Authors: Jill Hathaway
Impostor (8 page)
B
y the time I drag myself out of bed, Mattie has already gotten up. I look bleary-eyed at my alarm clock. Rollins will be here any minute.
All at once, the night before settles over me like a fog. I rush to the bathroom and throw up twice. After I rinse my face, I look at myself for a long time, wondering how I became a girl who could cover up a murder. Because if the person who slid into me pushed Scotch over the edge, and he is indeed dead . . . that’s what I am, right? A murderer. At least, technically. Does it matter that I wasn’t in my body when the crime was committed?
In my room, I pull on a pair of tattered jeans and a purple sweatshirt before going downstairs. Lydia and Mattie are sitting at the kitchen table. My father is nowhere to be seen. Mattie’s hair is disheveled and she has deep circles under her eyes.
“Your dad had to leave early,” Lydia explains. “I told him I’d take care of breakfast.” She gestures to a place across from her. There’s a plate loaded with bacon, eggs, and toast slathered with butter. It makes me feel like I’m going to be sick again. I grab a clean coffee cup from the cupboard and fill it to the brim, avoiding eye contact with Lydia. Screw my no-caffeine resolution, at least for today. I take a long drink.
“You look like you didn’t sleep very well,” Lydia observes.
I try to catch Mattie’s gaze, but she looks away.
A car honks outside.
“It’s Rollins,” Mattie says. I get up without saying anything, grab my backpack, and follow Mattie out to the car.
“So did you listen last night? Seriously, like ten people called in. It was so amazing,” Rollins says as he brakes at a stop sign. A couple of little kids with bright jackets walk in front of Rollins’s car.
I haven’t had time to think about what I’m going to tell Rollins. If my plan had worked out, I’d be giggling about how Scotch had to walk home in the nude. What would Rollins say if I told him the truth? That what was supposed to be a prank turned into a nightmare, ending in a horrific accident? I know that Rollins would do a lot to protect me, but would he keep this secret? Would I even want him to?
Mattie jumps in. “Vee actually went to bed early last night. She wasn’t feeling well.”
Rollins’s eyes flicker toward me. “You okay?”
I cough. “Yeah, I’m fine. I was just tired. Sorry I missed your show.”
“No problem.” Rollins shrugs. “I’m glad you got some rest. You’ve been looking kind of . . . um . . . haggard lately.”
“Gee, thanks,” I say.
In the school parking lot, Scotch’s usual spot is empty. I can’t stop staring at it. My sister spots Regina walking toward the school building and mumbles something about needing to talk to her. After she’s gone, Rollins pulls the keys out of the ignition and slides them into his pocket.
“What’s going on with you?” he asks quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“You just haven’t been yourself lately. Is there something you want to talk about?”
In that moment, I’m filled with the need to spill everything that happened last night. It feels wrong to keep such a huge secret from Rollins, the guy who’s been my closest friend for the last year.
But before I can answer, someone raps at Rollins’s window. We both look over to see Anna standing next to the car, beaming at Rollins. Her hair is gleaming in the early morning light, and her cheeks are rosy from the fresh air.
Rollins shoots a look as if to say,
Last chance. Wanna talk?
I turn away.
Rollins sighs and opens his door. “Hi, Anna.”
“Hi, guys,” she says brightly, smiling at Rollins and then me. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
I shake my head vigorously. “Nope. Nothing. In fact, I’ve got to get inside. I forgot to do my Government homework. If I hurry, I’ve got just enough time to finish it before class starts.” After spouting my lame excuse, I escape from the car and walk briskly toward the school. I hear Rollins calling my name, but I don’t slow down.
Once inside, I start feeling sick again. I have to walk through the cafeteria to get to my locker, and the smell of rubbery eggs has me gagging. There are only a few lone souls eating breakfast.
The pay phone at the far end of the cafeteria catches my eye.
It’s time.
I can’t avoid it any longer.
I have to call the police.
