Truly, Madly, Deadly

TWO

Heat, like a live wire, raced down Sawyer’s spine. The note was signed, “an admirer,” and that word, admirer, clawed at her. Her fingers started to shake, and she flicked the note back into her locker and slammed the door shut, pressing her forehead against the cool metal.

It’s nothing, she told herself. Someone probably sent flowers—everyone sent flowers. Each hour after Kevin’s death was reported a new bouquet seemed to show up—gaudy, pitiful, with drooping spider mums and cheap, glittered ribbons in the Hawthorne High School colors. Each bouquet reminded Sawyer of Kevin—especially when they died.

She suddenly hated flowers.

“I’m sure that’s what it is,” Sawyer mumbled.

“Tick tock, Ms. Dodd.” Principal Chappie tapped his mammoth wristwatch as he strode by, giving students his principal snarl and tick-tock warning.

Sawyer hiked her backpack onto her shoulder and stepped away from her locker, but that meager line—“You’re welcome”—was like an invisible string pulling her back. She spun her combination lock and reached for the note, her fingers hovering tentatively over it as though it would burn her. Finally, she snatched it up and tucked the note into her bag, heading toward her AP biology class.

Chloe appeared in the hallway halfway to Sawyer’s class and fell in step with her. She leaned in. “You look awful,” she whispered.

Sawyer swallowed heavily and licked her lips. “There was something in my locker.”

“Like a dead mouse?” Chloe shuddered.

“Ahem,” Mr. Rhodes said from inside his classroom. “As soon as Ms. Dodd is through with her conversation, we will begin our class.”

Sawyer looked from Mr. Rhodes to Chloe. “Gotta go.”

Chloe peeled off into her own class as Sawyer beelined through the open door and pulled it shut behind her, whispering apologies as she did.

“Nice of you to join us, Sawyer. Take your seat.”

“Sorry.” She ducked into her desk at the back of the room and pulled out her biology book, working to rein in her mind as it shot off in multiple directions. As the day wore on, Sawyer tried to put the note out of her mind, but each time the bell rang, her heart would start to punch against her ribs. She purposely avoided her locker—which was easy to do, since her speech class didn’t require a book and she was planning to buy her lunch anyway—but she couldn’t avoid it at the end of the day. She sat in her last class, doing her best to avoid the clock. But each time another minute ticked off, a hot coil of dread burned through her. When the bell finally rang, she took her time gathering her things.

Chloe poked her head through the doorway from the hall, glaring at Sawyer.

“Oh my God, Sawyer, the glaciers are melting,” she moaned. “Come on already!”

Sawyer slung her last book into her backpack and hitched it over her shoulder. She followed Chloe into the crowded hallway, and as they approached the junior hall, icy fingers of anxiety—or fear—pricked at Sawyer. She tried to shake it off, to remind herself of her well-constructed flower theory, but the note—and its message—hung heavily in the back of her mind.

“Hey, are you okay?” Chloe asked.

Sawyer shook her head, shrugged.

“Didn’t you say you got something?”

Sawyer sucked in a stomach-quivering breath, her eyes focused on her locker. Would there be another note? She fumbled with the lock and tugged it open, letting out a whoosh of air when she saw that her locker was just as she had left it: her neat stack of books, two tubes of Chapstick, a picture of her and Kevin—and no note.

“Earth to Sawyer?”

“Sorry, Chloe. I’m just—I’m just tired, I guess. I’m not sleeping very well.”

“I thought your doctor gave you some sleeping pills or something.”

Sawyer nodded, swapping the books in her locker for the ones in her backpack. “He did, but if I take one of those I’m dead to the world.”

“Sounds like heaven.”

Sawyer rolled her eyes. “Heaven with the teensiest bit of hallucinatory crazy tossed in.”

Chloe bounced on the balls of her feet. “Oh, IPO-paid hallucinogens? Sign me up!”

“And then I run like molasses the next morning.”

