Dead Girls Don't Lie (25 page)

Evan joins the group of kids from school. I climb up the porch and pick up a piece of sandpaper to work beside Eduardo, smiling as I kneel down. He doesn’t even look up. It annoys me that he doesn’t even acknowledge my existence. “Hey,” I finally say.

He doesn’t answer. I don’t have anything else to add, so after a long awkward silence I go back to scrubbing at the red marks, trying to forget that I’m underneath the window where Rachel was killed. “Hey,” I say again. Eduardo doesn’t look up, but I push forward anyway, but in a whisper. “We need to talk. Someone was in—”

“
No me hables
,” he says loudly. He looks around then in a quieter voice he adds, “Not here.”

“Where then?” I whisper back.

He shakes his head. “Later.” He stands up and looks toward the old house. I nod.

I look down at the half-rubbed-out gang symbol below me. It makes me think about Eduardo’s tattoo and what Skyler said about the football team, marking themselves with their jersey numbers like they were trying to prove they belonged to something, like their own kind of gang.

When I stand up, I feel dizzy, like the heat or being here is getting to me. I lean against the front porch and look inside the house. Araceli is sitting at her kitchen table, looking out the window, not watching any of us, looking like we aren’t even here. She looks so alone. I swallow away my fear and step up to the front door. I have to talk to her. I have to apologize for deleting the text. I have to apologize for everything.

I tap on the door, but she doesn’t move, so I push it open
and go inside. “Araceli?” I call. I walked through this door a thousand times after school with Rachel. I can’t believe she’ll never walk through it again.

Araceli doesn’t answer, not even when I step into the kitchen and I know she can see me. I stand in the entryway, not sure what to do. Everything I mean to say dissolves on my tongue and I’m left with, “Are you okay?” It’s a stupid question, one that I hate people to ask me, but at least it gets her to look up.

We stay still for a long time. Finally she says, “What did I do wrong, mija? Why did I lose her?” Pain closes off my throat, and I can only shake my head. “I tried to keep her safe, tried to teach her the right things, but they said—”

“Rachel wasn’t killed because she did something wrong.” I cross the room and stand in front of her.

“Then why did you stop being her friend?” Araceli’s tone isn’t accusing, instead it’s imploring, like she really wants to know. “She loved you so much. You were such good friends.”

I sink into the chair opposite her. “Because of a lot of stupid things. Things that I regret. Things that weren’t her fault.”

She looks out the window again, far away. “I didn’t want her to have a life like mine. My mother was very strict. She wanted me to stay Mexican. She wouldn’t let me speak English at home. She wouldn’t let me make friends or talk to anyone at school. But I was pretty, so I found friends. The wrong friends. Friends who wanted something from me. Friends like Rachel’s dad.”

She reaches across the table, and I take her hand. “I never wanted Rachel to live the way I did. I wanted her to be a normal kid and have friends. Friends like you.” She shakes her head. “What did I do wrong?”

I don’t have an answer for her. I can only think of everything I did wrong, everything I might have done to push Rachel away. Everything I should have done to help her. Araceli stands up and goes to the fridge like she’s done talking. She takes out a big glass pitcher full of lemonade. “I made lemonade and cookies for everyone who came to help. Please take them outside and tell them thank you. I don’t feel well. I’m going to go lie down.” She stands up and goes to the back of the house to her bedroom. She shuts the door behind her.

I stare at the pitcher of lemonade and the cookies, little pink frosted cookies like Araceli used to make for Rachel’s birthday. I wonder when she made them. I stare at the closed door to Araceli’s room, and then toward Rachel’s room. I’m afraid of what I might find, but I have to make this right somehow. I leave the lemonade and cookies on the front porch and then go back into the house, drawn to Rachel’s bedroom.

At the closed door I hesitate, and look toward Araceli’s room again. The whole house is quiet, almost reverent, the sounds from outside muffled. I whisper a prayer for courage or forgiveness as I push open Rachel’s door.

The top mattress from the bed is missing, and there’s a big patch of carpet cut to the bare floor where the dark spot was in Skyler’s picture. The things that were taken from the room and the things that were left seem odd to me: the dresser is
empty, the big mirror that was on Rachel’s wall is missing, but most of her pictures are still up. The wall has little red markings all over it, to indicate blood, bullet holes, or something else, I don’t know.

