Copycat

by Hannah Jayne

  “Dad, please.”

  They were in town, nearing the square. Addie could see the awnings from the farmer’s market about a mile ahead. She willed her father to turn, begged God to let the car fail, make the engine fall out, the road suddenly close.

  No such luck.

  Addie couldn’t tell if it was the hum of the road or the rush of blood in her temples, but she had to scream, had to make her father hear her.

  “Dad, slow down. You have to slow down!”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at her. He just kept blinking at the road, squinting like it was dark instead of broad daylight. She considered grabbing the wheel. She thought about gripping the little leather teardrop that hung from the key chain and yanking, but it was already too late.

  They were in the town square.

  The farmer’s market awnings were on either side of them. People were scattering, and a table exploded over the hood, vegetables pelting the windshield. No one was hurt, but the humiliation and radiating fear pulsed through Addie for years to come, choking her every time she got behind the wheel, becoming too much when the engine purred.

  Maya honked twice, and Addie was pulled from her daymare.

  “You know Maya could ring the doorbell like a civilized person.”

  Addie spun, rage engulfing her. A civilized person doesn’t drive drunk in the middle of the day. A civilized person doesn’t pick his daughter up from junior high with bourbon on his breath.

  A civilized person wouldn’t roar through a marketplace, freaking out his kid.

  She hiked her backpack onto her shoulder and grabbed an apple. “Whatever, Dad,” she muttered under her breath.

  “What’s that, dear?”

  “I’ll see you after school.”

  Her father engulfed her in a bear hug and Addie wanted to forgive him. She wanted to soften into his hug like she had done a million times before she turned eleven, before the police came to her house. But she couldn’t. She gave him a cursory pat on the shoulder instead, extricated herself, and zipped out the front door and into Maya’s perennially on-the-way-to-breaking-down Honda Accord.

  “Hey,” Maya said, turning the radio down a half turn.

  “Hey.” Addie sat down hard, belted herself in, let the still-loud thud of the Accord’s bass thrum through her body. “I love this song.”

  “‘Death to Sea Monkeys,’” Maya said with a double eyebrow waggle. She zoomed out of the driveway fast enough for Addie to grab the dashboard, go completely white.

  “Sorry,” Maya said, her cheeks blushing a fire pink. “Forgot.”

  Maya was the only one who knew that Addie was in the car that day. She was the only person that Addie had ever told; the only person who knew that simply being in a car ratcheted her anxiety to nauseating levels. And Maya usually did her best, when Addie was in the car at least, to drive slowly and safely, obeying all traffic laws and keeping both hands on the wheel like she was constantly taking her driving test.

  “Hey,” she said, yanking her sunglasses down her nose. “Isn’t that Spencer’s car?”

  Addie turned in her seat, frowned. “Yeah, yeah I think it is.”

  “What’s he still doing at Colton’s house?”

  Addie shrugged.

  “Maybe Colton’s fixing Spencer’s computer or something.”

  “Probably.”

  Maya raised an eyebrow. “You’d better hope that’s all it is.”

  Addie crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Just drive, Uber, would you?”

  Maya made the left-hand turn onto Educational Parkway, then slammed on the brakes, nearly sending Addie into the dashboard. Her heart hammered in her chest, her fingers gripping the cracked vinyl stretched across the glove box.

  “Holy shit!”

  “I’m so sorry,” Maya said, licking her lips nervously. “There’s never this much traffic out here.”

  Cars were spilling out of the U-shaped parking lot in front of the high school, backing up onto the street. They were inching at a snail’s pace, blocking the entrance to the student lot. Addie glanced at the glowing numbers on the dash. “If we have to sit here much longer, we’re going to be late.”

  Maya raised a single shoulder. “Which wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.”

  Addie glanced at her friend.

  “I have AP bio first period. And I may not have studied for the test.”

  “Do you ever?”

  “No, but I almost always feel guilty about it. Usually. That counts, right?”

