Chloe is dead.
It happened the instant he snatched her off the trail. He likens her death to plucking a rose. Although the flower may look alive, its petals a lurid color like blood pumping through a vein, it isn’t. And after a few days, it begins to wilt, the hues of life fading, dissipating into the true, monochromatic colors of death. Because, you see, the rose is dead the second you break its stem.
She’d been walking alone, still wearing Lydia’s red lace dress with a leather jacket over it, and carrying a bouquet of black roses when he came upon her Thursday night. She wasn’t paying attention to him, wasn’t suspecting anyone might be stalking her through the trees. She stared at her phone screen, and in the faint blue glow, he saw that she was crying.
Stealth was a skill he’d been perfecting, ever since his mom had gotten sick and he had to move her bed out into the living room. It was just easier that way. She could watch her shows all day long and he could keep an eye on her while cooking and cleaning. He learned to live in silence, and he didn’t mind it. In fact, he’d grown to like it. God knows he gets enough social interaction at school.
His appearance was seamless, as though he was as much sewn into the fabric of the night as the stars. It’s why little Chloe Winthorp never even heard the crinkling of the leaves’ curled edges as he crept toward her. She didn’t hear his footfalls when he suddenly padded onto the asphalt walking trail, or his breath hitch and the name he whispered when he got a good, up-close look at her.
“Aurora.”
Aurora, his dear gone but never forgotten sister. The one who fell through the cracks.
Eddie was sixteen the day death came for her. Their mom was working. He’d just returned from wrestling practice, the ends of his hair crusted to his face from walking a mile in the cold, when he realized Aurora was not at home. He knew where she was. For the past year, she’d made the old abandoned brick building of Hedelsten Hides & Leather Goods Tanning Company her retreat. It was her refuge, a second home for her whenever she and their mother weren’t getting along.
Which was often.
She used to tell Eddie she wanted to leave their hardscrabble house in Rainbow Row and live there permanently, that one day, she would plant a rose garden on the roof. It was an act of rebellion, he knew. Because whenever either of them complained about the cold showers and toast made of moldy bread, their mother’s response was always the same: “I never promised you a rose garden.”
Perhaps Aurora would never have a rose garden on Rainbow Row. But she could have one here. “Once I buy this place for real and fix it up, you’ll move in with me, won’t you, Eddie? This place is so huge we wouldn’t even have to see each other if we didn’t want to!”
He vowed that he would, that one day they would make the place their own. In the meantime, Aurora had been hell-bent on guarding the tannery, as though possession really was nine-tenths of the law. Honestly, if some contractor ever had half a mind to tear it down, she would have chained herself to the door. She made it hers as much as she could, stringing Edison lights in a crisscross pattern from the rafters and making shelves out of old crates, wherein she kept little skull baby figurines and punk style magazines. A misshapen beanbag she’d rescued from the curb slumped in a corner, and My Chemical Romance trilled on her MP3 player. She’d hang out there for hours on end, reading and dreaming and making jewelry out of safety pins. Sometimes, she just lay on her back, staring up at the stars through the hole-punch roof. This was the only place in Black Harbor you could see the stars, she told him, out here by the lake.
His recollection of that night is as vivid as the real thing. He went to collect her, to bring her home before their mom got back from work; she hated Aurora crawling around that derelict old building. The crack of splitting wood and the burst of a scream that followed would play on a loop in his memory for the next eighteen years.
He rang for help, using the disconnected cell phone on which he could only call 911. During the eight to ten minutes it took for rescue to arrive, he discovered that the fall wasn’t the worst part. Rather, the true tragedy of it all was that Aurora was alive for nearly that whole time, her eyes unblinking, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, blood draining from her face and darkening the floor. And he didn’t know a damn thing to say to her, until at last, he knelt and pressed his forehead to hers. “Aurora,” he whispered. “Aurora, don’t leave me here. Don’t leave me.”
He started to sob.
She couldn’t see him. Her gaze was faraway, lost in the stars, and her lips were grey but for the dash marks of blood where she’d bitten down on impact. He had to tilt his ear to her mouth to hear her final words. “She never promised us a rose garden, Eddie.”
That was why, when he saw Chloe Winthorp walking alone with roses hanging at her side, he knew it was fate.
She was a dead ringer for Aurora. Dressed in her goth getup and skin as pale as moonlight, had he not been watching her transformation at school the past several weeks, he would have sworn she was his sister returned from the dead. He had to bring her home. So, he made a plan.
Recognition registered in Chloe’s watery eyes the second she saw him. “Mr. Taylor?” Her voice was thick. As the distance closed between them, he noticed the fingers of mascara that striped her cheeks.