I cross the room to the closet. Inside is the red dress Rachel wore to eighth-grade graduation, the one that was in the picture. The folding doors squeak as I open them, and for a second I’m afraid someone will come to see what I’m doing. I hold my breath, but no one comes.

The dress is in the back, long and full and brilliant red. I touch it, remembering how beautiful Rachel looked. I pull it out and lay it on the bed, running my hands over the skirt and up underneath. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but the dress was on the collage. It had to mean something. I go through every inch of it, every bead, every scrap of lace, but I don’t find anything. I look up, defeated, and come face-to-face with the same picture on the wall, still crooked like in the photo that Skyler took.

I almost laugh at myself for overlooking the obvious and hang the dress back up in the closet. I reach up and take the picture down to look at it closer. As I do, the cardboard on the back slips out of place.

I gasp as I realize there’s something inside the frame, a folded piece of paper. I unfold it slowly and realize it’s a note, written in Spanish. The handwriting is messy, like a guy’s handwriting. I can only make out a couple of words:
te adoro, no le digas a nadie
, and in big letters,
olvidame
. I unfold the last corner and something falls out, another micro-SD chip.

My hands are shaking as I sit on the very edge of Rachel’s box spring. I slide the chip into my phone. There are three video files on it. I start the first one.

The camera is pointed toward a guy sitting on the couch in Rachel’s living room. It’s Manny. “Smile, baby,” Rachel says. She’s holding the phone.

“Rachel, put the camera away.” I recognize Eduardo’s growl. The camera turns to the other side of the couch where he’s reading some thick book. He barely looks up.

“Ed’s right, Ray. You don’t want to get caught with pictures of us on your phone.”

Rachel sets the phone down on the coffee table, but she leaves the camera on. I can’t tell if she did it by accident or on purpose, but the phone is on its side, so I can still see most of the couch. She curls up on Manny’s lap. “I think you’re lying to me. There isn’t really a gang, you just don’t want me to tell anyone we’re together, just in case you find someone better when school starts.”

“Wait, you mean there’s someone around here who’s hotter than you are?” Manny pretends to be shocked. “Why haven’t you introduced her to me yet?”

Rachel gets off his lap and slides closer to Eduardo. “Because I’m saving her for
el guapo
here. Ed, how do you feel about redheads?” She puts her hand on his arm, and I see his expression change. There’s no mistaking the way he looks at her. Despite everything Eduardo said about Rachel and Manny, it’s obvious that he felt something for her too.

“Your friend is too good for Eduardo,” Manny says, pulling
her away from him. Then his voice gets serious. “You haven’t told her about us, have you?”

She leans against his chest. Eduardo goes back to his book, but I see him watching her out of the corner of his eye. “No. But I’m tired of keeping secrets. No one is coming for you here. Lake Ridge is the last place on earth, literally.”

He kisses her head. “A little longer, okay? Agent Herrera promised us protection if I tell him everything, but I need to be sure. Soon we can just be hick farm boys like everyone else here. I might even play football again. I was pretty good when I was a little kid.”

Eduardo laughs, and Manny gives him a dirty look. “What?” Rachel says.

“He doesn’t think they’ll let me on their team,” Manny says.

“Gringo sport anyway,” Eduardo grumbles.

“I think football players are sexy.” Rachel slips her arms around Manny’s neck. “The tight pants and the big shoulders, mmmmm.” They start kissing. The look Eduardo gives them is pure jealousy.

The video ends.

I sit, thinking about what I just saw, and why Rachel left it for me. Did she want me to understand why she didn’t trust the police, because they didn’t protect her or Manny? Was it so I’d know Manny was going to play football, or why she had to keep him a secret from me, or was it something else? Was it the way Eduardo looked at her?

The next file is Rachel sitting on her bed, alone. She looks
like she’s been crying. “I’ve watched the video I took on my phone a thousand times. I can’t believe it’s all I have left of him, that he’ll never kiss me or hold me or—” Her voice breaks, she struggles for control, and then she gets mad. “I have to find out who did this. I have to make them sorry. I have to make them understand what they took from me. He told me to forget him, but I can’t. I won’t ever forget.”

