by Hannah Jayne
“Please don’t say it.”
Maya snatched the phone from Addie’s hand and dialed, pacing while Addie stayed still, rooted to the floor. She didn’t want to look at Lydia, but her eyes would go nowhere else.
She’s not dead, she reasoned. Maya doesn’t know.
She’s sleeping.
Yes, Addie told herself, Lydia is sleeping. Passed out, maybe.
But the message R. J. Rosen sent…
Addie could hear Maya’s disembodied voice. She knew she was right behind her, but Maya sounded like she was a million miles away, her voice shaking as she spoke. “Mom? It’s me. There’s…we’re at school and…”
Addie put her hands over her head, pressing his palms to her ears. She didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to hear Maya talking to her mother, the chief of police. She didn’t want to hear that they were in the journalism room with a dead body.
Lydia Stevenson was a dead body.
No.
That can’t be right.
Addie had seen Lydia at lunch today. She was sitting with Spencer Cohen; they had broken up, but she was still fawning over him. And now Lydia was dead.
“The police are on their way.” Maya stretched an arm across Addie’s shoulders. “Come on, let’s wait outside.”
Addie forced her lips to move. “We shouldn’t leave her.”
Maya shuddered, her voice finally starting to crack. “I don’t want to stay in here with…” Addie could tell that Maya didn’t want to look at Lydia, what was left of her, hunched and crumpled over her desk. “I can’t stay in here.”
***
It didn’t take long for the police to arrive, their cruisers screaming through the cold night air. But Colton arrived first, the smell of hot, greasy pizza hitting Addie before Colton hit the first step. She doubled over and dry heaved.
“Uh, sorry. Did you not want pepperoni?” His grin was wide and lopsided, dropping from his face when the first siren blared. “You called the cops? I paid for the pizza out of petty cash. Mr. Moreau said I could.”
“No.” Addie’s voice was a choked whisper.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s…it’s…” Maya looked helplessly from Colton back over her shoulder through the glass doors to where Lydia was. “It’s Lydia. We think she’s—”
Again, Addie willed Maya not to say it. Not to say that Lydia was dead, because if she did, it would be out there and it could be true.
People her age didn’t die.
Teenagers she knew didn’t die. People in the past did. Photographed faces of people she never met from old Hawthorne yearbooks died. Those people died, while Addie’s life in the here and now and the lives of her friends and family plowed on day after day, Monday after Monday, because that was life and that was what Addie knew. She didn’t know this. Sure, she read about death in her books. Gap Lake was filled with death: murder, mayhem, undercover abuse from seemingly perfect families. But this was real life. And in real life, red, white, and blue police lights were cutting through the night, splashing across the faces of Addie’s friends. Maya, her cheeks tearstained and red. Colton, pizza still in his hands, dark eyes drawn and wild-looking as he glanced from the approaching cars to Maya and Addie.
“You guys, what’s happening?”
The first officer was in the parking lot. His squad car was parked in the student drop-off and Addie had the ridiculous thought that she should tell him he couldn’t stop there. Then another squad car and another, until uniformed police were swarming the school. One approached Addie, Maya, and Colton.
“Which one of you found the victim?”
“Lydia,” Addie heard someone say. “Her name is Lydia.” It took her a half second to realize that she was the one talking, her voice sounding cool and even in the night air. “We found her. But she’s just…” She let her words trail off and a second officer, this one a woman with close-cropped blond hair and a name badge that said Olson, offered Addie a smile that was somewhere between authoritative and apologetic.
“Why don’t you come with me and we can talk?”
Addie pumped her head, then knitted her fingers, pressing her palms together so hard they hurt. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. What do people being questioned by the police do with their hands? She gulped, then cleared her throat, shifting her weight from foot to foot.
“Where’s Mr.—” Maya stopped talking.
“Mr. Moreau,” Addie answered.
The journalism teacher pulled into the parking lot, his bald head on swivel as lights from the squad car flashed across his windshield, illuminating his anemic lips that were pulled into a thin line. As the officers approached him in a tight bunch, he held up his hands, palms facing forward.
“Oh my God,” Addie murmured. “Oh my God, do you think he did it?”
Nobody answered and the swarm of noises—shouting, the yip of the sirens, the general buzz of radio chatter and static—swarmed around Addie, a thrum that pulsed through her and tickled the backs of her ears.
“What’s going on here?” Mr. Moreau’s usually calm voice was pinched and tight as he exited his car. “Are my students—is everything okay?”
“Addison?” It was Officer Olson again. Addie could feel a warm weight on her arm. She blinked at the hand that was there: rounded nails clipped short and glossy, a wedding ring. A watch with fat digital numbers flashed in a hazy blue.
“Is Mr. Moreau in trouble?” she heard herself ask.
“We’re just going to talk to him, just like I’d like to talk to you, okay?”
The woman smiled. Addie tried to nod but could only focus on the weight of the hand on her arm.
“Please, can someone just tell me what is going on here?” She heard Mr. Moreau’s voice through the din. “Addison? Colton? Are you guys okay?”
Addie lifted her hand and waved, an odd little finger wave that felt like betrayal. Lydia was dead and she was waving. Her breath caught in her throat and her eyes started to water.
