Wish You Were Dead (20 page)

The PA clicked off. There was a moment of silence, as if no one could quite believe we’d been told to use our phones in school, and then kids began calling. I got Mom on her cell. “You have to come get me.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Are you sick?”

I explained that something bad had happened and that school been cancelled. Mom was silent for a moment. Then she said, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

It wasn’t long before a line of cars was snaking into the school driveway and kids were being called over the PA. “Carley Applegate, Jason Prine, James Row, Lacey Williamson. Your rides are
here. Students who have not been able to reach parents or caregivers, go to the auditorium. Stuart Davies, Melissa Sloat, Randal Ellison, Benjamin Carlucci, please meet your rides.”

We watched silently as the kids whose names were called rose and left the classroom.

Tabitha raised her hand. “Can I go to the bathroom?”

“No,” said Ms. Skelling.

“But I have to go,” Tabitha insisted.

Ms. Skelling rolled her eyes. “Maura, please accompany Tabitha to the young ladies’ room and make sure she doesn’t go anywhere else and comes right back.”

“I don’t need a chaperone.”

“If you don’t like it, you can sit there and pee in your pants,” Ms. Skelling said.

Murmurs rippled through the classroom. While Tabitha and Maura got up and left, the rest of us exchanged glances. We weren’t used to teachers speaking to us that way, least of all Ms. Skelling. But some in the class suddenly saw an entertaining opportunity to make the time pass.

“What do you think’s going on, Ms. Skelling?”

“You’ll know soon enough,” she replied.

“You think it has something to do with the missing kids?”

“You’ll know soon enough.”

“You think there’s a killer going around killing kids?”

“You’ll know … soon … enough,” Ms. Skelling grumbled through clenched teeth. “No … more … questions.”

Another list of names was announced over the PA and mine was among them.

Outside in front of school, Mom was waiting in her car. Her eyes were red and watery. The radio was on: “… Miss Cunningham, a senior at Soundview High, was first reported missing on November second. Two other Soundview High students are still missing. This morning’s chilling development greatly increases the concern for their lives.…”

Using one hand to wipe her eyes, Mom turned off the radio with the other. Tears welled up and spill out of my eyes.
It had happened … the worst thing imaginable
.

She drove out of the school driveway and parked on the street, then undid her seat belt and leaned over, doing her best to hug me while I cried.

“I’m so sorry, hon. This is just a terrible thing for someone your age to have to deal with. It’s terrible thing for
anyone
to have to deal with. And when I think about Paul and Dana …” She didn’t finish the sentence. Instead I heard her choke up and start to cry again.

Alternating between wanting to cry and not wanting to, I sobbed, hiccupped, and blew my nose, then cried some more.
This morning’s chilling development …
Lucy was dead. My friend. Someone my own age. Someone I’d grown up with. Someone I knew … had been murdered.

If you’ve never known someone your own age who’s died, you can’t imagine what it feels like. It’s as if you were walking on a glass floor and it suddenly shatters and now you’re falling and falling and there’s broken glass in the air all around you and no bottom in sight.

I sat with Mom in the car and cried for a long time. Soon I
wasn’t just crying for Lucy, but for Adam and Courtney as well. Were they also dead?

“How can this be happening?” I sobbed.

Mom wiped her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t know, hon. I’ve never experienced anything like this before. I’ve never
heard
of anything like this before.”

Rap! Rap!
The sound of knuckles on the window made us jump. Mom and I swiveled our heads. A woman with straight black hair was gesturing for me to open the window. She was holding a microphone, and behind her was a man with a video camera.

“Cover your face and put up your middle finger,” Mom said.

“What?!” I asked in disbelief.

“Just do it,” she said. “Then they can’t use it on air.”

I did as I was told. The reporter and cameraman left. I turned to Mom. My eyes burned and my cheeks were wet, but I felt a smile on my lips. “God, Mom, I never thought the day would come when
you’d
tell me to give someone the finger.”

We shared a brief grin that quickly dissolved into more tears. My grandmother had died of cancer, and in third grade a girl in the year ahead of me had died suddenly from an asthma attack. But this was different. This was … murder. Something that only happened in movies and on TV, and in places far away. Something that no one ever imagined happening in a place like Soundview.

