I clear my throat, forcing an awkward pause. They both look up like they’re surprised I’m still there. “I just have to ask,” I say. “Did you leave this comment on Naomi’s Instagram?”
I slide my phone over the coffee table to a screenshot of the comment where that random user had written Come home, Mila. Come home to me.
Thomas turns red and he rubs a hand on the back of his neck. “Uh . . .”
Naomi raises her eyebrows.
“You wrote this?” she asks, incredulous. “I totally forgot about this, but it freaked me out.”
Thomas looks down. “I’m so embarrassed,” he says. “I did write that. Right after Mila said she didn’t want me to come to Edgewater.” He looks down at his lap. “I just . . . I wanted to reach her.”
“With a creepy comment from a gibberish account?” I ask, perhaps a little too bluntly.
Naomi stifles a small laugh but Thomas doesn’t flinch. “That was the day before I went to Malibu. I was in a rough place. I just thought . . . I don’t know,” he says, small. “I deleted it a few hours later when I realized how dumb it was.”
Naomi looks at me with pity in her eyes and I know we’re both thinking the same thing. This man isn’t a killer.
“We should go,” Naomi says, turning to Thomas. “Mila would have wanted to get to know the new you,” she says. “So would Shawna. You should call her.”
Thomas starts to cry again, mopping his face with his white T-shirt.
I stand and extend a hand for an awkward shake, not knowing what else to do. But Thomas pulls me in for a tight, urgent hug. When he releases me, my limbs feel like jelly.
“Thank you for coming by,” he says. “It’s good to remember Mila. To talk about her.”
Naomi nods. “I think so too.”
“Now,” he says. “Let’s find the fucker who did this.”
33
ELLIE
I used to love Halloween. You could be anyone. A superhero. A politician. A pop star. Anyone but a Steckler. Stella was never into it, but me? I planned for months. By the first week of the school year, Bethany and I had our matching costumes planned perfectly. One year we were Arya and Sansa from Game of Thrones. Last year we were Romy and Michele from Bethany’s favorite movie, Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion. No one got it, but that made it even funnier to us.
But this year, everything’s different. Mayor Dickerson canceled the town parade, trick-or-treating is banned after dark, and all anyone can talk about is how there’s a murderer on the loose. I walk into school on October 31, and with every step, I hear Mila’s name whispered behind cupped hands. Even though I have no costume, my desire to be someone else is at an all-time high.
It’s been a week since they found Mila, and the police have nothing. It all makes my stomach flip, my head spin. I pick at my chapped lips and wince as I draw a bit of blood. Shit.
When I get to my locker, I peek over my shoulder and spot Detective Parker, hanging around the doorway to Pérez’s office, leaning up against the wall. He’s been like that since the funeral, just standing around, watching.
“Hey.”
The word startles me and I nearly yelp. Noah stands behind me, his backpack slung over one shoulder. Here, by the lockers, we’re so out in public I feel naked. Anyone can see.
“What?” I ask, stuffing my history textbook back into my bag.
“I just want to know if we’re cool,” he says. “After everything.”
“Cool?” I ask. “That’s not really the word I would use.” I slam my locker shut.
“Look,” he says, exasperated. “Can we just bury the tension, okay? Tam is freaking out about basically everything, so on edge about Mila and the investigation. And we can’t afford to have any more drama between us. Right?”
His words hang between us. The secrets we’ve kept. The truth we know. All my nerves are on fire, and I can feel Parker staring in our direction.
“I’m having a Halloween party this weekend,” Noah says. He shifts from one foot to the other.
“How is that going down?”
“It’s a fundraiser,” Noah says. “Everyone’s gonna pay ten dollars to get in, and we’re going to donate all the money to Mila’s mom to help fund the private investigator. Dickerson okayed it.”
My cheeks flush. “You sure you want to do that?”
Noah doesn’t say anything and I slam my locker shut.
“Bury yourself,” I say. “But leave me out of it.”
