Dead Girls Society

by Michelle Krys

  Ethan.

  “What’s he doing here?” Lyla asks.

  “I don’t know.” My heart is tight and fluttery, and I don’t know if I’m more nervous or happy or scared to see my best friend.

  Ethan squints at the car, then pulls his hands out of his pockets when he recognizes me.

  “Call me later,” Lyla says.

  I nod as I crack the door.

  “Hope?” Ethan asks.

  I give him a tense smile and step out of the car.

  “Hey,” he says. “I knocked on the door, but no one answered. I figured I’d wait around a few minutes.”

  Lyla hesitantly backs out of the parking lot. I give her a wave to let her know I’m okay.

  “I didn’t know you were friends with Lyla Greene,” Ethan says.

  You don’t know a lot of things about me, I almost respond. “What are you doing here?” I ask instead.

  “You weren’t in school. I got worried. Are you okay?”

  “Define okay,” I say, but on some level I’m relieved he noticed my absence.

  He waits for me to explain. I exhale a long breath. “Let’s…just go inside.”

  There’s a deep crease between his brows now, but he follows me up the steps to my apartment. I unlock the door and swing it open, gesturing for him to go first.

  “Aren’t you missing school?” I ask. My voice sounds loud in the quiet place.

  “I’d rather be here,” he says. After a pause he adds, “I broke up with Savannah.”

  I suddenly remember our dance, the closeness of our bodies.

  “What happened?” I ask, even though I think I know.

  “Nothing, really. I guess I just realized I wasn’t as interested in her as I thought I was.”

  My face is strangely numb, and my heart’s beating too fast. “Well, I’m sorry,” I say lamely.

  “Don’t be. Hope, I hate how things have become between us.” His voice is tremulous and stiff, as if he’s rehearsed the speech a few times.

  “Me too,” I admit.

  “I never should have acted that way about Tucker. If you wanted to date him, I should have trusted you.”

  “Actually…” I sigh, toying with my fingers. “You were right about Tucker. He—he wasn’t who I thought he was.”

  Ethan freezes, and I push my hair back from my face, suddenly unable to meet his eyes.

  “It’s…a long story.”

  “Is it about where you were just now?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “Well, I want to hear it. Everything. We never used to keep secrets like this, and I’ve hated every second of it. I really miss you, Hope.”

  “I miss you too,” I say. So badly.

  A million different emotions swirl inside me. I’m so glad Ethan is here. So glad I can get some of this unbearable pressure off my chest. Tears sting my lashes, and I work hard to blink them away.

  “Are you okay?” Ethan gently grabs my forearms, and I hiss when his fingers touch the sensitive pinched skin from Tucker’s attack. He looks down and notices the bruises, and a frown darkens his face.

  “Let’s sit down,” I say.

  Ethan hesitates, then lets go of my arms and pads uncertainly toward the kitchen table; we sit next to each other, knees grazing. My stomach twists into knots. I don’t even know where to start.

  I focus on the condensation on a glass of water on the table so I don’t have to look at him. “There’s a lot I need to tell you. But first I need you to promise me you won’t bitch about how stupid I am. I already know.”

  “Okay…,” he says carefully.

  I take a deep breath and fill him in on everything. When I get to the part about Tucker trying to trap me in his room, his jaw clenches so tight I worry his teeth will crack. He takes in the red marks on my arms, but he doesn’t speak, just keeps so still and silent that I want to shake him—tell him to yell at me already, say I told you so. I was wrong to ask him to be quiet. This is worse.

  Finally I get to the end of the story.

  “Say something,” I beg him. I hate the way my voice comes out like a prayer. “I know you probably hate me right now, and this is all really crazy and stupid of me, but I just thought—”

  He pulls me into a hug, and my words die away. I didn’t realize how badly I needed this, someone to hold me and tell me it’s going to be okay, until I feel my tension melt into him. He presses my head into his neck, and I breathe him in.

