Her dark hair sprawls across my pillows like tendrils, and I immediately think of Ursula from The Little Mermaid, except Linzy's not voluptuous or purple. Although there is a blue-tinge around her lips and fingernails.
She's wearing the yellow, floral mini skirt and white top. From this distance I can see little white holes along the shirt's ruffled collar. I think they're called eyelets. A thin, white belt wraps around her waist and a beige fabric choker circles her neck. It has an old-fashioned, oval cameo at the center, which lies flat against her throat. For some reason she's barefoot. She's perfected the old Hollywood glam look with soft red lipstick, thick black eyeliner, and long, fake lashes.
It was dark at the river, but she's dressed exactly the same as she was there and the night I followed her. Her skin is pale, but she's no longer wet, as if someone dried her off and placed her on my bed.
This is a joke, a dream. I'm seeing things, and I've officially lost my mind, but I don't think insanity runs in the family. I open my mouth to call Dad, and her eyes open. I scream, and she bolts up, which makes me scream again.
"Why are you yelling?" A scowl covers her face.
"Piper?" Dad shouts. His heavy footsteps race upstairs. He turns the corner, into my room, and plows into me.
I stumble forward and crash onto my bed, right beside her.
"What's wrong?" His eyes are wide. Color has seeped from his face, but he's not nearly as pale as Linzy.
I look from him to her. Isn't it obvious?
He looks around the room and straight at Linzy twice, but he isn't reacting to the dead-live girl on my bed. "What happened?"
"It's Linzy." My skin breaks out with dread-filled goose bumps.
Linzy scoots off my bed and stands before Dad. She raises her arms and waves them in his face.
He doesn't react. In fact, he seems to look through her. "What about her?"
She turns her head toward me. "He can't see me."
She drops her arms then plops back onto my bed. "You couldn't see me before today either."
Before today? What the heck is going on?
I'm not stupid. On some level I get it, but it hasn't fully seeped in yet, and a huge part of me wants to deny, deny, deny.
Dad runs a hand through his hair. He pulls so hard, I see parts of his scalp. "I know this is tough on you. It's why I keep you out of my office. Death is difficult to process."
It would be a lot easier if the corpse wasn't talking to me.
"Maybe Chief Williams knows of a good grief counselor."
He wants to send me to a shrink? "Dad, I don't need a therapist."
Linzy rolls her eyes. "My dad tried sending my sister to one once. Mom had a fit. 'We can't tarnish Linzy's reputation'. As if that wouldn't come back to haunt me. He's so clueless." She laughs. "Haunt me." And she laughs harder.
I scoff. "Wow, selfish much?"
She quirks an eyebrow and examines her French manicure.
Dad scoffs. "How am I being selfish?"
Oops. I scramble for a convincible lie. "I'm just joking."
Linzy smirks. "Yeah, he'll buy that one."
"How is calling your father selfish a joke?"
I grab his arm and turn him toward my door. "It's from a show. You wouldn't understand. Sorry I worried you, Dad. I'm fine. You can go back to work now."
"But you screamed."
"Yeah, I saw a spider. It crawled back out the window though. False alarm."
Linzy chuckles.
He stops in the hall and pulls me into a hug. "You're not usually afraid of bugs. You sure you're okay?"
"Yep, fine." I say into his chest. "Just frazzled and need sleep."
He kisses the top of my head. "Okay. Don't worry about getting up early tomorrow."
"I won't."
He heads to the top of the stairs, and I shut my door.
"He's suffocating," Linzy says with a dramatic breath.
I wait until I hear his footsteps hit the last step and walk into his office. "No, he's not. It's called caring about someone. Don't your folks dote over you?"
She blows a raspberry. "No. They're normal."
I want to point out that waiting almost twenty-four hours to report your fourteen-year-old missing is far from normal. But getting into a parenting debate is so not what this moment is about.
"Why are you here?" I cross my room and sit opposite her at the foot of my bed. As I wait for a response, I remind myself I'm sane. This moment is real, and it's okay I'm talking to the dead.
She shrugs. "Beats me. It's quieter than my house though. Mom's blubbering all over the place."
So she realizes she's not alive? Good. That's not exactly something I want to tell someone. By the way, you've croaked. Sorry you won't be able to hang with your friends, eat ice cream, or kiss a boy ever again. But if you stick around, you can watch me do those things.
No, thank you. And Linzy seems the type to not take bad news well.
"She's upset she lost you."
Her body tenses. "Or that her cash cow won't be supplying her with fancy lunches and parties with celebs anymore."
Is she saying her mother used her?
She glances up from her manicure. "You look surprised. She was my manager."
That might explain some of it but not the sad tone in Linzy's voice.
"I'm sorry."
She frowns and lies on her back, staring up at the ceiling. "For what? You don't know me."
Exactly. So why is she here?
"You said this is the first time I've seen you. How long have you been here?"
She shrugs. "Feels like forever."
"You went missing three days ago."
She scrunches up her nose. "Is that all?"
"How did you die?"
She shrugs again.
"You don't know? How can you not know? I'd think that would be something you'd never forget."
Another flippin' shrug. "It was unpleasant. Why relive it?" She laughs at her words.
I jump off my bed, annoyed that she's so blasé about the whole thing. "You know, you could be a bit more invested, or at least care about what I've been through."
She frowns. "How is this about you?"
"I'm the last one who saw you alive, talking to that person in the car. Who was that? Your ex-boyfriend?"
