Dead Ringer

by Jessie Rosen

  “Watch it, Sanders,” Stanley said, but it was too late. Charlie was beyond reason.

  “What if I tell Hayden what you did to a student here? Then we’ll see if he lets you participate in the game!”

  Charlie could tell that it was taking Stanley everything in his power not to shove him clear across the room. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said with lips so tight Charlie could barely hear the words. “What I’m saying is that you don’t want to ruin your life over whatever is going on.” Something about Stanley’ face in that moment finally made Charlie snap back to reality. “Get some help, and then you can get back on my field.”

  Charlie stood and grabbed his backpack.

  “No one and nothing can help me through this,” Charlie hissed. “My life is worthless without soccer, and you just took that away, too.”

  * * *

  Charlie assumed that Amanda wasn’t speaking to him after their conversation earlier that day, but he didn’t care. His car practically drove itself to her house after school. He needed to see her, and he hoped that when she saw him the anger would fade for a second so that they could talk about this whole mess.

  An unfamiliar face opened the Hunters’ front door. She had deep, deep black hair, wide eyes that were almost the same color, and a tiny nose. Charlie felt like he recognized her from somewhere, but he couldn’t place it. She looked like she was around his age, but he didn’t think he knew her from school.

  “Hi,” she said. “Can I help you?”

  “Yeah, hi,” Charlie said. “Sorry. I’m Amanda’s friend, Charlie. I just came over to drop something off. Can I come in?”

  “CHARLIE!!” Amanda’s sisters screamed as they came running out from the kitchen.

  “Right. Charlie,” the girl said. “I think I’ve heard your name around here before. I’m Lexi, the new babysitter. Nice to meet you.”

  “You, too,” he said. “Do you go to Englewood?”

  “No. I live a few towns away.”

  “Cool. Well, I’m going to go talk to Amanda. See you around, Lexi.”

  “You will,” she said with a knowing smile.

  Charlie smiled back uncertainly, then walked through the foyer and up the stairs to the second floor. As he turned the corner to climb them, he noticed that Lexi was still looking at him, still smiling. The Hunters’ nanny having a crush on him was flattering, but it was literally the last thing he needed in the campaign to get Amanda to start talking to him again. Charlie made a note to be less friendly to Lexi the next time around.

  Charlie didn’t know what he was going to say once he finally arrived at Amanda’s bedroom door, but before he could plan a careful entrance, he heard something that overtook his nerves. Amanda was sobbing. Without thinking, Charlie turned the knob, opened the door, and walked in.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Amanda said. She was sitting on her bed, wrapped in the pink blanket with gold tassels that Kit had made her at summer camp the year before high school. Charlie remembered Kit proudly presenting it among all the gifts she’d crafted for them when she was away. He’d gotten a wood-carved stand for his vintage soccer ball collection, and Miller got flints in the shape of hearts. Charlie could still see Miller looking at the rocks, totally confused. All of that felt so far away now. Charlie didn’t know if they would ever exist as that kind of friend group again.

  Charlie stood in the doorway to Amanda’s room. She curled back up into her blanket and started to cry again. He didn’t say a word, but went over to the bed, sat down next to her, and put his arm around her shoulder. Charlie was too numb to cry with her, but it felt good to be around someone who understood exactly how destroyed he felt.

  “I’m so sorry, Amanda,” Charlie said after a few moments. “I never meant for this all to happen.”

  Amanda could barely catch her breath. She couldn’t get a word out. She just reached across the bed, grabbed her cellphone, and handed it over to Charlie.

  He looked at it. For a second, he honestly thought he was going to throw up. On the screen was a picture of Sarah Castro-Tanner’s bloodied face peeking out from the pitch-black water of the Navesink River. Her eyes were wide open. She was dead.

  “Who sent this to you?!” Charlie asked, trying as hard as he could not to scream. “Look at the top left corner of the image,” Amanda said, but Charlie didn’t need

  to do that. He knew exactly what two letters he was going to see: CO.

