Slain

by Harper, Livia

  “Are you okay?” Paige asks.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “I’m fine.”

  The boys come back, spray down the flames, but not soon enough to avoid leaving a blackened spot on the field. With how dry Colorado is, we’re lucky it didn’t spread farther.

  I struggle up to my feet, staring at what’s left of the crowd. It’s mostly just the kids in my circle now, maybe ten of them.

  “Did anyone see who set this up?”

  A couple people shake their heads no, wide eyed and confused.

  “It’s really important, you guys,” I say. “Someone is playing a very sick joke, and I need to know who it was.”

  “I was the first one here,” Chuck says. “Me and Ben. That thing was here when we got here.”

  Ben shakes his head, “Yeah. We didn’t see anything. Sorry, Emma.”

  I look out to the rest of the kids. “How about at school today? Did anyone notice who put those puzzle pieces up?”

  More nos.

  “Katie, you have Bible in Mr. Stearn’s class right before I do. You didn’t notice anyone putting that piece up on his bulletin board?”

  “It was already there,” Katie says.

  Ruth pipes up, “I have homeroom in there. It was there before the first bell rang.”

  “Same in the science lab,” Chuck says. “There was a puzzle piece right at your spot in first period. Casey French sits there and asked what to do with it, so Mrs. Boris took it and put it on the chalkboard.”

  “Math too,” Ruth says. “I saw it on the computer station in fourth period. Isn’t math your last class?”

  I nod. Whoever did this taped up those pieces before school even started, then snuck back to the school after all the sports practices and clubs were done for the day.

  Mike’s voice booms out, “I think we should get out of here, guys. It’s not safe.”

  For once, Mike is right.

  We clear out of the field and head back to the Connections Café, where somebody calls the police. They come and take a look at things, but seem to write it off as a prank in poor taste. Detectives Boyer and Simms don’t even show up. And after the police go, everyone else seems to take the same attitude. Just a prank. Just a really, really tasteless prank.

  I’m the only one who knows it was something more.

  With everything that’s happened and all the thoughts rushing through my mind, I almost forget that I still have to go to dance practice tonight. I consider skipping it, but the idea of going home alone and sitting in an empty house sounds so much worse than dancing right now.

  I race into the room and drop my backpack on the floor. The other girls are just starting to get into formation: symmetrical like always. I wouldn’t exactly call Miss Hope a gifted choreographer. All our moves are always completely symmetrical: if one half of the girls do something, then it’s a pretty safe bet that the other half of the girls will do it too. It’s all so neat and tidy it makes me want to break something sometimes, just for balance.

  To make it even worse, the choreography for all the choruses is always identical too. We repeat the same set of movements every time the chorus rolls around until it’s so predictable the audience could probably get up on stage and do it with us by the end. Apparently, Miss Hope only has a limited number of ideas and has to spread them out evenly across the song.

  “Hurry up, Miss Grant, you’re late.”

  “I know, sorry,” I say as I run over to them.

  “Okay. Gather up, ladies. We almost forgot to pray,” Miss Hope says.

  We group into a circle around her and bow our heads.

  “Dear Jesus,” she says. “We know You have a brand-new angel tonight.”

  June. I nearly forgot that she should have been here. This is our first practice since she died. I don’t dare open my eyes, but I can hear the girls around me sniffling.

  “We know You’re holding her safe in Your arms now and that one day we’ll be able to rejoice in Your presence with our beloved sister. We ask for Your peace and guidance tonight as we rehearse without her. May our movements, and all of our actions, be for the glory of You and not ourselves. Amen.”

  We do a big group hug, then line up in our starting positions, only no one seems to know where to go. June was the featured dancer in this one. She never had a dance lesson in her life, or so she said, but she was so naturally good that Miss Hope couldn’t throw enough parts at her. There was just something about June that made you want to watch.

  Without her, everything is off in the lineup. June should be front and center, and we should be lining up in a triangle around her. We all look toward Miss Hope. No one wants to say it.

  “Right,” Miss Hope says. “Emma? Do you think you could take over the lead?”

  I nod and take my place in the center. The other girls form the triangle around me. Paige is in the back, directly behind me at the point, where she always is because she’s really kind of awful and Miss Hope always tries to hide her. Ruth and I used to be on either side of June, but now it’s only Ruth. June’s absence is a literal empty space.

  “Paige, please take Emma’s place.” Paige nods solemnly and steps forward. Then the music starts. “How Beautiful” by Twila Paris. It’s for Pastor Pete and Miss Hope’s wedding, which is coming up in a couple weeks. It’s a good thing we’ve done this number before, or we wouldn’t have enough time to put it together. They play the song at basically every single wedding at the church. Even if I hadn’t danced to it a million times, I’d still have it memorized.

  I try to concentrate on the movements, but I can’t get it out of my mind. June isn’t here. Someone killed her. And that same someone is trying to blame me for it.

  As the chorus starts, I lift my leg and point my toe for the extension.

  “Too high, Emma,” Miss Hope shouts, but I don’t care. I need to feel my leg stretched all the way out. I need to push it as far as I can go. I do it again when the chorus repeats.

