by Hannah Jayne
Colton wagged his head. “It was empty. But the driver’s side door was left open.”
“Oh.”
“The battery was dead so the police don’t know if something happened with the car or—” he looked away, then bit his bottom lip, worrying it between crooked teeth.
“Or what?”
Colton jerked his head, and Addie followed him to a crook in the corridor that was less populated. “I’m not supposed to know this, you know…”
In addition to taking Addie’s GapLakeLove site from pretty cool to CGI-amazing, Colton also dabbled in sporadic, mildly illegal hacking projects. Anything from looping in to police scanners to changing the occasional grade or two for desperate Hawthorne kids who had the money to pay. That kind of skill set gave Colton—big, loping, too-smart-for-his-own-good Colton—some street cred. He wasn’t popular, but he wasn’t shunned, either. Addie kind of admired it.
“I heard that someone actually called the abandoned car in. Said they saw headlights in the brush and that they had been there all night.”
Addie shuddered. “Oh.”
“Yeah, but by the time the cops got out there, there weren’t any lights.”
Addie’s eyes flitted from Colton back toward Maya, dark ponytail disappearing through the masses of students. Usually she was up-to-the-moment refreshed on every police action in town—whether she wanted to be or not. Maya’s parents thought the best way to keep her out of trouble was to detail the exact kind of trouble they dealt with—from meth heads to kidnapping—over family dinners. Addie loved it as fodder for her fanfic; Maya rolled her eyes and begged to move in with Addie.
“When they found the car,” Colton was going on, “the key was still in the ignition, but the whole thing was dead.”
Addie knew he was talking about a car, but Colton’s use of the word dead sent another wave of shivers through her. She rubbed at the gooseflesh that pricked her arms. “Anything else?”
Colton’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Her purse was in the car. Purse, keys, cell phone.”
Now Addie was sweating. “Do you think she was pulled out of the car before…you know?”
“I overhead Maya’s dad say that it looked like there was a struggle.”
Addie’s eyes widened. “You’re sure it was Maya’s dad?”
“I heard it on the scanner. His voice is pretty distinct with the accent and all.”
Maya’s father was originally from somewhere deep in the countryside. While he was all business on the job, the sharp, clipped words of the detective were softened somewhat by the slower drawl of the South.
“Maya didn’t say anything?”
Addie shook her head. “I’m not sure she knew.”
Colton just shook his head and kept talking. “He said that the dirt and brush around the car looked like it had been kicked up, and that there was some hair. But no blood or anything. The car being there gives them reason to believe she drowned.”
She thought of her dream, of Lydia gone missing and turning up on the banks of Gap Lake. Then she remembered the water, Lydia Stevenson walking so peacefully in before dragging Addie down, the way the journalism room stank of water and mold.
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
***
Addie made a beeline for the ladies’ room, kicking open one of the stall doors before doubling over and heaving. Heat shot up the back of her neck and sweat dripped from her hairline and into her eyes. If Lydia’s car was left behind—keys, cell phone, purse—and the police saw that there looked like there was a disturbance, then it was true: someone had attacked Lydia.
Life imitates art.
Addie couldn’t get the waterlogged vision of Lydia out of her mind. She heaved again, then coughed, pressing her palms against the back of her neck and breathing deeply.
What the hell is going on?
“We need to do something. We need to have a march or a vigil for Lydia. Her family needs to know how much we loved her and will miss her.” Addie stiffened as a girl walked into the bathroom, talking. “Her killer needs to know that we’re going to find him.”
“We shouldn’t hold a vigil,” someone answered the girl back. “We should just ask Spencer. He was the last one to see her. He probably knows exactly what happened.”
“No, I don’t believe Spencer did it. It’s like that book, huh? The author makes it look like the boyfriend did it the whole time, but he didn’t. He was being framed.”
“How do you know that? The last book isn’t even out yet.”
Addie chanced a glance through the crack in the stall door, trying to discern who the two girls were. They were small and slight, looked like freshmen. One with a short blunt-cut bob was meticulously lining her eyes with another layer of coal while the other one was straightening and re-straightening an already perfect glossy black ponytail.
The ponytailed girl shrugged. “It’s just a hunch I have.”
Nineteen
The sun was dipping behind the trees when Maya’s car slowed to a stop in front of Bereman’s Boutique.
“I can’t believe you have a job.”
Addie gathered up her backpack and eyed Maya. “You always say that.”
“Your dad has money. Stupid money. You don’t need to work.”
“My dad has money,” Addie specified. “I have a job.”
The truth was, Addie took the job to get out of the house. The spending money was a bonus, but the fact that she didn’t have to spend hours cooped up in a house where her father was perennially “on his way home” and where Louisa bumbled around doing mom things but not actually being a mom was the true benefit.
“Can you pick me up tonight?”
Maya shook her head, dug in the back seat, and plopped her big, striped Hot Dog on a Stick hat on her head. “Big corporate event. Lots of dogs, many sticks. Can’t Daddy Warbucks get ya?”
