Paper Valentine (7 page)

“You could look,” Lillian says in my ear, “if you wanted. It won’t hurt you. If you look, maybe you’ll feel braver.”

I nod, but I don’t feel brave. I feel like we’re playing the worst game of Truth or Dare in the history of the world. Lillian is right there next to me, though. After a second, she reaches for my hand and squeezes it.

When Kelly goes back out to help Connor Price’s mother choose negatives for enlargements, I slip down from the counter.

It’s not like the safe combination is a secret or anything. Kelly keeps it on a tiny piece of scratch paper taped under the edge of the desk in case she forgets. She even has me open it sometimes, when she needs extra quarters for the register.

Still, it takes me two tries before I actually manage to twist the dial the right number of turns.

With shaky hands, I take out the stack of envelopes and sort through the order. I used to be honest. Not underhanded, not a sneak. I never would have looked at the crime-scene photos when Kelly said not to. But Lillian’s right, it’s no good pretending the tragedies aren’t happening, and I have to believe I’m brave enough to know the bad things. Anyway, this isn’t the same as taking something. I’m not vandalizing lawn ornaments or stealing candy from the gas station or cheating on a test. I’m just looking.

I hold the pictures in the palm of my hand, flipping through two traffic accidents and a B and E before I get to the final set. Cecily is lying just below the little cement dam at the west end of Muncy Park.

She’s wearing a blue sundress. The kind with a smock front, where the straps tie in little bows at the tops of the shoulders. I can tell just by the way the skirt is crumpled that it’s probably made of cotton, and it feels wrong to be noticing these things when I should be noticing other things instead.

Her face is shockingly white—dead white—and there are dark finger-shaped bruises all over one shoulder. In the blue evening light, the bruises look black. Almost as black as the blood that’s splashed in the weedy grass around her.

She’s lying faceup with her legs twisted awkwardly and her arms out to her sides. Even though the crime-scene photographer took the shot from twelve feet away, it’s not too hard to see how she died. The blood all seems to be coming from one side of her head, like maybe she was hit with something big and heavy.

None of this is the most shocking part, though. The real, actual worst part is the thing that Boles mentioned the other day.
Flea market.
When he said it, the words didn’t even add up to anything in my head, but now I understand.

The body of Cecily Miles is the drabbest thing in the picture. All around her, arranged in no particular order, marked with yellow police markers and reaching all the way to the corners of the photo, is a collection of toys. Most of them are tiny and cheap, like party favors. There’s a little airplane made of pink plastic, barely two inches long, and a sparkly rubber ball, like the kind you get out of a bin at the dollar store, and too many others to count. Threaded through the surrounding bushes and tied in a crazy web above her is a tangle of rainbow craft string.

“Oh,” says Lillian in a tight, shaky voice. “Oh, Hannah—Hannah, look.” She’s leaning in over my shoulder, pointing with a trembling finger.

But I already see it. Lying against the back of Cecily’s outstretched hand is a red heart, cut from construction paper and glued carefully to the center of a lacy white doily. It’s a strange, eerie thing to see lying in the grass, in the middle of summer, in the shadow of a dead body, but that’s not what makes the horror come bubbling up from the bottom of my memory.

“You remember?” Lillian whispers. The tightness in her voice makes her sound like she’s begging. “Remember, Hannah?”

I nod so slowly it feels like I’m underwater, thumbing through the rest of the prints until I get to a close-up. The valentine is big and bright red, but you can tell from the unevenness of the scallops and the crooked way the pattern doesn’t line up that the doily is handmade, cut out with scissors or maybe a utility knife. The tile floor is cold under me, and I feel wobbly and full of needles and pins, like maybe I’m going to faint.

Together, we crouch on the floor of the office, in front of the open safe.

“Remember?” Lillian says again, in a desperate, strangled voice. “The spirit board and the message?”

“
You
did that!” I mean to sound impatient and kind of bored, but it comes out much too loud.

I wince and clap my hand over my mouth. Out in the front of the store, Kelly and Mrs. Price both stop talking. There’s nothing but the sound of the machines, and I sit very still. Then Mrs. Price says something I can’t hear, and Kelly laughs and everything is normal again.

I shove the pictures back in their paper bag and lower my voice to a whisper, glaring at Lillian. “You did that. It doesn’t mean anything.”

