Bad Girls Don't Die (14 page)

Unless . . .

Unless she thought Kasey would be in the car.

A half hour later, the doorbell rang. Thinking it might be the police, I rushed to the top of the stairs and watched Mom open the door. But it was just a pizza delivery guy.

Mom looked up at me. “Are you hungry?”

I shook my head.

Mom looked tired. Her face was pale and her hair was tugged back into a sloppy bun.

“Can you get your sister, then?”

I swallowed hard, just as Kasey bumped into me from behind. It was enough of an impact to make me grab on to the wall, feeling a split-second panic that I was going to fall down the stairs.

“Oops,” she said.

Mom took the pizza into the kitchen, and Kasey took the steps at half her usual speed. Halfway down, she stopped and turned to look at me.

“What’s
your
problem?” she asked.

Your friends are trying to kill you, I thought, but I forced my shoulders back and kept my voice strong. “I don’t have a problem. . . . Listen, do you think we should talk to Mom about those reports in your backpack?”

Her hand squeezed the railing so tightly that the muscles in her neck seemed to tense up.

“No,” she said. “We oughtn’t.”

“We
what
?”

She glared at me. “I said
no
. It’s done. Resolved. I already took them back to school.”

“You
did
?”

She made an irritated noise. “I’m not
completely
helpless, you know.”

She took the rest of the stairs two at a time and slipped into the kitchen.

I stared after her while my thoughts rattled around in my head.

Nope. I didn’t believe her.

I crept down the hall to Kasey’s room. Inside, the only light was a faint slant of yellow spilling in from the hall, illuminating a little display of threadbare rag dolls on the other side of the room. When my eyes had adjusted and the lumps of blackness had taken on furniture shapes, I looked around for Kasey’s book bag.

I found it on the floor between the bed and the doll shelves on the far wall, and as I crouched on the carpet I felt as if dozens of pairs of eyes were watching me, angry at my trespass.

The bag was unzipped.

And empty.

It had basic school stuff—pens, a couple of empty notebooks, the last two issues of
Doll Fancy
(no wonder she had no friends left, if she read that stuff at school)— but no reports.

I stood up and surveyed the semidarkness, trying to figure out where she would have stashed them. I even remotely considered the possibility that she was telling the truth.

And that’s when I saw my freshman yearbook lying open at the foot of the bed.

It was open to a page of last year’s seniors, and Kasey had made a red mark on one girl’s portrait. Why would she do that?

I turned the book so I could see it better in the light from the hall.

And then the light grew narrower.

Under my gaze, the door jerked a little, almost as if I’d woken it up.

And then slowly, an inch at a time, it began to close.

I grabbed the yearbook, and the door slammed shut in front of me, closing me in the dark.

Fear pulsed through me like flashes of light. I was paralyzed by shock, too frightened even to move, although some distant part of my brain was yelling at me,
Get out!

And then came the worst part by far.

For a split second I thought it was my imagination, but I knew—I just
knew
it wasn’t.

A puff of cold, wet air on my neck. The smell of rotten eggs.

I yanked the door open, practically throwing myself at the wall across the hallway. I hardly had time to look back at Kasey’s door before it slammed shut again.

I ran into my room, switched on my light, and locked myself in.

After a few minutes I caught my breath and sat down on the floor near the wall opposite the door. I wanted a clear view.

What
was
that?

After a couple of minutes I convinced myself that I’d overreacted. The cold air could have been caused by an open window, which would also explain the breeze that slammed the door in my face. The smell was just musty old dolls.

I set the yearbook down on the floor and flipped through it. All in all, I saw probably eight girls whose pictures had red marks, just a little check mark in the corner of the photo. . . . Some of them I didn’t know, but a few I knew all too well . . . Pepper Laird . . . Megan Wiley—

But Megan’s was different.

There was a big, red
X
drawn through her picture.

In all fairness, it would make sense if you thought I drew the
X
myself, but I didn’t. My obsessive neatness pervades every aspect of my life; I was the kid who hung Barbie’s clothes on their little hangers at the end of every play session, and parked her pink Corvette in its space under the dresser. No happy-face stickers ever stuck to any of my bedroom furniture. And my yearbooks, though they represent some of the most miserable hours of my life, are pristine.

It was Kasey, obviously. But why would she do that to Megan’s picture?

I mean, how would she even know who Megan was?

And then I remembered the tacked-on ending to my story from the basement.

It wasn’t late, but I felt completely drained. The previous two nights’ meager sleep hadn’t been enough to keep me going, especially not when faced with a little sister dabbling in vandalism and parents being targeted for assassination.

After I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and put on my pajamas, I went downstairs to check the dead bolt on the front door. It was locked.

I checked the back door too, and then went through the kitchen to check the door that led from the side yard into the garage. This is where someone would have had to come in, to mess with one of the cars.

Dad’s car was parked in its usual spot.

As I neared the door, I stopped short.

There was a chain lock.

No way could someone have come in through this door.

That meant that whoever had come inside had been
through
the house. Or . . .

A strong chill went through me, making my hands shake, as I recalled Kasey’s dirty socks.

Had my sister, in a last-ditch effort for popularity, actually joined in on some twisted scheme to sabotage our mother’s car?

Had she come out here and opened the chain lock, to let someone in?

It didn’t make sense. She insisted that she hadn’t been in the garage—

But then, she insisted that she hadn’t been in the hallway that morning, either.

I trudged upstairs and closed my bedroom door behind me, hesitating for a split second.

“Shhhh . . .”

I opened my eyes to see Kasey sitting on the edge of my bed, luminous in the blue moonlight.

