Bex stayed after school to make up the geography test she’d missed when Michael and Denise let her sleep in. When she finished, she slipped the paper into her teacher’s wire basket, said good-bye, and stepped out into the hallway. It was completely deserted. The floors looked like they had just been cleaned, and the smell of chlorine and industrial cleaning products stung Bex’s nose.
Her footsteps echoed throughout the hall, as did the footsteps of the person behind her. Bex casually glanced over her shoulder, then stopped.
It was the girl from the funeral, the girl who had waved to her.
Tension pulled Bex’s shoulders up to her earlobes. “Can I help you with something?”
Clearly startled, the girl blinked her deep-brown eyes.
“I-I…” The girl swallowed and blinked again. She straightened. “I’m the girl whose mother was killed by your father.”
Someone had sucked all the air out of the room and Bex couldn’t move, her mouth open, eyes wide. In her mind’s eye, she doubled over herself, oofing from the sucker punch to the gut.
“Wh-what did you say?”
“I’m Lauren.” The girl looked as uncomfortable as Bex felt, taking a step and then stepping back, offering a hand, then pulling it away. “I just…”
“Oh. Oh,” was all Bex could say as a million things crashed over her: Apology. Grief. Guilt. Blame.
Blame?
Your mother shouldn’t have made my father kill her.
The thought—a fleeting one that was in as quickly as it was out—made Bex sick to her stomach.
“I just wanted to…see you…I guess,” Lauren was saying, the fabric of her skirt swooshing into a colorless blur.
“My father… He never… It was alleged…”
But Lauren just stared at her, eyes wide, intent, curious.
Bex took a step back. “I can’t… I’ve got… Excuse me.” She turned and pushed in the door to the girl’s bathroom, making it to the first stall just as she started to wretch. She was sweating, a burning stripe going from the back of her neck all the way down her spine as she vomited. Each time her stomach convulsed, a new wave of images shot through her mind—gruesome, haunting, slasher-movie scenes that made her sick all over again.
When there was nothing left to throw up, she grabbed a handful of toilet paper and blotted her eyes and nose as she cried a silent, body-racking sob for this strange girl Lauren and the mother that Bex’s father had snatched away. She cried for Lauren and for herself, and begged for forgiveness for thinking that the woman’s murder could be anything but her father’s fault.
You don’t know that! that inner voice told her.
He’s your flesh and blood, another one countered. Like father, like daughter.
Bex wasn’t sure how much time had passed but she’d cried everything out, her entire body feeling hollow and light. She splashed water on her face and pulled her hair over her eyes and cheeks, trying her best to hide the red splotches and smeared makeup. When she pushed back out into the hallway, it was blessedly silent.
“It’s Bex now, isn’t it?”
Lauren was still there, and Bex felt herself start to tremble.
“How did you know who I am?”
Lauren shrugged her thin shoulders. “I…know people. I went to the same juvenile detention center you did. I guess I kind of kept tabs…”
“I’m sorry,” Bex said.
“Me too,” Lauren said.
Bex started. “What are you sorry for?”
Lauren crossed in front of her. “I shouldn’t have just… I wasn’t even going to talk to you.” She looked at her shoes. “I really just wanted to see you, see what you looked like.”
Bex sucked in a slow breath. “Did you want to see if I looked like him?”
Lauren glanced at Bex, then stared at her shoes. “You do, kind of. I mean, the pictures.”
Bex nodded, unsure what to say. She really didn’t know what her father looked like, other than the pictures, and in them, she couldn’t see much more than a slight and passing resemblance: same hair color, similar expression.
“Do you mind if we sit down?” Lauren asked.
Bex wanted to say no, but something drew her. Whether she thought she owed Lauren something or not she wasn’t sure, but she pushed open the double doors and led her to a bench in the quad.
“Is it true that he gave you things—things that belonged to—”
“Yes.” Bex couldn’t bear to hear Lauren say the words. “I didn’t know…”
“Did he ever give you earrings?”
“No, but I never had pierced ears.”
Lauren pulled the sleeve of her cardigan up revealing a thin chain that looped around her wrist. On it was a five-petaled gold flower with a tiny pearl at the center. “This?”
Bex shook her head. “It’s really pretty though.”
“It was my mother’s. Her earrings. They only found the one. He took the other one.”
They were silent for a long while. Bex noticed that Lauren wouldn’t look at her. She stared straight ahead while they sat shoulder to shoulder, barely blinking, talking without a breath, but focused like there was something in front of her to see.
“I think I came here… I wanted to see if maybe you knew.”
Bex was walloped. Surprise, shame, anger, pain. She snapped her head to Lauren. “Knew what?”
Lauren swallowed and her voice was barely a whisper. “Why he did it.”
Bex knew she should argue. Set this girl straight. It was alleged that her father was a murderer, but it had never been proven. A sob lodged hard in her chest. She shook her head slowly, her breathing shallow and painful.
“My mom had one of those giant personalities. And your dad…” Lauren went to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “He’s just a man, you know?”