“Try and calm down,” Officer Olson told her. “Why don’t you take a few deep breaths?”
Addie, generally a devout rule follower, tried to do as she was told. She tried to smile but it felt like she was grimacing, her bared teeth cold against the night air. She cleared her throat, tried to suck in a deep breath—how does one breathe again?—then clamped her eyes shut.
After a second, she took out her phone to call her dad, but before she could, she noticed a new message. She opened it, and R. J. Rosen’s words flooded in front of her.
…Luxe looked like she was sleeping. She was on her side on the table, her hip and shoulder lined up perfectly, her knees crooking across the faux wood grain. Her arm was curled under her head. Jordan remembered thinking she looked peaceful, and that was how her friend always looked when she spent the night and slept in, one leg splaying out of her sleeping bag, her dark hair fanned out behind her. But when she looked closer, she knew her friend wasn’t sleeping. Her body was too still, too perfect, too crooked. Her fingers weren’t splayed, they were clawed—and her fingernails…Jordan narrowed her eyes and her breath caught in her throat. First from that deathly, muddy, swampy smell, and second from the sight of Luxe’s nails: filthy, her cuticles caked with dirt and brick-red blood. Her manicure was broken, the paint—no, Jordan realized with a sickening feeling, the nail was peeling back and splintered. She doubled over and retched, coughing and gasping and clawing at her throat. Her friend was dead. She was at school, where Crystal and Luxe and she had been, it seemed, almost every day of their friendship and their lives, and here she was alive and desperate to breathe but her friend would never breathe again…
“R. J. Rosen,” Addie whispered.
“What’s that?” the police officer said.
“I was reading…”
Maya looked up and pinned Addie with a low-eye
browed glare. “Addie, stop,” she hissed.
The officer looked from Addie to Maya, then pulled a tiny leather notebook from her enormous tool belt and produced a pen. “Can we start over?”
Addie blinked, her eyes dry but a mammoth lump forming in her throat.
“My name is Officer Christina Olson. What’s your name?” She was looking directly at Addie. Addie’s mind reeled, but she knew the answer to this question.
“My name is Addie. Addison Gaines.”
The officer cocked her head. “Gaines, like Morton Gaines?”
“Like Morton Gaines Investments,” Maya said under her breath.
Even with thousands of devoted blog followers, Addie wasn’t famous—but her father was. He was Morton Gaines, investment banker extraordinaire, and if you had money, he was your best friend. If you had money, he attended your wedding and bought your children birthday gifts and made your small fortune into a big one. If you didn’t have money or were his only daughter, you barely existed.
Addie cleared her throat. “Yeah, that’s my dad.”
“Hmm,” Officer Olson scribbled something on her notepad. Addie shifted her weight. She waited for the inevitable, for the officer to ask her about that event—about that case.
But that was a lifetime ago and tonight, at her own high school, a girl was dead.
“Hello, Maya,” Officer Olsen said.
Maya nodded to the officer. Both her parents were police officers—her mother, chief of police; her father, a homicide detective, which gave her some amazing street cred but meant she couldn’t walk in a circle without the entire police force knowing where she was.
“You mentioned another name a second ago. R. J.—something?”
“R. J. Rosen. He’s—”
Maya’s eye roll was almost audible. “R. J. Rosen is an author. He writes those Gap Lake books. Addie’s a mega fan. I don’t know why she keeps bringing him up.”
Officer Olson smiled. “Right, Gap Lake. I’ve read one or two of those. My niece loves those things. Pretty good, but I have to say there’s a lot of shoddy police work in them.” She smiled and Addie immediately warmed to her. Maya grimaced.
“You realize a girl is dead, right?” Her voice was soft and even, dripping with contempt.
“Wait, no one said…no one said…” Colton was taking baby steps backward, holding up his big hands, palms forward. All the color had drained from his face. “It’s Lydia? Are you…are you sure?”
“Yes,” Maya supplied. “Lydia, in the journalism room.”
Addie had the horrible urge to giggle. Maya sounded like she was about to win a round of Clue.
“Why did you bring up R. J. Rosen, Addie?”
Addie looked at the message on her phone, suddenly overcome with how silly she was about to sound. Finally, she shrugged. “I don’t know. It just, it felt like a book.” Her voice went up at the end, like she was asking a question. “I thought maybe…” She looked at her sneakers, then kicked at the cement in front of her. “I don’t know.”
Five
“Hello?”
Addie wasn’t exactly expecting anyone to answer. It was after eight and although half the lights in the house were blazing, she knew her father wouldn’t be home yet. She dumped her backpack in the hallway, knowing that she should pick it up but couldn’t be bothered to. Everything ached. Her eyes were dry from a combination of crying over Lydia and staring wide-eyed, as the police asked her again and again what happened.
“I walked in the room,” she had replied. “I smelled something wet, swampy-like.”
Swampy.
That was the same word that R. J. Rosen had used, wasn’t it? “Jordan smelled something muddy, swampy…”
Addie shook it off. R. J. Rosen was a good writer. He did research. He wrote about real-life events, and, in real life, teens died.
