by Norah Olson
“All of it,” I said. “The driving, all of it. If we can drive with the top down.”
I watched his breathing change and a smile spread across his face.
“It’ll be fun,” I said. “I want to feel how it feels. We can go after school on Thursday. We can drive up past the golf courses where there’s no one around. I’ll drive so you can film. Those drugs will make me a really good driver, right? The ones that make you focus?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking deeply into my eyes. “They will. They’ll make all of it so much better.”
“Okay,” I said, my heart pounding in my chest. He was so awful. And he had no trouble just going with me of course. He had no faithfulness or respect for my sister, would sell her out and cheat on her. He was the worst.
“Cool,” he said. “I’m so happy we’re going to do this. We’re going to become immortal.”
“Yeah, we’re going to be stars,” I said. “Hey, are you still selling those films?”
He nodded.
“The documentary ones of Ally?”
He nodded again and I thought, how could anyone be so stupid to admit that? He just knew he was bulletproof. He could admit to anything now, it didn’t matter. He always got away with everything. Even if I deleted them, he would simply make more and keep posting them. I vowed that that would be the next part of my plan.
“It’s an automatic system,” he said. “I never shut it down.”
“Can I be in some of them?” I asked.
He got that huge grin again. “Sure. Of course. We can make very different films than what me and Ally make.”
“I want part of the money, though,” I said.
He said, “You got it, partner. I’ll see you Thursday at the old pier.”
He was there standing out on the pier waiting for me. I flipped up my board and carried it while I walked along the wide wooden planks in the cold autumn air. My footsteps hollow, clunking along the dock. And then he turned and looked at me. He was beautiful. There was no denying it. I could see that his beauty was probably the thing that made his whole life possible. All the things he had done wrong all crimes all the “mistakes” forgiven when people looked into his pale-blue eyes and saw the smooth contours of his jaw. Or when they knew how much money his parents had. There was a light breeze and his T-shirt and thin jacket clung to him, showing the outline of his broad shoulders, his muscled form, his hair tousled and windblown.
“I’m so excited we’re going to do this together,” he said to me. Then he reached in his pocket and pulled out a little prescription bottle and rattled it. Smiled.
“What about our deal?” He nodded and reached in his jacket pocket, took out his keys—the key to the Austin, which had his house key attached—and handed them to me. As promised, he’d let me drive the Austin and in exchange he could film me doing it while on his special prescription.
“Thanks,” I said, putting them in my pocket. I looked again at his beautiful face—the face that wasn’t hiding anything evil—it was simply expressing nothing at all. He was like a big empty hole, someone built entirely of secondhand images of life and chemicals made to numb the experience of living it.
I smiled back at him and then took my skateboard in both hands, swung it fast like a bat and hit him in the face as hard as I could. There was a loud hollow sickening crack as he was knocked backward by the force of the blow and toppled into the water. The ocean was choppy and his body bobbed and drifted quickly north toward the yacht club. I looked down and saw the spray of blood across the pier and spattering my jacket. There was also blood on the board, but I would get rid of it in just a few minutes.
There. Done. Over. I turned to walk away, but gasped as Ally was literally right behind me—my face nearly touching her face. She was stunned and horror-stricken, in shock.
“What have you done?” she wailed, tears streaming down her face. “We have to get him out of the water, he’s going to drown. He needs to go to a hospital!” She lunged for the water, but I held her back.
“No, Ally, we have to get out of here now. He hurt you. He hurt you and a lot of other people and he won’t be able to do that anymore.”
I held her around the waist and pulled her backward into my arms, trying to drag her off the dock as she dug in her heels. Finally she broke free and ran, threw herself off the end of the dock into the water with him.
“Ally, stop. Stop! There’s nothing we can do now. This was his fate. This is how it ends for him after all the things he did.”
I saw her struggling in the water. Ally is a great swimmer. She had lifted his head above the water, his face torn and bruised and broken, his nose flattened his lips smashed. She was swimming with one arm around him making slow progress to the ladder beneath the dock.
“Let him go, Ally, we have to get out of here. Let him go,” I said. “I won’t let you bring him back up on this dock.”
It seemed that he was still breathing—bubbles of foamy blood came out of his mouth and nose. His weight was pulling Ally down. I watched my sister struggling, crying flailing in the water, trying desperately to carry the weight of someone who was more than half dead, who had filmed her naked and lied to her and sold her image to old men who wanted to do her harm, someone who did this all under the guise of loving her. I couldn’t bear to see her this way. And I knew I would almost rather see her dead than see her revive Graham Copeland.
Almost.
“Help me get him up the ladder,” she called to me, spitting water from her mouth and gasping.
“No,” I said.
“Sydney! Please, we can’t do this. Please! Help me!” She inhaled water and then spluttered and choked it up. Her head disappearing below the surface for a minute. I climbed down the ladder and kicked hard at his body to get it away from her, but she held tightly to him. I am certain he was already dead but still she clung to him, trying to raise his face, putting his body above hers.
I grabbed the ladder with one hand, then held tight to her wrist with the other and put my foot on Graham’s shoulder, trying to sink him back beneath the waves as I pulled her up.
She was crying hysterically and shouting for me to stop and then I watched it happen. A large wave came cresting in and threw her against the base of the peer knocking her unconscious. It pulled her down where I couldn’t see her anymore. And only Graham’s body was bobbing there streaming blood.
I felt light-headed. I screamed her name and dove into the cold waves. I swam in the choppy water trying to see her. I thrashed in the water in my soaking cumbersome clothes for what seemed like an eternity. Minutes ticked by, each second a precious moment of my sister’s life. Then I caught a glimpse of her floating facedown far away—the wave that had crested had sucked her right out into the harbor. She wasn’t moving.
