Dead Fake, page 14
“What?”
“He’s never asked me about your uncle.”
I think of all the boys who only asked me out so they could talk about Miles, all the classmates desperate for a scrap of ghastly information, all the eyes that, even now, see me as a safe way into hell.
“Not once?” I ask.
Kaylee shakes her head. “Never.”
Harper trundles back in, giggling at the bird as it zips away.
“If you keep cursing, I’ll have to tell Mom,” she says, her stare so hilariously, adorably stern.
“I know,” Kaylee replies. “And I’m sorry. Adults don’t think sometimes. We should be more careful, right?”
My sister nods. “Do you think my paintings are dry now?”
I watch them in the garden, Harper beaming as Kaylee lifts her up to the washing line, where my sister carefully unclips her latest masterpieces.
This isn’t perfect—our life full of cracks and bad memories—but it’s normally all I need to be happy.
Anxiety creeps up my throat as I imagine being right. If whoever killed Kash really is inspired by my uncle, Kaylee will find out eventually, and I am so scared what that will do to her.
I watch the muscles in her thin arms flex as she moves Harper along the line. Then I join them outside, daring myself to tread up the uneven garden path, where overgrown hedges rest across rusty tools and sun-faded plastic.
Behind the brambles that Miles always cut back to protect me from scratches is a wooden playhouse, hand-built with love and painted with tongue-poking precision.
I still have the photo of Miles hammering the final nail, while my brush sweeps across the front door. There was only room for one, but I didn’t mind. Inside, I held tea parties for my toys, while the adults shielded their eyes from the sun.
What I liked best was the finishing touch. A mailbox that Miles knocked into the grass and Kaylee filled with secret messages from the gnomes that guarded their flower beds and the fairies who only came out at night.
It was also the place where Miles left letters for me sometimes, telling me how proud he was to be my uncle, how excited he was to watch me grow.
I wait until Kaylee and Harper are back inside, then pull on the playhouse roof, its wet wood snapping between my fingers as insects scurry for safety.
The loose pole has fared better, its white paint intact under the dirt and my initials still visible on the compartment for the letters.
I yank the stubborn hinge until it opens, then peer into the empty box. What was I expecting? A message I’d somehow missed all these years? Hidden proof that he was innocent or, at the very least, an explanation for his heinous crimes?
“He was proud of that,” Kaylee says behind me. I jump at her voice; I’d thought I was alone. “I should have taken better care of it.”
“It’s fine,” I reply. “I understand why you didn’t. It’s just … where we used to talk sometimes. He’d leave me notes and pictures.”
“He loved writing letters,” Kaylee whispers, and a sharp pain flares in my chest as I picture the CD Harper should never have removed from that envelope.
Miles had so many ways of saying he loved us, but in the end, none of them were enough.
32
My uncle’s voice rests in my ears—a medley of nursery rhymes and bedtime stories.
“You will make a great dad one day,” Mom says, his stubble tickling my head as I peer up at him.
“I don’t know,” he replies. “Maybe awesome uncle is my limit.” Aunt Kaylee coughs and he laughs. “Then again…”
I slide off Miles’s lap and watch my uncle and aunt loving each other. Then something groans, and when I turn, a black haze creeps over my skin, washing my family away.
“Hello?”
There are cracks in the gloom, heavy footsteps breaking everything they touch, and my head is suddenly full of all the worst things from Miles’s stories—the trolls and wolves and ogres.
They snarl and cackle in the voices that came so easy to him, their claws leaving cuts as they creep across my skin.
“Is anybody there?”
The darkness swallows my voice, daring me to find it, but my legs have been hollowed out and loaded with rocks.
Then again …
His voice makes a hole in the black, just enough for me to slip through, and I’m somewhere else now—my room, but not quite. The posters are altered—letters in a different order, or missing entirely. The eyes in the photographs taped to my headboard too wide, mouths too large, hands obscured.
A twisted version of Kash grips my arm and yanks it up, then the other, until I’m dancing like a puppet. Then he pries my fingers open, placing a knife into one hand and a hammer in the other.
I open my mouth to scream but all the air has been drained from me. Something heavy rests over my face until my limbs are flailing and I see a tiny ball of light drift farther out of reach. My throat burns as I scratch at the hands pushing all the life from my body but they don’t let go. They take every fraction of my fight and use it against me, until my arms collapse at my sides and my light goes out.
“Fuck!”
I spring up in bed, wiping the thick sweat from my face.
Early morning light sneaks through my curtains, painting yellow lines across my sheets, and I focus on the glow as I calm my breathing. Then I head downstairs, where Mom is braiding my sister’s hair as they both sing along to the radio.
“How was your shift?” I ask.
“The usual.”
Mom’s voice is husky from lack of both sleep and coffee, so I make her a mug, sneaking a few sips before placing it in front of her, then lifting the glass of orange juice she’s already put out for me.
Kaylee says we need to look after each other because we rarely look after ourselves, and as I watch Mom’s fingers twirl faster and faster, last night’s eyeliner merging with the thick shadows under her eyes, I know what she means.