I’ve never seen Rachel so upset. Not even the night Manny died. I’m starting to understand how much he meant to her.

There’s one more video file on the chip. I open it up. This time the screen stays black. It takes me a second to realize that there are muffled voices coming through the speaker.

“We can work on it out here.” I strain to recognize the guy’s voice, but it’s too muffled. I put the phone to my ear so I can hear better.

“What is this?” The second voice is Rachel. She must have turned the phone on in her pocket or something.

“My darkroom. What do ya say, shall we step inside and see what develops?” Evan. The guy with her is definitely Evan.

Rachel laughs, light and flirty. “I just need a piece of your project, the picture from the beginning, you in your football jersey with the words underneath. What does that mean anyway, ‘making the cut’?”

“It’s top secret,” Evan flirts back. I recognize the fake charm in his voice.

“You can tell me.” The phone jostles around, and I imagine her leaning into him. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“I could maybe be persuaded to tell you if …”

The phone bounces around, and I can’t hear anything for a couple of seconds. I can only imagine what they’re doing.

Then I hear a sound like a door opening and someone yells, “Evan, what are you doing?” It’s Skyler. He sounds really mad.

“Get out of here, kid. Dad said you can’t be out here anymore,” Evan yells back.

“This is my place. My mom said—”

“Your mom is dead.” I hear shuffling and yelling and things banging around, like they were fighting. The door slams, but I can still hear Skyler yelling from outside.

“Maybe I should go—” Rachel says.

“Ignore him. I locked the door. He’ll go away in a little while,” Evan says.

“But is he okay? I mean, he sounds—” Rachel tries again.

“He’ll be fine.” More jostling, I imagine Evan putting his arms around her. “Let’s talk about something else, like you. What are you doing for New Year’s?”

The video stops. I don’t know if Rachel turned it off, or if it got turned off by accident. I think about everything I just saw. Evan took Rachel to the darkroom at least once, and she felt like she needed to record their conversation, but why? Did she think Evan had anything to do with what happened to Manny? I hear the door to Araceli’s bedroom open. I freeze, afraid that she’ll find me in here. I’m not sure how to explain what I’m doing or what I found. I hear her go into the bathroom. Quickly, I put the phone with the note in my pocket. Then I put the picture back together and rehang it, straight, and brush my fingers over Rachel’s face and mine. I
stand up and look around the room again, remembering two girls giggling on a checkered bedspread, a secret phone, and a text message that would take us somewhere we shouldn’t have gone.

Chapter 27

I make my way out of the dark house and blink in the too-bright sun. The crowd is packing up the tools and drifting away. I catch a glimpse of Eduardo. He looks toward the old house again and then back to me. I nod to show him I understand.

“You ready to go?” Evan appears in front of me, blocking my view of Eduardo.

“I can walk home,” I say. Eduardo turns and goes the opposite direction, away from the old house.

Evan follows my gaze. “Are you sure? We could go to the lake or something.”

“No. Thanks.” I turn to go.

Evan grips my wrist. “I really think you should come with me.”

I turn around to make a snarky comment, but the look in his eyes stops me.

“Or, more important, I don’t think you should go with him.” He nods toward Eduardo.

“With who?” I try to look confused.

He doesn’t buy it, and he doesn’t release his death grip on my arm. “You know who I’m talking about. That Mexican kid, the gangbanger, the one you were talking to before, the one you went running with yesterday.”

I stare at him, and everything inside me gets cold. “How do you know that? Were you following me?”

“I saw you with him, it doesn’t matter how. It’s not like you were trying to hide it.”

“If I was going to talk to him, or I went running with him, why would it be your business?” I try to make it come out brave, but I’m scared of the change I see in him.

“Because you’re supposed to be with my brother.” He says it quietly and through clenched teeth because the people around us are starting to stare.

I look at him, incredulous. “So it’s okay for you to come into my bedroom, and for you to hit on me at a party, but if I talk to another guy I’m cheating on Skyler?”

“It’s not just that. It’s
who
you choose to talk to.” Evan pulls me closer to him and glances at the people watching us. “Those people are dangerous, especially him.”