Second Verse (7 page)

“I don’t snore!”

He smiles and pulls out my desk chair, falling into it with a shake of his head. His guitar, which I now notice leaning against the side of my desk, clangs with the movement. “Believe whatever you want.”

“Whatever, stalker. Who sneaks into someone’s room like that?”

“Your mom let me in. I didn’t know you were sleeping.”

“Hello, I thought I was snoring?”

He rolls his eyes. “Whatever. You
did
know I was coming over. And I believe this makes the second time I’m here that you’re lying around while I do all the work.”

My mouth drops open, and I shoot him my best
how dare you
glare. Smirking, he leans back in my chair, the desk lamp throwing
dim light across him like a well-lit museum artifact. I can’t take my eyes off him: bright eyes, hair hanging just right, jeans worn-in but clean. My stomach stirs and I wonder how awful I look in comparison.

“Fine. Fair enough.” I nod to the paper. “So what was in this magical note you were writing?”

He shrugs and folds it, tucking it into his pocket.

I reach for it, and swing my feet to the floor. The headache hammers my brain, the dizziness almost taking me down. I grab the edge of my desk.

“Whoa,” he says, resting his hands on my shoulders to steady me. His eyes soften, deep brown melting. “You all right?”

I shrug away and stretch to look at my reflection. I am a certified mess, hair sticking out, clothes wrinkled, not an ounce of makeup. I wince, trying to smooth my runaway hair down.

“Hey don’t do that. You look cute all disheveled and messy.”

I throw a glare over my shoulder and narrow my eyes. “Sure, pick on the sick girl.”

Cute
.

“Although…” He kicks at my rug, mischief in his eyes.

“What?” I pull my brush through my hair.

“Well, I was just thinking about that sweater you had on the other day.
That
was hot.”

I look down at my yoga pants and tee shirt and laugh sarcastically. “Oh, and what’s this? Not fancy enough?” My voice wavers as I try and play off the fact that Vaughn just outright called me hot
and
remembered what I’d been wearing days ago.

He shrugs playfully, meeting my gaze in the mirror. “Who
were
you dressed up for, anyway? You never did say.”

I grab a balled up pair of socks from my dresser and throw them at him. He ducks as they bounce off the desk.

“Fine don’t tell me.”

I roll my eyes, and put on my best haughty voice. “If you came over just to insult me, you can see yourself out.”

“Fat chance,” he says. “I wanted to show you this stuff.” He nods to his backpack. “Not that hanging out with you is such a horrible Saturday night, either.”

Doing my best to ignore his compliment, I frown at his bag, filled to the brim with what looks like tons of information.

“That looks like a lot of stuff,” I say as he starts to pull stacks of pages out. “Maybe too much.”

“Oh I almost forgot,” he says, digging in his bag. “I have something for you.”

My chest flutters as he searches, his tight grin widening when he pulls out a book and hands it to me.

“They were having a flea market at the library. Books and crafts and stuff. Anyway, it’s about famous portrait artists. Their lives and inspirations and stuff. I know portraits are kinda your thing, so—”

“Wow, this is amazing.” I open the cover, my finger tracing the table of contents. Some of my favorites: Arcimboldo, Gericault, Raphael. Even Sargent and Velazquez and Van Eyck. And of course Rembrandt and Da Vinci. I flip through the pages, skimming as I jump from one artist to the other.

“So you like it?”

“I love it!” I say, closing the cover as emotion wells in me. “Seriously, it’s really sweet of you.”

“Well you’re always drawing people so I figured you’d like reading about all those old dead guys who were supposedly the best at it.” His cheeks pinken, his eyes still on the book.

Dead guys. Ugh.

I sigh, my mind instantly flashing to my vision.

“What’s wrong? Is it the book? Did it—”

“No, no. The book is great. It’s just … Something happened … before. I don’t know. I was in the attic with my mom and I just felt weird.” I wave my hand. “Forget it. It’s stupid.”

“Wait, what happened?” He’s beside me now.

“I don’t really know. It was weird.”

“Was it the voice again?”

With my eyes closed, I shake my head.

Find Me
.

“Come on, what?” He rests his hand on my thigh and the warmth of him reminds me of how close he was in the vision.

