Dead Girls Don't Lie (28 page)

“I love you too, Skyler,” I whisper back. It feels right to say it, but the desperation in his voice scares me.

He pulls away. “No one has ever told me that before. At least, not since Mom …” He swallows. I’m shocked and hurt for him. Wondering if he really means it. He wraps his arms around my waist. “I wish I could be the person you think I am.”

“But you are, Skyler, you just don’t—”

The door bursts open, and Claire’s mom stands there looking more triumphant than shocked. “What are you two doing?”

I untangle myself from Skyler’s embrace. “Mrs. Rallstrom, please.”

She comes into the bathroom, pushes me aside, and takes Skyler by the arm. “You can’t be here.” Skyler grimaces and pushes her away. I notice fresh cuts along the scars on his wrist. I wonder if his dad did that too.

Mrs. Rallstrom backs away, shocked, like she just noticed Skyler’s face. “What happened to you?”

“He got in a fight with one of his brothers, probably over Jaycee,” Claire sings out, filling in the holes that Skyler left with her own version of the story.

“That’s terrible.” Mrs. Rallstrom steps closer to Skyler. “I’m going to call your dad, let him know what—”

“No!” Skyler looks terrified.

“Mrs. Rallstrom, you can’t call his dad.” I take a breath and try to calm down. “If you would just listen—”

“Don’t.” Skyler grabs my arm and takes me out to the porch. “You can’t tell anyone. Please, Jaycee.”

“But you need help.”

“No!” he yells. “I don’t need help. I’m leaving. I can’t take this anymore. I have to get out of this town … I have to—”

“No, don’t.” The tears that have been threatening all day are back again. “We’ll work it out. My dad can—”

“Come with me.” He grips my arm harder. “You need to get out of here too. We’ll just start over. I have mo—”

“She is not going anywhere with you!” Claire’s mom yells, coming toward the door. “Stay right there until I have a chance to call your father.”

Skyler ignores her. “Jaycee, please. You don’t know everything that’s going on. It’s not safe here for either of—”

“Jaycee Draper, if you don’t get in this house right now I’ll—”

“Shut up, okay?” I turn around and yell at Claire’s mom.

She looks like I slapped her. “Don’t you talk to me that way. When I tell your father what a little—”

“Why don’t you take care of your own daughter for once instead of getting into everyone else’s business.” I step in front of her and slam the door closed in her dumbfounded face.

Skyler smiles. “So you’re coming?”

I shake my head. “I can’t. Not now. I have to—”

“You don’t have to do anything.”

I lean over and gently kiss his puffy lip, just as Claire’s mom gets the door open again. “I do. I’m sorry—”

“I’m sorry too.” He holds me against him and kisses me hard again, ignoring Mrs. Rallstrom’s threats. “I’ll give you time to think about it. When you change your mind, call me.” He slips something out of his pocket and presses it into my hand. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” I whisper back, the thrill of the words passed between us makes my whole body tingle.

“See you tonight.” He smiles and backs away. I glance down at the picture in my hand, a smaller version of the one he had in his darkroom. Me, lying in the meadow, wearing a white dress, my eyes closed, smiling like I’m having a good dream.

“You look—” Taylor starts.

“Dead,” Claire finishes.

I had to show someone the picture, so I got it out when the three of us were alone. I’m sitting on Claire’s bed, stuck here for a little longer. I finally convinced Mrs. Rallstrom
not
to call Skyler’s dad, but she had a long phone call with mine after Skyler left. She wouldn’t let me talk to him. She told me
that he’s starting back immediately, but it will be a few hours until he gets here. I’m not eager for that conversation, except I have a few things I need to tell him, like the truth.

“I was going to say angelic, but ‘dead’ kind of works too. With your hair fanned out like that and your skin all pale, you look like a dead heroine from a tragic poem,
Annabel Lee
or something like that,” Taylor says. We both look at her. “What? Poe, right? We read it in Lit last year.” We must still look shocked because she adds, “I read it.” She touches my face in the picture. “You have such nice skin. I’m jealous.” I think it’s the first time she’s said anything nice about the way I look.

“He probably Photoshopped it.” Claire brushes her hair back from her face, showing an orange line of cover-up. It makes me feel better about my pale but clear skin. “You kind of look like a corpse.”

“I still say angel,” Taylor says.

