Little Lost Angel (9 page)

But this weekend, he’d talked himself and several relatives into a major project. Steve’s father and stepfather were coming over early Saturday morning to help him rip up carpet and knock down a wall to expand the living room in his house.

When Steve arrived at Jacque’s townhouse to pick up
Shanda on Friday afternoon, the first words out of his daughter’s mouth were, “Can I help on the living room?”

“Sure you can, honey,” he said. An extra hand, even a young, overeager one, was always welcome.

That evening, as Shanda was helping Steve unload lumber from his truck, she got a call from her friend Michele Durham, who lived a few blocks away. Michele had big news: A boy who lived nearby was having a birthday party and Shanda was invited.

“Can I go?” Shanda asked.

Steve and Sharon had planned on ordering a pizza and spending the night with Shanda in front of the television. But they knew Michele to be a nice girl, and after all that Shanda had been through lately she deserved to have some fun. Within a minute of Steve’s approval, Shanda had conveyed the news to Michele, hung up the phone, and set up shop in front of the bathroom mirror. “What am I going to do with my hair?” she moaned to Sharon.

*  *  *

It was just starting to get dark when Laurie pulled her car down Capital Hills Drive and edged over to the side of the road a few doors down from the Sharers’ house.

Melinda turned to Toni and Hope and ordered them to go to the door.

“Why don’t you go up?” Toni asked nervously.

“Because she won’t come out if she sees Melinda,” Laurie said tersely.

“Well why don’t you go up?” Toni asked Laurie.

“Because I’m driving,” Laurie said impatiently. “Are you going to chicken out or what?”

Hope intervened. “Come on, Toni, let’s go.”

“Don’t forget now,” Melinda said, reminding them of the plan they’d been going over on the way there. “Tell her you’re friends of Amanda’s and that Amanda wants Shanda to go with you and meet her somewhere.”

Toni followed Hope reluctantly to the Sharers’ front door.

Steve was relaxing on the living-room couch, Sharon was in the kitchen, and Shanda was still busy in the bathroom when they heard the knock. Before Steve or Sharon could
make a move, Shanda had breezed past them and opened the front door.

“Is Shanda here?” Hope asked.

“I’m Shanda.”

“Hi, my name is Hope. I’m a friend of Amanda’s.”

Shanda told Hope to lower her voice, then stepped out on the front porch so that her father wouldn’t hear Amanda’s name mentioned. Hope was about to introduce Toni when Toni spoke up. “Hi, I’m Stacy,” she said. The fake name momentarily startled Hope, but she continued with the story Melinda had concocted and told Shanda that Amanda was waiting for her at a neat place down by the river called the Witches’ Castle.

“Amanda really needs to talk with you,” Hope said. “It’s real important.”

“I can’t leave now,” Shanda said. “Besides, I’m going to a party tonight.”

“But you really need to talk to Amanda,” Hope insisted. “She needs to tell you something.”

Shanda’s curiosity was piqued. “I know what,” she said. “Why don’t you bring Amanda back by my house later tonight, around midnight? I’ll try to sneak out for a little while.”

Sensing that this was the best they were going to do, Hope and Toni said goodbye, then spun around and raced back to the car.

“Who was that?” Steve asked as Shanda came back inside.

“Just some friends from school,” she lied matter-of-factly, then quickly turned the corner into the bathroom, hoping to avoid any more questions.

“Wait a minute,” Steve said. “Come back in here.”

Shanda peeped around the corner. She studied her father’s stern face and stepped meekly back into the living room.

“Why did they ask you if Shanda was here?” he demanded. “Don’t you know them?”

Shanda became defensive. “Yes, I know them. I don’t know why they asked that.”

“I heard them say Amanda’s name,” Steve said, rising to his feet and placing his hands on his hips. “Are they friends of Amanda?”

“They didn’t say anything about Amanda,” insisted Shanda. “They just wanted to know if I could go with them to the mall and I told them I couldn’t.”

“I know what I heard,” Steve said, his voice rising.

Sharon stepped between the two. “Now just cool it. Let’s not get into a big argument about this.”

At that moment the doorbell rang. It was Michele and another girl from the neighborhood. They’d come over to help Shanda get ready.