“It was you,” I say slowly. “But different. Not totally you. I don’t know. Maybe it was more of a daydream?” I pull at a thread that’s come loose from the band of my shirt.

He stares at the ceiling as if the answers are hidden in the ripples of plaster. He shakes his head. “This shit it getting weirder by the minute.”

“Anyway,” I say, waving to his backpack. “Let’s see what you were all riled up about.”

He leans forward for the stack of pages, but he stops halfway, reaching out to tuck my hair behind my ear. His fingers linger just beneath my earlobe, trailing along my cheek before dropping again. His eyes never leave mine.

The spell is broken when he looks away. He scoots back on my bed until he sits against the wall, pulling his bag with him. He gives me one of his sideways, totally-Vaughn grins and holds up his hands. In one is a package of Twinkies and in the other, a stack of computer printouts.

“All right, Langston Hughes,” he says. “Let’s get started.”

It turns out Vaughn did some serious research. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t impressed. I’ve always known he was dedicated. He’s smart and he works his ass off with his music. But I didn’t expect him to pull half the town’s history out of his bag.

“A lot of them tell the same basic story,” he says. “But I printed everything I could find.”

First, there’s tons of archived newspaper articles with their various accounts of the murders. I don’t want to read them all. The little bit I read at the library had been damaging enough. I can’t stand the thought of living and eating and sleeping in a place where these horrible things happened.

But if we want to get back to a normal life, we have to figure out how it’s all connected and what we’re supposed to do with it.

S
HADY
S
PRINGS
T
IMES

September 1, 1934 – Shady Springs police discovered the bodies of Marie Chopain, 38, Virginia (Ginny) Chopain, 18, Robert Chopain, 17, Helen Chopain, 15, Ruth Chopain, 13 and Margaret (Margie) Chopain, 12 in the Chopain’s Shady Springs home on August 31
.

Police described the crime scene as “horrific,” the victims in various states of mutilation, decapitation and dismemberment
.

“At least a day had passed between when they died and when they were found,” Francis Byrd of the coroner’s office said
.

Police report that Hank Griffin, the man behind the brutal murder of Marie Chopain and her five children, hanged himself after stabbing and mutilating his victims
.

“The acquaintance of the family was found in the barn shortly after the victims were discovered,” Detective Green said and, at this time, the police investigation is conclusive in his involvement in the murders. There was a suicide note at the scene, fully disclosing his guilt
.

Mrs. Chopain lived in Shady Springs her entire life, growing up Marie Miller, daughter of Betty and Clark Miller. She married Joseph Chopain in 1913, and then in 1924, he was killed in a hunting accident
.

W
E READ IN
silence. I sit against my headboard, Vaughn against the wall, legs splayed across my bed. I read account after account
of it, fighting tears and bile with each article. And though very little changes between them, I feel the need to read them all, just in case there’s something we’ve missed.

But what’s the point? What am I looking for?

Sell. Her. Sweeney
.

The words that started it all are nowhere to be found, but I feel like I have to keep going. Have to figure it out. The obsessive way we pore over the documents, and the amount of time Vaughn has obviously spent finding them proves we’re in the same frame of mind.

The articles go on and on. Town papers, state, national sources that ran the story. Near the bottom of the stack, I read one of them twice.

“Did you read this one?”

He stretches across my bed. “Which one?”

“
The New York Examiner
. ‘The Known Killer.’”

“I think so.”

I frown at the article. It talks about how many crimes are perpetrated by people known to the victims. Murders, rapes, robberies. The Chopain murders are mentioned, with the killer Hank Griffin being cited as a “very close friend of the family.” It fascinates and freaks me out on a whole new level. As if a murder wasn’t bad enough, to have it committed by someone you know and trust? It’s totally twisted. What kind of sicko had Hank Griffin been? I let the article fall and close my eyes, picturing him lurking in the hallway, in the barn. Someone they knew, someone they trusted.

I shudder.

“Okay, I’ve had enough.” He drops the last of his papers on the floor and rubs his eyes.

“I know.” I’m drained too. Although I’d known the basic story of the murders, after immersing myself in it for—I look at my clock—more than two hours, I can hardly stand to be in this
room. In this house. It could have been in this very room, where I
sleep
, that someone was murdered. Dismembered. Decapitated.

