Cheerleading Can Be Murder (Horror High #1) (13 page)

Chapter

Forty-Seven

I tossed and turned all night, my nightmares filled with images of dead kittens and bloody pompoms. When I opened my eyes, it was only a quarter past midnight. It felt like I’d been dreaming for hours. I closed my eyes and tried to fall back asleep, but kept thinking about Amanda.

It was an absurd idea. If she were the one doing all of this, then that meant she would have also been the person who hung up her own fliers. Why would she do that? It made no sense whatsoever.

But her dad was crazy, obviously. He had killed someone, according to the flier. I thought about the question on the flier.
Like father, like daughter?
Even if it was her, what would be her motivation? I couldn’t think of any reasons for her to do it. She made the cheerleading team and she got the guy she wanted…why would she sabotage all that?

But then again, maybe she was trying to get back at us for that little prank—the egging and the note to Grandma Mimi…

I decided it was time to do a little research of my own. I got out of bed and turned on the lamp beside my desk. My laptop was on from earlier when I’d been working on my Joan of Arc project. I pulled up the Google search menu and typed in the search words
‘Terrance Loxx’
and
‘murder.’
’ The screen immediately filled with relevant articles about Amanda’s father. I skimmed through one of them and moved on to the next. I read several more after that.

Basically, Terrance Loxx was a bad apple. He grew up on the rough side of Chicago. His mother had a drug problem, and he left home as a preteen. He begged and stole for money. He was in and out of juvenile detention as a youth for petty theft charges. He graduated to the Big Leagues of crime after the age of eighteen, and served a year in Maxwell Prison for theft. At age nineteen, he went back to prison for theft. He apparently had a drug problem too, because he racked up multiple drug felonies.

At some point, in his mid-twenties, he met Bethany Alsworth. They had a baby girl together. They named her Amanda.

Her dad apparently tried to straighten up his act for a while by getting clean. But five years ago, he’d relapsed and resorted to stealing again. On a cold winter day, Terrance Loxx walked into a bank with a gun. When he realized that the teller had hit an emergency alert sensor, he shot her and five other people who were standing nearby. Two of those people were a pregnant woman and her eight-year-old son. He ran from the scene but was found a few hours later, at his girlfriend’s house, clutching his ten-year-old daughter, Amanda.

He had a standoff with the police and lost. They shot him dead in the yard with his girlfriend and daughter watching.

I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again. Amanda’s dad was a bad dude. No doubt about that. Perhaps Genevieve was right when she said he got what he deserved. But my heart ached for my friend. I couldn’t imagine seeing someone I loved get shot down like that, especially if that someone was my father. And witnessing something like that at such a young age…

Experiencing a trauma of that magnitude was bound to cause some mental problems. But would it cause Amanda to torture a cat or do those other crazy things? I wasn’t sure. I certainly hoped I was wrong about this…

Suddenly, there was a loud tap at my window. I spun around in my computer chair, frozen with fear. There it was again.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
My bedroom window was on the second floor, so no one could possibly be standing near the window sill.

Tap. Tap. Tap
. I turned on my bedroom light just as a small rock hit the pane of glass, revealing it as the tapping culprit. I rushed over to the window and looked down. Amanda stood on the ground below my window, a navy blue hoodie tucked down low over her ears. I slid the window open.

“What on earth are you doing down there?” The look on her face was odd, ashen and scared.

“We need to talk. Now. Come down here,” she insisted.

Chapter

Forty-Eight

I’ll be the first to admit—I was scared to go out there. After my suspicions about Amanda and reading about her father, I really didn’t want to go outside with her in the dark. I didn’t want to be in the dark
period
, not with a crazy sociopath wreaking havoc in Harrow Hill.

But Amanda was my friend, and I needed to know what was going on.
Was she going to confess?
I wondered wildly. I crept downstairs slowly, afraid of waking my parents. They would be livid if they knew I was sneaking outside at one o’clock in the morning on a school night.

I reached the bottom of the stairs and tiptoed over to the front door. I opened it slowly, cringing as it made a loud creaking noise. I froze, waiting for my mom or dad to come running out of their bedroom to catch me. But that didn’t happen.

I slipped out the door, and left it ajar so I could slip back in easily. Amanda was pacing back and forth at the side of the house. “What’s going on?” I tried to keep my voice at a whisper.

“I know who did it,” she said, looking at me with a serious expression on her face.

“Who?” I asked, flabbergasted.

“How many girls are on the cheerleading team?” She was pacing back and forth rashly. I looked at her blankly. “Just humor me, Dakota.”

“Okay. There are six of us.” I shrugged. “So what?”

“Tell me the names of everyone the sociopath has targeted,” she said.

“Well, me and you.” She held up two fingers.

“Monika and Tally,” I added, remembering the slashed tires. She held up two more fingers. “And Brittani, with the cat.”

She was holding up five fingers total. I still didn’t get it.

“Six cheerleaders, five victims…there’s only one who hasn’t been targeted.”

Suddenly, my mind was spinning.

“Genevieve,” we both said in unison.

“She egged my grandma’s house. Why wouldn’t she be doing all of those other things too? And why is she the only cheerleader on the squad who hasn’t had any incidents involving the sociopath? She has a lot of reasons to be pissed off. Me…dating Ronnie. You beating out her friends on the squad…” Amanda moved her hands wildly as she talked.

“I can’t believe we didn’t realize this already. She’s the only one…” I said breathlessly.

“Precisely,” Amanda said, finally standing still.

We stood there, staring at each other, wondering if our theory was correct.

Chapter

Forty-Nine

For the third day in a row, Amanda was standing at the bus stop. “How come you’re not riding to school with Ronnie anymore?” I asked. Even though I used to really like Ronnie and I wasn’t crazy about them dating, I was still worried about my friend. I also felt terrible for suspecting that it was her doing all of those terrible things just because of her family history. I felt like a jerk, and was going to do my best to be a supportive friend from here on out.

