Frayed (6 page)

A thrill shot through me.

“Thanks, I guess.” I fiddled with the hem of my dress, then stood up.

I dragged my backpack over to my study desk and began to pull out books, piling them neatly into stacks. “As you can see,” I said, unnerved that he could be so
comfortable
right now, sitting on my bed and plucking on the guitar, “Amanda hasn’t gotten to me. Yet. So you can leave.” I moved over to yank open the blinds, and afternoon sunlight spilled through the windows.

Silence for a moment. And then, “You didn’t go to Kesley’s grave today.”

It wasn’t a question, but I replied anyway. “No, I didn’t.” I paused for a moment, then asked, “Rafe, how did you know I do that?” Had he been following me too? Like Jackson? Though I suspected my mother had asked Jackson to keep an eye on me.

Rafe looked at me. His eyes, sharp and calculating, were narrowed slightly. “You’re not the only one who visits Kesley’s grave,” he said. He didn’t elaborate, but I didn’t need him to. I silently lowered myself onto the bed beside him again, and we let our grief wrap itself around us. Gray and heavy.

The melancholy guitar notes filled the room, and I listened for a few minutes. “I never knew you played the guitar,” I said softly, as if I were unwilling to break the paper-thin atmosphere the music had created.

I wasn’t looking at him, but I heard the grin in his voice. “There are many things you don’t know about me, Ava. Music just happens to be one of them.” He shot a sideways glance at me. “I could teach you if you wanted.”

“Okay then, man of many talents. What else don’t I know about you?”

A flicker of surprise creased his forehead, but it vanished so quickly that I could have imagined it. His face had smoothed back into a blank mask; the moment had already passed. “What do you want to know?” His voice was guarded.

“What exactly did Kesley tell you the night before you came back?” I stared at him, my gaze unflinching.

Rafe ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “I was talking about myself. Not Kesley.”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

“I’ve already told you. She never told me what was going on. She said she needed me to come back to Circling Pines and that the situation had changed. I don’t…I don’t know anything else.”

“But you came back to Circling Pines after she died, right?”

“Yes.”

“Kesley died over a month ago. So what have you been doing all this time? And what did she mean when she said the situation had changed?”

Rafe shrugged. “I worked at the gas station near the highway for a while. Caught up with schoolwork. Enrolled back in high school. And if I knew more about what Kesley said, so would you.” He answered my questions with ease, but he wouldn’t look me in the eye.

What was that supposed to mean? That he was hiding something?

“I don’t know why you’re lying to me, Rafe,” I said flatly.

“I’m not lying to you.”

“Yeah, maybe, but you’re not telling me everything, are you?”

He couldn’t answer my question in good conscience without lying outright, so he said nothing. I said, “You said she was scared when she called you. Not long after, she was killed.” I turned to him, not caring about the tears that shone in my eyes. “I think she
knew
someone was after her.”

Rafe closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, they were glistening.

“That’s the logical explanation, isn’t it?” he said.

And the most horrible. What was so awful that it had stopped her from telling someone, anyone, her fears?

I stared absently out the window. A single star-shaped leaf floated through the air, joining its fellows on the carpet of orange and brown that stretched the length of the street. I felt a little like that. Withered and tired. The light was fading quickly, streaking the sky with dirty ribbons of deep orange and yellow.

A crunch of wheels on gravel brought my attention to the driveway. My heart lurched, and I shot Rafe a panicked look.

“You should go,” I whispered. “My mother’s back.”

“No, I should speak to her.”

“
What?
Rafe, no, that’s really not necessary—” But he’d already leaped from the bed. He glanced in the vanity mirror that hung on my wall and, after attempting to neaten his hair, headed to the door.

“This is a bad idea,” I warned. “And what does it matter what your hair looks like?”

He glanced over his shoulder with a grin. “It’s always nice to make a good first impression on parents,” he said.

I blinked. “You’re not my boyfriend.”

“No, not yet. But the last time I saw your mother was before I left for Vancouver.”
No, not yet?
What was
that
supposed to mean? A curious combination of anger and embarrassment burned inside me. I ducked my head, knowing I was blushing. There wasn’t time to question him further. The slam of the car door echoed down the driveway, and we both left my room.

