Beneath Her Skin

by Gregg Olsen

  “She’s one scared pup,” he said, “but now that she’s back with you, look at that tail wag!”

  Valerie didn’t even think to say the dog didn’t belong to her.

  Because the dog did.

  The Ryans loved Hedda, though no one else seemed to. They weren’t sure of her age, but a vet in Kingston put her at five or six when she was found on the bridge. The suggested age made the Ryans sad, as they knew that under the best of circumstances Hedda would be theirs for only a short time.

  And yet, the tubby little dachshund kept going. She was seventeen and really no worse for wear than a dog half her age. Her fur had grayed quite a bit and her hearing had dulled, but her eyes were bright and unmistakably alert.

  Valerie picked up the water dish and rinsed it in the sink. She washed out the food dish too. Instead of putting them away, she refilled both and set them on the place mat that the girls had bought at Petco in Silverdale. The mealtime mat read:

  DOGGONE IT’S DINNER TIME

  Valerie disregarded the words and smiled for the first time in a long while.

  The dog might be gone, but she’s definitely coming back.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Talking with Starla at school would never, ever happen. Even though she was only a sophomore, she was always surrounded by gatekeepers, wannabes and hangers-on. Hayley and Taylor knew they had to go over to her house to see her, which always meant the risk of running into Port Gamble’s resident sleaze. Not Mindee Larsen—though a case could be made for that—but Jake Damon, a man who left footprints of slime in his wake.

  At least, that’s what most Port Gamble teenage girls thought whenever he was brought up in casual conversation. Even a blind girl with a halfway decent service animal could detect how Jake’s hooded eyes traveled over a female’s body, as if he were taking a tour of what he’d like to touch. They noticed how, at the first hint of warmish weather, he’d plant himself along the edge of the bay to smoke and watch the girls as they lay out on blankets to suntan Washington-style—which usually meant a bad sunburn under overcast skies. No one could argue that Jake wasn’t good-looking. He was. He had nice eyes and straighter teeth than most handymen, with their picket-fence grins. He had a better body than those whose stomachs overhung dinner-plate-sized belt buckles. Jake never wandered around town in butt-crack-revealing, low-slung jeans.

  Taylor and Hayley, however, didn’t think Jake was hot in the least. In fact, behind Jake’s back the twins referred to Starla’s “momster’s” boyfriend as “Mr. Yuk,” because of the smiley-face tattoo on his right bicep. That undoubtedly was meant to be ironic, as it looked more like a poison-control sticker when he flexed, which was constantly.

  When the twins arrived at the Larsen house a few days after Katelyn’s funeral, they were relieved to see that Mindee’s car, a late-model red Cabriolet with a ragtop she’d repaired herself with duct tape after her husband ditched her, was gone. Also missing was Jake’s Toyota Tacoma, a dumb name for a small pickup truck if ever there was one. Who, Beth Lee once wondered aloud, would ever want to drive a pickup named after Tacoma?

  It made as much sense as calling a sexy sports car a Boise.

  Starla opened the door. She was wearing a pale pink top and dark-dyed jeans. The top, like most of the things she wore around the house, was her mother’s. Mindee could be trashy, but she had good stuff among the crap that she’d collected from the middling boutiques at the Kitsap Mall. Starla wore whatever she could hustle from her mom’s wardrobe because it meant less wear and tear on her own things.

  “Are you two collecting for something?” Starla asked.

  Somehow Starla could always manage a few words that rubbed their recipient the wrong way. Next to mounting the top of the human pyramid on the football field, it was one of her best talents.

  “That was last year,” Hayley said. “By the way, we never did get that money for the breast cancer walk. But that’s not why we’re here.”

  Starla made an annoyed face as she one-handedly clipped her tangle of long hair into a messy bun.

  Another skill.

  “You want to come inside?”

  Taylor pushed past the cheerleader. “It’s super cold out here. Thanks for inviting us in.”

