Twisted (3 page)

Bex’s heart slammed against her rib cage. The red recording light on Zach’s camera flooded her vision until everything she saw was coated in a haze of glowing red, bright as fresh blood. Her stomach turned and heat prickled her scalp.

“Wouldn’t you rather share the whole dirty story here, in your own words, instead of having it run through the KDH mouth breathers’ PA system?”

Images plowed into Bex’s mind. She was eight years old and dressed in an itchy navy dress with a thick, lacy collar, her grandmother dragging her by the hand as they dodged a maze of reporters. The flashes from their cameras were blinding her, snapping like the jaws of hungry alligators, one after another after another. People shouted her name—strangers who knew things about her, about her family.

“Beth Anne! Do you know where your mother is?”

“Beth Anne, is it true your father gave you jewelry and presents from his victims?”

She could feel her grandmother’s hand tighten on hers, her grandmother’s jaw going hard.

“Shut up, you miscreants!”
Gran had yelled.
“She’s only a child!”

Beth Anne had had to look up the word “miscreant.”

“Come on, Beth,” Zach prodded. “Inquiring minds want to know.”

“Shut up,” Bex said between gritted teeth. “Shut up, shut up,
shut up
!” Each one louder until she was yelling, hands fisted, fingernails digging into the soft flesh of her palm.

“Hey.” Zach dropped the camera to his side, the little red light flicking off, but Bex couldn’t stop herself. Every synapse was firing, her blood roaring through her ears.

“Shut up!”

She didn’t know when she started crying.

She heard the body slamming against the locker first, Zach’s shoulders hitting the slick metal, his head lolling back.

“Leave her alone, asshole. No one wants to be in your stupid movies!”

She could see Trevor, his outline blurred through her tears. He stood a whole head taller than Zach and leered down at him. His mouth was moving so she knew he was talking, but her head was filled with the same buzzing static that she had felt before. She saw Laney and Chelsea pushing through the halls, students parting for them without so much as a word, and it was like Bex was out of her body, suspended above the whole scene. She saw herself standing there, looking wooden and hollow as Trevor yelled at Zach and Chelsea threaded an arm through wooden Bex’s, Laney stretching a protective arm across her shoulders.

They tugged at her and she was back in her body. Zach looked at her, eyes wide, slightly fearful, completely apologetic.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out, Beth.”

“
Bex
,” Trevor spat out, bits of saliva landing on the collar of Zach’s polo shirt. “Her name is Bex.”

She watched Zach, a tiny triangle of his pink tongue darting out and brushing over his bottom lip. “I’m sorry, Bex. I didn’t mean anything. I was just joking around. I’m a documentary filmmaker.”

Laney narrowed her eyes into sharp slits, stabbing Zach with a look. “You’re a joke.”

Bex wanted to stay angry but she saw the crushed look in Zach’s eyes even as he tried to avoid hers. She felt the same hot stripe go up her neck—the one that she had felt so many times before when she was the joke, the stain, the kid that no one wanted to play with.

“It’s okay,” she said, but Zach had already turned around.

Trevor shot her a grin, and Laney nudged Bex’s hip with hers. “Don’t worry. You can tell us all your deepest, darkest secrets when you’re ready.”

Bex made it through her next class without incident, and when the lunch bell rang, Chelsea and Laney were waiting by her locker. Bex found herself glancing around for Trevor and then gave herself a mental head slap. Not even through the first day, and she was already crushing on someone.

Bex’s cell phone chirped. She glanced down at the readout, the sounds of her new friends and her new school going weird and tinny when she saw the area code preceding the strange number: 919.

Raleigh.

In her mind, she heard the muffled sounds and clicks that preceded a collect call, the robotic voice that informed her that she was receiving a call from a speaker who held the phone too close and mumbled his name. She remembered the one and only time she had heard that robotic voice, the way she had frozen, her hand gripping the old-fashioned receiver her grandmother had on the kitchen phone. She had finally croaked out the words, “I accept the charges.”