Making sure no one is paying attention, I discreetly pick up the receiver with the sleeve of my shirt pulled over my hand, just in case the cops try to dust the phone for prints later, after they’ve found Scotch. Again, I wonder how I became this girl—someone who worries about leaving fingerprints.
Taking a deep breath, I dial the numbers.
9. 1. 1.
A woman answers, sounding not much older than me. “911. What is your emergency?”
I make my voice as low as it will go. “Yes, I’d like to report an accident at Lookout Point. Please send an ambulance.” As soon as I finish, I hang up the phone and walk away as quickly as I can.
I head straight for the girls’ restroom, hoping it’s empty.
Inside, Regina stands in front of a sink. The faucet is running, but Regina isn’t washing her hands. She’s just staring at herself in the mirror. I know the look in her eyes, the haunted stare of someone who’s overcome with shame.
“Hey,” I say softly.
She doesn’t respond.
I want to wrap my arms around her and tell her I know how she feels. It’s like something out of a horror movie, to know someone might be dead and not be able to say a word about it. I want to tell her I couldn’t fall asleep last night, either. I want to ease her mind. Before saying anything, though, I check beneath the stall doors to make sure no one’s lurking, listening.
“I called the police from the cafeteria,” I say. “They should be headed to Lookout Point right now.”
Without looking at me, Regina turns off the water.
She pushes past me, her shoulder butting into mine. “Leave me the hell alone.” With that, she disappears into the hallway.
Before English class, I see Samantha getting a drink of water. I stand behind her, waiting for her to finish. She jumps when she turns around.
“Jesus, you scared me.”
“Sam, we have to talk about what happened.”
Sam claps her hand over my mouth and looks around. “Not here.”
I peel away her fingers. “But I have to tell you something.” She may never forgive me for making that phone call, but she needs to know about it.
“Later,” she insists.
The bell rings.
“Come on,” Samantha says, hurrying across the hall to Mrs. Winger’s classroom. “We’re late.”
Mrs. Winger doesn’t say anything to Samantha or me as we dart to our desks. Instead, she passes out a story called “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. She tells us we’ll want to pay special attention to the symbolism of different elements in the story that represent good and evil. I have no idea how I’m going to concentrate on the story.
She lets us pick partners to work with, so I wordlessly take the desk next to Samantha.
Partners in crime,
I can’t help but think. She sits with her eyes glued to the badly photocopied story.
“Let’s get this over with.” Sam hunches over her desk and begins slowly reading aloud the story of Young Goodman Brown, a sort of regular guy who goes walking deep in the woods one night and comes across a dude I’m pretty sure is the devil. Brown sees all these people he knows from the village doing some kind of satanic ritual. The kicker is when he finds his own wife, Faith, participating.
“Duh, okay, so that’s a symbol right there. His wife’s name. Write it down. Faith. He lost his faith when he went walking with the devil.” Samantha points at the empty notebook in front of me. I write down her suggestion.
It’s hard to explain, but the story makes me feel really weird. I’m pretty sure it’s about loss of innocence, and I can’t help but feel like I went walking with the devil in the woods last night. Except I’m not sure if the devil was Scotch or whoever slid into me or maybe even me, because I left a boy in a ditch to rot.
“Okay, put your desks in a circle for discussion,” Mrs. Winger calls out. Everyone groans and maneuvers their desks to line the perimeter of the room. She draws a big T-chart on the board and asks for us to name some of the symbols we found.
“His wife,” Samantha blurts. “She represents his faith.”
“Okay,” Mrs. Winger says, scribbling on the whiteboard with a dry-erase marker. “What else?”
“The dark man,” someone else says. “Clearly he was the devil.”
“Good,” says Mrs. Winger. “Why do you think Goodman Brown went walking with the devil, even though he was supposedly a decent fellow?”
I speak up. “Because everyone walks with the devil at one point or another. Even Goodman Brown’s perfect little wife, Faith, was hanging around with the rest of the townspeople in the forest, worshipping Satan. It just means that everyone makes bad choices in their lives. No one’s perfect.”
Especially not me,
I think.
