Adventures of a Graveyard Girl (4 page)

Then I saw it. Madison was in a club: Pep Club. The group that had helped decorate the dance last night according to Sarah. I looked at Madison's picture again. It totally fit with that grin of hers, actually, but that's where I knew her. I had idiotically tried to join Pep Club at the beginning of the school year and it had been a total disaster. My dad had drilled it into my head that I needed to start thinking realistically about colleges. My grades were decent. They were nothing like the straight A's Ethan got or anything. Still, I mostly got A's and B's and I was pretty happy and proud of that. Although, I would have done cartwheels if I ever got straight A's. There was always just one class, though, and usually at least two that always prevented that from happening.

Anyway, I thought Pep Club would be something easy to do, as far as clubs went. I mean, you just went to games and made signs and stuff. It was all about school spirit. I could do that without too much effort. And, I didn't mind the effort of a club or anything. There were just no clubs that I really wanted to join. Still, my dad said I had to join something and so, I decided on Pep Club.

I knew the cheerleaders, the jocks, and most of the popular kids went to all the games from football to basketball to whatever, but people like Ethan went to all the games too. And, I had already thought he was cute. So, what was wrong with spending a night here or there watching some cute guys play sports and cheering them on? Especially if one of those guys was Ethan?

It sounded like a good idea at the time, but when I got to the first Pep Club meeting, I found Ariel there. Sarah and Megan were probably there too, but I focused on Ariel. I mean, didn't she have boys to chase or something? How did she have time for Pep Club and shopping too? Still, for her, I guess it was an easy club. She was already cheer-y.

So, long story short, the day I signed up for Pep Club, I quit. My name was still on the list, though, and I never actually quit, quit. I just never made it to the meetings. I still planned on putting it on my college applications. I did go to the first meeting, after all. I had the rest of the year to attend another one too, to make it really official. Two meetings was enough, right?

Still, that day proved to be important in terms of my investigation. I remembered Madison pretty well. She was the President of Pep Club. She was super into it too and tried to get all of us potential new people excited and peppy about joining. I've never seen someone so on, unless they were onstage, but this girl was totally all over the place and trying to ramp us up. It would have been a really fun and energetic club meeting too, if Ariel hadn't spent it giving me dirty looks at crashing her club meeting. At one point, I got frustrated enough that I wanted to walk over and tell Ariel off. I didn't know that she was going to be there and the looks were getting super annoying. Not that I was actually going to talk to Ariel and tell her that. I'd let Ariel think that I was trying to follow her or emulate her or something. That was a better revenge. Besides, Ariel would think it anyway. She was narcissistic like that.

I was sure I had seen Madison in school too, but it was definitely that day in Pep Club that I remembered her from. She had been so full of life. Why would anybody want to kill her? And, why at the Homecoming Dance? There were way more private places to kill someone. Was it a crime of passion instead of a planned and thought out crime? That was something to really consider. It would be way better to go after someone in a dark alley than a crowded dance and it wasn't like girls weren't in and out of the bathroom every few seconds fixing their hair and make-up. I was surprised nobody had seen anything.

It occurred to me that school on Monday was going to be insane. Madison Brown's murder was going to be the talk of the entire student body. There hadn't been a tragedy like that in my school since I had been there, so it was going to be interesting to see the after effects. I wondered if they were going to close off the bathroom near the gym that they had found her in. I knew I wasn't going to be paying it visits anytime soon. I'd have to find out which stall too and definitely avoid it. I wondered if prom would be cancelled even though it was seven months away. Would Ethan have asked me? I ignored the thought, instead just hoping that Ethan wouldn't still be mad at me by then for breaking my promise to him regarding investigating the murder. It was important that the case be solved, although a prom date when it came time would be nice too.

I wondered how Madison's friends and family were doing. I felt really bad for them. I knew how big of a hole a loss like that could be, especially when it came so unexpectedly and totally blew your world apart. I opened a window on the internet and logged onto Facebook. I hadn't been friends with Madison, but her profile was public so I was able to check it out without a problem. Her wall was filled with posts from grieving friends. I read through them one by one. Madison sounded like an amazing girl. She seemed like the real deal - smart, nice, peppy, and she had tons of friends. I almost wished I had decided to stay in Pep Club and gotten to know her. Then I reminded myself that doing so would have meant a lot of quality time with Ariel making posters and going to games and I knew it would never have happened.

From Madison's Facebook page I garnered a few tidbits about her: She was a big fan of Lady Gaga. She kept posting lyrics from her songs as her status updates. Her favorite movie was
The Notebook
because it made her cry. On an opposite note, she was a huge sports fan. It looked like she even took part in a fantasy football league, which was so not in type with how she looked. Still, guys probably thought it was super hot. And, Madison loved, loved, loved the Pep Club. There were tons of pictures of her at games, making posters, and cheering her heart out. She was all about the school spirit.

I also noted that I knew some of Madison's friends. I didn't know if they were close friends because it was Facebook and Madison might have just added people and well, I didn't know, know them exactly. Like, we weren't friends, but they were in some of my classes and in my grade, so I knew of them even if we never really talked. I wondered if I should start by talking to them, to get more of an idea about her and who might have had reason to kill her. Then it occurred to me that I might weird them out by doing that. I had never spoken to them before this and the first thing I did when I finally talked to them, was talk about a murder. Yeah, they might legitimately think it was weird.

I opened a window outside of Facebook and googled Madison Brown's name to see if there had been an obituary posted. It was already online, including the date, time, and location of the wake and funeral. That had happened fast.

Madison Brown, 18, died Saturday. She was an honor student at Palos High School. Her motto in life was to live life to its fullest. She always did and will be sorely missed. She is survived by her parents Jennifer and Kevin Brown and her sister, Lana Brown. The wake will be held on Friday from 3-9 pm at Palos Funeral Home. The funeral is Saturday at 10 am.

