Chapter Nine
“I’m going to Seattle tomorrow.” Dad keeps looking at his spaghetti when he says this, like he’s embarrassed to admit it or something. I knew it was coming. He’s been staying late after work, and that always means he thinks he’s found a lead. That guy he told me about… That guy must be more than just a lead for him to pick up and go investigate him.
“That guy?” I ask, spinning my own spaghetti.
“Yeah. I think I’m on to something.” He shoves a giant forkful in his mouth, almost as if it will keep him from having to say any more. He gets sauce in his mustache.
“Who is he?” I stab my spaghetti a little harder.
“Works the shipyards.” Dad shrugs and gulps and spins more spaghetti around his fork. Spins and spins and spins.
“That’s it?” I stare at him, waiting for him to quit it with the endless spinning and just tell me something substantial already. I wish I could tell him about all my investigations, the locals that I trailed. Part of me wants to think that maybe he would take me seriously and start including me in his searches, but I know that he’ll just tell me to leave that job to the professionals and pay attention in school instead.
Dad shrugs. “He was seen in Port Angeles the day before the… ” His eyes dart toward the living room, and he clears his throat. “Anyway, will you be ok for a night?”
He wants me to stay here.
Alone.
“Sure,” I mutter and stab, stab, stab with a shaky hand and tears in my eyes.
I’m at the park that afternoon keeping an eye on Stephanie Felice when I see Edward again.
Stephanie is a senior at my school. She plays varsity volleyball and varsity basketball and runs first string track and sits second flute in band. She volunteers to tutor middle school kids in math every Saturday and works one day a week at the nursing home pushing old ladies around the gardens in their wheelchairs, pretending to be their granddaughter. She walks her little brother home from school every day and picks up trash along the highway with her youth group every summer. She has curly blonde hair and big blue eyes and long, long legs and could probably be Barbie’s little sister.
Basically, she’s perfect.
I hate her.
I’m pretty sure that she murdered my sister. I have absolutely no evidence, no reason to even suspect her really, but I’m almost convinced. People that good, people that perfect? Their demons are bigger and darker and hidden even deeper. I’ve been trailing her around for weeks now, and I know, I just know, that at any moment she’s gonna crack, and I’ll finally get some proof.
What that proof will be, I have no idea.
It’s when I’m darting behind another tree to get a little closer that I see Edward. I gasp and stumble and go down to my hands and knees in the grass, scraping my skin and bruising my pride, and Stephanie looks over at me with her pretty, perfect face full of concern, that bitch.
“Are you ok?” she asks, and I grumble and huff and mutter to myself as I stand and brush the dirt off my legs. Both of my knees are bleeding. Don’t even ask about my pride.
“Yeah. I’m fine,” I hiss, then glare over at Edward. He’s standing beneath a tree on the far side of the park with his hands in the pockets of that same limp suit, and he looks no better than the last time I saw him. Still pale. Still shadowed. Still slumped. He’s shaking his head at me like he disapproves, and I stomp over to him, ignoring the screaming kids running between us.
“Leave me alone.”
“I’m not bothering you,” he says, still shaking his head, but his mouth is almost smiling.
“Yes. Yes, you are. You’re following me.”
“Like you’re following that girl?” He looks over at Stephanie just as she brushes the sand off her brother and kisses his cheek and then they’re off, holding hands like they always do, headed home like a goddamn Lifetime movie, and did I mention how much I hate that girl?
“She murdered Alice,” I tell him, completely convinced of it.
“No. She didn’t.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You know that how?”
“I just do.” He shrugs and doesn’t meet my glare, and I resist the urge to kick him in the shin.
“You are the most frustrating person I know.”
“Probably not,” he says, staring down at me. “You’re alone tonight?”
I narrow my eyes at him. “How did you know that?”
He ignores my question. “Will you be ok?”
“I’m not a child.”
One, just one, of his eyebrows rises high into his forehead. He says nothing.
“Ok, fine, I’m legally still a child, but I can sleep alone.”
“That’s not what I asked. I asked if you would be ok.”
“I’ll be fine,” I mutter, even though just the thought of a night alone in that house has my heart fluttering like a hummingbird on speed and my blood pumping fast enough to make my vision go fuzzy. My palms are clammy. My knees are weak. I can’t even feel the earth beneath me, and I have to swallow a few times to wet my mouth because I’ve dried up like a desert.
“I’ll come by to check on you,” he says.
“Don’t bother.”
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