Ten (20 page)

“What?” he asked. He held the battery-operated lantern up to her face. She could see the light rain falling in its beam.

“We can’t go back up,” she said, squinting into the light. “Not yet.”

T.J. sighed loudly. “Why?”

“Because,” Meg said with a significant glance up toward the house. “The killer … could be up there.” She almost said “is up there” but decided against the panic that statement might induce, particularly in herself. She was afraid of what her discovery meant, and she needed T.J.’s opinion on the matter before she jumped to conclusions.

T.J. seemed to understand. “Okay,” he said calmly. “Let’s go to the boathouse.”

They took the shorter route along the beach and up through the trees to the boathouse. With the sun fully retreated beyond the horizon, the bone-chilling cold had returned, and while the boathouse offered a reprieve from the relentless drizzle, Meg still shivered as she and T.J. huddled around the lantern.

“Spill it,” T.J. said unceremoniously.

Meg noted the edge to his voice. “I found this earlier.” She reached a shaky hand into her pocket and retrieved the diary.

“Where?”

“In my room. I thought it was mine, but … not so much.” Meg opened the first page and held the diary before the light.

“‘Is this book yours?’” T.J. read aloud. “‘No? THEN STOP READING IT. NOW.’” Despite his fatigue and strain, T.J. gave her a half smile. “So naturally you read on.”

“Funny,” she said. The fact that he could still find humor in their current situation bolstered her courage. “It gets weirder though.” She flipped two pages ahead to where the line of the quote had been copied in the center of the page.

“‘And their doom comes swiftly.’” He looked up at her. “The poem you read back at the house, right? How does that fit in?”

“It’s a quote from the Bible that starts with ‘Vengeance is mine.’”

Even in the relative darkness, she could see T.J.’s eyes widen. “The video.”

“Yeah.”

“Holy shit.”

“I know.”

“So whoever is stalking us wrote that?”

Meg bit her lip.

“What?”

It was too impossible, too bizarre to believe. There was no way in hell Claire was the killer since she’d been dead for three months. And yet, everything pointed in that direction. Ugh. Meg didn’t trust herself. She needed T.J.’s unbiased opinion. “Just read it.”

“Fine.” T.J. lifted the book from her hand. He held it close to the light, examining both the front and back covers, then opened to the first entry. Meg sat silently at his side while he read the first few pages. Meg stopped him at the point where the pages had been ripped out, covering the photo of Claire with her hand as she took the journal away from him. She didn’t want him to see it. Not yet.

“Okay” he said. “So this girl had some problems she needed to work out. How does that relate to us?”

“Don’t you see?” she said. “It’s like a hit list. The singer. The two-faced bitch. The heartbreaker.”

“Look,” he said. “I know we were talking theoretically back at the house, but Vivian’s death had to be an accident. You almost went over the hill at that point yourself.”

“Teej!” she said, losing her patience. “We both saw that the railing had been tampered with. That was no accident.”

T.J. wasn’t convinced. “It could have been.”

“But it wasn’t,” Meg said, her mouth dry. “Listen, Lori was a singer.”

“Right.”

Meg stared into the darkness. “Vivian was definitely a bitch, and Lori even said she’d probably kill her own mother if it meant she’d get the best grade or win a competition. And don’t you remember what Nathan said at dinner? About conning some poor girl at school into helping him pass algebra?”

“So?” T.J. clearly hadn’t made the same leap.

“Don’t you get it?” she said. Why was he being so obtuse? “Lori was a singer. The diary talks about a singer who beat the author out for a solo.”

“Okay,” T.J. said begrudgingly.

“And Lori was strangled. By a noose. It crushed her vocal cords.”

“That’s just a coincidence.”

“Yeah? Was it a coincidence that her suicide note was written on the sheet music for her solo from the last concert?”

“Okay.” T.J. nodded. “What else?”

“Then Vivian,” Meg said, speaking fast, as if she was afraid she’d forget what she wanted to say halfway through. “Two-faced pain in the ass who was completely self-serving.”

“Heh.” T.J. smirked. “Tell me how you really feel.”

Meg narrowed her eyes. “Are you finished?”

“Maybe.”

“
Such
an appropriate time for sarcasm.”

“You’re gorgeous when you’re angry.”

Meg rolled her eyes. “Come on. This is important.”

T.J. sat back and crossed his legs in front of him. “Fine, fine. Go on.”

“The diary talks about a backstabber who got the author kicked off the debate team. And Vivian just
happened
to be stabbed through the back?” She didn’t wait for him to respond. “Then Nathan,” she said. “The heartbreaker. The author said she hoped the boy who broke her heart would have the same done to him. And Nathan was shot through the heart.”

T.J. shook his head. “But in the diary, the author and The Boy are perfectly happy. No mention of him being a heartbreaker at all.”

That was true, Meg couldn’t deny it. But if “The Boy” and Nathan were the same person, the diary would chronicle the same story Nathan told over dinner, about conning some poor girl into helping him cheat on his algebra midterm by pretending he was in love with her.

There was only one way to find out. Meg flipped to the next entry and began to read out loud.

This can’t be happening. She did this, I know she did. That backstabbing bitch must have said something to The Boy.

The big test was yesterday, the one we’d been working so hard on. I did something I shouldn’t have done, but I just wanted him to pass, you know? I texted him last night to see how he thought he did. He didn’t respond so I called and he didn’t pick up. Then today I didn’t see him anywhere, but I found his best friend and told him I wanted to talk and could The Boy meet me after school at the usual place? His friend sort of nodded, but wouldn’t look me in the eye. And then after school … The Boy never came.

Meg swallowed, trying to control the emotion in her voice. She could feel the pain coming through the page. The tone of the entry was frantic. The handwriting grew more and more erratic as it went on so that by the last line the words blurred together and the letters were almost unintelligible. It looked as if that passage had been written in a fit of pure despair.