  I suddenly become aware of how intimate our embrace is. He just broke up with Savannah five seconds ago. I can’t do this. I pull away so fast my knees bump the table and the glass knocks over, dumping water into his lap.

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” I jump up from the table.

  “It’s okay, it’s fine.” Ethan stares uselessly at his soaked lap.

  I grab a dry dishcloth from the sink and blot at the mess, then realize how awkward it is that I’m dabbing at his crotch and hand him the rag.

  “We can hang it outside to dry,” I offer. “I’ll get you something to wear.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t think I’ll fit in your jeans.”

  “I meant my mom’s stuff, asshole.” I grin and go to Mom’s room, looking for her baggy plaid pajama pants, but they’re not in any of her drawers. Of course—it’s laundry day tomorrow. I drop to my knees in front of the giant pile of family laundry Mom has all set to the take to the Laundromat and dump out the basket. I’m digging through the clothes when I see it.

  A pair of black pants with a ring of duckweed around the knees. I gingerly pick it up. They’re Jenny’s pants.

  There’s only one way Jenny could have gotten duckweed on her pants: if she was near the swamp, maybe kneeling in the mud to watch us swim to the island and back.

  Jenny. My Jenny. My own sister, a part of the Society.

  My entire body goes numb. Sound funnels away, and suddenly it all comes flooding back.

  We were at IHOP five years ago, having breakfast after blood work at the hospital. Jenny was bumping a Princess and the Frog action figure over the table, and Mom was trying to flag down the waitress to order a coffee. She was wearing a red dress. I remember that, because she looked so pretty with her hair pulled up and her earrings showing. It was a happy day, a normal day.

  Jenny said she wanted to marry Prince Naveen and have fifteen kids, and I said she was stupid, that fifteen was too many. I would have two, and I would name them Frankie and Lagoona, like the characters on my favorite TV show. Mom got quiet then, and I didn’t really get it. Until later.

  She came into my room that night and sat on the end of my bed. She told me I was dying. That I wouldn’t marry. Wouldn’t have kids. She cried, and I stared at her crumpled-up face, the mascara streaking down her cheeks. I’d known I was sick—of course I’d known—but I didn’t understand what it truly meant until that moment. The world spun out of control, everything I knew breaking up, sucking away, shattering into a million pieces, and I was frozen in the middle of it all, helpless to stop it. Mom tried to hug me, and I lost it. I kicked and screamed, threw a lamp against the wall. Mom begged me to stop, but I couldn’t. I told her I hated her, and in that moment I did. She was my mom—my family. She was supposed to protect me from the bad things, and she’d let me down.

  And now all those feelings are back. The shock, the hurt, the rage, the betrayal. A toxic swirl of emotions.

  Jenny—my own sister.

  “It’s okay,” Ethan says from the doorway. “I can just use a hair dryer or something….” His words trail off.

  “It’s Jenny,” I say. “She was the person at the swamp.”

  “What?”

  I spin to face him, holding the pants up with heavy arms. “She has duckweed on her pants, Ethan.”

  Ethan’s lips part in shock.

  I drop the pants and stagger up, pushing past him.

  “Wait, where are you going?” he calls.

  “To find Jenny.”

  Edward Hynes Charter School stretches o
ut on top of a perfectly manicured lawn, an American flag sitting languidly in the still, sticky air. A few teachers skulk at the edge of the property, but other than that, there isn’t a person in sight. Classes are in session.

  Ethan shifts the car into Park. “Are you sure about this?”

  But I’m already gone, climbing the embankment toward the double doors. He calls after me but gives up when I don’t turn around. My breaths wheeze, and I pull my inhaler from my bag and take two quick hits. Used to be that I could climb a few steps without a problem, but I push the worry from my thoughts. I don’t care about my failing body right now.

  All I care about is finding Jenny.

  I don’t plan on there being a guard posted at the front door of the school, so I paste on a smile, make up a lie about being late for school, and hope hope hope that my sick body makes me pass for an eighth grader. I’m almost insulted when it actually does.