  The Larsen house was as it always was—a total mess. Mindee wasn’t a hoarder, per se. But she was an incorrigible collector of the kinds of things that Valerie Ryan liked to call “dust catchers.” On the table next to the front door was Mindee’s collection of Scottie dogs. She seemed to embrace the concept that if one was good, fifty was awesome. Her kitchen was done up with more chickens and roosters than a KFC. The living room was less cluttered, save for the sofa table and its clutch of glass egg-shaped paperweights.

  Teagan was playing a video game on the computer in the family room. He brightened a little when he saw Hayley and Taylor.

  “Double trouble,” he said, trying to be cool.

  “Hey, that’s clever. Let me write that down,” Hayley said, pretending to smile. “You are so funny.”

  Taylor smiled, trying to defuse her sister’s annoyance at the kid she’d babysat a couple of times—and never wanted to again. “Actually, we’re twice as nice,” she said.

  “Whatever,” Teagan said as he went back to bombing New York City with a scary kind of enthusiasm.

  “What do you two want?” Starla asked.

  “I’d like a diet soda, please,” Hayley said.

  “Water for me,” Taylor added.

  Starla made a face. “Okay, but I didn’t mean that. Why are you here? Not that it’s not nice to see you, but we really don’t hang out anymore. Not since I made cheer.”

  You have to throw that out as if it were winning the Pulitzer, Hayley thought.

  “We’re here about Katelyn,” Hayley said. “Can we talk in your room?”

  Starla eyed her warily. “I guess, but do you still want the drinks?”

  “No,” Taylor said. “We’re good.”

  They followed Starla upstairs. It had been a couple of years since they’d been in Starla’s inner sanctum. The last time they’d been there, she had posters of pop stars and hippy-dippy beaded curtains she bought at Spencer’s back in seventh grade.

  This time it was completely different. Taylor almost gasped when Starla swung open the door.

  The walls looked like mirrors. Everywhere they turned were pictures of… Starla. She was posing in her Buccaneers’ uniform (with and without pom-poms) and in some ridiculous evening-wear attire that reminded Hayley of getups she’d seen in kids’ pageants on TV. There were even some images of Starla practicing her cheer routine in the backyard.

  “Motivation,” Starla explained, picking up on the girls’ obvious stares. “I read in a magazine that if you surround yourself with the best that you are, you’ll get even better. I have a lot more to work with, but you two should give it a try.”

  You’re a real piece of work, Taylor thought, but thankfully she managed to hold her tongue. She and her sister were there for a reason—and an important one at that.

  Hayley studied the photo of Starla in the backyard. In the background, off to the side, was Katelyn, standing with slumped shoulders and a sad look on her face.

  The reason they were there.

  “We wanted to talk about Katelyn,” Hayley said. “Do you think she actually killed herself?”

  “I don’t know. I guess she had a lot to live for,” Starla said halfheartedly, as though she was not sure if that was true. She planted herself on a big pink beanbag, the only item that either visitor remembered. Beth Lee had once hurled all over it during a sleepover when Mindee served salmon cakes (“made up of two cans of salmon—the good kind”) and Tater Tots. The memory was disgusting, but it still made Taylor smile. Just the idea of Beth retching over a beanbag was awesome enough, but the fact that it was Starla Larsen’s made it absolutely sweet.

  “I heard Hedda went missing. Did she come home yet?”

  “No,” Taylor said. “Have you
seen her?”

  Starla shook her head. “Oh, no! What kind of a friend would I be if I didn’t call you the very second I saw her?”

  You would be a rotten friend, thought Hayley.

  A friend like Starla Larsen, thought Taylor.

  Like most bedrooms in the historic district, Starla’s room was small and there weren’t many places to sit. Hayley slid to the floor, resting her back against Starla’s white wrought-iron daybed. It had a lemon-and-cherry print duvet and enough ruffled pillows that it seemed it would take an hour to scoot them aside to make space to sleep at night. Taylor swiveled the white and black plastic IKEA desk chair around to face the other two.

  “Katie was pretty messed up,” Starla said.

  Hayley tried to get comfortable by shifting her weight. The hardwood floor was, well, hard.