My heart is breaking. I feel like everything’s been taken away from me!!!! I bet his friend didn’t tell The Boy I was waiting for him. Idiot. Someone should just beat him over the head. That has to be it. I know The Boy wouldn’t have abandoned me.

He wouldn’t do this if he knew how much it was hurting me. Does he know how I feel? Does he know what it’s like to have your heart ripped out of your chest? I wish someone would tell him how much it hurts.

TWENTY EIGHT

T.J.’S HEAD SNAPPED UP AS MEG FINISHED
reading. “Head beaten in? And a heart ripped out?”

“Yep.”

T.J.’s jaw dropped. “You’re saying that each of them was killed in a specific way?”

Finally. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Hm.” T.J. scratched his leg through his jeans, then shook his head. “It doesn’t add up. I mean, what did the killer do, convince Lori to hang herself, then just get lucky that Vivian fell on a log that stabbed her in the back?”

Was he being intentionally dim? “T.J., you’re the one who just told me that it looked like Nathan had been shot once through the stomach and then someone shot him again through the heart.”

“Yeah, to make sure he was dead.”

“Or to follow the pattern. And Vivian’s death could have been the same thing. We’re not the police. We don’t know how she really died. Maybe she broke her neck in the fall, then the killer staged the body after her death.”

It sounded plausible, and not just because she’d watched too many episodes of
Dexter
. And as she watched T.J. mulling the situation over in his mind, she saw him wrestling with the idea that she might be right.

“All the people who went to Mariner are dead. But how do the rest of us fit in? And Ben?”

Meg held out the journal. “Maybe … maybe we’re all in here.”

T.J. looked directly at her. Whether it was stress or the crappy lighting, he seemed to have aged twenty years. Deep worry lines creased his forehead and the arcs around his lips and nose were heavy, his usually full lips pressed tightly together, disappearing into a thin line.

“You said you knew who the killer was. Back at the house.”

“I think …” Meg bit at her lip again. She was going to sound like a crazy person if she told T.J. what she really thought. “I think the killer knew about this journal.”

“And is using it for revenge or something?”

“Yeah.”

“But for whom?”

Again, Meg balked at saying the name. It was all too surreal. Claire Hicks couldn’t be the killer. But then who, exactly, was hunting them?

“Maybe we should read it together,” she said.

“Okay,” he said. “But we need to read fast. They’re waiting for us.”

“Right.” Read fast. No pressure.

Meg opened the diary to the next entry, bent her head close to his, and together they began to read.

First day at the new school.

Yay.

New school. It must have been Kamiak. Claire had started that fall, and Meg remembered the rumors that she’d been at like five or six different high schools already. More like two, apparently. She’d been at Mariner before she transferred to Kamiak. But before that? Still a mystery.

Three schools in two years. That’s got to be some sort of Guinness Book of Freak Shows record. My mom and Bob really believe every time that it’ll be different. So did I. But not now. Now I know better. There’s no point in even trying anymore.

And I’m pretty sure I’m being haunted by the past. Yesterday I saw someone from sophomore year. That was two schools ago, but it feels like a lifetime. And she didn’t even recognize me. Or at least she pretended not to.

Why should she? I wasn’t anything to her. Just a scapegoat so she could get her precious A in physics. I bet she never expected to see me again after I transferred to Mariner.

She’s not the only one haunting me. Today I saw that blond jerk from my P.E. class at Mariner. I was at the grocery store with Mom and there he was. I never understood why I was the butt of all his jokes. I remember every one of his taunts. They’re imprinted on my brain forever.

“Hey, freakshow, how’s the circus? BURN!”

“What’s the lunch menu like in the psycho ward? BURN!”

“When you go to the zoo, are the animals scared of you? BURN!”

I want to make him choke on those words. Him and his stupid bleached-blond hair. Really? I was the freak?

Meg gasped. Choke on his words …

“What? T.J. asked.

“The blond guy.”

“Ben?”

“Yeah.”

T.J. shook his head. “I was thinking the same thing.”

What are the odds I’d see them both in two days? I don’t even go to school with them anymore! It’s like a bad joke. What was she doing way up here from the city anyway? I wanted to march right up and smack her. I mean, it wasn’t my fault we got paired as lab partners in physics. I wouldn’t have chosen her, that’s for sure. But we got stuck and we were supposed to work together. As a team. Not one of us making decisions and the other just agreeing to them. Which is really what she wanted.

Until it all went horribly wrong. I told her the way she routed the circuits wouldn’t work, but would she listen to me? No. Apparently she was the only one who was surprised when the lightbulb didn’t go on and we got a failing grade.

She went to our teacher and blamed the whole failure on me. She got to redo her experiment. Which she passed. I still got an F.

How could they believe her? The teacher never even asked me what happened. How is that fair? Tom said it was a conspiracy but either way, it sucks.

“Damn,” T.J. said, flipping to the next page. “A conspiracy in high school physics?”

“The only conspiracy is that they force us to take physics.”

“Gold.” T.J. smiled faintly. “Any idea who she’s talking about?”

Meg shook her head. “Let’s keep reading.”

He’s the one. I know it.

Everyone here acts like they don’t see me but he’s different. He smiles at me sometimes. He notices me. I think maybe he wants to talk to me but his friends wouldn’t approve.

I just need to get him by himself—no friends around—and then maybe we could talk.

Meg’s empathy was back. She pictured that messed-up girl with her dirty hair and her sadness and her pain. Meg found it hard to believe that any of the guys at school had shown interest in her, but it sounded like she truly believed they did. Probably the same thing that happened with Nathan. Meg wondered who the guy had been at Kamiak.