by Marlowe Blue
I landed on my side on a boulder and almost slid into the rushing waters. Luckily my gloves allowed me to get a good grip on the rock. Charlotte and Morgan shouted my name from the bank, asking me if I were okay. I didn’t answer. They still sounded so far away.
Get it together, Lela, I told myself. The others had all made it across. I was the reigning queen. I couldn’t be the one who didn’t make it. I wondered how much time I had taken. It seemed like I had been out there for half an hour. The tumble I’d taken slowed me down and made me second guess every move I made. My legs shook as I continued to make my way across. I had no other choice but to keep going.
At last, I felt arms grabbing and pulling me. My feet hit dry land and I could breathe again. I removed my blind fold. “What was my time?” I didn’t want anyone asking me if I were okay or making a big deal out of my fall.
“Three forty-five,” Morgan said quietly, which meant Char had beat me. Charlotte had the decency to not make a huge scene, even though I knew she was screaming on the inside.
I pulled the shark-tooth necklace from around my neck and placed it around hers. “Good job, Char.”
She smiled with those glistening white teeth of hers. “Thanks.” Then AJ swept her off her feet and stuck his tongue down her throat.
Coach put his hands on my shoulders. “It’s cool, Lee. You can’t always win, right?” That sounded stupid coming from him because he did always win and he had won again that night. “Anyway, you almost broke the number one rule. I said, don’t die.”
Coach was the unspoken leader of our group. Although no one would ever admit this, his approval meant the most. Whenever we performed at stunt, impressing Coach was always at the back of our minds.
I shrugged his hands off me. “I didn’t almost die.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, your sneakers aren’t sopping wet because your ass almost took a bath in that river. Wait until it’s my turn again. I’m going to come up with something even more challenging than this.”
Normally a statement like that would have excited me, but that night it didn’t.
“Hey,” Brayden called. “How are we supposed to get back to the car?”
Coach held his hands up. “Back across the rocks. Don’t worry, no blind folds this time.”
I watched as the others started their way back. I was in no hurry. Coach’s words were still bouncing around in my mind. What was our limit? How far were we going to go? What was it going to take? For one of us to end up dead or like Zander?
5
The Present
Duncan McAllister had his pen poised and ready to go. “Lela, I need you to tell me everything that happened this evening starting from when and why you left your house.”
I stared at my hands. Even though they were clean, I could still picture the blood on them. I wanted to tell him my side of the story, but I had no idea what it was. How could I just lose an entire chunk of time like that?
“I—I was up in my room like my parents said. I was listening to some music. It was daytime. It was still light outside and I was laying on my bed. Then . . . I don’t know. After that it was night time and I was walking to Morgan’s house. I don’t know what happened in between that.”
McAllister closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Lela, I’m you lawyer. I’m on your side. It’s my job to defend you but I can’t do that if you don’t tell me what really happened. I have to be honest with you. This doesn’t look good. You were covered in blood. You were found with the murder weapon in your hand. You have cuts and bruises all over you.”
Tears streamed down my cheeks once more. “I didn’t kill them. I would never kill anyone, but I definitely wouldn’t do that to my best friends. Why would I? Why would I kill them?”
“Lela, I’m not here to determine your guilt or innocence. I need to prove reasonable doubt, which is going to be hard considering the evidence. We need to bring up other suspects and other motives. Reasons why someone would have wanted to kill those poor kids.”
The only person I could think of who hated us was incapable of it. Zander had been through enough without me accusing him of murder.
I shook my head, trying to free it of all the confusing thoughts floating around in there. “I don’t know what to tell you, Mr. McAllister. I swear to God on my life that I don’t remember anything.” I looked at both my parents. “I don’t. I really don’t know what happened tonight.”
McAllister shut the recorder off. “You don’t have to talk to the police. You don’t have to do a thing until your arraignment which will be in a couple of days.”
“I’m ready,” I told him. “I want to talk to them. I might as well do it now. I’m going to tell them the exact same thing I’ve told you.”
McAllister pressed his lips together. “I have to advise against that—”
“I don’t care. I have to tell them that I didn’t do this. I have to let them know so they can keep looking for the killer. The person who killed my friends is still running around out there.”
An officer came in and told my parents they would have to leave. Mom couldn’t stop crying. I wanted to hug her and tell her that everything was going to be okay, but that would have been a lie.
They moved me to another interrogation room. I took the seat next to McAllister and across from Detective Nichols and Bloom. They looked stern and tired and I knew this interrogation was going to be the hardest thing I had ever done in my life.
Nichols turned on the tape recorder and asked me to state my name and age. I did as I was told. Bloom sat back and folded his arms across his chest. “Why did you kill your friends, Lela?”
“Don’t answer that,” McAllister said before I could speak.
But I stared Bloom straight in the eye. “I didn’t. I’ve never killed anyone in my life.”
Nichols fiddled around with his Styrofoam coffee cup. “Lela, there is an overwhelming amount of evidence pointing in your direction. Aside from your bloody appearance and possession of the murder weapon. Your footprints are tracked all through the blood at the Donahue house.”