  Charlie tried to make sense of the gruesome image. He knew that Sarah had fallen, and he knew that the fall killed her, but he’d never seen her face after it happened—the entire world thought no one had. Apparently that was wrong. Someone saw her fall that night—CO, or Sasha, or…maybe they were one in the same person?—and they must have taken this picture as part of their eventual blackmail plan. But why now? And, most importantly, who?

  “Someone was there that night,” Charlie said.

  “But maybe if they saw everything they would know it was just a game? If they were following us all night, then they must have seen that we invited her out to have fun,” Amanda said, trying her best to sound like she believed that could be true.

  “I don’t know,” Charlie said. “Would they be out to get us if they really believed it was an accident?”

  “Do you think we’re going to survive this, Charlie?” Amanda asked. She was beyond the surprise of the photo; she looked exhausted. Charlie wanted so badly to ease both of their fears, but he didn’t know if that was possible.

  “I don’t know,” he said, “but I want to believe we can. We’ve survived so much already. Having the baby could have ruined both of our lives, and it almost did, but we were strong enough to get through that.”

  Charlie couldn’t believe he’d actually said those words out loud: the baby. They hadn’t exactly been banned from conversation since Amanda delivered a baby girl the summer after their freshman year, but Amanda’s family and Charlie’s mom made it very clear that the story needed to be over as soon as the adoption was finalized. They were supportive, even though they were furious. Amanda hadn’t been due until late August, and she didn’t really start to show until school was out for the previous year. She told everyone that she was spending the summer at camp—even Kit and Miller—and they never knew the truth. After that summer, Amanda slipped into a deep depression, though she told people it was a result of an “illness.” The only person she could be around was Charlie. Talking about the baby after all that seemed too dangerous, and so it became like a terrible dream they forced themselves to forget.

  “My baby,” Amanda said, making the moment even more painful. She was right, of course. Charlie had only claimed that the baby was his to protect Amanda. The truth would have destroyed her family far more than a secret pregnancy between two young, stupid teenagers. But Charlie had to push that nightmare down just as deep; his future also depended on the real father remaining a secret.

  “Right,” Charlie said. Now he wanted to get off this topic as fast as possible. “We made it through that, but now most days I just want to run away.”

  “We may as well. We don’t belong here anymore. Did you know that your ex is having a giant ‘Friendsgiving’ bash next week at her house because her parents are out of town? Literally everyone is invited, except for us, of course, because we are now people that everyone wants to pretend they don’t know.”

  Charlie didn’t know anything about what was going on in Laura’s life—or anyone else’s, for that matter. He was completely cut off from the social scene at Englewood.

  “We’re just like Sarah now,” Charlie said without even thinking.

  “Yeah,” Amanda said. “Wouldn’t she be thrilled?”

  Sasha

  Sasha couldn’t stay and finish her shift with the Hunter girls after what she heard through the door of Amanda’s bedroom. She called up to Amanda that she was feeling sick, put the girls in front of the TV, and ran out of the house. She had been days away from quitting the job
because Amanda and the crew had completely stopped communicating about the Sarah story, but now, thanks to her patience, Sasha had hit the jackpot, and she’d been smart enough to pull out her cellphone out and record everything.

  Three things were confirmed from Amanda and Charlie’s conversation. One, they were in the presence of Sarah when she died. Two, some game they played was the cause of her death. And three, CO knew. But then there was item number four—the piece of information that Sasha didn’t expect to learn: the baby. But right now that shock was still secondary to the only thing clouding Sasha’s mind: it was some game they played that lead to Sarah’s death.

  Did it mean that Sarah didn’t actually kill herself? Or did she do it because of whatever game they played with her? What did Amanda mean about them inviting her out for the night? Did that happen on the night she died, or another night?

