It feels like all the air has been sucked out of the room. Out of me. The second bell rings and Mrs. Barnes’s voice comes over the loudspeaker, asking us to stand for the pledge of allegiance.
Anything he says about what? I reply.
“Monica,” my homeroom teacher snaps. “Put the phone away before I take it away.”
I hide my phone in the hem of my shirt, my fingers trembling around it. When I sit back down, I steal a glance at the screen, at the one-word response.
* * *
—
I check my phone every free moment I get for the rest of the day, but my message—What is everything?—dangles there, unanswered. After last period, my phone vibrates.
I whip my phone out, but the text isn’t from him/her: It’s from Kelsey Butler. She says practice is canceled; Coach’s son is sick.
Rachel texts Alexa and me to tell us she has to stay for extra help in pre-calc, which means I have to take the bus for the first time this year. I don’t even know what number my bus is, and by the time I get it from Mrs. Barnes and run out to the parking lot, the bus has started to pull away.
“Goddamn it.” I run toward the bus, waving my hands. “Hey! Wait!”
The bus slows; the door swings open and I hop on, ignoring the filthy look the driver gives me. She doesn’t wait for me to sit down before hitting the gas; I lurch forward, grabbing ahold of the seat next to me.
There’s someone sitting by the window, but the space next to her is free. I plop down and drop my backpack at my feet. I glance at my seatmate; Ginny Cordero is staring out the window, hands folded on top of the messenger bag on her lap.
I tap her on the shoulder. When she turns her head, she doesn’t look surprised to see me, which makes me think the staring-out-the-window thing was her way of avoiding eye contact and hoping I wouldn’t sit next to her.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hi.” Ginny nods at the backpack wedged between my feet. “Do you need more room? I can move over—”
“No, you’re fine.”
“Cool.” Ginny looks down at her hands. Laces her fingers together more tightly. On her left hand is a scar on the knuckle of her middle finger, small as a grain of rice.
The bus hits a speed bump, and we lurch forward. At the back of the bus, two guys are shouting out the window; the driver yells at them to sit their asses down or she’s pulling over.
“It’s nice to have a day off from practice,” I say to Ginny, when I can’t stand the awkward silence between us any longer.
She comes alive a bit at my mention of dance team. “Yeah, it was lucky for me. I forgot my uniform money.”
I don’t tell her that lucky is an understatement. “You’re really good. How come you didn’t try out sooner?”
“I did,” Ginny says. “When we were freshmen. I didn’t make it.”
I don’t even remember Ginny being there. “You used to do gymnastics, didn’t you?”
Ginny nods. “Yeah.”
“Why did you stop?” I ask.
“My dad— My parents separated and my mom couldn’t afford it anymore. The travel teams are expensive….” Ginny’s cheeks go pink, and I hate that I made her feel like she has to talk about this.
“Anyway,” she says. “I have dance team now.”
She’s wearing the same expression she had when she saw me leaving Brandon’s office. Does she think I’m being nice to her as an intimidation tactic to keep her quiet?
I swallow. “Yesterday, in the cross-country coach’s office…that wasn’t—”
Her voice is gentle as she cuts me off. “You don’t have to tell me. It’s none of my business.”
I know it’s different with her than with my friends, and it’s not fair to compare them. But for once, I’m thankful not to be hounded.
The bus driver slows to a stop at the intersection of Lennox and Wilson Streets.
“This is me,” Ginny says quietly. I move to let her get out.
She catches my eye as the bus is pulling away. Holds up a hand and smiles.
* * *
—
My mother’s car is in the driveway. Twice a week, she leaves work at noon. I head down the hall, stopping short of her office door, which is open. She’s facing the other direction, leaning back in her chair, turning a pen over in one hand. A man’s voice emits from the speaker on the phone cradle on her desk.
“I just don’t think we have the budget for that,” my mother interrupts him.
I tiptoe past her door and up the stairs. Once in my room, I deposit my backpack on my bed and sink into my desk chair, digging my phone out of my pocket. I reread the last messages the unknown number sent to me.
I don’t know what everything means, so I decide the most logical place to start is with the murders. Since I found those letters in Tom’s drawer, I’ve already discovered one detail that contradicts the story I’ve accepted all these years:
Jack Canning never pointed a gun at Tom.
All I really know about the murders is what the police say happened, and I never had a reason to doubt what the police say happened.
They say that Jack Canning killed Susan and Juliana. They say he was a predator, that he was obsessed with Susan, that he saw the girls were alone and vulnerable and he pounced. They say the pictures of Susan, taken without her knowledge, only supported their theory.
I blink at the blinding white home page on my laptop. The search bar is accompanied by the message What are you looking for? It feels like a taunt.
There are several Jack Cannings in the world. I refine my search to include only Sunnybrook, NY.
At the top of the page are several hits for pictures. Juliana Ruiz, her hair in a high ponytail and silver hoops in her ears. Susan Berry standing next to her, wearing her slightly robotic smile. Her normally pin-straight blond hair is crimped, and she’s wearing pearly pink lipstick. The caption says this photo was taken during Spirit Week, on Time Travel Tuesday. Every grade was assigned a decade; the sophomores got the eighties.
I click through the images, a lump in my throat. More pictures of Juliana and Susan. There’s only one of Jack Canning—a blurry, unsmiling driver’s-license photo. His hair is dirty blond and his glasses take up half his face.
There are no other pictures of Jack Canning, no childhood shots of him snuggling the family dog or showing off a medal at a high school robotics competition. None of the usual pictures of murderers that the news likes to flash as they report that “he seemed so normal!”
I double back to the search results and scroll down. One headline jumps out at me: WHEN DEATH COMES TO TOWN. It’s hosted on the Crunch, a website we all used to dick around on in the library before the school blocked it. Calling the Crunch “news” is generous. It’s mostly garbage quizzes and celebrity gossip; it’s hardly a hub for serious journalism.
Yet, three years ago, someone there decided to write about the Sunnybrook cheerleader deaths.
I glance at my door to make sure it’s shut. Like I’m looking at porn or something. I gnaw on my thumbnail and pull up the article. I skim the profiles of Bethany Steiger and Colleen Coughlin and the horrific details of their car accident. The writer must have spoken to someone in Sunnybrook; their account is eerily accurate, down to the part about the paramedic vomiting at the scene.
The first mention of the murders is several paragraphs down. It starts with the night before homecoming, describing Juliana’s and Susan’s excitement for the following day’s festivities.
My chest grows tighter. The details of the murders read like a horror novel: The killer had draped a bath towel over Susan’s naked body. I skip the rest of the description of the crime scene, unsure how much more I can stomach.