  Inside the school the hallways are barren, harsh light shining brightly off tile floors. The muted voices of teachers occasionally break over the quiet echo of my footsteps on the green metal lockers. I don’t have a clue where to find Jenny.

  I cut down a random wing, then another. Children’s artwork is pasted to a corkboard in the hall. It’s hard to believe my sister, an eighth grader who goes to goddamn middle school, could have betrayed me like this.

  Where the hell is she?

  I start to think I’m going to have to go to the principal’s office and fake an excuse to get Jenny out of class when the bell rings.

  Recess.

  Students pour into the hallways, laughing and chatting. I spot a head of ash-blond hair and dart through the crowd.

  “Jenny!”

  She goes rigid. A handful of kids spin around to stare at me. Jenny finds me, and the color drains from her face. She hikes her bag over her shoulder and tries to slip away, but I shove kids aside and grab her arm.

  “What the hell, let me go!” Jenny says.

  “Not a chance.”

  “I don’t have time for this.” She tries to shake off my grip.

  I dig my fingers in harder. “Then make it.”

  “I have to meet my teacher.”

  There’s a crowd of kids around us now. I let go of her arm.

  “Okay, fine. We can do this right here if you want. You’re part of the Society.”

  “What? I don’t know what you’re—”

  “I found duckweed on your pants, so don’t deny it. You were at the swamp that night. You put that gift on my bed. You put the invite under my covers. And you lied to my damn face.”

  There are shocked gasps around me, but I don’t care. All I care about is my rage. My betrayal.

  Jenny’s face burns. She looks around frantically, then pulls me into an empty classroom. There’s a crepe paper alphabet border around the roof. It’s a child’s classroom, and for a half a second I feel bad for the way I’m treating her. But she’s no child.

  She turns to me. “Okay, I know this looks bad, but it’s not what you think.”

  It sounds so familiar my stomach curdles. I swallow my anger. “What do they have on you?”

  She stares at the tiled floor and won’t meet my eyes.

  “Come on, Jenny. You can tell me.” I’m sure it can’t be that bad. She’s too young to have something as horrible as Tucker’s secret, but she thinks it’s bad, which is all the Society needed to control her.

  She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, shifts her weight. “I made a mistake. In the summer. I got drunk, and…there are pictures.”

  “Pictures?” It’s all so twisted I can’t get my mind around it. “Like what? Drinking pictures?”

  She shakes her head minutely.

  “Puking pictures?” I try.

  “No, Hope. It’s worse.”

  And then the full horror of what she’s saying dawns on me. “Oh. Oh my God.”

  Her cheeks are red, and she won’t meet my eyes.

  I pace away from her, dragging a hand through my hair. Naked pictures. Jenny has naked pictures. I don’t know what to do, what to say.

  “How, Jenny? Why?”

  “I said I made a mistake,” she mutters.

  I gesture uselessly. “When did this even happen?”

  “In the summer. At Jarrod’s pool party. I had a crush on this guy named Matt. Chelsea Boyd got beer from her older sister, so we were drinking and—”

  “Never mind,” I interrupt. It’s too disturbing to hear the details right now. I don’t know that it ever won’t be.

  “How did you even get out to Honey Island? Don’t tell me you stole Mom’s car.”

  “I got a ride,” she confesses, and I know there’s more to this story.

  “From who?”

  She won’t look at me.

  “Tucker?” I say with mounting horror.

  “I was just doing what they told me! We barely talked. It’s not like we…you know.”

  “Oh my God! I wasn’t even thinking that, Jenny!”

  “Well, then, why are you so mad? Can’t you even a little bit understand where I was coming from? I was scared!”

  I shake my head. Of course she was scared. I can’t blame her for any of this—well, beyond the pool party—but getting angry about it won’t change anything. I need information. We’ll deal with everything else later.

  “How did they contact you?” I ask. “The Society.”

  “I got texts,” she answers, wiping tears from her cheeks.

  “Show them to me.”

  She reluctantly digs her phone out of her bag and hands it over. I scroll through the texts.

  Do as I say.