What if the hours I let pass before telling the police meant the difference between life and death for Scotch?
Samantha looks over at me. “Yeah, but Goodman Brown let it destroy him. If he had just let it go, he would have been so much better off.”
“Interesting,” Mrs. Winger says, tapping the marker against her chin. “You girls really seem to have gotten into the story. I’m impressed.”
The bell rings, and Mrs. Winger scrambles to pick up the photocopied stories.
Samantha and I stay in our seats, staring at each other for just a second. She passes her story to Mrs. Winger and then scoops up her books. She leaves the room without waiting for me.
T
he day seems to go on forever. Finally, the last bell rings. I trudge toward my locker, my textbooks feeling heavier than they normally do. It takes me three tries to get my locker open because my eyes keep blurring when I stare at the little numbers. I am beyond exhausted.
“So Regina is totally pissed.” Mattie leans against the locker next to mine.
“I told her I called the police using the pay phone,” I say wearily. “I don’t know what else she wants me to do. Turn myself in?”
“She keeps talking about how Scotch was misunderstood and really was a good guy underneath it all.”
“Ugh,” I say. Though I feel bad that Scotch’s mom has cancer, I’m fairly certain he’s not a
good guy
.
“Pretty much. I’ll try talking some sense into her at practice. Are you going straight home?”
“Yeah, I’ll catch a ride with Rollins.”
“Oh,” Mattie says, her eyes getting all big like she knows something that I don’t.
“What is it?”
“I just saw him walking out to the parking lot with Anna. I assumed you weren’t riding with him.”
My heart falls. I’d really been hoping for a chance to tell Rollins about what happened last night. I’m still not sure I did the right thing by calling the cops anonymously. I wanted to get his perspective because clearly Samantha isn’t going to be a moral compass in this matter. And Mattie’s too invested. She doesn’t want to see me get in trouble.
I slam my locker door shut. “Great. I guess I’ll walk. Again.”
Mattie grabs my hand. “I’ll see you when I get home.” She lets go and hurries down the hallway, her ponytail bouncing.
I hoist my backpack onto my shoulders and somehow summon the energy to walk home. The sun is warm on my face, and it would be an enjoyable hike if it weren’t for the morbid thoughts circling in my head. I keep wondering what’s happening at Lookout Point. Did the paramedics, realizing that Scotch was nonresponsive, zip him into a body bag and load him onto a gurney? Are the police searching the woods for any evidence of foul play? Do Scotch’s parents know yet?
When I turn onto my street, Lydia’s yellow car in my driveway almost makes me want to turn around and run the other way. She’s the last person I want to see right now, but I don’t really have anywhere else to go. I turn the knob slowly and push open the front door. Inside, I hear nothing. After setting my backpack down and hanging up my jacket, I scope out the kitchen and living room. No one’s there. I check out the upstairs. All the bedrooms are empty, and the bathroom door is wide open. No one is inside.
It appears that Lydia went out for the day. This piques my curiosity. Where would she go without her car?
I stand in the doorway to Mattie’s room. The shades are drawn, painting the walls in darkness. I’m tempted to open them or turn on a light, but Mattie’s window faces the driveway, and I don’t want Lydia to realize someone is in here if she comes home early. I can make out a suitcase on the floor next to the closet, though, and I kneel down beside it.
My heart hammers in my chest. I grab the zipper and pull it open, exposing a bunch of wadded-up clothes. One thing is for sure: my aunt isn’t the neatest person in the world. I recognize the outfit she wore when she showed up at the front door. It’s damp and shoved into a corner of the suitcase. Poking through the clothes doesn’t reveal more than my aunt’s preference for black silk underwear, unfortunately.
I push the clothes back into the suitcase and zip it up, noticing a pocket on the front that I hadn’t seen before. From the bulge, I’m able to tell there’s definitely something inside. Excited, I yank open the zipper and thrust my hand in. My fingers close around a leather wallet. Bingo. I pull it out so I can examine it properly.