The tension faded and Steve sat back on the couch as Shanda and the other girls slipped into her bedroom. Shanda persuaded her stepsister, Sandy, to help fix her hair, an operation that took nearly half an hour. Finally Shanda was ready. She shyly approached her father.

“Can I stay out till eleven?” Shanda asked.

“Let’s make it ten-thirty,” said Steve, who hadn’t quite gotten over the earlier argument.

As they walked to the party, Shanda mentioned to Michele the visit of the two unfamiliar girls.

“I remember her saying something about these two girls and something about Amanda, but I wasn’t really paying attention,” Michele said later. “Then we started talking about something else and she didn’t mention it again.”

A little while after Shanda had left, Sharon’s two children went out for the evening, Sandy on a date and Larry Dale to a friend’s party. Home alone, Steve and Sharon had a pizza delivered and snuggled together in front of the television.

*  *  *

Melinda was fuming when Hope and Toni arrived back at the car without Shanda, but she eased up when she learned that Shanda had told them to come back later. The plan would just have to be delayed for a while.

They drove on to Preston Highway in Louisville. The hardcore music concert was being held in a place called the Audubon Skatepark, located next door to a neighborhood bar in a run-down shopping center. It was filled with large ramps on which teenagers tested their skateboarding skills.
This night, however, the ramps had been pushed to the sides to make room for a dance floor and bandstand. The room was crowded with hundreds of teens jostling for space, pushing against each other as they rocked to the relentless rhythms of a punk band called Sunspring.

Seeing a girl that she knew, Melinda sneaked up and pinched her butt. The girl threw her arms around Melinda and they danced together. Laurie also felt at home here, and she liked the fierce, slashing chords played by the lead guitarist. She adopted a tough attitude and began searching the crowd for a familiar face.

Hope and Toni had taken off their shirts and walked inside with only their jackets over their bras, hoping that this sexy attire would attract guys. After a few moments of flashing their assets with little success, however, they became bored. The room was stiflingly hot, the music louder and harsher than they liked. They asked Laurie for her car keys, then pushed their way through the sweaty crowd to the exit. The sun was down now, and it was bitterly cold. The girls idled the engine to keep the heater running. Two teenage boys tapped on the window and asked if they could sit in the car for a minute to get warm. Toni and Hope thought the boys were good-looking and eagerly opened the door. After all, wasn’t that why they had come along in the first place?

Hope and Toni talked to the boys, Jimmy and Brandon, for hours—about school, about skateboarding, about music, about everything but what was really on Toni’s mind. Brandon could tell that something was bothering her and asked what was wrong.

Hope gave her a look that said Keep your mouth shut. But Toni’s mind was spinning, and she had to talk to someone.

“You know those two girls we told you we came with?” Toni began. The boys nodded. The next words came out haltingly: “Well, they’re going to kill a little girl tonight.”

The boys stared back in disbelief, then they laughed. “Yeah, sure,” Brandon said.

“No, I’m not kidding,” Toni said seriously. “That’s all they’ve been talking about. They even have a knife. Don’t they, Hope?”

Hope decided, What the hell, she may as well show off a bit. She reached into Melinda’s purse and pulled out the knife.

Brandon and Jimmy were unmoved. They knew plenty of kids that carried weapons, even guns. But Brandon could sense that Toni was truly frightened.

“Listen,” he said, “if you’re scared, why don’t you just come with us? We’ll find someone to give you a ride home.”

Toni said okay eagerly, but Hope gave her a stern look. “We can’t do that,” she said. “We can’t just take off. Laurie will be pissed.”

Toni didn’t want to leave without Hope and she didn’t want to make Laurie angry. She thought to herself that maybe she was making too much of this. Maybe Melinda just wanted to beat up Shanda. Maybe nothing at all would come of this. She told the boys she’d stay with Hope. The knife was soon forgotten and they began to talk about other things.

Jimmy and Brandon were still in the car at about eleven-thirty when Melinda and Laurie came out of the concert. Seeing that the new arrivals were eager for them to leave, the boys said their goodbyes. The girls went to a nearby Long John Silver restaurant, and while they were waiting for their food, Melinda began talking about Shanda again. She told Toni that, much as she hated Shanda, she had to admit she was sexy. “I’d like to eat her out,” Melinda said.

Melinda was all worked up. The concert was over now. There would be no more distractions. It was time to do what she’d set out to do. It was time to get Shanda.