She shakes her head, raising one hand and keeping her back very straight. “Hannah, I swear to you, I didn’t move that glass.”

I sit staring down at the package of photos in my hand, not really seeing them. “That’s not possible, okay?”

“What’s a better explanation, then? That I was trying to play a prank on you and I accidentally broke a murder case that hadn’t happened yet? That I psychically tapped into some freaky collective unconsciousness? Look, whatever—
whoever
—wanted us to know about the heart, it was someone else.”

I put the pictures back in the safe and close the door, making sure not to let it slam.

Someone killed a girl one winter—left her dead like a worn-out toy, all powder-pink ski jacket and bloody hair—and then they killed another, tucking her in a nest of the cheapest party favors ten dollars can buy.

This is not one of those dismal everyday tragedies that Lillian talked about, those bad things that just happen.

This is something black and monstrous.

It’s so much worse.

RABBIT HOLE

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
he rest of the week is like a strange alternate reality where everything keeps chugging along like always.

It’s one thing to know—know, with a crazy, impossible knowing—that someone in my city is out there killing girls, but it’s another to actually be able to talk to anyone about it. So I don’t. I walk Ariel to school and I go to work and I paint my toenails, and I act like nothing is wrong.

Since I saw the crime-scene pictures of Cecily Miles, though, that raggedy homemade valentine has mostly been all I’ve thought about. I’m almost sure I’d be having nightmares, except that it’s been really hard to sleep.

I’ve started wearing my Alice bracelet all the time. I never take it off, even though the chain sometimes pinches my wrist and a lot of the charms are kind of sharp. I don’t care. The weight of it against my skin is comforting, and it’s nice to have something solid to remind me of Lillian. I never told her, but the Queen of Hearts charm always reminded me of her, even when she was alive. The way that all ways were Lillian’s ways, and how in the story the queen is unpredictable and kind of scary, but even when she throws a tantrum or threatens to cut off Alice’s head, she never really means it.

Sometimes Lillian got mean or moody, or snapped at me to stand up for myself, reminding me that she wasn’t going to protect me from every cranky teacher and varsity jerk forever. But mostly? She liked me exactly how I was, and I liked her right back.

I wrap my fingers around the charm and hold on until I fall asleep.

On Monday night, when I went downstairs for dinner, the bracelet was lying on the porch where Finny said it would be, arranged in a careful circle on the welcome mat. It wasn’t in great shape, but I fixed it so it’s wearable at least. The chain was still in one piece, but the jump ring holding the clasp had to be replaced. The Cheshire cat’s tail is broken, and some of the enamel is scratched off the card guard. The white rabbit is just plain gone.

Now, it’s four o’clock in the afternoon on Friday, and the house is empty except for me. Ariel’s at the pool with the Orteros, and there’s a note from my mom on the refrigerator door saying she’s taking Joan to get her shots. Decker is out at one of the new housing developments on the east side of town, putting up drywall.

I can remember so many days when all I wanted was to be alone. Hating how crowded and noisy the house was, wanting so badly to have the place to myself. Now, though, I don’t really want to be by myself.

No matter how loud I turn up the stereo and dance around, I can’t shut out the list of random words that keeps popping into my head:
bone
and
blood
and
bludgeon
. When I close my eyes, I see Cecily. I see Monica Harris, who I did an English project with one time and then never thought of again until she was dead.

Lillian’s sitting on my dresser, rocking from side to side in time to the beat of my dance party, while I bounce on my mattress and scream along. After my legs get tired and my throat starts to hurt, I stop jumping and turn off the music. The air feels suddenly still, like the silence right after a thunder- clap.

“Okay,” Lillian says finally. “This can’t be how you spend the rest of your life. Come on, what are you doing, Hannah? I’m supposed to be the obsessive one.”

I sit on the edge of my bed, breathing hard with the raw, screaming feeling still sitting in the back of my throat. I know she’s right. It’s strange to have Lillian be the voice of reason and me the one who can’t relax or sit still or act normal.

“How do you stop obsessing?” I whisper, pulling at the little tufts of fleece on my bedspread.

Lillian laughs and rolls her eyes. “Do I look like I know the answer to that? I always just locked on to the target and then followed it all the way down.”

I nod and stop ruining the bedspread. Then I get up and dig through the pink footlocker at the end of my bed until I find my yearbook from freshman year.

