Beneath Her Skin

by Gregg Olsen

  It was worse than a flea bite that never went away.

  “What’s gotten into you, Taylor?”

  Finally, another chance to be direct, and Taylor took it. “Maybe the fact that all you ever do is hang out with him. What about Katelyn? And the ‘look’ message? We’re nowhere with it. What are you two so busy doing all the time, anyway?”

  Hayley clearly didn’t like what she was hearing. “What is that supposed to mean exactly? If you’re accusing me of something, I would prefer it if you’d just spell it out.”

  Taylor held her ground. “You know.”

  “Colton and I are just hanging out.”

  “Hey, I’m your twin. Don’t lie to me. Save it for someone who doesn’t give a crap,” Taylor spat out, trying to bury her jealousy.

  Hayley wasn’t buying it. “Look,” she said, “there’s a lot going on around here that we don’t know. The two of us need to stick together to figure it all out. In the meantime, I would appreciate it if you’d please lay off the Colton jabs.”

  With that, she turned the knob of the back door and was gone.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jealousy, annoyance, whatever it was, reverberated between Hayley and Taylor with a vengeance. Maybe it was because they had come from the same egg, or maybe it was because even after the womb they spent so much time together. Whatever the case, the girls shared and experienced intense emotions simultaneously. The energy was almost a twin-sense, telegraphed to each other silently through the air like sound waves.

  Didn’t everyone feel that way? Didn’t everyone understand the transference of emotion in the same manner?

  They didn’t, of course.

  Hayley’s ability to capture feelings and images came to her differently from Taylor’s. The older sister by less than a minute, Taylor could immerse herself in water and infuse her brainwaves with the past thoughts of others. Hayley’s pathway was more tactile. The transmission that came to her often came through her fingertips. It was as if she could touch an object, a person—dead or alive—and capture an instant in the real, present world.

  She’d touched Katelyn’s laptop, and the exchange of the moment had taken place.

  Two days after school had started, Hayley sat at the kitchen table, her parents gone somewhere, her sister upstairs reading her latest US Weekly. She drank a glass of water because water always helped the process. She shut her eyes and tried to recall the images that had flashed too quickly through her head in Katelyn’s room. She needed to see it all in slo-mo in order to understand it. She waited. She did what she and Taylor called “hope and focus.”

  In a moment, the images came. There was a computer. Hayley could tell that a person was typing on one machine and sending the words to Katelyn’s shiny silver laptop. She watched fingers glide over the keyboard as if each grenade being dropped were a mere powder puff. One fluent keystroke after another. There was very little hesitation because the writer of the message knew exactly which words to use.

  Cullant: i’m not a total stalkr but i’ve bn watching u, katelyn.

  Hayley watched as the pair typed.

  Katiebug: u sound lk a perv.

  Cullant: not @all!!! It does sound pervy 2 watch someone. Lol. Truth is if u weren’t so hot—i 100% mean that in the right way—i would just ask u out.

  Katiebug: ru a freak or what?

  Hayley sipped the tepid tap water, and then let a flood of it down her throat.

  Cullant: no. Just a guy who doesn’t want 2 get shot dwn by the hottst girl @khs. That’s u, katelyn. U know, u really r.

  She could feel that Katelyn knew every reason why she should just stop the online conversation and maybe report the guy to someone. But Katelyn wasn’t exactly sure, however, who the boss of the Internet was anyway. It didn’t seem like there was an Internet police either. Every day her email inbox was stacked with ads for Viagra (gross), breast enhancers (not!) and offers from Nigerians to share their fortune (tempting, but no thanks).

  Hayley was irritated by the digression, though she completely agreed with Katelyn’s thoughts. She hoped and refocused on more of what she was after, and what she was seeking came forth.

  Instead of telling someone or giving the boy on the other side of the computer screen the big kiss-off, Katelyn, who’d never felt lonelier in her life, answered him.

  Katiebug: thx, i guess. But i don’t know anything bout u. Ur not like that phantom of the opera guy. Ru?

  Cullant: don’t like opera. Boring.

  Katelyn shook her head and typed.

  Katiebug: lol. Meant the broadway musical. Freak w/a burned up face falls 4 a woman & doesn’t want her see his butt-ugly face.

  Cullant: i’m tld i have a nice butt.

  Katelyn smiled. The guy hitting on her was actually kind of funny. Maybe a little clueless, but amusing, nevertheless. The boys at Kingston were in one of two camps—either a slacker or a jock who measured his muscles in the reflection of the school’s crowded trophy case. None seemed to understand for a single nanosecond that talking to a girl was hotter than a Dirty Girl Scout drink, a blanket and a quickie down at the beach.

  Far, far, hotter.

  Cullant: i want 2 meet u.

  Katiebug: dn’t know if i’m rdy. 2b w/u in person might be more thn i cn handle.

  More than she can handle? She could handle plenty. That is, if someone gave her something to sink her teeth into… er… hold. Whatever!