“You dropped something.” Chloe bent down and plucked the mint-green envelope from the linoleum. “What’s this?”

Sawyer swallowed. “It’s nothing.” She snatched the envelope back while Chloe cocked an eyebrow.

“Grabby.”

Sawyer bit her lip, then forced a nonchalant smile. “Call me later?”

“Will do.”

Sawyer felt like she was sleepwalking all through track practice—and Coach Carter told her the same. She was glad when he finally let the team leave after their timed trials.

“You okay, S?” Coach Carter asked as students trickled off the field.

“Yeah, I’m sorry, Coach, I was just—” Sawyer bit her bottom lip, suddenly certain that Coach Carter could see right through her, would know that she was lying. “Distracted.”

Coach nodded. “That’s not like you.” He broke into a friendly grin and trotted backward. “You’re going to bring it next time though, right?”

Sawyer smiled back, for once glad that Coach Carter cared about nothing more than her performance on the track.

“Sure,” she mumbled, forcing herself to smile.

Sawyer skipped changing in the locker room and went directly for her car in the school parking lot. She threw her backpack—note safely tucked in the front pocket—on the passenger seat. She drove a brand-new midnight blue Honda Accord with all the extras. Though she was thankful, she wasn’t as wowed by the thing as her friends had been. Where they saw shiny new wheels and imminent freedom, Sawyer saw her parents’ last unified attempt at appeasement—or apology—while her mother moved two thousand miles away to run a corporate office and her father and wife number two moved Sawyer to the outer regions of hell. Her parents had presented the car as a reliable necessity for Sawyer. Her father’s new subdivision and her new, just-like-every-other-house-in-the-tract home were thirty-three miles away from Chloe, Hawthorne High, and every other bit of civilization in Sawyer’s life.

She sunk her key in the ignition, plastic Fighting Hornet keychain dangling, but didn’t start the car. Instead, she bit her lip and listened to her heartbeat speed up, grimacing as hot needles pricked at her spine. She unzipped her pack and pulled out the note, studying the envelope as if some new, revealing clue would suddenly appear. There was nothing. On a sharp breath she plucked the card from its envelope and opened it, reading the handwriting font once again:

You’re welcome.

She said the words out loud, and they seemed to fill up the whole car, to squeeze the air out of the cab. Sawyer chewed her bottom lip, glancing from the newspaper article back to the note. I’m welcome for what?

She heard the football coach’s whistle blow in the distance, signaling the end of their practice. Football players, muddied and sweaty, began to trickle into the parking lot, their hoots, howls, and general chatter muffled by the Accord’s rolled-up windows. The team girlfriends hung back with the cheerleaders, who walked into the lot in bunches, talking animatedly, ponytails bobbing. A group of band members lugged their instruments, and from behind them Sawyer watched as a group of varsity football players ambled by, all wearing matching shirts—hornet green, the words “We Will Never Forget You” printed above a bright white number twenty-one and the last name Anderson.

Kevin.

Sawyer looked from the jerseys to the note in her hand. Her breath hitched and her fingers—and the note—began to tremble.

Someone knew.

A navy blue sedan was blocking Sawyer’s driveway when she came home from track practice. Sawyer parked behind it and stepped out of her car, the dusk already setting, already pushing the estates into a hazy darkness. She blinked when she saw the spark of a cigarette from the side of the house. Sawyer guessed the owner of the sedan was checking out the bones of the houses nearby; it wasn’t unusual for potential buyers to check out the Dodd family’s “model home.”

“Hey, Dad,” Sawyer started, “it looks like someone’s looking at the—” She paused, looking at the three heads that swung to look at her.

Her stomach rolled over on itself as she felt all eyes fixate on her, studying her with a look she was starting to recognize—and loathe—sympathy mixed with curiosity, with just the tiniest hint of frustration.

Sawyer’s dark eyes washed from her stepmother to her father. “What’s going on?”

