Dead Girls Don't Lie (3 page)

“It was a nice service, though.”

“It was.” My answer comes out strained and polite. Three days ago Skyler kissed me, my first-ever kiss, maybe even the start of something, but thanks to Rachel, we’re strangers again. Something horrible inside me resents her for that.

I gesture to the swather, looking for safe territory. “I didn’t know you knew how to drive one of these things.”

He slaps his gloves against his leg again. “I’ve known how to drive it since I was, like, ten.” His voice swells with a bit of pride, like driving it is a big accomplishment. “My dad put me in charge of this whole field.” He looks over at the big machine; maybe he’s looking for safe territory too. “I’d better get back to it.” He moves away. I don’t blame him for not knowing what to say to me, but I wish he would at least try.

I take a step backward too. “Oh, okay.”

He keeps moving away. “Um, were you heading to the lake?”

Swimsuit, flip-flops, towel in a bag, not exactly a hard thing to figure out. “Yeah.”

“Maybe I’ll see you there, maybe when I’m done working?” He’s so close to the combine now that he has to shout above the engine. “But it might be late. You don’t need to wait for me or anything.”

“Sure,” I shout back, even though I don’t think he can hear me.

I watch him for a minute while he turns the monstrous piece of equipment around and starts up a thousand blades that tear into the field, leaving it shorn and bare.

I turn back to the road, wondering how long I should stay at the lake in case Skyler shows up. Wondering if he’ll ever kiss me again. Wondering if I want him to. Are girls whose best friends were just murdered supposed to care about things like being kissed?

I step out of the field and look up. There’s a pair of dark eyes staring back at me. One of the workers from the field across the road is drinking from the hose and watching me. He stands out from the other migrant workers because he’s wearing a gray tank top, jeans, and a baseball cap. He looks like he’s close to my age. When he straightens up, water from the hose drips down his deeply tanned chest.

For a second our eyes meet and recognition flashes between us. I don’t know his name, but I’ve seen him around school, and most recently, I’ve seen him with Rachel, a lot. He was at the funeral, sitting in the back of the church with the other migrants, but like he didn’t really belong there. I read pain in
his eyes. For a second I want to cross the road and ask him about Rachel, about the last six months of her life, if he knows why she sounded so afraid in her last text.

But before I can move, his face goes blank and he turns away.

Chapter 3

I’ve been going to the lake since I was a little kid, by myself since I was twelve. I know the way. But for some reason, I leave the main road and head for the dirt road that cuts across the field in the opposite direction. I keep walking, alongside the irrigation canal, past piles of rusting farm equipment and a fallen-down barn, to where the sparse trees thicken into a little grove that someone planted years ago. It’s the closest thing we have to a forest around here.

Rachel’s house is on the other side, hidden from my view, but that’s not where I’m going. Instead, I head toward what looks like a towering clump of weeds. The only hint that there’s a house buried inside is the sun glinting off a broken upstairs window. This was where Rachel and I went last summer, two weeks before school started. This is where I went in my dream last night.

This is where everything changed.

I was sleeping over at Rachel’s house. We were sitting
around talking, like we had at a hundred sleepovers before. She said something like, “What do you most want to happen at school this year?”

I hesitated. She already knew, and saying it out loud sounded painfully desperate, but because I knew Rachel wouldn’t laugh at me, I answered, “I want Evan Cross to fall desperately in love with me.”

Rachel shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Don’t waste your time. He’s a player. And anyway, your dad would never let you date a guy like him.”

“You don’t even know him,” I protested.

“I know the type,” Rachel said.

“Once he’s with me he’ll reform his evil ways.” I said it like I was joking, but that was my deepest fantasy, that once Evan noticed me he would forget all the other girls he had ever known.

“And you’ll have a glorious church wedding and the whole town will be there. And five years and four kids later, when he cheats on you and runs away with some stripper from Vegas, I’ll try not to say ‘I told you so.’”

I threw a pillow at her, but I threw it too high, so it hit the wall and knocked the picture above her bed crooked. She stood up and adjusted it. I watched her mess with it until it was just right before she sat down again.

“Okay,” I challenged her, “what do you want from high school?”

