Avenged

by E. E. Cooper

  “I heard about Officer Siegel,” I said.

  Brit mimed gagging. “I hate that woman.” I searched her face, trying to figure out the cause of her dislike. Was it just that Officer Siegel wasn’t in her thrall like most of the teachers, or did she worry that Siegel might suspect something? The bell rang, and Brit groaned. “You guys want to skip? It’s entirely too hot to be here. I can’t face another class. It’s like this year never ends.”

  It was one of the first really hot, sticky days of the year. Northside didn’t have air-conditioning except for the computer labs, and whoever had designed the halls hadn’t been too concerned about airflow. It was a cement block heat box. It wasn’t even midmorning, and the building already felt like a sauna.

  “No can do,” Amy said.

  “Me either,” Kate added. “I’ve got Laurice this period, and knowing her she’s got some evil pop quiz planned to prep us for exams next week.”

  “I’ll go,” I said impulsively. I could live with the heat, but I did want to hear what Brit had to say about Siegel.

  Brit’s eyes sparkled. “Let’s do it.” She turned and I followed her without another word.

  Once we were out in the parking lot we debated where to go. Neither of us was hungry, and the idea of having coffee made me sick. I was jittery enough as it was.

  Brit lightly slapped her steering wheel. “God, I hate this town. There’s nothing to do.”

  “Should we go to your place?” I suggested. “We could watch a movie.”

  “We can’t. My mom has some interior designer over taking measurements,” Brit said. “She’s on this kick where she wants to redo the basement so they can put the house on the market next fall. She figures with me going to college they could move into a condo by the water.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  Brit snorted. “What about the fact that it’s my childhood home? When I come back for summers I’ll be stuck in some pokey spare room. I’m used to having my own room, plus the extra space so I can have people over.”

  I opened my mouth to say something when the impact of what she said hit me. If Brit’s parents renovated the basement any evidence that was still there was going to be destroyed. I’d assumed that it didn’t matter if Nicole was out of town for months, other than it was frustrating, but her testimony wasn’t going to be enough. I’d counted on the idea that her statement would make the police check Brit’s story more closely. Light up that basement with some luminol like a fireworks show—but if all of that was gone, there wouldn’t be enough to prove anything.

  The pressure around my chest tightened another notch. I was running out of time.

  I kept an eye on the front door of the school. It was just a matter of time until a teacher came out and realized we were just sitting there. “We should go somewhere,” I said.

  “Ooh, I know just the perfect thing.” Brit fired up her car and we peeled out of the lot. When the radio came on, Brit whooped; it was one of her favorite songs. She jacked up the volume so loud that the seats throbbed with the bass.

  When she pulled into the parking lot, I felt the blood drain out of my head. I stared ahead at the sign for the Point. Where Brit had supposedly leapt to her death and where she’d pushed Beth’s body into the lake.

  “I like being here,” Brit said. “It reminds me of Beth.” She unhooked her seat belt and jumped out of the SUV.

  A million questions ran through my head. Did she think about dumping Beth’s body? Planning her suicide, down to the tragic note left on the beach? Did she have even a sliver of regret when she realized Beth hadn’t been sleeping with Jason?

  “Are you coming?” Brit was already down the path leading to a rocky outcrop. She was whacking at the beach grass with a stick she’d picked up. I scrambled out of the car and followed her.

  We came through the trees and out onto the bluff. A wooden guardrail ran across the bluff with a sign. Danger. Sharp drop. I took a step back so Brit wasn’t behind me. Two accidents at the same location would be hard for her to explain away, but if anyone could find a way to do it, it would be her. She paused and smiled, and I had the sense she knew why I’d moved and that it amused her. Brit took a deep breath and closed her eyes to the sun. “This is so much better than being in school,” she said. “Sometimes I feel like I can’t really breathe in there.”

  “So what happened with Siegel?” I asked.

