Buried (10 page)

When Skarla leaves the room, I turn to the Micqui and Barbee. “Is Skarla always so cheerful?”

“Always.” Barbee takes a cookie from a tray on the coffee table.

“Skarla's cool,” Micqui says. “She never even complains.”

“Complains about what?” I ask, gesturing at the spacious, artfully decorated room. “She's popular, pretty, lives in a gorgeous house, and has supportive parents.”

“Those aren't her parents,” Micqui says. “Grandparents.”

“So where are her parents?”

“Don't tell anyone at school,” Barbee says in a hushed voice. “Her mother is in jail and her father died of an overdose.”

I can't think of anything to say. I'm sobered and a little ashamed. Although I never said anything snarky, I'd mentally labeled Skarla as an over-bubbly fluff-brain. I judged her without looking any deeper, like most people do to me. I hate hypocrites—especially when I turn out to be one too.

As an unspoken apology, I'm nicer for the rest of practice. I don't even roll my eyes when I'm asked to hum the chorus of “Giddy-up Sweetheart.”

When we finish, Skarla offers to drive me home. As I'm putting on my jacket, a button snags in my hair. I pull and tug until it loosens but it catches on the shoestring around my neck, sweeping the locket out from underneath my shirt. The plastic heart shines golden under the car's dome light.

“Pretty necklace.” Skarla nods at the necklace as she starts up the engine.

“Pretty ugly is more like it.”

“Depends on who gave it to you. Even tacky plastic is priceless if it's a gift of love,” she replies philosophically. The car moves forward, the dome light softly fading until we're in near darkness. “Did your boyfriend give it to you?”

That question is wrong on so many levels that I almost laugh. “Not even close. This necklace isn't mine. I found it on a chair on the stage, on registration day for the contest.”

“Meeting Philippe that day was sooooo amazing,” she says, sighing. “Everyone gasped when he showed up in the auditorium. He signed autographs and posed for photos. Want to see one of us together? My skin still tingles where he put his arm around me. Then he led a Q and A session on the stage. Ohmygod. It was, like, amazing.”

“You were on stage with him?” My brain clicks through events as she nods. “Then you must have seen whoever lost this.”

She looks closer at the golden heart, then shakes her head. “Sorry. I've never seen it before.”

“No one has,” I say in frustration. “But I'm sure whoever lost it was on the stage with Philippe. I've been really obvious showing it around, but no one has claimed it and I can't think of any other way to find out.”

“I can,” Skarla says.

I raise my brows, surprised.

“Maybe I took a picture of it,” she says. “I brought my camera that day, since I always post tons of pictures on my blog. I get hundreds of hits every day, which is so cool. I talk about where I went with my friends or what we're wearing or what we ate for lunch.”

Exactly why I don't read blogs
, I think. I gesture for her to go on.

“Since Philippe coming here is the most interesting thing to ever happen at Nevada Bluff High—he even brought his tour bus!—I wrote a really long post and uploaded all my photos. You know, when I was helping Amerie set up the chairs on the stage, girls were fighting over who got to sit next to Philippe. It's crazy the way girls freak out over him, but who can blame them?”

“Philippe is just another guy,” I say, thinking of Amerie locking lips with him. She'll want to be his “one and only,” not his “one of many.” If I try to warn her, will she listen? Probably not.

“He's way more than that—he's perfect,” Skarla says with a sigh. “I got great photos of him, and of everyone else on the stage, too.”

“Everyone?” My hopes rise. At the very least, this will narrow my search.

“Yeah. Check it out.”

Skarla hands me her cell phone.

T
w
e
l
v
e

I
click through about a h
undred photos. I don't see the locket, but I do find a clear shot of the people who went to the Q and A session. Seven fan girls and on
e guy sit in a circle of chairs surrounding Philippe and his manager. Amerie is so close to Philippe she's practically in his lap. I also recognize Barbee, Micqui, and Jessika from English Lit.

“Can you send me this picture?” I tap my finger on the camera.

“Sure.” Skarla asks for my email. “I can include names, too, if you'd like.”

“Thanks.” I give her my email addy.

As we turn up the street to my house, excitement rushes through me like when I'm in finding mode and close to a solution. All I have to do is find out which of the girls sitting in that circle was pregnant last year, then confront her with the locket. She'll confess about the grave, and then my parents and Sheriff Hart will know I'm not involved.

When I get home, I'm lucky—no one is using the computer in the family room. It's a clunky older model, but it works most of the time. I'd rather have my own personal computer, of course, but that's not going to happen. My parents offered to buy me a laptop for my seventeenth birthday if I improved my GPA. I improved it, but by then Dad's job was history and so was my hope for a laptop.

I power up the clunk-puter and check my email for one from Skarla. I open the photo, comparing the faces to the names she included in her email. I enhance it to a larger size and study each person. Jessika and the guy, who's named Aidan, are both wearing necklaces—but not a gold heart hanging on a black shoelace.

