Dead Girls Don't Lie Read online

  I wanted her to think I was as brave as she was, that I wasn’t always a goody-goody, and that she could trust me with her secrets. So I went with her, out in the dark, across the field, to the old house. I was so afraid, but I was loyal to her … then.

  I hesitate, looking around to make sure I’m alone before I put one foot on the sagging front stairs.

  My heart pounds; I shouldn’t be here.

  It was the same thought that echoed with every thump of my terrified heart against my chest that night, with every creak of the stairs that led up the front porch, toward the hollow-eye front windows and the door of the old house.

  I take another step; the porch creaks so much that I wonder if it will hold my weight. I reach out and touch the sign nailed to the railing.

  I remember how I licked my lips and dared to say it out loud. “The sign says NO TRESPASSING.”

  It wasn’t more than a hoarse whisper, but Rachel whipped her head around defiantly and grinned at me, her “you’re going to be part of this whether you like it or not” grin. “C’mon, Jaycee, don’t be such a baby. It’s not like the cops are going to jump out of the bushes and arrest us for going inside. Kids hang out here all the time, at least big kids do.”

  I got the jab, Rachel implying that I was immature, and so I kept moving, the fear of losing Rachel’s respect greater than the fear of the old house. I had one last hope. “It’s probably locked any—”

  “Shh.” She touched her finger to my lips. “Did you hear that?” I froze so fast and so solidly that it felt like my heart stopped too. She shook her head, still grinning. “I don’t think we’re alone.” She giggled like this was a big joke, a big adventure. For her it was.

  Her laugh sounded evil and horrible, but I huddled close to her, so close that I got a face full of long hair. Tears collected at the back of my throat. “Let’s just leave, okay, Ray?”

  “Not a chance.” She kept moving toward the door, turned the knob, and it swung open without a sound. Somehow the door’s silence terrified me more than if it had made a horror-show door creak. “See. Unlocked.”

  I followed her inside that night because the only thing more terrifying than going inside the old house was staying outside in the dark by myself.

  I peer through the windows, dust and grime making the shapes inside almost as dark as they were that night. My eyes adjust to the dark room, and the shapes morph into semi-recognizable forms: an overturned chair, bits of garbage, boxes, things that were left behind or brought in by vagrants after the last people to own the house left permanently. It doesn’t look like anything has changed since that night, like anyone has been inside since then, but I know someone has.

  I touch the doorknob; this time it’s secured with a big silver padlock. I remember the odd mix of smells inside, musty and old, with a hint of cigarette smoke and mice, but there was something else, a strong, lingering odor that smelled too new, like someone had just painted.

  “He-llo,” Rachel said when we walked inside, and she waited, like she was expecting an answer. Then she stepped toward a narrow staircase. I stayed by the door, frozen with my own fear, half admiring, half despising her courage as she headed up the stairs. She turned once. “Are you coming?” I shook my head and she shook hers back at me, with disgust or whatever, but I was too scared to follow.

  I stayed back by the door, still close enough to run if I had to, but also close enough to the wall so my back wasn’t exposed to the darkness behind me. The odd paint smell got stronger. I listened to Rachel’s footsteps going up and then moving across the floor above me.

  I rub one of the windows, and pitch-black dust comes off on my hand. On the far end of the room, pillars of dust stream through big windows, framed by long black drapes on one side of the room. It’s the drapes I remember more than anything. I saw them move after Rachel went upstairs. I tried to convince myself that it was the wind or a mouse, something harmless, but my imagination kept coming up with things that were much worse.

  I stayed completely still, holding my breath, searching the dark for whatever or whoever might be there. Wondering if it would be better to follow Rachel or run through the door behind me and all the way back to her house. I stepped backward toward the door, feeling for the wall behind me. My hand touched something solid; I jerked it back. It was wet.

  I turned around to face a huge, dark circle. It had a symbol in the middle that looked like an eye glaring back at me. The paint was so fresh that it ran down the wall and clung to my hand where I had touched it, staining it red.

