Pink fingers of sunlight were starting to scrape against the sky as Bex crept back into her house.
“Were you outside?” Michael was standing on the landing, hair ruffled, eyes bleary with sleep.
“Uh…” Bex stammered. “I woke up early. Couldn’t sleep.” She thumbed over her shoulder. “I thought maybe a walk would be good.”
Michael nodded, yawned, and brushed past her. “You want coffee?”
“I’m actually going to try to see if I can get back to sleep now. Get in another hour before I have to wake up for school.”
She padded up the stairs, the thunk of her heart mirroring the thunk of her footsteps. She peeled off her clothes and slid into bed, for the first time that she could remember, feeling light.
Bex’s phone went off before her alarm clock did.
“’Lo?”
“Bex?”
She sat up ramrod straight, all thoughts of drifting back into sleep-filled oblivion gone. “Detective Schuster.”
“You didn’t call me back last night. Are you okay?”
“Uh, yeah.” She coughed into her hand. “I’m fine.”
“I want you to know that we’re protecting you, Bex. You’re not on your own in this. We’re going to find your father. So there still has been no contact?”
Bex gnawed on her lower lip, her heart speeding up and doing a breathless double thump. She thought about her father’s downcast eyes, the earnest way he pursed his lips when he was telling her—admitting to her—that he wasn’t guilty, that Detective Schuster was framing him. She shifted in her bed. “Uh, no. He hasn’t reached out.”
The detective blew out a breath. “Okay, well. Let’s keep each other posted.”
“Okay.”
“Hey, Bex?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re doing a great thing here. You’re helping to take a dangerous man off the streets.”
Bex hung up the phone without answering. She let a beat pass before pulling her laptop into her lap.
“Bexy?” Denise knocked, pushing open the door a half inch. “You awake?”
“Yeah.”
Denise opened the door, sitting on the edge of Bex’s desk chair. “Everything okay?” Her eyes were searching.
“Totally. Yeah.”
“Michael said you were out really early this morning.”
A stripe of heat burned the tops of Bex’s ears. “Uh, I was just having trouble sleeping so I went for a walk.” She shrugged, trying to act nonchalant. “No big deal.”
“Not really, no.” Denise looked away, seemed to think better of it, then fixed her gaze on Bex. “It’s just that—I mean, I want to be cool and all, but I’m still your mom. Your foster mom. I’d like it if you wouldn’t just go out like that. At dawn. Or at night. They still haven’t caught Darla’s killer and…”
Bex nodded, wondering when Darla’s name would stop triggering that awful memory—her broken body on the beach, those milky, unseeing eyes. Then she thought of Detective Schuster suddenly showing up in town. Had he really been looking for her, or was he hunting for Darla?
Bex’s stomach started to churn, pinpricks of heat burning through her nightshirt.
“I’m really sorry, Denise. I won’t slip out without telling you. And about everything else lately…” But even as Bex finished her statement, she knew it was a lie. “I’m sorry.”
Denise stood up. “Hey, no problem. We never really set any ground rules. We’re new at this, you know.”
Bex forced a smile she didn’t really feel. “Me too.”
She really did like Michael and Denise. There probably weren’t cooler or nicer foster parents in the entire system but Bex’s father—her dad!—was back! Maybe, that same tiny voice cautioned her. Maybe… She thought of the psychologist, the eyewitness testimony. Serial killers are master manipulators…
“You should probably hop in the shower or you’re going to be late for school.”
As soon as Denise closed the door behind her, Bex flipped open her screen and went directly to the fan forum. GAMECREATOR was already online.
Bex clicked the private chat icon and GAMECREATOR accepted. She started typing, her fingers stopping after just two letters: H-I. Did she say “dad”? Did she call him by his screen name? His first name? Finally, she hit Enter and watched her piddly “Hi” fill the screen.
GAMECREATOR: Thanks for talking with me last night.
BETHANNER: I still can’t quite believe that was actually you.
GAMECREATOR: You don’t think it was your father? The one who ordered two waitresses to bring more powdered sugar that one time at the Black Bear Diner? Oh, man, was your granny mad at me when I brought you home. Said you kept her up nearly all night!
Bex grinned. She remembered that dinner. She had wanted pancakes for dinner and her father had indulged her, stopping first their waitress and then another to bring Beth Anne another white bowl mounded with powdered sugar. That second waitress had lingered after setting the bowl in front of her, had leaned one bony hip against the torn Naugahyde booth and talked to Beth Anne’s daddy in a slow drawl that didn’t sound like it came from North Carolina.