  “Sure.” Addie rolled down the window, cupping her eyes with her hands. “There’s something going on. No one’s moving in the admin lot.”

  Maya did a quick maneuver around a Chrysler that had stopped in the road, the doors kicked open as students ambled out and picked through traffic.

  “There are cop cars up front.”

  Addie followed her gaze, her eyes focusing on the two black-and-whites. One was at the front of the cavalcade of cars, the other had pulled directly onto campus, was sitting with doors open in the quad. Addie felt the blood drain from her face as a cold chill went down her spine.

  Sixteen

  There was another message on her cell phone when Addie sat down in her next class. She glanced up, cutting her eyes across the room. Mr. Hoover wasn’t looking at her directly, but he wasn’t exactly not looking at her either. She slid the phone down the arm of her sweater and swiped, staring at the message.

  TheRealRJRosen:

  I’ve been watching you…

  Addie’s breath caught sharp and hard. She could feel sweat bead between her shoulder blades, her heart thundering in her chest.

  “What?” she muttered.

  “Did you say something, Ms. Gaines?”

  Addie shook her head, hoping the look of shock wasn’t registering with him. “No, Mr. Hoover. Sorry.”

  She cut her eyes back to her phone, desperate to see what R. J. Rosen said.

  I’ve been watching you?

  She thought of Lydia, of Friday night, the way the journalism room stank of mildew. She thought of the text R. J. had sent her and shot her hand up in the air.

  “Mr. Hoover? I don’t feel so well. Can I—”

  Mr. Hoover nodded his head sharply, bent over, and scribbled something on a pink Post-it note. Addie shoved her phone farther into her sleeve and zipped up the aisle, grabbing the note and stuffing it in her back pocket.

  “Thanks,” she muttered on her way out.

  “Hey,” Addie spun when Kelly Weiss called out to her in the hallway. Kelly was the only sophomore on the school newspaper. She was a whole head shorter than Addie with a pixie cut done in three shades of purple that made her thick black eyebrows stand out like caterpillars. Addie couldn’t have pulled it off, but the look was actually cute on the girl.

  “Sorry, I’ve got to—”

  “Just wanted to say I love, love, love your new site. And your new fanfic? I might actually be a bigger Addie Gaines fan than I am a R. J. Rosen fan.”

  Addie stopped in her tracks, pride swelling through her. “Really?”

  Kelly pumped her head. “You’re really, really good, Addie. If we could get another story for the school newspaper, it would be amazing.”

  Addie bit her lower lip. “I guess I could do that.” She grinned. “Really though? I usually just do one a semester.”

  Kelly shrugged. “You’re kind of the shit, and mystery is all the rage.” She slapped a black fingernailed hand over her mouth. “Omigod! That sounded really terrible. I didn’t mean—it’s just that people like a kind of escape, you know?”

  “And you can only watch so many kittens on YouTube.”

  Kelly smiled, cheeks still flushed pink. “So you’ll do it?”

  Addie’s phone pinged from her sleeve and the pride she felt d
isappeared with a pinprick.

  “Let me think about it, okay? I just—I’ve got a lot of work to do on the GapLakeLove blog and homework. I’ll think about it, okay?”

  Kelly nodded so hard that short, purple wisps of hair bounced up and down. “Do it. Please.”

  “’Kay,” Addie turned, sliding her phone out of her sleeve and going directly to the bathroom. She began to read again.

  TheRealRJRosen:

  I’ve been watching you and your blog, and wow! Your numbers look terrific. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your being a part of this launch! The next thing I’d like you to do is post a story on your site as a teaser. I’d like you to post this tonight at 9:00 p.m. What do you think?

  Addie wanted to say no. She wanted to ask R. J. Rosen who he was, what he meant by his “surprise,” but Maya and Colton’s words came back to her: she was being stupid. She was being paranoid and freaky and R. J. Rosen was talking to her about a book that had nothing to do with what happened to Lydia.

