Bad Girls Don't Die (12 page)

“What are you doing?”

The voice scared me so much that I dropped the stack of reports.

I just stared at her. “I came in to cover you up, but . . . why do you have everyone else’s projects?”

She gave me a look that said pretty plainly that she didn’t think it was my business.

“I’m a student grader,” she said at last.

“A what?”

“It’s new.” Kasey yawned and scooted to the edge of the bed. “Don’t bother with the blanket; I’m awake.”

She followed my gaze to the papers on the floor.

“I’ll get those later,” she said.

I was kind of surprised she hadn’t wigged out about me being so close to her dolls without supervision.

But she didn’t look anywhere near freaking out. And if she wasn’t going to freak out, I wasn’t going to either.

“There’s something wrong with the thermostat. Come help me check out the circuit breaker,” I said.

Kasey followed me downstairs and into the garage.

The cold had seeped under the kitchen door and even the garage was chilly. If Mom showed up now we’d be grounded until college. How long would it take to warm up the house if we opened all the windows? Then Mom would never know . . . until the electric bill showed up.

Built into the wall behind the garage door was a metal cabinet. Opening it revealed about thirty chunky black switches. Kasey leaned in to look at them.

“What are those?”

“Fuses,” I said.

“Which one is for the air conditioner?” Kasey asked.

I studied the little map at the top of the cabinet. Third down on the left, the little square was labeled “A/C.”

“This one,” I said, flipping the switch. “Go see if that worked.”

Kasey ran inside. A second later she came huffing and puffing back. “Nope,” she panted.

I stared at the rest of the circuits. “Okay,” I said. “Stay here and flip this switch when I tell you to.”

I went inside to the thermostat and looked at the little red light in the corner. “Flip it!” I called.

The red light went dark.

“Flip it back!” I called.

The light came back on. Then off, then on, then off, and on again. But none of that mattered, because the whole time, cold air never stopped blowing through the vent.

Kasey came in from the garage, shivering. “No luck?”

“No,” I said, my teeth chattering. “We’re going to get in sooo much trouble.”

“So what else is new?” Kasey said. She approached the thermostat and grabbed the switch, moving it back and forth. I almost told her to stop because I was afraid the stupid thing would break off.

“I’m
freezing
,” Kasey said under her breath. “Turn off, turn off.”

Midflip, the air conditioner turned off. We stood in confused silence.

“Huh,” I said. “Weird.”

“I didn’t do anything!” Kasey snapped.

“Did I
say
you did?” I asked, going back into the kitchen. “Jeez.”

She stomped up the stairs, leaving me alone. I pulled a string cheese and a few pieces of sliced turkey out of the fridge and stood in the kitchen eating, just kind of looking around.

I looked at the garage door and then down at the floor. The light gray rag rug had dark smudges on it. Our footprints.

I lifted my foot and looked at the bottom of my sock.

It was covered in a fine dusting of grimy-looking dirt.

Just like the dirt I’d seen on Kasey’s sock that morning.

So she’d been in the garage?

At six thirty in the morning?

. . . Why?

The contact sheet from my earlier darkroom session was completely dry. I counted down to the fifth row of negatives and over three, to the half-ruined, half-in-focus picture. I put the negative into a little frame, checked the focus, then set a piece of photo paper down and hit the timer.

After fifteen seconds I slipped the paper into the developer and stood back to watch the image emerge.

But there wasn’t an image. Unless the whole paper immediately turning black counts as an image.

I pulled that page out and rinsed it clean before dropping it in the trash.

I set another piece of paper down and turned the timer on for five seconds, figuring it might be underexposed, but at least I would have a better idea of what time to use.

But no. This one turned black too.

A panicky feeling started to rise up inside me as I looked at the package of photo paper. There were two black plastic bags with fifty sheets each; only the top one should have been unsealed. But they were both open. And the stacks of paper weren’t neat and even—they were irregular and off-center.

All of my paper had been exposed.

A package like this cost sixty dollars. With my current weekly allowance of twenty dollars, that meant three weeks of savings down the drain. And three weeks of more saving before I could even afford another package.