  Before I could process what the symbol might mean, Rachel’s scream pierced the darkness. I jerked my head back toward the stairs in front of me. Beyond them, the curtains moved again. For a heartbeat I saw something white, the number eighteen and a face. Then the curtains parted and someone disappeared into their folds.

  Rachel screamed again.

  I was so terrified that I couldn’t move. I was too scared to even run away. She ran to the bottom of the stairs before I could get to her. I could tell her foot was bleeding, but she didn’t stop. “We have to get out of here now!” She took my hand when I didn’t move, dragging me out the door, down the stairs, and through the woods. I knew she was hurt, but she ran like she wasn’t. By the time we got to her house, her foot was covered in little rocks, dirt, and leaves, all clinging to the sticky blood. Her hands were covered in blood. There was even blood in her hair and on her T-shirt—too much blood to have been from the cut on her foot. She was whispering something in Spanish over and over that I didn’t understand, “Lo atraparon.”

  She washed her foot and wrapped it in a bandage. She threw her clothes into the washer. She cleaned every speck of blood off the floor with a washcloth, threw that into the washer, and added a ton of bleach. She washed her hands over and over again, and when she saw the paint she made me wash mine too.

  I rub my hand against my cutoff shorts, trying to erase the paint stain from my memory. I have to swallow back a gag because I can almost smell paint now. I look sideways through the window. I can’t get the right angle to see if the circle or any of the other markings are still there, so I go to the other side of the porch and look through the window framed by the tattered drapes.

  My face reflects back to me from a dusty mirror on the other side of the room. It’s a distorted, ghostly image. The mirror is cracked and missing pieces. The shattered glass on the floor is reflecting chunks of light on to the ceiling. I turn my head, wondering if the symbol on the wall is still there, wondering if Rachel’s blood is still soaked into the wood on the stairs, like in my dream. I wonder if there’s blood on the floor upstairs.

  Mom picked me up the next morning for our end-of-summer visit, one of the few that didn’t have to be rescheduled. I found out after school started that a Mexican kid had been murdered in the upstairs bedroom of the old house. The notice that grief counselors were available for anyone who had known him was tucked in with the emergency information cards, club info, and picture order forms we got at the beginning of the school year. I asked a dumb question about it when someone brought it up in advisory, and Claire looked at me like I was a moron. “You really have been living under a rock, haven’t you?” She was ruder back then, before we became friends again.

  I didn’t know very much about the boy who was murdered. Just that he was from L.A. and living with relatives here. It didn’t seem like anyone knew him. He had moved to Lake Ridge sometime during the summer. I looked up the news story on the school’s computer. It said he was killed because he was part of a gang. It also said his body was found two days after Rachel and I went into the old house.

  When I finally got brave enough to ask Rachel about it, if she had seen anything when we were in the house, her eyes went wide with fear, but she said, “I didn’t go all the way upstairs. I got scared because I saw a mouse, and I cut my foot on the stairs when I was running away.” I knew she was lying. Rachel wasn’t scared of mice or anything else. When I pushed her, mentioning the
kid who was murdered, her voice got cold and expressionless. She said, “He was a gangbanger. He got what he deserved.”

  Around the left side of the house there’s a broken window, maybe big enough for me to climb through. The urge to get inside the old house is so strong that I’m already thinking about how I’ll put my towel across the glass so I can climb in without getting cut. I don’t know what I’ll find inside the house, or if there’s anything there I want to find. I only know I have to. I should have gone to the police and told them what I saw that night. I should have made Rachel go too.

  At the window I pause. There’s something tucked behind an overturned couch, a backpack or a duffel bag maybe. It looks too new to have been there long. I lean forward, trying to see it better—

  “Hey!” A guy’s voice startles me so badly that I scream and spin around.

  “I, I—” My heart pounds and my voice cracks. I turn to face the voice, momentarily blinded by the sun coming through the trees behind him.

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “I was just—” My eyes adjust to the light, and I recognize the guy standing in front of me.

  Evan Cross.

  Chapter 4

  I stumble back and try to say something, but I can’t.