My breath catches, like it’s stuck in my throat, like I’ll choke right here in my room.

Vaughn slides beside me, cautiously draping his arm across my shoulders. I settle against him, which somehow feels incredibly natural. I rest my face against his Rolling Stones shirt and think about dead Marie and her five murdered children. Even if it makes me selfish, I don’t want to live here, knowing it happened in my house. My mind runs round and round the murder details like demented movie scenes on an endless loop.

I finally force them to stop, noticing the stillness in Vaughn’s breath and the way he brushes my hair back with his fingers, humming quietly in my ear. His heart beats solidly against my cheek.

What am I doing? Stace is my friend. I shouldn’t be doing this.

“Hey,” he finally says, gently rubbing his thumb on my cheek.

When I finally get the nerve to look at him, the clear look on his face gives me chills. It’s not only his expression, but the solemn, calming atmosphere he’s created around us, like a protective bubble.

With the arm he’s wrapped around me, he pulls me closer, the other hand stroking my hair. The sound of our breathing mingles like whispers.

This is where I belong
.

I listen to it for a while. That thought, our breathing. His pulse, so close I can feel it mirroring my own.

But then I mentally slap myself again. This is so wrong.

I sit up, pulling away from him.

He runs a hand down my back and gives me his warmest smile. “You all right?”

“Just overwhelmed I guess.” I straighten the hem of my shirt, then busy my hands with pulling my hair up into a ponytail and letting it drop again. I have to fight the urge to fall back against him. I so don’t want him to leave.

“I’m sorry for all this.” He nods to the articles and books on the floor, but I wonder if that’s all he’s apologizing for. When he gets up, he stretches, the line of his body lengthening to expose a sliver of his stomach and the smooth, tight muscles that flex with the lift of his arms.

I look away.

When he starts shoving papers in his bag, I notice the corner of a photograph sticking out from under the pile.

“What’s that?” Instinctively, I reach for it.

He backs away, pulling the bag with him.

“Come on, what is it?”

“Fine. But don’t freak.”

“What?” I say in a sharper voice than I mean to. “Just show me.”

But when he pulls out the photo I gasp.

“It says 1934,” he says. “Looks like a senior picture. I’m thinking it’s the oldest girl. Virginia. Ginny.”

I’m aware of his voice, but his words barely register.

The girl in the photo has brown hair, swept up in a loose bun. Her dress is modest with the neckline covering her collarbone, but fitted enough to highlight her slight frame, her bony shoulders. She smiles knowingly at the camera, a crooked smile beneath a thin, sloping nose, the white line of her teeth just visible.

“Lange?”

But his voice seems far away.

My blood is ice. My mind flashes again, as if racing through photo negatives. I don’t need to, but I can’t help it; I reach for my sketchpad. I lay my drawing on my desk and place the photo beside it, studying the expression on the second girl in my drawing,
the taller one with her younger self inside. The same face stares back at me, the expressions nearly identical. It’s as if I’d drawn her from this picture.

I look at the girl in the photograph.
Who are you? Why did I draw you?

Another flash in my mind. I blink, the picture wavering in my vision, bright red splatters across the girl’s face.

Warmth runs down my scalp. Blood. I shriek, falling backwards, leaning against the desk chair, barely noticing Vaughn there, holding my elbow. Warm stickiness drips down my neck and back, pools in the front of my bra. I focus on the way it moves on my skin, like leeches, sliding, as I look at the photo, her smile gone now, replaced by a scream, the camera catching her eyes wide with terror, mouth agape.

Help me
. Her voice hisses, surrounding me in a tornado of horror. I shiver, covering my eyes until it stops.

“Lange?” Vaughn says softly.

Still shaking, my fingers creep through my hair, touch my back and chest. Dry.

In the photo, Ginny is smiling again.

And it’s then that I know, no matter how painful it is, I can’t give up the search. The girl in the photo is begging me not to.

O
NCE
V
AUGHN LEAVES
, with a promise to call later to make sure I’m okay, I scoop up a pile of scrap paper and some pencils. Sitting against my wall, I start to draw. They’re nothing but doodles, shapes and lines that bend and curve into each other. But with each stroke, my mind begins to unravel.