  “Messed up enough to kill herself?” Taylor asked.

  “Teen suicide is rampant in this country,” Starla said, readjusting her messy bun. “I did a paper on it.”

  Hayley gave up on being comfortable. “Katelyn was your best friend.”

  Starla shook her head. She did so slowly and without making eye contact.

  “Correction,” she said. “And I know this will sound harsh, and harsh is not at all what I’m about, but she was most definitely not my best friend. I might have been her best friend, but not the other way around.”

  “All right,” Taylor said. “But you knew her better than anyone. You would have noticed it if she was spiraling downward, thinking of killing herself. Right?”

  Starla punched at the beanbag to spread its flattened Styrofoam beads. “Look, I’ve been busy. I feel horrible about what happened to Katie. But if you’re looking for me to give you some insight—and I don’t even know why you’d care—I can’t do that.”

  “What about last fall? Can you tell us about that?” Hayley asked. “What happened?”

  Starla refused to meet Hayley’s gaze. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Taylor picked up the beat in the conversation. “Something happened. Her mother was really mad about it.”

  “Her mother was always pissed off at something,” Starla said. Her tone was dismissive and mean.

  “Right,” Taylor said. “But what happened, Starla?”

  Starla appeared to think for a moment. It was hard to tell sometimes—not because she wasn’t smart; she was. She was just very, very cagey.

  “I don’t know,” she said, hesitating a little. It was clear the Ryan twins weren’t going to leave her alone without some kind of revelation.

  “Tell us, Starla. Katie would want us to know,” Taylor said, nearly wincing at her own words. Who knew what anyone would want, especially a dead girl?

  Well, maybe she and her sister would.

  “It might have to do with stealing that money from the till at the Timberline,” Starla said, getting up from the giant pink beanbag.

  “What money? What are you talking about?” Hayley asked.

  “She took some cash out of the register so she could get away.”

  Taylor leaned closer. “Run away?”

  “Not really,” Starla said. “She took the money and caught the Bainbridge ferry to Seattle to see her boyfriend.”

  “Boyfriend?” Taylor asked.

  Starla looked around, refusing to meet either girl’s piercing gaze. “Some online guy,” she said. “I don’t know any more about it.”

  Again, Taylor pushed. “She never told you his name?”

  Starla got up and started walking toward her bedroom door; her very clear signal that the conversation was over.

  “Cullen Anthony, I think,” she said. “But I don’t even know if the dude is real or not. Katelyn had gotten weirder.”

  “How weird? What do you mean?” Hayley asked.

  “She was so, I don’t know… it seems embarrassing to admit it, but she seemed so jealous of me.”

  Like that was some kind of admission she didn’t want to make. Starla reveled in the jealousy that swirled around her. She didn’t always live in What-About-Me-City, but she’d done a good job finding a spot on the town’s main drag.

  Taylor picked up on the meat of what Starla had said. “Weirder, how?”

  “I don’t even think the boyfriend she wanted to meet was real.”

  “No?” Hayley asked, interested in that repeated disclosure.

  Starla continued talking as she walked down the hallway, down the stairs. Teagan was hovering by the entrance to the kitchen.

  “It is so sad,” she said. “But I think Katie just kind of lost it after she didn’t make cheer again this year. I wanted her to… I did everything I could. And when she didn’t make it, I had to distance myself from her a little—for obvious reasons.”

  Obvious reasons? Like the fact that if you were a bigger biatch you’d have to sleep in a kennel at night? That kind of obvious reason? thought Hayley.

  Before Starla opened the front door to shove the twins back out into the cold air, Hayley reached into her pocket and pulled out the WATCHING YOU note.

  “I don’t think she made up her boyfriend,” she said.

  Starla took the note and warily eyed Hayley, then Taylor.

  “What’s this?” she said, taking the message.

  “What do you think it is?” Taylor said in a voice unable to mask her anger. “Your best friend—or rather, the girl who considered you her best friend—had someone in her life.”

  Starla looked up from the paper and twisted the doorknob.