  Katelyn started to type just as her mother entered the room. Sandra Berkley had been drinking since five that afternoon and she was clearly feeling the effects of the alcohol. She’d switched to vodka earlier in the year because she was under the erroneous assumption that it didn’t have an odor. Of course, it didn’t have the sweet smell that wafted out of a whiskey drinker’s mouth, but it did carry the hard-edge scent that reminded Katelyn of Listerine. Minus the minty freshness, of course.

  “What do you want?” Katelyn asked, sending a perceptible glare in the direction of her nosy, drunk and all-too-predictable mom.

  “That’s no way to talk to your mother, Katelyn.”

  “You haven’t acted like my mother since I was seven,” Katelyn said from behind her laptop. She’d swiveled on the edge of the bed so that her mother could see only the back of her computer.

  Sandra brushed her dark, limp hair from her forehead in a display of dramatic effect that was meant to show impatience and tolerance at the same time.

  “Must we always go there?” she asked, slumping on the foot of the bed.

  Katelyn closed the chat app on her laptop, just in case her mother’s vision was less blurry than she expected it to be.

  “I guess so,” she said. “I guess we must. Where’s Dad? Shouldn’t you be downstairs fighting with him?”

  Sandra wrapped her arms around her shoulders, trying to convey that she was freezing or maybe a little vulnerable.

  In reality, Katelyn was sure that her mother was merely trying to steady herself. She’d overdone it, like she always did.

  “What are you doing online?” her mom asked. Sandra put her hand on the laptop, but Katelyn flicked it away.

  “Homework. What do you think?”

  “Don’t get lippy with me,” she said.

  Katelyn let out a sigh. It was exaggerated, but with her mom drinking too much, emotions sometimes had to be painted with very, very broad strokes. It was the only way to ensure that something, anything, got through her mother’s alcohol-induced haze.

  “I’m not lippy,” Katelyn said. “I’m just tired, Mom. Tired of you not trusting me.”

  The images faded and Hayley fought hard to hold on to what she was “seeing.”

  Suddenly Sandra reappeared. This time she was wearing jeans and a sweater, and her hair was clipped back from her face. She was angry and she stood to leave. “I won’t ever trust you after what you did last fall.”

  She spun on her heel, shot her own glare in the direction of her daughter and left the bedroom.

  Katelyn sat t
here seething.

  Last fall. There would always be that to throw in her face.

  * * *

  Taylor came into the kitchen to get a post-hanging-out-with-Beth snack. A slice of cold leftover Hawaiian pizza sounded good just then. And since she was the only one in the house who’d eat it, there were always leftovers for her. She glanced over at her sister and the empty water glass.

  “Hopeful and focused?” she asked, a little more quietly than needed. They were, after all, home alone. “Anything?”

  Hayley looked up and nodded. “Yeah, although I’m not sure what it means or if it really has anything to do with Katelyn’s death.”

  Taylor took her pizza from the refrigerator, grabbed a too-long streamer of paper towels, and slid into a chair facing Hayley.

  “What did you get?”

  Hayley drew a deep breath and exhaled. She was wiped out from the experience of seeing the conversation play out over Katelyn’s laptop.

  “She had an online hookup,” Hayley said. “Did you know that?”

  Taylor picked at an errant piece of pineapple and shook her head. “Who?”

  “I have no idea,” Hayley said. “It felt kind of deep, kind of personal.”

  “Personal how?”

  “Katelyn seemed really interested in him. She was really happy. It was like that boy was the only thing that lifted her heart. I didn’t get all the information. Her mom interrupted them.”

  Taylor nodded. “Her mother is the worst.”

  “Her mother’s mother is, that’s for sure,” Hayley said, remembering the visit with the family after Katelyn died.

  Hayley closed her eyes and tried to replay the last part of what she’d felt.

  Taylor was impatient, something she was pretty good at being. “Well?”

  “Give me a second, okay?” Hayley said.

  Though Hayley kept her eyes shut, Taylor could see them move back and forth under their clamped lids. She finished her pizza and wondered when Hayley had started to wear that hideous frosted slate-gray eye shadow, but she didn’t say anything. She waited. Not everything could be rushed to meet the schedule of a ticking clock.

  Hayley opened her eyes. “Something happened last fall,” she said. “I’m not sure what it was, but it was something big. Her mom said she had ‘trust’ issues with Katelyn.”

  “Like what? What did she do?”

  “I have no idea. She didn’t say, and I didn’t get anything to point us in the right direction—except a reference to last fall.”

  “Last fall?”

  “Yeah. They said something about last fall,” Hayley repeated.

  “What happened? Where was she in the fall?”

  “I can’t really think of anything. We didn’t see her much. Remember, she and Starla were always practicing for cheer?”

  Taylor nodded. “Ugh, I hated that. With a passion. We could hear them jumping up and down and yelling from our backyard.”

  “That’s right,” Hayley said. “I remember it was intense.”

  “Maybe it was related to cheer?”

  “I doubt it, but there’s one person who might know.”

  Taylor gave her sister a knowing look.

  Starla Larsen—Port Gamble’s It-girl. She’d be worth a visit. It would have to be at her house, not at school. Since she had picked up her pom-poms, Starla was too cool to acknowledge any of the old Daisy Troop girls she’d known forever.