*  *  *

When Shanda got home from the birthday party at eleven, she had her friend Michele by her side. Shanda was supposed to have been home half an hour earlier, and her father was not pleased.

“Can Michele spend the night?” Shanda asked.

“No,” Steve said. “We’re going to have a house full of people here early tomorrow morning to work on the living room. You’d better call Michele’s mother and have her pick her up.”

Then, feeling he was being too harsh on the girls, Steve
added, “While you’re waiting, why don’t you two finish off the pizza?”

The girls were still eating when Steve decided to go to bed.

“Shanda, when Michele leaves you can watch TV for a half hour, then you’d better turn in,” he said.

“Okay, Dad,” Shanda said. “Good night. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Steve told his daughter before he went into his bedroom and closed the door.

A few minutes later Michele’s mother arrived and the two girls said their goodbyes.

“I think she’d forgotten all about those girls coming back,” Michele said later. “She hadn’t mentioned them again all night. If she remembered that they were coming back I doubt that she would have asked me to spend the night.”

*  *  *

Michele had been gone less than half an hour when Laurie’s car rolled down Shanda’s street and slowed to a stop a few houses away. The headlights were off, but no one was getting out. Toni had just told the others that she wasn’t going to the door with Hope this time.

“But she’s expecting to see you,” Melinda insisted.

“I’m not going,” Toni said with all the firmness she could muster.

“I’ll go with you, Hope,” Laurie said, giving Toni a contemptuous look.

The two girls began walking up the sidewalk when they saw a pickup truck pull up. Sixteen-year-old Dale Gettings had just gotten off from his job at a pizza shop and was stopping by to pick up Shanda’s stepbrother, Larry Dale. They were going to a big party out in the country.

Dale saw the two girls approaching.

“Hi,” one of them said. “Do you know if Shanda is home?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just going to pick up her brother.”

Assuming the girls were Shanda’s friends, Dale motioned them to follow him. “Come on, we’ll see if she’s still up.”

Dale went to the side-door porch and knocked, Laurie and Hope standing a few feet behind him in the driveway.

Shanda opened the door. The family dog, a rottweiler, stood quietly by her side. Dale petted the dog and asked about Larry Dale. Shanda told him that her stepbrother had already gotten a ride to the party with someone else.

As Dale pulled away in his truck, he saw Shanda step out onto the porch to talk to the two girls.

Out in the car, Toni sat on the front passenger side, with Melinda crouched in the backseat. Laurie came running back to the car by herself.

“Hurry up, we’ve got to hide you,” Laurie said. “She’ll be out in a minute.”

Holding the kitchen knife in her hand, Melinda scooted down on the rear floorboard, while Laurie arranged an old red blanket and some dirty clothes on top of her. A few minutes later, Hope and Shanda came running to the car.

“Where’s Amanda?” Shanda asked.

“We’ve going to meet her,” Laurie said. “Come on, get in.”

Toni stepped out of the car and let Shanda get in the middle of the front seat. Hope went around to drive, and Laurie got in the back with the hidden Melinda.

“Did you know that Amanda and Melinda have broken up?” Hope asked innocently as they pulled away.

“Yeah, I know,” Shanda said. “Amanda and I went together for about four months.”

Melinda had heard enough. Springing up suddenly, she pulled Shanda’s hair back and put the dull side of the knife to her throat. Shanda shrieked.

“Surprise!” Melinda shouted. “I bet you didn’t expect me here, you bitch.”

Shanda recognized the voice and cried, “Please, Melinda, don’t hurt me.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Melinda ordered. “Now answer me, and you better tell the truth: Did you and Amanda go to the haunted house at Harvest Homecoming?”

“Yes.”

“Did you and Amanda have sex?” Melinda demanded.

Shanda hesitated, then felt the pressure of the knife increasing. “Yes,” she said. “Please, don’t hurt me.”

Melinda was so angry she began to stutter. “You . . . you
bitch.” She kept the knife to Shanda’s throat as Hope drove them down to the river, then headed east toward Utica and finally arrived at the Witches’ Castle. Shanda was sobbing as Melinda and Laurie each grabbed one of her arms, pulled her out of the car, and marched her up the hill to the foreboding ruins. Toni and Hope stumbled behind, using lighters to see in the darkness.