The Body Finder

VIOLET AMBROSE WANDERED AWAY FROM THE
safety of her father as she listened to the harmony of sounds weaving delicately around her. The rustling of the leaves mingled gently with the restless calls of birds and the far-off rushing waters of the icy river that lay beyond the trees.

And then there was another sound. Something she couldn't quite identify. Yet.

She was familiar enough with the meaning of this new, and misplaced, noise. Or at least with what it signified. She had been hearing sounds, or seeing colors, or smelling smells like these for years. For as long as she could remember.

Echoes, she called them.

She looked back at her father to see if he had heard it too, even though she already knew the answer. He hadn't, of course. Only she could hear it. Only she understood what the haunting sound foretold.

He walked casually behind her, at his same slow and steady pace, keeping a watchful eye on his eight-year-old daughter as she ran ahead of him.

The sound whistled past her again, carried on the breeze that sent crisp, golden leaves swirling around her ankles. She stopped briefly to listen, but once it passed she continued on ahead.

“Don't go too far,” her father dutifully called from behind her. He wasn't really worried about her out here. These were their woods.

Violet had practically been raised in this forest, learning about her surroundings, learning how to tell which direction she was facing by the lichen growing on the tall tree trunks, and knowing how to tell the time of day by the position of the sunâ¦at least on those days when that sun wasn't obscured by the gloom of cloud cover. This was easy territory, even for an eight-year-old girl.

She ignored her father's warning and wandered off the path, still listening to
that something
that was beckoning her forward. Her feet felt propelled by a will of their own as she struggled to make the sound into something coherent, something she could identify. She stepped over fallen branches and walked through a sea of fern fronds that grew up from the damp ground.

“Violet!” She heard her dad's voice breaking through her concentration.

She paused, and then called back, “I'm right here,” although not as loudly as she should have, before she started walking again.

The sound was getting stronger. Not louder, but stronger. She could feel the vibrations practically resonating beneath her skin now.

This was how it was with these things. This was the way these
feelings
came to her. They were indescribable, yet to her they made perfect sense.

And when they called to her she felt compelled to answer.

She was close now, so close that she could hear a voice. That was what this echo was, a voice. Single and solitary, seeking someoneâanyoneâto answer it.

Violet was that someone.

She stopped at a mound of damp dirt covered with a thick layer of rotting leaves. The soil was oddly out of place amid the undergrowth, with nothing living springing up from it. Even Violet knew that the soil was too newly placed to have fostered life just yet.

She knelt down, feeling the pulsating echo coming from beneath. She could feel it reverberating within her veins, coursing hotly through her small body. Without waiting, Violet brushed away the leaves and debris with a sweep of her coat sleeve, before she began earnestly scooping at the soft earth beneath with her hands.

She heard her father's light footsteps catch up with her
and his gentle voice ask, “Find something, Vi?”

She was too lost in her task to answer, and he didn't pry. He was used to this, his little girl searching out the lost souls of the forest. Without speaking, he leaned against the soaring trunk of a nearby cedar and waited without really watching.

Violet felt her fingertips brush against something hard and smooth, cold and unyielding. She shuddered against a disturbing awareness that she couldn't quite name and kept digging.

She sank her fingers into the moist soil once again. And again, they touched something chillingly firm.

Something too soft to be a rock.

And it was back, that nagging something that was trying to get through to her.

She reached in again, this time not to dig, but to sweep away the thin layer of dirt to get a better view of what lay beneath. She had captured her father's interest, and he leaned over her, looking into the shallow hole.

Violet worked like an archaeologist, carefully sifting and brushing across the top of her discovery, so as not to disturb what might be buried there.

She heard her father gasp at the same time she recognized what she had uncovered. She felt his strong hands reaching for her from behind, pulling her firmly by the shoulders away from the fresh dirt and gathering her into his strong, safe armsâ¦away from the sound that was calling to herâ¦

And away from the girl's face staring up at her from beneath the soil.

CHAPTER 1

THE SOUND OF THE ALARM CLOCK WAS AN
irritating intrusion into the comfortable haze of sleep that wrapped its arms around Violet. She dragged her hand out from beneath the warm cocoon of blankets to hit the snooze button. She kept her eyes closed; trying to let the haze reclaim her, but the damage had already been done. She was awake now.

She sighed, still not ready to untangle herself from the covers, and she tried to recall what she had been dreaming about before being so rudely interrupted. For a moment, she thought she might remember, but the elusive whisper
of her dream escaped her.

She made a disgusted sound to herself as she finally threw off the blankets and sat up in one not-so-smooth motion. She turned off her clock before it could reach its nine-minute snooze interval.

This was the third day of school, and she didn't want to start her junior year with a tardy slip. She rubbed her face with both hands, trying to stimulate the flow of blood in an effort to stay alert. She wasn't much of a morning person.

She stumbled through most of her before-school routine; showering, brushing her teeth, dressing. After scrutinizing herself in the mirror and noting the dark circles beneath her eyes, she once again thought about how badly she wanted to crawl back beneath the mound of already cooling blankets that covered her bed like an inviting nest.