“Whatever. Were we going to go to a party at the lake or are we going to hang around and talk about Jaycee’s love life again?” She turns on me, a wicked sneer playing at the corner of her mouth. “Oh wait, I forgot, you’re like grounded for eternity or something.” I think her mom is letting her go out tonight, just to spite me. “Are you in, Taylor?”

Taylor looks at me for a second and then says, “I don’t have a suit.”

“You can borrow one of mine. It’ll be only a little tight.” She throws Taylor a wad of strings and then slips her feet into my white sandals. The ones she said looked like they belonged to a little girl. “Since you lost my shoes, I’m taking yours. See you later, Jaycee.”

As soon as they leave I get a text from Skyler:

Meet me at your house?

I don’t know how to answer. I agree that he needs to get away from his dad. I’m just not sure about how he plans to do it. I can’t let him run away by himself, and I can’t go with him. I open up my backpack and touch the roll of film I found in the old house. I had planned to ask Skyler if we could see what was on it, but it will have to wait. Getting Skyler out of here has to be my focus now, at least until he’s safe. Rachel is dead. I can’t do anything to bring her back. And Eduardo … I don’t know if Sheriff Cross was telling the truth or not, but maybe it’s time I let someone who knows more than I do try to sort him out. I’m not sure there was ever anything I could have done for him.

My phone buzzes again.

Come. I don’t think I can live without you.

Somehow, I have to get out of this house tonight and convince Skyler to stay long enough so I can help him. Dad is going to be off-the-wall mad when he gets back, but he’ll still help Skyler once I explain things to him. I know he will.

I text: I’ll be there as soon as Claire’s mom falls asleep. I’ll call u when I get there.

I listen to the house around me. Somewhere downstairs the television is going. I wonder how long it will be until Claire’s mom falls asleep. I open the blinds and stare down the road toward my house. There’s a lot of darkness between me and it.

Skyler answers: You’re my angel. I love u.

I pick up the picture he took of me again. He wrote the
same thing at the bottom of this picture, “My angel.” I’m tired of waiting and worrying; I just need to get out of here. I pull my running shoes out of my bag and sling my backpack over my shoulder. Whether Claire’s mom is asleep or not, I have to go meet him right now.

Chapter 32

I slip my phone into my pocket, creep down the stairs, and head for the back door, the one I’ve snuck out of twice now, but never by myself. The TV drones on. No one comes out to see where I’m going. I pass silently through the back fence and to the dark alley where Evan and the other guys were hiding last time. I stop and listen—no footsteps but mine.

I cross behind Claire’s house, down the empty road toward home, trying to ignore the darkness pressing in behind me. The urge to move faster, either home or back to Claire’s house, is almost overwhelming. I break into a jog and then I run. I don’t stop until I get to my house.

I grip my keys and walk up the stairs, but when I reach for the door I realize it’s already open, just a crack. Did I forget to shut it tight when I left? Is Dad home?

Then I smell it. Spray paint fumes. Nausea hits me so hard that I have to lean on the windowsill for support.

“You shouldn’t be here,” someone hisses in my ear at the
same time he clamps his hand over my mouth, cutting off my scream. I struggle, but he picks me up and drags me off the steps, around the side of the house, below my bedroom window.

“Shhh, boba, it’s me. Shhh.” Eduardo says it like that should comfort me, like I should trust him, but my instinct is to bite him hard, scream, and run.

Before I can, voices float through my window. “Snooping little bitch. What do you think she knows?” I freeze and press into Eduardo, this time for protection. He doesn’t loosen his grip, but he takes his hand off my mouth.

“Shut up and finish what we came to do.” I strain to recognize either of the voices, but I can’t, they’re too muffled. “I’m almost done.” A hissing sound comes through the door and the smell of paint cuts the air, the same smell as the night Manny died.

“If this doesn’t stop her—”

“After this there’s no way she’ll keep looking.” Panic seizes my chest. What are they doing in my bedroom? What if Dad gets home, what will they do to him?

“She turned in that Mexican kid today, said he had a gun.” Eduardo’s grip tightens around my waist. “And after tonight, when everyone sees this, she’ll be sure it was him. Eric said—”

“No names!” the first voice says. “What if someone hears you?”

“But if she doesn’t buy it, if she keeps looking?”

“He said he’d take care of her.” Everything inside me turns cold.