Because she was from Texas. She was Amanda Perkins. Three days later, her body was found mostly undressed in a ditch, what was left of her pink Black Bear Diner uniform streaked with reddish-brown blood and dirt. Bex remembered how the sodden uniform had looked, rolled up in a Ziploc bag and held aloft by a man in rubber gloves.
BETHANNER: I remember that night. I remember the waitress. Her name was Amanda Perkins. She was murdered 3 days later.
There was no response from GAMECREATOR.
BETHANNER: She talked to you. Did Schuster know her?
GAMECREATOR: Probably. Lots of cops ate at that place. It was kind of a hangout.
Bex couldn’t remember that, but her simmering anxiety was almost snuffed out.
BETHANNER: One of the other women—Amy Eickler, I think—we gave her a ride.
GAMECREATOR: I don’t remember that, but OK.
BETHANNER: She was murdered after.
GAMECREATOR: She was hitchhiking.
BETHANNER: Schuster could have picked her up.
GAMECREATOR: Yes.
Bex’s phone blared out Trevor’s favorite Death to Sea Monkeys song and she glanced down at it, seeing his grinning face on the home screen. She smiled to herself but sent the call to voice mail and grabbed her towel.
• • •
Chemistry was bad enough when she could concentrate, but on this day, it was excruciating. Bex had spent her day e-chatting with her father and her night tossing and turning, hearing him whisper to her, seeing him in the dark recesses of her mind. Was he right? Had Detective Schuster framed him? And if so, why? When she had asked her dad, he gave her this simple explanation:
Schuster is a psychopath. If he pinned the murders on me, then he’s also the hero who caught the big bad wolf. I go down and he moves up in his career, and really, he can keep doing what he’s doing. Killing them girls. He didn’t think anyone would ever figure him out. He’s like that. Narcissistic.
Narcissistic.
That’s what Schuster had called her father. That’s what “all psychopaths” were. But did her father know because he was one?
When morning came, Bex was cranky and jumpy at the breakfast table and in class, her mind constantly wandering, trying to figure out a way to help her father, trying to decide what to do about Detective Schuster. Turn him in? Set him up? Her father was stern—as stern as someone could be in writing—telling her to let him worry about Schuster. But Bex knew she had to help. She had helped incriminate her father away; now she could help to free him.
She told her dad that Schuster was in town, that he had been texting and calling her. Her father had called him a dangerous man and urged her to stay away. And in the last twenty-four hours, her phone had been mercifully silent, not a text or a call from the detective. It should have made Bex feel better, but instead she found herself studying everyone now, squinting at the barista who poured her coffee, sweeping her gaze at the team of gardeners huddled in front of the school. Now Bex wondered if Schuster was in every crowd, watching her, holding back, waiting.
Something hit her square in the lap and she glanced down, staring dumbly at the folded piece of notebook paper. Bex looked up and Trevor cocked an eyebrow, a hint of a smile on his lips. He jutted his chin toward the note and Bex looked up surreptitiously, watching Mr. Ponterra’s fat bottom jiggle while he wrote equations on the whiteboard, completely oblivious to the yawning class behind him. She snatched the note and smoothed it open on her lap.
Does this class make you want to die? Check yes/no.
There were boxes to check next to “yes” and “no.” Bex pulled out her pen, marking the “yes” box with a thick blue check and underlining it three times. She crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue at Trevor before folding the note and handing it back to him.
There was another beat, then another note in her lap.
What should we do about it?
Bex replied.
I don’t know. Stage a walkout??
He tossed the note back.
Or maybe…
She looked up when Trevor stood, waving an arm. “Mr. Ponterra?”
Bex could feel her heart flutter. Was Trevor actually going to stage a walkout?
Mr. Ponterra turned, eyebrows raised as if surprised to see an entire class behind him.
“Yes, Trevor?”
He paused, then opened his mouth at the exact moment the fire alarm started to wail from the loudspeaker.
Mr. Ponterra clapped his hands for the class’ attention. “Fire drill, fire drill, everyone! Now line up and—okay, orderly lines. Okay, okay…”
The class stood and interpreted “orderly lines” as “meandering cluster heading toward the door.” Bex grabbed Trevor’s arm.
“Did you do that?”
“Would you believe it was a lucky break?”
She hiked her backpack over her shoulder and narrowed her eyes. “No.”
