THE ONLY PEOPLE who noticed their early departure were the reporters. They hovered like vultures between the campus and parking lot, waiting for the students to be let out for the weekend. Waiting for carrion. As Makani and Ollie neared, Makani’s spine stiffened. She lowered her head and walked faster. Ollie adjusted his speed to match.
The reporters erupted all at once: Did you know the victims? How would you describe the atmosphere inside the school today? Will this hurt your team’s chances in the playoffs? Microphones and cameras were jammed in their direction, and Makani angled her body away from the intrusion in the clearest possible signal, but a woman with a wall of hairsprayed bangs chased behind them anyway. “How does it feel to have lost two of your classmates in only three days?”
Makani focused on Ollie’s car at the far end of the lot.
“How does it feel to have lost two of your classmates in three days?”
Car, car, car, car, car, car, car—
A hand touched Makani’s shoulder, and she screamed. Her eyes looked manic with fright. The reporter stumbled backward into her cameraman, and Makani screamed again. The woman exclaimed something in confused anger, and suddenly Ollie stood between them shouting, “Get away from her! Get the fuck away from her!”
The cameraman placed a hand on the reporter’s arm, urging her back, but she wasn’t ready to yield. “You,” she said. “Pink hair. How does it feel—”
“How the fuck do you think it feels?”
The cameraman pleaded with the reporter. “They’re probably minors—”
Through the haze, Ollie reached for Makani. An arm slid around her back as he hustled her toward his car. Car, car, car, she thought. Car. He opened the passenger’s door, helped her inside, and ran to the driver’s side. All five of her senses were overloading. Instead of trying not to cry, Makani just tried not to sob.
She expected—maybe even wanted—him to tear out of the lot, but he exited cautiously and stuck to the speed limit. He turned left, away from the direction of her house, and drove until they reached the park near the elementary school.
The cruiser pulled over to a stop. Makani felt him trying to decide whether or not to lay a comforting hand on her arm. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her overreaction was blatant and humiliating. She had to lie. “I don’t know why . . .”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for.”
She sniffled, rummaging through her backpack for tissues.
Ollie leaned over her to pop open the glove compartment. It was lined with crumpled napkins from an out-of-town KFC.
She accepted a wad and blew her nose. There was no attractive way to do it. She felt like a monster. “It’s been such a shitty day.”
“Such a shitty day.” He laughed once.
They sat in silence for a full minute. Makani stared out the window. The park was empty apart from a mom and toddler on the swings. “I don’t want to go home.” Her voice was weak and dispirited. “She’ll want me to rehash everything that happened at school today, but I don’t wanna talk about it. I can’t think about it anymore.”
Ollie nodded. He understood that she was talking about her grandmother. “Where would you like to go?”
“Someplace quiet.”
So, Ollie took her to his house.
• • •
It was a twenty-minute drive, halfway between Osborne and East Bend on Highway 79, another lonely road of cornfields and cattle ranches. Every mile, they’d pass another highlighter-yellow billboard for the Martin Family Fun Corn Maze. A smiling family of cartoon redheads beamed at them from the top corner of each advertisement.
NEBRASKA’S LARGEST CORN MAZE! 5 MILES AHEAD!
PUMPKIN PATCH! 4 MILES AHEAD!
HAYRIDES! 3 MILES AHEAD!
PETTING ZOO! 2 MILES AHEAD!
CORN PIT! 1 MILE AHEAD!
“What’s a corn pit?” Makani already felt lighter, knowing that she had a few hours’ respite ahead of her. She’d texted Darby that Ollie was driving her home, and she’d texted Grandma Young that Darby was taking her to his house. Neither seemed pleased, but they’d each correctly assumed that she needed a distraction from the news.
“Exactly what it sounds like,” Ollie said. “A giant pit of corn kernels.”
“Okay. But what does one do with a corn pit?”
He glanced at her with a smile. “You know those ball pits at McDonald’s? It’s like that, but bigger. A lot bigger. It’s pretty fun,” he admitted. “Now, the petting zoo. That’s what I could do without. When the wind blows just right . . .”