  His voice softens. “I mean, this isn’t the safest place for you to be. There’s broken glass all over, and druggies sometimes hang out here. What are you doing, anyway?”

  “I was on my way to the lake,” I manage to reply. I think this is the first time Evan has ever talked to me.

  He looks at me with suspicion. “The lake? You seem to be a little lost.”

  The truth sounds completely insane. I go with, “I took a detour. I was on my way to my friend’s house to see if—” I remember Rachel’s dead and bite off “to see if she could come with me,” and finish, “I just wanted to check on her mom, to see if she’s doing okay.”

  “Oh.” Evan looks down. “You mean the girl who lives on the other side of the woods. The one who …” He trails off and his face twists. I hate how he says “the girl” like Rachel meant nothing to him. Maybe she didn’t. Maybe I lost Rachel’s friendship over a stupid rumor. He takes a breath. “I just went by there. Her mom isn’t home.”

  “You went to Rachel’s house? Why?” Curiosity completely overcomes my fear, and I look up enough to make eye contact with him.

  “Oh.” He crosses his arms and avoids my eyes, like now he’s the one who was doing something wrong. “I went to tell her mom that my uncle is willing to fix her window. For free.”

  “Oh.” Evan’s uncle owns Cross Landscape and Construction, the biggest, actually the only, landscape/construction company in town. “That’s really nice of him.”

  He smiles a sad smile. “Considering everything her mom’s been through, it’s the least we could do.” Something about the way he says it, something about his smile, makes me think there’s more to it than that. “Anyway, nobody’s home, and it’s still kind of a mess. I don’t think you want to go there.”

  When he stops talking I realize I’m still looking into his eyes, the clear blue eyes I memorized from his yearbook photo. Eyes that look like Skyler’s. I drop my gaze and neither of us says anything for a long moment. Finally he says, “Hey, I know you. Jaime, right?”

  “Jaycee,” I correct him. I know I’m blushing all the way up to my red hair. Blushing, another bad look for someone as pale as I am.

  “Right. I didn’t recognize you at first. You look different, older or something.” He smiles, but the fact that he doesn’t even know my name makes me realize how invisible I’ve been to him. He fidgets for a second, playing with the strap to his helmet. “Well, Jaycee. It’s getting hot and you’re a long way from the lake. How about I give you a ride?”

  I look up at him, startled. “Me?” I touch my hair, wishing it was curly blond like Taylor’s or stick straight and shiny black like Rachel’s used to be. Instead, I’m not wearing makeup, I didn’t shower this morning, and my hair is in an “unflattering” ponytail. There’s nothing about me that would make Evan remember my name.

  “Unless you’re afraid of motorcycles.”

  “Um.” I hesitate, not daring to look above the level of his lips now. I can almost hear Claire’s voice screaming at me that I’m an idiot if I don’t go with him. But I can also see my dad, shaking his head with disapproval. I’m not allowed to accept rides from guys, especially not on motorcycles. “I’m not sure.”

  “Not sure it’s safe?” He pats the helmet under his arm. “I’ll let you wear this. Trust me. I’ve ridden these trails since I was younger than you.” I get it, a jab about my age, even though I’m only two years younger than he is, but he’s still being really, really nice and his lips have formed into a grin that threatens to melt me.

  Besides, Evan might be the only person who could tell me what really happened between him and Rachel on New Year’s Eve. Not that I’m brave enough to ask. I glance at the dark windows on the old house. They feel dead and hollow. Like eyes, watching me. The empty, creepy feeling of death settles into my chest. I need to get away from this place as soon as I can.

  “Okay.” A nervous laugh bubbles out of my throat. “Okay, I’ll go with you.”

  “Cool.” He puts his hand on my shoulder, propelling me away from the house to the edge of the path where his yellow dirt bike is parked. He settles the helmet on my head and then buckles the strap under my chin. It smells like sweat and guy, a smell that reminds me of Skyler. I wonder what he would think about me riding his brother’s bike.

