by Marlowe Blue
“Now!” Charlotte yelled.
We threw our masks over our heads and raced toward the open doors of the train. A few people screamed, jumping out of our way like they thought we might attack them. The sick part of me liked that people were afraid of us. It felt like we had some kind of power.
“Hurry up!” Coach shouted. The doors were going to close at any moment. He was the first one to make it on. The twins and their long legs were right behind him. When I jumped on Coach yelled for us to run to the front of the train. I grabbed the hand of the person closest to me, thinking it was Morgan. I had no idea how we were going to choose the king and queen of the week, but I wasn’t even thinking about that right then. I couldn’t believe we had done it.
The train took off. Once we made it to the front car, we ripped our masks off and exchanged high fives. I turned to give Morgan a hug, but she was nowhere to be found. The hand I was holding had been Charlotte’s.
“Where’s Morgan?” I asked the others, but I already knew. She hadn’t gotten on the train.
Coach smirked. “I saw her back there, Lee. She didn’t even jump the turnstiles. She didn’t even try.”
My heart dropped because I knew where things were headed. All I could think about was my best friend standing back there alone and probably disappointed in herself for not having the guts to jump. How was she supposed to get home? Would she have to stay there and wait for us to come back? If she called her parents she would never be able to explain what she was doing at the train station on her own.
I searched for any excuse I could find. “Well, she’s still kind of new.”
Coach glowered. “She’s been in the group for almost a year. She’s out.”
I looked to the others for help but they became fascinated with the ground all of a sudden. Brayden kicked a gum wrapper with his sneaker then finally met my gaze. “Those are the rules. She can still hang out with us and stuff.”
“No, she can’t,” Coach argued. “The rules are the rules and out means out.” He softened his tone. “I’m sorry, Lee. She never really belonged. I knew that from the second I met her but I was willing to let her in for you.”
Charlotte’s eyes were wet but she wiped them quickly before Coach could see. Charlotte had a good heart and she probably felt guilty that her challenge was the one that had gotten Morgan kicked out, but it wasn’t her fault.
I needed to get away from the others. I moved to the next car, avoiding the stares of the other passengers, and pulled out my phone to call Morgan. She answered on the first ring. “Hey.”
“Morgan, I’m so sorry. I thought you were right behind me. If I knew you had stayed back I wouldn’t have gotten on the train. If I could come back for you right now, I would.”
It was hard to hear her over the background noise. “I know. It’s my own fault for being chicken shit. I should have jumped like everyone else, but my mind just wouldn’t let me do it. I’m out, aren’t I?”
“Yes.” My voice creaked. “I’m so sorry. You know how Coach is.”
An awkward moment of silence passed.
“It’s okay. We all know I didn’t really belong in the Hex anyway. I was only in it for you.”
That made me feel even worse. I didn’t know what to say.
“So what does this mean for us?” she asked. “We can’t hang out anymore?”
“Seriously? We’re never going to stop being friends no matter what they say.” I meant that. “Are you going to wait for us to come back?”
She paused for a few seconds. “I guess I don’t have much of a choice. I can’t call my parents—they’ll freak. And you . . .”
I knew what she was going to say. I was her only friend so she didn’t have anyone else to call.
“Okay. We’ll see you in a little bit.”
We got off the train after five stops and grabbed a bite from a greasy diner. By the time we got back, Morgan was gone.
McAllister thumped his fingers on the table. “There you go. Another suspect. Add her to the list.”
My head snapped in his direction. “Wait . . . what? No! Morgan would never kill anyone. Besides she was at her house when I got there.”
Detective Nichols started pacing again. “It was hours later when you arrived at the Thorne’s. The bodies were deceased hours before they were found.”
I pushed away from the table. I didn’t know how much more I could take. “Morgan would never do something like this. She was always the one trying to talk me out of doing crazy things.”
Bloom frowned. “She must have been angry after being kicked out of the Hex, no?”
I let that question roll around in my mind. “No. Actually she almost seemed relieved. As long as I was still her friend, that was all she cared about.”
That wasn’t good enough for Bloom. “Maybe she wanted to get rid of the others so she could have you all to herself.”
I stopped talking then since everything I said kept making things worse. There was a knock on the door. When Bloom answered it, someone handed him a large manila envelope. He took a peek inside and then turned to me. “You starting to remember anything, yet?”
I shook my head. There was still a huge gap from the time I left my house to the time I showed up at the Thorne’s. I would give anything to figure out what happened. I wanted to know who had slaughtered my friends. We may have been trouble makers, but none of them deserved that, not even Coach.
Bloom sighed and dropped into his seat. “Fine. But time is of the essence here, so let’s jog your memory.”
11
The Present
He pulled one sheet from the envelope and slapped it down on the table. My throat tightened and I almost choked on my own saliva. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. It was a photo of Charlotte, completely mutilated.
Her dark eyes were frozen open, wide and staring back at me. Her entire chest was covered in crimson. Deep red slashes ran across her beautiful face. Her arms and hands also had wounds from where she’d tried to defend herself.