I spent the rest of the day at home, texting, talking, IMing, and thinking about Tyler. He wasn’t online, but he was there in my head, gnawing at my thoughts. I didn’t want to believe he was involved in Lucy’s death, but I couldn’t be sure he wasn’t.

And then there were the tears, which were never far away as the whole reality of Lucy’s death hit me again and again. Each time I finished crying, I’d go downstairs and find Mom on
her
computer and phone, and we’d go into the kitchen and make tea. Dad was in London, but Mom reached him and he left a dinner with some important people to speak to me for a while. The TV stayed off. Mom said we’d had enough bad news for one day (although I had a feeling she was checking the news while I was upstairs).

I was sitting in the kitchen, gazing at the Sound. The water was steel gray, reflecting the sky. The breeze drove row after row of small waves across the surface, but all I could think about was the cold, still darkness beneath.

“Honey?” Mom asked.

“Yes?” I raised my head.

Mom smiled crookedly as she came toward me with a jar of honey in her hand. “I meant, for your tea.”

“Oh, sure, thanks.” She set the jar down and I transferred a spoonful of the amber syrup into my mug. The phone rang and Mom answered. “Yes? Uh-huh. Yes, I understand. I’ll tell her.” She hung up. “No school tomorrow.”

That didn’t come as a surprise. Everyone was beyond freaked. School the next day would have been a waste, and there was a good chance a lot of parents would keep their kids home anyway. Mom sat down and cupped her hands around her mug. “I guess what I’m wondering is how in the world they’re going to have school the day
after
tomorrow?”

*  *  *

When I went back upstairs there was a message from PBleeker:

I guess you must be pretty upset, unless maybe you’re happy about what happened because Lucy stole Adam from you. But people don’t deserve to die just because they steal someone’s boyfriend, do they? Besides, you’ve never struck me as the vengeful type. Can you believe what they did to her eyes?

The first rule of dealing with cyberstalkers is to never, ever respond. But this felt different. Even if I wasn’t sure who PBleeker was, it was obvious that we knew each other. I wrote back:
What about her eyes?

I waited, hoping that PBleeker would be thrilled that I’d finally answered, and eager to reply. But no reply came.

That night there was more news about Lucy. The medical examiner announced that she’d been dead for less than twenty-four hours when she’d been discovered in that wooded grove near the school that morning. The cause of death appeared to be kidney failure due to severe dehydration. There was no mention of anything relating to eyes.

chapter
20

Thursday 6:43
A.M
.

NORMALLY WHEN I got up in the morning, Mom was already downstairs with the newspaper. She read the paper daily, not only because she was active in town politics but because she was a news junkie. But the following morning there was no paper spread out on the kitchen table. There was only Mom, wearing her white terry-cloth robe, the ends of her hair still damp from a morning swim. She was gazing out the window. When she heard me come in, she turned and gave me a weak smile. “How’d you sleep?”

“Better than I thought I would,” I said. “I guess massive anxiety can really wear you out.” I sat down and poured myself a mug of tea. “What’s up?”

“Just having my coffee.” That was so un-Mom-like.

“Why aren’t you reading the paper?”

She gave me a completely unconvincing shrug.

“Mom, I already heard.”

She reached across the table and placed her hand on mine. “About how she died?”

I nodded, although trying to make sense of what they’d said was like trudging through heavy snow.
Kidney failure … dehydration …

Mom must have seen that I was struggling. “They think … it means that wherever she was she couldn’t get anything to drink.”

“Why not?”

Mom blinked and her eyes got watery. “I don’t think anyone really knows. But if I had to guess, the answer would be that someone didn’t want her to drink.” Tears began to run down her cheeks.

I was usually such a homebody, but for once it was hard to stay inside. Maybe it was the craziness of what was going on. Maybe it was my yearning to sort out things with Tyler. Whatever it was, it was impossible to stay still. There was nothing good on TV and I didn’t want to sit at the computer all day exchanging IMs based on gossip and rumors. I tried to read, but that didn’t work, either. Nothing did.