“Okay, then let’s just say I have friends in low places.” He winked, his fingers sliding down her arm, then linking with hers. Bex squeezed his hand, enjoying the pinprick-like shivers. They followed their class into the hallway, carried along with the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. Bex tried to keep her focus on Trevor, on the way his thumb stroked the back of her hand, on the way their hips bumped as they walked but she still searched the crowd, examining every face for her father as the crowd wound out to the designated meeting spot on the back forty.
“Is there really a fire?” someone asked. “Oh my God, did something really happen?”
Nobody answered immediately, and Bex felt a niggle of fear at the back of her neck. Someone jostled between her and Trevor, and he broke hands with her while a line of students trudged through. She whirled when someone called her name, but Trevor still wasn’t there.
“Trevor?” Her voice was swallowed in the din of students talking and the far-off wail of the fire alarms. “Trev?”
She began to walk, then blinked when two teachers rushed by her. She didn’t recognize them. She didn’t recognize the boy who bumped into her or the two girls behind her. Bex turned, anxiety starting to swell.
“Bex?”
She turned, trying to find the person who said her name. It wasn’t Trevor. It wasn’t Mr. Ponterra. The voice was rich and deep, but it was familiar.
“Bex!”
Had he said Bex or Beth?
A man was coming toward her, fast, but he turned before she got a good look at him. But the profile, his hair, his broad shoulders…
Dad?
Another alarm blared. Someone stood up with a bullhorn. Someone was cheering—or was it screaming?
She stumbled over her feet, thought she heard someone mumble, “sorry” or “’scuse me.”
Bex pressed her palm over her chest, felt her heart slamming against her ribs. She was breathing hard, her cheeks and eyes burning. She started to walk blindly toward the school, weaving through the crowd that seemed to swell and push against her.
“Hey, hey, you can’t go in yet. That way.” Someone grabbed her by the shoulder and steered her toward the left. Someone turned, elbowing her in the chin. She stumbled backward and tripped. Bex hit the ground, her tailbone smacking against the packed dirt. She saw a snatch of bright-blue sky before the crowd closed in around her, legs and backpacks and arms closing in on her. She was crying, trying to push herself up, but each time she did someone pushed past her and she felt back down again.
“Trevor!” She stared to sob. “Stop, please, I’m down here! Don’t!”
“Bex?”
Trevor pushed between the crowd, his face appearing at her eye level. He reached out and slid his arms around Bex’s waist. “Move, assholes! Someone is down here!”
A few kids stepped away, looking stunned. Most looked annoyed but still moved.
“Are you okay?”
Bex looked around, blinking in the too-bright sunlight. “I-I fell.” She tried to shake Trevor off, feeling instantly embarrassed. “I just tripped and fell, that’s all.”
Trevor kept a tight hold on her, leveling her chin with a finger. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m not big on crowds either.”
Someone came on the bullhorn again, and this time, Bex could hear the order. The fire alarm had been cleared; students were told to return to the building and go to their next class. It was now her lunch period. She raked a hand through her short hair.
“God, you must think I’m the biggest idiot.”
Trevor brushed a clump of grass from the knee of Bex’s jeans. “Not the biggest idiot,” he said with a soft smile. “Actually, I kind of think you’re one of the coolest girls I know.”
She felt herself blushing. “Thanks. I guess I don’t really feel all that cool. You know…ever.”
“You’re pretty hard on yourself.”
Bex cocked her head. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Trevor.”
He shrugged. “Like your locker number or ATM code? I figure that’s more of a second semester of dating thing.”
“I’m serious.”
The smile dropped from Trevor’s lips. “You are? Are you an ex-con? An undercover cop? Really a man? Because all those things are okay with me. Well, most of them are. If you’re a dude, I probably won’t take you to prom, but we can still hang out and catch a few games together.”
Bex shoved her hands in her back pockets and smiled. “Is there anything you’re not cool about?”
“Narwhals,” he deadpanned. “They don’t get the respect they deserve.”
Bex rolled her eyes as she and Trevor strolled away from the school and toward the football field, where they slid onto the lowest bench on the bleachers. Trevor took both of her hands in his, his eyes soft.
“Seriously, you can tell me whatever you want, Bex. Or you don’t have to tell me anything. I mean, I want to know everything about you. But only if you’re cool with that. There’s nothing you can say that’s going to make me think less of you.”
“Unless it’s something derogatory about narwhals.”
Trevor nodded solemnly. “Well, obviously.”