Bex nodded again, although she didn’t really know. Her father was a distant memory. Her father was a two-dimensional picture in the newspaper, a man with a dark beard and a shaggy haircut. He was a gray man and a legend with a made-up name. He was the Wife Collector. Her father died a long time ago.
“I’d look at his pictures. I was obsessed with them.” She let out something between a snarl and a laugh. “I couldn’t believe it was him. I wanted him to be bigger. A monster maybe, with claws. Someone—something that couldn’t help what it was, so a real person wasn’t responsible for seeing my mother—hearing the way she would laugh out one high-pitched squeak before giggling without making a sound. The fact that she was a mother who read Horton Hears a Who! with a crazy voice and her arm in front of her nose like a trunk just because it made me laugh.
“I wanted your dad to be a monster who couldn’t understand that my mom was a woman and a person with an awesome chocolate-chip cookie recipe and a daughter because really, how could a person do that to another person?”
Bex didn’t have to look at Lauren to know that tears were pouring over her cheeks. That they were the kind of tears that took with them a tiny bit of Lauren’s hope and joy and heart.
“I think I came here hoping that he would be here with you.”
“He’s not.” Bex didn’t mean for it to come out a whisper. “I don’t know where he is either.”
Now Lauren shook her head and used the palms of her hands to wipe at her tears. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I shouldn’t… You don’t…” She paused, and a fresh torrent of tears started. “I guess I thought maybe you owed me something but”—she sniffed—“you’re out a parent too.”
Bex wanted to apologize for her father. She wanted to tell Lauren that even at home he was shy and mostly kept to himself, but she didn’t know the man that Lauren talked about.
• • •
Bex spent the rest of her week avoiding Detective Schuster and trying not to think about Lauren, about her wide, flat brown eyes. But by Saturday, the thoughts consumed her as she sat in front of her laptop.
“Hey, Bex. You okay? You’ve been up here all day.”
Bex blinked at Denise as she stood in the doorway. Her head was cocked, her voice soft. “It’s Saturday. I think by law we’re supposed to make sure you get at least one hour of sunlight each day.”
“Yeah,” Michael said, coming up behind Denise. “Don’t let anyone say that we’re raising veal.”
Bex rubbed her eyes. “Um, I was thinking of going to a movie with Laney and Chelsea.”
“Sunlight! Fresh air! Stretch your legs! Stop watching that little screen and go watch the big screen. In the dark. While sitting down.” He looked at Denise. “Pretty sure we’re nailing this parent thing.”
Denise shot him a high five and Bex smiled. “You guys are so weird.”
They left the room and Bex glanced back at her computer, hoping Denise and Michael hadn’t noticed the way she’d blanched when they came in the door. She was still on the Wife Collector fan site, still trying to avoid the photos that popped up. She had already seen most of them, but they never ceased to make Bex’s stomach drop into her shoes. She was going to close the laptop when a chat bubble popped up.
DETECTIVE LT. SCHUSTER is requesting a chat.
Bex clicked Accept and a tiny, smiling picture of the detective appeared in one corner of the gray box, his typing scrolling across the screen.
LT SCHUSTER: How is it going?
B*AND: Not gr8
LT SCHUSTER: Be patient. He’s going to be cautious.
Bex felt slimy talking to Detective Schuster about trying to trick her father.
B*AND: Maybe he’s just not on there.
LT SCHUSTER: What sites have you tried? Our link to your computer isn’t up yet.
B*AND: Tried them all. Nothing. Maybe UR just wrong.
Anger and annoyance simmered low in Bex’s gut. Anger, annoyance, and…joy? If he wasn’t on the site, maybe that proved that he wasn’t guilty…
LT SCHUSTER: Just—
SCREEN NAME B*AND has left this discussion.
She dialed Laney.
“Bex! Still up for a movie?”
Bex rubbed her eyes, yawning. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“Is that why you yawned? To demonstrate your interest in the exciting social lives of Kill Devil Hills’ finest?”
“Aren’t a town’s finest supposed to be the police?”
“I don’t know. Anyway, you coming with?”
“You’d better be coming with!” Chelsea chorused in the background. “Unless you’re throwing us off for Trevor, but you’d better not be!”
Bex laughed. “Yeah, I’m coming with, and I would never throw you guys off for a guy.”
“That’s good,” Laney said, “because we’re outside your house.”
“Woooo! The call is coming from outside the house!” Chelsea burst into hysterical laughter. Bex wished all spooky stories could end the same way.
“What were you going to do if I had decided to ditch you guys and go out with Trevor?” she asked, opening the front door.
“We knew you would never do that,” Laney said, following her into the house and hanging up the phone.
“We have intimate faith in you,” Chelsea said.
“Imminent, Chels. The word is imminent.”
“Whatever. Don’t take this the wrong way, Bex, but you look awful.”
Bex was dumbstruck for a half second. Her friends were in her bedroom, less than three feet from her open laptop and the heinous pictures and the throbbing forum of weirdos craving blood. Her two lives were about to crash into each other.
She slammed the laptop shut.
She didn’t hear the ping of a new message alert from the fan site.
She didn’t see the single line in the subject box from GAMECREATOR.
Is it really you, Bethy?