I’d just poured Rafe a cup of orange juice when the front door opened.

Anxiety made my fingers slip on the glass I handed Rafe. It clattered to the table, but Rafe steadied it by curving his hand over mine. I pulled away more quickly than was probably polite.

What would my mother think of Rafe now? Would she, like me, immediately think the worst of him? But then I wondered: why did I care what my mother thought?

“Sorry I’m late, sweetie,” I heard my mother call from the hallway. “Traffic was awful. They’re doing more construction on the highway, and it slowed down… Oh.” She stepped into the kitchen, eyes falling on Rafe.

“Hi, Mom,” I said rather weakly. What little courage I still had left seemed to drain out of me when I saw the way she was looking at Rafe. Not…hostile exactly. But definitely
not
friendly either.

Rafe stood. “Hi, Mrs. Kingston.”

My mother dropped her bag on the counter and said, “You know to call me Diana. You’ve come back from Vancouver then?”

“Yeah. A few days ago.”

“You missed your best friend’s funeral.”

I was somewhat taken aback by the chilled edge to her voice and the bluntness. “
Mom
,” I hissed. She didn’t even spare me a glance.

Rafe lifted an eyebrow but didn’t say anything, which was smart. If he said the wrong thing around her, especially concerning Kesley, things would not be pretty.

“Sorry,” she said, but it didn’t sound much like an apology.

Rafe shot a glance at me and half smiled at my mother. “I’ll see you at school, yeah?” he said to me. I nodded and watched him leave the kitchen. A moment later, the quiet
click
of the door told me he’d left.

I turned to my mother, eyes narrowed. “That was uncalled for,” I said.

Diana didn’t answer me straight away. Instead, she moved to the fridge, started pulling out vegetables, and reached for a knife on the counter. The blade caught a stream of light coming in from the window, reflecting brilliant, white light.

A blade raised high. Light pouring from the window. A voice: frail, unsure, broken, saying, “Ava. Go. Please, just go!” And then…blackness.

The sound of the knife slamming down on a carrot brought me back.

“I just can’t believe the audacity of that boy. Kesley dies. He doesn’t even bother coming to her funeral—and now he thinks he can just waltz back into your life? Can’t he see you’re
hurting
?”

I stared at her blankly. What was she even talking about? I didn’t remember. I watched the knife slice tip first into another carrot. I waited for it to trigger another…
something
, but the moment never came.

I closed my eyes briefly. The light on the knife reminded me of a recurring nightmare I’d had as a child. In it, I was standing outside a long, dark room with one window, light streaming through, and a knife lying on the counter. I could never pinpoint
what
about the dream terrified me so much, because I would wake before I stepped into the room. I remembered telling the dream to a psychologist I’d had as a child. She’d crossed her legs and said, “It was a dream, Ava. Nothing in a dream can hurt you.”

My rapidly beating heart began to slow, enough for me to pull myself back to the present.

My mother had stopped chopping. “Ava? Are you listening?”

Oh, right. “Yeah.”

“Was he in your room?” she asked suddenly.

I felt my cheeks flame. The best option here, I thought, was to lie. “
No!
No, of course he wasn’t. Why would you think that? And besides, you know I have a boyfriend.”

“Good,” she said. “Jackson’s a nice kid.”

“As opposed to Rafe?”

“Yes, as opposed to Rafe.”

I tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ears, feeling uncomfortable. “That’s not fair, Mom. He was one of Kesley’s closest friends. And mine too.”

My mother spun around, the knife still clutched in her hands. I flinched. “For God’s
sake
, Ava! You
know
what happened. He went completely off the rails when his parents divorced! He beat up his social worker and got sent to juvenile
detention
. You don’t need him hurting you too.”

“He’s
always
been there for Kesley and me,” I whispered.

“Well, she’s dead, isn’t she? Clearly, he wasn’t there enough for her.”

I tried to swallow, but my mouth was dry. “Are you saying you think Rafe was somehow involved with Kesley’s…”

“No.” My mother breathed out a sigh. “I don’t know, Ava. Maybe. All I know for sure is that I’ve been your legal guardian for only ten years, and I’ve already lost one of my daughters. I can’t lose you too.”

I felt tears burn my eyes. I don’t think I’d ever heard her talk like that, with such raw honesty in her voice.

