Dead Ringer

by Jessie Rosen

  I’m safe, she thought to herself as she wrapped her long hair up into a loose knot on the top of her head. Even if she saw me, I’m still safe.

  Laura now realized that Sasha was the old Russian form of the name Alexandra. She’d learned that from reading Crime and Punishment freshman year—all the characters had a million names, which is normal in the Russian tradition. Lexi was the name Alexandra Castro-Tanner had always gone by, but Sasha was another form of that same name.

  That answered Sasha’s true identity, and it explained why she wanted information about Sarah from Charlie and his friends—she wanted to know what really happened to her sister.

  But Laura could not wrap her brain around how “Sasha” had attained all the information that she was using to scare Charlie and his friends. She had to be following them, at the very least, but Lexi didn’t go to Englewood High. She was a seventh grader when Sarah died, and her family moved away six months after the suicide. And yet, somehow Lexi was doing as good a job at uncovering the true story of Sarah’s death as Laura had been from right under Charlie’s nose.

  Laura was desperate to know more about Lexi’s process, but meeting in person was not possible. It was only now that she realized how risky the idea of a meetup with anyone had been in the first place, and Laura was furious with herself for being so careless. There was no room for error in her plan, and this could have been a big one. If she hadn’t seen Lexi from afar before approaching the swing set, she would have been screwed. Lexi did not know Laura, but she would most definitely want to know why she was masquerading around as CO, and right now “CO” could not provide an answer.

  Laura left the vanity and grabbed her laptop off the bed. It felt like a mistake to keep Lexi guessing about why she was stood up in the park, especially given her obvious abilities to collect information. She needed to apologize for not showing and provide an excuse. The suicide note might throw Lexi off course—maybe she’d think she was wrong about Charlie and his friends—but that didn’t seem likely based on what she knew about that night. Besides, Laura doubted that Lexi would give up. Laura needed to keep her interested without revealing what she knew.

  Hi, Sasha,

  I’m sorry I flaked tonight. Something came up and I couldn’t make it. I understand if you don’t want to meet anymore given the news about Sarah, but I still wonder if this is the end of the story… If you feel the same, let’s keep emailing until it’s safer to meet. Yes?

  –CO

  Laura hoped that Lexi wouldn’t harp on the one part of that email that was a complete and utter lie: they could never meet in person.

  So far, everyone at Englewood had reacted to Laura just as she intended: she reminded them of Sarah just enough to make them talk. That talking lead to Charlie talking, and Charlie’s confessions were the key to uncovering everything. But Lexi Castro-Tanner talking was not any part of the plan.

  Laura didn’t know if Lexi had seen pictures of her, but if they saw each other in person, she would know the truth. She would be close enough to look into Laura’s eyes, smell her skin, and hear the tones in her voice that she’d worked so hard to cover up. Laura would not be able to lie to Lexi like she had to the rest of the world for almost exactly two years. Lexi would see that Laura Rivers was actually her sister Sarah—alive, well, and totally transformed.

  Chapter 13

  November 21

  Laura

  As of the week of November 20th, it was clear that Laura Rivers was the new queen of Englewood High School.

  All anyone in the junior and senior classes could talk about was her Friendsgiving Bash planned for the upcoming Friday night. Laura had casually invited thirty or so people, but from the sounds of it, two hundred thirty were attending. No one in Englewood had ever thought of throwing a Thanksgiving rager. No one’s parents went away around that holiday. Therefore, Laura Rivers was the luckiest and coolest girl that pretty much ever existed. She didn’t mind the attention, even if it did make her insanely nervous to throw a party that delivered on all that expectation.

  Fortunately, the rumor mill told her exactly what she needed to have to make for the epic event. “I bet she has tons of Pacifico. That’s all they drink in Cali,” someone said. “Wonder if she’s going to crank up the heat in the house and play old school No Doubt so it feels like SoCal,” said another. “If she has food—which she obviously will—it better be shrimp tacos, though I don’t know how she’ll pull that off. No one around here even sells shrimp tacos because this town sucks so much.” And with that, Laura had her shopping list. First, though, she had a very different task to attend to.

  Charlie

  “I know the details are still fuzzy, but do you think you could talk to me about how you were feeling before you hit your coach, Charlie?”

  Charlie heard Dr. Walter ask something, but he couldn’t focus on her words enough to know what she was saying. It all just sounded like it was coming at him through a long tunnel—everything had since the moment he lost control and lunged at Stanley.

  It didn’t escape Charlie that Coach was the person who was supposed to convince him to go back to therapy. Now, because of what happened yesterday, Dr. Walter controlled whether or not Charlie could go back to school. Though, right now he would have been happy if the decision was that he should transfer. There was nothing left for him at EHS.

  But it wasn’t all the cruel stares and nasty comments that made Charlie finally snap with a right-fisted punch directly at Coach’s left eye. And, despite what everyone thought, it wasn’t just the fact that Stanley fully cut him from the soccer team minutes before the “altercation” as Principal Hayden called it.

