The Deadly Sister (2 page)

I
knew I didn’t have much time. Even though few people ran in this area, I couldn’t count on Jefferson’s body going undiscovered for long. I had to get to Maya right away.

There was no way to call her—her phone was in my hand. But I’d try her friends. I’d find out which house she was crashing at, which bar or mall parking lot she’d passed out in. It was a start. I would come to know everything Maya knew, and then I’d make a plan. By now the routine of tracking her down and dragging her to safety was familiar to me. Though this time so much more depended on my pulling everything off.

“What’s up, guys?”—many of Maya’s friends’ voice mails picked up this way, like their phone calls lit up the power grid so brightly that they had to answer in the plural—“This is Ranya. I guess I’m not by my phone, so leave a message.”

“What’s up, guys? Leave a message.”

“Guys, meet David’s cell phone. David’s cell phone, meet the guys. Converse amongst yourselves.”

“You’ve reached Jefferson Andrews—” I pulled the phone away from my ear, as if stung. I’d been going alphabetically down the list and had stopped looking at who I was dialing.

“What’s up, guys? You haven’t reached Katie, so leave a message.”

Then, finally, “Hello?”

“Oh!” I said. “Who’s this?” I glanced at the screen, but it just read
Medusa.

“Who’s
this
? Maya?”

My voice came out sounding amazingly calm. “No, it’s her sister. I’m looking for Maya. Is she around?”

“Why would she be here?” Whoever this was, his tone was really defensive. I sat up.

“Um, who is this?”

A pause. “Keith. Why are you calling from her number?”

“Okay, Keith. I don’t have time to explain all of it to you. I just need to find her. Can you help me?”

“This is really something. You think I’m going to help you, just like that?”

I thought I heard heartbreak, a history of fights and wounds in his voice. I recognized it all too well. “I don’t know what’s passed between the two of you,” I said. “Honestly, I don’t. And I’m not trying to poke around. I just—” I let out a long sigh. “Thanks, anyway.”

I didn’t hang up—I’d long ago decided never to be the one to end a call, to always let the other person be through with me first. Funny thing was, though, Keith didn’t hang up either. Maybe he had the same idea. I spent a few seconds listening to the line, to the sounds of traffic and
clinking dishes on the other end. I crouched at the roadside, a bead of perspiration running through the sweat-salt on my temple and landing on my shorts.

“Is she okay?” Keith finally asked. He had a high voice. I imagined him in skinny gray jeans, a cigarette behind his ear. In my mind he was not only gesturing with his hands but with his whole arms flailing over his head—a high-strung kid.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Look, if you don’t know where she is, then I have to go.”

“Medusa’s Den,” he said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Medusa’s Den. The tattoo place on Langdell. She came by last night to get a tattoo covered up. She crashed at my place above the studio. You can start here. I have to run some errands, but you can come by once I’m back.

“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“I won’t be back until four, though.”

“Great, thanks. Hurry, if you can.”

“I might be there when you see her. So you know.”

“Um, okay.”

“It’s a shock, talking to Abby Goodwin. We haven’t met, of course. But finally talking to Maya’s mythical, straightedge sister. Some rule just got broken, you know what I mean?”

“Bye, Keith.”

I broke my rule after all and finished the call. The End
button beeped for a while before I realized I hadn’t let it go. Maya’s phone tight in one hand, I rubbed my sweat from the screen with the sleeve of my sweatshirt.

Back home, my parents would be beginning their lazy Saturday routine. Chairs groaning against floorboards, the low hum of public radio, water spraying against the hollow spot of the porcelain sink. I hadn’t seen them yet today. That was normal enough—I usually spent my Saturday mornings doing homework in the library, running, and eventually driving over to my best friend Cheyenne’s for gossip and bagels. Part of me wanted to go straight home, let my parents see how pale I was and hear them ask what was wrong. Then I’d tell them. What to do next would become their responsibility. But their hysterical reactions…I couldn’t stand the thought of the scene they’d make. For now, all they knew was that their youngest daughter hadn’t come home. Not at all unusual for Maya. Once my parents knew more, though, my sister would become a potential killer. My mother might have listened to my reasoning, but my father would insist on calling the police immediately. Always “the truth will set you free” with him. But we’d never faced anything like this. If they pinned this on Maya, it would get her jailed. Or executed.

But I couldn’t think about that. I had to focus on saving her.

I had to believe she’d have a reason prepared, or an alibi. If asked, she’d have something to say.

But would it be enough?

Knees cracking, I stood and started sprinting. Cody lurched to her feet, grunted in complaint.

