The Hanging Girl

by Eileen Cook

  “What? I had a vision about Paige.” Mom shut her compact with a click. “I have a responsibility to share that. I’m doing my best to get the girl home.”

  I stared at her. My heart cracked, and my throat tightened. My mom wanted this so bad. To discover that she was the chosen one and that her whole crappy life was for a bigger purpose.

  Chan shook his head, his annoyance at my mom dripping from his expression. Jay joined him and shut the door.

  “The girl is dead, isn’t she?” Mom asked before the detectives even sat down.

  Chan nodded. “Paige Bonnet was found murdered at a fruit stand on County Road Forty.”

  Thirty-Two

  I stood up so quickly my chair fell to the ground with a clatter. “What do you mean, she’s dead?” I looked back and forth, waiting for one of them to admit it was some kind of horrible, not-funny joke.

  “Why don’t you sit back down.” Detective Jay picked up my chair for me and guided me into it.

  She’s dead. Paige is dead. Oh my god. I swallowed over and over to keep from vomiting.

  “That poor girl.” Mom shook her head. “Have you told the family?”

  “No,” Detective Jay said. “Not yet. The patrol just called it in. We’re taping off the scene now.”

  “I’d be happy to speak to her parents if they’d like that.”

  “I think you’re the last person they’ll want to talk to,” Detective Chan said. His face was blotchy and red.

  Mom tugged her shirt down. “I’m not trying to upset anyone. I’m simply trying to help.”

  “You don’t seem surprised that she’s gone,” Chan said.

  Mom blinked. “I’m not. Have you forgotten that’s why I came here today?” She sighed. “I hoped I was wrong, but when I didn’t sense her at all . . . well, I suspected this would be the outcome.”

  Chan rolled up his sleeves. “What else can you tell us? What’s the manner of death? Was she shot? Stabbed? Did she know the attacker?”

  As he fired off options, images popped up in my head like some kind horror slide show. I pictured Paige lying there in a puddle of blood. Her hair sticking to the ground as the blood dried a dark maroon, turning tacky. Her eyes would be wide open, and her flesh would be cold. If she’d been tied up waiting for me to send the cops to her, she wouldn’t have even been able to fight back. She’d have been a sitting duck.

  Mom spread her hands wide. “I’m sorry. I told you everything I know already.”

  Chan spun to face me. “What about you?”

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Should I ask for a lawyer? Mom reached over and patted my hand.

  “If you have any information, now is the time to start talking.” Chan was so close to me I could smell coffee on his breath.

  “I don’t know anything,” I whispered. Every time I blinked, Paige’s terrified face flashed through my mind.

  “Do you have any sense when this happened?” Detective Jay asked. His voice had grown cool and professional.

  “She—” I started to say, and then closed my mouth. I’d almost said that she was fine when I talked to her last night. The words had been in my mouth trying to escape, ready to betray me. My heart was beating so fast it vibrated like a motor engine. I needed shut up. “S-s-she’s really gone?”

  Jay nodded. “We’ve got a forensic team on the way out there now. They’ll establish manner of death and time. We’ve got some preliminary details, but we’re not at liberty to share them now.

  I bit my tongue to keep from asking any of the questions piling up in my head. I had to know how she died. I had to be able to picture it.

  “They’ll get evidence,” Chan said. “Anything that was left behind. Hair, tire tracks, DNA—”

  “Good,” Mom said, cutting him off. “I understand that you’re upset. We are too. I had a feeling, but I didn’t want it to be true. There’s no point in being angry with us. We want whoever did this to be caught just as badly as you do. If there’s something we can do to help, we will.”

  “You’ve helped plenty,” Chan said flatly.

  Mom sighed. “I’m not sure there’s any point in us staying.” Her eyebrows arched. “Unless you’re saying we can’t leave.”

  Detective Jay stood. “Of course not. You’re not suspects.”

  “Not officially,” Chan added.