There was no point in pushing the conversation about Rafe further. It would only upset her. So I turned and made my way back to my room, eyes falling on the guitar Rafe had left sitting there. And it wasn’t until then that I realized why the tune he’d been playing sounded so familiar.

It was the guitar version of “Für Elise.”

How long does it take for someone to stop grieving over a death anyway? One year? Two? Three? An entire life? Would the pain ever fade or would it always be there, a constant weight on my shoulders?

Unable to sleep, I watched as the moon sunk below the horizon and the sun rose. I got up early, unable to stand the stillness, the nothingness.

I waited until a half hour before school started and bought roses from the flower store that had just opened for the day. Proper flowers too. You know, the kind you get from those fancy stores where they wrap cellophane around the stems. They were a deep, passionate red—their color was stark against the white gravestone, so bright they were almost painful to look at. Many of the other graves were bare, their stones chipped, their facades peeling away to reveal a sadder, forgotten grave.

I couldn’t bear that happening here.

I lingered near the graves until sunlight broke over the tops of the trees, and I knew it was time to head to school. The cemetery’s wrought iron gates appeared in the mist before me just as a figure stepped out of the shadows to block my path. It was impossible not to recognize the golden-brown curls that framed a gaunt, arrogant face. I staggered back a few paces. My stomach twisted.

“Thought I’d find you here,” Amanda said coldly. Two more figures stepped out from trees that lined the cemetery and stood beside her.

“I see you’ve brought your entourage,” I muttered, acting braver than I felt. Riley’s cropped red hair gleamed in the silvery light of the sun, and she was looking at me as someone might look at a slug. I was pretty sure the other girl’s name was Abbey. Her skin was a deep, flawless brown, and the golden earrings and studs in her ears stood out against the darkness of her skin. Black curls spilled over her shoulders. She was sizing me up, watching me with her sharp, beady eyes. May was nowhere to be seen.

No one spoke.

I stared at my feet, unwilling to make eye contact with any of them, like the coward I am. “I’m sorry, Amanda, about before. I really don’t know what got into me.” I touched my hair, making sure it was covering my face.

“I don’t want your apologies,” she said.

I looked up at her. The angle of the sun cast a deep shadow across her face, but I could still make out the purplish bruise that swelled across her cheekbone and the stitched-up cut from the shattered glass that ran down her other cheek. Again, guilt stabbed at me.
Why
had I acted like that?

“Then go ahead, Amanda,” I said. “Punch me. Knock me out. Whatever it is you want. Just get it over with.”

“Maybe we don’t want that either,” drawled Riley.

“Then what
do
you want?”

A smile eased across Amanda’s face. It stretched her gaunt, pale skin, making her look skeletal. She said, “We want to talk to you about Kesley.”

Kesley?
My mind blanked. Whatever I had been expecting from them, this was
not
it. My stomach twisted into knots.

“I’m going to be late for school,” I said flatly, turning to leave.

I should’ve known better than to turn my back on Amanda. “Who said you have a choice?” I heard her ask. There was a brief moment of silence when I halted, unsure, before the sound of something swished through the air before connecting with the back of my head. Pain lanced through my skull, hot and sharp, before my vision bled into darkness.

• • •

The rumble of an engine woke me.

It growled on and on, shuddering and spluttering as it was pushed to its limits. I tried to breathe, but something constricted my mouth. A gag, I realized. I shifted in my seat, but when I moved my hands and feet, a coarse, rough material chafed against my skin. Rope? A thick, black cloth covered my eyes, obscuring everything but a few flashes of color.
Green, brown, gold. Trees?
Panic engulfed me, the icy sort of fear that tightened my chest, shrouding all reasonable thought.

A throbbing pain centered at the back of my head.

My memories were a little confused, muddled. The last thing I remembered was encountering Amanda and her crew in the graveyard, then pain. How long had I been out? And where were they taking me?

Tears sprung into my eyes as I tried to suppress the panic.

“We’re here,” said a familiar voice. The car—or truck as it sounded—began to slow, groaning to an abrupt halt. “She’s awake. Sweet Jesus, Jackson is going to kill me when he finds out.”

“May, he’s not going to find out,” Amanda said from close by. I’d be a fool if I didn’t hear the threat in her voice. “I’ll make sure of that.”