My head swam as I tried to imagine how afraid she must have been. How confused she was, probably wondering why she was being viciously murdered. I wished I could ask her who had done that to her.
McAllister squirmed beside me. Bloom thumped his finger on the photo. “Charlotte March. She was supposed to turn eighteen in three days.”
Yes, she was. We had planned a surprise road trip for her this weekend. Now that would never happen because my friends were dead.
I inhaled as he placed two photos beside Charlotte’s. Brayden and AJ. They wore the same terrified expressions on their faces. I couldn’t tell which was which because their freckles were camouflaged on their blood-smeared faces.
Nichols shook his head. “Those poor people are going to have to bury two of their children.”
A tear ran down my cheek as I thought about all their parents. They probably feared their kids would die from doing something stupid like bungee jumping or drag racing—not by being stabbed to death in cold blood.
I closed my eyes as he laid the final picture on the table. Even after all we’d been through, I didn’t want to see him like that.
“Look at it,” Bloom urged. I pressed my eyelids together, shaking my head. “Look at it!” he screamed.
Finally, I opened my eyes one at a time. Coach’s picture was the worse. I saw the stab wounds through his t-shirt. There wasn’t a part of him that wasn’t covered in blood. At least his eyes were closed.
“Kyle got it the worst,” Nichols said unnecessarily.
I couldn’t take my eyes off his picture. “His name is Coach. He hates Kyle.”
Nichols cleared his throat. “Coach got it the worst. Whoever did this, seemed to really have it out for him. From what you tell us, it seems that everyone loved and looked up to him. You said yourself that everyone wanted to impress him—even people outside of the Hex.”
“Yeah.”
“Then who would be mad enough to do that to him?”
&
nbsp; I didn’t answer him because there was only one person I could think of.
Me.
“Can you please put those away?” I asked. My forehead was wet with sweat and I was going to vomit at any moment. I would never get those images out of my mind for as long as I lived.
Bloom collected the photos and slid them back into the envelope. “Why don’t you tell us a little more about Coach?”
My heart raced at the sound of his name. Where could I even start? I swallowed hard and told the detectives the parts I could as they scribbled on their notepads. “I’ve known him since we were seven. We dated for a couple of years. He was one of my best friends. That’s it.”
Here was the part I could never tell anyone.
Coach was my savior and the bane of my existence. He was the reason I’d spent two months in juvie at the age of fourteen, but he was also the reason I wasn’t currently serving life in prison.
It was the last month of our eighth-grade year on a rainy Saturday afternoon. That was around the time Coach had gotten a tattoo on his back that read LEGENDS DIE YOUNG. I asked him where he’d gotten it because I wanted one, but he refused to tell me. He said I was too young for a tat even though he was only five months older.
That rainy afternoon we were bored. Stupidity and boredom was never a good combination. Coach and I had been hanging out in his basement shooting pool and throwing darts. The other members of the Hex were grounded for breaking curfew the night before. Coach was the only one who had gone unpunished because his father was away on a business trip. His dad was hardly ever home. I, being grounded like the others, was supposed to be tucked away in my room. I’d turned my music up so that it was blaring at the highest level my parents would tolerate before barging in my room and yelling at me to turn it off. I locked my bedroom door and climbed out of my window.
After we had gone up to the Coachman’s kitchen and wolfed down almost an entire pack of baloney, Coach had a brilliant idea. “Let’s do a challenge.”
I waved him away. “We can’t do one without the others. That’s against the rules you made up, genius.”
He grinned. “I know, but let’s do a practice one. I think it’s time to up our game. I have an idea, but I want to give it a dry run first. If it works, we can have the others do it.”
“Fine,” I muttered because once Coach came up with an idea, there was no talking him out of it. He was going to do it with or without me.
“Hold on a sec,” he said before disappearing into the garage. When he came back, he was wheeling an old rickety baby stroller.
“Coach, what the hell?”
“My neighbors put this out for the trash the other day and it gave me an idea.”
I had to admit, I was curious to see what he had planned that involved a baby stroller.
Taking turns pushing the stroller, we went to the wooded area behind the school. It was a short cut that led to a road that was semi deserted. A car came by every few minutes. The road had a dangerous curve that was even more treacherous in the rain when the roads were slick. Every time it rained, there was a report of an accident. We stood hidden in the trees, just waiting, watching an occasional car roll by.
It was drizzling and I loved the smell of rain. Usually I found it calming, but I couldn’t relax without knowing what Coach was up to.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked for the hundredth time.
Coach didn’t say anything until another car skidded past going too fast. Maybe if I were smarter, I would have put two and two together quicker than I did.
“Stay here,” Coach ordered. I stayed put as he pushed the stroller through the trees. He placed it to the middle of the road and then doubled back to our hiding spot.
By then, everything had clicked. I shuddered at the thought of what could happen. Someone was going to come speeding around that curve, see the stroller much too late, swerve to miss it, and then kill themselves. I gasped. “Coach, we can’t do this.”
He stared at the road with a strange glint in his eye. There was something evil in it that I had never seen before. He narrowed his eyes as if wishing for another car to come by. “Just relax.”