  The more Sasha wondered, the angrier she became. The details didn’t matter more than the bottom line of the whole situation: Charlie, Amanda, Kit and Sean knew how and why Sarah Castro-Tanner died, and they never told anyone. It made Sasha’s face heat up and her skin crawl. She wanted to storm into Amanda’s room, shove her to the ground, and pull every last strand of her hair out of her head. Then she would grab her off the floor, march her straight to the Englewood Police Department, and make her confess. Amanda deserved to feel every second of the pain she made Sarah feel. They all did.

  Sasha tried to calm down as she took the bus from Englewood back home. She only had a few hours to review all the material she had gathered before she needed to get back on another bus to the park in Franklin Lakes, and she needed to be incredibly focused. She was going to meet CO.

  Sasha didn’t know whether she was terrified or thrilled about this upcoming rendezvous. The idea of getting real answers about the story she’d followed for over two years now was incredibly exciting. But she still had no idea who might be delivering the information or how they found her, and the fact that this person wanted to meet in a remote park in a different town after sundown was not entirely comforting. Sasha had used every channel possible to reverse CO’s email address into some information about his or her identity, but nothing worked. There was zero trace of this person online.

  Let’s chat in Turkey Swamp Park in Franklin Lakes, Wednesday night, 8:00 p.m. There’s a swing set that no one uses behind the softball field. Meet me there. I’ll come find you. Sorry. No cellphones yet. Still don’t know if I can trust you.

  –CO

  The note came just one day prior, via that same, strange HelloSasha email account. Sasha knew she was letting her curiosity get the best of her by meeting a stranger with dangerous information inside a dark park, but at this point she didn’t care what happened to her; the truth was more important.

  At seven o’clock, Sasha grabbed the small can of pepper spray that her mom had stashed inside an old purse and headed out to the bus stop. The bus arrived at seven fifteen on the dot, and it was a thirty-minute ride out to the Turkey Swamp Park stop, just as planned. That gave her fifteen minutes to find the swings and wait for CO to arrive at 8:00 p.m.

  But at eight thirty, Sasha was still waiting.

  The spot was harder than she thought it would be to find. Maybe CO is having similar issues, Sasha thought as she swung back and forth on the old rubber-seated swing inside the giant sandbox. She would wait another fifteen minutes and then maybe walk around the park a little to see if there was another swing set and CO had gotten confused.

  At nine o’clock, Sasha made her way back to the original meeting spot. Still no CO. She had walked around the entire perimeter of the park. There was not another swing set, and aside from a park worker picking up trash, there was not another person. Either something had prevented CO from meeting her, or Sasha had been tricked. She couldn’t come up with a reason why this mystery person would make the effort to set up a very specific meeting and then not show, but she was not dealing with a typical person. CO was obviously calculating. This must have been part of the plan for some reason. That, or CO chickened out.

  By the time Sasha got home, it was ten thirty. She wanted to crawl into bed and shut out the world for at least the next day, if not the rest of her life, but she was greeted by a very unfamiliar sight in the living room: both of her parents. The last time they were seated together in those exact same spots was the night Sarah went missing. Sasha had to take a deep breath to stop herself from vomiting.

  “What’s going on?” she said.

  “Sit down, sweetheart,” her mom replied. “We need to talk to you about something.”

  “No. I’m fine standing. Just tell me.” Sasha watched her mother glance over at her father, giving him the go-ahead.

  “As you know, we authorized the police to search our old house because of the new investigation around your sister’s…” Her dad stopped. It was still so hard for anyone in the family to believe what happened to Sarah. “Death,” he finished. The word hit Sasha hard. There was something definitive about the way Dad was speaking.

  “What did they find?”

  “Don’t you want to sit down?” her mom said.

  “No! What did they find?!”

  “A suicide note. Sarah’s suicide note. It was in Sarah’s closet, hidden in a crack in the floorboard that we didn’t even know was there. Apparently they searched more thoroughly this time around because of everything going on.”

  “Are they sure it’s real?” Sasha asked, growing angrier by the second.