I struggled against my bonds to no avail. The sound of a truck door echoed, and then, much closer at hand, one opened. Fingers scrabbled at my hands and feet until the bonds loosened. The gag was pulled roughly from my mouth, and as I breathed in gratefully, my nose was filled with the scent of pine needles and sweet, rotting leaves.

I jerked the black cloth from my eyes, the sudden bright light almost painful.

Scrambling out of the truck, I lurched forward, stumbling and crashing down. The reality of the situation took a few seconds of frantic breathing to really sink in. I heard someone snicker, and a hand reached to grab me from the ground. “Let go!” I yelled, and my voice echoed around the clearing.

“No,” snarled Amanda. “We’re not—”

“You’re hurting me. Let go—”

“Amanda,” cut in a new voice. May. “Just leave her alone for a moment, okay? She can’t go anywhere from here. We’re two hours from Circling Pines. She can run, but it’s not like she’d get far.”

Amanda’s grip loosened. I pulled myself away from her, pressing my back to the car in an attempt to get as far away from her as possible. But like May had said, where would I go? I barely registered my shaking hands, the beating of my heart. I forced in a deep breath and looked around me.

Golden trees stood proudly, leaves fluttering to the ground. And right there, nestled deep in the trees, was a wooden cabin with a thatched roof. Under any other circumstance, it would have looked cute. “Welcome to our humble abode,” Amanda said dryly.

This was where they hung out? I looked at the four girls.

Amanda regarded me coolly, the barest hint of amusement glittering in her eyes. May stood more toward the truck, looking at me warily. Abbey and Riley stood beside each other, gazes fixed on me as though they were daring me to run.

My hand flexed into a fist, nails biting into my palm.

I spoke, my voice scratchy with fear. “You told me you wanted to talk. So talk.”

Amanda offered a smile that didn’t touch her eyes. They remained as hard as the stones that littered the ground beneath her feet.

“Looks like you were right, May. She’s not gonna run.” She jerked her head to the cabin resting between the trees. “We’ll talk in there, all right?”

I nodded, reluctantly following her through the trees. A minute later, Amanda had locked all five of us in the cabin. I didn’t like this. Not one bit. I felt too trapped, suffocated.

The cabin looked no larger from the inside. It was empty except for a desk pushed up against the wall, one chair, and a wastebasket in the corner filled with candy wrappers and cigarette packs. As if on cue, Abbey pulled something from her pocket and a hissing sound rent the air as she lit her cigarette and took a drag.

May wrinkled her nose. She looked pointedly at Abbey. “In here? Gross.”

She moved to one of the windows and yanked it open. A rush of cool air swept in, but the sharp, stale scent of smoke lingered. My stomach clenched.

Riley snatched the cigarettes from Abbey’s grip and lit one herself, her amber eyes and cropped hair gleaming in the sudden flare of the lighter. She saw me looking and said, “Want one?”

I shook my head.

Amanda yanked the pack from Riley, rolling her eyes and taking out a cigarette. “We are
so
not wasting these on her,” she said as though I wasn’t standing beside her. “They were such a bitch to get this time around.”

Amanda puffed a cloud of smoke into my face, and I recoiled.

“That’ll kill you one day, you know,” I told her daringly.

She just laughed. “Yeah, I know that, genius. But you never know. I could be dead tomorrow morning anyway. Could be choked to death and thrown into a lake in the middle of fucking nowhere. I’m not worried about this.”

“That’s not funny,” I hissed, anger licking at my insides, hot and ready to spill over. Amanda just shrugged. She flicked ash from the cigarette into the air, a trail of coiling smoke drifting through the cabin. She arched a brow at me as if she couldn’t understand why I was getting so worked up. She turned to Riley and said, “Go on then. Tell her.”

“Amanda, I’m not so sure this is a good idea…” It was May who’d spoken. I’d almost forgotten she was here. She’d just melted into the shadows, letting the others take over. Vulnerability and uncertainty pinched her features.

Amanda rounded on her, eyes glinting. “You got a better one?”

I flinched at the harshness of her voice. I expected May to recoil like I would have, but instead, she held her ground. She was tougher than me. Her forest-green eyes sharpened as she stared Amanda down. Jackson and May both had the same determination, I thought as I watched the two girls, and I almost felt a smile curve at my lips.