  “What, no thank-you? I did it for you, after all.” Brit said. “Siegel was not your friend. She thought you were involved with Sara’s page, you know.” Brit took a seat on one of the larger rocks. “I had no idea they’d suspend Siegel. I thought they might make her leave the school, but she’s off work completely.”

  “You did this for me?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t going to have her make it sound like you were responsible. I just don’t get why you looked at the page at the library. You couldn’t wait to get someplace more private?” Brit rolled her eyes. “And why was Siegel following you around anyway? Doesn’t she have anything else to do?”

  “I just wanted to see the page again,” I said. “Siegel wouldn’t have been able to prove anything.”

  “It made her suspicious.” She fixed me with a stare, shading her face from the sun with her hand. “It made her suspect me.”

  I stood in front of her. “Are you in trouble?”

  Brit shaded her eyes so she could look up at me. “She didn’t say anything in particular. It wasn’t a big deal.”

  I hadn’t expected that answer. I dropped down so I was sitting next to her. “What do you mean?”

  Brit was piling small stones on the rock next to her. “I mean she didn’t say anything in particular, but I could tell she thinks I was involved. Every time she looked at me it was like she smelled something bad. It pissed me off.”

  Siegel had looked at her funny? “But your parents filed a harassment case.” There must be more to it. Did Brit suspect that Siegel was checking into her amnesia story?

  Brit laughed. “Well, they weren’t going to cause trouble for her just because I didn’t like her. I had to have a better story than that.” She shook her head ruefully, like she couldn’t get over how naïve I was. “I told my parents that she was hounding me.” Brit made her voice waver as if she was about to cry. “It’s like I can’t even walk down the hall without her following me and whispering all this horrible stuff.” A sob escaped from her throat. “I tried to talk to her, but she told me she doesn’t want to listen. I’m afraid of what she might do.” Then she stopped and beamed. “Not bad, huh?”

  Her ability to turn her emotions on and off was unnerving. “She could lose her job, Brit. This is serious.”

  “Then she shouldn’t have been such a fucking bitch to me all the time.”

  “You can’t get someone fired because you don’t like them,” I said.

  Brit stood and brushed the sand off her butt. “Apparently I can.” Her voice was casual, as if we were talking about something like what to have for dinner.

  I pressed my fingers into my temples. I couldn’t believe the stuff that came out of her mouth. “You have to drop this case. She never harassed you.”

  Britney shrugged. “It really comes down to what I say versus what she says. Besides, I said you were around for some of it, so you can back up my story.”

  I was mad at myself for being shocked. I should have known she’d drag me into this mess. “I don’t know,” I hedged. “This is the police, Brit. Why did you go after Siegel in the first place?”

  Brit suddenly chucked a large stone into the air over the cliff’s edge. “I had to do something. I’m so fucking bored, I feel like I’m going to explode,” she yelled.

  I stared at her in shock. “Bored?”

  Brit paced back and forth in front of me. “I had this horrible thing happen to me, and I had to fight, freaking crawl and scratch my memories back so I could return. And I finally get here and this is it. People don’t even care anymore.”

  “What do you
mean?”

  “It’s all the same. I’ve got Jason back, and sure, he’s good-looking and smart, but he’s still this high school guy. He’s actually happy with how things are. He doesn’t want to run off together or do something huge. He’s happy to rent a bunch of lame action movies and have a barbeque on the beach. I’m stuck in the same classes, reading the same stupid textbooks, taking the same tests. The hot lunch menu is the same, week after week. Everyone tells the same jokes, they watch the same shows, they listen to the same music. It drives me insane.” Her pacing picked up speed, the sand grinding under her feet. “If I have to act like I give a shit one more time when someone whines about how stressed they are over exams, or how it’s a national tragedy that their hairstylist cut off an extra quarter of an inch, or because their mommy makes their curfew too early, I’m going to start screaming and I don’t think I’m going to be able to stop. Oh, and speaking of parents, guess what mine are all lathered up about?” She stopped and put her hands on her hips.

  “I don’t know,” I said softly.