“Somebody’s going to get killed.”
He shrugged off my concern. “Nobody’s going to get killed. At the worst, they’ll just crash their car.” He said that like it was nothing.
Our challenges never involved hurting other people or putting them in danger. He was taking things to a new level that I didn’t like.
Nothing about this was funny and I couldn’t understand what he thought he was going to get out of it. Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to let it happen.
Before he could stop me, I bolted toward the road. Just as I came upon the stroller, my sneakers slipped on the wet concrete. My legs flew from beneath me and before I could catch myself, I landed hard on my chest, knocking the wind out of me. The rain pounded harder, like it was punishing me for leaving my house and being on that road in the first place. Before I could get back on my feet, the ominous sound of tires against a wet surface was coming in my direction.
With the fear of being mowed down propelling me, I grabbed the stroller and pushed it off the road. A police car rounded the curve and then slowed down when it neared me. I stood frozen gripping the stroller handle. The officer pulled to the side of the road and stepped out. He was tall and huge, almost giant-like. He stared me down before speaking.
“Little wet to be out here with a baby, isn’t it?”
I looked down at the empty stroller, slowly filling with water. How the hell was I supposed to explain this without throwing Coach under the bus? He would never forgive me and I would be out of the Hex for good. The others would hate me too. We had absolutely no tolerance for snitching.
“Uhhh . . .” was all I managed to say.
The officer stepped closer, his thumbs hooked in his belt loops. He took a peek into the empty stroller. “Now what would you be doing out here in the rain with an empty stroller?”
“Um, I didn’t put this here. I was just moving it so no one would get hurt.”
He clicked his tongue. “Sure. That makes a lot of sense. The question is, what are you doing out here in the first place?”
The rain matted my hair against my head and dripped into my eyes. I squinted to see the officer who was now a huge blur. “I was just walking. That’s not a crime.”
He didn’t like that answer. “What’s your name?”
“Lela. Lela Dupree.”
“Lela Dupree, get in the back seat.”
Was I being arrested? My stomach flip-flopped at the thought. How was standing in the road with a stroller a crime? “No, officer, you don’t understand.”
He pulled his radio from its holster. “No, you don’t understand. You must think I’m stupid or something. You think you’re the first kid who tried to pull this dangerous prank? You could have killed someone. How old are you, Lela?”
“F-fourteen.”
I looked back through the trees where Coach was hiding. I was going to kill him.
The officer spoke into his radio. “This is Officer Downs. I’m bringing in a minor, Lela Dupree, on a 1090.”
“Copy that. Over and out,” someone said on the other end.
The officer turned his attention back to me. “I’m taking you in on the charge of reckless endangerment—engaging in reckless conduct likely to cause death or grievous bodily harm to another person.”
I shivered. I wanted to be out of the rain and home lying across my soft, warm bed where I was supposed to be. Why hadn’t I just stayed home? “Reckless . . . what?”
“See, the kids in this town have been out of control. Playing in traffic almost causing accidents. Vandalizing abandoned buildings. Just causing all kinds of trouble just for the hell of it.”
The Hex. That was all us.
Officer Downs reached for his handcuffs. “The sheriff is really cracking down on stuff like this. We can’t have you all looking at this stupid stuff online think
ing it’s funny and then putting our good citizens in danger, can we? Unfortunately for you, you get to be the first example of how serious we are about this.”
Screw that. If I was about to be arrested, I was telling the truth. I’d rather be banned from the Hex than go to prison. “It wasn’t me, officer. This was my friend’s idea. He’s over there in the trees hiding. I was just trying to keep it from happening. I swear!”
Officer Downs raised an eyebrow at me like he kind of sort of believed me. He hooked his cuffs back onto his belt and put me in the back of his squad car. Then he went into the trees to check for Coach. He came back a few minutes later alone. “There’s no one there. Nice try, though. We’ll call your parents when we get down to the station.”
That was like a stab to the heart. My parents probably thought I was still up in my room. Getting a call about me being in police custody was probably their worst nightmare.
At the station, I told them everything. The whole truth. They’d even sent officers over to Coach’s house. As my luck would have it, Coach’s dad had come home and claimed that he and Coach had been there all afternoon.
At first, I didn’t think anything would happen, that the judge would believe my story and let me off. I hadn’t counted on Officer Downs taking the stand and lying. He’d told the judge that he’d actually seen me placing the stroller on the road and that I’d admitted to him that I’d done it as a prank. Of course the judge believed an officer of the law over a trouble-making kid who had a reputation for doing stupid shit.
That was how I got two months in juvie. Officer Downs hadn’t been joking. The town was really cracking down on pranksters, and I was the poster child for what not to do. I missed a month of school and half my summer vacation. Coach never apologized for what he’d done, but he promised he’d make it right. I should have known then that he was only going to make everything worse and make me indebted to him for the rest of our lives.
I didn’t go to juvie because I was a bad kid. I had only been trying to do the right thing—to stop someone from getting hurt or killed. I might have saved someone’s life that day, but I would never get credit for that.