  “It has been decided by the school board that your actions against Sarah Castro-Tanner warrant consequence, Charlie,” the principal had said. He was standing in Coach Stanley’s office when he delivered the news, which was another fact that Charlie did not appreciate. This may have been Hayden’s decision, but Coach should have been man enough to deliver the news. “The character you exhibited in this situation is not in keeping with the standards to which we hold our student athletes. For that reason, we cannot have you representing our school as a member of the soccer team. What you did to that girl is shameful, and, as a school, we have to take a stand against it so that it doesn’t happen again. And I’m sorry, Charlie, but we’ve had to notify the colleges you’ve applied to about this situation.”

  Charlie felt like his insides were spilling out of his mouth. He didn’t think he could possibly feel more worthless. His soccer career was over, his college dreams were erased—he had failed. Then Coach Stanley spoke up.

  “I just don’t understand how you could do something so hurtful to a young girl,” he said. Those words hit Charlie’s ears harder than any of the insults that had been hurled at him so far. Hearing Coach say “a young girl” was what made Charlie lose control over his body. In one swift movement he leapt out of his seat, lunged across the desk, and threw his right fist at Coach’s eye. As Charlie felt his body release all that anger, he realized just how long he’d been holding it in. Hayden couldn’t reach over to grab him before Charlie’s fist slammed into the tight skin of Coach’s cheekbone. He bled instantly and everywhere. It was grotesque.

  Thirty minutes later, Charlie was sitting in the passenger seat of his mother’s car. She did not speak to him for the entire drive home, and when she finally did say a word it was a simple one. “Why?” And now, the very next day, he was back on Dr. Walter’s couch.

  “How did you feel?” she had asked.

  “I felt amazing,” he said. A wide-eyed reaction let Charlie know that Dr. Walter was not expecting that answer.

  “Can you tell me what ‘amazing’ feels like, Charlie?” she asked.

  “I didn’t want to hit him,” Charlie said, lying. He could not talk about Stanley, even to Dr. Walter. “My body just needed, like, a release or something.” That part was not a lie.

  “And that release felt good?”

  “
It felt so good,” Charlie confessed.

  Dr. Walter nodded. He couldn’t tell whether or not she was judging him for what he’d just said, but he didn’t care. It was such a relief to say the truth out loud.

  “Dangerous things can happen when we hold in our feelings or our truths,” she said. “It sounds like you’ve been doing some of that lately, yes?”

  Charlie nodded. The list of lies he’d told over the past two years and secrets he was still keeping made his head spin. It felt like there was no more room in his mind.

  “I need you to know that this is a safe place, Charlie. As your doctor, I can keep anything you say confidential. That rule exists so that I can treat you. Because if I don’t know the truth, I can’t help you deal with your feelings.”

  Charlie nodded again. He knew all about doctor-patient confidentiality. Dr. Walter explained it during their first go-around, but that time she had included a detail that Charlie never forgot: unless you confess your intention to hurt yourself or another person, or that you already have.

  Because of that part of the clause, Charlie could never tell Dr. Walter the whole truth. If he did, she would be required to report him to the authorities.

  “Charlie,” Dr. Walter said after a few seconds of silence, “I know that you’re here because of what happened with Coach Stanley, but do you want to talk about some of your feelings regarding Sarah Castro-Tanner’s suicide note?”

  Charlie had been wondering all session if Dr. Walter was going to bring that up. It was all over the news. He wanted desperately to confess how he really felt.

  “How do I feel about the suicide note?” he would say. “I feel like it doesn’t matter because that’s not what happened. Sarah didn’t commit suicide. Maybe she wanted to at some point or was planning to, but she never got the chance because on the night of December 23, we killed her.”

  That was the truth. The whole world thought that Charlie, Amanda, Kit, and Miller bullied Sarah into taking her own life, and that was bad enough to ruin his life, but the reality was even worse. That was the fact he would now have to take to his grave. Charlie could never, ever tell Dr. Walter that the game they played to scare Sarah into leaving them alone was the reason she plummeted off the Navesink River Bridge. He couldn’t tell her how scared he had been since it happened, explain what it felt like to have his world fall apart, and ask her what he was supposed to do to feel better. For the first time in his life, Charlie was certain that he could not handle this on his own. He needed help, and if he didn’t get it, he didn’t know what might happen. But there was absolutely no way out. If he told Dr. Walter the truth, he would spend the rest of his life in jail. The only option was to stay silent and hope that all these feelings didn’t eat away at him until he did to himself what Sarah never could.

  “The note makes me feel sad,” Charlie finally said. It was the best he could come up with, and it was part of the truth. He felt sad that Sarah felt that way at some point in her life. He didn’t know if she’d written that note one week or one year before she actually died, but he wasn’t surprised to know that she had a plan to disappear. He knew from thousands of school assemblies that most people don’t follow through with those plans, so more likely than not, Sarah would have lived if not for him.

  “Can you think of something you’ve done in the past to help lift that sadness from your body?” Dr. Walter asked.

  Charlie thought for a second. Nothing could make the feelings go away, but what Charlie’s body craved was more of the feeling that punching Coach Stanley gave him: a release.