Almost.

But then I remembered I was supposed to be at school right now. And what was everyone going to think when they found me missing? It wasn’t like me to cut school or do anything outside the rules. At least, up until last week.

Finally, May relented. She graced Amanda with a tight nod—a sign of begrudging acceptance—before turning her back to the others in rebellion.

Amanda turned to Riley, who was now appraising me with an expression that told me she wasn’t sure how I was going to react. Confusion knotted in my stomach, and I swallowed. What did they want to tell me?

Riley took another drag from her cigarette. “We want to figure out who killed Kesley,” she said simply. I stared at her a few moments, taken aback.

“Why would you care?” I said. “She was my sister, not yours.”

Abbey spoke up from the shadows. It was the first time she’d spoken since entering the cabin. “She was as much our sister as yours,” she said softly, and the sincerity, the honesty in her voice frightened me.

“No,” I said, now panicked, “she wasn’t.”

Riley’s mouth curled into a scowl. “We’re willing to help you, Ava, and you’re going to turn down that opportunity? Amanda was right. You’re stupider than you look.” I shot Amanda a vicious look full of daggers.

She just shrugged.

I said, “Give me
one
good reason why you’d want to help me. You’re nothing but trouble. Kesley would never have wasted her time with you.”

From the shadows, Abbey laughed, a cigarette still dangling from her lips. Her eyes had a wicked edge to them.

“Honey,” said Amanda from beside me, “your sister was nothing
but
trouble. We had more in common than you probably think.”

She’s lying. That’s what she does
, said a small part of my mind.

The other part wasn’t so sure.

“What do you mean?” I said. “She wasn’t… She never would have—”

“Haven’t you worked it out yet?” Amanda said, her voice harsh. When I just shook my head, she continued. “Kesley, K. Me, Amanda, A. Riley, R. May, M, and Abbey, A.”

A terrible silence filled the cabin.

What she was telling me took a long time to reach my brain. At first, I thought I’d misheard her. Because I had to have, right? Everything I’d known—or
thought
I’d known—was turned on its head.

Each letter spelled out a member of their group.

K for Kesley.

Kesley.

She was part of their group.

She’d lied to me. Lied, lied, lied, lied. And her lies were beginning to stack up with each passing day. Wasn’t it ironic that the people standing in front of me right now were more honest than she’d ever been? I felt cheated, betrayed by her decision to confide in
them
but not me.

Liar, liar, blond hair on fire.

Dimly, I was aware of everyone staring at me, but I was too far away, locked in my own mind, to pay them much heed.

“Do you think she’s going to pass out?” a voice whispered. May?

With a ragged, harsh breath, I drew myself back to the present and forced myself to act, to be strong. “Tell me everything,” I said, surprising myself at how steady my voice had become with the pain still raging inside me.

Surprisingly, it was May who answered my demand.

“She started the group in our second year of high school, I think. She found us one by one, looking for people…like her, I guess.”

“Like
her
?” I said, incredulous. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

May just shrugged, saying, “Rebels. People who don’t care whether they break the rules. People who needed to let loose.”

“She found me first,” Amanda butted in. She tossed her hair over her shoulder, seemingly proud of this fact.

I narrowed my eyes. “She
found you
?”

“I had problems
way
before Kesley came along, sweetie. She just…heightened them. She wanted to form a group of people who were…”

“Troublemakers,” I said through gritted teeth.

The ghost of a smile flickered across Amanda’s face. “Call us what you will, hon. But compared to Kesley, we’re nothing.”

Another blow. I forced myself to say, “She was nothing like you.”

“No,” said Amanda softly, “you’re right. She was worse. Way worse. You don’t get it, do you? Everything we did,
she did
—we took the blame for it.” She took a step forward, and it felt menacing. “And you wanna know why? Because
she
didn’t want her perfect, golden reputation tarnished.”

“No, she didn’t. You’re lying. You have to be.”

Amanda’s heated gaze flared with sudden hate. “God, Ava, don’t be so
blind
! Your sister was a stinking, cowardly, pathetic excuse for a human being! She didn’t
care
about any of us. She used us as a distraction, nothing more.”