HER: A Psychological Thriller

by Britney King

  “What about Darcy?” I ask my eyes searching the crowd. “Does she get one?” I want her to know that I understand her, but once again she proves how hard it is to ever really know a person.

  She kind of scoffs at a very reasonable question. “We aren’t in high school, Sadie. Everyone gets one.”

  I don’t say anything because what is there to say when someone calls you out for being juvenile? Before I can think of anything else, Amelia comes bounding down the stairs, headphones covering her ears, two friends trailing behind. I look over at Ann, wondering if she is disappointed in me. Maybe she wanted more reciprocation in the garage. Maybe I should say something about it. It’s hard to know with her. One second she’s into to me—she’s telling me she can’t help herself—and the next she’s biting my head off. Whatever the case, obviously she has a short fuse, and I’m learning how important it is to stay clear of the trip-wire.

  But now, standing beside me, she doesn’t look bothered. To the contrary. There is such a look of satisfaction upon her face that a lump forms in my throat. That’s the thing about letting go of a dream—it has its way of resurrecting itself, of sneaking up on you in the most obscure ways. And sneak up on me it does.

  Suddenly, I am thinking about how I’ll never have that—how I’ll never ever know what it feels like to have something—anyone—to make me that happy. Something, or rather someone that really belongs to me. Forever. Not just pretend forever, either, based upon some made-up, shaky vows. Something that is mine and mine alone. Something that could never be taken from me. Something that could never leave, even when it does, because we are tied together in ways that nothing could ever change.

  “Excuse me,” Ann says looking over at me. “I need to have a word with my daughter.”

  I don’t bother with a response. I’m too preoccupied overthinking the rest of my life. Maybe that’s why I don’t notice that someone is standing behind me until I am startled by his voice. “Teenagers,” he remarks. “Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.”

  When I turn, I see that it’s Paul, Ann’s husband. Interestingly enough, we haven’t officially met. I mean, I’ve seen him here and there. But he isn’t home much, and unlike his wife, he tends to shy away from the spotlight. I offer a closed smile.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, taking a step forward so that we’re shoulder to shoulder. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” He turns and extends his hand. “I’m Paul.”

  “Sadie,” I offer. “From down the street.”

  “Yes, I know. I’ve heard quite a lot about you.”

  Funny, I think. I’ve heard almost nothing about him. Ann really only talks about her husband in an abstract sort of way. But he isn’t abstract. He’s right here in the flesh, and he’s handsome—though surprisingly short—and charming, and everything I imagined him to be. It’s easy to see what she sees in him. It’s all there in his reserved nature. “Ann told me about your situation,” he adds, and his demeanor shifts to one of uncertainty. “That was thoughtless of me, the remark about teenagers.”

  I look at him blankly. I have no idea what she has told him of my situation, only that it sounds bleaker than I’m pretty sure I’ve ever let on. “It’s fine.”

  “Ann says you’re subbing at the high school.”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s really fond of you, you know. My wife.”

  “Really?” I smile. Then I get an itchy feeling in the back of my throat. It goes by the name of guilt.

  “And you should know…Ann doesn’t feel that way about many people.”

  “Well,” I say, glancing around their living room. “People certainly seem to be fond of her.”

  “That’s the thing, Sadie. People are always fond of a party.” He sips his champagne slowly and gazes over the crowd. He has a presence about him, the kind that causes you to watch from the corner of your eye because you just can’t help yourself. “It’s the clean-up crew who deserve the real credit though, isn’t it? Those that get in there and get their hands dirty.”

  “Yes,” I manage. He knows what happened in the garage. Or at least, he suspects. Did Ann tell him? Or is he as perceptive as his lovely wife? Either way, I make a note to stay to help out afterward. Right from the beginning, the Bankses never did make a point explicitly.

  “I just hope you won’t let her down,” he says and it’s clear what’s happened. Ann is using me. And oddly enough, I don’t mind at all.

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Good,” he says. “Because she really needs this. And quite frankly, I really need her to be happy.”