  “They aren’t happy with my grades. They think I should be doing better. They are already riding my ass about Cornell and how I have to up my game if I expect to do well. Up my game,” she said, spittle flying from her mouth. “I came back from the dead and they still want me to up my goddamn game.” Her face was bright red and I could see the vein in her forehead throbbing. “I came back and I still have to deal with all this bullshit.”

  “Your parents worry about you,” I said. “They went after Officer Siegel for upsetting you. Doesn’t that prove that they care?”

  “What they care about is making sure they look like the best parents in the world.” She ran her hands through her hair. “My dad went after Officer Siegel because she pissed him off. He told me how when I was missing she rubbed him the wrong way, making it sound like maybe they had something to do with why I might want to kill myself. Trust me, there’s nothing my dad hates more than someone blaming him. I just gave him an excuse to go after Officer Siegel. He didn’t do it for me.”

  She looked ready to fly into a million pieces, hard shrapnel spraying out, causing collateral damage all around her. “Listen, Brit, it’s going to be okay,” I said, trying to defuse the situation. It scared me that she was out of control.

  Her head dropped back, and she slumped as if she’d crossed a marathon finish line, spent and exhausted. “But that’s the problem. It’s all . . . okay. Is there anything more boring than just okay?”

  I sat there staring at her. I didn’t know what to say; she’d told me more than she’d expected to. She’d shown me more. A tiny flicker of clarity sprung up in my chest. She needed a fix, like a junkie. The truth was Brit had enjoyed all of this. Maybe what had happened with Beth had been an accident, or a crime of passion, as they say, but once it was done, she’d liked the challenge. She’d had to figure out how to get rid of Beth’s body, how to get away with it. She had to come up with a way to escape, to disappear, and then once she was gone she’d had to engineer a way to return. It must have been scary, but it had also been an adrenaline rush. Now she was back and everyday life wasn’t enough anymore. Prom had been a letdown, Jason wasn’t living up to expectations, and baiting Sara was all she had left, and it wasn’t cutting it.

  I rubbed my face. Every nerve in my body was tingling as the insight into Brit’s mind was laid open to me. All of this: posting the photo of Sara, feeding lies about me to Dr. Sherman, setting up the slut page for Sara, trying to get Officer Siegel fired, was her trying to re-create that thrill. She’d likely always needed some kind of excitement, a problem to solve. I would almost feel sorry for her if she weren’t willing to hurt others to get what she wanted.

  “Look, none of this matters. You have to back me up with Officer Siegel. If the school board wants to hear from you, you need to tell them that she harassed me.”

  “Brit, I can’t lie to the cops.”

  She rolled her eyes. “C’mon, you owe me. Your stupid stunt with going to the library almost sank us both into hot water. You can say you don’t remember any specifics, just that she said a bunch of stuff and it made me cry. Besides, I got rid of Siegel for you. Did you really want her prying into your history?”

  “Maybe you can say it was someone else who was there,” I suggested.

  Brit’s nose twitched in irritation, and she cocked one eyebrow. “Maybe you can find another way back to your car.”

  “What?”

  Her earlier emotional outburst had cleared, like a storm that raged in and then blew itself out. She seemed perfectly calm. “I forgot I have a dentist appointment. I have to go.” Brit started walking down the path. I scrambled after her.

  “You’re leaving me here?” I tripped over a root as we walked through the trees and stumbled. “Just because I won’t back up your story?”

  “Don’t be a drama queen. I told you. I have to be somewhere, and it’s the opposite direction of school. Just call your mom. I’m sure she’ll pick you up.”

  “I can’t call my mom. She’s going to want to know what I’m doing out here in the middle of the school day,” I said.

  Brit already had her SUV open. “Jeez, sounds like a problem. If you can’t get a ride, let me know and I’ll pick you up later.” She climbed into her car and slammed the door. She waved at me through the windshield and then pulled out without looking back.

