Poor Little Dead Girls (31 page)

After Jessica left, Sadie lay on her bed and stared at her phone. She had three unopened texts from Jeremy, but she couldn’t bring herself to respond. She didn’t know what to say to him. She knew he would try to explain what had happened, but she couldn’t trust him anymore, and she couldn’t bear to just go on pretending everything was okay. Finally, she flipped open her phone.

She scrolled through them all. The first two were from yesterday, asking if she was okay and begging for her to call him. The third was from earlier that afternoon.

“Please call me — I’m really worried about you. I’ve been asking around, and I think I know what happened. We really need to talk.”

Sadie exhaled. She knew she was being cruel, but she couldn’t face him yet. As she was staring at the last text, her phone buzzed in her hand and a new message popped up.

“Can you meet me in your locker room? I know you don’t want to see me, but it’s really important. This isn’t about us. You really need to hear this.” Fear closed around her heart like a fist. He knew something.

Then another text came through. “It’s about Saturday night. I know what they did to you.”

The grass was stiff with frost, and she could feel each blade as they crunched under her shoes and gave way. The wind picked up around her, howling through the trees, and she shivered. She jogged faster. She had told Jeremy she would meet him in an hour, but she had been so anxious she had decided to get a run in first. She had so much nervous energy she could barely stand still, and her mind was so jumbled she couldn’t think.

She had already done the length of the beach three times, and she still felt tense. She reached Keating again and turned around, focusing on her breathing and the dull thud of one foot after another. She tried to focus only on the road ahead of her, blocking everything else out. In the dark, though, the long path looked almost like the dim hospital hallway, and she felt her mind pulling back to that night. Her eyes blurred, and the vision closed in around her. She felt like she couldn’t stop, and just like in the dream, she barreled toward the door at the end of the hallway, and whatever awful thing lay behind it.

She forced her eyes closed and the vision fell away, but her toe caught on a crack and she stumbled, landing roughly on her knees. She collapsed onto the ground and just breathed, ignoring the slush as it seeped through her clothes.

When she finally made it to the locker room, it was still empty. She sat down to wait, leaning back against one of the lockers. Her head had been such a mess for two days now, and she still couldn’t make sense of anything. She knew the Sullas had taken her, and she knew where, but she still didn’t know why.

She had been assuming it was some kind of revenge for what she had seen — a threat to show her how easily they could get to her. But then why the hospital? And what had the men in the basement been talking about? She thought of her conversation with Josh — the way his eyes had glazed over as he talked about the history of the Sullas, and the future. “We’re going to take over the world,” he had said. Remembering the statement, she started to laugh at its ridiculousness.

She doubled over and laughed harder, but there was no joy in it. The stress and fear had all bubbled up until the pressure was so high she felt like she would burst. She had to let it out, and she shook until she wheezed, the sound echoing around the empty room.

Her whole body trembled until finally she was spent, and she sat back, exhausted. She wiped the tears away from her eyes, and they felt dry and raw. She blinked until her vision cleared, and when the room swam into focus, she saw a single word, written in girlish bubble letters.

Anna.

The sign was still there, hanging from its single square of tape like a dilapidated shingle. It had held on defiantly for all these months, as if determined to be the one thing that could keep her memory alive. Sadie had been so preoccupied all day with her own problems, she hadn’t even thought about Anna’s. She still didn’t know what had happened to her, or to Maylynne, and what it had to do with the Sullas. She felt the weight of it all crushing down on her again, and her skin itched like she had had too much caffeine. She couldn’t sit still any longer. She had to do something.

She stood up.

Anna’s locker was still full of the usual trimmings — a bottle of lavender-scented shampoo, a purple loofah that had accumulated a thin layer of dust. Sadie reached into the cubby and felt along the back wall until her fingers closed around something metal. It was a tiny gold stud.

She placed the earring carefully back where she had found it and opened the hamper at the bottom of the locker. A scent wafted upward — it was weak, but it was a living smell, sweat and skin and detergent. It was Anna.

She sank to her knees and went through the clothes inside, one by one. There were two Keating T-shirts, one green, one white, and an old gray sweatshirt. She laid the clothes neatly beside her on the floor. She didn’t even know what she was looking for, and part of her felt intrusive, like she was watching a stranger who thought she was alone. But Anna hadn’t been a stranger, Sadie told herself. She had been family.

She took out the last item, a single white sock, and laid it next to the others. There was nothing there — no letter from beyond the grave, no eerie, cryptic messages scratched into the wood with a bloody nail. Sadie leaned over the hamper and laid her forehead down on her arms. The scent had already started to disperse, released back into the ether, and she felt its absence like a loss. She wondered what Anna had been like.

She sat up and shook herself. She needed to focus. She needed to find out what Jeremy knew, or if he really knew anything. He had refused to tell her anything via text.

She picked up the pile of clothes and placed it back in the hamper. It looked too neat, too artificial, and she toppled it with one hand. She watched the sock as it came to rest in one corner, and she paused. The crack between the base of the hamper and the walls was uneven, slightly larger in this corner, like it had shifted away from the wall. She slid a fingernail under the hamper lining and pulled. The panel was cheap particle board, and it curled up just slightly, but the heavy clothes weighed it down. She emptied the hamper, a little frantically, and tried once more. She pulled harder, and the seal gave way with a crackling sound, like chipping paint. Pain pulsed through her finger and she gasped. Her nail was split down the center, and bright red blood seeped out and pooled at the cuticle. She clenched her hand into a fist and looked down. She stopped breathing.

The base of the hamper was rough and unfinished, with a wavy line of hardened glue that wound around its border. But it wasn’t empty. Near the corner was a photo on newsprint, grayed and creased along the center. Her mother’s face smiled up at her, younger than she had ever seen her. She was wearing a coat and had the collar drawn up around her face, and she was surrounded by a crowd, like she was sitting in the bleachers at a football game. It must have been cold, but she looked happy.

