Envy (14 page)

Hayley narrowed her focus on her best friend. “I thought you said your mom told
you
.”

“Guilty. Big deal, I was eavesdropping. So what? The information is good.”

“What did your mom say, exactly?” Taylor asked.

“I’m Asian. That doesn’t make me a Sony recorder.”

“Right,” Taylor said. “But what did she say?”

Beth thought for a moment, extracting every word for her friends who always annoyingly insisted on precision. “She said, ‘If I were Katelyn’s mother I’d have done the same thing. What girls won’t do these days for a boy.’”

“What boy was she talking about?” Hayley asked.

Beth sighed. “I don’t know,” she said, clearly bored with the subject of Katelyn’s imaginary love life. “I really don’t care. But I thought you two might.”

BETH LEE ANCHORED HER TRADEMARK black Doc Martens on the green linoleum floor in front of the lockers in the Red Pod at Kingston High School and flipped through her texts. The school administration didn’t allow the use of electronic devices during class, and teachers had gotten pretty good at catching the kids who tried to strategically place books to block the view from the front of the classroom. One violation got a slap on the wrist (not literally, of course, because that would be abuse and abuse was so very, very out of bounds), but two violations meant confiscation of the device and required an irritated parent to personally retrieve it from the principal’s office.

That day Beth’s fashion sense was subdued. Her top was a small men’s chalk-striped suit vest that left her arms bare, and her jeans were old-school acid-washed. She looked a little like an ’80s reject, but she didn’t care.

While a sea of kids trudged past her, she methodically scrolled through her messages, ignoring her mother’s notes, which were always signed
LOL
. Beth didn’t have the heart to tell her it did not mean Lots Of Love.

BE HOME LATE TONIGHT. YOU’LL HAVE TO MAKE YOUR OWN DINNER. LOL. MOM

She’d moved on to Facebook when Hayley arrived.

“Where’s the other one of you?” Beth asked.

“Maybe Taylor’s in the bathroom?” Hayley guessed. “I don’t know.” Beth held out her phone. “Who is Moira Windsor?”

Hayley looked on and shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of her.”

“Says she’s a friend of yours and wants to friend me.”

Taylor joined them.

“Who is Moira Windsor?” Beth asked her.

Taylor shook her head. “Dunno.”

Beth looked at the twins. “Do you two always say the same thing?”

Hayley laughed, but it was a nervous laugh. “No, and no, we don’t know her.”

By then Taylor was looking at her Facebook account.

“Get this,” she said. “This Moira person says we should friend her because she’s
your
friend.”

The three girls looked at each other.

“Stalker!” they all said in unison.

Beth put her phone back into her purse.

“Hey, that was cool,” she said. “This time I got to say the same thing. Someone’s rubbing off on someone.” She let a beat pass. “Not sure I like that.”

Hayley and Taylor didn’t say anything more about Moira as they peeled off in different directions for their respective classes. Taylor had art, Hayley had life science, and Beth was toying with getting out of PE because it was table tennis and she felt it would be racist to make her participate. She hated to sweat, and the excuse seemed a plausible way to get out of suiting up.

“Forcing me to play because I’m Asian is offensive,” she imagined herself saying to the coach, a nice woman who never offended anyone.

Kim Lee would be mortified by her daughter’s actions, and Beth would pretend to sulk after she got a talking-to.

Her mom might notice her then. That would be good. It was all she really wanted.

Hayley and Taylor knew Moira’s name. They’d heard their father talking to their mother in the living room again about the pushy reporter, but it was a conversation that ended abruptly when they approached.

What was that all about?

chapter 21

NUMBER 19 WAS EERILY QUIET. For a change their father’s sometimes-jackhammer snoring couldn’t be heard. Hayley and Taylor had talked through the outlet about what they were thinking and feeling. Not surprisingly, Katelyn remained heavy on their minds. She was probably in the thoughts of many in Port Gamble before they slept. Those who were religious likely included Katelyn and the Berkleys in their prayers. All wondered just how it was that a girl could die in a bathtub with a household appliance as her killer.

Hayley and Taylor went to sleep hoping that a clue would come to them.

Something did.

Taylor’s last thoughts before slumber were pleas to whomever or whatever controlled her dreams to let Katelyn come to her.

Then she was in the corner of Katelyn’s bedroom, watching,
feeling
all that was happening.

