“What about the murders?” I ask. “I have him recorded practically confessing.”
“Once they finish up interviewing Ginny about what happened today, someone is going to talk to you again. After that, the DA will want to hear from you.” Tom massages his beard. “I’ve been asked to step aside while they investigate.”
My eyes go prickly. If Brandon is charged with Juliana’s and Susan’s murders, the department will reopen the inquiry into Jack Canning’s death. Tom could lose his job.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “All of this is my fault.”
My mother moves her hand to my knee and squeezes. “Stop it.”
She’s crying and I’m crying, and soon Tom is crying and wrapping his arms around both of us and we’re all crying.
“What if Jen knew it was him?” I manage to choke out. “What if she knew and he found out and he made it look like she did it herself—”
“Monica.” My mom tightens her grip on me. “She left a note. Jen left a note. She mentioned you. She wanted you to see California for her—”
“Stop,” I say. “Please stop.”
“Honey, no. You have to understand.”
I’m sobbing too hard to get out what I want to tell her: I’ll never understand.
* * *
—
I wake in my bed to my mother’s hand on my forehead and sunlight assaulting my eyelids. “Ginny’s here, if you want to see her.”
I sit up. “What time is it?”
“Almost ten. I wanted to let you sleep. Do you want me to send her up?”
My head is throbbing. “No. I’ll come downstairs.”
Ginny is on my living room couch. She cranes her neck. Stands when she sees me.
I wave a hand. “Sit, sit.”
Ginny lowers herself onto the couch and I plop down next to her. “God, this hurts so bad.”
“Your neck?”
That, and everything else. “Yeah.”
“I just wanted you to know—I didn’t tell the police anything,” she says. “Well, obviously I told them stuff. But not the last part of yesterday.”
“Thanks. But you don’t have to lie for me anymore.” I pinch the bridge of my nose until I see white. “Everyone’s going to find out about Brandon and me. My life is pretty much over anyway.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.” Ginny’s voice is soft. “He used you, like he used Juliana.”
“I used him. I was tired of being numb and I wanted to prove to myself I could feel something.”
Ginny is quiet for a moment. Then: “Did you?”
“I do now.”
I don’t realize I’m crying until Ginny throws her arms around me.
* * *
—
Tom said to expect the murder case to move slowly. When the news breaks Brandon is being charged with statutory rape and assault, there’s no mention in the news of Juliana’s and Susan’s murders.
There’s no mention of Brandon Michaelson’s unnamed victim, but everyone at school knows it’s me.
I’m not sure who figured it out, but it doesn’t take a detective to put everything together. My two-day absence starting the morning that Brandon was fired from Sunnybrook High, rumors already swirling that he’d been arrested.
Rachel and Alexa are the only ones I’ve told outside of Ginny and my family. They shield me on the way inside the school building; when the news broke last night, my mother said I could stay home today, but there’s something I’ve been meaning to do.
Instead of nasty looks and a scarlet letter painted on my locker, I arrive to sympathetic smiles. I suspect Rach and Alexa did damage control.
I am a victim, whether or not I feel like one. Maybe one day I will wake up crushed under the weight of what Brandon did to me. For now all I feel is the memory of that baseball bat hitting his body and my foot in his ribs.
At the end of the day, before dance team practice starts, I find Coach in the athletic office, filling out registration forms for the upcoming competition. She looks up at me; she doesn’t seem surprised to see that I’m not dressed in my dance clothes.
“I quit,” I say. “I should have done it sooner. But you have a week before regionals to rework the spots.”
Coach works the top of her pen with her thumb, giving it a click. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
I couldn’t eat the morning after dance team tryouts freshman year. I tried to strike a deal with God: If I make the team, I promise I’ll be nicer to Mom and Petey and give all my Christmas money to the animal shelter. I’d never wanted anything so badly.
Freshman-year Monica would want to punch me in the face.
“Yes,” I tell Coach.
She blinks at me, the ghost of a smile on her lips, before going back to her paperwork. “You’re all right, Rayburn.”
I don’t know which way she means it. But when I leave her office, I feel lighter than I did when I stepped inside.
* * *
—
I catch the three-thirty bus home from school. The days are getting shorter. It feels strange, being home before dark. As I climb the driveway, I see my mother’s silhouette in the window, hanging a strand of orange holiday lights. The outside of the house looks different too; she’s stretched cotton cobwebs over the bushes, and a skeleton in a top hat hangs off the hook on the front door.
When the door clicks shut behind me, Mango starts barking. My mom pops her head into the foyer, the tangle of Halloween lights in hand. “You’re home.”
“I quit dance team.”
She comes to my side, draping an arm around my shoulder and pulling me in for a hug. I’m almost as tall as she is now. I let her squeeze me for a solid minute before putting my hands on her shoulders and gently pushing her away. “Do you need help with the lights?”
After the lights are strung, I head up to my room and shrug out of my jeans, replacing them with pajama pants. I plop into my desk chair and open up my email, bracing for anonymous hate messages about what a life-ruining slut I am.
I only have one message, and it’s from Daphne Furman. My heartbeat skips; there’s no way she knows that I’m the Sunnybrook High victim. There was no mention of Brandon’s connection to the cheerleader murders in the media—
The gears in my head grind to a halt when I see the subject line.
Phil Cordero.
I pull my feet onto my desk chair and tuck them under me.
Hi Monica—
My contact had a tough time with this one. He couldn’t find any record of employment, taxes, or incarceration for Phil Cordero in the last five years.
Four years ago, his wife filed a request to have him declared dead, but it looks like the judge denied it. The record shows that Phil’s wife posted a five-thousand-dollar bail for a previous DUI charge he was set to appear for before he disappeared (unrelated to the domestic violence charge—this guy seems like a real winner). If a defendant dies before a case goes to trial and bail is paid in cash, whoever posted the bail can get the money back. It’s pretty difficult to provide proof of death without a body or evidence that a person met foul play.
Anyway, the motion to have Phil declared dead states that the last time his wife saw him was the morning of October 27. Several other people saw him at a bar that evening. I’m sure you’ve realized that this means Phil Cordero was last seen a full week before the murders.
I’m sorry—I know you were hoping this would turn into a viable lead. I’ll admit that I was too. My guess? Phil Cordero was facing upward of fifteen years in prison for the domestic violence charges and the DUI and fled. Wherever he’s hiding, he’s doing a good job of it. Probably shacked up with some poor woman who has no idea what he did.
Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.
Best,
Daphne
I read it again to make sure I have it right. Ginny said her father left on October 18, a full three days before this report says he was last seen.
Either Ginny has the date her dad went missing wrong, or she lied about it.
Ginny’s father was last seen the night of Bethany and Colleen’s accident.
* * *
—