Copycat

by Hannah Jayne

  “Is that weird?” He took a few steps across the sand, and Addie found herself following behind him.

  “Not weird at all, just surprising. I don’t actually drink either.”

  Spencer jutted his chin. “I see. You’re just into watering the sand?”

  Heat broke over the tops of Addie’s ears. “They handed me a drink. I just…”

  Spencer shrugged, but his expression was kind. “I get it. Peer pressure and all that. Want to walk?”

  Now it was Addie’s turn to smile. “I thought we were.”

  They went a few more feet, walking in silence until the din of students on the sand was a low roar and the lights from the boardwalk were nothing but splashes of color in the distance. The horizon was varying shades of dark.

  “My dad’s an alcoholic.” Spencer volunteered. “Or I guess he is now. Once you see your pops facedown in his own vomit, you kind of lose the urge to party even if everyone else is doing it.”

  Addie could only nod even though she wanted to tell Spencer she knew exactly how he felt. She hadn’t seen her father facedown in his own vomit—but she had seen him in handcuffs. She had seen his face drawn and gaunt after weeks of back-and-forth with lawyers and cops. She had seen the smug smile on his face when he walked free, the drunk driving offense expunged from his record.

  “That’s got to be rough,” was all she said.

  Though it was dark, a bit of silver moonlight washed over them, enough that she could study Spencer’s reflection, could see the hard set of his jaw when he swallowed. She watched his Adam’s apple bob.

  “Yeah, it is.”

  They were silent for a beat, the hum of the night air and the crash of the waves between them. “So, Addison Gaines. What’s your deal? What are you doing out here?”

  “It’s a bonfire. It’s not really an invitation thing, right?”

  “No, I was just—just trying to start a conversation. Badly, obviously. Just wondering who the real Addie is.”

  Addie couldn’t hide her bemused grin. “‘The real Addie?’ Wow, that sounds—that sounds ridiculous. The real me loved pink when I was a kid, hates beer, and has a massive aversion”—she picked up her foot and shook it—“to getting sand in my socks.”

  He raised a shoulder in a sort of half shrug. “Ah. So the real story begins.”

  Addie’s stomach dropped to her knees. She stopped walking, turned to face Spencer. “What did you just say?”

  She could see Spencer’s eyes widen, could see the bloom on his cheeks. “Nothing, I wasn’t trying to hit on…I was just being—”

  “No,” Addie shrugged. “No, that was weird of me. I was just asking—” She pulled out her phone and pointed to it as if that would explain everything. She clapped a hand over her face. “Never mind. I’m lame and kind of a freak. All of this”—she gestured to the world as a whole—“I’m kind of on the edge.”

  Spencer let out a half chuckle. “You and me both. And I didn’t mean that to sound…I mean, I feel…Lydia was my—”

  Addie shook her head. “Truce, okay? You and me, we both say really stupid things, but they die right here and now, okay?”

  There was a long, awkward beat as what Addie said hung between them.

  “I didn’t mean die.” She licked her dry lips. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Spencer held out a hand, then curled his fingers back, offering only his pinkie. His smile was small and shy, and it melted Addie’s heart. “Truce, okay?”

  Thirteen

  It was midnight by the time Addie got into bed. She yanked the covers up around her, worried that she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Her father was in the next room, and the house was deathly still. Addie was tired, but every time she tried to close her eyes she saw Lydia, glaring at her.

  Addie had a crush on Spencer. Addie had a crush on a dead girl’s ex-boyfriend.

  Who people think might be responsible for her murder.

  No, he wasn’t. That wasn’t right. She savored the night, holding it against her, replaying the sweet conversation, the sweet warmth of Spencer near her. Before she knew it, her eyes were fluttering and she began to dream.

  Addie could see her feet, her toenails painted Easter-egg blue. She was barefoot, those blue toenails digging into sand so pale it was almost white.

  Where was she?

