Hanging by a Thread (20 page)

My mom’s mouth dropped open and some of the anger faded into fear. And suddenly I realized that I was doing exactly the same thing my mother had done to Nana—threatening her with pushing her out of my life, just to get my way.

“Mom,” I whispered, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“No.” Her voice wavered, and she pushed away tears. “Don’t.”

Then she got up and went into the house, leaving me to stare out at the best view in town.

Alone.

In a few hours, we were being civil to each other. She didn’t mention the application again, and neither did I. I volunteered to go and get takeout and Mom offered me the car without even being asked.

At the Chinese place we both liked, I was waiting for my order, reading a newspaper that someone had left on a chair, when Victoria came in with Jenna Liu and a middle-aged woman I assumed was her mother.

“Clare!” Victoria said, hugging me. “Mom, this is Clare Knight. You know, who moved back into the haunted house?”

“Oh, honey, don’t call it that,” Mrs. Abelson said, blushing.

“Welcome back to town, Clare. Are you getting settled in all right?”

“Yes, thank you.” I’d gotten used to people’s reactions, and was finding that it bothered me less as time went on. Eventually everyone would figure out that my mom and I weren’t ghost hunters or cult members or whatever impression they’d all gotten of us. “We’re still existing on takeout, but otherwise we’re mostly moved in.”

“I’ll have to give your mother a call. See if she’d like to join my hiking group. Does she like to hike?”

“Uh, yes,” I lied, making a note to suggest to my mom that she invest in a pair of hiking boots. Maybe this would be a way to get her out of the house.

Mrs. Abelson went to place their order while Victoria and Jenna stayed with me.

“Are you coming to Kane’s serial killer party?” Victoria asked. “His folks are out of town.”

“Hush, Vic,” Jenna said. “If your mom hears that, she’ll never let you go. Everyone’s saying they’re coming to my house,” she added. “I live a few doors down so you can park there and walk over.”

“You can dress as your favorite killer in history,” Victoria said.

“Only the guys are doing that, though,” Jenna said. “I think it’s disgusting. And tacky.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“Listen, have you talked to Rachel today?” Victoria asked me. “I’m worried about her.”

“Um, yeah, actually, I went to see her,” I said, wondering how much to say. “She seemed a lot better today.”

“Good. She really needs to tone it down before the elections,” Jenna said. “I mean,
I’m
voting for her, but not everyone’s as open-minded.”

“What she means is not every Gold Key girl is willing to slum with the likes of me,” Victoria said cheerfully.

“Sure, you can joke about it,” Jenna said, rolling her eyes. “Your parents didn’t grow up here so they’re not on your case all the time.”

“Was your mom a member too?” I asked her. It was impossible not to notice that most of the members belonged to Rachel’s group, the most popular kids in school. The ones who set the trends, excelled in sports, had all the leadership positions. I could see where that would be important to a certain type of parent.

“Yeah, she’s insane. I told her if she doesn’t ease up on me I’m going to have a breakdown like Rachel did and end up hospitalized.”

“What?” I blinked in surprise.

“She didn’t tell you? Freshman year, she was gone for a couple of weeks. She was in this inpatient thing at the hospital. She had some sort of anxiety attack. I mean, she’s all better now.”

“Oh. That. Sure.” It was weird, but as I kept finding out things Rachel had hidden from me, I found that I wanted to protect her almost as much as I wanted to ask her what the hell she was thinking. But I was damn sure
going to find out what was going on. “Is she going to be at Kane’s?”

“I’m sure she will,” Victoria said. “Rachel never misses a party.”

Mom and I ate in front of the television, and she fell asleep during a
CSI
rerun. But I hadn’t been paying attention to the show. I’d been thinking about Rachel, and all her increasingly crazy behavior. Did she really think she was in danger? Or was she the one who was a danger herself? Did her breakdown freshman year signal some sort of ongoing mental instability? Was she
crazy
? Could she really be capable of hurting Amanda—over something as minor as membership in an exclusive club?

I checked on my mother. Still asleep, making a gentle sound on the exhale that wasn’t quite a snore, full of weariness. I was still angry about what had happened earlier, but that wasn’t an argument we could resolve in a day.

I left a note—“Went to Rachel’s”—but I knew if Mom woke up she wasn’t likely to check on me; she’d just go to bed.

Jenna had given me directions to Kane’s house. I took my bike, and it was an uphill ride, as it was every time I went to visit the rich part of Winston. His house was well lit and there were cars parked all around the cul-de-sac, so I parked my bike behind a tall flowering arbor.

The front door was open so I went on in, recognizing
many of the kids who were standing around the living room drinking from red plastic cups. There had to be thirty kids in the living room and kitchen alone, and I could see that the back door was open, leading out to more people in the backyard standing around the pool. Someone had dragged a keg into the back and there was a table set up with bottles. It looked like a lot of people were already drunk.

I heard shouting from the yard, and people crowded the kitchen, trying to get out the back door to see what was going on. I let the crowd carry me to the back, keeping an eye out for Rachel. Everyone was standing around two guys on the grass. Great—another fight, except this didn’t look like the usual joking-around brawling that the guys were always getting into on the beach.

It was semi-dark, the only light coming from the landscape lighting and party lights around the patio, so it took me a minute to figure out that the guy who was lunging and throwing drunken punches was Luke. He was wearing a sweatshirt I recognized, a dark smear of something along the sleeve.