Andrew Dodd blinked at his wife and cleared his throat. They were perched on the new ecru couch, pillows undisturbed, but their faces were drawn. A man sat on the couch directly across from them, a small leather notepad balanced on his knee.

“Is this your daughter?” the man asked.

“Yes,” Andrew Dodd said, jumping up and going to her. “This is Sawyer.” He put his hand on the small of Sawyer’s back and ushered her into the living room. “Sawyer, this is Detective Frank Biggs.”

Frank Biggs looked exactly like you’d expect a man named Frank Biggs to look—like a mustached fireplug in a short-sleeved, button-down shirt; a stained blue tie; and khakis that could use an iron or a dumpster.

Sawyer shook his hand and he smiled, breathing out a whoosh of overly minted, Nicorette smelling air. “Nice to meet you.”

“Dad, what is this about?”

“Detective Biggs just wants to ask you a few questions about Kevin.” Andrew cleared his throat a second time, avoiding Sawyer’s gaze. “About what happened to Kevin.”

“Just a few routine follow-up questions,” Biggs said, flipping a black ballpoint pen over his hairy knuckles.

Sawyer nodded. “Okay. But I told the other officer everything I knew.”

Biggs nodded and flipped open his notebook. “So did you see Kevin the night of the accident, Sawyer?”

He pronounced her name Saw-yah and fixed her with his flat, brown eyes.

“Yes. I saw him before”—a sob lodged in her throat—“before the accident.”

“Were you in the car with him at any time?”

Andrew let out a hissing sigh. “Is this really necessary? She already said that she had been on a date with Kevin and then walked back to her car.”

Sawyer turned to her father. “It’s okay, Dad.”

“So you were in Kevin’s car. Up until when?”

“I don’t know; nine o’clock, maybe?”

“And that was on the hillside.”

“Yeah.”

“So you weren’t in the car with Kevin as he went down the hill.”

Sawyer shook her head. “No. No, he’d been drinking. I walked down myself. Can I ask why you’re asking me this? The other officer—I mean, he asked me about pretty much everything.”

Detective Biggs looked up from his notebook. “We found a shoe stuck in the mud near the accident site.”

“A shoe?”

Biggs nodded and produced a color photograph of a shoe lined up next to a ruler. “It’s a ladies’ size seven and a half. What size shoe do you wear?”

Sawyer cocked an eyebrow. “Seven and a half.”

Tara cleared her throat from her spot on the couch. “I wear a seven and a half, as well, Detective. It’s a pretty common size for women.”

The detective regarded her with a small bob of his head. “We’re not making any accusations here, Mrs. Dodd. Just trying to establish some facts.” He turned back to Sawyer and pressed the photograph toward her. “Do you recognize this shoe?”

Sawyer took the picture. “I have those shoes. But so does pretty much every girl at Hawthorne.”

“May I see them, please?”

She was taken aback. “My shoes?”

“Just what exactly are you getting at, Detective Biggs?” Andrew asked.

“We’re working on a theory—just a theory—that there may have been someone else in the car with Kevin that night.”

Sawyer’s breath hitched. “What?”

“The passenger seat was moved back—just enough for someone to have slipped out the door.”

“But the car—everyone said it was smashed. Wouldn’t a passenger have been killed? Or at least hurt pretty severely? And why would someone not say something? Why wouldn’t they say they were in car?”

Detective Biggs held up his meaty hands. “Right now it’s just a theory. Like I said, we’re just trying to establish the facts, figure out as best we can exactly what happened that night. The seat being in that position could just be a coincidence. And the shoe stuck in the mud—well, it could have been left in the car prior and gotten kicked out on impact, or it could have even just been there on the side of the road. You kids spend a lot of time up there on Hicks. There’s always a lot of junk left behind.”

Sawyer felt strangely ashamed, like the detective had stumbled on her generation’s dirty little secret.

“May I see the shoes, Sawyer?”