  Once she pulled out it was totally silent. Just the sound of the distant waves hitting the rocks. Brit was teaching me a lesson.

  Now I had to figure out how to teach her one.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I had to jog from the Point back to school to get my car, and I was exhausted with a headache beating behind my eyes by the time I made it home. I came into the house, the air-conditioning instantly cooling the layer of sweat on my skin.

  I dropped my school bag on the floor by the door and rolled my neck. On the way home, as cars had whizzed past, I kept thinking about the fact that Brit’s parents were planning to renovate. All the evidence would be wiped away for good. I had to move things forward quickly, but I wasn’t sure how to do it. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something—some key piece of information that would make things fall into place. It made sense to start with things that were out of place and Zach talking to Siegel about me didn’t fit. He was ticked at me, and he had reason to be, but making accusations wasn’t his style.

  I picked up our home phone and dialed Zach using *67 so our number wouldn’t show and he might pick it up.

  “Hello,” Zach said.

  “It’s me,” I said. He was silent. “You weren’t answering my texts.”

  “Because I didn’t want to talk to you.”

  I flinched at his honesty. “I just need to ask you one thing, and then I’ll leave you alone.” When he didn’t hang up I pushed forward. “Why were you so sure I had something to do with Sara’s photo leak and her online page?”

  “Are you still denying it?”

  “I just need to know why you think I could do that.”

  Zach sighed. “Brit talked to me.”

  I sucked in a breath. “She told you I did it?”

  “She didn’t say that,” Zach said. “She was worried. She thought you might have done it to try to get on her good side because you knew she was mad at Sara. And she was mad, but she said she would never want Sara to be hurt. It was always so important to you that you be in good with Brit and Beth, I thought it was possible.”

  I bet she said that. I bet she said all sorts of things. That bitch was setting me up. “Zach, I didn’t do this,” I insisted.

  “That’s not up to me to figure out,” Zach said, hanging up the phone.

  I stared at the receiver. He thought I was guilty. I felt a ripple of panic. I was ending up isolated, just like when everything went bad with Madison. I had to get someone to see my side. I’d talk to Nadir.

  It’s not that I think it is my older brother’s job to fix my problems; it�
�s just that he’s pretty good at it. When I was little and Vince from down the street used to pop the heads off my Barbie dolls and hide them, it was Nadir who went over and told him if he didn’t leave me alone he would fight him. When I accidentally broke the ballerina figurine my mom liked by hitting it with a ball in the house, it was my brother who stuck her arm back on with superglue and promised Mom would never find out. He coached me through algebra my first year of high school and was always available for advice. It might be that he’s older, or maybe he’s just better at staying calm and figuring out what to do, but he’s always been someone I knew had my back. And I needed to count on someone because I’d suddenly realized I was running out of options.

  As soon as we got through the usual checking in on our parents, I jumped right in. “I want to talk to you about something, and I need you to listen,” I said.

  “I always listen,” Nadir said.

  I sighed. “With an open mind,” I stressed. “You know how everyone thinks Beth’s death was an accident? It wasn’t.”

  “Okay,” Nadir said doubtfully.

  “When all this went down, Brit believed Beth was fooling around with her boyfriend, Jason. I found a note. I know Beth was over at Brit’s the night she disappeared. I think Brit confronted Beth and things went badly.”

  There was a long beat of silence of the phone. “So you think Britney did something to Beth,” Nadir said.

  “Not something. I think she killed her.” I made sure my voice stayed calm and rational. I knew this was a big leap for someone else to make, but if anyone would hear me out it would be my brother.

  “But weren’t they friends forever?” Nadir sounded confused.

  I wanted to throw something at the wall in frustration. “Yes. But that’s the point. Britney believed her best friend betrayed her by sleeping with her boyfriend. She confronted Beth and then maybe Beth laughed it off, or denied it, and then Brit snapped.”

  “Kay-Kay, people can have fights without it turning to murder.”

  “I’m not saying she set out to kill her, it might have been an accident,” I said.