Fifteen minutes seemed to lapse between the clicks and beeps, and then she heard what she thought was her father’s voice—gravelly, low, nearly unrecognizable. It sounded like the caller said her name but blood was pulsing in her ears, and she even though she strained, she couldn’t make out the man’s mumbles. He hung up and she stood in the kitchen, pressing the receiver to her ear and pretending that her daddy was talking to her, saying soothing things and that he’d be home soon. Instead, she let the dial tone drone in her ear until her gran hung up the phone.

“You okay, Bex?” Chelsea had her hand on Bex’s shoulder, and Bex forced herself to pump her head in a positive nod.

“Yeah, sorry. It was just a weird number on my phone. Probably nothing.”

Chelsea offered a warm smile and linked her arm through Bex’s. “Okay, now I will tell you absolutely everything you need to know about living in Kill Devil Hills. Do you have three and a half minutes?”

“No,” said the man who stepped into the hall in front of them. “She doesn’t.”

Bex’s mouth dropped open, her throat going bone dry. The man in front of her was smiling but it didn’t reach his flat, emotionless brown eyes.

“You’re Bex Andrews.”

Bex wasn’t sure if he was asking or telling, but she nodded anyway. “Uh-huh.”

“I’m sorry we haven’t met sooner. I’m Terrence Howard, your guidance counselor.” He offered a hand that Bex stared at before limply shaking. “Care to step in my office?” The way he spoke wasn’t unpleasant, but something about him set Bex on edge.

“I guess.”

“Hey, we’ll catch up with you later,” Chelsea said.

Bex followed Mr. Howard into his office, a small room with the same utilitarian furniture that she suspected populated every other public school administrator’s office in the world, and sat down in the visitor’s chair across from him. As he settled himself, she glanced around the room, noting the same cache of “You Can Do It!” posters that had lined the cinderblock walls at what passed as the schoolroom at the juvenile facility where she had been held.

Then she glanced at the newspaper on his desk. The body found in the Dumpster was the topic of the main headline, accompanied by a full-color picture of the cordoned-off crime scene and insets of anguished onlookers. Bex knew she should look away but found herself skimming the headline, the article, trying to glean new information.

“It’s horrible, isn’t it?”

Bex’s head snapped up. “Excuse me?”

Mr. Howard gestured toward the newspaper. “Terrible business. A young woman like that, taken in the prime of her life.”

Bex nodded stiffly. “Yeah.”

“Anyway, Bex.” Mr. Howard smiled again, this one easier, seemingly more genuine. “That’s an interesting name, Bex. It’s not short for anything?”

He held her eye for an uncomfortably long moment, and Bex shook her head. “No.”

She could see that her file was on the desk in front of him, the name
Andrews, Bex
typed in a twelve-point font.

“Well, I just wanted to make sure that you’re settling in well here at KDH. Are there any questions I can answer? Anything I can help you with?”

Before she could answer, Mr. Howard prattled on. “I understand from your file that you’ve been homeschooled up until this point. Are you having trouble adjusting? I know it can be hard. Everything is all new to you here, I’ll bet.”

“I’m okay.” She cleared her throat. “People seem to be nice so far.”

“It seems that way, doesn’t it?”

Bex had been set in front of enough psychologists in her life to know that Mr. Howard was mirroring her—using her own words and body language to theoretically make her feel more comfortable, but the way he said, “seems that way,” struck her as weird and all Bex wanted to do was get out of his office.

“I appreciate your help, Mr. Howard, but I’d really like to get to class. I don’t want to fall any more behind.”

“Oh right, of course. Well”—he stood, gathering a sheaf of papers—“these are from your teachers. Some books you’ll need to pick up, some additional reading material for catching up, and I’ve included some helpful material about the area, about making friends. You’ll be sure to come and see me, should you need anything, right, Bex?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Bex shoved the papers in her backpack and made a mental note to avoid Mr. Howard at all costs.