  But the mildew smell…

  Meant nothing, Addie told herself firmly.

  Fingertips on fire, she plunked across the keyboard on her phone.

  AddieGaines:

  That sounds amazing! I am so happy and honored to host. I’ll post this at the stroke of nine!

  Addie sent off the note then felt immediately stupid.

  “Who says ‘at the stroke of nine’?” She rolled her eyes, then started to read.

  It took a second for Jordan’s eyes to adjust to the darkness. Her head was throbbing, a one-two sucker punch to the temple, and her jaw ached. When she rubbed it, the pain radiated in a starburst and she coughed, a gush of blood flooding her gums. She tried to remember what had happened, but the pain in her head was taking over everything. She tried to breathe, sucking in sharp, shallow breaths that made her rib cage scream. Little by little, it came back to her.

  Crystal.

  Jordan winced, remembering the way the water lapped at her toes, feeling the mud that oozed under her feet, made the soft sucking sound as she nudged herself toward the edge of the lake. There was something floating there—

  Her stomach dropped.

  There was someone floating there.

  Long, marble legs. Gauzy white fabric. A halo of blue-black hair.

  Crystal.

  Addie looked up from her phone, heart pounding in her throat. “Jordan was there! Jordan was there when Crystal died!” she whispered.

  She dipped her head and continued to read.

  Jordan pressed her eyes shut, willing herself to remember more. She saw Crystal—she knew she’d been found, so why was she remembering…?

  The hand.

  She felt the weight, the fingers on her arms, on her shoulders—around her throat.

  “No, no—” she started to claw in the darkness, even though no one was there as she remembered. Fingers around her throat, throwing her so easily. Her palms hit the water first; she slapped and splashed, but the hands around her neck didn’t loosen and she was going down, down, desperate for breath, for air when her face broke the surface of the water. The water was in her mouth, swirling through her nose. She was coughing, sputtering, but every breath was waterleaden. Jordan opened her eyes, did her best to turn, to arch, to kick, but the person who held her was too strong—too familiar. He shadowed her every move, easily pushing her down through the water.

  This is what it feels like to die, she thought. This is what it felt like for Crystal.

  The bell rang and Addie jumped, nearly dropping her phone in the toilet. She replayed the passage over and over again in her head. Jordan was there when Crystal died and someone tried to drown her too. She rubbed her chin. But who? The big mystery of Gap Lake was who killed Crystal and why—and if her friends would figure it out before they were next.

  Addie immediately began writing back:

  AddieGaines:

  OMG! It’s so exciting! I love it! Thank you so much for sending it!

  His response was just as quick.

  TheRealRJRosen:

  I’m glad you like it. Don’t forget to post it tonight!

  She was grinning, fingertips cold as she stepped into the hall. She had inside information into Gap Lake and she had to tell someone! But one look around shattered Addie back down to solid reality. Lydia Stevenson wasn’t a character in a book. She wouldn’t turn up three hundred pages later.

  This wasn’t a story.

  Seventeen

  Maya was waiting for Addie when the bell rang after second period.

  “You are, like, the slowest person ever.” She narrowed her eyes. “Tell me you were all swept up in Spencer during class.”

  “Right, because right after World History, I have Human Anatomy and they totally wanted volunteers so you know, me and Spencer.”

  Maya smiled. “You’re gross and I love you.”

  “I get it from you.”

  “That’s why I love you. You’re like my little moldable lump of clay.” Maya looked over both shoulders. “It’s creepy around here again.”

  The usual din and chatter of the students was a low murmur again, the crowd in the halls slow and careful. Eyes seemed to be darting, people seemed to be whispering, and no one was smiling.

  “I know. I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but it’s…I don’t know, creepy somehow?”

  Maya hitched her chin. “Can you put your finger on that?”

  Addie followed her gaze, out the wide open front window to the horseshoe-shaped drive outside. Police cars. Two of them. Their lights were flashing, cutting red, white, and blue stripes through the hall, but there was no sound.