Sawyer nodded mutely and climbed the stairs, her mind tumbling over the idea that someone could have been in the car with Kevin. If someone had been there, she mused, why would that person let him drive if they knew he’d been drinking?

She picked through the detritus on her closet floor, shoving past prom shoes and track sneakers. The pair in question—a fairly nondescript pair of mall-issued metallic flats—wasn’t there. Sawyer flopped back onto her butt on the floor, frowning. She did a cursory check under the bed before half-heartedly picking through a bulging cardboard box labeled “Sawyer.”

Twenty minutes later she stepped down the stairs and shrugged. “I can’t find them.” Sawyer gestured toward the photo Detective Biggs laid on the coffee table. “But those can’t be mine.” She licked her lips, forcing the words past her teeth as the images of that night flashed in her mind. “I wasn’t wearing them that night.”

Detective Biggs sucked on his teeth and seemed to consider Sawyer’s statement. Everything in her went on synapse-snapping high alert and suddenly, without knowing why, Sawyer felt guilty. When the detective broke the silence what seemed like eons later, Sawyer finally breathed.

Biggs thrust out a hand to Sawyer’s father and stepmom. “Sorry to have bothered you, Mr. and Mrs. Dodd.” He nodded at Sawyer. “You have a very smart daughter there.”

Sawyer watched her father and Tara shake Biggs’s hand, frustration prickling her spine when no one corrected Biggs, no one reminded him that Tara wasn’t her mother. When the detective offered his hand to Sawyer, she shook it woodenly, saying nothing. Once the door closed and he was gone, Sawyer blinked.

“I’m going to go take a shower.”

“Don’t you want to eat something first?” Tara asked.

Sawyer shook her head, feeling the dead weight of…something…sitting in the pit of her stomach. “No, I’m not very hungry.”

She turned her back on Tara’s and her father’s expectant stares and pulled her backpack over her shoulder. Once she got to her room, she shut the door, dumped the pack, and stashed the note where no one would find it. Then she turned on the shower as hot as she could get it, as if the water could wash away the last year of her life.

Sawyer was in her pajamas, hair wrapped in a towel turban, and stretched out on her bed when there was a knock on her doorframe. She looked up from her Spanish homework and blinked at her father.

“Hey,” he said softly.

“Hey.”

He walked in, sitting on the edge of Sawyer’s bed, one hand fanned out on her bedspread. “She’s trying, you know.”

Sawyer didn’t say anything. She kept her pencil moving even though she had ceased conjugating verbs and was now doodling circles on her notebook paper. “I know.”

“It’s not easy for her.”

Sawyer looked up, betrayal flashing in her eyes. “It’s not easy for me, either.”

“I know. And Tara understands that. But this is all new to her. New husband, new house. New teenage daughter. It’s a lot to take in. She just wants to make this work. She wants us all to be a family. Can you give her a break?”

Sawyer felt the tears stinging behind her eyes. She gritted her teeth, digging deep into her molars until her jaw hurt. “It’s a little new for me too. Remember? When she was getting a new husband, I was getting a new stepmom. And a new house.” She swallowed hard, trying to wash down the thick lump in her throat. And losing my real mom, she wanted to say.

Andrew rubbed his palm over his mouth and sighed. “But you’re strong, sweetheart. Tara’s not like you. She needs a little more help.”

Sawyer caught on that word, strong. When her parent’s marriage fell apart, people started calling her strong just because she didn’t start cutting herself or bring a gun to school. But she wasn’t strong. She was weak and small and afraid, and she felt safe when Kevin opened his arms to her, tucked her forehead under his chin. She remembered the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest, the first time they had had sex, the first time in so long that she didn’t have to be strong. Back then, Kevin protected her.

“Sawyer?”

The lines of her binder paper blurred in front of her, but she refused to cry. She sniffed instead and nodded. “Sure, Dad. I’ll try.”