Home was four miles off. Too far.

In order to get to Maya, I needed a car. And in order to get a car, I needed someone I could trust.

And in my life, that meant Cheyenne.

M
y town is an overheated stretch of cracked pavement in the middle of an alligator-hunted wasteland between Naples and Miami. We have three high schools, whose athletic competitions are the focus of an otherwise bored and sluggish community. The Sunday outing for most is a trip to Walmart, or Target if they’re classy. We’ve got some tension between the haves and have-nots, I guess, but it’s not like there are any private schools—it’s just that some people were born and raised locally and live in mobile homes, and others buy brushed-steel appliances in Miami and live around here because there are more golf courses. That’s all there is to know about my town. If you were driving through you’d only stop as long as it took to buy a soda. I recommend turning left off the highway and going to Ernie’s gas station, across from the high school, then getting back on I-75 heading anywhere else.

It was an easy run to the mall. Cheyenne was halfway through her shift at Denim Jungle, not quite busy folding wide-leg jeans. “Whoa,” she said when she saw me, “what the hell is up?”

Was my flipping out that obvious?

“I need your help,” I said.

“Yeah, you do!” she said with a smirk.

She gave some excuse to her manager. He shook his head, then spied me lingering at the store entrance and, tipped off to the freakish need I was projecting, reluctantly nodded. Cheyenne and I went to the food court. It was great to be alone with her. My best friend. Her skin tight and splotchy, masses of dry hair and the going-hunting look of the only recently skinny. She watched me as she took long drags from a Manchu Wok Diet Coke.

I explained everything.

Or rather, I explained everything I was willing to have the world at large know: basically, that I’d gone running and discovered Maya’s phone in the woods. I couldn’t put words to what had happened to Jefferson. The arms emerging from the water, as if to pull himself up and out. The windbreaker parachuting with water. The sharp jaws of those feeding ants. I knew Cheyenne would be horrified that I hadn’t called the police yet, that I hadn’t even told my parents. So she couldn’t know about Jefferson. She listened to me sympathetically, but one arched eyebrow told me she thought I was going overboard. I wanted to clutch her, to hear her reassurances that everything would work out okay. I’d spend the weeks to come wanting nothing more than that.

“So your sister boinked some guy in the woods and her phone fell out of her panties,” Cheyenne said. “Or she got high and went skinny-dipping. What else is new? That cell phone has probably been left in beds all over the state.”

I surprised myself by laughing. It had an iron, slashing
feeling behind it, and I had to work to make the laughter stop. Talking to Cheyenne made me feel more alive than I had all morning.

“I can’t find her,” I finally said.

“This is just the first time you’ve bothered looking for her in a while. Remember back when you actually cared, when you were still being an older sister and letting her be a toxic influence on your life? We’d drive around all night trying to find her, and she’d always turn out to be passed out on some guy’s couch, or detained by security guards…or remember that time we thought she ran away and she’d actually just decided to hang out at the strip mall for five hours eating fro yo, getting high in bathrooms, and chatting up some random Japanese girl she met by the vending machines? She’s
never
at your house, and when she is, she’s in that swampy basement of a bedroom. I don’t get why you’re so worked up
now,
hon.”

That was when I should have told her. But I couldn’t tell her. Because, like everyone else, Cheyenne assumed the worst about Maya. There would be no benefit of the doubt here, and I couldn’t have Cheyenne refusing to help.

“I’m really scared,” I said. “I just need you to acknowledge that, all right? We aren’t discussing some random girl. It’s my sister.”

Cheyenne laced her fingers through the wires of her chair back. “I’ve always been really impressed that you finally managed to cut Maya out of your life. You used to spend every weekend being her nursemaid. Driving to Orlando to
pick her up because someone jacked her wallet. Shuttling to a cab driver’s house with twenty bucks so he wouldn’t beat her up or hike her back to Pakistan or something. And what good would it ever do? You’d get an ulcer, and she’d get back in trouble. You know, you have to respect the lesson you learned, to have the wisdom to know the difference between the things you can change and those that are just blocks to your shui.”

Cheyenne loves astrology, has considered becoming a midwife, and is the primary funder of the local bookstore’s self-help section. She frequently sets up cornfield mazes of mental health jargon and then gets lost in them. But the girl isn’t dumb. She was in the running for valedictorian of our class. In fact, she was probably first now, with the competition half submerged in the Everglades.