• • •

The rest of the school week passed quickly and smoothly for Bex. For the first day or two people smiled at her and gave her the obligatory new-kid greeting when prompted by the teacher, but by midweek she was a regular kid. Not once did she feel the bitter burn of eyes on the back of her neck or hear the chafing whispers, “Stay away from her. She’s bad.” By Friday morning, Bex was actually looking forward to going to school. She knew where her classes were, had memorized her locker combination, and had been absorbed into Chelsea and Laney’s circle of friends.

“Ugh!” Chelsea was growling at her cell phone as she and Bex merged into the crowd in the hall. “I’ve texted Darla seventy times, and she hasn’t texted me back.”

“Darla? Your friend from Rhodes’s class? I thought you guys said she was sick. Maybe’s she napping or something, or her parents took her phone.”

Chelsea shot her a bemused look. “Darla’s not really sick. She tends to take the occasional mental health day. Or, in this case, week. And her parents? Mom’s a flight attendant and dad’s a pilot.”

“Sounds kind of romantic.”

“Darla says it’s more passive-aggressive than romantic since they work very hard not to ever be on the same schedule. Or in the same city.” She went back to her call. “Answer your phone, bitch!” Chelsea rolled her eyes when Darla’s nasal voice boomed out from the phone:
You’ve reached Darla’s phone. Lucky you!

“Hey, Dar, it’s Chels. Again. If you don’t call me back, I’m officially kicking you off the squad and busting you down to mascot. So, if you don’t want to wear a giant devil’s head that smells like ass for the rest of your high school existence, you’ll call me.”

Bex spun the combination on her locker. “Remind me to never get on your bad side.”

Chelsea winked and pointed at Bex. “That’d be best. Anyway, tell your parents you have plans tonight.”

“I do?”

“Party at Darla’s house. She might not be answering the phone, but I know she’ll answer the door. I’ll shoot you the info. Bye!”

Bex was too stunned to wave. She hadn’t been in school—hadn’t even been Bex Andrews—for more than a few days, and already she had friends and a social life. She felt a slight tingle behind her ears. Could it really be this easy?

“See you later, Bex!” Laney passed her in the hall as Bex opened her locker.

“Bye!”

I can do this.

She pulled books from her locker and shoved them into her backpack, her hand hovering over the stack of papers from Mr. Howard. Bex had stashed them away on Monday and avoided them since. Just the thought of the man gave her the creeps, but she pawed the pages into her bag anyway, vowing to trash them at home. She slammed the metal locker door shut.

“Hey.” Zach was crouching next to her locker, picking something up. “You dropped this.”

He slid the postcard into Bex’s hand without making eye contact and kept walking.

“Thanks!” A tiny niggling feeling in her gut hoped that Zach would turn around and smile at her to give some indication that he was okay, that he didn’t somehow blame her for Trevor’s reaction. He had studiously avoided Bex and her whole group all week, and for some reason, it bothered her.

“Next time,” she muttered under her breath, glancing down at the postcard he’d handed her.

Bex had to blink several times to read the words. They couldn’t be right. They blurred and swarmed and re-formed again.

Greetings from the Research Triangle!

There was a cartoon picture of the state of North Carolina, a red line forming the Research Triangle of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. The same line could be drawn to mark the locations of most of the Wife Collector’s victims.

Bex shook her head. It was a coincidence. A joint ad for UNC and Duke, maybe something from Mr. Howard’s stack of brochures to familiarize herself with the area.

But the Research Triangle is almost 250 miles from here…

She flipped the card, hoping to see a preprinted message about applications for admissions or campus tours. She didn’t expect the hastily scrawled message:

DADDY’S HOME.

The words throbbed in front of her eyes.

DADDY’S HOME.

They burned into her retinas, into her mind, and paralyzed her. All around Bex, lockers slammed and kids shuffled down the halls, the din of doors opening and closing and chatter and overhead announcements that the last bus was leaving all morphing into one crashing whoosh that swelled in her ears and slammed through her mind.

Daddy’s home.

Somehow, Bex turned. Somehow, she scanned the hall and the few students left. No one acknowledged her. No one snickered behind their hands or tried to hide a sinister smile, responsible for this sick joke.

Daddy’s home.