“Come on Saturday, okay? It’ll look weird if you don’t.” He rests his palm on my arm and I jerk away at once, a reflex that draws a few stares from the people around us. Parker stands up straight and takes a step toward us. But I can’t have any more attention on me. I can’t have him questioning me.
“I’ll think about it.” I turn and walk away, quickly, trying to stop the bile from coming up through my throat.
* * *
—
“Are you sure you don’t want to come too?” I ask Stella, who flops on my bed, belly-down, on Saturday night.
“Absolutely not,” she says, crinkling her nose and shaking her head violently.
“Come on,” I say. “Don’t make me go alone.” I know there’s no use in trying to convince her otherwise, but Noah’s words stuck with me. It’ll look weird if you don’t.
“Nope,” Stella says. “But I’ll watch you put on whatever ridiculous costume you decide to wear.”
I roll my eyes and rummage around my makeup bag, trying to figure out how to look even remotely festive. Everything feels frivolous. Finally, I fish out a pot of thick, silver glitter and dab some on my eyelids.
Stella flips over onto her back and plants her feet on the bed so her knees point toward the ceiling. She reaches for her phone and starts texting furiously. Whoever’s on the other end is making her smile just slightly.
“Stella Steckler, are you flirting with someone right now?” I say, reaching for her phone.
Stella turns bright red and shoves her phone under her butt. “Maybe don’t go,” she says, changing the subject. “We can watch a movie or something.”
I take a step back. “Okay, whatever this is,” I say, motioning to her, “is weird. When’s the last time you asked me to stay home and watch a movie with you?”
But just like that, the soft expression on her face is gone. “Whatever.”
“I’m going to show face, pay my ten bucks, and get out of there,” I say, already regretting the fact that I’m going. “If I don’t, that’ll just inspire more talk about the Steckler sisters.” I wipe a few loose specks of glitter from my cheeks.
“Your funeral,” she says, then winces. “Bad line.”
“The worst.”
She looks up at me in the mirror. “Who are you supposed to be anyway?”
“A disco ball, I guess.”
She rolls her eyes.
“It’s last-minute, okay?”
“Call me if you need me to come get you,” she says, walking right out my door.
* * *
—
There’s a cavernous pit in my stomach when I arrive at the party alone. It takes every muscle in my body to push open Noah’s front door, and when I do, it seems like the entire school is here. A handful of zombie brides shimmy their chests while a werewolf passes a tray of tequila shots around the room. I spot a whole crew of Mario Kart characters in the kitchen playing Quarters, and I see a few cats, a bottle of sriracha, and someone I don’t recognize wearing what can only be described as a “sexy avocado” outfit.
The music is so loud, the walls vibrate. It’s as if everyone at Edgewater High is about to explode. Here they are, expending all of their pent-up energy, acting out their most depraved desires in fear of what’s happened, of the unknown. There’s a feverish energy that fizzles and cracks as the music swells and t
he stench of sticky beer spreads throughout the main floor. Suddenly, I’m suffocating and I get a creeping feeling that I just should have stayed home.
I push my way to the back of the house and open a sliding door that leads to the deck. The cold air stings my bare skin, and I pull my denim jacket tighter around my middle, hiding my silver sequined top. The backyard is lit up from the fairy lights hanging in the trees, and kids sprawl around on lawn chairs and in little circles on the grass just beyond the deck.
I’ve been here a few times, over the summer, when Noah’s parents were out of town. I know that if I spin around and look up to the right, I’ll see Noah’s bedroom window. His pale-blue wallpaper would show through, as would his cross country trophies that line one wall. You wouldn’t be able to see his plaid comforter or the plastic Simpsons figurines he keeps on his nightstand. Or his seven-foot stack of books from the seventies, the overflow from his bookcase in the corner.
I got to see all of that this summer, the real him, the guy who always kept a paperback in his bag, who wrote silly notes on the dedication pages, and knew a freaky amount of presidential trivia. But now it’s like that part of him doesn’t even exist. All I know, all I can see, is the bro I decided to intertwine myself with in the worst of ways. He’s just a dude who turned my life inside out without a second thought.