  “Stop. Stop. Stop.” Miss Hope grabs her iPod off the floor, where it’s piped into the sound system through a cable, and stops the music. “You have to think about what that will look like in the dresses, Emma. What will people in the audience see?” One of us is dead, and all she cares about is whether or not some perv watching teenage girls dance in a church will catch a fleeting peek of my completely covered crotch.

  “But aren’t we wearing leggings underneath the skirts?” I ask, using the same lame argument Hannah tried this morning.

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s not decent above your waist. Try it again.” She starts the music back up, and I can feel my blood boiling as I go through the movements. What’s the point of any of this?

  When the chorus starts, I kick so high that my legs strike a straight line from the floor to the toes above my head.

  “Emma! What did I just say?” Miss Hope shuts off the music again.

  “Why does it fucking matter?!” I shout.

  The whole room goes silent. There is no shuffle of feet on concrete, no swish of ponytails. All their eyes are on me. Miss Hope is speechless, trying to decide if she heard me correctly. Certainly, perfect Emma Grant didn’t just say the word fuck?

  I glance at Paige; she’s staring at me with her mouth wide open. It’s the first time she’s ever heard me say it.

  My chest is heaving. I’m hyped up and out of breath from the dancing.

  “What did you say?” Miss Hope says.

  “I said,” I say, trying to calm down, trying to speak evenly, “why does it matter?”

  “It matters,” Miss Hope says. “Because we are charged with being an example to others. And what you just said proves to me that you’re not ready to do that.”

  “Oh please,” I say. What a joke. It’s all such a complete joke.

  “Get your things. You can come back when you get your attitude straightened out.”

  “Fuck this,” I say under my breath, the word new and dangerous on my tongue. Then louder, “I quit.”

&nbs
p; CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  I STORM DOWN THE halls, out the door, to my car, slamming the door shut as I get in. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.

  I shouldn’t be spending time dancing to some stupid church song I don’t even believe in anymore. I should be figuring out who made that sign tonight and who put that gun in my bedroom so they don’t have a chance to do it again.

  I drive until I can finally see straight, then see the line of people outside Voodoo Doughnut and realize where I am: a little neighborhood just outside of downtown Denver called Capitol Hill. It has a bunch of hipster bars and a couple aging concert venues that were once movie theaters with big, bulbed signs. Jackson took me to a coffee shop here once. I drive a little more until I find it, then drive a few more blocks until I spot a place to park.

  Inside there are lines of long wooden community tables. I take my tea to an open spot and sit down. I need to think things through, figure this out.

  The first thing, the glaring thing I have to face is that May was right. Whoever killed June most likely knew both of us, which means they probably go to the church. The killer knows where I live, knows where I go to school, and enough about my schedule to time things just right. That message today wouldn’t have worked an hour earlier or an hour later. There was too much going on at school before, and too much going on at church after.

  I have to face the facts. The best place to start might just be with the list the police are working off of. I pull out my notebook and write down the names:

  There’s me and Jackson, though I can eliminate us. Jackson only left my side for a few minutes to use the restroom, which would barely have been enough time to get down to the sanctuary and back. And even if he was physically able to pull it off, he never even met June.

  Paige. I scratch her name out right away. Yes, she was alone for a while when Mike was snooping on me, and yes, she even knew I would be out of the main Youth Center room at the time the murder was committed. But if my best friend, the person I know better than anyone, the person I trust more than anyone on the planet, is somehow guilty, then I don’t care what happens to me. It would mean the world was the kind of place that I didn’t want to live in anymore. I refuse to believe she’s capable of it.

  Chuck, Pastor Pete, and Miss Hope. They’re also easy to eliminate because they were together, though it might be worth asking if any of them left at any point, just to make sure. What would be harder to believe out of this group is why anyone would want June dead, or hate me enough to try to frame me, much less do both.

  I’ve always gotten along with Pastor Pete, and I can tell that he really cared about June. And I hadn’t even thought about this before, but he’s one of the few people in church who’s anti-gun. There was an incident a couple years ago when he tried to convince some kid not to join Brothers in Christ because it’s so weapons-focused. The family left the church over it. A lot of people around here don’t like him because he’s too liberal, but my dad sticks up for him because he says he thinks it’s healthy to have multiple viewpoints represented within the Body of Christ. It would be a stretch to imagine Pastor Pete shooting anyone.

  Miss Hope can be a little strict sometimes, and I get the sense that she’d definitely like my family to be stricter too. But it’s a far cry from disagreeing with the way my family interprets the Bible to trying to frame me, and I can’t imagine any reason she’d have to kill June.

  I guess if I’m honest with myself, there’s Chuck. Could me not being interested in him have hurt his feelings more than I realized? It’s hard to say. He’s never done much more than elementary-school teasing. Would he even have the guts to go through with all this? And even if he did, why kill June? I can see why he might secretly hate me, but June?

  None of them seem likely. I move on.

  Mike. I can’t take him off the list. He was wandering around in the church alone twice around the time June was shot: once looking for a hand truck, the other time returning it. Or so he says. Of all the kids in the youth group, he’s by far the most conservative. He’s the only one I can even imagine telling June it was her fault that her father did what he did to her. Though that might be a stretch, even for him.