  Jay rested his hand on Chan’s shoulder. “We need to go to the crime scene. We’ll want to talk to you again, but while we’re gone, I’m going to ask you both to give a statement to another one of the officers.”

  “I’m not sure there’s anything we can add.”

  “We’ll still need a record. From the start. When you first had a vision about Paige. Every vision since then. Any detail you can remember. Once we’ve had a chance to see the scene, we’ll be in touch with further questions.”

  Mom stood and hugged Jay. He went stiff in her arms. She pulled back and looked into his eyes. “This isn’t your fault. I don’t think there was anything that could have been done to shift what happened to Paige. All you can do now is find who did it. Get justice for her.”

  I shut my bedroom door behind me and slid to the floor. I could barely remember the rest of the morning. We each went over everything we’d ever said about Paige. The officer asked the same questions over and over in slightly different ways. Looking for inconsistences and mistakes. I hadn’t been able to stop shaking. Usually it was my mom who was the drama queen, but we’d swapped places, and she was calm and collected, answering each question patiently until they let us go.

  What the hell had happened?

  My mind raced in circles, but there were only three options. One, that Paige had faked her death. Two, that a random person just happened to come across her at the fruit stand and killed her. Three, someone else knew about Paige’s plan and killed her to keep her from returning.

  There was a body. I shivered at the word. There were too many things the police could check out—DNA, fingerprints, hair and skin samples. If Detective Jay said they’d found Paige’s body, it was hers. There was no way for her to fake that.

  I know people look for patterns. It’s what makes faking psychic skills so easy. They see links between things that are random. The truth is, coincidences happen all the time. Not everything has a purpose. There are random crimes. People are murdered for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I was certain that wasn’t what happened in this case. Paige ending up dead wasn’t a case of bad luck. No one just stumbled across her way out there.

  That left only option three. Someone knew where to find Paige, and they killed her. And if they knew enough about her plans to know where she would be, it meant there was a good chance they knew I was involved too. Maybe I hadn’t been paranoid the day I’d been out there and thought I heard someone in the woods. She might not have hit herself to make things look real—someone might have been trying to teach her a lesson. And if I had heard them, they would have seen me for certain.

  I pushed myself up from the floor. I couldn’t afford to lie around feeling terrified. I had to make sure there was nothing to connect me to Paige in case the police searched the house. Detective Chan didn’t trust me, and with a dead rich girl on his hands, they were going to check out every possible lead. I crossed the room and dug the pay-as-you-go phone out from under my mattress, as well as all the notes we’d passed back and forth in the encyclopedia, and piled them all into the middle of the bed. I stuffed everything into my bag and headed out. As soon as I was outside the apartment building, I stopped to pretend to tie my shoes.

  The late afternoon sun was hot, and a trickle of sweat made its way from my hairline down my neck and snaked under my shirt. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. The hair on my arms prickled like antennae trying to pick up a signal.

  I walked toward the street as if headed to the bus stop. Traffic rushed past. I waited until I saw two semis coming in my direction and counted in my head trying to time them. When the trucks
crossed in front of me, I turned and bolted down a narrow dirt path that led down to the creek behind the bus stop.

  My feet slid on the dirt and pebbles, almost landing me on my ass. I caught myself by grabbing on to a tree. The bark ripped the skin off my palm. I jogged down the path, darting a glance over my shoulder every few steps. It was probable that no one was following me, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Especially while carrying a bag full of evidence that connected me to a murder.

  Bile rose up in my throat while the word murder bounced around in my brain. I shook my head to clear my thoughts. I had to focus. I could panic later.

  The trail cut behind a mini-mall with a hair salon, a pawnshop, and a dollar store that had gone out of business last year. I came up behind the 7-Eleven and paused, catching my breath.