She was the second crying girl he’d encountered that evening. Madison Caldwell had been the first. Subconsciously, Eddie lifted his gaze to gauge the phase of the moon. “Miss Winthorp.” He offered a smile, close-mouthed, like he’d trained himself to do since his middle school days. The same smile he’d given to Miss Caldwell before grabbing her by the jacket collar and dragging her down to the gully. It wasn’t until they were out of the eye of the lamppost that he had bared his teeth.
Killing her had been for Chloe. Smashing her teeth out of her skull had been for both of them. He knew she teased Chloe for having retained baby teeth; he’d heard the jeers firsthand, seen the drawings that she and that wicked Sari Simons passed back and forth. Madison acted as though having perfect teeth herself gave her license to harass those who didn’t. And she was exactly the kind of girl who would have teased him during his teenage years for his shark-toothed smile.
Dolphin teeth, that’s what they called them at the jiujitsu academy. Only there he didn’t mind so much because everyone had a derogatory nickname. A guy could do much worse than Orca, which was, ironically, the same in English as it was in Portuguese—the language from which most of their monikers originated.
He’d taken a detour onto Belgrave Circle Thursday night, where he knew Madison Caldwell would be headed to the walking trail. He circled once, then parked in front of the beach and began to walk in her direction.
“Oh, hi, Mr. Taylor.” Madison’s smile was bright, teeth practically glowing under the light of one of the lanterns in someone’s front yard. She sounded a bit breathless. “Sorry, I didn’t expect you to be out here.”
Blotches bloomed on her usually flawless cheeks. She was upset. A fight with her boyfriend, perhaps?
“I was just taking a walk, soaking up some of the last nice days of the year,” he said, carefully so as not to scare her off. “Are you on your way to the play?”
She nodded.
“Would you like a ride?”
He noticed it, the alert behind Madison’s eyes. It’s what’s ingrained in us since we’re children: don’t take rides from strangers. But rideshares had changed all of that, hadn’t they? And he wasn’t a stranger; he was her teacher. He watched these thoughts roil in her mind as her lips parted to form her answer, but he was already choking her into silence.
He had to do it that way—act before he changed his mind. It was the only way to bring Aurora back. His mother would be so happy. She might even forgive him for being the one who lived that day.
Madison let out a yelp and kicked, but it didn’t last. She went limp in less than ten seconds, and he dragged her down to the gully when something took hold of him. Pent-up anger and emotion from all those years of being teased by girls like Madison Caldwell. He grabbed a rock and smashed her teeth until they were sharp, broken little pegs like his.
Then he went to the play. He paid for his ticket with a faculty discount and sat a few rows behind Axel and Rowan, so he could watch when they inevitably got the call that would force them to leave.
And leave Chloe ripe for the picking.
It worked like a charm.
Thus far, police had found nothing that traced back to him. Chloe Winthorp’s disappearance on the same night as Madison Caldwell’s death stirred up enough suspicion, especially when it became public knowledge that the missing girl and the murdered girl had recently suffered a falling-out.
Eddie had the student body to thank for that. They could dig up dirt on anyone, and when the infamous Snapchat rose to the surface like a sliver determined to poke through the skin, it felt like the stars had finally aligned for him.
Cutler and Chloe, herself, were the obvious suspects for killing Madison. And then there was the bonus of adding Reeves Singh and Libby Lucas to the mix. A neighborhood canvass placed Reeves in the vicinity of the crime scene that night, and the collar burns on his girlfriend’s neck resembled hickeys. As for Libby, she was weird and unlikeable. Lifting her taxidermy kit from Deschane’s classroom was too easy. He’d seen it just lying willy-nilly on the table when he went to pick up the glass eagle eyes the great oaf had ordered for him. It was almost as if she’d placed it there expressly for him. Take me, an invisible note said. Plant me at your next kill scene.
Honestly, the muddier this investigation became, the merrier. Eddie would be lying if he said he wasn’t amused by the myriad theories, his mouth quirking upon hearing whispers of what really happened in the hall, ears pricking anytime someone mentioned Chloe as the culprit. But, what he really enjoyed was hearing Cutler’s name entangled with it all. After killing Sari, Cutler’s name started getting thrown around a lot, particularly on social media. Everyone knew the connection: that she’d sent the Snapchat condemning him of having a sexual relationship with Chloe Winthorp. He was as good as guilty. Eddie thinks that if he’d endured the same as Cutler, he probably would have jumped off the bridge, too.
Now, everything’s turning up roses. He almost smiles at his cleverness. He has devoted his life to making things right. Their mother never promised them a rose garden. But nothing could stop him from creating his own.
For her. For Aurora.