Not One of Us(26)

Who’d been rifling through my stuff? Zach had no interest in my old junk. He never came in my room and didn’t tolerate anyone entering his bedroom, either, unless invited. Mimi had never been one to come in my room. Ever since junior high, I’d been responsible for cleaning my space and doing my laundry.

I bent down and picked up scattered Monopoly money and stacks of spilled photographs, intent on tidying the mess. But I paused at the sight of my old notebooks and journals, which lay open as though someone had been reading them.

Why? Who would care about the journals of a teenage girl? It was hardly gripping reading material. Thank God I’d torn out and burned the section chronicling my last semester of school before leaving the bayou to strike out on my own. Tonight, I’d burn what was left of these journals. The idea of someone violating my privacy made my skin crawl.

I picked up a couple of notebooks and flipped through them. Random pages had been torn out. I began separating the journals from the rest of the other junk on the floor, but I stopped short when my hands brushed against something sticky. I held up my hands and gasped at the brownish liquid coating my fingers. What the hell? I scrambled backward and then kicked at the pile with my foot.

A tiny snake, no longer than four inches, was slit down the middle, its organs sagging out of its body. It was skewered onto a cardboard chessboard with a bent safety pin. A single dried flower petal and a note were pinned to its dissected, ruined body. Trembling, I bent back down to read the block letters written in all caps: LET DEAD DOGS LIE.

Bile rose in my throat, and I jumped backward again, staring at the words in disbelief. Who would do such a thing? Why would they do it?

Let dead dogs lie. The only possible explanation was that someone had not liked my speaking with Jackson’s mother yesterday, but I hadn’t told anyone about the visit. Not even Mimi, who would have disapproved of my digging around the past.

And what was up with the flower? I had a sneaking suspicion that the petal had been torn from the pressed corsage Deacon would have pinned to my prom dress if he hadn’t disappeared. I hurried to my jewelry box, where I kept the treasured memento.

The rose had been crushed into desiccated shreds.

Tears stung my eyes, and I raked through the ruins. Had anything else been destroyed or gone missing? It wasn’t as though I had anything valuable in this childhood jewelry box. It was only the size of a book, wrapped in lavender satin with a ballerina on top. The brass key on the side wound up, and she spun en pointe in her pink tutu. The box was so old and worn that the music played warped and out of tune. It had been from my mom the Christmas when I was nine. Inside, my small childhood treasures were still there—a pin from Bayou Enigma First Methodist Church for perfect attendance one year; a few tumbled stones from a visit to Rock City, Tennessee, when I was twelve; an empty sample tube of Avon frosted-pink lipstick I used to sneak-wear in junior high after my mom had forbidden me to use makeup; and a cheap bracelet from elementary school with rusted charms.

The dried corsage had been the last treasure I ever stored in the box. It had seemed a fitting resting place for the posy that symbolized the death of my first love and of my childhood.

Anger seeped into my emotions of fear and shock. How dare someone come into my bedroom, go through my private things, and destroy my property? Was it someone I knew? Someone I trusted?

It had to be. Who else would even know I had old journals and keepsakes? Unless the intruder had browsed and stumbled upon my private mementos while delivering his threat.

I marched out of my room and into the kitchen. Mimi was humming as she tossed okra and onions into a sizzling cast-iron pan. She glanced up from her work. “Want to chop up the garlic for me?” she asked. Her gaze narrowed, and she held the knife poised in the air. “Something wrong?”

“Have you been in my room today?” I asked in a hard, flat voice.

Humph. Her chin lifted, and she began to chop a garlic clove. “No, I have not, missy. What’s with that tone?”

“Has anyone else been in the house today?”

“Only Rose. Why?”

“Someone came in my room and tore up my stuff.”

The knife hovered over the cutting board. “Zach never goes in your room.”

“It wasn’t him.”

Mimi dropped the knife on the counter and hastily wiped her hands on her apron. She walked toward me, her face a ghastly gray color. “What stuff?”

“Nothing of value, just sentimental things. My journals and other private items.”

Her face turned a shade grayer. I was a little surprised she hadn’t brushed off my complaint, claiming that I must be imagining the entire thing.

She followed me to my room, and I pointed at the mess on the bottom of the closet. “They went through here and tore pages out of my journal. They also opened my jewelry box and destroyed some dried flowers. But the worst—”

Mimi bent over for a closer look. Before I could warn her about the bloody carcass, she let out a shriek. “Oh, my God. A dead snake.”

“Not only that. It’s sliced down the middle and has a note jabbed in its body.”

Her eyes widened, and a hand went to her throat. Her voice came out in a guttural croak. “What does it say?”

“Let dead dogs lie.”

Mimi sat on the edge of the bed, drawing in a labored breath.

Guilt immediately sluiced through my gut. She was as upset about the invasion as me. Maybe I shouldn’t have even told her about it.