been no shadow. Ghosts don’t have shadows. I spun around and there was Cole, perched in a tree about twenty feet away.

  “What’s up?” he said. Casual. Cool. Acting as though last night had never happened. Did I really dump him? Or was it a dream? I was hoping it hadn’t happened but I knew what was real.

  I tried not to smile. I was so glad to see him but I didn’t want to let on. I was still in the let-him-go mode.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “We can’t always do these things alone. I want to help.”

  I nodded. Okay. He’s here to help—that’s it. Nothing more. It’s not like he’s over there singing out his love for me to the treetops. This is all business. Sure.

  “It wasn’t his dad. I heard him confessing in church.”

  “Ooooh. Listening in on a confession. Pretty slick move,” he said.

  “I know it was sleazy, but I just—”

  Cole flew over suddenly and landed right next to me.

  “It wasn’t sleazy. There are no rules. We do what we have to do.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we join the Afters.”

  I nodded again. I knew all this.

  “I can hardly wait.”

  Andy’s front door opened and he came out. He was looking good, like he’d washed some of the grief off himself. I had mixed feelings about that. Forgotten so soon? My heart sank a little. He got in his Jeep and took off. I glanced at Cole. I knew he saw the pain in my eyes.

  “Echo?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “What else are you going to do? Hang around in the trees, maybe build a nest?” He smiled like he’d just won the lottery. I put a serious face on and did my best impression of someone important.

  “Let’s go.”

  We took off after the Jeep.

  * * *

  Andy ripped across town with the stereo blasting heavy metal. Which was weird, because he usually only listened to heavy metal when he was lifting weights or psyching himself up for a martial a
rts bout, a sport he was awesome at. I once asked him about it and he said the music made him just the right amount of crazy. He pulled into Dani’s driveway and she was out the door in two seconds and jumped into the Jeep next to him. I tried to be cool, but she made it hard by giving him a kiss on the cheek and a hug and then rested her hand on his knee as they took off. They were heading down Chalmers Road, which took them straight toward the school. I wondered what was up. Why go to school on a Sunday? My thought process was scrambled as her hand kept inching upward until it was on his thigh. I imagined hitting her over the head with various objects. I heard growling. It was me. Cole pursed his lips.

  “Keep it under control, Echo. Keep cool.”

  I swore under my breath. Yeah, you betcha. Where was he taking her? When they pulled into the school parking lot, I thought to myself, this makes no sense. Andy stopped the Jeep by the side of the main building and checked the grounds. Not a soul in sight. Except us ghosts.

  He put it in park, kept the engine running, and got out. He pulled Dani over into the driver’s seat.

  “Get ready to hit it when I tell you,” he said.

  “What are we doing?” she said.

  “You promised to help me. If you don’t want to, I can take you home.”

  “No, I’m good; I’m in,” she said. She didn’t want to piss him off in the least.

  He pulled a crowbar and heavy-duty bolt cutters out of the back of the Jeep and went to a side door. He cut through the padlock in two seconds and was inside. I zoomed in after him with Cole right behind me.

  “What’s he doing?” said Cole.

  “How should I know?”

  “Well, for one thing, he was your boyfriend.”

  There was that word again. Was. I wasn’t on board with was. I still wanted is. Dammit!

  The hallways were dark. Andy ran right to Mr. Hemming’s photography classroom. Then it hit me. The sticky note on Andy’s corkboard wasn’t about his fourth-period class, it was about mine. I had photography fourth period. With Mr. Hemming. The classroom door was locked but the top half of the door was glass. Andy used the crowbar to smash his way in.

  “What are you doing, Andy?” I said.

  Why was he vandalizing Mr. Hemming’s classroom? I watched as he moved through the classroom to the teacher’s desk. He picked up the small glass piggy bank Mr. Hemming kept there and put it in his pocket. That’s what he’d broken in for? A piggy bank? Again, none of this was making a stitch of sense. But then again, neither did my murder. I heard footsteps and zoomed down the hallway. Mr. Mack, the old security guard, was limping his way toward us.

  I whooshed back to Andy, who was still searching the desk. There was nothing of value on top. He yanked on the desk drawers. Locked. He pulled the crowbar from the back of his jeans. In one sudden, violent motion, he popped open the desk drawer. More footsteps. Mr. Mack was closing in.

  “You have to get out of here!” I shouted.

  I didn’t want him to get caught. He’d be suspended, or worse—thrown in jail. He pulled a laptop out of the drawer and ran from the room, rushing past us right before Mr. Mack let out a croaky, pathetic, “Stop!”

  Andy ran back outside, legs pumping, his jacket flapping. The little glass piggy bank popped out of his pocket and fell to the pavement, shattering. Andy stopped and scooped up the coins that had been inside. I wondered if he was losing his mind.

  He jammed the coins into his pocket and jumped into the Jeep. Dani slammed her foot on the gas and they were gone, leaving Mr. Mack cursing in the doorway. He fumbled in his pocket and called a number on his cell phone, but I was pretty sure there was no way he could have seen the Jeep’s license plate. Andy had gotten away with it. This time.

  AXE

  We followed the Jeep to Vista View Park where Andy opened the computer and scanned through the files. I had no idea what he was looking for, but by the expression on his face, he clearly wasn’t finding it. He kept looking and looking until finally he slammed the computer shut.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  “What’s wrong, sweetie?” said Dani.