“Ronnie hasn’t spoken to me ever since…the fliers,” she said, rubbing her hands together nervously. “Screw him. I didn’t like him that much anyway.” But I could tell she was lying to cover up her feelings.

Amanda shifted her backpack back and forth. “What the heck do you have in that thing? That’s the biggest backpack I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh, just stuff I need for class,” Amanda remarked.

We found an empty seat near the back of the bus.

“What do you think we should do about Genevieve? Do you think we should confront her? Tell her we know it’s her?” she asked, switching topics. I honestly had no clue what to do about it.

“If we could prove it was her, then we could go to Principal Barlow. But we can’t…” I said, my thoughts running away from me. We both sat there quietly, pondering what we should do.

“Thanks for still being my friend,” Amanda said out of the blue, catching me completely off guard.

“My dad did some terrible stuff, but that doesn’t mean I’m a bad person or a total screw up just because he is. We choose our own fate, and he chose his. I’m going to choose a different path for myself. I’m living with my grandma now and I’m a cheerleader…everything seems to be falling into place…despite Genevieve and some of the kids harassing me. I know I’m rambling, but all I really want to say is thanks for not judging me, Dakota. It really means a lot.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. “No problem,” I nearly whispered.

If she only knew the truth, that I was sitting up late last night reading all about her family on the Internet and judging the hell out of her.
Well, I wasn’t going to do that anymore.

***

Amanda and I were on the lookout for Genevieve all day, but neither of us had seen her by the time our lunch hour rolled around. Not seeing her during the first part of the school day was not that strange though, because neither of us shared classes with her in the morning. We expected to see her in Phys Ed, but she wasn’t there, either.

At cheerleading practice, Coach Davis announced that Genevieve was sick with the flu, and her mother had called in to school this morning. “Poor baby.” Amanda rolled her eyes at me sarcastically. I mouthed the word ‘karma’ and she grinned.

Coach Davis and Coach Purnell must have reached some sort of agreement, because the boys’ basketball team was practicing in the gym again today. We ran through all of our chants and cheers again, but since Genevieve was missing from the formation, it threw everything off.

“Sydney, please come stand in for Genevieve.” Coach Davis motioned for her to come join us. She and Ashleigh had learned all of the chants, but they hadn’t been involved in learning the half time cheer or stunt.

I hadn’t spoken to Sydney since she’d basically admitted to participating in the egging at Amanda’s house. I gave her a small smile, despite my reservations. I felt bad that she didn’t make the team, and after last night with Amanda, I was starting to think I needed to be less critical of others.

At the end of our routine, we practiced the lift again. Once again, the boys were staring at us. They were mainly staring at me. This time I smiled back at Andy and gave him a little wave. “Dakota, don’t wave at boys when you’re on top of a stunt,” Coach Davis scolded me from below. I could feel my face heat up with embarrassment. I cleared my throat nervously.

One of the boys started whistling at me. When I looked back over at them, I realized it was Ronnie. Andy was giving him a funny look and Amanda looked like she was going to cry.

Chapter Fifty

Friday nights had always been, and always would be, game night in the Densford household. No matter how old I got, I planned on showing up for it. My dad tried to get off work by seven on Fridays just so he could participate. Unfortunately, the weather was too stormy this evening, which meant he was stuck at the station, making sure they didn’t go off-air due to wind or water damage on radio transmitters.

Since my brother was still too little to participate, tonight it was just me and Mom. Mom let me pick my favorite game first. I knew it was childish, but my favorite board game was Mouse Trap. The anticipation you felt while turning that crank and waiting to see if your trap worked never got old for me. As usual, I captured Mom’s mouse with ease. Even though I was fifteen, I could have sworn she still let me win sometimes.

My mom’s favorite game was Clue. While she set up the board, putting all of the little weapons in their respective rooms, I got up for a bathroom break. I also ran upstairs to check my iPhone. Two missed calls from an unknown number. But there were no voicemails or texts to go with the calls, which was unusual for any of my friends.

I went back downstairs and kicked Mom’s butt at Clue. “I think I’m going to turn in early, sweetheart. I have to work for a few hours this weekend to get caught up with some of my paperwork. I’m taking off for your games on Tuesday and Friday, so I need to get as much done as I can over the weekend.” She yawned.

“You’re the best, Mom.” I kissed her on the cheek before heading up to my own bed. It was after ten o’clock, but I didn’t feel tired. I tried playing a few apps on my phone, but nothing held my interest. I was all gamed out for the night.

I stuck my ear buds in, flipping through my phone, looking for a song that I wasn’t totally sick of. I picked a song by Miley Cyrus, one of those catchy beats that never gets old. If I hadn’t been looking at my phone at that exact moment, I would have missed the call coming in with the ear buds in. It was that number again.

I hit the ‘Accept’ button. “Hello?”

The voice on the other end was strange and robotic. It had to be some sort of recording or someone talking through an electronic voice recorder.

“If you go to the game, you will die,” the creepy voice warned.

“I know it’s you, Genevieve!” When I said her name, she hung up on the other end. Ten minutes later my phone rang again. But this time it was Amanda.

As soon as I answered, she asked, “Have you gotten any weird phone calls?”

“Yes. Don’t worry. It’s just Genevieve. We need to ignore her. If we get scared, she wins, because that’s exactly what she’s trying to do.”

“But why wouldn’t she want us to come to the game on Tuesday? We’re on the same squad!”

“Because she hates us,” I reminded her.

“Oh yeah.”

We hung up a few moments later. Even though I was a little scared, I was so tired that I fell asleep with my ear buds in. I slept like a baby.