  “I wonder why they’re here,” Maya said.

  Addie looked at her best friend. “If I weren’t so freaked out, I’d make a joke about you watching too much TV.”

  “Hey, I’m thinking of following ole Ma and Pa’s footsteps into law enforcement.”

  “I thought you were thinking of going into living off me? Or—gross—marrying my dad? I prefer you in a law enforcement career to either of those by the way.”

  Maya tried to smile, but her eyes were fixed on the police cars as they crept into the parking lot, filling each space, then overflowing in an organized line like a series of black-and-white Tic Tacs.

  “What do you think they want?”

  “Ladies and gentlemen.” The overhead announcement speaker crackled overhead. “Please don’t be alarmed at the police cars lining up out front of the school. This is just a precautionary measure and you are to go about your day as if they are not here.”

  “Really?” Maya crossed her arms in front of her chest. “A fellow student is dead, every cop within a hundred-mile radius is on our front lawn, and I’m supposed to do biology? Wrong.”

  Normally, Addie would agree with her best friend. But she had stopped looking at the police cars, had stopped listening to Principal Johnson talking overhead. She was looking at Spencer Cohen, right in front of her. He was transfixed on the police exiting their cars out front. He was gripping his backpack straps so hard his knuckles had gone white, and all the color had drained from his face.

  Strangely—instinctively—Addie wanted to go to him. She didn’t know what she’d say, exactly. She didn’t know if she would comfort him or ask his side of the story, but something inside her was drawn to him looking so scared and so small among the Hawthorne High kids swarming around him. But her cell phone pinged.

  No one ever called her when she was in school except her father for emergencies.

  Addie looked at her phone.

  Or R. J. Rosen.

  The familiar zing of excitement from seeing R. J. Rosen’s name on Addie’s phone was gone, choked out by the pure weirdness of the day. Lydia Stevenson was dead. Hawthorne High was flooded with police cars and uniformed officers. And Spencer Cohen looke
d guilty.

  “Hey,” Colton said, shaking Addie back to the here and now. “Cops”—he shuddered—“always freak me out.”

  Addie gulped. “This whole thing is freaking me out.”

  “I think I’m going to go be freaked out over at Starbucks,” Maya said.

  “Brave girl,” Colton said with a light shrug.

  “You mean because of Lydia?” Addie tried to sound nonchalant.

  Colton’s eyes were saucer-wide. “You didn’t hear?”

  “Hear what?”

  “The cops are here because they found Lydia’s car.”

  Eighteen

  Something cold hardened in the pit of Addie’s stomach. She tried to blink, to swallow furiously, to command her body to do something other than stand there like a freaky lump. “I didn’t even know Lydia’s car was missing.”

  Colton shrugged. “Me neither. But I guess it wasn’t in the parking lot the other night and…you know, wasn’t at home or whatever.”

  “So did…the person who hurt Lydia. Did he steal it or something?”

  Another shrug from Colton. “They didn’t say but they found the car. It was out by the Percolation Ponds.”

  Addie’s tongue went heavy in her mouth. The “Perc Ponds”—so called by Hawthorne High students for as long as Addie knew—were a group of shallow ponds in a wooded area less than a mile from the school. They were in an unincorporated area and heavily guarded by falling-down fences and No Trespassing signs pockmarked with BB gun divots and spray paint. At the beginning of each school year, the Hawthorne High principal worked an admonition into his welcome speech to students, telling them not to go to the Perc Ponds: They were dangerous, they were city property, trespassing was grounds for expulsion. But that speech came at the beginning of the school year after a summer full of partying along the Perc Pond banks, well after students had found their favorite spots and party grounds.

  “Were there any clues inside?” Addie immediately felt dumb saying that, as though Lydia’s killer would have left a calling card or murderous résumé tucked under the windshield wiper. “Or anything?”