“Shhh . . .” she repeated.

“Kasey,” I said, “what . . . ?” Behind her, the door gaped open into the dim hallway.

“Hello, Alexis,” Kasey whispered. “I saw you in the dark.”

“What are you talking about?”

In the low light, everything seemed drained of color, like it was happening in black-and-white. Even Kasey’s eyes shone bright black with flecks of white.

But she didn’t answer.

Now I was wide awake. “What do you want, Kasey?”

But her attention had wandered away from me. I followed her gaze to my desk, where the yearbook lay open.

“Why did you draw in my yearbook?” I asked.

She ignored the question. “Come play with me, Alexis,” she said, and her eyes burned even brighter. “Come outside and play with me.”

“Are you crazy?” I kept my eyes on her monochromatic face and reached my hand out toward the lamp on the nightstand. “I don’t
want
to go outside.”

I switched the light on.

She ducked her head away, but I swear, for the split second I saw them—her eyes were green.

“GET AWAY FROM ME!” I ordered.

She stayed hunched over, facing the door for a few seconds, and then she turned around and looked at me through blank eyes—
blue
eyes.

“What
is
that?” I asked. “Some stupid contact lens thing?”

She seemed puzzled. “No, Lexi . . . I have twenty-twenty vision.”

“Go to bed, Kase.”

“Why did you want me to come in here?” she asked, looking around.

Was she kidding?

“What are you talking about? I didn’t
want
you in here . . . It’s the middle of the night!”

She slumped and leaned away. Her hand brushed the hair back away from her face. It was a gesture of elegance, practiced and casual.

Then she reached out to my arm. Her fingers brushed my skin.
“We can be friends,”
she whispered.

I felt a sharp burn and looked down to find four red marks across my skin, where she’d touched me.

“You know what?” I said. “I’m sick of this. Get out of here.”

Kasey stood up suddenly, and grabbing the yearbook from my nightstand, threw it at the wall as hard as she could.

“What—?”

Then, with hard eyes, she backed away and hit herself in the face.

It took me a moment to process what I was seeing— my sister with an angry red mark on her jaw—and by the time I realized what she’d done, she was huddled on the floor screaming at the top of her lungs.

A second later Mom came running in, bleary-eyed. She looked at my sister crying on the floor, and then up at me, and the look in her eyes sent a chill through my body. I sat in a ball on the far corner of the bed. I couldn’t find any words to explain.

Mom reached down and touched Kasey on the shoulder.

Kasey looked up at her, the red mark on her jaw getting brighter by the second.

Mom and I both gasped at the sight.

“Kasey . . .” Mom whispered, kneeling down to get a closer look.

My sister huddled down tighter and shied away from Mom’s hand.

“Mommy,” Kasey sobbed.

“What, baby? What happened?” Mom cooed, putting her hand on Kasey’s back.

“Mom—” I said urgently.

Mom held up her hand, and I knew there was no use. There would be no “baby” for Alexis tonight.

“Lexi hit me,” my sister said between choking sobs.

Mom took a moment to study the mark on Kasey’s face, then looked up at me.

“She’s lying,” I said. “She did that to herself.”

“To herself?” Mom repeated. “That doesn’t make any sense!”

“And she threw that book at me,” Kasey added.

Mom glanced over at the yearbook, which of course had fallen open to Megan Wiley’s page, displaying the scribbled red
X
over her picture-perfect smile.

“Mom, can we talk about this?” I asked. “Alone?”

Mom looked up at me incredulously.

“You don’t understand . . .” I said, even though I knew it was useless. She didn’t believe me. Not in the slightest.

“You’re right, Alexis,” she said. “I don’t understand.”

“Don’t be mad, Mommy,” Kasey said. “Lexi knows she oughtn’t hit people. She’s just sad.”

“Do you know what kind of
day
I’ve had?” Mom exclaimed. “Alexis, I know you’re angry, but you don’t have to take it out on your little sister!”

I didn’t say a word. Kasey and Mom stood, and Kasey linked her arm through Mom’s.

“Can I sleep in your room tonight, Mommy?” she asked in a pitiful voice.

Mom’s shoulders slumped. She sniffled and nodded. I felt a pang in my chest.

“She’s lying,” I said as they walked out.

Mom didn’t turn around, but Kasey did, and her green eyes flashed at me as she closed the door behind herself.

I sat down on my bed and pulled my left sleeve up to look at the marks on my arm. They looked like a really bad sunburn, and they were tender to the touch.

Could a person really snap as suddenly as it seemed Kasey had? One day, be a nice, normal girl, and the next be a total maniac?

Unless Pepper Laird had been telling the truth.

And Kasey had actually broken Mimi’s arm on purpose.

Maybe she hadn’t snapped all at once; maybe she’d been getting worse all the time. And then somehow it had come to a peak in the past day—breaking down after dinner, stealing the reports from school, exposing all my photo paper. . . .

And having something to do with what happened to Dad?

The numbers on my digital clock glowed blue. 2:41. It was the middle of the night. I had to spend four more hours in darkness with a crazy sister in the house.

I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, listening for any sound that might mean Mom was in trouble or that Kasey was coming back. But I didn’t hear anything, and eventually I faded into an uneasy sleep.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
I heard Kasey bumping around in her bedroom, humming, but she never came out. I’d grabbed a cold Pop-Tart and a Coke, and I was almost out the front door when Mom appeared at the top of the stairs.

How great would it have been if she’d said, “Let’s clear the air, Alexis. We’ll sit down in the dining room and you can tell me your side of the story.”

But of course that didn’t happen. She stared down at me.