I knew that she was dead and that the water was already freezing my limbs making it impossible for me to swim. I climbed back up the ladder and raced to Graham’s car, looking for a cell phone or anything I could call someone from. There was nothing. I screamed for help but the whole idea of meeting at the abandoned pier is that there is no one to help. I looked for a rope I could throw to her—knowing as the minutes raced by that there was no way she could have survived this.
I heard myself scream as if I were drowning and then I ran. Fast. I had to save the only thing I could.
I put the key in the ignition, turned the car around and drove frantically to Graham’s house. His parents were not home—and if mine were they didn’t notice their dripping-wet daughter crying and whimpering as she fumbled for the neighbor’s house key and let herself in.
I raced up to his room and followed the instructions Becky had given me and got to the dummy site—logged in and then there it was. The swirling beach-ball timer showing how many girl-next-door videos were being downloaded.
I logged into Graham’s site administrator page and voided the sale of the videos. Then I called up the full list of other footage, selected them all, and hit delete. I knew I
was destroying evidence. But the boy who had committed that crime had already paid. And so had my sister. I would not let him be the one who controlled what people remembered of her. I would not have people know her for anything other than what she really was. Not a piece of meat, or some girl who should have known better, or all the other terrible things people say about girls when boys hurt them and use them. I had gotten rid of all the disgusting images he made of people because he thought that they weren’t real or were just for his own entertainment or his own way to make money.
When I got back to the pier, their waterlogged forms still bobbed in the waves and I was wracked with guilt. I had made sure Ally’s life would speak for itself. But she was still gone.
It didn’t seem possible. I’d tried to save her, and now she was floating below me in the harbor she’d loved, beside the boy she never should have loved. I couldn’t let her drift anymore. I dove into the icy waves to drag her out, pull her up the ladder, to feel her hand in mine one last time. And I rocked in the waves, swimming with her head against my chest, clinging to my sister’s body as if it were my own.
We still don’t know exactly what happened. It seemed they fell in together. Or might have been attacked by a third party, who we haven’t yet found. Both of their faces were smashed. One from a flat, blunt object, the other from the pier. They died maybe ten minutes apart.
The strangest part was the boy’s home.
His bedroom was covered with puddles of ocean water, his computer equipment partly wrecked, all his files destroyed, sometime after the accident. His car seat was soaking wet, but the car was still parked where he left it by the pier. And no fingerprints anywhere. Not one.
We questioned Becky and Declan, but they hadn’t seen Phil Tate’s daughter in over a week before it happened. She’d been staying home. We talked to the parents and they said the same. The girl seemed preoccupied but fine.
We don’t know what we are looking at here. We don’t know if this is a murder or a double suicide or a jealous fight that got out of hand. There are only two bodies. Two kids that lived next door to each other.
We do know that Graham Copeland found trouble wherever he went and that this time trouble found him.
Rockland Mourns the Loss of National Merit Scholar, Avid Sailor
Allyson Sydney Tate (1998–2015)
Allyson Sydney Tate died last week in a marina accident. “Tate,” as she was known to her friends, family, and teachers, was to be the valedictorian of her class. She worked for a year at the Pine Grove Inn, sailed with her father, skateboarded, and sold muffins at fund-raisers for the Rockland Historical Society. She won several science fairs for Rockland High School, but most people remember Sydney for her exuberant spirit, quick wit, keen ability to debate, and her love of skateboarding. She could always be seen doing tricks at the skate park on a board she built herself. Sydney was known for her independence, her stylish flair, and her love for punk-rock music. Her dream was to go to Stanford with her friend, class salutatorian Declan Wells, and study chemistry. Calling hours are Tuesday 6–8 p.m. at Shady Point Methodist Church. In lieu of flowers donations can be made to the Tony Hawk Foundation, which builds skate parks in urban areas and helps keep neglected kids out of trouble.
I am extremely grateful to my agent Rebecca Friedman for her friendship, intelligence, and insight. She has made this book possible. My editor, Claudia Gable, is a superhero. Her integrity, creativity, and intellect have helped guide this book from idea to reality and I’m lucky to have the opportunity to work with her. I’m also tremendously thankful to Katherine Tegen for her genius and vision; so proud to be a part of her list. Melissa Miller, Alexandra Arnold, and the whole team at Katherine Tegen Books are talented and dedicated people. What a pleasure it is to write among such company.
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epicreads.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NORAH OLSON is a former journalist who covered criminal cases for a regional New York newspaper and received a prestigious fellowship for her work. She was educated in New England and lives in Manhattan. Twisted Fate is her first novel for young adults.
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CREDITS
Cover art © 2015 by Justin Case/Getty Images
Cover design by Heather Daugherty
COPYRIGHT
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
TWISTED FATE. Copyright © 2015 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Olson, Norah.
Twisted fate : a novel / by Norah Olson. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: Told from separate viewpoints, unfolds how sisters Sydney and Ally Tate’s relationship changes as they get involved with their new neighbor, Graham, an artist with a videocamera who has a mysterious—and dangerous—past.
ISBN 978-0-06-227204-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-06-238732-5 (int’l ed.)
EPub Edition © December 2014 ISBN 9780062272072
[1. Mental illness—Fiction. 2. Sisters—Fiction. 3. Neighbors—Fiction. 4. High schools—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction. 6. Artists—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.O52155Twi 2015
2014005862
[Fic]—dc23
CIP
AC
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14 15 16 17 18 PC/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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