Twisted by Hannah Jayne(40)
“These people are depraved, Bex. These men and women are sick.”
Women?
That struck the black part deep within Bex’s soul that didn’t question whether or not her father was guilty. It scratched like a clawed hand, fingernails dragging through wood, piercing the back of her neck, whispering with hot, moist breath. It’s him. It’s you. His depravity, his sickness, his narcissism, his need to do this runs in your own veins…
She had seen a movie about a female serial killer once, watching it huddled under the covers while her gran slept in her chair. But it was just a movie, and the killer was a big Hollywood star who had gained a couple of pounds and wore fake teeth to look evil and ugly. She said her lines like a Hollywood starlet would, and they used computer-generated images to show a couple of murder scenes. Two weeks later, that actress was on every television station in fabulous dresses and diamond-dripping chandelier earrings because it had only been a story. The thrum of death that coursed through Bex’s veins couldn’t be shed like the teeth and a couple of extra pounds. Bex’s ugly was in her blood.
But if Schuster was wrong…
If Schuster was wrong and her father was innocent—the word stung more than it should have, an aching reminder of what she did—then he wouldn’t be on the sites at all, would he? Bex tried to quell her guilt, tried to remind herself that she was just a child and couldn’t have known that they’d take what she said and use it against her dad.
And then the anger walloped her and the sound of Schuster’s coaxing voice enraged her. He should have known better. He’d manipulated her, and here he was, doing it again. But no one else had ever talked to her. She was a pariah without Schuster. The emotions wheeled through her—dizzying, frustrating, lonely, painful—when all she ever wanted was to be normal.
“Bex?” Michael knocked on the door frame before slightly nudging open the door. “Ready to take a break from homework? I made lasagna. Well, not so much made as thoroughly heated up.” He grinned at her, a floppy, cockeyed Dad-laughing-at-his-own-joke grin, and Bex knew that the only way to get to normal was to wade through this mess with her real father.
She pressed her fingers over the mouthpiece of her phone and smiled back at Michael. “I’ll be right there.”
? ? ?
“No. No, I couldn’t. I would just die.” Chelsea was shaking her head, her ponytail bobbing against her cheekbones. “I can’t believe you stayed in that house knowing that someone had broken in.”
Bex took a miniscule sip of her coffee and avoided Chelsea’s eyes. “It wasn’t really that big a deal. The cops said it was probably just kids.”
Laney smacked her palms on the table, and both Chelsea and Bex jumped. “Do you hear yourself? The cops are just brushing it off, but our friend was murdered. Shouldn’t they have put up surveillance or put you in protective police custody or something?”
Bex’s stomach roiled. “Why me? I have nothing to do with… I mean…”
Chelsea’s eyes bulged. “Are you kidding? Yeah, you do. You’re a teenager. Darla was a teenager. This guy could be after any of us. Or all of us.” She leaned in, hissing, “There is a crazed killer on the loose and your house gets ransacked and the police think it’s just kids. Oh no, seriously, no. I’d call the brigade or the army or whatever. When you die, you should seriously sue for negligence or noncompliance or something.”
Laney rolled her eyes. “I’m sure Bex is fine, Chelsea. It’s not like they took anything, right, Bex?”
Bex didn’t trust herself to talk so she meekly shook her head, her hands going to her backpack. She touched the zippered pouch where she had stuffed the Black Bear Diner menu, the gentle crunch of the paper giving her a strange sense of calm.
“Ladies!”
Both Chelsea and Laney groaned when Zach approached the table, but Bex was happy for the distraction. He had his GoPro camera in front of him, the red Record light glowing.
“Do you have any comments that you would like saved for posterity? Perhaps some advice or information for the incoming freshman of, say, 2089?”
“Hopefully, the people of 2089 will be so advanced that they’ll have done away with high school.”
Laney cocked an eyebrow. “You realize 2089 isn’t that far away, right, Chels?”
Chelsea batted at the air. “Whatever. We’re all going to be dead by then.”
“Anything to add, Bex?”
Bex had suddenly gone cold, the din of the cafeteria noise overwhelming.
“I-I’ve got to go.”
Twenty-Three
Bex paced a worn spot in the grass behind the gym. She was only about twenty feet behind the school, but the thick, tall brick wall of the gym separated her from the rest of Kill Devil Hills High and all of the students inside.
If there really were a brick wall between me and the world, Bex thought, then no one else would get hurt.
She pulled out her cell phone and dialed, counting the rings, waiting for the overly cheerful receptionist to pick up the receiver and announce she had reached Dr. Gold’s office. She would talk to Dr. Gold, and Dr. Gold would remind Bex that the only thing she had to do was take care of herself. Dr. Gold would make everything okay with her psychology speak, and Bex would hang up the phone and cut the line to Detective Schuster and her father and get to work pretending that nothing had ever happened.