“Oh, hey.” I turn at the sound of Raven’s voice behind me. She steps out of the sliding door and shuts it behind her. Her eyes are painted with bright green eyeshadow and she’s wearing a neon-lime bodysuit. Poison Ivy. “We didn’t think you’d show up.” Then she looks me up and down. “What are you supposed to be?”
“A disco ball,” I say, a little defeated.
“Sure,” Raven says. “You okay? You’ve seemed distracted in practice and stuff. I mean, I even beat you yesterday,” she says, a smile curling on her face.
I look at her with a blank stare and scramble for something to say other than Fuck off. “Yeah, I mean, Mila and everything . . .” I let the sentence trail and Raven’s face falls.
“Of course,” she says. “So devastating.” She takes a big swig of a drink and from the face she makes as it goes down, I’m guessing it’s more than half booze. I cross my arms, wondering what the hell she’ll say next. “But we still have to worry about our times, you know? The season is still, like . . . happening.” She takes another gulp. Her glassy eyes meet mine. “Whoever killed her must’ve known the toll it would take on Edgewater’s best runners.”
I feel my stomach lurch. “What do you—” But Raven cuts me off and points to an old swing set over in the corner of the backyard.
“Come on, everyone else is over there.” She grabs a beer from the cooler behind us and hands it to me. I follow her, but my feet are heavy as bricks.
“Well, look who it is,” Bader says, a beer can clenched in his meaty hand. “The lesser of two evils.”
My cheeks burn but I will myself to be strong. “Shut up, Bader. You’re just mad that Stella and I can both beat your PR.”
He grimaces and takes a long swig from his can.
“I’m here to donate to the PI fund, obviously,” I say, the words sounding forced and hollow in my mouth. I swallow hard to keep my dinner down.
“Guess your sister couldn’t do the same,” Julia says under her breath.
I know I should fight back and stand up for Stella, but in this crowd I’m outnumbered. Nothing I could say would change that right now. So I let the conversation flow toward regionals, then State, then back to regionals. It’s all so boring, so ordinary. I can sense Noah trying to catch my eye the entire time, but I avoid him, pretending the can I’m holding is super interesting.
But then I hear a bang coming from the house. I turn to see Tamara slamming the door behind her, looking frazzled and clutching her phone. She’s dressed as Diana Ross, wearing a full Supremes get-up and holding an inflatable microphone. Her sparkly dress shimmers in the moonlight as she rushes toward us. “Did you see?” she asks, shoving the phone into the middle of the group.
“What?” Julia asks.
“Mila.” Tamara breathes heavily and her eyes roam the circle until they land on me. “Parker held a press conference tonight. Look.”
Tamara presses play on a video. Parker takes over the screen and his voice plays through the small speaker. We huddle close to hear him over the music and the cheering from inside the party.
“We are here tonight to release new information about Mila Keene’s disappearance and death. Here is what we know: Mila left her home around dawn on the morning of October 15 to go for her usual run around the Ellacoya Lake Preserve. Until recently, we thought she might have been alone, but we now know that Mila was not alone. She was joined by a female friend, most likely a teammate on the Edgewater varsity cross country team.”
Someone gasps next to me. My hands go numb and my head spins. I look up from the screen to find Noah staring directly at me, terror in his eyes.
“We do not know who she was with, but we have leads that we will be following.”
Tamara’s hands shake as she tries to hold the phone for us. The tension in the circle is palpable, a beating heart about to burst. Back on the screen, Parker clears his throat and continues speaking.
“We are now ready to release more information about Mila’s death. We hope doing so will encourage those of you who may have tips to share them with the police department.” He takes a deep breath. “Mila was found on the Oak Tower trail, inside a deep pit, which had been covered in a blanket of leaves and brush. That’s why it took so long to find her. She was wearing black spandex leggings, a blue long-sleeve Edgewater cross country shirt, and one lilac Nike sneaker. Her other shoe was found fifty yards away with its shoelace missing.”