Makani laughed as circus-like flags appeared through the fields. They passed the sprawling maze and a massive dirt parking lot, which was mostly vacant. “Does anyone actually come here?”
“It’s packed on the weekends. People drive in from Omaha and Lincoln. And it’s loud. You can hear it in my house. On Saturdays, they even have a polka band. When our windows are open, I’ll often find my feet tapping to the belch of their tuba.”
She laughed again. “I’m still imagining you swimming in the corn pit.”
Ollie kept his eyes ahead, but they twinkled. Or maybe gleamed.
He turned onto the next road. A gentle hill broke up the flatness of the surrounding earth. It was the hushed, eerie beauty of Willa Cather country, a century later. Sophomore year, she’d been assigned to read O Pioneers! in English class, and the familiar descriptions of the land had comforted her. They’d reminded her of visiting her favorite grandmother. Little did she know that, soon enough, she’d be living here.
The novel no longer held any appeal. It wasn’t fictional anymore.
A house in the distance grew bigger, and Makani realized that the road was Ollie’s driveway. His house was white, like hers, but peeling and weatherworn. It was a Victorian Gothic Revival—a style that was growing obsolete in these parts—with three dramatically arched windows under three steeply pitched roof points. Twin columns framed a modest covered porch. The expansive yard was unkempt and overgrown.
Makani was grateful that she didn’t believe in ghosts; she only believed in the ghostlike quality of painful memories. And she was sure this house had plenty.
Not everything about it was gloomy, however. As she stepped out of the car, a set of wind chimes jangled in the breeze and two large ferns swayed on chains from opposite ends of the porch. They were dead from the early frosts. But proof of recent habitation.
Ollie shot her a nervous glance. “Home sweet home.”
Had he ever brought home a girl before, or was this something new for him? Something potentially vulnerable? On the disintegrating coir welcome mat, a single word was barely visible: LARSSON.
The younger Larsson unlocked the front door, which opened into a large, dim, and dusty room. “I know.” He sighed. “It looks like a haunted house.”
Makani held up two innocent hands. “I didn’t say a word.”
He led her inside with a tight smile. The floors were old hardwood, and the boards groaned with each step. Makani waited in the threshold while Ollie threw open the curtains. Sparkling dust motes caught in the sudden light as the living room was revealed to be more homelike, more normal, than anticipated. She couldn’t help feeling relieved. The rugs, lamps, and hardware seemed to be a mixture of Victorian reproductions and actual Victorian antiques, but the sectional sofa was firmly from this century.
Though . . . there was something about the space. It possessed an unnatural amount of stillness. Everything appeared unruffled. Unused.
“Would you like something to drink?” Ollie asked. “We have water, orange juice, Coke—well, it’s not Coca-Cola, it’s the off-brand Coke—”
Makani laughed, because he’d remembered. “Water’s fine.”
“Tap water? Ice? No ice?”
She trailed behind him through the adjoining dining room, which was also murky and untouched. Ollie moved like a creature of habit. “Whichever’s more work for you,” she called out, even though the temperature inside wasn’t much warmer than it had been outside. She didn’t want ice.
At least the kitchen was brighter. Much brighter. Curtainless windows looked out upon the sweeping fields, and the maze’s flags waved merrily in the distance. Ollie’s kitchen, though not as clean as Grandma Young’s, was less dusty than the other rooms, and the dishes had been recently washed and were drying on a rack. And while the cabinetry and furniture didn’t look exactly modern, they didn’t look Victorian, either.
A shadow lurched out from the floorboards.
Makani shrieked as a small dog with a speckled, bluish-gray coat skittered and stumbled toward Ollie.
Laughing, he kneeled to greet the intruder. “Hey, Squidward.”
For the second time in an hour, she’d completely lost her shit. Makani felt embarrassed, all over again. “Sorry. I didn’t know you had a dog.”
“Blue heeler.” Ollie smiled as he rubbed its head. “Back when we adopted him, I was a big SpongeBob fan. Now he’s deaf and almost blind. He sleeps most of the day—that’s why he didn’t notice when we came in.” Squidward leaned against him, as if he were using Ollie to keep himself upright. “How are you, buddy?”
Makani squatted to pet him. “Is he friendly?”