  She spun, taking in her surroundings: mile-high pine trees shrugging toward the sky. The white sand beach, half-lined with an ancient looking boardwalk. A café that looked like it was part of the scenery. She squinted. GAP LAKE EAT AND DRINK was painted on the side of the stucco wall in faded red paint, right above the phrase, “Get in here!” Addie turned. The lake was in front of her, the cold water barely lapping at her toes.

  Instinctively, Addie knew that it was junior cut day, that the banks were about to be choked with Gap Lake High students and that—yes, right there—over her left shoulder there was a clearing. Two girls in beach chairs, a cooler between them.

  Crystal and Jordan.

  Behind her, Addie knew that Declan Levy was talking to Poppy, the summer worker who died in the first chapter of book one. She knew that Jordan would discover the pair while Crystal stayed at the lake drinking an energy drink. Addie heard the pop of the top. She watched as Jordan—exactly as she had pictured her each time she read the books—stood up, dusted sand from the back of her cutoff shorts, and walked to GAP LAKE EAT AND DRINK. Addie wanted to stop her, to sit down next to Crystal and explain what was about to happen. But there was someone already sitting in Jordan’s vacated chair.

  Lydia Stevenson.

  She was wearing short shorts and a bikini top, rubbing sunscreen on her long, already tanned arms. She and Crystal didn’t seem to notice each other.

  “Lydia?” Addie blinked at the girl. “What are you doing here? This is Gap Lake. You’re not—you’re real.”

  Lydia stopped what she was doing and pulled her sunglasses a half inch down her perfect little nose to stare at Addie. “Am I?”

  Addie blinked. “You shouldn’t be here anyway. Jordan is going to come back and then—” Then what? Addie racked her brain, trying to remember the scene in the book. Whatever it was, she knew it didn’t have Lydia Stevenson in it.

  “You’re weird,” Lydia said, batting at the air as she stood. She took a step closer to Addie so that they were nearly nose to nose. “There’s one thing you should keep in mind, Addison. If a character comes into a book in an unexpected place, it’s usually for very good reason.” Lydia slid off her sunglasses and dropped them onto the sand, turned her back on Addie and the still-silent Crystal, and began to walk down the beach toward the lake. Addie had to run to keep up with her.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  But Lydia kept walking, taking slow, deliberate steps that left two-inch-deep imprints in the sand. When she got to the water’s edge she turned and smiled at Addie, her lips blood red and heart shaped. “One more thing you should keep in mind too,” she whispered before snaking a hand behind Addie’s neck. “Life imitates art.”

  Addie didn’t have time to blink. She didn’t have time to consider what Lydia was saying to her before the water was lapping over her lips, rushing down her throat. It was in her nose, and when she tried to open her eyes everything was waterlogged. She saw the sky above her and she tried desperately to claw at it, but Lydia still had ahold of her neck. She was going down, she and Lydia both, and when she finally stopped struggling, that’s when she saw it: Lydia, in front of her, eyes wide open. Bright, but something about them was unsettling—unseeing. She was deep underwater, her hair floating around her, her perfect mouth open in a silent scream.

  Addie’s own screams woke her up. She was gasping and coughing, a sheen of sweat making her nightshirt stick to her back and dampening her sheets. “Oh, oh God.”

  She had dreamed about Gap Lake. No—she had d
reamed about Lydia Stevenson. Dead. Drowned in the lake. Addie shook herself and sat up, pressing the soles of her feet into the heavily piled carpet. She needed to feel something solid underneath her. She needed to know that she wasn’t going to drown.

  “Everything okay in here, kiddo?” Addie’s father poked his head into her doorway, brows knitted. “Did I hear you scream?”

  Suddenly, Addie was embarrassed. She was a little girl who had had a nightmare—bad enough to scare her into a cold sweat. She shook her head. “I’m okay, Dad. Just a dumb dream.”

  Mr. Gaines grinned, cheeks pushing up, making his hazel eyes crinkle. Addie liked the effect; she realized it had been a long time since she saw her father smile. “Let me guess—you stayed up late reading those River Run mysteries, huh?”

  Addie felt annoyance flutter in her chest. “Gap Lake, Dad. And no.”