She tried to breathe but it was like she couldn’t remember how. Her chest tightened, her head pounded, and her vision blurred.

Just a joke.

It had to be.

She was nine years old, and her grandmother had dropped her off at vacation bible school at Our Lady of Grace out in High Point. It was a glorious summer day, the kind that whitewashed everything and prickled your shoulders and hung on in memories as summer perfection. Her grandmother had plaited Beth Anne’s hair into two long braids that hung down her back, nearly to her waist, the white blond almost blending into her pale cotton tank top. Sue Reynolds was holding her hand.

Sue Reynolds had the soft-edged accent of her Georgia home. It was her first summer in North Carolina, visiting her grandparents, and when they had dropped her off in their beaten-up Coup de Ville with the mismatched hubcaps, the other kids had stuck their tongues out at Sue, had turned their backs. Not Beth Anne.

Beth Anne sat silently next to Sue and held out half her sandwich. Sue took it without looking at her, the way misfits did, and chewed carefully, still quiet. When she and Beth Anne finished their last bites simultaneously—dumping the soggy crusts in the grass for the ducks—they smiled shyly. Sue found Beth Anne’s hand.

“Do you like ponies?” she whispered.

Beth Anne was about to answer that she did, but a whistle cut through the humid-heavy air and distracted her. That first rock hit Beth Anne in the temple, shooting a starburst of pain through her head. She had to blink several times to get her vision to clear, and when it did, she saw the kids in front of the church, a half dozen of them with narrowed eyes and angry, wicked grins.

“Killer!” A redheaded boy standing on the bottom step of the church porch cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted: “Killer!”

Another boy, one step down from the first, selected another rock, his arm reeling back for the throw.

“She’ll kill you!” a third kid yelled.

Sue looked at Beth Anne, eyes wide, and broke her hold to protect her head as a handful of pebbles rained down on them.

“Hey, new girl.” A brunette Beth Anne had never seen before ran toward them. “Stay away from her. She’s a psycho. Her daddy murders mommies and eats them!”

Another rock came sailing from the church, this one hitting Sue square in the chest. The girl looked at the dirty mark it left on her T-shirt and then at Beth Anne as if she was the one who put it there. And in a way, she was.

“Come on!” The brown-haired girl snatched Sue’s wrist and pulled her up, tugging her into a run. “You can’t play with her,” the girl admonished. “No one can. She’s bad like her daddy.”

The taunts of the kids—
killer
,
murderer
,
psycho
—still rang in Bex’s ears, still hung in her head. The postcard trembled between her fingers, the fading image she still held of her father sharpening in her mind. Pale complexion. Larger-than-life stature. Kind eyes.

She shoved the postcard deep in her backpack, smashing her books on top of it.

Bex Andrews didn’t have a father.

It was only three o’clock, but the thick haze of gray fog made it look later and Bex shivered at the damp chill. School had let out less than ten minutes before, but the grounds were emptying at record speed as kids crossed the street en masse and a long line of SUVs and minivans snaked through the front lot, collecting kids and disappearing into traffic.

“Bexy!”

Bex whirled at the loud voice and waved at Laney who was hanging out the driver’s side window of a VW Bug painted a hideous fluorescent green that shone through the fog. Bex could see a spray of silk daisies wobbling on the dashboard and something with a crystal hanging from the rearview mirror. Even though Bex barely knew her, the whole car seemed to scream “Laney.” Chelsea was in the passenger’s seat, staring at her cell phone, when Bex jogged over.

“Hey, you need a ride?” Laney asked.

“Oh.” Bex was stunned, still certain that somehow the week had been a colossal joke that she was the unwitting butt of, that the postcard was simply the start of her old life chipping away at her new one.

“You don’t even know where she lives,” Chelsea said, snapping her gum.

Laney shrugged. “Need one?”

“No thanks.” Bex waved at the air. “I’m actually not entirely sure where I live yet. I know it’s that way.” She pointed in the general direction Denise had come from that morning. “Anyway, D…my mom”—Bex had trouble pushing out the words—“insisted on driving me today. First week and all that.”