  Wouldn’t want anyone to see your pics, now, would you?

  If you don’t do it, I’ll make sure you’re destroyed.

  I grit my teeth. It’s one thing to threaten me, to put my life in danger, but my sister? A thirteen-year-old girl?

  “You never met with this person?” I ask.

  “No. I told you, I don’t know anything other than what they told me to do.” Jenny’s arms are crossed over her chest, and there are tear tracks on her cheeks. She looks so small, so young. I always thought Jenny was the lucky one. She got to do whatever she wanted, and no one was paying attention. Now I realize how wrong I was. We all have skeletons. Some people just hide them better than others.

  I feel suddenly guilty for barging in on her school, confronting her like this. I’m no better than the Society right now.

  “Excuse me, miss. Are you a student here?” A teacher stands in the doorway.

  “We’ll talk more later,” I tell Jenny, then push past her out the door.

  “You can’t be here!” the teacher calls.

  “It’s fine. I’m leaving.”

  Ethan is waiting outside the car when I trip down the front steps.

  “Well?” he asks.

  “Get in the car.”

  Once the school is blurring in the rearview mirror, I tell him everything.

  “So what do we do now?” he asks.

  “I dunno.” I take out my cell and stare at it a moment, but before I do anything, it rings. Lyla.

  “I’ve got bad news,” she says.

  My throat cinches. I don’t want to hear it, but I ask, “What now?”

  “I think my teammate Tallulah Dumont is in on it. Everywhere I turn, she’s right there. And she won’t take no for an answer when I say I’m too busy to hang out.”

  I nod, even though she can’t see me. “This is exactly why we should have been talking to each other from the start. We could have been comparing notes. They got my sister too and who knows how many others.”

  “Well, hindsight is twenty-twenty.”

  I rub my eyes. “I don’t know what to do. How can we take on a network this organized?”

  Lyla is suddenly quiet.

  “Lyla?” I ask.

  “I remembered something,” she says. “After I dropped you off. I did tell someone what our plan was. About Tucker.”

&n
bsp; I sit up straighter. “What? Who?”

  “Nikki.”

  “Lyla!”

  “I know, I’m sorry. But I didn’t think it was a big deal. It’s just Nikki.”

  I blow out a harsh breath and push back my hair. “Who do you think she told?”

  There’s a long pause before she says, “Maybe no one.”

  It hits me what she’s insinuating. “You think Nikki could be part of the Society?”

  “Why not? She’s smart enough,” Lyla says. “Besides, she’s not as wholesome as everyone thinks.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask at her pointed words.

  Again there’s a pause, but then she sighs. “Okay, I don’t like talking about this, but last year, when my sister was really behind in school, Nikki persuaded her to plagiarize a paper. She said no one would ever figure it out because she’s a good girl and no one ever suspects the good girls. So my sister did it, but she got caught, and there was a big thing with Tulane. They were talking about taking her scholarship away. Nikki didn’t even seem sorry about it either. Actually, she seemed like she wanted nothing to do with my sister. Like she didn’t want her to ruin her reputation, even though it was Nikki’s idea.”

  It’s so devious and cold, just like the Society, and she certainly has access to money. “But she broke her arm when she fell off that coaster.” I was there. No way could she have faked that.

  “Maybe she wanted to make sure we’d never suspect her,” Lyla says. “She’s smart, remember?”

  I can’t argue with that. I didn’t suspect her. In fact, I envied that she so neatly got out of the game.

  “And she didn’t get punished,” I say, putting the pieces together. “My car exploded when I cheated, and she just skipped out of the game and nothing happened.”

  “Yep, and she knows everyone at school. It would be easy for her to gather secrets to use against us.”

  I consider how true that is. She remembered me even though we’ve never been friends and didn’t share any classes until this year. She travels in Farrah’s social circles but makes an effort to reach others whenever she’s campaigning for some elected position. If we’re looking for a mastermind, she’s it.

  “So what do we do now?” I ask. “How do we find out if there’s anything to this? We can’t just accuse her.”