“I’ll say it again!” he yelled, swinging wildly. “I’ll say anything I want!” The other guy blocked the hit with his forearm and stepped out of the way as Luke crashed down again onto the ground.

“Hey, hey, cut that shit out,” someone said, pushing the standing fighter out of the way. He held up his hands and stepped back, and as the glow of a light hanging from a tree crossed his face, I recognized him.

Jack
. It was Jack who’d managed to send Luke down
without even hitting him. Luke was crawling toward him, struggling to get up.

Jack said something quietly enough that I didn’t hear it. A few paces away, Kane clapped a hand to his forehead. “My folks are going to kill me if anything happens.”

“I’ll go,” Jack said, a little louder.

No one argued with him. They just stood aside so he could leave. He stalked toward the house and at the last minute I stepped out in front of him.

“Clare,” he said, sounding surprised. “What are you doing here?”

“I was
invited
,” I said. “What about you?”

“Ask your friends,” he said bitterly, and pushed past me. “I’m sure they’ll tell you. I’m nothing but trouble, remember? And they’re all innocent.”

“Jack, wait. Please.”

But he didn’t, and I could hear the front door slam behind him. I thought about following, but there were people watching, and I didn’t want to start more rumors. Besides, I hadn’t found Rachel yet.

“I’ll find you!” Luke bellowed after Jack as he staggered to his feet. “You better run!”

It was clear to everyone that he’d lost the fight, but he kept yelling for a few minutes until Kane and some of the other guys dragged him off. Nothing had been damaged, at least; they’d been fighting in the middle of the lawn.

“Did you see all that?”

I turned, startled, to find Rachel standing next to me. She was wearing jeans and a sweater, neither of them tight
or even particularly well-fitting. And she had barely any makeup on.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey yourself.” She looked embarrassed. “You want to come sit by the hot tub with me? I got you a Coke.”

She held up two cans that hadn’t been opened yet. She didn’t seem the least bit drunk, and I followed her around the corner of the house to a small landscaped hot tub at the end of the larger pool. No one else was there, and we rolled up our jeans and put our feet in the water.

“So, your boyfriend was defending your honor,” Rachel said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Jack. Luke said something to him. Don’t worry, everyone knows you turned him down, but the story he’s telling is … uh, a little different.”

“Wait. Let me get this straight. Luke’s saying I—”

“Gave him something to remember,” Rachel said, giving me a leer. “But he said it to the wrong guy. One minute they’re over by the keg and the next minute Jack hit him so hard he rolled into the yard. Came up fighting, though, I’ll give him that much. And Jack only took the one swing. After that he stood there and took it. Let Luke come after him, but he was drunk enough I don’t think he did much damage.”

“Oh, no,” I said. Luke had clearly not been happy when I turned him down the other night, but it was hard for me to accept that he’d been talking about me … that way. I felt sick to my stomach just thinking about what people were hearing, people I barely knew.

But Jack had defended me. With his fists, without thinking. Without even hesitating.

I’m nothing but trouble, remember?

It was the same impulsive anger I’d seen in the truck, the same white-hot reaction that quickly cooled and gave way to reason. But a lot could happen quickly.

“Listen, I … want to apologize,” Rachel said. “For, you know. Before. I haven’t told you everything. I just—I want you to know it doesn’t have anything to do with you. The thing is, Cee-Cee, sometimes I feel like you’re the only person I can talk to. The only person who hasn’t already judged me. I want to show you something.”

She dug in her pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She smoothed it out on her knee, and I could see it was a lined page from a spiral notebook. In block letters written with a Sharpie, it said, “YOU’RE NEXT.”

“It was on my windshield when I came out of the yogurt shop the other day,” she said quietly. “Right on Beach in the middle of the afternoon. I think Mr. Granger put it there.”

“How can you say that, Rachel? It could be anyone.” I picked up the paper, turning it over; the back side was blank. “It could be kids playing a joke.”

“No. Listen. What if he did it? What if the thing with Dillon was like an accident? I mean, everyone’s seen Mr. Granger get completely out of control. He could have hit Dillon too hard, once too often. Completely without meaning to. And then he’d have to get rid of the body, right? It could have been him that put it over the cliff. He could have thrown the bike over too, and then called from the
truck stop. Because he would have been out of his mind with grief, right, and he’d want them to find the body so Dillon could be properly buried and all. But the whole time he couldn’t let them know what happened or he’d go to jail.”

“Rachel, that’s—that’s insane.” But I was remembering the way Mr. Granger looked, the expression on his face as he looked out over the crowd yesterday. Was he capable of something so cold? “Besides, why would he kill Amanda?”

Rachel shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe it isn’t even related. Or maybe she figured it out, so he had to get rid of her. Or maybe it set off something in him, and he can’t stop.…”

“That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“Well, what about this?” she said, taking the piece of paper back from me and holding it up. “This doesn’t make a lot of sense either, but it was there. Under my windshield.”

“It could have been something completely different. It might have had nothing to do with those murders. It could have been anything,” I said, thinking it could have even been Rachel who wrote the note, if she was as unbalanced as I was beginning to think. Maybe it was even an attempt to get attention. Maybe she was on the verge of another breakdown.