Three weeks without developing photos?

I started to feel kind of sick.

I’d told my sister a trillion times not to touch my stuff, not to even go into the darkroom, and she refused to listen.

Kasey was guilty. She had to be.

After a few deep breaths I went to confront my sister. My hands shook as I stalked down the hall and pounded on her door.

Stay calm
, I told myself.
Be mature.

She opened it, blue eyes wide.

“What?” she asked.

I took a long breath through my nose. “Just . . . tell me . . . why.”

“Huh?”

My calm exterior shattered like a lightbulb dropped from a third-floor window. “Why did you do it, Kasey?

What did I do to you? I try
so hard
to be nice to you when nobody else even wants to be your friend, and you—”

Her hands flew up to her cheeks, which flushed pink. “Lexi!” she cried, dismayed.

I took a step back. “
Why
, Kasey?!”

“I didn’t do anything,” she said. “I swear I didn’t. I don’t even know what happened. I heard a noise and then all I remember is having the weirdest dream and then I was at school and they said come to the office because of Dad and I saw all the reports on Ms. Lewin’s desk and later they were in my bag—”

“What?”

Her face fell slack, her jaw hanging slightly open, her breath ragged.

“What are you talking about, Kase?”

She shook her head and stared at the floor.

“I’m talking about my photo paper. Someone ruined it. All of it.”

“It wasn’t me,” she said in a tiny voice.

“But wait—you
stole
those reports from school? I thought you said you were a student grader.”

“No!” she wailed. “I told you, I didn’t . . . I mean, I guess I took them, but I didn’t mean to. I just looked in my bag and found them there.”

“You’re saying someone framed you?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I guess so.”

Knowing how spiteful kids could be, it was a serious possibility. “Did you see anyone near your bag?”

“I don’t know!” she said.

My patience was paper-thin. “Kasey, either you did, or you didn’t.”

“Maybe!” she said. “I mean, I don’t remember. But it had to be someone, right?”

Someone. More like Mimi Laird, or one of her snotty little friends. I didn’t say it out loud, though, because Kasey seemed traumatized enough.

I sighed. “You’re going to have to give them back.”

“I can’t!” she wailed. “I’ll get expelled!”

“Teachers understand mean kids, Kase,” I said. “You just have to do it soon so it doesn’t look any weirder.”

“Will you help me? I’m
tired
,” she said pitifully. “I didn’t sleep very much last night.”

I didn’t point out that she’d just taken a two-hour power nap.

A thought occurred to me. “Yeah, so . . . why were you in the garage this morning?”

Her nose wrinkled. “I wasn’t in the garage.”

“When I saw you in the hall, your socks were dirty—” I began.

“In the hall?” she asked. “I didn’t see you in the hall this morning.”

I stared at her.

“What are you talking about, Lexi? I don’t understand.”

I didn’t understand either. But I did understand that all of these bizarre things were starting to add up and make me feel like I was going crazy. After all, what was that old saying? The common link between all your problems is
you
?

What if I was losing it?

“I’m going for a walk,” I said, going into my room to get my house key.

“Can I come?”

“No!” I said. “I just want to be by myself for a while.”

“No fair,” she whined.

“You just stay here,” I said. “And try to figure out how you’re going to explain to your teacher that you stole everybody’s reports.”

“I
didn’t
!” she yelled. “I didn’t steal anything! Someone put them in my bag!”

Then she ran into her room and slammed the door.

At least she wasn’t insisting on coming.

I went downstairs and out the front door, locking it as I left. Out of guilt, I glanced up at Kasey’s windows to see if she was looking down at me.

She was.

I pulled my eyes away from her and glanced at the oak tree, trying to forget its horrible role in my dream.

That’s when I noticed the lines of the wood, the jagged edges of long-since-removed limbs, the soft overgrowth of bark on several of the scars left behind by pruning or broken branches.

The tree I’d drawn the night before—it was this tree. This exact tree, down to a tuft of grass growing out of a tiny hollow about six feet off the ground.