“I didn’t do it,” I said quietly.
The detectives sighed and sat back in their seats. Nichols raised one eyebrow. “Okay, Lela. Let’s just say you didn’t do it, but there is no doubt you were there. If it wasn’t you, who would it be? Who would want to kill your friends?”
I swallowed hard. “I don’t know. Maybe it was just a random thing. Maybe some nut broke in and slashed them up for no reason.”
“Nope!” Bloom shouted. The boom in his voice made me jump. “This was a crime of passion. There were no signs of forced entry. Nothing was stolen. Each of those kids was stabbed at least fifteen times. This wasn’t random. Someone was angry with them. Angry enough to slaughter them. You were a part of their group. You guys were always together. You should know if they had pissed someone off that badly. Now if it wasn’t you, who would that be?”
I didn’t want to name names, but something had to give. I had to get the detectives looking at someone else besides me.
I hated myself for what I was about to say, but I had no other choice. Swallowing hard, I gave them the name of someone who hated us enough to want us dead. “Zander Finley.”
6
A Year Ago
Before Morgan moved to Helena Falls, there had been another member of the Hex. Zander Finley became a part of our group when we were ten. That was when all the crazy dares began.
When I was younger, much to my mother’s dismay, I was a straight-up tomboy. I had no use for pretty clothes, makeup, bows, and other girly things. While the girls were painting each other’s nails and playing with their My Little Ponies, I was outside leaping from tree branch to tree branch and smashing mud pies in people’s faces.
Coach, the twins, Zander, and I ran the neighborhood from sun up to sun down during the summer only going inside for the occasional popsicle or soda. If we needed a drink of water, we’d get that from the hose. If we had to use the bathroom, any bus
h would do. Charlotte had been in our fifth-grade class, but she didn’t hang out with us in elementary school. She stuck to the girls.
One day the boys and I rode our bikes out further than we’d ever had until we discovered an abandoned building on the edge of town. The faded signs told us it had once been a carpet factory. That place had been like a gold mine for us. We ran wild through the ruined building jumping over old equipment, breaking the windows with any hard objects we could find, and using the lighting fixtures as piñatas.
It was Coach who discovered the beam. “Hey, check this out.” Even at ten years old, he was always the one calling the shots and coming up with new ideas.
We gathered around to see what he was talking about. There was a section of the floor missing. Not a huge part, but enough. Coach pointed to a thick wooden beam that lay to the side. “Hey, Zander, help me with this.”
Zander, with his unruly blond curls, rolled his hazel eyes. He and Coach had never gotten along well, even when we were little. Zander hated being bossed around my him, but he did as Coach said. They laid the beam beside the hole and then slid it to the other side so the beam stretched from one side to the other.
I hung back, straddling my bicycle, wondering where Coach was going with this. He turned to Zander. “I triple dog dare you to walk across that beam.”
The twins immediately cracked up and I thought Coach was joking too, but Zander looked at the beam and nodded. “I accept the challenge, but if I do it, you have to go after me.”
Coach shrugged. “Piece of cake.”
Zander spit on his hands and rubbed them together. He always did that before he climbed a fence or a tree. The four of us watched with bated breath as Zander made his way across. It had only dawned on me when he was halfway across that he could have easily fallen to his death. Yes, the beam seemed wide and steady enough, but if he lost his balance, it could all be over. Through the hole, I saw where pieces of the floor and ceiling had fallen to the ground below. I didn’t want to see the same happen to Zander. Once he made it all the way across, we cheered for him. Everyone except for Coach who looked as if he’d just sucked a lemon. I knew he was wishing that he had gone first so that we’d all be cheering for him.
“Your turn,” Zander said from the other side. “It was easy for me,” he boasted.
Coach approached the beam. “Not only am I going to cross it, I’m going to do it faster than you did. Let me show you how it’s done.”
Coach practically ran across the beam and I thought I was going to have a heart attack. “Bam!” Coach said getting up in Zander’s face once he’d made it to the other side.
Zander shrugged Coach’s cockiness off as usual. “What about you guys?” he asked the twins.
AJ and Brayden went into a huddle like they always did when they needed to make a big decision. If one wasn’t going to do it, neither of them would. After a few moments of whispering, they separated. “We decline.”
Coach and Zander made chicken noises at them, but the twins wouldn’t budge. “All right, be wusses then.” Zander said. “This is boring. Let’s go do something else.”
The boys turned toward the staircase. “Hey, aren’t you guys going to dare me?” I demanded. I was insulted that they hadn’t even thought of that.
Coach’s eyes widened in surprise. “What? Princess Lela wants to give it a shot?”
“Don’t call me that!” I hated when he made those types of comments about me. There was nothing princess-like about Lela Dupree.
Zander looked impressed. “Go ahead, Lela.”