“If you let him sniff your hand first, you’ll be fine.”
Squidward himself kind of smelled, but Makani didn’t mind. His fur was coarse, almost waxy. But it felt nice to be petting a dog and even nicer to be this close to Ollie.
“Do you have a dog? Back home?” Ollie looked aside as he added this second question, aware of how infrequently she spoke of her past.
But dogs were a safe subject. Makani shook her head as Squidward rolled onto his back. “My mom claims she’s allergic. Really, she just thinks they’re too messy.”
“We have a cat, too. She’s probably outside right now.”
“Sandy Cheeks?”
He grinned. “Raven.”
“Ah. A much cooler name.”
“Not necessarily. At the time, I had a massive crush on Raven-Symoné.”
Makani laughed.
Ollie rubbed Squidward’s belly. “I have no idea why my parents let me name our pets.”
“Because, clearly, your parents were awesome.” But she flinched as soon as it came out. Was it okay to mention them? Although, he was the one who brought them up.
And now he was nodding in agreement.
It occurred to her that perhaps Ollie appreciated the acknowledgment of his parents. Perhaps it was harder when people went out of their way to avoid talking about them—when they pretended like his parents had never existed in the first place.
Makani often pretended like hers didn’t exist. At her grandmother’s insistence, she called her mother once a week and her father every other week. They didn’t even know what was happening here, because, until this moment, she hadn’t thought to tell them. Her parents always spent the too-long calls complaining about each other.
Ollie washed the dog off his hands and grabbed two burritos from the freezer. He held them up for her. They were both bean and cheese. “One or two?”
Makani longed for a piping hot bowl of saimin, a noodle dish so common back home that it was on the menu at McDonald’s. Osborne didn’t even have a non-saimin McDonald’s. But burritos were decent. Better than whatever she’d be making for dinner with her grandmother. “One, please,” she said. “Thanks.”
He slipped off their wrappers, hesitated, and then grabbed another burrito for himself. All three went into the microwave.
As she scratched behind Squidward’s ears, Makani stared at a faded photograph on the refrigerator. Ollie’s parents stood in front of Old Faithful. Their arms were around each other, and they were smiling as the geyser sprayed above their heads like a whale’s blowhole. His father’s smile was farmer-stiff, but his mother looked carefree.
Beside it was a photo of Ollie and his brother. Ollie looked old enough to be in high school, but he was still younger than she’d ever known him. His hair was an odd, streaky green, and he was wince-laughing as Chris pulled him into a forced hug. She wondered if their parents were already dead and who had taken the picture.
“I tried to dye it blue.” Like always, Ollie had been watching her. “One of the first lessons that you learn in school—yellow and blue make green—and I forgot.”
“You look like a mermaid. A sad, pubescent mermaid.”
Ollie froze. And then he covered his face, shaking his head in disbelief. “That might be the actual worst thing that anyone has ever said to me.”
“No!” As Makani burst into laughter, she smiled with all her teeth. “I mean, I stand by my assessment. But I swear I have pictures that are just as bad. Worse, even.”
“I demand proof.”
“Fair enough. The next time you’re at my house, take a peek under my bed.”
Ollie blinked. And then his eyebrows rose, perhaps at the mention of her bed.
“Seventh-grade swim team.” Makani shuddered as she recalled her flat chest, gawky posture, and unflattering suit. “Let’s leave it at that.”
The microwave let out an extensive series of beeps. As Ollie removed the steaming burritos, he glanced at her. “You’re a swimmer?”
Shit.
She couldn’t believe it had slipped out. Since the age of seven, she’d dived competitively, but her grandmother was the only person here who knew it. Osborne didn’t even have a swim team. And even if it did, those days had passed.
“I used to swim.” She looked away. “A little.”
Her eyes snagged on a brown file folder. It was sitting in the center of the breakfast table. She didn’t have to open it to know what it contained.
Ollie followed her gaze. “See? He’s practically asking me to read it.”
“Why didn’t he take it with him?”
“I’m sure he just forgot. Happens all the time.”
The case file was thick. “Isn’t a good memory kinda important for an officer?”