  I walked down the street and ducked into the alley between the recreation center and the grocery store. I pulled the SIM card out of the phone, rubbed the card with the hem of my T-shirt to get rid of any fingerprints, and dropped it down the grate into the storm sewer. Trying to ignore the shaking of my hands, I wiped down the rest of the phone, and then stomped on it until the screen cracked and broke. With one last look around, I chucked it into the dumpster. I fished the notes out and tore them into tiny strips, then set them on fire with the lighter stuffed in my pocket. I used my sneaker to smear the ashes left into the asphalt. No one was putting those back together again.

  So long, Pluto.

  A wave of relief washed through me when all of it was gone, and I felt lightheaded. I mentally went through everything we’d done. Paige had been careful, and I owed her for that. There were no calls between our personal phones, and we’d met in person only a couple of times. Nothing connected the two of us other than my predictions. That might not even be enough to give the police grounds for a search warrant. It was suspicious, but not damning. Ryan had given me the bracelet to give to her, but I didn’t think he’d tell the police. The information damned him as much as me. If there was even the slightest chance he was involved, there was even more reason for him to stay quiet.

  There was a split second when I imagined telling Paige how brilliant she’d been before I remembered she was dead. The knowledge sat thick and heavy in my gut. It wasn’t grief exactly. Paige and I weren’t friends.

  The real question was, who killed her?

  And did they know about me?

  Thirty-Three

  The next morning the scene outside school was surreal. I got off the bus and stood there taking it in. There were trucks parked on the street with satellite dishes on top, each emblazoned with a different network affiliate name. An alphabet soup of media. They must have driven here from all over, drawn by the story. A group of reporters stood around in crisply starched clothes, all checking their hair. Our tiny town had hit the big time.

  I rubbed my face. My eyes were dry and scratchy. I cried so long last night that they were dried out.

  Then there had been the dreams. Over and over, I woke up with the image of myself raising a knife above an already bleeding and dying Paige. My right arm was sore, most likely from gripping an imaginary murder weapon all night. It wasn’t hard to understand—I felt guilty. If I’d told people where she was earlier, she wouldn’t be dead. I hadn’t killed her, but I hadn’t stepped forward with everything I knew either.

  Packs of reporters clustered across the street, trolling for people willing to give a reaction on the record. Suddenly everyone had been one of Paige’s best friends. They positioned for camera time and cried on cue. The front fence had morphed into a creepy memorial complete with flowers, teddy bears, and notes woven into the links.

  Paige’s abduction had been the most exciting thing to happen at our school, and her murder took it to an entirely new level. People vibrated with excitement.

  I gave the front door a wide berth. The last thing I wanted was to be caught on camera. The media didn’t need my face; they had my mom. I’d tried to convince her that she shouldn’t talk to any reporters, but I didn’t stand a chance. She kept saying how horrible the whole thing was, but when I got home from getting rid of the burner phone, she’d already heard from two publicists who wanted to represent her.

  Last night I’d lain in bed and tried to figure out if I should go to the cops and confess. This was murder, after all, but no matter which way I looked at it, I couldn’t see how talking to the police would help. I had no idea who’d killed her, and if I came forward, there was the very real chance the police would blame me. The only plan I had was to keep my mouth shut and pray that whoever killed her didn’t know I was involved. Or figured I wasn’t worth the hassle if I was keeping quiet. It was a shitty plan, but it was the best I’d come up with so far.

  I stepped into the flow of the hallway as everyone picked up speed before the last bell. People moved away from me like I was contaminated. It was one thing to have a touch of psychic ability. Being connected to murder was a different animal altogether. That wasn’t cool. It was creepy. The crowd parted as Drew barreled toward me.

  “I texted you a thousand times.” She threw herself into my arms. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay.” I bit my lower lip. “Listen, about the stuff I said when you came over yesterday—”

  She waved off whatever I was about to say. “Don’t. I was being an idiot. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re all right.”

  I nodded, my throat tightening. “I’m sad for Paige’s family.”

  “I bet,” a voice mumbled behind me.

  Drew and I both whipped around. Lucy stood there throwing stuff in her locker.

  “Is there a problem?” I asked.

  Drew rubbed my upper arm while shooting Lucy a nasty look. “Everyone’s just shocked at the news.”