I took a deep breath suddenly wishing I had kept my big mouth shut. I demanded myself to not show fear as I stood at the end of the beam. Then I didn’t even think about it. I put one foot in front of the other and pretended to be walking a tight rope in a dream where nothing bad could happen to me. Before I knew it, I had made it to the other side. I’d been afraid, but there was another emotion running through me that I couldn’t explain. All I knew was that it felt like I was flying and I wanted to feel that way all the time.
After that, AJ and Brayden decided to walk the plank because they refused to be shown up by a girl. For the rest of that week, we came back to the beam and timed each other getting faster and faster. Once we got bored with that, we came up with other dares like swinging across the creek on a rope or riding our bikes across busy streets with just enough time to make it. That’s how the Hex was formed by a bunch of bored kids doing stupid things. Once we got older, we dropped the triple-dog-dare and our stunts got more dangerous.
A year ago, just before Morgan arrived, tragedy struck on one of our challenge nights. Coach and Zander still had their rivalry going. Zander was the only one who could beat Coach for king and Coach hated every minute of it. On Coach’s night to pick the stunt, he decided to go back to where it had all began. He took us to an old factory building. This time the hole in the floor was gaping and the beam was much thinner than the one we’d used at the old carpet building. I knew right away that this was going to be impossible to do without someone getting killed, but I said nothing. The others probably felt the same way but nobody dared to question Coach for fear of being kicked out.
If only I had spoken up, yeah, I may have gotten kicked out of the group, but then I wouldn’t be accused of murdering my friends and what happened to Zander would have never happened.
We’d all taken our customary shots of Vodka. Zander took four and from the smell of his breath, he’d had something earlier.
Zander’s name got picked first. He hooted and pumped fists with all of us before taking his place.
We all stood back silently watching him. Charlotte was recording on her phone and Brayden was taking the time. Zander was doing great until he hit the middle of the beam and it started to dip underneath his weight. It obviously wasn’t sturdy enough. At the same time, noise came from the bottom floor.
“Hey, who’s here?” shouted a brusque voice. “This is private property!”
“Shit,” Coach whispered. “Zander, get to the other side, man.”
“Hey, what the hell are you doing up there?” the man bellowed. That was all Zander needed for his concentration to be broken. His arms flailed out desperately reaching for something to grab on to, but there was nothing. He slipped from the beam, disappearing from our view, but we all heard the sickening thud.
The man downstairs shouted obscenities as Coach ushered us out of the building through the back doors. No one said a word. Outside, I turned to him. “What are we doing? We can’t just leave Zander like that. We don’t even know if he’s okay.”
Coach shoved me forward with the others. “The man will call for help. If we get caught here, do you know how much trouble we’ll be in?”
I turned back to the building, wanting to run back inside, but Coach pulled me by the back of my shirt.
No one argued with Coach as we piled into the car and took off, leaving Zander behind.
I fought back tears at the thought of abandoning my friend when he could very well have been dead. “This is wrong.”
Coach drove, staring straight ahead wearing a stone-cold expression. “What can you do for him, Lee? Are you a doctor? You think I like leaving him behind? I don’t, but I have to look out for the rest of us.”
He was good at doing that—making it seem like he was doing something for us when he was only really looking out for himself.
Charlotte cried from the back seat. I was surprised Coach didn’t yell at her because crying wasn’t allowed. The twins stayed quiet. I had no idea what was going through their minds.
Zander never walked again after that night. He was paralyzed from the waist down. We waited for the police to come to our houses to question or arrest us, but they never did. Zander never told anyone what really happened or that we had been there. He said that he had been in the building alone and drunk and that he’d done something stupid and that it was his own fault. Although he hadn’t snitched on us, he never spoke to us again. When we ca
lled or came by, he refused to talk to or see us.
When he came back to school wheelchair bound, it pained my heart every time I saw him. Whenever he passed us, we would stop talking out of respect. Kind of like a moment of silence. He never looked at us. We’d become invisible to him.
We stopped the challenges for about a month and then started them back up again at Coach’s insistence. I wanted out then but that wasn’t possible. Soon Morgan came and took Zander’s spot. He’d been replaced just like that. It hurt to see how easy it was. If something happened to me, they would simply replace me and keep it moving.
If anyone wanted to murder members of the Hex, Zander would be at the top of the list. Yes, Coach had come up with the ridiculous challenge, but all of us had left him behind and not even called for help. There was one problem with that theory. How could someone confined to a wheelchair murder four able-bodied people in such a savage way?
He couldn’t have.
7
The Present
Bloom made a tent with his fingers and held them against his mouth. “So, besides you, our number one suspect is a boy bound to a wheelchair?”
“You’d still better check it out,” McAllister said from beside me. I’d almost forgotten he was there.
Nichols scribbled something on a pad. “We will, thank you.” He left the room.
Bloom’s glare penetrated through me. “You know that was really messed up what you guys did to your friend.”
I wasn’t about to disagree with that. It was more than messed up and it was something I felt guilty about every single day. Part of me wondered if Coach had set it up on purpose to get rid of his biggest competition and we had all fallen in line like his little followers. Coach had pulled the names that night. Had he really pulled Zander’s name from the bag or had he just said he did? We had no way of knowing for sure.