Bex stared at the toes of her Converse sneakers tapping against the bleacher floor. She shot Trevor a sidelong glance, taking in the slant of his nose, the way his chin poked out just slightly. Behind him, Kill Devil Hills High looked like any other high school anywhere in the world: kids were milling around, and there were streamers and GO BIG RED! posters plastered all over the exterior wall of the gym. There was nothing different about the scene, and Bex was a part of it. For the first time she could remember, she was part of something normal. And she was about to ruin it. As much as she wanted to shrug off her father and Detective Schuster and just kiss Trevor and go to prom and forget about anything else, there was one other poster on the gym wall that gnawed at her: the grinning picture of Darla, the letters R.I.P. emblazoned across the front of her cheerleading uniform.
“You know—do you remember when we were kids, there was a serial killer out in Raleigh?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You mean the Wife Collector? He’s, like, local legend there.”
Bex kept her eyes on her toes. “He’s real. Everything he did… It was real.”
“Okay…” Trevor drew out the word.
“The man they accused of being the Wife Collector had a daughter, you know. A young daughter.” Bex’s heart slammed against her rib cage. She tried to keep her breathing steady and even, but it was like her insides wanted to implode.
Bex couldn’t bring herself to look up. She was sure that if she did, Trevor would be gone, a trail of smoke and laughter behind him as he ran to tell Chelsea and Laney and the rest of the school that Bex Andrews was a lying freak. She didn’t want to see the hate and disgust on his face, the way his lip would curl if he spat on her or slapped her. If the Wife Collector was her father, what did that make Bex?
Trevor was silent for a beat that seemed to stretch on for a year.
“I think I remember reading that. Talk about a kid who’s going to need some serious therapy.”
A stabbing pain arched through Bex. “You mean because she’s probably psycho too.”
Trevor shrugged, considering. “Not necessarily. But if you found out your dad was a murderer, don’t you think that’d mess you up, even a little?” He held her eyes and she wasn’t sure if he was asking her or challenging her. She wanted to sputter out the whole truth, who she was, because even if Trevor ran from her, it would be better than the lie she was living. If she was truly the Wife Collector’s daughter, it would always be a stain on her soul. Therapy couldn’t fix her. She would never be normal. But either way, she was the daughter of the man who was accused of committing those crimes.
“I guess.”
“So?” Trevor’s sneaker slid toward her, then lightly kicked her toe. She glanced up and he reached out to lightly stroke her cheek. “You’re not the kind of girl who needs a ton of therapy, baby.”
Bex wanted to cry. Or run. She’d thought that telling Trevor the truth might peel the weight from her shoulders and maybe he would understand. Except she knew that everything she feared about the way people thought of her as Beth Anne Reimer—messed up, in need of help—was true. She may be Bex Andrews now, but she was still the accused Wife Collector’s daughter. Tears played at the edges of her eyes, and Bex was far too tired to try to stop them when they overflowed and rolled down her cheeks.
“Why are you crying?” Trevor jammed his hands in his pockets and fished out a brown Starbucks napkin. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry. Bex, are you scared of something? Are you scared of that killer coming here?”
She silently shook her head, took the napkin, and blew her nose. “I don’t know. I don’t even know why I started to talk about it.”
“I’d like to believe it’s because you trust me.” His hand found hers. “And hopefully because you know that I love you.”
The air was sucked out of Bex’s lungs. She stared at Trevor, stunned. He squeezed her hands.
“Bex?”
“Did you just—?”
No. She had heard wrong. Trevor didn’t love her. No one did. She was unlovable. She was the daughter of an alleged murderer, and that blood—that horrifying blood—flowed through her veins, so no one could love her. No one should. No one could ever know—not Trevor, not Chelsea or Laney, not Michael or Denise. Even her own father didn’t love her to fight for her.
“Did I just say that I love you?” Trevor nodded. “Yeah, I did. I do.”
Bex knew she should talk. Acknowledge him somehow. Tell him that she loved him too, because she really thought she did. But all she could do was open her mouth, then close it again dumbly. She was the child of a murderer, and this good, decent guy didn’t know that and now he thought he loved her. He said he loved her. But he didn’t really know her.
“Did you want to tell me something else, Bex?”
Trevor’s eyes were intense and drew Bex in. They were gorgeous but at the same time terrifying. The sun broke though the clouds, and she squinted in the light. When the sun was bright enough, you couldn’t see the darkness, but the second the wind changed, the clouds shifted and the gloom was there again. That was the story of her life.
“Um, just that I love you too.”