“Are you okay?” Mom asks. “I heard…”
“I’m fine,” I reply, aiming a grin at Harper as she glances up at me.
Mom used to rush to me whenever I screamed myself awake but, as those screams grew scarcer, she kept her distance. With Harper in the house, we’ve learned to crush our own terror and leave it where the sun doesn’t reach.
“I found this under one of our sofa cushions,” Mom says, handing me my electric toothbrush. “Is there anything else you’ve decided to rehome?”
“Thanks,” I reply, trying to steady my smile. “I wondered where that was.”
The truth is, I want a weapon close by on the nights I’m waiting for Mom to get home; something I don’t have to worry about Harper finding and hurting herself with.
Kitchen knives may be better if someone did ever break in, but only if I can reach them in time. Inspired by Mason’s deepfake, I’ve started dozing with something a little less harmful in my hands.
“You’re going to be late,” Mom says, glancing at the clock then sliding my lunch across the counter.
For a moment I want to tell her that Willow is back in the fold and, between us, we’re going to do what the adults in this town struggle to achieve. We’re going to stop another death before it happens.
But nothing good will come of that. Mom will only tell me not to get in the way; that Chike has everything under control.
Instead, I kiss her and Harper, then head outside, where Mason is marching up his own front path with an extra sprinkling of sass.
“You look sprightly today,” I say.
“I’m tired of being depressed,” he replies.
“Are you happy to have your Willow back?”
Mason sighs and looks past me, waving at Mom and Harper before we get in the car and drive away.
“You know me,” he says. “I like someone to bounce off of and I don’t have the heart to hassle you.”
“You can make fun of me whenever you want,” I tell him.
“I know. But doing it to Willow is way more fun.”
I hit the brakes as we approach the turn onto Burnt Oak—the private road where twelve of Bleak Haven’s most expensive houses sit behind eight-foot hedges and electric gates.
Cars are backed up a hundred yards or so, and as we creep past, I see an empty police car blocking the narrow road into the development, while people wearing all-in-one plastic suits hurry in and out of the house closest to us.
The truck behind me sounds its horn and I speed up, my heart pounding to the beat of the uneven asphalt.
I pull over farther up the street, then stare at Mason until he mutters, “You don’t think…?”
I have no idea what to think. Instead, I open my door and sprint past the creeping cars, Mason’s heavy breaths growing louder as he grabs my shoulder and says, “Ava. Stop for a second.”
I run faster, reaching the entrance to Burnt Oak, where Deputy Cosgrove holds her arm out like a gate that I wish I could burst through.
“What happened?” I ask, searching the unmasked faces behind her.
The deputy starts to say one thing, then stops, her features softening as she mutters, “You know I can’t tell you.”
“But you can. Just say the words. Is someone else dead?”
Her head shakes then falters, her eyes drifting past me where I turn to see Mason hanging back, merging with a sea of strangers who are just as desperate to know what’s going on.
I look back at the house, at the police tape snaking around the ornamental trees that line this and every front yard around here. Mom says it’s a street like any other but, unlike the road Willow lives on, this one feels a little too rich.
Unless you live there, Burnt Oak is something to admire from afar. Or, today, something to fear.
People move quicker as objects are carried out. Not bodies. Smaller things hidden in plastic boxes with handles at both ends. Then the sheriff glances in our direction, his lips moving almost imperceptibly before he strides over.
“Ava,” he says. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Why not?”
“Well, for starters, don’t you have school?”
“I don’t know,” I reply. “Do I?”
Chike sighs and shakes his head. “For now, the school remains open.”
“For now.”
I leave the words to hang between us—a challenge he knows he has to answer eventually. Maybe he can usher other people away with vague words and that shiny star on his chest, but not me.
“Was it a hammer?”
“Stop,” Chike says, taking me gently by the arm and leading me away. “What do you want me to say? That you’re right? Will that make you feel better?”
My voice cracks as I mutter, “No.”
“Please go to school, Ava. I don’t owe you special treatment or insider information. I’m the sheriff of this town and you’re a kid. Stop acting like we’re colleagues.”
I wipe away a single tear, watching as he whispers something to his deputy then walks quickly back to Anne-Marie’s house, where, unless I’ve gotten this very wrong, she didn’t survive the night.
33
A heavy silence fills the school courtyard as thick shoulders buckle and eyes we are used to seeing ultra-focused are suddenly stained by grief.
Anne-Marie’s death wouldn’t get this kind of reaction, not from the football players who stumble from one embrace to another, slamming their fists into one another’s backs, some crying like babies while others wail at the sky.
“What the hell is going on?” Mason asks.
I search the mascara-stained faces of the cheerleaders huddling behind their stars, then the stern looks of teachers who have somehow encircled us like a belated force field.
Anne-Marie isn’t here, but neither is the boy who is always at the center of this team.
“It’s Trey,” I say. “I think he’s dead.”
“No way.”
When I saw the police tape surrounding Anne-Marie’s house, it was easy to assume she was the next victim. But how many times has Trey sneaked into her place unnoticed?