Inside, I find a wad of receipts from places in San Francisco. A few credit cards. And her driver’s license. All of these items have the same name on them, but they’re not my aunt’s name. They say “Lila Harrington.”
Who is Lila Harrington?
That’s when I hear the front door open.
Crap crap crap crap crap.
My dad’s at work, and Mattie’s at cheerleading practice, meaning there’s only one other person who’d be walking into our house.
Lydia.
My panic makes me uncoordinated, and I struggle with stuffing the wallet back into the suitcase pocket. It takes me several tries to zip it up. I scramble to my feet and am poised to race out the door when something on the bureau catches my eye.
It is the picture of my mother in a sombrero.
The one I thought I lost last Thursday, before I got into the car accident.
I hear footsteps on the stairs, and the sound is enough to shake me out of my paralysis. I rush out of the room, pulling the door shut behind me. Somehow I make it to my doorway and bolt inside.
Lydia comes down the hall and pauses outside my room. “Hello, Vee.”
I’m out of breath. “Huh-hi. How was your day?”
“It was great.” She ticks off her daily activities on her fingers. “Took a walk around the neighborhood this morning. Lovely houses. Had a late lunch at this cute diner. They had the best pie. Seriously. I’ll have to take you there sometime. Then I walked around downtown and did some window-shopping.” She sighs. “The weather is just perfect today, don’t you think?”
“Perfect,” I agree, hoping she doesn’t see the way my smile wobbles.
Her face turns more serious. “I was hoping we could have a little talk.”
“Um, okay.”
Lydia shifts her weight, looking uncomfortable. “I want you to know I didn’t say anything to your father about you coming in late last night.”
My heart pounds. “What are you talking about? I went to sleep early.”
She gives me a long look. “Right.”
“What? Don’t you believe me?”
“I wasn’t exactly born yesterday, Vee.”
We stare at each other.
If she was the one who slid into me before Scotch’s accident, of course she would know I wasn’t in my bed.
After a long moment, Lydia says, “So you weren’t out with that boy? Rollins?”
“No,” I sputter, confused. “I told you. I wasn’t feeling well. I was in bed.”
She sighs. “Look, are you at least using protection?” The maternal tone she uses makes me want to vomit. Who does she think she is, anyway?
“I’m not having sex,” I say. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Promise me,” she says. “Promise me that if you do have sex, you’ll use protection. I’ll even take you to Planned Parenthood if you want. We can get you on the pill.”
“Jesus. What’s your problem?”
She takes a few steps into my room, puts her hand on my shoulder. “I just want to be here for you. I’ve been without a real family for so long. I want to be a good aunt to you. Vee, if there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to ask.”
She pats me on the back, and I feel all my muscles tense. She sighs and backs away from me. “See you at dinner.”
“Wait,” I say, thinking of the picture I saw in her room. I want some confirmation that Lydia’s as shady as I think she is. “Have you seen a picture of my mother lying around anywhere? She’s wearing a sombrero. It’s from her honeymoon.”
Is my mind playing tricks on me, or did Lydia’s muscles just tighten, ever so slightly?
She crosses her arms over her chest. “Sure, I saw that picture. It was lying on the floor under the couch downstairs. I held on to it for a little while. Is it yours?”
I hold her gaze. She doesn’t look away.
“Do you want it? I can go get it for you,” Lydia offers.
“Yes, please.”
I hold my breath as she walks down the hallway. Doing the math in my head, I realize the last time I saw the picture was at breakfast on Thursday morning. It was missing by suppertime that night. What if Lydia is lying about finding it underneath the couch? Is it possible she was following me the day I lost it? Could I have dropped it in the parking lot or something? If so, Lydia could have slid into me that night and forced me to steal my father’s car, hoping I would get into an accident. But then, seeing I wasn’t hurt badly enough, she could have taken her plan a step further and decided to infiltrate our home. To destroy us from the inside out.
This speculation makes me feel crazy.
Still, when Lydia returns with the picture and presses it into my hand, I see an arch in her eyebrow that makes me wonder if I’m not.