  “Anyway, breakfast in five.”

  Addie waited to hear her father’s steps on the stairs before she stepped in the shower, the spray of water hitting her with a start.

  Lydia Stevenson, underwater.

  Addie, being pulled under, the water sealing her lips, swirling until it reached her nostrils. She was coughing, struggling to breathe again, as the steam from the hot water rose and pressed against her chest.

  She was drowning again.

  Addie pushed her way out of the shower, grabbing a towel and rubbing it over her face.

  This is crazy, she said to herself. I had a bad dream. I had a bad dream because I read a scary book and watched the news and that’s all there is to it. I’m not going to drown in the shower.

  She knew it was true, but she made sure to double-tighten the faucet anyway.

  Fourteen

  On Monday morning, Addie’s father had the refrigerator doors open and was balancing a stack of disposable cartons in one hand while wrestling an orange juice carton from between two pizza boxes with the other.

  “We should really clean out the fridge.”

  Addie took the orange juice and the top two disposable containers. “We really should learn how to cook.”

  Mr. Gaines frowned. “I thought you loved Louisa’s cooking.”

  Louisa came to the house four days a week to cook and clean, and make sure that Addie was doing something that looked like homework after school while her father worked late. The days she didn’t come, she packed the fridge with disposable containers of cheese-laden casseroles and macaroni salads. She was an old lady who lived on carbs and cheese food. She was kind and always warm to Addie and her father, but she wasn’t Addie’s mom.

  Nineteen days after Addie’s mom left—when Addie was still counting her mom’s absence in days—her father pulled out the chair across from her, steepled his fingers, and said, “We need to bring someone in.”

  Addie had no idea what that meant, but it began a series of women coming through their door—housekeepers and glorified babysitters, women who wanted a crack at becoming the next Mrs. Gaines, girls barely out of college who told her dad they just “loved kids” but who regarded Addie as some sort of competition. Addie hated the first one, a plump woman who filled the house with apple-pie spice and sang unsettling hymns. The second couldn’t pour a bowl of cereal and had boobs up to her chin. The third, fourth, and fifth were gone within weeks. Addie couldn’t remember what number Louisa was, but she knew enough not to get close.

  “I do, but sometimes it might be nice to, you know, make something ourselves.”

  Mr. Gaines did one of those frown head bobs that Addie knew meant he was considering the offer. “I guess we could try that. But until then—hash brown casserole or French toast casserole?”

  “I’ll stick with cereal,” she said, pulling a bowl from the cabinet. Her father flicked on the television. That was another thing that had changed since her mother left: now, whenever Addie and her father were alone, he flicked on the television, never actually caring what show was on. He didn’t even bother to channel surf most days, just clicked on the set and let whatever chatter was already playing fill up the otherwise silent house. This morning, it was the news.

  “Hey, honey, isn’t that your school?”

  Addie didn’t have to look at the screen to know it was. Her stomach sank as the reporter looked directly into the camera, brows knitted, jaw clenched.

  “Seventeen-year-old Lydia Stevenson was found deceased at Hawthorne High late Friday night.”

  The word deceased sent a chill through Addie.

  Teenagers weren’t supposed to be deceased.

  Mr. Gaines turned in his chair, eyebrows raised. “Are you doing okay?”

  Addie felt the anger swell low in her belly. She and Maya had found Lydia. She had been besieged by a parade of police officers and shivered under the covers next to Maya, and now her father was concerned.

  Addie nodded slowly, looking down at the cereal and milk in her bowl. Already it looked like sludge, and her stomach churned. She pushed the bowl aside. “I’m doing okay. I just want things to go back to normal.”

  The news anchor went on to report everything that they already knew. She went through the series of events, just as Addie herself had described—and witnessed—them, then added: “The last person to see Lydia alive was her seventeen-year-old boyfriend. Police aren’t saying that he’s a suspect in this case at this time, but have created a hotline for any leads.” Again, they didn’t mention him by name. Again, they made it sound like he was guilty of something. Addie reached forward and flicked off the television set.