  * * *

  He knew he was playing with fire by running by the bridge that night, but Charlie didn’t care. He needed to get all the anxious energy coursing through his veins out of his body, and the only place that his mind wanted to take him was the spot.

  Charlie waited until nine o’clock before he put his running sneakers on and slipped out the door. He was supposed to stay home when his mom left for her shift at eight o’clock—for his own safety, she explained. She’d debated for hours about how she should punish him, but in the end she did nothing.

  “You don’t need to be grounded,” she said. “You’ll learn more of a lesson by facing what you did out in this community than you will by sitting inside this house.” She was right.

  Charlie hit the pavement hard with each stride. He was running faster than usual, but he didn’t feel any pain or fatigue. He usually listened to music when he jogged—classic rock or whatever new pop songs didn’t feel too girly—but right now he wanted to be alone with his thoughts. If Dr. Walter believed that facing the truth would help, then maybe it would be best to face it alone.

  It was a ten-mile trek between Charlie’s house in the center of town and the Navesink River, but he got there in less than an hour. The minute he did, he wanted to turn around and run away.

  This was the very first time he’d been back since that night, and the sight of it hit as hard as he was afraid it might. He forced his body onto the thick, wooden planks of the bridge before he could convince himself to stop. The spot was in the dead center of the bridge. In daylight, it would have been in plain view of anyone driving by on the highway above, but the bridge hadn’t been lit in years, so Charlie had only the moonlight guiding him out on the structure. It wasn’t as cold as it had been on the same night almost exactly two years ago, but the view below was just as ominous. That black water could kill; it had killed. Maybe, Charlie thought for the first time, it should kill me, too.

  When Charlie reached the exact post in the railing where they’d stopped that night to play their game, his body took over for his mind. He stopped running, reached his hands onto the railing and hoisted himself up onto the ledge. He wanted to jump, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead he just screamed with every ounce of energy left in his body. Then he screamed again, and again and again until his throat was so dry that he couldn’t stop coughing. Next he started kicking and punching at the wood guard so hard that his fists started to bleed and a hole popped into his left sneaker. His body hurt, but somehow the pain felt good. He kept on pushing.

  After a minute or so he saw a light in the distance—a small beam like the flashlight on a cellphone. Charlie froze. Before he could make out the figure walking toward him, she spoke.

  “Charlie? Hello? Stop! What are you doing?! You’re going to kill yourself!”

  It was Laura.

  Laura

  Laura approached Charlie slowly after she got his attention. She couldn’t tell what state he was in, and she didn’t want to take any risks.

  “Laura?” he said after he finally saw her through the darkness. “What are you doing here?”

  No matter how many times she’d heard him use that name, it still felt strange to hear. If only Charlie knew that Laura was the name of the girl whose pictures Sarah had used when she pretended to be Chelsea all those years ago——Laura Janson from Pleasantville, New York. She’d chosen them for Chelsea because that Laura looked so sweet and innocent, and because she never, ever checked her profile. She’d never know someone had been tinkering around using pictures of her face. Charlie probably wouldn’t be so fond of the name if he knew all that, but he’d like it even less if he knew that the “River” in her last name was in honor of this very spot. Someday he’ll know, Laura thought to herself as she walked closer.

  “I was just getting some supplies for this party I’m having when I saw a person down here,” she said. “I thought it looked like you so I pulled over. Charlie…what are you doing?”

  Charlie looked to where the dirt road led to the river. “Where is there to shop in that direction?” he asked.

  Laura couldn’t tell if he was being suspicious or just curious. “Don’t change the subject,” she said. “What are you doing out here murdering this bridge?”

  Laura watched as Charlie’s face reacted to the word murder. He was fully and completely paranoid, and doing a much worse job of hiding it these days. Right now, he looked co
mpletely guilty. He hung his head down as he stepped away from the railing, trying to figure out what to say next, it seemed.

  “I’m all messed up about this Sarah thing, and I ran here to…I don’t know…think about it, I guess.”

  “Looks like you’re doing more than thinking about it,” Laura said. “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Were you trying to…?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t know. This was just…an impossible day.”

  Laura debated pressing Charlie more on what specifically happened during the day, but she didn’t want to push him away right now. She’d kept things rocky between them so that the eventual reunion she was planning would be perfectly timed, and she did not want to rush it.

  “Let me drive you home,” she said, “and we can talk about it if you want. It’s really cold out here.”

  “It’s fine,” Charlie said. “I know that you hate me. I know you’re having a party and didn’t invite me. I know you practically run the school now, and I’m what everyone whispers about. Just leave me out here. It’s better for both of us.”

  Laura looked at Charlie as he turned back to face the wood railing. This was definitely not the Charlie that wooed her just weeks ago, and it wasn’t the Charlie that Sarah Castro-Tanner had known since middle school. His face was hollowed out like he’d either lost weight over the last few weeks or not slept a wink. His body was hunched over from the shoulders, not straight and strong like usual. And all he was wearing was a T-shirt and shorts, as if he didn’t care enough to keep his body warm. He was a shell of the Charlie Sanders that had stood in this very same spot almost exactly two years ago and destroyed a life to keep his own perfect.