Sadie picked up the photo and held it closer. She told herself not to hold it too tightly, but still her hand shook. In the photo, Maylynne had her arms wrapped around two people on either side of her. On her left was a girl her age, with long, straight hair that was blowing back off her face. She was smiling and clutching Maylynne’s arm, leaning into her like a best friend. Or a sister.

On Maylynne’s other side was someone so familiar, Sadie’s brain almost couldn’t process it. The square jawline and country club haircut were so similar that at first she thought it was him. He had the same haughty look in his eyes, and that same easy, effortless confidence that could only come from a deep understanding of exactly where you came from, and exactly where you were going.

He had his arm around Maylynne’s back, and Sadie could see his fingers digging into the fabric of her coat on her opposite shoulder. She looked back to the woman on Maylynne’s left and squinted at the photo. She tried to imagine her face older, the bones a little more prominent, the skin stretched and taut, but nothing came. She looked slightly off, like Sadie had seen her before, but not like this.

“Sadie, I’m so glad you came. I am so sorry, I don’t even know where to start.”

Sadie dropped the photo and turned, covering the open hamper with her back.

“How about you start with Saturday.”

Jeremy came toward her in three long strides, and instinctively she backed away.

He held up his hands. “Please just listen, okay? I swear I didn’t know what they were doing, and I couldn’t stop it.” He sank onto one of the benches. “When I think about what they did to you … ” He trailed off and put his head his hands. He was shaking, and Sadie could see the knuckles on one of his hands were bruised and scabbed. She looked away.

“What did you put in the drink, Jeremy?” Her voice was cold, but she didn’t care.

When he looked up, there were tears in his eyes. “Nothing — you have to believe me. It was just Diet Coke — you were so freaked out, and I just thought you needed to sober up. It usually helps.”

Sadie’s shoulders sagged. Jeremy looked beaten down, almost haggard. He looked so tired, and something inside her crumbled and started to give way. But she wasn’t convinced.

“Finn and Josh — what did they say to you?”

He shook his head. “I thought they were just hammered, but they were babbling about you snooping around and seeing things you shouldn’t have seen. I told them you were just looking for the bathroom — I thought it was nothing.” He pounded the heel of his hand into his forehead. “I should have known what they were going to do.”

She sat down next to him.

“What did they do, Jeremy? I have to know.”

He looked up and took a deep breath. “They put something in your drink. I didn’t see them do it, but Finn was bragging about it the next day. He said it was time for you to make your donation — become part of the family or something, it was so creepy. A few minutes after I gave you the soda, you got that text from Thayer, and then you disappeared. I thought you just went back to the dorms, but I should have looked for you.” He reached out and took her hand. “I am so sorry. I’ll kill them for this.”

She pulled her hand away. “So wait, you think this was all just about Finn and Josh drugging me so they could … do things?”

He nodded, and she could see that he was barely holding it together. “I know it sounds crazy, but they’ve done it before. Those guys are scum. Please Sadie, you have to stay away from them.”

Sadie shook her head. “I know. And you’re not crazy, but I think it’s bigger than that. I think they drugged me so they could take me somewhere.”

He looked up. “What do you mean?”

She took a deep breath. “Now you’re going to think I’m the crazy one, but I’ll tell you everything I know. I can’t believe I thought you were part of this, I just … I didn’t know what to think, and I was so scared — ” Her voice caught, and she felt Jeremy’s arms wrap around her. She tried to resist, but it felt so good to let go that finally she collapsed into him. She let him hold her for a long time, until her shoulders stopped shaking.

Over his shoulder, she saw Anna’s locker, and instantly her mind went back to the photo. What had Anna been doing with a picture of her mother? And not a framed, family photo, but a scrap — something she had ripped out of a newspaper. It didn’t make sense … unless.

Sadie pulled back and closed her eyes. Maybe Anna had been trying to figure out what had happened to Maylynne, too? She was as much related to her as Sadie was, and as far as she knew she had been missing for twenty years. It wasn’t hard to imagine that she must have been curious. Anna probably hadn’t even known she was dead.

She felt herself start to shake all over again.

She opened her eyes and saw Jeremy facing her, one hand on each of her shoulders. He was shaking her lightly, his eyes searching her face. “Sadie, where’d you go just now? What’s going on?”

“It’s my mom.” She looked toward Anna’s locker. “I think Anna was looking for her, and now Anna’s dead. They did something to her, too, and I think I’m next. Someone’s trying to cover up what happened to her when she was here, and they’ll kill to make sure whatever it was stays buried.”

Jeremy let her go, and she could see the fear in his eyes. “Wait, slow down. What do you mean?”

“Look, I don’t remember anything that happened after I left the tower on Saturday, but the twins said I didn’t get home until five. That’s at least four hours after I left the salon. Then I remembered this one flash, like a white hallway that I was rushing down.” She took a breath. She knew she was rambling, but it was like blood from a wound. It wouldn’t stop.

“I went to the hospital on a hunch. I just had this feeling that was where I’d been, and I found the hallway from the memory I had. They kidnapped me, and they did something to me, but I still don’t know what it is.”

Jeremy’s body tensed, but he didn’t speak.

“And I saw the book — the one in the big room in the tower, where they keep all the names of the past members. And I found my mom’s and Anna’s, and they were related. She was my cousin, and they’re both dead.” She put her head in her hands. “Something terrible is going on, but nothing makes sense. I just can’t help thinking that something horrible happened to my mom while she was here, and Anna was killed because she started looking into it. And now … they must think I’ve been doing the same thing, and they’re coming after me next.”