  “Can we just have a little quiet, please, Dad?”

  Mr. Gaines reached across the table, resting his hand on Addie’s. “Maybe we should call Dr. Britton.”

  Ice water shot through Addie’s veins, and her tongue felt heavy in her mouth. Dr. Britton was the therapist her father had sicced on her after her mother left and after the accident. She was a prim woman who wore pencil skirts that molded to her perfect curves. She had thick brown hair that hung to the middle of her back and glossy brown eyes punctuated by perfect brows that had a practiced look of perma concern. Addie hated her the moment she walked into the office. Dr. Britton was a perfect specimen behind a huge mahogany desk backed by degrees written in fancy script from a half-dozen universities and institutions. She wanted to talk to Addie about her feelings: how Addie felt inadequate and unloved; she batted her eyes and said she could relate.

  Addie doubted it.

  “No, Dad.”

  “I know you hung out with Maya, but going back to school could be kind of a trigger, you know?”

  Trigger.

  That word.

  Dr. Britton had used it to talk about her mother leaving. Addie could still feel the anger surge through her body. Her mother wasn’t a trigger. Her mother leaving wasn’t a trigger. The man who had called the doctor, who had schmoozed her up while Addie got a soda from the machine, was the trigger. The car he pulled up to take Addie home in was a trigger.

  “If you’re scared, if you’d like to take some time and stay home from school today…”

  Addie almost felt hopeful. It almost felt like old times, when she was a kid and her dad would hold her hand, build her a blanket fort, and hole up with her in her bedroom to keep watch for monsters. Except now, the monster was real.

  “Maybe—”

  “I can’t stay with you, of course, but I bet Louisa would enjoy the company.”

  Louisa.

  Addie brought her untouched cereal bowl to the sink and dumped it, watching as the cereal and milk swelled in the sink, then clogged the drain. “I’ll be okay, Dad. Thanks anyway.”

  There was a long pause. “Do you want a ride today?”

  Addie kept her eyes on her shoes as she shook her head in a sharp “no.” She could hear her father’s annoyed sigh. “You could drive yourself, you know.”

  Fifteen

  “Actu
ally, Maya is on her way.” She offered him a bared-teeth grin, shimmying by the garage door that held her father’s car and hers, side by side. Addie had had her license since the day she turned sixteen, and the new car was a peace offering, her father’s way of trying to quell her anxiety, but it had the opposite effect. Every time she got behind the wheel, each time she rested her palms against the buttery soft leather, she could feel the anxiety swell in her chest. Sweat broke out above her upper lip, and her father’s accident played on an endless loop, a black-and-white, terrifying film strip.

  She sat in the passenger seat, her father behind the wheel. He stank of bourbon and smoke and Addie pretended not to notice. He drove carefully at first, holding the wheel with both hands, knuckles white. But then he started talking, laughing, gesturing wildly, and Addie kept her eyes on the road, kept focusing on the asphalt flying by. At first it was fine, but her eyes flicked to the speedometer: 25, 30, 35, 40. She watched as the front of the car veered to one side, then lurched to the other, swallowing up the double yellow lines.

  “Dad, slow down.”

  “I’m barely doing thirty, hon.”

  Even now, Addie could feel the heat burst in her chest, the starburst of pain that thudded behind her eyes as the speedometer climbed and her father’s voice went from his usual chatter to a boisterous blather. He took one hand off the wheel and chucked her under the chin. She could smell the cigar smoke on his fingertips; she could taste the biting scent of alcohol on his breath.

  “Dad, you’re drunk.”

  “I had one drink, Addison.”

  She shook her head, grinding her shoulders into the soft leather of the car seat, grounding the soles of her feet. She checked her seat belt, feeling the thick weave pressing hard against her waist, her chest. She was sure if she really looked, she could see the belt move against her heart as it slammed into her rib cage. Addie’s lips went dry as her palms started to sweat. She clamped her eyes shut, refusing to look at the climbing speedometer, at the double yellow lines that wiggled and slashed across the asphalt.