The illumination from the laptop’s screen sent a cool white spray of light over her face as Katelyn sat on her bed, hoping for more conversation with the boy she was falling hard for. She wasn’t disappointed. The chat window was open for only a second before he appeared online to talk.

CULLANT:
Y WN’T U MEET ME?

She took a second before answering. Being too quick would signal desperation.

KATIEBUG:
CAUSE I DN’T KNOW WHO U R.

His typing was slow as he hunted and pecked his way across the keyboard, stopping, correcting.

CULLANT:
THAT’S THE PT IN MeTING SOME1.

Katelyn was almost sixteen. She was nobody’s fool. But she was undeniably lonely.

KATIEBUT:
THX 4 THE NICE THINGS U’VE SAID. BUT 4 ALL I KNOW, UR SOME OLD MAN IN PORT ORCH & U GET UR ROCKS OFF BY GNG AFTER TEEN GRLS.

CULLANT:
LOL. THAT’S GOOD. LYK I’VE EVER BEEN 2 PORT ORCH.

KATIEBUG:
K. DAT
WZ
A LOW BLOW.

CULLANT:
A PERV IS FINE, BUT PORT ORCH? UR HITTING BELOW THE BELT.

Katelyn laughed; it wasn’t an LOL, but an actual genuine laugh. She liked this guy.
Whoever he was.
She needed someone to like. She’d felt so abandoned, so lost. Nothing had been going right. Her grades had slipped precipitously from the year before. It was as if she’d been freefalling and there was nothing to land on. And as lame as it was, she felt her only hope was the guy on the other side of her computer screen.

KATIEBUG:
WHEN RU SENDING A PIC?

CULLANT:
WOT KIND OF PIC DO U WNT?

KATIEBUG:
NOW U REALLY R BNG A PERV. U KNOW, THE KIND U MIGHT GVE UR MOTHER.

A short pause was followed with some more typing.

CULLANT:
K. JUST SO HAPPENS I TK A NEW 1 2DAY. HERE IT COMES.

She waited for the image to upload in the window of her instant messenger. One pixel at a time. The wait was excruciating, and she wondered how much longer her parents would make her live without broadband.

They had it at the Timberline, of course.

Like they ever needed it there.

Katelyn’s eyes lingered over the photo as it came into crisp view. It was a casual shot, not of the quality pulled from some male model site on the net. The boy had dark hair, blue eyes. Hot.

KATIEBUG:
DAT’S U?

CULLANT:
YUP. DAT’S ME. U LIKE?

KATIEBUG:
IF DAT’S REALLY U, I DO.

CULLANT:
IT’S ME.

Katelyn knew there were other stupid girls out there who’d fall for some Internet guy, but she wasn’t that type of a girl. Even if she was, even if she allowed herself a little fantasy, it was something that she needed right then. She wanted the attention of someone special, because she no longer felt special herself.

KATIEBUG:
LET’S TALK 2MORW.

CULLANT:
K.

KATIEBUG:
BYE.

CULLANT:
TTFN.

Katelyn clicked the icon to close the IM window. She went into her bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror in a way a stranger might: critically, with an eye to pick her apart in the meanest way possible. She wasn’t really fat. She had good skin. Her hair was cute. Cute-ish, anyway. When she really processed what she saw in her reflection she knew that she should feel better about herself. But she just couldn’t get there. She could blame it on any number of things—her parents and their stupid restaurant, living in Port Gamble, and probably the worst of it, not making the cheerleading squad.

When it came right down to it, it was all Starla’s fault. She was to blame for everything wrong in Katelyn’s world. She never could have imagined a betrayal from someone who had been a part of her life for nearly as long as she could remember. Yet it had happened. It came swiftly and irrevocably. It was like Starla’s cold indifference to her had literally frozen her out of the life she’d imagined.

Katelyn pulled her clothes off, one item at a time, until she was naked, except for her bra and panties. She sat on the edge of the clawfoot tub and reached for the razor that had been calling to her all day. The cold metal blade’s handle felt molded to fit her fingers and hers alone. Although it had become increasingly difficult to find the right place—a place that could not be seen by anyone but her—she managed to find a fresh spot on her upper right thigh. She drew a deep breath, like the kind she’d done when she’d tried to smoke cigarettes with Starla when they were kids.

When they were still so very, very close.