Luckily, Ollie didn’t take offense. “That’s why they write everything down. Cops do shit-tons of paperwork.” He shrugged. “Memories aren’t reliable, anyway.”
Makani wished that she could forget. In the darkest hours of the night, her own memory was keen and cruel.
“You can look if you want.” Ollie’s voice tensed. “It isn’t pretty.”
Of course she wanted to look—sheer human curiosity demanded it—but there would be no unlooking once she’d done it. Her fingertips crawled toward the file anyway. They recklessly flicked it open to reveal a stack of photographs and papers. A female body lay on her back, right arm hanging limp from a bed. Her neck had been carved open by five crude slices. One for the mouth, two for each eye. X and X.
Dead cartoon eyes.
In Makani’s imagination, this scene, this smiley face, had been tidy and precise, but in reality . . . it was a bloodbath. The head was tilted too far back to see Haley’s real eyes. The longest cut was deep and vicious, and her neck skin flapped open in a jagged, ugly gash. Her hair, clothing, and bedsheets were soaked with enough blood to curdle a butcher’s stomach. Blood had dried inside her nostrils.
Makani closed the file with a shaking hand.
“Bad, right?” Ollie said.
It wasn’t just bad. It was horrific.
A real dead body looked different from the ones on television or in the movies. There was nothing artful about it. Nothing positioned. Haley’s body looked lifeless—but not like life had been taken away from it. Like it had never had life.
Ollie pressed his fingers to his temples. “I should have warned you.”
“You did.” Makani hugged herself. Was Matt in that stack of photos, too, or did he have a separate file? The brutality of the crime overwhelmed her. Someone did this. A real person had crept into Haley’s house and murdered her in her own bed.
“Any chance the police have a lead?” she asked.
Ollie shook his head. “But they do think it’s probably someone a lot smaller than Matt.”
“So, not another football player.”
“Right.”
“Why?”
He waited for her to meet his eyes. “Are you sure you want to know?”
Makani nodded.
“Before the killer did . . . what they did, they stabbed Matt in the gut. But his abdomen had nothing to do with the final display of his brain. So, he was probably attacked by someone who physically couldn’t go straight for his head. They had to weaken him first. Bring him down to their level.”
Perhaps the killer was female, after all.
Dead cartoon eyes. Blood inside her nostrils.
Makani became aware of a dinner plate being pushed gently against her stomach.
“Hey,” Ollie said. “It’s nicer in my room.”
She stared down at the warm plate. Was Matt stabbed once in the abdomen or had it taken multiple jabs for him to go down?
Wordlessly, she accepted the burritos. Ollie carried their water glasses. As the stairs creaked beneath their feet, Makani wondered how many gruesome pictures he’d seen since his brother became a cop. Sure, there had never been deaths in Osborne this violent before, but people died by accident all the time. People like his parents.
Did it get easier to look at the photos? Or did it get harder, knowing that so many people died so young—and in such awful ways? Did seeing the proof of this make you more paranoid or more careful? Or did it just harden you?
Old photographs were everywhere. A framed studio portrait of his whole family hung at the top of the upstairs landing. Ollie was so little that his mother held him on her lap. What was it like for him to look at this one every day?
“It’s this one,” he said, pulling the phrase from her mind.
Makani had assumed that his bedroom would be as black and unembellished as his wardrobe, so when he opened the door, she blinked in surprise.
The room was filled with sunlight and signs of life. Even the kitchen clung to a whiff of abandonment, but here, Ollie’s ubiquitous paperbacks were spread across every surface. There were too many for his shelves, so they’d spilled onto his rug, been stacked on top of his desk and under it, and even lay in messy piles on his unmade bed. With its heap of mismatched blankets, the bed looked like the coziest spot in the entire house.
Makani set down the plate on his desk and picked up the closest book, Jupiter’s Travels. “Four years around the world on a Triumph,” she read aloud. On the cover, a man in an old-fashioned leather jacket rode an old-fashioned motorcycle. The paperback smelled old, too, like dusty shelves and faint mildew. She used it to gesture around the room. “I knew you liked to read, but . . . wow.”
Ollie shrugged with his hands in his pockets. “I get them from garage sales and the used bookstore in East Bend. I haven’t read them all. I just keep picking them up.”
