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I lifted my camera, but for once I couldn’t find a shot.
All I could see was a fourteen-year-old girl in pain.
Pain caused by me.
She’d lost everything, and now as fast as she could piece together a new life for herself, I was chipping away at it. She was my sister—why couldn’t I be supportive?
Was it really because I was afraid Lydia would hurt her? Or did it go deeper than that? Had I grown so smug in my new life that I wasn’t willing to let go of any of it to make room for Kasey? I couldn’t even share the stupid sofa.
“Kasey…I’m sorry,” I said.
So we’d seen something in the woods. So Lydia was reaching out to lonely freshmen. So (against all odds) Mimi had found forgiveness. What did that have to do with Kasey?
“I’m really, really sorry,” I said again, feeling the sting of tears in my eyes. “I made a stupid assumption. I got suspicious, and I thought—” Might as well confess, even if it made me sound evil. “I thought there might be something going on. Something like—like Sarah.”
Her shocked eyes darted up to meet mine, and she recoiled.
“But that was wrong,” I continued. “I know you wouldn’t get involved with that stuff again. You’re smarter than that.”
I hoped she’d stand up, forgive me. We could cry and hug and get the heck out of the woods before we both ended up covered in ticks.
I’d have settled for her storming away.
Worst case, she’d sit there and cry, too hurt to respond.
She didn’t do any of those things. She stared up at me, as surprised as a little fish, her eyebrows perfect arcs.
And when she spoke, her voice was a rush of confession and release.
“But what if I’m not, Lexi?” she asked. “What if I’m not smarter than that?”
I PUT MY HAND OUT and plunked to the ground.
They’d lock her up for years—maybe forever.
It would break our mother’s heart, clean down the center.
Kasey grabbed my hands and held on to them like we were in danger of being swept away. “It’s not like last time,” she said. “It’s not, I swear.”
Weighed down by the props, we went back toward the parking lot, leaning on each other like shipwrecked survivors. Kasey’s gown kept getting caught on sticks and roots, and by the time we made it back to the pavement, the bottom layer of tulle was a shredded mess.
We spent the next few minutes sitting in the motionless car, staring out the windshield at the decaying fountain in the middle of the lake. Finally I put my seat belt on and started the engine.
“Did you do anything to the car? Brakes, fuel line?” My voice was flat, heavy.
She scowled. “No.”
“Tires, power steering, axles?”
“No, Lexi!” she said, folding her arms across her chest and sinking into a deep pout.
As if she had any right. As if she hadn’t, eleven short months earlier, messed with the brakes in the car our dad was driving and sent him careening into a tree. As if it weren’t her fault that he has metal plates in his leg and will never again get through an airport security line without being patted down.
We came to the old LAKEWOOD sign at the entrance to the community.
I hit the brakes so hard that the tires squealed and the car filled with the unmistakable odor of burning rubber.
Kasey shrieked and slammed into her seat belt. “What are you doing?!?”
“Did that thing in the woods last week have something to do with this?”
She was as wide-eyed as a kitten. “What thing?”
“Come on. The thing in the woods!”
“Oh, that.” She sighed. “I don’t know.”
Un-freaking-real. I sat back against my seat.
“Lexi, there’s a car coming behind us.”
“He’ll go around,” I said.
“There’s not room to pass.”
“Fine!” I pulled onto the main road without even looking for traffic. Kasey squealed and bashed against the passenger seat. The other car passed us anyway.
There was no sound except the rumble of the engine and the tires on the road. Halfway home, it started to drizzle. Kasey leaned forward and looked up, as if she could see into the clouds. Miraculously, I made it all the way into the garage without losing my temper again.
“What now?” Kasey asked.
Our parents were out at Dad’s coworker’s wedding; they’d be gone for a few hours, at least. I unbuckled my seat belt and turned to face her. “We’re going to have a talk.”
“Where?”
“The kitchen.”
“Fine,” Kasey said, unbuckling and opening her car door. “But I have to change first.”
“Go ahead of me,” I said. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”
“Alexis, if I wanted to hurt you,” she said, stepping out into the garage, “I’d whack you with a shovel.” To prove it, she reached out toward the rack and poked one of the shovels with a single finger, setting it bobbing on its hooks. Then she opened the door to the house and disappeared down the hall.
She was right; if she meant to harm me, she’d had the chance. I went into my bedroom and put on a pair of pajama pants.
Kasey met me in the kitchen. We sat on opposite sides of the island. Outside, the wind howled resentfully down the narrow street, thrashing the poor saplings in the median.
“Now,” I said. “Get to the point.”
“I was at Adrie
Like that was a night that would just slip your mind. And then suddenly, horribly, I remembered how she’d tried to back out but I’d made her go.
She either didn’t think about that or was too polite to rub it in. “We were playing ‘truth or dare’ and I said dare, but they wanted me to do truth. And they asked me why I had to go to Harmony Valley.”
“So you told them,” I said, like a prosecutor on a TV show, “what we all, as a family, agreed to tell people. That you have a mild form of schizophrenia.”
“Yes, Lexi, I did.” Her eyes flashed. “But Lydia did a research paper on schizophrenia last year, and she asked me a bunch of questions that I couldn’t answer.”
“She accused you of lying? Typical Lydia.”
“No, she didn’t say it like that,” Kasey said. “She thought maybe I’d been misdiagnosed and I should get a second opinion. She wanted to help. But then…I messed up. She asked what medication I took, and I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to say…so I said none.”
I knew it without even having to think. I’d know it in my sleep. Haldol. If anyone asked, Kasey was on Haldol.
“Then Adrie
“No, you didn’t have to,” I said. “You could have told her to mind her own business, Kase. You could have said you wanted to go home. You could have called me. You could have left the room.”
Her face fell. “But Lexi,” she said. “They were nice to me.”
She hung her head and studied the countertop.
I sighed. “Then what?”
“Lydia didn’t really believe it at first.”
“You had a chance to take it back?” I asked, but I’d lost the will to play the angry lawyer.
“Not really. Tashi believes in ghosts, and they all talked about it for a while, and then we talked about how depressing it was to be—to be social rejects.” She took a shaky breath. “And then Adrie
“Found it where?”
Kasey shrugged. “I thought it was like a party game. I tried to talk them out of it, but they didn’t listen. I wasn’t going to do it—but they said we should all—”
“You weren’t going to do what?” I asked.
She was on the verge of tears. “Did you know people put notes in my locker? They called me psycho. Once, when I went to the bathroom, someone put a—a dead cockroach in my purse. And Mimi got everyone to throw the ball at me in dodgeball—even people on my own team.”