It was so sad, but at the same time I was surprised. I thought maybe they'd keep the body a little longer to do forensics stuff. Then again, we were in a small Illinois suburb. They probably didn't have a forensics unit. Maybe I watched too much
CSI.
Actually, I almost felt sorry for Detective Dixon. He was probably buried in paperwork after this sudden jump in the city's murder rate in the last couple of months.

Still, Madison wasn't being buried until late in the week. The police must be holding the body for forensic evidence or something. Usually, people got the funeral over with quicker than that for the simple fact, that you had to get it over with, in order to start moving on with your grief.

Actually, I didn't feel the full extent of my grief over my mom until after her funeral. It hit me a couple of days after and I couldn't get out of bed. At that point, my dad wanted to take me to the doctor and get me on antidepressants, so I dragged myself out of bed and went to school. I'm not a big fan of pills and in my opinion I kind of had a reason to be sad, you know? I was pretty okay after that. Especially after I started funeral crashing and visiting my mom at the graveyard. She kind of found a way back into my life again. What had destroyed me so much after the funeral was that I had thought I lost her entirely, but she was still out there even if it wasn't in exactly the same way.

I found myself thinking back to the dance. If it was a murder of passion, did Madison have a fight with her killer at the dance? Was it someone Madison knew and was friends with? Maybe it was even one of the people posting a sympathy comment on her Facebook wall? Or was it an enemy, someone that hated her for some reason? I looked back on Madison's Facebook page. She was listed as single. I wondered if she had any exes to worry about or a new potential guy that could have turned killer. I knew how that is he or isn't he my boyfriend thing went, so it was also possible that she wasn't single at all. I mean, I was still listed as single on Facebook, technically, and what were Ethan and I? I hoped I wasn't sabotaging myself on that front.

I ignored my thoughts of Ethan and pulled a blank notebook out of my desk drawer. I always kept a couple in case I needed one for school to replace the one I had filled up. I was an excessive note taker. It probably wasn't a good thing. I wanted to write everything the teacher said down, which meant I also had a lot to study when it came time to prepare for a test.

I started writing down the names of Madison's friends. There were over three hundred of them on Facebook. That was a lot of suspects. I stopped. What was I doing? Nobody had asked me to investigate Madison Brown's death and here I was starting to write up a list of potential killers to start crossing suspects off. What was wrong with me? I had almost gotten myself killed investigating the murder of Ethan's half sister. Ethan was totally right. I should stay out of this.

I felt torn. I wanted to investigate the murder and find out what happened. I knew I didn't get to really talk to Madison that day in Pep Club, but she seemed really cool. She definitely didn't deserve to be murdered. I wanted to find out who did it and who took her life away like that. Maybe she would have become the first female president or something equally as cool and society changing amazing, but now it was never going to happen.

I thought about my mom. If I could have prevented her death I would have done it in a heartbeat, but cancer was her killer. Madison's parents didn't even have that knowledge. She was just killed by some unnamed person in her high school girl's bathroom during a dance. It wasn't right. Madison deserved justice. And, besides, what if the killer didn't stop with Madison? What if he or she killed someone else? I couldn't let that happen knowing that maybe my investigation could have stopped it from happening.

I ignored the little voice in my brain that was telling me that I had almost died the last time I had been involved in a murder investigation. The other part of my brain was telling me that there was no way Detective Dixon was going to solve this case without my help. Hey, it had been true the last time.

I continued with my list of potential killers, throwing out names that didn't seem plausible at all. There were twenty-three names in all that I thought were possibilities from their comments on Madison's wall. They were all guesses, in the thought that Madison was killed by someone she knew, in the heat of the moment. Where did I start? The killer might not even be on my list. I didn't know Madison well enough to know if there were other people that could have found a motive. I didn't even know anyone on the inside, who knew Madison well, that I could easily talk to.

An idea I didn't like occurred to me. I scanned through the Facebook posts on Madison's wall again. Ariel had quite a few posts on her wall and not just since Madison died. Madison wasn't one of Ariel's best friends like Sarah or Megan because I saw Ariel with those girls all the time, but Madison definitely seemed like a friend of sorts to Ariel, if the following wall banter counted for anything:

Ariel:
Can't wait to mall it up!

Madison:
Pizza!

Ariel:
Salad! You want to fit in the dress right?

Madison:
Only if I can have pizza.

Ariel:
Fine. No pepperoni. And we blot the cheese with a napkin.

Sounded like they went Homecoming dress shopping together. That's a big deal for a girl, especially one as into looks, clothes, and popularity as Ariel. So, it looked like Ariel and Madison had grown decently close since the start of the school year. They even had some Pep Club pictures together, making posters. I hated to admit it, but Ariel actually looked happy in the photos and like she was having fun. Maybe I just hadn't seen that side of Ariel in a long time. At this point in our relationship when we were together, Ariel usually scowled at me or made fun of me. Neither was pleasant.

I thought for a moment. Ariel would definitely be the easiest person for me to talk to about Madison, in that I probably could get her to talk to me, if I tried. She did owe me one for roundaboutly introducing her to Troy. I looked through some of the other people who looked to be friends with Madison. Even with going to the dance with Ethan, I was doubtful that they'd open up and talk to me about their friend. I was still the weird girl even if I was dating one of the most popular guys in school. We were technically dating right? I stopped my brain right there and went back to my original train of thought. Yeah, they'd probably think I was obsessing about their friend because she died or something creepy and weird like that and then they probably wouldn't talk to me about anything significant. It could ruin my investigation entirely if people didn't talk to me at all and the graveyard girl rumors spread like fire again.