She pulled her hair into a messy ponytailâthe only kind of ponytail that her unruly curls allowedâbefore grabbing her backpack off the floor. She hated it when adults told her how lucky she was to have such gorgeous, natural curls, when she wanted nothing more than to blend in with the sea of shiny, flat-ironed, stick-straight hair with which every girl in her school seemed to have been blessed.

But what did she expect? Life didn't seem to want
her
to blend like everyone else.

After all, how many girls had inherited the ability to locate the dead, or at least those who had been murdered? How many little girls had spent hours of their childhood scouring the woods in search of dead animals left behind by
feral predators? How many had created their own personal cemeteries in their backyards to bury the carnage they'd found, so the little souls could rest in peace?

And how many eight-year-olds had been drawn to discover the body of a dead girl?

No, Violet was definitely different.

She brushed aside the disturbing thoughts and hurried out the door, crossing her fingers, like she did every morning, that her ancient little car would sputter to life when she tried to start it.

Her car.

Her father called it a “classic.”

She wasn't quite so kind in her description of the small 1988 Honda Civic, with its original factory paint that was fading after years of being battered by the rainy Washington weather.

She called it dilapidated.

Reliable,
her father would argue back. And Violet couldn't entirely disagree. So far, despite its morning protests and groansâso much like her ownâher Honda had never been the cause of one of her (many) late slips.

Today was no different. The car coughed and spewed when she turned the ignition, but the engine caught on the first attempt and, after a few coaxing moments, the sound turned to something closer to its usual not-so-quiet grumbling.

Violet had just one stop to make on her way to school, the same stop she'd made every day since getting her license six months earlier. To pick up her best friend, Jay Heaton.

Best friend.
The expression seemed so foreign now, like an old, comfortable sneaker that once practically molded to your foot but now strained against each step you took because it no longer fit.

The summer had changed thingsâ¦too many things for Violet's liking.

She and Jay had been best friends since they were six years old, when in the first grade Jay had moved to Buckley. It was the day that Violet dared him to kiss Chelsea Morrison at recess, telling him she'd be his best friend if he did. Of course Chelsea had pushed him down for doing it, which Violet had known would happen, and all three of them were hauled into the principal's office for a discussion about “personal boundaries.”

But Violet was true to her word, and she and Jay had been inseparable ever since.

In the first grade, they'd played tag on the playground, always ganging up on the other kids to make someone else “it” in order to avoid playing against each other. In second grade, they moved on to the jungle gym, choosing teams and using the tunnels as makeshift forts to defend against their enemies. By third grade, they'd learned to play four square and wall ball. Fourth, tetherball. And fifth was the year they discovered the giant boulder at the edge of the playing field, behind which the recess teacher couldn't see what was happening.

It was the year of their first kissâor
kisses
, ratherâtheir one and only foray into romance with each other. They tried it once with their lips closed tightly, a small quick peck, and then again, they tried it by touching their tongues together. The sensation
was slippery, supple, and foreign. They both immediately agreed that it was gross and swore they would never do it again.

By middle school, their parents, who had become something like chauffeurs, ferrying the two of them almost daily across the mile-long distance that separated their homes, had resigned, maintaining that if Violet and Jay really wanted to see each other, then the exercise would do them good.

But neither of them minded the walk. They had spent years of their childhoods combing through the forested areas that surrounded both of their homes, as they explored and built clubhouses out of old timber. They had mapped and named entire sections of the woods, several of them after themselves or unusual arrangements of their combined names. Things like “Jaylet Stream”â¦“Amberton Woods”â¦“Hebrose Trail.”

They also named the makeshift graveyard behind Violet's house, using neither of their names, simply calling it Shady Acres.

They were ten at the time, and the name sounded ominous and darkâ¦which was exactly what they were going for. They would dare one another to go out there, to see who could wait alone, until well after darkness had fallen, telling each other tales of the strange occurrences they were sure must be happening out thereâ¦especially at night.

Violet always won, and Jay never complained that she did. He seemed to understand that she wasn't afraid, even when she pretended to be.

He understood a lot of things. He was the only person, besides her parents, and her aunt and uncle, who knew about
her strange penchant for seeking out ravaged animals, and her need to rebury them within the safe chicken-wire enclosure of Shady Acres. It had been an adventure that they'd shared together, combing through fern groves and blackberry thickets in search of the lost bodies. He'd even helped her build little crosses and headstones to mark the tiny graves.

Before they were buried, before they were properly laid to rest, those animals left behind would call out to Violet. They would emit an energyâa sensory echoâin the wake of their murder, like a beacon that only she could find, letting her know where they'd been discarded. It could be anythingâ¦a smell, a burst of color, a taste in the back of her mouth, or a combination of several sensations at once.

She didn't know howâ¦or whyâ¦It just
happened
.

But what she did know, what she'd learned early on, was that once she placed them in her graveyard, they no longer called out to her. She still felt them, but it was different. She was able to filter them out, until they became nothing more than the comforting static of white noise.