"How'd you see me? You followed me? What are you, some kind of perv?"
I roll my eyes. "That only applies if I peer into your windows. I was curious why you snuck out and where you were going."
She raises her brows. "Sounds nosy and still a bit pervy."
I ignore the comment. "So, was that your ex or some actor from your show?"
If she says it was Shia or Leonardo, I'll know I'm asleep and this is a nightmare.
She shakes her head. "Nope."
"Then who?"
"Why should I tell you anything? Especially since you spied on me."
"Good thing I did, otherwise no one would have had a clue you might be in trouble."
"That's stupid. Mom probably called in the Armed Forces as soon as she realized I wasn't in my room."
"Not so much. They waited until the following night to even call the cops." It's after I say it that I realize I should've let her think her folks had hired a necromancer to bring J. Edgar Hoover back from the dead so he could direct an FBI investigation.
Linzy's expression drops. "Whatever."
She stares at my window. The blinds are drawn, so she's not looking at anything outside. She's hard to read, but if it were me, I'd be beyond upset.
"When I went missing, what was it like?" Her tone is melancholic.
It's finally sinking in. Good. Now we can figure out why she's still here and how to get her to move on. "Awful, I guess. I told the chief what I saw. I helped the best I could."
She gets onto her knees, and a smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. "Chief Williams is handling my death, not one of her minions?" She giggles.
"Is that funny?"
"No. It's awesome. Was everyone upset and frantic when I disappeared?" Her eyes widen. "Were there fliers with my face put up all over town? A search party with dogs? What did Mom give them with my scent?"
And Dad thinks I'm morbid. "I don't know. I was mostly home."
She sits back down. "Well that's disappointing. Fill me in on everything you do know. Don't skip over a detail."
I start with the night I followed her.
"Yeah, yeah, I know all of that. I was there. Get to the good stuff, to what I don't know."
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. I tell about finding her in the river, talking to the chief, and finding her on my bed. I don't know the juicy tidbits she wants—the behind-the-scene law enforcement stuff. Did Chief Williams lose sleep combing every inch of the town? Were there false leads that made the police angry and sad because the first twenty-four hours in a disappearance is most important? At least according to Law & Order: SVU reruns. Stabler and Benson were always frantic when a kid went missing.
I sit across from Linzy, a mixture of fear, pain, and uncertainty swirl in my belly.
She looks down at her lap. I can't see her expression, but I imagine it's not filled with joy. How is someone supposed to take the news of finding their body in the river?
"Do you think there will be pics of me…like that, in the paper or on TV?" Her voice cracks.
"There were reporters gathering, but none of them got close enough."
She blows out a long breath. "Thank goodness. The last image of me cannot be bloated and full of muck."
Is that all she's concerned about? "Did you go to the river? Maybe you went for a swim and got sucked under?"
She curls up her top lip. "Are you serious? I never go to the river. It's disgusting and stinks. That's Shayla's place. She's a sewer rat."
Wow, possibly true but harsh much?
"So, how'd you get there?"
She shrugs again. It seems to be her favorite habit. "I don't remember that. Someone must've put me there."
"You say that so casually. If that's true then someone killed you first."
She doesn't reply, just stares at her hands. "There are a few people that dislike me enough."
Whoa. Seriously? I've made some frenemies, like Aaron. But no one hates me enough to actually kill me.
"Okay, who?" Figuring out who the suspects are and then narrowing them down is the first step in good detective work. Especially since I don't know her life, and right now the entire world is a suspect.
She leans back against my pillows. "Well, there's Shayla, Mom, April, Margo, and maybe Elias."
I blink several times. I expected her to give me two names tops, not a handful, and not anyone I've already met. I jump up, grab my notebook and pen off my desk, and return. "Okay, let's start at the beginning. Why would your own sister want you dead?"
Her eyes become huge. "Are you serious? Shayla and I hate each other. We wish the other wasn't born. Now she doesn't have to whine about all the attention I get. Not just from the world but from Mom and Dad. They don't love her as much as they do me."
That's so sad. If Vincent was still alive, would I have to compete for Dad's love? I already know Mom cared about him more than me. If not, she wouldn't have stayed away all these years.
I scribble notes onto my page. "Okay, but surely your Mom wouldn't kill you."
Linzy shrugs. "She told me she hated me the other day."
Whoa. What goes on in their house? "Why?"
"She was complaining she had nothing to wear to a luncheon with cast members. I told her that she shouldn't worry about it. No one cared what she looked like. I'm the star. I'm the one the paparazzi follow and hound. I'm young and beautiful, and she's not."
Ouch.
"She said I was evil and she hated me." Linzy laughs.
I narrow my gaze. "What's wrong with you?"
She gives me an innocent look. "What?"
"She cares enough to let you have a career. You're fourteen not forty. You could be hanging at the mall with your friends. You're so ungrateful. She's your mother. How would you feel if she left you? No wonder someone killed you. You're horrible."
I don't know what came over me. I'm not usually so verbal when someone pisses me off. Well, I am in my head, but not to their face. I always worry the person won't like me anymore, and not having friends sucks. But I guess with Linzy I don't care. It's not like we'll become best of pals. She's dead.
"This is stupid." She jumps up.
The bed doesn't move. No dips or anything.
She walks to my door. "I'm outta here." Instead of opening it, she walks through it.
I race to it and fling it open. She's not in the hall or on the stairs. Where'd she go?