Addie stiffened. She hated driving with her dad, even now that he drove with two hands clenched on the wheel, his eyes dead focused on the road, his breath smelling of old cigars and Altoids. He never drank anymore; he never sped, but Addie still had a hard time trusting him, had a hard time being behind the wheel with a man—even her own father—who had been so foreign to her that day at the market.
“Sure.”
Addie pulled the door of the boutique open, inhaling the sweet smell of Bereman’s rose-scented air freshener and new clothes.
“Addie!” Ella, the day manager, was the daughter of the owner and one of Addie’s favorite people. She came around the register and engulfed Addie in a hug.
“I wasn’t sure you’d make it in tonight after what happened.”
Addie shifted her weight and Ella held her at arm’s length. “You okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah…no. I mean, I…I don’t know how to act. It was awful but I didn’t really know Lydia and…” Life goes on. Maya’s words came back, haunting, hanging on Addie’s periphery.
Ella’s eyes were soft but pained. “I just can’t imagine what you must be going through. And that girl’s parents…” She pressed her hands to her cheeks and shook her head so that her waist-length brown gray curls swirled, the streaks of gray catching in the fluorescent lights. “I can’t believe people aren’t more concerned.”
Addie looked over her shoulder as though concerned citizens or killers would be lining the streets.
“Do you know if there have been any leads?”
Addie thought of Spencer, of the shocked, scared look on his face as he stood at his locker. She thought of R. J. Rosen. Who really is R. J. Rosen? “I don’t know,” she said, immediately busying herself tagging a stack of blue blouses. “I don’t know who would do that.”
As she tagged, she replayed that night over and over in her head. Lydia, crumpled.
Did you like my surprise?
Gap
Lake.
She licked her lips, didn’t look up from her task. “You know the Gap Lake books?”
“Of course I do,” Ella said, draping a scarf around a mannequin. “If you’re not reading them, you’re talking about them.”
“Do you think it’s possible that…that someone may have wanted to make Lydia’s murder sound like one from the book?”
Ella stopped fiddling with the scarf and looked at Addie. “Is that what Maya’s dad is thinking?”
Addie shook her head. “No. I don’t think so.”
R. J. Rosen made his career selling mystery novels. He made his career putting pen to paper and committing murder in the pages of a book. This wasn’t R. J. Rosen’s work. No—Lydia’s death was the work of someone who wanted to bring R. J. Rosen’s work to life.
A copycat.
“I need to make a phone call,” Addie said, dropping the heap of blouses. She went into the storeroom and dialed Maya’s cell phone.
“Humiliation on a stick, this is Maya speaking.”
“What if it’s a copycat?” Addie said quickly.
“Qué?” Maya asked.
“I know it’s dumb that I thought R. J. Rosen might be responsible for Lydia’s death. It’s obviously just a coincidence.” Addie pulled on her sweater but still shivered. “A really weird coincidence. But, what if the person who did this was copying the murder from the book?”
Maya let out a long sigh, and Addie couldn’t quite tell if it was exasperation or consideration.
“You said what happened to Lydia looked like it came from a story R. J. Rosen sent you. How would anyone know about that?”
“And you said that I was being crazy. But what isn’t crazy is the other stuff: a girl killed at school, the swampy stink. In the first book, Crystal Lanier went missing from the school when she was there at night. Yes, it turned out she was kidnapped and then drowned, but she was found facedown in the lake. Swampy smelling.”
“Addie—”
“And in the book her car was found—”
“On the banks of Gap Lake.”
“Kind of like the Perc Ponds where Lydia’s car was found.”
There was a long pause. “So you think some obsessed superfan thought it would be some sort of homage to kill Lydia Gap Lake–style?”
Addie pinched her lip. “It’s a theory.”
“Addie, hon, I hate to break it to you, but the only Gap Lake superfan in town is you.”
Twenty
A ping from her cell phone pulled Addie out of a thankfully dreamless sleep. She rolled over, started to scroll before thinking. Her eyes widened when she saw who it was from. Addie thumbed open the message.
TheRealRJRosen:
I’m a bit disappointed in you, Addie. I noticed you didn’t post the story last night.
Addie’s heart thumped. She licked her lips and started to type.
AddieGaines:
I’m sorry. There’s a lot going on here. I wasn’t able to get around to it.
She counted the beats of her heart until the phone pinged again.
TheRealRJRosen:
You promised.
Addie chewed her thumbnail, breathing hard until the next message popped up.
TheRealRJRosen:
This is a very important launch for me. If it’s not something you think you can do, please let me know and I’ll have another blogger take your place.
Heat singed Addie’s cheeks. This was her dream. This was R. J. Rosen writing to her, and she wasn’t going to mess it up.
AddieGaines:
No, no, I’m super sorry. I’ll post the story right now and be completely on top of it from now on. Thank you so much for giving me this chance—I promise, no more screwups!
Addie turned her phone off before R. J. Rosen could respond.