I glance at each suspect, mentally crossing off Aidan, Philippe, and Philippe's manager Collette. I narrow my suspicions to the seven girls: Amerie DuPrau, Barbee Kingrey, Micqui Kingrey, Jessika Schillard, Ebony Mae Alexander, Veronique Samoun, and Ruby Rodriquez.

One of you lost the locket—and a baby
, I think grimly.

But how do I find out which girl? I'll need more than suspicions and a photo to prove anything. I only know three of the girls: Barbee, Micqui, and Amerie. I start to cross off Amerie but then pause … what do I really know about her? She and Rune have been friends forever, which is how I got to know each her, but I'm not close with her like I am with Rune. I've been to Amerie's house a few times and met her stay-at-home mom, who sells Tupperware, and her kindergarten teacher dad. She jokes that her parents are so normal, she must be a changeling switched at birth. I don't doubt it—there's more to her than wings and a sunny nature. Her rendezvous with Philippe proves that she can keep a secret.

If I still lived in Sheridan Valley, I'd ask Manny De­Vries for investigative help. He's editor of the school newspaper and can find out anything. His brains are his best asset; his ego his worst. He's a brilliant computer geek, sexy in black dreds and he knows it. He's also a dating addict, going through girlfriends like it's a sport and he's aiming to medal. When I refused to date him we became friends instead, which is a better deal since he's unreliable as a boyfriend but amazingly loyal as a friend.

Why not ask him anyway?
Being geographically apart doesn't end a friendship. So I shoot off a quick email—and get a reply within a minute:

Send me the names and what you need to know.

Will get on it ASAP.

PS—How's it going in NV?

I reply:

THX.

Not great but not boring.

I forward the photo and the names and explain how I suspect one of the fan girls had a baby but hid the pregnancy. I added what the sheriff said about the bones being six to eight months old. I start to hit
send
, then think of someone else I'd like to know more about.

PS. Need info on Jay Blankenship.

Then I hit
send
before I lose my nerve.

I play a computer game while I wait for his reply. As usual, Manny isn't just fast—he's accurate. He sends me pages of info including photos and school records (how does he get those?). I lean close to the computer screen, studying each photo. Most come from blogs and I jot down the dates they were taken, searching for a tell-tale baby bump. It's hard to tell, since most are face-shots. There's one of Micqui from last February and she looks heavier, but then another shot shows her skinny at a pool party over spring break. Barbee is at the same party, but all I can see is her face.

By the time I've gone through all of them, my eyes are blurry and I haven't found even have a hint of a baby bump.

While there are lots of photos of six of the girls, Manny forwarded none of Ruby Rodriquez. I only have Skarla's photo of her sitting on the stage with Philippe—she's thin, with black hair long enough to sit on. I search through school records (thanks Manny!) and check out her class schedule. She's a senior, and off-campus the second half of the day for a regional nursing program. There's no more information on her.

I have her schedule, though, so it'll be easy enough to find her at school on Monday. I may know more by then.

At least I have a place to start, which feels good.

There's a knock at my door and Amy shouts my name.

“Go away,” I call out.

“Phone.” Amy smacks the door.

I jump for the door, snatching the phone because I'm sure it's Manny with more information. I thank Amy then shut the door before she can ask noisy questions. I glance at Caller ID and only find “Unknown Caller” flashing on the display.

“Is this Thorn?” There's nothing familiar about the whispery girl's voice. All I can tell is that she's someplace with lots of background noise.

“Yeah,” I answer cautiously. “Who's this?”

Another whisper. “You have my locket.”

“Maybe I do.” I don't want to scare her off. She has no way of knowing her locket led me to the grave. She only knows I found her locket. “But I can't just hand it over to anyone. Can you prove it's yours?”

“I saw you … wearing my gold … ” I can't make out the rest of what she's saying over loud music and someone shouting in the background.

“Who are you?” I ask again.

“Bring it … to … ” Background sound drowns out her words.

“Speak louder. I can't hear you.”

“Meet me … Stardust … ”

“Stardust Mall?” I guess. Amerie is always raving about the great discounts she finds at the mall and asking me to go with her. I always decline. Not a fan of malls.

“Yes,” the caller says. “Tomorrow at noon.”

“Why not wait till Monday at school?” I ask. This is a logical question, although I'm so curious to meet her that I'd find a way to get to the mall tonight if she asked.

“Can't wait,” she admits, her voice strangely garbled. Is she trying to disguise it? Does that mean I'd recognize her voice if she spoke normally?

“All right,” I say as if this was a hard decision. “I'll meet you. Where at the mall?”

“The arcade.”

“How will I know you?”

“I know you.”

“That's not good enough. If I go out of my way to meet you at the mall, I deserve to know who I'm meeting.”

“I'll explain when we meet.”