The window squeaks as they push it open. In a heartbeat Eduardo is moving again, carrying me, dragging me, but this time I don’t resist. He pulls me behind the bushes, and I curl up in a ball next to him and try to make myself invisible in the shadows.

One dark figure and then two jump out of my bedroom window. Their faces are covered with black paint, but I know who it is. Mitch and Peyton. More hissing, more paint fumes. I swallow at the bile that keeps trying to come up. They’re painting the same symbols that were all over Rachel’s door on the outside wall of my house. Eduardo grips something hard against his side. Without looking down, I know he has the gun. I stay breathless and still, more scared than I’ve ever been in my life, huddled against Eduardo and his weapon, not sure I trust either of them to keep me safe.

My phone buzzes. I grab for it in terror. Eduardo does too, both our hands scrambling in the dark. Somehow, one of us finds the button to silence it. The guys freeze. “What was that?” Peyton whispers. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

They stay still. Eduardo leaves one hand on top of mine, gripping it hard, like my phone might go off again. His other hand holds the gun.

After forever, one of them speaks again. “Let’s get out of here.” They throw the empty spray cans. I hear them clatter. One rolls across the lawn and lands in front of me. Without saying anything else they run, going in opposite directions. Eduardo rolls on his stomach and belly crawls out from under
the bushes. I can tell he’s moving to follow them, trying to decide which one to go after.

I crawl beside him and grip his shoulder. “No.”

“Let me go, boba. They killed Rachel.” His voice is stony and he won’t look at me.

“You don’t know that.”

“Weren’t you listening? They want to kill you too.”

That realization sends ice through my blood, to replace the adrenaline that’s been pumping since I left Claire’s house. I swallow, but I answer, “We don’t know that either.”

“Let me take care of this, I promised Rachel—”

“We have to go to the police, we have to tell them—”

“Don’t you have ears, boba? The police are part of this; no one will help us. We have to do this ourselves.”

I move closer to him, wrapping my fingers around his arm, knowing that if he really wants to leave there isn’t anything I can do to stop him. I dig my fingers into his arm and force him to look at me. “If you go after them, if you kill one of them, you will go to jail. I’ll turn you in myself.”

“Like you did today?” His face is so cold that I let go of his arm and shrink away. “They came for me. When I went back to the house all my things were gone and stuff was thrown around like they were looking for something.” He gestures with his gun. “For this? Because you told them I have this?”

I scoot away from him. “Sheriff Cross said that Manny was cooperating with the police and that you were … I thought … I mean …” I look away, thinking of the cap in the back of the sheriff’s car, knowing I’ve been played again.

“And you believed him.” He stands up and I see something dangling from his neck. Rachel’s cross.

I stare at it. “You stole that from my room,” I say quietly. “You’re part of this. One of them.”

“No!”

“You were in my bedroom!” My voice gets louder, I don’t care who hears. “You took—”

“Because you wouldn’t give it to me. I had to know what she left behind.”

“Then why are you here now?”

“I came looking for you, so I could show you this.” He pulls a scrap of paper out of his pocket. It’s a copy of a newspaper article. The headline says,
FUTURE STATE CHAMPS
? Below it is a picture of the entire football team, including Skyler and Manny. He puts his finger on Manny’s picture. “I was right. He did choose number twenty.”

“Where did you get this?”

“At the library. I told you there was something I had to do and that I would tell you what it was if I found it.”

“I thought—”

“You thought I was going out to kill someone.”

“You had a gun.”

“You still don’t trust me.”

I shove the paper back into his hand. “How am I supposed to trust you? Rachel trusted you and now she’s dead.”

His face crumbles.

“Where were you the night Rachel died?” I stand up, suddenly furious with him, realizing that this is what’s been bothering me all along. “Why weren’t you there to save her?”

He won’t look at me anymore.

“Answer me! For once give me a straight answer! If you’re so tough with your gun and your street cred, why didn’t you save her?”

His jaw is clenched. He grips the gun against his chest. For a second I think he’s going to turn it on me, or himself. He takes a breath and his voice comes out shaky. “She wanted to go to that FBI agent, the one who let Manny die. I told her we couldn’t trust him. We had a fight and I left. I was done with it, with her, with everything.” He closes his eyes. “I was on my way back to L.A., hours away, when she called for help. By the time I made it back, it was too late. She was dead.” He bows his head. “That’s why I have to finish this tonight.”