  I smile, nod, and down the rest of my drink.

  I DON’T WANT to let Ann down, and I want to get away from Paul, so I deftly hand out the invitations as she’s asked. By the time I make it ‘round to Darcy White, she along with Ann and a few other women I don’t know have isolated themselves to a corner in the Bankses’ library. It doesn’t make any sense, now that I’ve gotten a better look at the room, why Ann’s favorite book is on the bookshelf under the stairs instead of tucked away in here where it could be safe.

  I’m thinking so hard about this, and about what happened in the garage, and what Ann’s husband said, that I forget I am standing side by side with strangers. I stare too long at the books. I forget to listen to the conversation and to laugh and nod in all the right places. This is what I mean when I say I am not good with people. Books, I can understand. They give up their secrets, eventually. They say what they mean. People rarely do.

  Ann leans in and asks me if everything is all right. Her fingertips brush mine. It feels like electricity, a current that is moving too fast. Everything is, in fact, not all right. I want to ask her about what Paul meant when he said she needs this. He couldn’t possibly have meant me, could he?

  But I can’t ask her now. Not with everyone around. I’ve just realized I’ll have to develop sharp elbows if I want to get any time alone with her. These women are like vultures, and they’re circling, circling, circling. Mouths move, but I don’t hear anything that is being said. A shrill sound plays in my head, reverberating around, until it’s sharp and relentless. Ann asks me again if I’m okay. Nothing feels okay, but I nod, because people never really say what they mean or mean what they say. I nod because I’ve spotted her first book, the one that Ethan tried to gift to me, and now I am once again thinking too much and thinking leads to bad places.

  It leads to places like me wondering who is using who. It leads me to ask myself how I really feel about Ann making me come. It makes me wonder where Ethan is and whether he’s alone. Is he thinking of me? Will he text? It leads to me think about Chet and where things stand between us. How long do I have to keep this going before Ethan catches wind of it?

  This leads me to check my phone. I know Ann hates this. But I can’t help myself. It is only when I go to retrieve it from my pocket that I feel the lone invitation still in my hand. I hand it to Darcy. I practically throw it at her, to tell the truth. “It’s an invitation,” I say, because she looks confused. Her expression quickly turns to one of pity as she takes it from my hand. “Thanks,” she tells me. “But I’m really quite busy.”

  The room goes quiet, and everyone is waiting for me to respond but my mouth is too dry and my eyes dart toward Ann’s book. This will help you, I hear Ethan say. You can make friends. You can be normal again. You can be like you used to be.

  I think what he really meant was: this is how you let me go. Darcy’s words sting, but Ethan’s cut like a razor blade and they’re all colliding with one another. In my mind I picture myself grabbing them in midair, catching them in my fist and squeezing, squeezing until they’ve lost their power. I imagine telling Darcy what I really think. But everyone is watching and waiting, and if I say what’s really on my mind, it will not end well.

  Ann takes me by the arm. “Excuse us,” she says, pulling me out into the hall. Her head is cocked and her gaze is transfixed. She leans in and whispers, “What is with you?”
r />   “Nothing. I’m just tired.”

  “I need you Sadie. God, I want you. I want you so much.”

  I don’t know how to be needed, so my response is stupid and off topic. “Paul knows.”

  Her expression doesn’t change, so I say the next most stupid thing. “I don't know what’s keeping Darcy so busy…all I ever see her doing is gardening.”

  For a second Ann seems surprised. She recovers quickly. “Let me guess…in nonexistent shorts and a low-cut top?”

  “Yes,” I tell her. I have no idea how she knows this. Summer is long gone, and Ann didn’t live on Penny Lane then. “I swear she used to flirt with Ethan.”

  She offers a tight smile. It fades fast, though, and then she shakes her head. Her eyes dart toward my shoes. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she almost looks hurt. “It’s not polite to gossip.”

  A sort of apology rises to my lips. But before it can find its way out Ann says, “Oh, Sadie. Don’t acquiesce for the likes of Darcy White.”