It’s weird to look at a picture of someone and know that they’re not even in the world anymore. You are never going to run into them in the beauty aisle at Rite Aid or pass them on the street. They’ve gone past the point of no return. They’ve winked out.

In her class photo, Monica looks almost unbearably happy. Her teeth are small and straight, but there’s something in her smile that reminds me of Cecily—at least, the photo of Cecily they keep showing on the news.

For a freshman, Monica is in a lot of the candid shots. She was in a ton of clubs and activities, which is one of the surest ways to get your picture in the yearbook, but still I can’t help thinking that maybe they included more than they normally would because she’s dead.

On the front page of the fall sports section, there’s a picture of her with Taylor Wetherall and Izzy Marks at the first football game of the year, wearing matching sweatshirts with their hair up in pigtails and go, fight, win written on their cheeks in greasepaint. It’s the kind of undisguised enthusiasm that Lillian always considered dorky, but I don’t even know if that’s fair. They look really happy.

Lillian has climbed down off the dresser and is crouched on the floor next to me. She watches me flip through the book, leaning over my shoulder to study a black-and-white photo of Monica looking responsible and serious as she represents Turkey during a debate for Mock UN. “God, she was a piece of work. Do you think Cecily was even one-third as annoying?”

“They seem like they were both really sweet,” I say, running my finger along the caption underneath.
International drama sparks lively discussion
.

Lillian rolls her eyes and makes a dry, scornful noise. “That’s one word for it.”

I don’t answer or tell her to be nice. I’m thinking about smiling Monica, about smiling Cecily and the awful scattering of plastic toys lying in the grass around her. The valentine that is the only thing tying them together, and I’m not even sure it’s a real thing.

I glance over at Lillian. “When Monica died, it was in the newspapers for a while, right? All the interviews and details about the investigation and everything?”

I expect her to say, How should I know, but instead she nods, looking almost awkward.

“Well, I think we should try to find copies of that stuff, check the details, see if there’s anything about a heart, or Valentine’s Day, or what her head wound was like, anything that could connect her to Cecily. The library would have all that, wouldn’t it?”

Lillian sits very still, like she’s bracing herself for something. It takes a minute before she answers. “Or you could go get it from my house. I have a scrapbook in my room.”

I sit with the yearbook open on my knees, staring at her like she’s blurry around the edges and I’m trying to make her come into focus. “Sorry, a what?”

“It was just this thing,” she says, sounding defensive, talking very fast. “I was really bothered that someone could just die like that, with no warning. I just—I sort of kept a record of all the important things, plus a bunch of little details, dates and stuff. So it’s all there. You just have to go and get it.”

“Are you insane? I’m just supposed to ring the doorbell and ask your mom if I can go downstairs and get your secret dead-girl scrapbook out of your room?”

Lillian gives me a disdainful look. “Don’t be stupid. Anyway, she’s at work right now.”

* * *

Lillian’s house is big and eggshell-white, and right across the street from Muncy Park.

When she was alive, Lillian and I would sometimes climb out her window late at night and run across the street to the playground. We’d swing on the tire swing or lie on the grass by the baseball diamonds, even though Lillian’s curfew was eleven o’clock and the park was supposed to be closed to the public after dark.

I haven’t been on this side of Muncy Park since before she died, and it’s weird to me that her street doesn’t look any different from the way it looked six months ago. The trees and bushes all have leaves now and the daylilies are in bloom, but otherwise it’s exactly the same.

I have to climb in through her bedroom window, which is in the front, barely hidden behind a row of snowball bushes. I cross the lawn, trying to look inconspicuous and like I belong there. The neighborhood is deserted, though. It’s still before five, so most of the neighbors aren’t home yet.

Her bedroom is in the basement, which means that in theory, all I have to do is open the window and crawl in. The window is the sliding kind that locks with a metal spring latch, and even though I don’t think it’s very likely, I’m a little worried that someone will have noticed the lock doesn’t exactly do what it’s supposed to and gotten it fixed.

The thing is, Lillian’s mother caught her sneaking out. Lillian’s mother caught her sneaking out more than once. The first time, she got all worked up and yelled and threatened to take away her cell phone, but yelling at Lillian has never really had much of an impact.

After a while, it got so that any time Mrs. Wald woke up and found Lillian gone, she’d go through the house and make sure everything was locked, so if Lillian wanted back in, she’d have to ring the doorbell. It was supposed to be this tactic of parental control, but Mrs. Wald underestimated exactly how much Lillian hated being told what to do.