“If you start letting yourself worry about Maya, you’ll never stop,” Cheyenne concluded. “Look at your parents. They let Maya dominate their lives, and she wrecked their marriage. Once and nearly twice.”

“No, the affair wrecked their marriage,” I said.

“The first time, sure.”

“Whatever. I just need you to come with me to search for her,” I said. “Right now. Some emo guy named Keith’s waiting for me.”

“I just moved up from the kids’ store,” Cheyenne said. “If I blow off an afternoon shift now, I’m not coming back. If you can promise me that Maya’s going to cover my car payments, I’ll go look for her with you.”

Tears must have been standing in my eyes. Cheyenne softened. “There’s more to this than you’re telling me, isn’t there?” she asked.

I nodded into my lap. I couldn’t look at her. My best friend in the world, and I couldn’t convey my panic.

“Look, I’d blow the afternoon off,” she said softly, with the same tone she used when I got my dress caught on a gymnasium pegboard at the eighth-grade dance and she convinced her dad to take us out for ice cream afterward. “But I guess I don’t see what you’re really freaking out for. And you’re talking about heading off into a totally sketch area of town. I definitely don’t want you to go alone. But if you’re really worried, call the police. Call your parents. Veronica. Or
my
mom, even. I just don’t get why you’re suddenly being Nancy Drew.”

“I don’t know what she’s gotten herself into. I have to find out exactly what it is before I potentially screw up her future.”

“You’re too good to people who don’t give a crap about you, you know that?”

There were sweeter friends I could have turned to. Ones who would be hugging me, who would see the depth of my hurt even if they didn’t know the cause. Who would be saying tons of things that would make me feel better, rather than these edgy little truths. But more than comfort, I was craving honesty.

I took a deep breath. “It’s Jefferson Andrews,” I said.

“What do you mean, it’s Jeff Andrews?” No one but Cheyenne ever called him Jeff. I guess she wanted to diminish him. Make him more masterable, somehow. “It’s Jeff Andrews who was off in the woods with her?”

I nodded. Suddenly, it felt like if I didn’t get some truth out right away, I wouldn’t ever be able to speak, about anything, ever again. So I spoke.

“He’s dead.”

Nothing changed in the food court. A baby was still climbing on the back of a nearby seat. The Miss Sakura girl, wearing a skirt as a shirt, was still handing out samples. I could still hear the hum of the refrigerators at the cookie cake place. Cheyenne was still in the same position. But I witnessed something change in her. Her life had entered the same twilight realm as mine.

She didn’t ask if I was kidding. She saw the answer in my face.

I didn’t want to give her space to speak, didn’t want to hear her tell me I was accountable and monstrous. So I rambled on about the physical details. The run and the dog. The bashed head. The blood and the phone.

“He’s really dead,” Cheyenne said, finally.

I nodded.

“And you think your sister had something to do with it?”

I couldn’t answer that. I was cold and sweating, like I’d just woken up in the middle of the night with a fever. Even within the astonishment of finally revealing myself, I
couldn’t shake the feeling that Cheyenne wasn’t totally surprised to hear Jefferson was dead. She’d gone glassy, and her pupils were huge, but she hadn’t flinched.

“You’re right not to have gone to your parents,” she said softly. “They gave up on Maya long before you did. They might actually
want
her caught. So that they’d finally, officially, not have to deal with her anymore.”

I nodded solemnly. I’d drawn the same conclusion, even though I hadn’t admitted it to myself until now. I wanted to thank her, suddenly, for saying it out loud.

“We’ll go to that tattoo place first,” she said. “Medusa something? Then we’ll try Veronica’s. She’s the only sorta parental type that gives a crap about Maya anymore—if your sister’s going to go to an adult for help, and I bet she will, it’ll be her. But maybe, do you think…oh god, Abby. What if Maya doesn’t realize she’s killed him? Like they fought, and she left without knowing he was bleeding to death?”

I nodded.

When Cheyenne tossed her Diet Coke into the trash, it traced a zigzag in the air, thrown by a shaky hand. Otherwise she seemed totally in control, someone I could lean all my weight on. “We’ll take my car,” she said, as though I hadn’t arrived on foot, as though we had some other option.

She didn’t tell her manager she was leaving. She just tossed her work ID into the trash as we left the mall.

Once we pushed out of the front doors I untied Cody, who had fallen asleep with her head resting against a bike
rack, and started walking to Cheyenne’s car. Maya’s phone buzzed in my pocket. The text was from Keith.

abby made it back early im here if u want to come.

My fingers flew over the keys.

ill be there in half an hour with a friend. dont tell anyone were coming.