  They were a step way too low on the popularity ladder.

  Later that evening, Taylor’s phone vibrated with a text from Beth.

  Beth: Saw weirdo over by K’s house.

  Port Gamble was not a big town, but it had plenty of weirdos.

  Taylor: What weirdo?

  Beth: Segway guy.

  Taylor: What was he doing?

  Beth: dunno. Segwaying. Like always. He gives me the creeps.

  Taylor: My dad checked him out. Harmless creep.

  Beth: Perv.

  Taylor: Not a perv.

  Beth: He just hovers round there. Right?

  Taylor: What if he was K’s fake bf?

  Beth: That’s really gross. He’s like 40.

  Segway Guy was closer to fifty, but Taylor let it go. One of Beth’s fortes was her ability to underestimate everything.

  Even so, Taylor did think Segway Guy was a little creepy. Seriously, riding around in a Segway without at least a little irony about the spectacle?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Taylor Ryan filled the old, white clawfoot tub with too much water, nearly sending a small wave over its rolled edges. Since childhood, she always wanted the water as deep as possible—deep enough to dive down and hold her breath. One, two, three. Her record was 177 seconds. Her sister’s was about the same. She was fifteen now, and getting into the water on that night had nothing to do with trying to set a new record. Hayley had tried to find out more about Katelyn’s death, and Taylor wanted to dip her toe into these waters herself.

  Literally.

  The air in the bathroom was cool, and the steam from the bathwater collided with the mirror. Taylor noticed the circular motions she’d left on the surface of the glass the last time she’d been stuck with bathroom cleaning duty. She undressed, folding her favorite Hollister jeans, pale pink cami, and cream-colored merino wool sweater into a neatly squared stack on top of the toilet seat. Slowly, she stepped into the hot depths of the bathtub. Her hair, no longer as blonde as it had been in the summer, was pulled back in a messy ponytail. As she slid down to cover her body, she could feel the water wick slowly up her backbone, like hot fingers along each of the knobs of her vertebrae.

  The water shut out all of her senses. No sound. No air upon her face. No sight. Just the stillness of a blanket of hot water. Taylor let it all go. She had been thinking of Katelyn all day, and her sister had brought them a bit closer to finding out what had happened. That evening, the water, the sensory deprivation, the forced concentration held the answer to questions that she and Hayley had asked over and over since their visit to the Berkley house.

  What happened to Katelyn?

  Like the flood of images that sometimes came to Hayley through touch, what transpired underwater with Taylor couldn’t be explained—at least not to anyone’s satisfaction. Not that either of the twins ever tried to come up with the reasons for it or how they discovered it. In truth, they really weren’t sure of its origin. It just happened, like the random way things happen in nature.

  All on their own.

  They talked about it through their bedroom outlet intercom, but only occasionally, and always with great respect—respect that came from the fear of whatever it meant, whatever was happening to them.

  Or where it came from.

  Sometimes Taylor practiced immersions, but with the discretion that comes with keeping something secret. One time, Valerie came in and found Taylor floating under the surface of the bathtub, and her mother had screamed.

  “Are you okay? What are you doing?”

  The words came at the girl with a rifle-shot of panic that startled her so much, it had almost made Taylor ashamed of being naked.

  Now, she lay perfectly still and dropped below the surface. Quiet. Focused. A surge of feelings that somehow translated into images emerged. What visual cues came at her were never from a memory of her own. These memories belonged to others. Sometimes they came in a steady stream, like swirling orbs linked up in a video shooting gallery game. They moved quickly. So fast, in fact, that she experienced a kind of upper neck pain akin to whiplash. Looking, following, trying to see whatever it was.

  Other times the images were more static, without a sense of urgency.

  Five seconds into the immersion.

  Though her eyes were closed, Taylor felt tears underneath her eyelids. In front of her she saw a horizontal box of white light. Along the left side were tiny rows of black.

  Ants on an envelope? That didn’t make sense at all.

  Twenty seconds passed.

  She turned
her head in the water and imagined her eyes open, staring hard at the white block in front of her. The ants had moved. In fact, the ants were moving across the blank field, shifting in and out of focus.

  What is it?

  Forty-five seconds elapsed.

  Her lungs were beginning to strain a little. It had been a long time since she’d held her breath for a minute or more.

  I’m not ready to stop, she thought. And just what are those nasty ants doing?

  Her hands floated toward the surface, a reflex to grab onto the edge of the tub and pull herself out. Taylor ignored the impulse and willed her body to stay just where it was.

  A minute and fifteen seconds.

  They weren’t ants, but letters.

  Okay, Taylor thought, what are they saying?

  Seven words spun by and she grabbed at them. The first five were easy, but she kept failing on the last two.

  LEWD HOT ROD KOALA FURL

  Three minutes underwater.

  Taylor’s lungs were going to explode. She strained as hard as she ever had.

  I’m not giving up, she thought as she fought the physical compulsion to rise up and breathe.

  Katelyn’s dead. She’s got a messed-up family. She didn’t need to die. I need that last part of the message. She wants me to have the words! Give me those words, Katelyn!