  “Yes,” her mother said. “They did a handwriting analysis.”

  “I think we should see this as the closure we all need,” her dad chimed in.

  “I don’t want closure! I want answers!” Sasha yelled.

  “We have them now, sweetheart. Sarah didn’t want to live.”

  “No,” Sasha said. “There’s more. There has to be more…” She had to be careful about revealing what more she knew to her parents before the time was right. “Are they going to continue the investigation?” Sasha asked.

  “We’re not sure yet, but we don’t want to focus on that right now,” her dad said.

  “We actually thought it would be nice to get away for a bit over the Christmas holiday. We booked a trip to Florida so we can relax as a family,” her mother said. “Doesn’t that sound nice?”

  Sasha ran from the living room to her bedroom and slammed the door. She didn’t want closure and she didn’t want a vacation; she wanted answers. Right now she didn’t care about CO or Charlie or Amanda or anything else. If this note was real, then at the end of the day, regardless of their influence, Sarah made the choice to die and not live. This finally confirmed what Sasha had questioned since the day she heard that Sarah was gone: Sarah was not murdered. And if that was the case, then Sasha’s greatest fears were being realized: she could have stopped it from happening. She could have helped Sarah make those dark and scary thoughts go away. If only she had known how bad it was, she could have saved her sister’s life.

  Laura

  Laura held her finger on the button of the pepper spray tucked inside her pocket as she approached the swing set where she and Sasha were supposed to meet. She’d scoped out the spot before so she could arrive behind Sasha and wait behind a cluster of trees about twenty yards from the swing set instead of walking directly toward the girl…or guy. Laura still wasn’t entirely sure, and the hackers she’d paid to uncover Sasha’s email address didn’t know either. Some men were named Sasha. Maybe that was part of the mystery. Laura would be able to see his or her face before deciding if it was safe to approach.

  As Laura got closer, she saw the outline of a small, frail body sitting on the center swing. It was definitely a girl, and from her body shape and long hair alone, Laura could tell that she was not Becca, who was much stockier and had short hair, or Amanda or Kit. They were both much taller and had lighter hair than this girl, who wore her long, black waves in a low, messy ponytail. She was also wearing a ragged, hooded sweatshirt. Neither Amanda nor K
it would be caught dead in something that looked like it belonged to their grandpa. Just a few steps more and Laura was safely behind the trees, waiting for Sasha’s body to shift in the swing enough so that she could get a good look at her face. After what felt like an eternity, Sasha finally stood up from the rubber seat and spun around, clearly looking for someone.

  The minute her face was within view Laura felt herself running. It wasn’t a conscious reaction. It was just see, think, dash. If she had stopped for even a millisecond to take in the person sitting, waiting for her to arrive, Laura never would have left that spot; she would have been too frozen in shock to move. Something inside her brain knew that. It took one glance at the real person behind the infamous Sasha and told her body to run.

  * * *

  Once home, Laura sat down at the antique vanity in her bedroom and reached out a shaky finger to touch the ceramic flowers stuck to the corners of each of the three mirrors. Some of them were losing their pink-and-blue paint, but she didn’t mind. This was the exact thing she’d been looking for when she visited the Englishtown Flea Market the day after moving into this house. She wanted a really pretty place to sit and examine her face in the mirror—to put bronzer on her cheeks, a little shimmer on her eyes, and that bold pink lipstick that she loved so much on her mouth. It would be the special spot where she indulged in feeling totally beautiful.

  But that’s not how she felt as she stared into the mirror right now. Laura ran her fingers over her cheekbones, feeling how high and close to the bottom of her eyes they were. She used her pointer finger and thumb to pinch up the length of her nose, feeling how perfectly narrow it was from the bottom to the top. Next she pressed her first and middle fingers against the soft skin of her lips. They were plump and pink, even without any lipstick. Finally, Laura looked herself deeply in the eyes, noticing how the deeper blue hue of her right eye stuck out against her golden hair.