With a steady hand and a practiced technique, Katelyn Berkley cut. It was slow, deliberate. Even strokes. One. Two. Three.

She watched the blood ooze and closed her eyes to savor the feeling that came with the cut. The release was better than she imagined sex might be. She wondered
when
she would have sex.

And if it would be with the boy she’d met online.

IT CAME TO HAYLEY RYAN IN A DREAM, the way a lot of things did. She was in the middle of the food court of the Kitsap Mall in Silverdale. All around her were the people of Port Gamble. Her family. Her neighbors. Mill hands whose names she didn’t know because they lived in Little Boston or on the other side of the Hood Canal Bridge, but whose faces were very familiar. Beth. Colton. Starla. Even Segway Guy. No one seemed to be talking to each other, though the noise of their voices fought with the sound of dueling blenders at the Orange Julius counter. She watched herself wait for Taylor’s smoothie—raspberry and banana. All around her. The noise. The people she knew. The girl behind the counter made change and handed it to her. She didn’t recall ordering anything and was going to hand the money back to her sister, who was sliding a straw through the
“X”
cut through the plastic lid.

When she held out her hand, she noticed something peculiar about the dollar bill crumpled in her palm.

Hayley looked down, closer. Written over George Washington’s unattractive green face:

THE CAUSE OF HER DEATH
IS AMONG YOU

For a second, all sound stopped. It was instantaneous. Hayley looked up from the money and then quickly scanned the crowd in the food court.

Everyone from Port Gamble was there. For a moment, she even thought she saw Starla’s dad, Adam Larsen, who’d been gone a couple of years. He waved at her, and then he vanished. All of them did. Gone, like the smoke from a birthday candle.

The next morning, while the twins put on makeup in the bathroom mirror, Hayley told Taylor about the dream.

“Weird. I hate bananas, and you know it,” Taylor said, running brown mascara over her fair eyelashes.

Hayley knew her sister was playing with her. “I thought it was strange, too.”

“Seriously,” Taylor said, “I had a dream sort of like that last night too. Not exactly, though. Mine wasn’t set in the mall. It was in Katelyn’s room. Same idea. The feeling that the person responsible for Katelyn’s death is right here, among us.”

Hayley thought a moment, checking herself in the mirror.

“I know you’re not going to tell anyone about our dreams, or whatever they are. But if you ever feel tempted, please leave out the part that I was in the food court in my dream. It sounds so lame.”

Taylor put her makeup into a small pink and black makeup bag.

“Are you kidding?” she asked, heading down the hall. “If people think you’re a dork, then that’ll transfer to me. Half the people around here think we’re the same person. As far as I’m concerned, the mall dream never happened.”

But it did.

chapter 22

IT WAS THE MORNING OF HER FORMER best friend’s funeral. Starla Larsen stood in front of the mirror in her Kingston High cheer outfit. The dress was red, trimmed in gold with a narrow white edging. It was a color combination left over from the days when cheerleaders were wholesome and when it didn’t matter what color their pom-poms were—as long as they shook them with enough persuasive vigor when the team put some numbers on the scoreboard.

It was clear that no one back then took into consideration what a girl like Starla Larsen could bring to the uniform.

Starla knew.

White and black would be better
, she thought as she turned in the mirror.
White and black don’t compete; they enhance.

She had a point. Starla usually did. She was that kind of a girl.

Because of her looks and somewhat overly seductive personality, Starla was an easy target for the B-word. If gossip ever got back to her, Starla merely looked blankly at her informant.

“Really? Wow, I never even noticed
her
. Wonder why she feels that way?”

It wasn’t easy for most girls to look as hot as she did, and Starla almost felt sorry for them. It was true that she was blessed with her mother’s and father’s good looks, but it took more than genetics to change things in the physical world.

She was good at embarrassing girls, teasing boys, and making things worse. Those, along with her undeniable in-your-face beauty, were her gifts.

Starla’s teeth were white, her eyes glacial blue, and her hair spun gold. Those things were easy to alter. Sure, teeth could be whitened, and she routinely did that. Her eyes, thankfully, were the right hue of blue. Not blueish. Not gray. Intense icy, icy blue. Certainly, her hairstylist mom helped her with her hair. That was more out of convenience than the fact that Starla thought her mom really knew what she was doing. Starla read enough fashion magazines and watched enough Style TV to understand that the cut was more important than the color.