“All right. See you later then!”

Laney stepped on the gas just in time for Bex to glance in the tiny backseat of the car. Monday’s newspaper was on the seat, the picture of Erin Malone, the body from the Dumpster, smiling out at Bex. Her breath hitched, the words on the postcard already seared in the back of her mind.

Daddy’s home.

Erin was a pretty blond, vibrant and happy from the looks of the newspaper picture, and she had been dumped in the trash like she wasn’t worth anything at all.
Just like the rest of the Wife Collector’s victims
, the little voice in Bex’s head taunted. She gritted her teeth and tried to edge out the thought.

A train of cars followed Laney’s out into the street, and Bex was left at the crescent-shaped mouth of the school driveway, waiting for Denise. She glanced at her phone and rocked on her heels. What if Denise had forgotten her? What if Denise had figured out who she was and wasn’t coming for her at all? A strange heat burned through Bex and she pushed up the sleeves of her hoodie, even as the fog turned to a cold wet mist.

Another few moments passed, and then there was a cacophony of honking and a stressed-looking Denise screeching into the driveway. She frantically rolled down the passenger-side window and pushed open the car door.

“I’m so, so sorry,” she said before Bex could reach the car. “We got absolutely swamped at the station. The news editor is out sick, and my editor’s water broke and—”

“It’s okay.” Bex smiled, pulling the door open farther. “You’re not really late. Everyone just takes off the second the bell rings, I guess.”

The look on Denise’s face softened and she grinned back. “I love that you haven’t learned teenage angst yet.”

Bex slid into the passenger seat, her temperature still rising, her heart still thundering in her chest. When her cell phone buzzed, it nearly sent her into a tizzy. Denise glanced at her, and Bex forced a nonchalant chuckle.

“Oh,” she muttered, when her heart no longer threatened to launch itself from her mouth. “It’s just Chelsea.” She flicked her thumb over the message.

Chng-o-plns. Bonfire 2night @ corollabeach. Still cant find that skank darla!!!!

• • •

Bex dropped her backpack in her closet when she got home from school. She glanced at it sitting there in the half dark among her shoes and new cleats. Even though the stupid postcard was buried inside under her books, her gym clothes, and a few notes from Chelsea and Laney, it still seemed menacing. Taunting.

She was pulling the closet door shut when Denise knocked on the door frame. “Hey, Bex,” she said. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah.” Bex dropped into her desk chair while Denise took a spot on the bed. “You okay, hon? You seemed a little distracted on the drive home.”

Bex bit her lip. “Oh, yeah. It’s nothing. Just tired.”

“You know you can talk to me or Michael about anything, right?”

“Oh, yeah. Of course. Thanks.”

There was a slow pause. Then, “So, do you have any plans for tonight?”

“Well, Laney and Trevor and them are going to have a bonfire. Someplace called Corolla Beach?” She couldn’t stop herself from shooting a glance toward the closet, toward the postcard. “But I don’t think I’m going. I’m kind of tired.”

“Oh no! You should totally go! Corolla Beach is beautiful!”

“It’ll be dark,” Bex said, laughing.

“The beach is beautiful at night. And high school bonfires are a tradition. But”—Denise held up her hands—“it’s totally up to you.”

“What’s going on in here?” Michael poked his head through Bex’s open door, eyes narrowed as he feigned a suspicious glare.

“I am just telling our daughter that bonfires at Corolla Beach are a high school tradition.”

“Aw, we used to bonfire on the beach too! Bunch of guys, bunch of girls, bunch of blankets…” His voice trailed off and then he shook his head emphatically. “No. No bonfires on the beach. Bonfires, blankets, bad. You know what’s fun? Hanging out with your parents and a gluten-free pizza. So fun. Right, Denise?”

“Don’t worry, Michael. Bex wasn’t going to go anyway.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Bex said, starting to smile. “You’ve suddenly made beach bonfires sound very appealing.”

Michael moved to protest, and Denise put a hand on his arm. “What if she promises to avoid blankets?”