She gripped her pillow and fell back dramatically on her bed. “I want to be in love; madly, desperately, and completely.”

Now it was time for me to roll my eyes. Boys had been drooling over Rachel since sixth grade when she got all the curves I have yet to acquire. “Haven’t you had enough boyfriends already?”

She sat up and looked at me seriously. “I want someone who will love me, not another guy who wants to go up my shirt.” She lowered her voice. “And maybe I’ve already found him.”

“Who?” I was shocked. We never kept secrets from each other. I used to tease her that I knew she was in love before she did.

She smiled mischievously and shook her head. “I’ll let you know when I’m sure.”

“C’mon, Ray,” I begged. “Tell me.”

She shook her head again, but this time she looked sad.

“Don’t you trust me?” I pushed. “You know I won’t tell.”

She squirmed for a minute, and I was sure she was going to tell me, but she shook her head harder.

“Why not?”

“I just can’t, okay?”

I pushed her until she finally said, “Look, if I can really trust you not to say anything …” She reached under her bed and pulled out an old jewelry box, her treasure box. I expected her to show me a picture or a note from the guy she was talking about. Instead, she pulled out a phone.

“You have a phone?” I practically screamed the word. Rachel and I were the only kids at the middle school who didn’t have phones. Her mom couldn’t afford it, and back then, my dad was convinced personal electronic devices would allow bad guys to get ahold of me.

“Shh,” she said, thrusting the phone under her pillow and looking around. “My mom doesn’t know. And you can’t tell her. I mean it.” She sounded afraid, like she really believed I would rat her out.

“Why do you think I would tell?”

She got annoyed. “I don’t know, maybe because sometimes you’re just too perfect, with all your church stuff.”

Her words stung. I’d heard them since grade school: goody-goody, tattletale. There were worse ones from middle school, but until now, Rachel had never used any of them against me.

“I won’t, okay? I promise.” She still didn’t look convinced, so I made an attempt to sound excited about the phone. “It’s really cool. Where did you get it?”

“It was a present from my dad, for my birthday.” She kept her eyes down, like she felt guilty for that. I felt a sick wash of jealousy: my mom could easily afford a nice phone like that, but she’d never even tried to give me one. “But you can’t tell anyone. Please, Jaycee. If Mom finds out, she’ll never let me keep it.”

My mind raced. If Rachel got the phone for her birthday, that meant she’d had it for almost two months. Two months of her not telling me. Two months of her not trusting me. And she didn’t trust me with the new guy thing either. I tried to push all of that away, along with the jealousy, even though it stung, and be happy for her that she’d finally heard from her dad. “So what did your dad—”

But I didn’t get to ask her about her dad. The phone vibrated to life, and I leaned forward, afraid and eager as a text message came through.

She held it away from me and smiled.

“What does it say?”

Before she could answer, we heard Araceli coming down the hall. Rachel shoved the phone back under her bed, and we both tried to look casual. I was sure we were busted, that Araceli would ask about the phone and somehow I would slip and give away Rachel’s secret and then she would never speak to me again. But Araceli just said that she’d been called into work, she needed to leave right away, and she wanted us to call my dad to come get us so we wouldn’t be alone.

Once her mom drove away, Rachel got the phone out again. She looked at the message and whispered, “Are you up for some excitement?”

As I move closer to the house now, remembering how it looked as we approached it in the dark, I was terrified, already worried about what my dad would say if he ever found out what we were doing. I was scared about what the text said and who it was from, but she wouldn’t tell me. “Trust me” was all she would say.

I wanted her to think I was as brave as she was, that I wasn’t always a goody-goody, and that she could trust me with her secrets. So I went with her, out in the dark, across the field, to the old house. I was so afraid, but I was loyal to her … then.

I hesitate, looking around to make sure I’m alone before I put one foot on the sagging front stairs.

My heart pounds; I shouldn’t be here.

It was the same thought that echoed with every thump of my terrified heart against my chest that night, with every
creak of the stairs that led up the front porch, toward the hollow-eye front windows and the door of the old house.

I take another step; the porch creaks so much that I wonder if it will hold my weight. I reach out and touch the sign nailed to the railing.