I had to get out of there. But I could think of only one place to go.

I hurried down the front walk, toward the street.

By the time I reached the school, most of the parking lot was empty. A few stragglers stood by their cars in small groups, talking. A crowd of kids waited miserably at the bus loop for their late bus. At the sight of the brick building, my body tensed, the way it does at 7:58 every weekday morning. But it was better than being surrounded by things that made me feel like I was coming completely undone.

One girl looked at me strangely. When I walked past her, she moved forward like she was going to say something, but her friend touched her arm and they both turned away.

As I passed the gym, a mob of cheerleaders emerged from the band room and went by me, chattering like first graders at a crosswalk. They weren’t wearing uniforms, but their white-ribboned ponytails and packlike formation gave them away.

A couple of them looked at me and whispered, heads bowed together like horses nuzzling.

Megan Wiley was the last to exit. She carried a notebook and studied the papers inside it so intently that she almost walked right into me.

“Sorry,” she muttered, and then looked up. When she saw me, she took an involuntary step backward.

I averted my eyes, waiting for her to make a quick retreat into the gym after her minions, but she didn’t. Instead, when I glanced up, she was looking at me.

“How’s your dad?” she said.

The question was beyond unexpected. “Um, all right.”

“Lydia told everyone you fainted,” she said. With a shudder, she added, “Then she said your dad was probably going to die.”

I rolled my eyes and shook my head. For some reason my mouth felt like it was full of straw. “He’s okay,” I said. “Just broken bones, bruised organs. Limbs, ribs, that kind of thing.”

The conversation could have ended there, but Megan swallowed hard. “I just . . . My mom died in a car accident when I was a baby,” she said. “So I was really worried.”

Wow.

“Wow,” I said. What else could I say? The things you don’t know about people. “I’m sorry.”

“Well, I don’t remember her, so . . .”

“Still,” I said. Yikes.

“I live with my grandmother,” she said, and then her eyes flickered longingly toward the door where all of her friends had gone.

“But thanks for asking,” I said.

“I’m glad she’s okay.”

“No, it was . . .
he
. It was my dad,” I said.

She blushed, her perfect cheeks turning a lovely rose color. “I mean—I knew that, sorry.”

“Well,” I said, wishing for a sinkhole or something to swallow me up.

We stood there, up to our ankles in awkwardness.

“Thanks,” I said at last.

She smiled a tight-lipped smile and ducked into the gym.

Huh.

I stood there for a second. Then without warning the door opened, and Megan stuck her head out.

“If you’re looking for Carter Blume, I saw him talking to Mr. Makely about five minutes ago,” she said.

My expression was apparently so shocked that it was funny, because Megan laughed. It was a short, self-conscious laugh, but it wasn’t mean or anything.

“See you,” she said, and disappeared. This time I hurried away so she couldn’t surprise me again.

Mr. Makely stood outside the library for twenty minutes after school ended every day. I’d probably have him for physics next year. He gave me a strange look as I entered the courtyard, and I got this weird, uncomfortable feeling that everyone thought my dad was dead. It made my heart beat funny for a second just to think about it. Carter wasn’t there, so I headed toward the student parking lot.

When I got there, the first thing I saw was Carter in his car, studying his iPod. I stopped suddenly as it hit me—what was I doing? Why had I run straight to Carter? I hardly even knew him, and here I was, following him around after school like a lovesick loser.

The skin around my jaw and ears felt tight, and my eyes started to burn. I wondered how fast I could get someplace else. Just somewhere he wouldn’t see me as he drove away. I scanned the parking lot and saw only low shrubs and a few cars that were all too far away to dash for.

I had no choice but to stand there and wait for him to notice me. He did a double take, then got out of the car and walked over.

“Hi,” he said, his voice a question.

I looked at him, and the “wanting to crawl under a rock and die” feeling intensified.

“How’s your dad?”

“He’s okay.”

Carter looked at me. “How are
you
?”

Amazing how suddenly there was no easy answer to that question.