• • •

The drive to Corolla Beach took nearly forty-five minutes and Bex, Laney, and Chelsea laughed the entire way. Trevor and his friends had left ahead of them, tasked with finding wood and building the bonfire. As Laney navigated the last few winding miles toward the beach, Chelsea turned down the radio and leaned over the backseat.

“Okay, Bex. We have to tell you something about Corolla Beach.”

“Let me guess. It’s not really a beach? Or, wait, it’s a nude beach?” She waggled her eyebrows but sincerely hoped that wasn’t the case.

“No.” Laney laughed from the driver’s seat. “And, Chelsea, way to make it sound so ominous. It’s not that big of a deal.”

Chelsea gaped. “It’s totally a big deal. Someone
died
there.”

Bex felt the smile drop from her lips, her blood running cold. “What are you talking about? What do you mean?”

“A girl drowned there when we were freshman.”

Bex could finally breathe again—not that drowning made anything better, but it wasn’t murder. It wasn’t anything like what her father had done.

Allegedly.
The voice, nearly a breathless whisper, was at the back of her mind again. She clenched her teeth against the unwanted intrusion.
Innocent men don’t run
, Bex’s mind ticked. She tried to push her father and his crimes—alleged or otherwise—out of her thoughts.

“That’s awful,” Bex said.

“Yeah. And someone tried to murder a young couple there last summer.”

Bex bit her lip. “And we’re going there, why?”

“Oh”—Chelsea spun back to sit forward in her seat—“that guy got caught. Or died. Or something. It’s not like he’s still out there lurrrrrking in the night, looking for his next kill.” She pounced on Laney, who screamed and swerved the car, its headlights cutting yellow streaks over the dunes and beach grass.

“Chels!” Laney caught Bex’s eye in the rearview mirror. “And by the way, she’s totally lying.”

“I am not,” Chelsea whined, turning her attention back to Bex. “They say the guy who murdered the young couple had a hook for a hand.”

Bex giggled, then heard the tires spin over the sand, trying to gain traction. The girls all jerked when it finally did, the car righting itself on the road with a clunk.

“Why are you trying to kill us?” Laney asked, trying to maintain her anger over her laughter.

But Chelsea wasn’t listening.

She was leaning forward in her seat, hands flat on the dashboard. “Aim that way again,” she said, pointing toward the area where they were nearly beached.

“Why?” Bex asked, picking up the towels and chips that had flopped off the seat when the car lurched.

“I thought I saw something.”

Laney slowed the car but didn’t stop. “What are you talking about? What did you see?”

Chelsea blew out a sharp sigh. “If I knew what it was, I wouldn’t have asked you to light it up, now would I?”

Heat began to prick on Bex’s ears. “You guys, this is a little too horror movie for me,” she said with a nervous giggle. “Can we just get to the beach?”

Chelsea spun to face her. “You just want to get your freak on with Trevor. Like we haven’t noticed him puppy dogging you all week. Turn around, Lane, just for two seconds.”

“It’s probably nothing,” Laney said, turning anyway.

“Could be pirate treasure. Give me the booty!” Chelsea screamed in the worst pirate accent Bex had ever heard. “See? There!” She bounced on the seat as she pointed.

Laney and Bex leaned forward, squinting. “Oh my God, someone’s out there.”

Bex cocked her head. “Is it two people? Are they having sex?”

Laney stopped the car and slammed on the horn, the headlights fully illuminating a pair of bare feet in the sand. She honked two more times, and Bex’s stomach started to fall as a memory nibbled at her periphery.

It was a pretrial hearing in one of those cavernous courtrooms that was supposed to be closed to the public. But it was packed nonetheless.

“Counselor,” one of the attorneys—Beth Anne couldn’t keep their names straight—raised his hand as he stood. She remembered thinking how strange it was that a grown man, a grown man in a suit even, still had to raise his hand when he wanted to speak. “I’d like to request that the defendant’s daughter be excused before viewing the crime scene photographs. She’s only a child—”

“No!” A stocky man from the prosecution’s side of the room jumped up. “She should have to sit here and see what her father done! What he done to my little girl!”