Betrayal

Taylor went back to bed and let out a sigh, thinking back on the Halloween party earlier that evening. Bria

Around midnight, it became obvious that her best friend, Beth Lee, had seen better days. Despite the fact that it was Halloween, a quasi-holiday, they still had school the next day. The four of them—she; Hayley; Hayley’s boyfriend, Colton; and Beth—had decided to leave even though it looked like the party would rage on for hours.

Taylor knew she was going to feel like crap in the morning. The only solace that came to her at that moment was fleeting. She figured Beth, who had a lot more to drink, would look far worse. The irony of that, of course, was that Beth Lee didn’t give a crap what anyone thought about her.

She just didn’t.

Taylor burrowed back under the heavy blankets and turned to the wall that separated her room from her sister’s. With her free hand, she swiveled the plastic cover away from the spot where there had once been an electrical outlet. The outlet cover in her sister’s room was already open.

“Something’s happening, Hayley.”

Taylor heard a shifting of sheets and felt the vibration of her sister as she rolled closer to the wall.

“I know,” Hayley answered. “I’ve been thinking about it since we got home. Something’s up. Bria

Just inches apart, Hayley faced her sister through the hole in the old plaster-and-lath wall. Her head was on a cloud of goose-down, a pillow that accompanied her on every sleepover she’d ever been to. Hayley was a mirror image of her sister. Winter-white skin. Long, messy blond hair. Blue eyes. At sixteen, the girls had a bond greater than mere sisterhood, greater than twinship and all that comes with being so, so close to another human being. The sisters also shared an ability to somehow see letters in signs or headlines rearrange themselves into words that revealed important messages. It always creeped them out a little when that happened. Even more u

And while they didn’t understand it and were certainly unable to control it, the girls were digging in deep to find ways to accept whatever it was. They saw it as more than the ability to sense something; it was the ability to decipher what was happening now, and sometimes what had happened in the past, in a way that others could not. It was as if they were able to catch a whisper from the wind.

Freakish? Sure. Different from others? Absolutely. Whatever it was that passed through them bound them closer together and shut out others, including their best friend, Beth Lee, and Hayley’s boyfriend, Colton James.

As the rain pelted the rippled windowpanes and the wind scraped a dead branch from an overgrown rhododendron against the espresso brown siding of house number 19, the Ryan sisters talked into the early morning hours.

All without uttering a single word.

THE 911 CALL CAME IN AROUND 2 A.M., the time the bars closed—always a busy hour for the Kitsap County law enforcement communications center in Bremerton, the region’s largest city. The comm center’s dispatcher on duty was Sally Marie Butterworth, a twenty-eight-year-old mother of two who liked working nights so that she and her husband, a navy yard pipefitter, never had to put their son and daughter in what they considered “prison for tots,” or the local daycare center.

Sally had taken a number of 911 calls that Halloween, including a doozy about a tipped-over jack-o’-lantern that had ignited a two-alarm blaze and torched five cars at the Mariner’s Glen apartment complex off Jackson in Port Orchard. A call from Chico had buzzed through around eleven o’clock from a woman who was suspicious about a homemade treat:

CALLER: My daughter brought home a popcorn ball that I think might be laced with something.

SALLY: Is your daughter ill?

CALLER: No, ma’am, she’s not. I wouldn’t let her eat it.

SALLY: What makes you think the popcorn ball has drugs?

CALLER: I just don’t trust the person who made it. She’s total trailer trash. (Slightly muffled) Amber Marie, get that cat off the stove!

SALLY: Why don’t you throw it away?

CALLER: (Long pause, the tinkling of ice cubes in a glass) I guess I could do that. Good idea.

Sally Butterworth disco

The line buzzed again. Sally set down her Aquafina, adjusted her headset, and answered:

SALLY: What’s your emergency?

CALLER: It’s really bad, I think. My friend is all bloody. Really, really hurt. Help me. Help us. This is really bad.

SALLY: Tell me your name and where you’re calling from.

CALLER: Bria