Jay also understood the need to keep Violet's secret, even though he'd never been told to. He seemed to sense, even from an early age, that he needed to keep that secret close to him, like a treasure he protected, saving it just for the two of them. He'd always made Violet feel safe and secureâ¦and even normal.

So why, then, had everything changed so suddenly?

Already, as her car sputtered down his driveway, with gravel crunching beneath the tires, her heart rate was racing
within the suddenly too-confined space of her chest.

This is ridiculous,
she chided herself.
He's your
best
friend!

She saw the front door opening even before she slowed to a complete stop. Jay was yanking his hooded sweatshirt over his head, dragging his backpack in his wake. He yelled something into the house, probably telling his mom that he was leaving for school, and he pulled the door shut behind him.

It was the same thing every day. There was nothing different from yesterday and the day before that. Nothing different from every single day since they'd met.

Except that now her stomach climbed into her throat as he grinned his stupid sideways grin at her and slid into the car.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid!

She smiled back, willing her reckless pulse to slow down. “Ready?”

“No, but do we have a choice?” His voice, which had gotten deeper over the summer, was still so well-known to her, so comfortable, that she immediately relaxed.

“Not if you don't want a tardy.” She backed out of the driveway, barely glancing in her rearview mirror to watch where she was going. His driveway was almost as familiar to her as her own.

She hated these new, unknown feelings that seemed to assault her whenever he was around, and sometimes even when he was only in her thoughts. She felt like she was no longer in control of her own body, and her traitorous reactions were only slightly more embarrassing than her treacherous thoughts.

She was starting to feel like he was toxic to her.

That, or she was seriously losing her mind, because that was the only way she could possibly explain the ridiculous butterflies she got whenever Jay was close to her. And what really irritated Violet was that he seemed to be completely oblivious of these new, and completely insane, reactions she was having to him. Obviously, whatever she had wasn't contagious.

Except that it was. She wasn't the only one that seemed to be noticing him. She almost dreaded the moment they'd step out from the relative peace of her noisy old Honda in the school's overcrowded parking lot. Because that's when the real games began.

Day three of school, but as of day one, girls had begun to wait for them to arrive in the morning.

No, not for themâ¦for
him.

His new fan club,
Violet thought sourly. Girls who had known Jay since the first day of his first-grade year. Girls who had never paid him so much as a second glance before now. Girls who seemed to notice the not-so-subtle changes that had taken place over the last two and a half months they'd spent away from school.

Girls like her.

Stop it!
she silently screamed at herself.

She slid a sideways glance in his direction, trying to figure out just what it was that was making her soâ¦so painfully self-conscious all of a sudden.

He was looking right at her. Grinning. A big, stupid, self-satisfied grin, as if he had been eavesdropping on her all-too-embarrassing thoughts.

“What?” She tried to defend herself, wishing she'd never looked his way as she felt her cheeks burning with shame.
“What?”
she asked again when he just laughed at her.

“Were you planning to ditch school today, or should we turn around?”

She looked up and realized that she'd just driven past the road that led to the school. “Why didn't you say something?” she accused as she pulled a quick, and probably illegal, U-turn. The tops of her ears felt like they were on fire now.

“I just wanted to see where you were heading.” He shrugged. “I didn't say I wouldn't skip school. You just have to ask me first.” His new grown-up voice seemed to fill all the space of the small car, and Violet found even
that
annoying.

“Shut up,” she insisted, even though she couldn't help smiling now too. She couldn't believe she'd passed the entrance to her own school. “Now we really
are
going to be late.”

By the time she found a parking spot in the student lot, there were only two die-hard “Jay fans” left waiting for them. Or rather, for
him
, Violet corrected herself again.

She couldn't help but wonder how many others had already given up their watchful post in favor of
not
visiting the attendance office before school started today.

Violet decided not to wait around to watch the flirt-fest begin. She was already half running, with her backpack slung over her shoulder, as she bolted from her car. “See you in second period!” she yelled back to Jay, consciously deciding that this was better anyway. The last thing she wanted to do right now was to watch him with the two girls, who
practically assaulted him as he got out of the car.

She dashed through the door to her first class just as the bell sounded.

Made it!
she congratulated herself.
Three days down and no tardy slips
.

Just one hundred and seventy-seven to go.

By the time second period rolled around, Violet was already convincing herself that whatever it was she thought she'd been feeling, whatever plagued her ill-advised subconscious, was just an illusion of some sort. It was all smoke and mirrors. A trick of the mind.

And then he sauntered in and fell into the chair beside her, his new size making his desk look like something from a doll-house. Violet half expected the chair to buckle beneath him.

“Hey, Vi. Glad to see you decided to stay at school after all.” He punched her in the arm playfully.

Her heart somersaulted painfully.

Violet sighed. “Ha-ha,” she retorted without a trace of humor.

Jay's brow furrowed, but before he could ask her what was wrong, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. “I almost forgot. Check it out.” He held out the paper so she could grab it from him.

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