I was paging through a
Seventeen
magazine when Mom knocked on my door and came in wearing business clothes. “There’s a board of directors meeting at the hospital. I hate to leave you, but I know you’ll be safe here. Is that okay?”

I didn’t want her to go, but she was right. It was hard to imagine anyplace safer than my own house, in the gated community of Premium Point, in the (formerly) ultra-safe suburb of Soundview. “It’s okay, Mom. How long do you think you’ll be?”

“They usually go for most of the afternoon. Some people just love the sound of their own voices.” She came over and kissed me on the head. “You’ll be okay. I’ll keep my cell phone on.”

“No prob, Mom.”

She left and I wished she hadn’t gone. It wasn’t logical; I just didn’t want to be alone in the house. Not today. Who could I
invite over? Tyler was the only one who came to mind, and I didn’t feel comfortable calling him.

I finished looking at the magazine. The house was empty, and my room began to feel claustrophobic in my room. I went downstairs and walked around, making sure all the doors were locked and the windows were shut. I would have turned on the alarm system, but it was wired to first-floor motion detectors and that meant having to stay upstairs to avoid setting them off.

There were coffee-table books in the living room to look at and more magazines in the kitchen to read. And there was always the Sound to gaze at, but I’d done a lot of that lately. I couldn’t sit still. Every time I did, thoughts I didn’t want to have were quick to appear. What did it feel like to die of dehydration? What did someone who’d died from dehydration look like? If Lucy hadn’t been given anything to drink, was the same true of Adam and Courtney?

And of course, there was Tyler. Tyler, Tyler, Tyler, until I felt like I’d go crazy.

I went upstairs and changed into exercise clothes, then jogged on the treadmill while watching
Ten Things I Hate About You
, one of my favorite movies. That worked for a while, until I got tired and had to slow from a jog to a walk, and then—when my legs really began to ache—to a stop altogether. But at least I knew what I wanted to do next.

The indoor-outdoor pool and hot tub were separated from the house by a long, narrow breezeway lined with sliding-glass doors. In summer we opened the doors and retracted the pool’s roof. In the winter the doors were closed and the roof went back
on. I guess the indoor hot tub was what people would call a guilty pleasure. I loved sitting in it after exercising or riding Val, with the bubbling hot water swirling around me and the view of the Sound out back. As I walked along the breezeway, I saw that the blue sky was dotted with high thin clouds as wispy as baby’s hair and the sun sparkled on the water. But in the distance to the west, a thick bank of dark gray clouds was approaching.

The hot tub was in a corner between the pool and the windows. I turned the whirlpool on and waited for the water to heat up. It hardly took any time for the hot tub to get steamy. I took off my white terry-cloth robe and draped it over a pool chair. I was naked. It seemed silly to bother with a bathing suit when there was absolutely no one around. Before I got into the tub, goose bumps ran over my skin, more from the daring thrill of being completely unclothed than any lingering cool air.

I eased myself into the bubbly brew and immediately felt myself start to relax. The windows closest to the hot tub steamed over and I stared at the ceiling, trying to let my mind go anywhere it wanted as long as it had nothing to do with Lucy, Adam, and Courtney. Or Tyler.

There was college to think about. But then I imagined what the first day would be like. I’d meet other students and they’d ask where I was from and as soon as I said Soundview they were sure to press their hands to their mouths and gasp, “Isn’t that where those kids disappeared and that girl was killed?”

The thought made me wince. Would this follow all of us for the rest of our lives? Would we always be the kids from Soundview—like the kids who went to Columbine?

I slid down a little in the hot tub and let the swirling bubbly water cover my shoulders. And thought about Tyler again.
Okay, okay
, I thought.
I give up. As soon as I get out, I’ll call him. Either I’ll make up some excuse, or I’ll just tell him the truth … that I would feel better if he told me more about himself and what was going on
.

That’s what I was thinking when I looked back at the window … and felt a jolt of terror. Against the foggy glass was a shadow—a silhouette of someone, almost certainly a man.