  DARCY WHITE’S body was discovered at the bottom of the pool at approximately 1:31 a.m. It was too cold for a swim. It appeared she took one anyway.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  HER

  She didn’t have to make things so difficult. It’s not as easy as it looks, holding a person underwater. Easier than smothering them on land—sure. Still, I suppose of all the ways to kill someone, it’s the least labor intensive. Unless, of course, the water is cold. Trust me—then it’s pure hell.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  SADIE

  A person typically drowns in less than a minute. It doesn’t look like it does on TV. Ann knows this, so I know this.

  While distress and panic may sometimes take place beforehand, drowning itself is quick and often silent. A person close to the point of drowning is unable to keep their mouth above water long enough to breathe properly and therefore is unable to shout. Lacking oxygen, their body cannot perform the voluntary efforts involved in waving or seeking attention.

  The instinctive drowning response is the final set of autonomic reactions in the 20 to 60 seconds before the victim sinks fully underwater. Uncontrollable movement of the arms and legs, rarely out of the water. Eyes glassy and empty, unable to focus. Head low in the water, mouth at water level. Head tilted back with mouth open. To the untrained eye these reflexes can look similar to normal, calm behavior.

  In emergency situations, it is advisable to wait for the victim to stop moving or sink before approaching, rescuing, or resuscitating. While the instinctive reaction to drowning is taking place, the victim will latch onto any nearby solid objects in an attempt to get air, which can result in the drowning of a would-be rescuer as well as (or instead of) the original victim.

  Ann knows this, so I know this.

  Not that anyone was watching. No one saw Darcy go in the water. Her friends say she seemed fine, and her husband swears she wasn’t drunk. For several weeks afterward, neighbors speculate on what could have happened. Had she drank too much? Had she meant to do herself harm? Had someone wanted her dead?

  Ann certainly disliked her, and she had been capable of bumping a cyclist with her car, and possibly causing a man to fall from his ladder, but is she really capable of drowning a friend?

  I don’t know. And more importantly, if I did, could I prove it? Should I tell someone, and if so, would they think I was making it all up? It’s all so confusing.

  Ethan always told me I care too much about things that don’t matter. He liked to throw around words like “obsessive” and “neurotic.”

  I realize he is probably right when Ann says, “I’m sorry that she’s dead. But perhaps what really gets me about the whole things is, who is going to remember her, Sadie?”

  Everything about her conveys exasperation, so I tell her I don’t know. She looks tired today, as much as a woman like Ann can. It’s a lot to have a dead body so close to home. Or so I presume.

  She hasn’t mentioned what happened between us in the garage, and she hasn’t made another move. Ann projects. She channels her energy into worry over other things, instead of what’s really bothering her. She expresses her anxiety in her work, in meddling in her children’s problems, in asking questions no one can really answer. She’s different in real life than who she portrays herself to be on the internet. She doesn’t let her problems go to waste. She milks them.

  My mother was like that. Growing up, we didn’t have much. That’s how I know that I haven’t yet hit rock bottom. I’ve seen worse. We were poor. Dirt poor. Irrevocably poor. In turn, mother made sure to never let a thing go to waste. If she cooked a chicken, she’d find a way to use it all. In the same way, I watched her work herself to death until she was all used up. Minus the financially challenged part, Ann is like that. She asks the question again, hoping it will change something. “Outside of her family, who is going to remember Darcy?”

  “Really. I don’t know.”

  “Paul has spoken with the family, and they agreed to donate some of the organs that could be salvaged.”

  “Salvaged?”

  “Organs need oxygen to survive, Sadie. Darcy drowned,” she says as though I’m unaware. “The water was cold. So there’s that.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Ann gives me the side eye. “It means there are a few things they can work with.”

  “Like what?”

  “Bone, liver, corneas…skin.”