  Lucy snorted. “What shocks me is that the police don’t think it’s weird you and your freak-show mom knew so much about Paige.”

  Drew sucked in a breath. Dougie, who was standing next to her, made a low whistling sound. Before I could think of a response, Mr. Lester’s voice boomed out.

  “Lucy Lam, that is enough,” Mr. Lester barked. Everyone in the hall froze. Drew’s eyes were wide, and her hand covered her mouth as if she were a witness to a drive-by shooting.

  Lucy started to say something, but stormed away down the hall instead.

  “Okay, people, move along,” Mr. Lester said, just as the bell rang. “Drew, give me a minute with Skye.” She looked at me to make sure I was okay, and I nodded.

  Mr. Lester directed me into his office. Ms. Brew was nowhere to be seen. “Let me make you a cup of tea.”

  “I don’t need anything.” Lucy had basically accused me of murder in front of the entire student body. I swallowed hard to keep a sudden rush of tears back. The fact I felt like crying made me irate. I didn’t want to give a shit what Lucy thought of me, but apparently I did. I hated this town, and I still wanted everyone to like me.

  Mr. Lester fussed with his kettle. “It’s no problem to whip up a cup; I’d already boiled water for myself. Besides, I’ve always believed tea makes everything a bit better.” He passed me a mug. I wrapped my hands around the hot ceramic to keep them from shaking. I didn’t want to drink it, but if it had been possible to crawl inside and let the hot water rush over me, I would have.

  “This is a hard situation. We’re bringing in extra grief counselors. But you should feel free to come directly to me.”

  He acted like he was a pro at handling these kinds of situations, when I knew nothing like this had ever happened at our school before. He was making up what to do the same as the rest of us. Relying on what we’d seen in movies and on TV shows to figure out how to respond.

  “People think I did something to Paige,” I said.

  “No. That’s not true,” Mr. Lester rushed to say. “Everyone knows that you and your mom were doing everything you could to bring Paige home safe.”

  I wondered if it was hard for Mr. Lester to continually see the best in everyo
ne.

  “Lucy doesn’t believe that,” I said.

  Mr. Lester took a deep breath. “Lucy has her own issues that likely color how she’s dealing with this news.”

  I sat up straighter. “What kind of issues?”

  Mr. Lester tugged on his beard. “I can’t say, but she and Paige had a complicated friendship. And at your age, people tend to feel invincible, so this kind of tragedy hits extra hard. I’m certain once everything has had a chance to calm down, things will look different.” He patted my shoulder.

  The tea sent up steamy clouds of bergamot and vanilla, and I breathed them in deeply. I took a sip. It was still too hot, and it burned my mouth, making me wince.

  I let my eyes fill with tears. “I guess I’m more upset than I thought.”

  Mr. Lester passed me the box of tissues.

  I blotted my face and sniffled. “Thanks.”

  He smiled. “No problem.” He leaned forward. “Would you like to talk about how you’re feeling?”

  “Can I ask a favor?”

  “Of course.”

  I lightly touched my temple. “I have a terrible headache. I didn’t sleep well last night and then with everything today . . .” I sniffed again, attempting to look sad enough for him to feel bad, but not so sad that he felt we had to dissect my feelings.

  “If you head down to the nurse, she’ll give you some Tylenol.”

  “It’s just, her office is right by the cafeteria,” I said. “I don’t want to see a bunch of people when I’m like this.” I motioned to my face. “All of them wondering what’s wrong with me.” I rolled my eyes. “I know I’m being stupid.”

  Mr. Lester slapped his thighs and stood. “I think you’re entitled to be a bit sensitive today. I’ll pop down and pick up some pain relievers for you. Until then, you relax here.”

  “Thanks, Mr. L,” I said.

  He smiled and waved his finger in my face, the cedar smell of his cologne filling my nose. “No problem. But don’t go telling everyone you got this rock star treatment, or people will think you’re my favorite.”