Frustrated, I consider telling her I opened the locket, but that might scare her off. “Fine,” I say. “I'll be there.”

There's a long pause and if there wasn't so much noise around her, I'd think she hung up. But then she whispers, “Wear the locket.”

The phone goes dead.

I oversleep, and when I wake up Mom has gone somewhere in her Jeep. Dad's car is in the driveway, but no way am I asking him for a ride. That leaves one person.

“K.C., can I borrow your car?” I ask when I find him tinkering on his vintage 1965 Ford Ranchero (he calls it a “classic”). He's been fixing it up since he bought it on Craigslist last month, but I have serious doubts that the clunker will ever leave our garage.

“Why?” He puts down a wrench and gives me a suspicious look.

“I just need it for a while. I won't be gone long. Please.”

“Not without knowing what you're up to.”

“Me?” I feign innocence. “I just want to go to the mall.”

“You hate shopping.”

“I'm meeting someone.”

“A guy someone?” he teases.

“No. A girl.”

K.C. pushes his hair from his face, leaving a grease streak across his forehead. “So why can't your friend pick you up?”

“She's not exactly a friend,” I admit.

“So why meet her?” He rubs his chin, smearing more grease.

I hesitate. “It's the girl who lost the locket.”

“Cool!” Excitement rises in his voice. “What are we waiting for? Let's go.”

“Did I invite you?”

“I'm inviting myself. Any complaints?” He says it like he's joking, but I know his feelings will be hurt if I admit I don't want him to come along. Although he's a few months older than me, he acts more like a younger brother.

I grab a rag and toss it to him. “Wipe the grease off your face.”

Grinning, he wipes his face, then takes his keys from his pocket and leads me over to his dented brown Toyota. He opens the door for me. Hinges creak loudly and the seats have rips covered with tape, but at least this car runs.

“So how'd you find her?” K.C. asks as we drive off.

“She called me—but she wouldn't tell me her name. She insisted on meeting at the mall.”

“Strange. Why is this girl so secretive? If she wants her locket back, why not wait and get it at school? And why not tell you her name?”

I shrug. “I'll find out soon.”

“You're not meeting a psycho chick alone. I'm sticking close to you.”

The car jerks to a stop at a red light. “I don't need a bodyguard.”

“Well, you got one.”

He's trying to sound tough, which makes me smile because he's so not the bodyguard type. But he can be stubborn and there's no changing his mind.

Walking through the mall a short while later, I hear the electronic booms and blasts of the arcade before I see the flashing lights of the games.

“Don't follow me,” I tell K.C.

“I'll be over there.” He points to a NASCAR racing game and goes off to play.

I look around, fidgeting with the gold locket around my neck. There are more guys here than girls, so finding the caller shouldn't be too hard. I wander around, peering into faces and waiting for a look of recognition.

It's frustrating to meet someone I don't know. I'm not afraid—I mean, it's just a girl from school and I feel safe in a public place. She only wants her locket, which I can understand and even sympathize with, if her baby died naturally. But if the baby's death was deliberate, she deserves to rot in jail.

I walk through the arcade three times before I give up. She's not coming. I was stupid to trust an anonymous voice on the phone. Angry at myself, I find K.C. in a crowd watching a kid slaughtering on House of the Dead. There's shouting and applause when he shoots zombies. I join him and watch too.

“He's almost beat the top score,” K.C. yells in my ear, since that's the only way I can hear him.

I gesture that I want to leave.

“Just a minute,” K.C. says, turning back to stare at the game.

The gamer kid is racking up his score when suddenly the screen goes black.

“What happened?” someone shouts.

“The game imploded!”

“Sabotage!”

But it's K.C. who moves over to the wall and lifts up a limp electrical cord. “The plug fell out,” he says with a shrug, plugging it back in.

Instead of thanking him, the crowd turns on itself—arguing, shouting, and flinging accusations like pinballs gone wild.

I try to escape the mayhem but get a hard shove from behind. Someone pulls my hair and I cry out, stumbling sideways into a wall of bodies. It's all fast, and a blur of riotous gamers. Then there's a tug on my arm, and I look up to find K.C. pulling me out of the chaos. We push through bodies until we come out into the bright mall lights.

“What happened in there?” I bend over to catch my breath.

“That kid was just about to break the zombie-killing record. Probably whoever had the top score unplugged it. I can't believe how serious those guys get.”

I point to his arm. “You're bleeding.”

He touches a scratch on his neck and comes back with a blood-stained finger. “Those gamers are more dangerous than flesh-eating zombies,” he jokes.

“Another reason to avoid malls,” I say wryly. “Coming here was a waste of time.”

“Psycho chick stood you up?”

“You may be right about her. Damn. I really expected to find out who owns the locket.”

K.C. points at me with a curious expression. “I thought you were wearing it.”

I reach up around my neck.

The locket is gone.