  Oh, so now it was sweetie? I gritted my teeth. Andy started up the Jeep.

  “Now where are we going?” asked Dani.

  “Into the belly of the beast,” he said.

  Dani was as confused as I was as Andy punched the Jeep forward.

  “Any clue what’s going on here?” asked Cole.

  “Not at all,” I said. “But we’re going to follow them.”

  We soared above the Jeep as it sped through town then screamed south on Lake Washington Boulevard. Andy turned left up a side street and parked with a screech in a cul-de-sac, two doors down from an upscale brick Tudor. It was Mr. Hemming’s house. Again thoughts of my photography teacher brought up an inward smile. Things were coming back to me slowly. I remembered coming to this house, remembered being nervous. I must have been dropping off an assignment or something, because I was rarely nervous around my teachers. I was a fairly good student, not a cheater or anything. I never had anything to hide.

  Andy had Dani wait in the Jeep while he moved into the backyard of the house adjacent to Mr. Hemming’s place. A dog barked, but it was behind a fence down the street and posed no threat to Andy, whatever he was planning on doing, which at this point I supposed was more searching, or possibly even a confrontation with Mr. Hemming. I wondered what Andy thought Hemming might know about my murder? It wasn’t possible that he was a suspect. He was a guy who smiled all the time. If you Googled friendly, his picture would probably come up.

  Images appeared in my brain, each one causing a wave of pain. Suddenly I wasn’t smiling, I was afraid. I tried to dig deeper but they went away just as Andy entered Mr. Hemming’s house through the back door.

  I rushed into the house and looked around frantically. Moving down the hallway, I passed a set of framed family pictures. Hemming with his arm around a girl, probably his daughter. In one picture, the daughter was smiling by a cake that said “Happy birthday, Marie” on it.

  I found Hemming in his office at the computer. He’d heard something and stood up and looked around. For a few seconds, he was looking right at me. I spoke his name.

  “Mr. Hemming?”

  I wasn’t sure why I kept on talking to living people when I knew damn well they couldn’t hear me. Hemming looked away and appeared suddenly nervous. He hadn’t heard me or seen me, but maybe he’d sensed me. I was learning from the gang that this was common. As a living human being, you couldn’t see or hear ghosts, but you could sometimes sense their presence. I thought about just scaring Hemming and entering him, but I remembered Andy was coming.

  I flew through the house until I saw Andy. He was moving quietly, taking careful steps. He and Hemming were on a collision course. I flew back to Hemming. He’d been alerted. He glanced down a hallway and saw Andy. Instead of confronting him, he backed up into another room, probably to call the cops. Andy was going to get busted after all. But Hemming wasn’t picking up the phone. He was picking up an axe from next to the fireplace. If I didn’t do something, he was going to split my boyfriend’s head like a melon.

  My mind raced, a jumble of confusion. I forced myself to focus. I rushed outside.

  “What are you doing?” asked Cole.

  “No time,” I said.

  I reached the Jeep in seconds and swirled around Dani, causing her hair to rise up. For good measure, I opened and closed the glove box, slamming it hard twice.

  “What the hell?” she yelled.

  Good. She was plenty scared. I entered her. Her psyche was jumbled because of the fear, but she wasn’t full of terrible images or anything, just worrisome thoughts. I took a deep breath and screamed like a warrior woman, then flung myself from Dani’s body and rushed back inside.

  Andy was just about to go into Hemming’s office when he heard the screaming, which was enough to scare the pants off anyone because it was relentless and sounded like it was coming from someone who just fell into a p
it of fire. Hemming was poised behind a door with the axe, ready to chop.

  Andy ran from the house. Hemming lowered the axe. My distraction had worked. Hemming moved to the living room window and peered out.

  Andy got into the Jeep and shook Dani to stop her from screaming.

  “Jesus, Dani, what’s wrong? What are you doing?”

  Dani stopped screaming abruptly and slowly shook her head back and forth. She was clearly dazed.

  “I … I thought something bad was happening to you. I had these, these thoughts. I don’t know where they came from—they just sort of jumped in my brain. I was so scared!”

  Her whole body trembled. She wrapped her arms around him.

  “Can we get out of here? Please?”

  Andy shot a look at the house and saw Hemming standing in the living room picture window.

  “Just you wait, you piece of shit,” he muttered.

  Andy jammed his foot on the gas. The Jeep’s tires smoked on the pavement.

  I’d saved Andy twice now. I wondered what I’d have to save him from next. Cole and I pursued them. They drove back to Vista View Park where Andy parked, got out, and went to the bluff, staring bleakly out at Lake Washington.

  It wasn’t long before Dani joined him and slipped her hand around his waist.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?”

  He wrestled with the difficult words, and they finally came out.

  “Hemming and Echo had something going on.”

  Dani’s eyes got big.

  “You mean…?”

  “I don’t know what I mean yet, I just know there was something. The way they looked at each other and stuff.”

  Dani opened her mouth to speak but thought better of it. She was thinking. And so was I. Was something going on between Hemming and me? Was I having an affair with him? Was I that bad? Maybe I was, and maybe Andy had caught me. What if, in a jealous rage, it was Andy who had killed me? My head was spinning and the more I tried to find clarity in my brain, the worse it hurt.

  Dani touched the back of Andy’s neck, stroking him to calm him down. They sat in the grass. I had to watch as once again she busted a move on him, kissing his cheek.