People Like Us(30)
I search my memory. I can’t think of a single link between the four of us. “I don’t think so.”
“Do the words Dear Valentine ring a bell?”
They hit me like a knockout punch. I take a moment to steady myself. “What do you know about Dear Valentine?”
“I know that my first year I had no friends and I was desperate to make some. So I signed up to be delivery girl. I was assigned to third floor, Henderson. So Jessica was on my delivery list. And on Valentine’s Day, she didn’t get any flowers. No big deal, she wasn’t the only sophomore. I didn’t either. But then Tricia tracked me down and begged me to deliver a letter back to Jessica. We’re not really allowed to do that. Dear Valentine is a one-day thing. But she was just so nice, and I needed nice so badly . . . So I said okay. Then the next day, same thing. And the next. By the third day, Jessica begged me to stop. But when I tried to tell Tricia no, she told me how awesome I was and how I was everyone’s hero. You and Tai and Brie and even the seniors. I’m such an idiot. None of you actually spoke to me. But I guess I imagined all these looks of admiration in class and started showing up at sports games, and oh my God, I was such a loser. Anyway. I don’t know what was in those letters Tricia wrote. But every day I could hear Jessica crying when I knocked on her door. And I kept bringing them. For almost two weeks until Tricia finally stopped writing them. Then she went back to pretending I didn’t exist. So yeah. I’d say Jessica had a reason to get back at me, too. That’s why I really wanted to help you. I’ve been waiting to see if my name was going to come up. I was just hoping what someone else did to her was worse. Whatever was in those letters was bad. So bad that Jessica’s last wish was to ruin the lives of everyone involved in sending them. You were Tricia’s friend, and Jessica entrusted you with carrying out her revenge. That means either you were involved, or you were the only one of your friends who wasn’t. So I’m asking again. Is there something you did to Jessica?”
I try to speak, but my throat is too dry. Dear Valentine is a very good reason for Jessica to be upset with me and my friends. And Nola only knows part of the story. Her version just scratches the surface.
She turns the laptop around to show me the poem again and draws a deep, shaky breath. “Do you remember that whole big freak-out a couple of years ago when Dr. Klein’s cat went missing? Maybe a week or so after that year’s Valentine’s Day?”
The memory sends a jolt of electricity down my spine. It was a big deal. Hunter had been a fixture around campus, practically a mascot. He was always trotting across the green, chasing chipmunks, batting leaves around, or basking in the sun. Then he disappeared from inside Dr. Klein’s mansion on the fringe of campus. The doors and windows had been closed, but not bolted. She was positive about that. His collar had been left behind. It was ominous as hell. Posters went up everywhere. There were multiple assemblies. The campus police spoke to the student body; the school psychologist had us all come in for interviews. It was huge. But Hunter never turned up. Adorable, fluffy, orange-striped Hunter.
I turn to Nola, dread spreading through me slowly like a fever. “What did you do?”
“It was an accident.” She presses her face into her pillow and lets out a muffled shriek, and then lifts it. Her eyes are bright red and watery, and her mascara is smudged. “I didn’t take him. I just found him. At least I think it was him. He was in the creek. Alive, but just . . .” She trails off, her eyes overflowing, her nose swollen, lips trembling. Her voice wobbles. “His body was flattened and his fur was matted with blood and in the water it wasn’t even red, it was brown and pink, it was so creepy.” She chokes and I put my arms around her awkwardly.
“I never saw anything dead before,” she goes on, getting more and more worked up. “And everyone was so upset, and I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t have any friends, and I was afraid if I said something, everyone would think I did it. Or if they found him, they would say, hey, Nola was out walking by the creek, isn’t that a funny coincidence. And she’s so weird.”
A huge, wrenching guilt rips through me as I remember how nasty we were to her when she showed up with her dyed raven-black hair, black nail polish, and goth makeup. Necro. We didn’t even give her a chance. We made jokes about her sleeping with corpses and worshipping the devil. Of course it caught on. Everything we do eventually does. No wonder she was terrified. I open my mouth to say I’m sorry, but instead I just say, “No one would have thought you did that.”
She looks at me sharply. “Everyone would have thought I did it.” She sniffles and slumps into my shoulder. “So I picked him up, and just ran. Through the woods, in the snow, as far as I could. Then I put him down to bury him, but everything was frozen, so I covered him with stones. But the snow all around was covered in blood. For a while, I thought about just sinking into it, and just letting the snow surround me and freezing to death. It sounded like a painless way to die. But I chickened out.” She suddenly sits up and blows her nose on her sleeve and then looks at me. “Do you know why?”
I shake my head. “Why?”
She walks across the room and points to one of the columns of writing on the wall. “‘For in that sleep of death what dreams may come / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / Must give us pause.’”
I squint at her. “Shakespeare saved your life?”