  “I don’t know anything about this,” she said as the winter air blasted inside. “I’m sorry that we have to cut our visit so short. I have some chores to do before Mom and Jake come home.”

  Taylor scoffed but said nothing.

  Chores? When did Starla go all Little House? Or when did she do anything but worship her face in the mirror?

  After dinner, Taylor put up a second LOST DOG posting on Craigslist, this time with a photo of Hedda taken by their mother on Christmas Day. The dog was curled up like a kielbasa in front of the crackling fireplace, looking cozy and reasonably alert—at least for Hedda. Hayley created a LOST DOG flyer using the same photo and, by the end of the day, Beth, Colton and the girls had plastered it all over Port Gamble.

  None of their friends thought that Hedda was a particularly good-looking or smart dog, because, to be completely fair, she wasn’t. Beth, in particular, had been merciless in teasing Taylor and Hayley about the dog over the years.

  “I saw a dog just like yours that used a skateboard to get around because it had no legs,” she said one time.

  “She has legs, Beth,” Taylor said a little defensively.

  Another time…

  “The Ugliest Dog in America is ramping up again. It’s time that disgusting Chinese Crested with the overbite is given the boot. I was thinking that Hedda has a shot at the title.”

  “She’s not ugly, Beth.”

  “I’m just saying,” Beth said.

  As they stapled flyers to the kiosk by the General Store, Beth admitted something that surprised the others.

  “I hope we find her. I really, really like that little dog.”

  “I thought you hated her,” Colton said.

  “Tells you how much you know about me, Colt. I’m more than what I say,” she said, before waving goodbye from the corner and heading home.

  Taylor walked a few steps ahead of her sister and Colton, who always found a moment to linger alone together. She looked up at Katelyn’s bedroom as they passed the Berkley house. She wondered if Mr. Berkley was watching from the darkened room. She nodded in the direction of Jake, next door, who, despite the weather and the season, was barbecuing something that actually smelled pretty good.

  For meat, anyway.

  She wondered if they’d ever learn what really happened to Katelyn on that awful night.

  Talk to us, Katie, she said to herself.

  As the three of them walked to their side-by-side houses, no one called out to Hedda. The
re was no point in it. Hedda was half-deaf. There was a more disquieting reason too. The air was so cold that if the missing dog had been outside, she’d have frozen to death by then. The wind blew hard across the water. It was harsh and decisive. Port Gamble on a cold winter’s night was no place for a short-legged dog, ugly or not.

  Later that night, as Taylor burrowed under her blankets and drifted off to sleep, Katelyn remained on her mind.

  And so did someone else. Someone she could not see as her eyes fluttered behind her shut eyelids.

  Fingertips moved slowly across the keyboard, stopping and starting as if each keystroke were a separate word followed by a period. Stop. Start. In a way, it was almost like Morse code. Rat. Tat. Tat. It was as though whoever was writing the message used the depression of each key to shoot anger at a target far away in cyberspace.

  Katelyn stared at the computer screen, her heart beating faster. She knew she was moving closer and closer to something a little dangerous. But danger was needed. Her life had become pathetic on every front. Her mom was drinking more often. Her dad was growing more distant. Starla, her best friend, could no longer see fit to even smile in her direction.

  Not that she deserved a smile, but even so, one would have been welcomed.

  A flurry of messages zipped across the screen in the chat window:

  Cullant: meet me @sSattle ctr. By that ugly ass fountain. U know the 1.

  Katiebug: i climbed in it last may @folk life when it wz really hot.

  Cullant: that’s lame

  Katiebug: i know. My parents lyk that crap. Flutes. Latvian dancing. Whatever.

  Finally, this came across her computer screen:

  Cullant: only a renaiss fair wud b wrse. Meet me. Let’s get away frm evry1—esp parents. Let’s get the hell outta here.

  She liked that he used the word parents, because part of her still held the possibility that he was some old freak messing with her. She’d watched Dateline and knew “To Catch a Predator” episodes never failed to showcase some beer-guzzling creep with a sackful of Four Lokos and a pocketful of roofies.