If he was there last night, maybe he stood between his girlfriend and the killer, that pumped-up body that brushes off hits from boys twice his size violently deflated.
Whatever Anne-Marie deserved after pranking us, it’s not this.
“Did you hear?” Willow says behind me. “Trey Schofield was murdered last night. Does that ruin your theory, or—”
“Do you know how he died?”
“Not yet, but if I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”
As the newest sleuth on the case, she’s overly enthusiastic; the only person smiling as the bell sounds and teachers quietly guide us into the building.
“He has to close the school soon,” Mason says. “And we’re probably due a curfew any second now.”
In English class, Ms. Swift sits on her desk, a sweater covering all her scars.
“This only gets harder,” she says loudly. “But, as some of you will have already heard, we lost another student last night. Trey Schofield.”
Two boys in front of me kiss their fingers before raising them to the sky.
“Why are we here, then?” Verity asks. “Shouldn’t we be at home grieving?”
“You didn’t know him,” someone mumbles.
“Protecting ourselves then, because somebody out there is a killer, and we’re expected to go to class like everything is fine.”
“No,” Ms. Swift replies. “That is not what you are expected to do. You don’t think we’re afraid? You assume the adults in this town are carrying on with their day not caring about the two dead bodies? Because if you do, you couldn’t be more wrong.”
My classmates avert their eyes as she wipes tears from hers, but I study her because she’s strong, like Mom, and Kaylee, and, I guess, like me.
There is nothing weak about anger; not when it’s used the right way.
“I have to tell you that the counselor’s door is open,” she says, “and that extra support has been brought in as of this morning. I have to say that the principal has cancelled all other duties so he will be available for anyone to talk to, if they wish. These are not remedies but, for some of you, they may help. Everyone copes in different ways, so be kind to each other, and trust that the killer will be caught.”
There is a faint crack as her fingernails leave her desk and I search for her name in the carvings on mine.
A sophomore knocks then enters, handing Ms. Swift a note.
“Ava,” she says, “you are wanted at the front desk.”
“Now?”
“Apparently so.”
I stand, grab my backpack, then head for the receptionist’s station, worst-case scenarios all involving Harper playing on a loop. But they vanish when I see who’s waiting for me.
“Ava,” the sheriff says, stepping in front of Principal Whitlock and pointing to an open door. “We should talk.”
34
“Does my mom know you’re here?” I ask.
Chike frowns. “Do you want her to know?”
“That depends. Was Trey killed with a hammer? Is the pattern repeating?”
“I’ll be honest, Ava. Principal Whitlock wanted to sit in on this one but I convinced him not to, because there are some things you need to clear up.”
“Like what?”
“Like why you warned Anne-Marie Venn when I expressly told you not to. And the fact that you and Mason were attacked by Trey and you told him, quote, ‘You’ll get what’s coming to you.’”
“I never said that. Who told you that?”
“Did Trey Schofield attack Mason on Main Street?”
“It was a prank.”
My fingers rattle against the table and I wonder if Mom should be here or if I need a lawyer.
Chike studies me. “Describe the prank, in detail.”
“We were driving home from our friend Willow’s house when Anne-Marie walked in front of my car. She was covered in blood and she looked terrified.”
Chike nods like he already knows that.
“There was someone behind her,” I say. “We thought it was the killer, but it was Trey fooling around. He did it to get back at me for warning Anne-Marie. He thought I was scaring her, but I was only trying to help.”
“Was anyone else there?”
I picture Conor bent in two on the sidewalk. If I lie, the sheriff will know. “Conor Abbot. Willow’s boyfriend. He was there but, if anything, I attacked him.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I kicked him … between the legs. It was self-defense.”
A faint grin ripples over Chike’s lips before he clears his throat and it vanishes.
“But you didn’t say that Trey will get what’s coming to him?”
I search my memory, pulling at the strands when we first saw Anne-Marie, then feared for our lives and then, finally, hated all three of them.
“I might have said something to Mason but … I obviously didn’t hurt Trey.”
“Why obviously?”
I hold Chike’s stare. “Because it’s me. I’ll find out eventually if it was a hammer. So you may as well tell me.”
“Where were you last night, Ava?”
My legs shake as I say, “Seriously?”
Chike stares at me, the silence expanding, until Principal Whitlock’s face appears outside the closed door.
“I was at home, with my sister. Mom was working late. She came back around twelve. I was dozing on the sofa, like always. Then I went to bed. You can check with her if you want. Besides, doesn’t every house in Burnt Oak have security cameras?”
“Most,” the sheriff replies. “But the strangest thing is that nothing suspicious was picked up. It’s as though someone knew exactly where to step.”
I picture the houses in my mind—Anne-Marie’s the first on the left—then imagine someone powerful enough to take Trey down.
“They were cheating,” I say. “Trey and Anne-Marie. He was with Rochelle when they got together, so there would have been lots of sneaking around.”
Chike says, “So?” but his eyebrows rise in interest.
“So … if Trey knew how to sneak into that house unseen, it’s only because Anne-Marie taught him the blind spots. Was she hurt?”