“I wasn’t making fun of you. My last boyfriend read a lot, too.”
Shit. Double shit.
Ollie wasn’t her boyfriend. They barely knew each other. She wanted to know more about him—she wanted him to be her boyfriend—but they were each still standing behind a wall of unspoken history. She decided to act like she hadn’t meant anything by it and casually picked up another book. Glanced at him. His pale skin was unable to hide an emotional flush. At least he didn’t seem turned off by the idea.
Makani had been surprised in Darby’s car yesterday morning when she’d realized that Ollie was more shy than he was rebellious, but she was even more surprised now to realize that she found his shyness attractive.
She held up a travel guide to Italy. “Mind if I go with you?”
“We’ll leave tonight.” Ollie stepped toward her, and her heart spasmed. But he had only come closer to remove his keys from his pocket and take the plate to his bed.
Disappointed, she flipped open the guidebook. “Positano. Hotel Intermezzo. Excellent value in this charming, family-run hotel overlooking the sea.” She carried the book to his bed and plopped down beside him. “Shall I call for a reservation?”
Ollie smiled as he bit into a burrito. He held out the plate with his other hand. She accepted one. It was strange sharing a plate, but she liked it. It made her feel close to him.
“Tell me,” he said.
Makani swallowed before speaking. The cheap burrito was thoroughly mediocre but immensely satisfying. “Tell you what?”
“About your last boyfriend. The reader.”
She smiled. Caught. And then she nudged his leg with her kneecap, pleased by his obvious jealousy. “I thought I’d steered us away from that conversation.”
“You tried. Usually, you’re good at that. At steering away.”
It was the first time that it had been acknowledged out loud. She felt chastised but rose to the challenge. “Okay, here’s my offer. I’ll tell you about my last boyfriend if you tell me about your last girlfriend.”
Ollie considered it for a few seconds. “Deal.”
Makani steeled herself to remain honest. “His name was Jason Nakamura, and we dated for seven months.” She tried to gauge Ollie’s expression. It remained maddeningly enigmatic. “He was a swimmer, too. Freestyle.”
But then he wouldn’t talk to me anymore.
“But then I moved away.”
“Did you try to make it work long distance?” Ollie asked.
She discarded her final bite back onto the plate, an end piece of freezer-hardened tortilla. “That would be a very long distance.” When he waited for elaboration, she selected her next words carefully. “No. We didn’t like each other enough.”
Ollie nodded with understanding.
She braced herself. “Your turn. Last girlfriend.”
He set the plate onto the floor with a hollow clunk. “No one.”
It wasn’t the answer she was expecting. She stared at him, searching for comprehension. He stared back as he repeated it. “No one.”
“Explain. Use more words.”
A smile tugged at his lips. “I’ve never had a girlfriend.”
Makani had made out with him. Makani had had sex with him. She found this statement to be highly improbable. He knew what she was thinking, and he shrugged, but it wasn’t a shrug of indifference. It was a shrug that was hiding some measure of embarrassment. “I’ve never had a girlfriend, but, yes, obviously I’ve had sex before you.”
Makani couldn’t let that one sit. “Obviously.”
Ollie squirmed and glanced up at the ceiling. “Not obviously because I was amazing. Obviously because . . .”
“Oh, no. No, no, no.” Her hair bounced as she shook her head. “I need to hear you finish that sentence.”
His expression deadpanned. “Because I lasted more than thirty seconds.”
She burst into raucous laughter, which made him smile. Ollie always smiled when he saw that she was happy. Makani leaned into the space between them. “So, are you gonna tell me about this non-girlfriend? Non-girlfriends?”
His smile widened into a grin. “Yes.”
She moved in closer, beckoning. “But not today?”
Their lips were an inch apart.
“Not today,” he said.
They went for each other at the same time. Mouths clashed. Jackets peeled off. She lowered herself onto her back, and he moved above her, pressing down. The weight of his body made her feral. Her fingers clawed under his shirt and up his back as his hands slid over her bra. Her hands moved to the bottom of her shirt, ready to strip it above her head, when suddenly . . . they were aware.
A third person was in the room.