***
Addie padded down the stairs, the silence unnerving. Usually at that hour there were pots clanking, Louisa singing some funky mash-up of songs she didn’t know the actual words to, and her father in front of the TV, furiously mashing the Volume button to drown out Louisa’s sound track. But today it was almost silence, a thick haze of muffled sounds like everyone was trying to be quiet. When Addie reached the kitchen, that’s exactly how it seemed. The TV was on but the volume way down. Louisa had three frying pans going on the stove, but even the bacon seemed reluctant to sizzle or pop.
“Hello?”
Addie’s voice threw everything into hyper speed. Louisa turned and was manning her frying pans in a matter of seconds, flipping a pancake with one hand, shaking the bacon with the other.
“Everything okay here?”
Morton and Louisa both gave sharp, clipped head nods.
“Okay…”
Louisa turned, the smile on her face forced and overly bright. “Bacon and pancakes?”
Addie glanced down at the glistening bacon in the frying pan.
“Let me give you some.”
Addie swallowed hard, nowhere near hungry, but she dutifully took the plate Louisa handed her and took her place at the kitchen table opposite her father. The newspaper was spread in front of him, a spray of crumbs across the NASDAQ index, but he wasn’t reading. His eyes were on the television, on the anchorwoman stationed outside of Hawthorne High, her concerned voice a weird droning murmur with the volume turned down. He reached forward and clicked off the set.
“You’re coming straight home after school today.”
Addie blinked, poked at the too-crisp bacon on her plate. It immediately crumbled, submerged itself in a rainbow-y pool of grease. “What? Why?”
“Just do as you’re told, Addie.”
Addie carefully put down her knife and fork, wiped the grease from her fingertips. “Why?”
“Do I have to spell it out for you? One of your classmates is dead and they don’t have any leads on who did it.”
“They don’t even know what happened, Dad.”
Addie’s father shook his head. “Addie, that girl was drowned.”
If her father kept talking, Addie couldn’t hear him. The kitchen seemed to wobble and go out of focus, and Addie’s stomach clenched like a fist. “How do you know that?”
“It was in the paper this morning,” Louisa supplied.
Addie tried to lick her lips, tried to form words and sentences, but her tongue felt enormous, leaden. “Can I see that?” she asked finally.
Louisa’s eyes widened and Morton nodded slowly; Addie reached out for the paper and skimmed, passing over the normal rhetoric, the mention of Hawthorne High and the journalism department. Her breath caught when she saw what she was looking for:
“…Preliminary autopsy reports say that seventeen-year-old Lydia Stevenson was most likely asphyxiated by drowning…”
“We found her in the journalism room,” she said, shaking her head incredulously.
“But her car was found out by the Percolation Ponds, yes?”
Addie licked her lips, gave Louisa a small nod.
“Honey, someone drowned this girl and then left her in a spot where she could easily be found.”
Addie started to shake, the black words on the gray newsprint marching in front of her like ants, then scattering in a million directions.
She had been drowned.
Addie’s dream came flashing back to her.
The smell of the journalism room.
Crystal Lanier had been drowned too.
“Don’t you know life imitates art?”
Addie watched as her father methodically added cream and sugar to his coffee, then stirred: three in one direction, three in the other. Addie vaguely wondered if he had always done that, always been so meticulous.
“I won’t take a chance on you.”
Addie wanted to warm to her father. She wanted to swell with love and pride: her f
ather didn’t want anything happening to her! But it seemed like such an afterthought, such an add-on. He had drunk a bottle of bourbon and gotten behind the wheel. He had picked her up from school when he could hardly recognize her through the spirited haze.
And now he cared.
Addie ripped off a piece of pancake, chewed without really tasting it.
“Sure, Dad. Maya can get me home.”
“Louisa will be here when you do.”
She cut her eyes to Louisa, who immediately broke her gaze, started polishing the already polished marble on the kitchen island. Louisa glanced up from her work, her eyes settling on Morton.
“I’m going to wait for Maya outside,” she said.
It was unseasonably cold outside and Addie briefly considered going back into the house to grab her big jacket. But then she remembered it was draped across Maya’s back seat because Maya had borrowed it, and as great a friend as Maya was, once she borrowed, she rarely returned. Instead, Addie pounded her hands against her arms and shifted from foot to foot, trying to work some feeling into her toes.
“What are you doing, Adds, chilling?” Colton was standing on his porch, smiling way too broadly for his horrible joke. Addie rolled her eyes, then narrowed them.
“Wow. As far as bad jokes go, that’s, like, dad-level bad.”
Colton mimed straightening his lapel, his smile still ear to ear. “I got a million of ’em.”
“I wouldn’t brag about that.”
“Hey, you okay?” Colton asked.
Addie shook her head. “Did you hear about Lydia?”
Colton studied her. “I was there.”
“No,” Addie shook her head. “They said she was drowned. That someone drowned her and then put her in the journalism room.”
His face paled. “Did they want us to find her?”
“I don’t know. Who would do that? If you kill someone, don’t you want to keep it hidden?”
Colton crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Well, the journalism room is new. It used to just be storage. Maybe they thought…” He shrugged. “Maybe they thought no one would find her for a while?”