Someone in the circle gasps at that last detail, a freaky similarity to the cold cases.
“Our medical examiner found two broken ribs, a head wound, and a twisted ankle, all sustained pre-mortem,” Parker continues. “The cause of death has been determined as blunt force trauma. Right now we are treating this as a homicide.”
I cover my hand with my mouth, trying not to barf or cry or scream. Julia ekes out a small sob.
“While Miss Keene’s death somewhat resembles the Edgewater cold cases, we are not convinced that this crime was committed by the same perpetrator or perpetrators,” Parker says. “As many of you know, it rained in the days following Mila’s disappearance, thus compromising the crime scene and much of the evidence. We are imploring you, our community, to come forward now if you know anything about Mila’s untimely death. She was a bright girl with an even brighter future and her tragic death was avoidable. Please help us find justice for Mila and peace for the entire Keene family.”
The screen goes dark and no one says a word. They just keep staring at Tamara’s phone where Parker used to be, until finally Tamara shoves it back into a hidden pocket in her sparkly dress and pushes her hair off her face. I wrap my arms around my stomach to try to steady myself, to understand what this all means, what the evidence says.
“It’s a copycat case,” Julia says, shaking her head. “Some monster is trying to make everyone think the serial killer is back.” She looks at the ground and mutters, “Probably Stella.”
“What did you say?” I bark, but Julia holds her ground, narrowing her eyes at me.
“I said, probably Stel—”
“Jesus, Julia, that’s not helping anything,” Tamara says.
Raven clears her throat. “It seems like the killer is back. I mean, the missing shoelace. The Oak Tower trail. Blunt force trauma.” She shrugs. “But honestly, everyone here knows about those cases. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else”—she glances over at me quickly—“did a little extra reading and—”
“Stella didn’t do this,” I say, my voice trembling.
“Sure, she’s your sister, Ellie, but the text messages,” J
ulia says. “She sent those. She’s the only one who had a motive.”
“Just stop it!” I scream, surprising even myself. “Stella had nothing to do with this. She was working out at home in our basement like she does every morning. I was with her doing circuits,” I say, echoing what Stella told Parker. The lie burns like poison on my tongue.
Everyone in the circle turns to me and all of a sudden I want to melt into the ground.
“Oh, yeah?” Julia says, sneering.
Bader cuts in. “Didn’t Parker say that someone was running with her? And that they have evidence to back that up?”
Tamara nods. “Who was it?” she asks, looking around the circle. “Who went running with Mila that morning?”
My toes begin to tingle and a chill runs through me. No one says anything and I can feel Noah’s eyes on me, daring me to speak.
“Clearly no one’s going to come forward now,” Julia says. “Cowards. But the truth will come out.”
Tamara nods, her eyes welling with tears. “And you don’t want to be on the wrong side of it.”
34
STELLA
I wake with a jolt, sweat dampening my brow, and before I open my eyes, I remember the press conference from last night. Parker’s unwavering voice. His steady gaze. Mila had two broken ribs. A head wound. A twisted ankle. Parker said she was found in a pit, the one by Oak Tower, the forbidden trail. But you don’t get those kinds of injuries from just falling into a pit and trying to climb out. Something must have happened. Someone else was there. Someone on our team.
I reach for my phone and when I see there’s a text from Naomi, my heart beats fast.
I can’t even begin to wrap my head around this. How are you holding up?
Wow. Even through all this, she thought to text me. I want to respond. I want to call her and hear her voice. But my screen says she sent that at two a.m. and it’s now close to five. I resist the urge to wake her.
I roll over and pull the curtain back from my window. It’s pitch-black outside, but I just need to run. I change my clothes in silence and shove my feet into practice sneakers. I tiptoe down the stairs and carefully slide open the side door. The air is cold, whipping at my cheeks. But as soon as I put one foot in front of the other, my mind begins to clear.
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