I remember how I licked my lips and dared to say it out loud. “The sign says
NO TRESPASSING
.”

It wasn’t more than a hoarse whisper, but Rachel whipped her head around defiantly and grinned at me, her “you’re going to be part of this whether you like it or not” grin. “C’mon, Jaycee, don’t be such a baby. It’s not like the cops are going to jump out of the bushes and arrest us for going inside. Kids hang out here all the time, at least big kids do.”

I got the jab, Rachel implying that I was immature, and so I kept moving, the fear of losing Rachel’s respect greater than the fear of the old house. I had one last hope. “It’s probably locked any—”

“Shh.” She touched her finger to my lips. “Did you hear that?” I froze so fast and so solidly that it felt like my heart stopped too. She shook her head, still grinning. “I don’t think we’re alone.” She giggled like this was a big joke, a big adventure. For her it was.

Her laugh sounded evil and horrible, but I huddled close to her, so close that I got a face full of long hair. Tears collected at the back of my throat. “Let’s just leave, okay, Ray?”

“Not a chance.” She kept moving toward the door, turned the knob, and it swung open without a sound. Somehow the
door’s silence terrified me more than if it had made a horror-show door creak. “See. Unlocked.”

I followed her inside that night because the only thing more terrifying than going inside the old house was staying outside in the dark by myself.

I peer through the windows, dust and grime making the shapes inside almost as dark as they were that night. My eyes adjust to the dark room, and the shapes morph into semi-recognizable forms: an overturned chair, bits of garbage, boxes, things that were left behind or brought in by vagrants after the last people to own the house left permanently. It doesn’t look like anything has changed since that night, like anyone has been inside since then, but I know someone has.

I touch the doorknob; this time it’s secured with a big silver padlock. I remember the odd mix of smells inside, musty and old, with a hint of cigarette smoke and mice, but there was something else, a strong, lingering odor that smelled too new, like someone had just painted.

“He-llo,” Rachel said when we walked inside, and she waited, like she was expecting an answer. Then she stepped toward a narrow staircase. I stayed by the door, frozen with my own fear, half admiring, half despising her courage as she headed up the stairs. She turned once. “Are you coming?” I shook my head and she shook hers back at me, with disgust or whatever, but I was too scared to follow.

I stayed back by the door, still close enough to run if I had to, but also close enough to the wall so my back wasn’t exposed to the darkness behind me. The odd paint smell got
stronger. I listened to Rachel’s footsteps going up and then moving across the floor above me.

I rub one of the windows, and pitch-black dust comes off on my hand. On the far end of the room, pillars of dust stream through big windows, framed by long black drapes on one side of the room. It’s the drapes I remember more than anything. I saw them move after Rachel went upstairs. I tried to convince myself that it was the wind or a mouse, something harmless, but my imagination kept coming up with things that were much worse.

I stayed completely still, holding my breath, searching the dark for whatever or whoever might be there. Wondering if it would be better to follow Rachel or run through the door behind me and all the way back to her house. I stepped backward toward the door, feeling for the wall behind me. My hand touched something solid; I jerked it back. It was wet.

I turned around to face a huge, dark circle. It had a symbol in the middle that looked like an eye glaring back at me. The paint was so fresh that it ran down the wall and clung to my hand where I had touched it, staining it red.

Before I could process what the symbol might mean, Rachel’s scream pierced the darkness. I jerked my head back toward the stairs in front of me. Beyond them, the curtains moved again. For a heartbeat I saw something white, the number eighteen and a face. Then the curtains parted and someone disappeared into their folds.

Rachel screamed again.

I was so terrified that I couldn’t move. I was too scared to
even run away. She ran to the bottom of the stairs before I could get to her. I could tell her foot was bleeding, but she didn’t stop. “We have to get out of here now!” She took my hand when I didn’t move, dragging me out the door, down the stairs, and through the woods. I knew she was hurt, but she ran like she wasn’t. By the time we got to her house, her foot was covered in little rocks, dirt, and leaves, all clinging to the sticky blood. Her hands were covered in blood. There was even blood in her hair and on her T-shirt—too much blood to have been from the cut on her foot. She was whispering something in Spanish over and over that I didn’t understand, “
Lo atraparon
.”