  Evan looks beyond the woods toward Rachel’s house. “I’m sorry about your friend.” The sympathy in his voice makes me remember that everything isn’t okay. “Eric says this is a lot like the other one, the kid who was killed last summer, but he’s not sure how the two cases are connected.”

  Evan and Skyler’s older brother, Eric, is the sheriff. He was elected last fall, even though he’s only about thirty. If I’m not brave enough to ask about the date with Rachel, at least I can ask about that. “How are they the same?”

  Evan sets his hand on the seat of the motorcycle. “Eric says they’re still investigating, but it looks like a gang thing, like before. Rachel’s house was tagged.”

  “Tagged?”

  “Gang symbols. Graffiti. Like that.” He points to a faded red symbol on the side of the house, a leftover from the last time gangs visited Lake Ridge. I shiver despite the heat. It matches the dripping red symbol I saw last summer—a circle with an eye inside and a dot above the eye.

  “He said they questioned all the Mexicans who have ties to gangs, but they clam up whenever he tries to talk to them about anything.” He shakes his head like he’s disgusted. “You’d think they’d want to help. She was one of them.”

  “No, she wasn’t.” The words come out before I can stop them. “She lived here her whole life, and her dad was white. She wasn’t like them.” As soon as I say it, I know it sounds awful, racist, and stupid. I shrink farther into his helmet.

  Evan just shrugs. “Scary that this kind of stuff is coming here. Eric says Yakima has major gang stuff, and Moses Lake, even some other smaller towns, but Lake Ridge always felt safe.”

  “Yeah,” I answer.

  “Anyway, somebody from the gang task force in Spokane is coming to take over the case. That’s what they did the last time.”

  He straddles the motorcycle and waits while I climb on awkwardly behind him. “Hold on tight; this road is pretty rough.” I wrap my arms around his waist, thinking about how many times I’ve dreamed of riding on Evan Cross’s motorcycle. I didn’t imagine looking this bad or being this scared. He kick-starts it. The bike lurches forward in a cloud of smoke and rocks. I lean into Evan’s back, but I can’t help but look behind us at the broken window and the faded graffiti on the side of the house.

  Chapter 5

  “Ev-an Cross.” Claire repeats his name again, slowly, in disbelief.

  “And you look like that.” Taylor i
ndicates my ponytail, my face, my outfit. Maybe she doesn’t mean it as rude as it sounds. She’s just more concerned about appearances than the rest of the world. She shakes her bleach-blond curls that will never touch lake water and takes a sip from her Diet Pepsi.

  There was no way Claire or Taylor or any of the other kids lounging around the edge of the lake could have missed me showing up with Evan. His motorcycle blasted the announcement from a mile away. Then he helped me take off the helmet and said good-bye in front of the gawking crowd. “I have some stuff to do for my uncle,” he said like he had to explain why he wasn’t staying. “But I might be back later. I kind of miss hanging out at this place.”

  “He saw me walking here and offered me a ride.” All the attention is making me feel dumb, and showing up at the lake on Evan’s bike feels like cheating on Skyler, or Rachel’s memory, or maybe both. And what if my dad finds out? One way or another, everything I do seems to get back to him.

  “Next time I’m walking,” Taylor says, “if he’s willing to pick you up—”

  “At least you’re keeping it all in the family.” A nasty edge creeps into Claire’s voice, an edge I heard all the time before she started being nice again.

  I cringe, thinking about how bad that sounds. “I don’t, I didn’t—”

  “Oh, come on,” Taylor says. “Skyler is a good starter boyfriend. An okay first kiss, but Evan is eighteen and totally drool-worthy.”

  Claire and Taylor keep talking, analyzing my ride with Evan, strategizing the next step in our relationship. Arguing about whether I should let Skyler down easily, so there’s no bad blood between brothers, or if I should hold on to him until I’m sure about Evan. The conversation is getting to me, like my ride with Evan is the most important thing in the world. Like Rachel isn’t dead. Lying between them on my beach towel is making me claustrophobic.

  “Are you, like, having the best summer or what?” Taylor says, spinning her sunglasses around in her fingers. “I mean, first Skyler and now Evan. Wow. Just wow.”