  My mind can go a lot of places, I’ll admit. But it never, not even once, went there. I don’t know what to say. Ann is expanding my life. She is very informed about a lot of things, and I don’t want to seem unintelligent by asking too many questions. Now is not the time to say the wrong thing. Not when she’s in this kind of mood. “Well, at least some good is going to come of it.”

  “A lot of good, Sadie. A lot of good. You have no idea.”

  I can only shrug. Ann has a way of making a good point.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  SADIE

  A death in the community really shakes things up. For Ann and I, Darcy’s untimely departure certainly has that effect. She goes radio silent on me. She gets busy. As usual, some places inside of her are easy to reach. But others are encrypted, grueling to decode.

  Paul comes home for a week, and Ann says they need time. I worry that she’s using this as an excuse to avoid me. Maybe she’s changed her mind. Maybe she’s had enough of me. She wouldn’t be the first person. If anything, I’ve learned when you think you know what you’re dealing with, you usually don’t.

  Still, Ann assures me everything is fine, she says time is important in a marriage. She says it’s all you have.

  It certainly feels like all I have. I go to DUI class, I come home. Chet waits. Chet works. Chet and I have sex. Chet leaves and I’m thankful for another day to slow his progress. I lay in bed and toss and turn. I don’t sleep. Eventually, the sun rises. Chet comes back. I do it all again. Lather, rinse, repeat. This is my life.

  I can sense the world is going on without me. It feels like I’m sleepwalking through this one and precious life. All the while, Ann is slipping away. My home is slipping away. My marriage is slipping away. My bank account is dwindling. I’m about to be homeless. There aren’t many subbing gigs to be had lately, which is a real bummer because I need the money in a bad way. Even if it isn’t much.

  Maybe this is rock bottom, I think as I lie there each night. By dawn, I’m certain. It has to be.

  THANKFULLY, near the end of the week, I finally get a call. Strep has hit the campus, and they need me to sub. Sometimes you realize you’re just one unfortunate circumstance away from better luck. Relief floods over me. Sometimes what feels like rock bottom is maybe just a blip.

  There’s only one problem. I’ve only made it halfway down the driveway before I’m forced to come to a full stop.

  Ann is pacing back and forth across my drive.

  She’s like an apparition. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s pouring rain out—it’s
the kind of day I would have just as soon preferred to stay in bed. But not Ann. I note her running clothes. They’re new. I note the way they hug her body. Jealousy washes over me like rain. If only she didn’t have to be so hardcore. She never misses a run, not even for rain, apparently not even for time with Paul.

  It’s not just her attire that is seductive. She wears a Cheshire Cat grin, as though I’ve been caught doing something interesting, when really I’m just going to work.

  She waves and I ease up on the brake, roll backward a little, and let down my window. Ann rests her hands on the door and leans in. “Where are you off to?”

  “They called me to sub.”

  “Oh,” she huffs, glancing toward the house. After a few seconds she backs away from the car. She folds over to rest her hands on her knees. She’s panting hard. When she speaks, it’s forced out in bursts. “Speaking of…I’m glad I caught you. I wanted to ask…”

  I wait and wait and wait. Rain trickles in.

  When she finally looks up, her brow is knitted. “Have you noticed anything strange with Amelia?”

  “Amelia?” I shake my head. “No. Why?”

  “Who’s been picking her up after school?”

  My heart picks up pace. “I’m not really sure. Subbing is still slow. Today is the first time I’ve gotten a call in forever.”

  Ann has the icy look down to an art. She offers it so freely now.

  “What? They haven’t really needed me.”

  “Before that.”

  I pretend to mull it over. “I couldn’t say. I’m in the classroom. Mostly.”

  “But you’ve seen her, right?”

  “It’s a huge campus.”

  “Still, you must have seen her…she hasn’t been riding the bus. As a matter of fact—I’m pretty sure she’s been lying to me for weeks.”

  “Oh...”

  Ann rolls her neck, and then arches her back in full stretch before resting her hands on her hips. I mustn’t forget, she’s trained at spotting liars, trained at sussing out the details she wants. “Who was she with, Sadie? When you saw her?”