Sawyer flopped down in her bed at half past eleven, her body heavy with exhaustion. But sleep wouldn’t come. The words of the note hung heavy on her periphery, like if she just read a little more into them, gave them a little more thought, they would reveal her mysterious admirer. At close to 1:00 a.m., Sawyer finally kicked off her covers, frustrated, and retrieved the note from her underwear drawer where she had stashed it. She read it, turned it over and over again in her hands, but nothing was shaken loose, no memory or insight. She was smashing the letter back between a pair of boy shorts and a sequined thong Chloe had given her as a gag gift when light flooded the room. It came in a smooth, blue-white arc, pouring over her open bathroom door, her computer desk, her bulletin board, until it shifted over Sawyer. She was paralyzed under the bright light. When it had washed over her, plunging her back into blackness, her eyes burned and the adrenaline rushed through her, working her already aching muscles.

“Oh God.” Sawyer grabbed at her chest, feeling the spastic thud of her heart under her hand. “Now I’m scared of light.”

She felt the giggle twitter through her as she crawled back into her bed, sinking into her pooled covers. When the arc of light came one more time, she talked herself out of her nerves, out of the niggling feeling in the back of her mind that something was wrong.

“Headlights, freakazoid,” Sawyer said out loud, keeping her voice throaty and low. “Nothing weird about—” She sat bolt upright and kicked out of bed, falling to her knees on the carpet. She pressed her palms against the windowsill and sunk down so only her eyes and the top of her head were showing.

She swept the street.

“Who the hell is driving out here now?” she mumbled in the darkness. She had no neighbors, no guests, and civilization—anything other than cows and model homes—was at least a twenty-minute drive from her housing tract.

Sawyer poked her head up another half-inch and craned her neck, trying to see down the connecting streets. But it was dead silent outside. There was no wind rattling what remained of the leaves this autumn, no neighbors with lights still on or TVs blaring. Sawyer hated the empty housing development. During the day, the houses looked cheery and welcoming, like some apron-wearing mom was in the model kitchen baking cookies, her perfect kids ready to spill out of the front door at any moment. But in the dark, the same houses seemed to boast their emptiness, and the windows that looked like they hid the perfect American families by day were gaping, menacing, and black at night. There was no sound and no movement—until Sawyer caught a beady red eye out of the corner of her eye. It was the taillight of a car—the other must have been broken—and it sailed down the street, a leisurely coast. Had it been daylight, a lone car on the street wouldn’t have piqued Sawyer’s interest—people were always cruising through, pretending they were heading to their new homes, she guessed. But tonight was an unusually dark night, starless, and without streetlights, there was nothing to see—unless you knew what you were looking for.

Sawyer shuddered and pulled her curtains closed. She slipped slowly back into bed, pulling the covers to her chin, her eyes wide, focused on the ceiling. She willed them to shut but then her mind kept spinning. She rolled over onto her side. Her eyes—suddenly very used to the darkness—flicked over her nightstand, the stack of books lying there, and settled on the prescription bottle shoved behind this week’s US magazine. Sawyer sighed and rolled over, clamping her eyes shut.

And then she rolled back.

“No, I hate that stuff,” she muttered. “It makes me feel freaking crazy.” She flopped back hard against her pillow and pulled another one over her face.

As her parents leveled their “news”—divorce, split homes, a move for Dad to the outer regions of housing tract hell, the “chance of a lifetime” for Mom that moved her across country, they doted on Sawyer and looked at her with troubled expressions. And when a new car and promises of a “good, new start” didn’t make her smile—or sleep at night—it was Dr. Johnson, one hour a week of “and how does that make you feel?” and finally, the Trazadone.

After tossing and turning for another twenty minutes, Sawyer was in the bathroom, filling up a glass of cold water and popping a dose of the medication.

“Just so I can get some sleep,” she mumbled to her sallow, sunken-eyed reflection. Then she crawled into bed and fell into a restless, heavy slumber.