A shiver walked up Addie’s spine and she tried to rub the chill from her skin.
Teens weren’t supposed to die.
She walked through the enormous foyer and snapped on every light until the room glowed, soft white light bouncing off the ridiculous marble floors, the ugly vase that was worth a fortune.
Addie hated this house.
She had been seven when they had moved in. And she had loved it. It was a fairly new development, but now, almost all the houses were occupied. She used to ride her bike through the red mud and the new construction, revel in the fact that her bedroom was the size of a small apartment with its own bathroom and a bathtub fit for a mermaid. It was way too big for just Addie and her father, but she hadn’t realized that yet and loved every nook and hiding spot, loved roaming the neighborhood. She was too young then to realize the house was a stupid status symbol of something they didn’t really have. It wasn’t a home. But then again, she and her dad weren’t really a family.
Louisa, the latest woman who helped out around the house, had left her a plate in the microwave, covered with cling film and loaded with goopy-looking vegetables and something baked with potatoes.
Addie threw it in the trash.
Her stomach had been in knots since Officer Olson had stared her down, had turned off that kindly smile and gone “all business” on her, asking the same question four different ways until Addie was tripping over her own tongue. Addie had known that she didn’t have to answer them, that she didn’t have to talk to the police. That happened in every Gap Lake novel: the police came out to interview the tearful, hapless bystanders, teens who didn’t have to talk if their parents weren’t present. But Addie didn’t want to seem guilty, so she told her story again and again, each time they asked, until her mouth was dry and her throat ached.
Her cell phone chirped and she let out a tiny scream, clutching her chest and holding the thing to her ear. “Jesus, Maya, you scared the crap out of me.”
“Sorry. I know, I’m pretty jumpy too. You alone?”
Addie hiked herself up on the counter. “What do you think?”
“Did you have to let the staff go?”
“Very funny. What’s up?” She could hear Maya shifting on her end of the phone, could hear the vibration of Maya’s voice. “Are you in the bathroom?”
“No. Yes. I was calling to see if you want company.”
“I’m coming to your place,” both girls said simultaneously.
Maya lived in a nondescript home in a tract of equally nondescript homes. Each room was a perfect square with a single square window and four walls painted eggshell and carpeted wall to wall with unobtrusive almond-colored carpet. The furniture was just as nondescript and unobtrusive, and Addie never asked but was vaguely sure the barely beige sofa set that matched the lamp shade that matched the drapes must have come with the house.
“The police are at your house. I’m coming over,” Addie said.
“No, the police are at the station. My mom threatened to send Officer Hale to come ‘check in on me.’ So I said I’m going to your place.”
“You get a police escort? That’s awesome.”
“No,” Maya said slowly. “I’m a seventeen-year-old with a babysitter in combat boots. I’m coming to your place. Your place is awesome. You’re just blind to its awesomeness.”
“It’s a freaking prison,” Addie said, hopping off the counter.
“With gilded bars. Whilst I am in a prison of beige. Of”—Addie imagined her best friend spinning around her bedroom, glancing at the eggshell walls, her fingers flitting over the beige curtains—“almond excrement. And you have better snacks. And a pool.”
Addie sighed. “I guess I can’t argue with that and your exceptional use of the word ‘whilst.’ Get over here.”
“You think your dad would mind if I spent the night? Everyone’s at work and I don’t want to be alone.”
Addie shrugged. “If he shows up, I’ll ask him.” She paused. “Are they working on Lydia’
s case?”
Lydia’s case. It just sounded off. Someone she knew had a police case—no, Addie corrected herself. Was a case. Gooseflesh shot out along her arms. “Just get over here, okay?”
Addie left her cell phone to charge on the kitchen counter and went to her bedroom, stripping out of her clothes and dumping them on the floor. She glanced at the heap, briefly wondering if she should bag them, if the police would ask for them for evidence.
You’re being crazy, she told herself. All you and Maya did was find the body.
Her heart ached.
Lydia was now “the body.”
She didn’t want to believe it. Couldn’t believe it but couldn’t get it out of her mind.
She stepped into the shower and turned the knob, getting the water as hot as she could stand. When the bathroom was waist high with steam, Addie stepped in, letting the water pour over her, pinning her skin, giving her goose bumps.
Tonight, she and her best friend had seen a dead body.
Lydia.
Slumped.
Arms folded.
What had happened to her?
She wasn’t bleeding.
Overdose?
Addie didn’t know Lydia as much as she knew of her. She was pretty, popular—didn’t those two always go hand in hand?—she was friendly enough. Captain of the debate team. A cheerleader. A fairly good student. But drugs?
Addie thought back to the first time she had seen Lydia in her element. It was at a party at Brian Briggs’s house and Addie and Maya hadn’t exactly snagged an invite, but the party was big enough and loud enough that no one noticed when they slipped in. Addie, nervous, licking her newly painted Raging Red lips.
“Stop that,” Maya had said, giving the flesh above Addie’s arm a good pinch.
“I can’t help it,” Addie said, blotting her lips. “I’m nervous. We’ve never been to a high school party before.”
“And we never will again if you keep licking your lips like that. People are going to think you have herpes.”