Lillian’s solution was simple. She took apart the window latch with a screwdriver and put it back together so the little metal lever always looked like it was in the locked position, when really, it didn’t lock at all. The fact that someone might be able to break into her house didn’t even faze her. Ludlow was safe enough—safe enough to walk around the park in the middle of the night, safe enough to leave her window unlocked so she would always be able to get back in. But now that sense of security is gone, and it makes me wonder if it was ever safe at all.

I have to slide through the window on my stomach, which is precariously awkward, and for a second, I’m scared I’m going to fall through and land on my head on the floor. Her bed is still pushed against the wall, though, right under the window. When I drop down onto it, the impact sends a puff of dust billowing up around me, and I have to press my hands over my face and close my eyes to keep from sneezing.

Being in Lillian’s room is like being in a wax museum or someplace just as eerie.

It’s so dark that at first my eyes can’t focus, and the air seems oddly damp, like I’m standing under a swamp cooler. The bed is still half made, the quilt hanging down over the mattress at an angle so one corner of it touches the floor. Her Emilie Autumn poster is still tacked up on the wall, but her computer and most of her books are gone. The closet is empty, but her basketball trophies from elementary school are still on the little shelf above her desk.

When I swing myself off the bed, Lillian is standing in the middle of the room, looking around like we’re in the wrong place. “What happened to all my stuff?” she whispers.

I cross to the bookshelf, which is mostly bare except for a few figure-skating programs and a framed picture of Lillian with her dad. Things the Salvation Army probably wouldn’t want.

“Maybe your mom got rid of it,” I whisper, picking up a glass paperweight with a tiny seahorse suspended in the center. “Almost everything’s gone.”

I’m suddenly so sure that we came here for nothing and the scrapbook has gone into the donation box or the trash with the rest of her stuff, but Lillian shakes her head and motions me over to her bed.

It’s a huge oak cabin bed, with a carved headboard and built-in drawers underneath. The scrapbook is in the one closest to the wall, shoved all the way in the back. It’s a three-ring photo album, with a lumpy handmade paper cover, cream-colored with real rose petals and dried ferns mixed in with the pulp. It would look elegant, like something for a wedding, but Lillian has drawn all over it with a marker, making the dried flowers look spiky and ominous.

Inside, the book is filled with articles cut out of the
Ludlow Herald
and printed from various online news sites. The last item in the book is a one-page follow-up article from December, ten months after Monica’s body was found. After that, the rest of the pages are blank.

I sit on the carpet with the book open in my lap. In the margins, Lillian has added all these little notes and comments, mostly cross-referencing people and places.

It’s detailed and methodical, but that part doesn’t really surprise me; Lillian was always writing things down. After she was sick, it got worse. She started keeping this little purple notebook full of numbers—how many steps she’d walked, pounds she’d lost, calories, carbs, grams of sugar she’d eaten. Breaths she’d taken.

No, the shocking part of the scrapbook is the absolute gruesomeness of it.

“This must have taken forever,” I say, touching a bold five-pointed star that she’s scrawled next to the clipping of Monica’s obituary. “How come you never told me about it?”

Lillian laughs, and it’s not as harsh or as mean as it could be. “You would have just said I was being creepy and then changed the subject.”

I nod, because it’s probably even true. The book is one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen.

Suddenly, from upstairs, there’s a faint metallic jingling, barely audible, but I freeze, listening. It’s the sound of a key in the front door. The door opens, then closes again, and the ceiling echoes with the sound of footsteps overhead.

“It’s cool,” Lillian says, leaning over the scrapbook. “Just don’t make any noise. It’s not like she’s going to come down here or anything.”

I’m pretty sure she’s right, but I get up and close the door anyway, before picking up the book and heading for the window. Lillian was a lot taller than me, and I’m not sure how to get myself back into the yard.

I’m trying to figure out the best way to climb out, when upstairs, another door opens and I can hear Mrs. Wald talking to someone. And then comes the sound of frantic, scrabbling feet. I recognize it immediately. Our dog, Joan, does the same noisy, ecstatic dance any time you shake the Milk-Bone box.

There’s an explosion of barking right outside Lillian’s door—the huge, booming kind of barking that only comes from something the size of a pony—and Lillian gasps and makes a grab for me, pushing me toward the window.