  And what about that story he told me about seeing June with her shirt unbuttoned? That was weird. Why would June act like that? Is there more to the story than Mike said? Could he have done something with her that he regrets? Could she have been threatening to tell me? He’s in Brothers In Christ so he obviously knows how to shoot a gun. And he’s very upset with me right now. There are too many pieces that make him a possibility. I resign myself to be more careful, more watchful around him from now on.

  Then there’s Nicolas. I don’t want to think that he’s capable of it, but there are a lot of factors working against him. He might be underplaying how upset he was that June refused his proposal. In the video Paige took, he looked pretty agitated. According to the police, not a single person can verify where he was when June was killed. And he’s in Brothers In Christ too, right along with Mike.

  Lastly, though it’s not on the police’s list, is everyone else who goes to the church, over eight thousand people every week. The truth, the daunting, I-wish-I-could-ignore-it truth, is that I, and my whole family, aren’t exactly afforded a lot of privacy. Anyone could follow us home at night. Anyone could tell where I went to school, and maybe even figure out which classes I was taking if they asked the right people or snooped in my backpack when I left it unattended. Anyone could have hidden in the church, just like June did every single night, and waited for some stray person to wander by. What if it wasn’t about June at all? What if she was just the first person to cross his path? If someone has a grudge against the church itself, or one of my parents, I might be the perfect target.

  I close my notebook and go up to the counter for a refill on my tea. Maybe I need to think in a different direction for a while, change it up to see if it jogs anything loose in my brain.

  But what other directions are there? Talking to Lee Stuckey was a joke. It didn’t feel like he was talking straight about anything. And there’s no way he could have done it himself. But still, he’s a convicted murderer, and his daughter was killed. Maybe it’s worth researching what he told me, even if it’s just so I can rule it out.

  Back at my seat, I power up my laptop and pull up the article about the bank robbery to see if there’s anything I missed. Maybe I should try to talk to the other people involved, see what they have to say. I jot down a list of their names:

  Lee Stuckey

  Sara Jo Ford

  Buddy Trent

  Jay Peterson

  Christina Bromegat

  Five people, all convicted of the crime, but Lee was the only shooter. Does that mean they’re all in prison too? I have no idea how it all works.

  I do a quick search on the Colorado Department of Corrections website, and find records for most of them. The records don’t say much, but they do show their current photo, list their arrest dates, their future release dates, and how long their sentence was originally for.

  The only one I can’t find is for Jay Peterson. Was he released? Could he have been transferred to another facility outside of Colorado? I don’t know how to begin searching for him, or what not finding him even means.

  I call Mr. Graham on his cell. Maybe lawyers have access to records I don’t. He never returned my message last night; neither did Boyer, so I’m not leaving another message.

  “Yes, Emma. What is it?”

  “Did you get my message the other night?”

  “I did, and I passed along your ideas to the police, but Emma—“

  “I was wondering if you could look into someone for me?”

  “Like a background check? I’m not an investigator, Emma, I’m a lawyer. What is this about?”

  “I think there’s a small chance that June’s dad was involved with some bad people who might have wanted to kill her.”

  “Oh? What makes you think that?”

/>   “He’s in prison. For killing a woman and her baby when he robbed a bank. So I went to talk to him and—?”

  “You did what?”

  Shit. I didn’t mean to let that slip out.

  “I went to the prison to talk to him. I had to.”

  “Emma. That’s—you can’t just do things like that.”

  “Why not? The police aren’t doing anything.”

  “That could be very dangerous. You have no idea what sort of people—“

  “Well somebody has to do something.”

  “I specifically advised you to stick to your normal routine. We can’t afford for the police to think they spooked you.”

  “Can’t afford? Why?”

  “Look, Emma, this isn’t something we should discuss over the phone. Why don’t you have your parents bring you to my office?”

  “Is something wrong? Did something happen?”

  He pauses for a moment. At first I don’t think he’s going to tell me, but then he takes a deep breath and speaks.

  “The police have narrowed down their suspect pool considerably. My contact wouldn’t tell me who else they’re looking at, but he did say that there were only three and that you’re on the list.”

  I say goodbye, hang up the phone, and take a deep breath. This changes nothing. Nothing at all.

  I wake up my computer and look at the list again. Jay Peterson. He’s the only who I can’t find in the system. If he’s been released from jail already, maybe Lee was right. Maybe he would have a reason to hurt June. Maybe he thought she had Lee’s share of the money or maybe he was trying to get back at Lee for something he didn’t tell me about.

  As for the rest, they’re all still in jail for at least another five years before they’re even eligible for parole. There’s no easy way to talk to any of them. Even if I could convince them to see me, I’m not eighteen yet, and the Colorado Department of Corrections won’t allow me to visit without a parent or guardian unless the person I’m visiting is a parent or guardian. I can just imagine how that conversation would go down with my parents.

  But the better question is May’s—why kill June now? Why not wait until they’re released? If Lee’s theory is correct, if someone from the gang turned him in and then went after June, Jay Peterson is the only one that could be responsible. It’s worth looking into.