The Cheerleaders(25)

I feel a tug in my chest. It hits me, why I like Ginny so much—it’s not only because of her connection to my sister. Ginny reminds me of Jen. My kind sister, who always gave people the benefit of the doubt, even if they didn’t deserve it.

Ethan McCready’s yearbook picture comes into focus in my mind and his role in all this starts to come together—that note, his claims that Tom can’t be trusted—it feels much more insidious now. Is he trying to make me doubt Tom to shift the suspicion from himself? Aside from Jack Canning, Ethan’s now the only person who wanted cheerleaders dead.

Ginny is watching me expectantly. I feel like a dam inside me is about to break.

So I tell her everything. I start with the letters in Tom’s drawer and how they led me to Jen’s cell phone and Ethan’s phone number. I recap my meeting with Daphne and all the inconsistencies about the murders. Ethan’s warning that Tom is hiding something.

Ginny eyes me while I speak, a look on her face that I can’t quite pin down. I think of Rachel’s reaction the other day when I asked her if she thought everything that happened that year wasn’t a coincidence.

“I know it sounds ridiculous,” I say. “But my sister—I never believed it, that she would kill herself over her friends dying. And maybe that makes me sound like I’m in denial or something, but this stuff with Ethan McCready—him calling her the morning she died…I don’t know.” I take a breath. “It can’t be a coincidence.”

Ginny mulls this over. She rearranges her feet so she’s sitting cross-legged. “You know that theory about a butterfly flapping its wings could cause a tsunami or a tornado across the world?”

I nod. “It sounds familiar. Like, something small can happen and set off a bigger reaction.”

“Yeah,” Ginny says. “The opposite of a coincidence.”

I tug at a blade of grass tickling my ankle and wrap it around the tip of my finger. Ginny’s simple explanation has parted the jumble of thoughts clouding my brain. I don’t know why I didn’t think of the possibility sooner—that the deaths aren’t a bunch of dots waiting to be connected, but a single series of events, set into motion by something that fall.

But what happened? How am I supposed to find the exact spot where a butterfly flapped its wings five years ago?

And how am I supposed to believe anything Ethan says—how he was friends with Jen, how I shouldn’t trust Tom—when according to Mr. Ward, he wanted her dead?



* * *



—

Tom’s car is in the driveway when I get home from practice. The spot in the garage where my mother parks her SUV is empty. I remember her saying something about Meet the Teacher night at Petey’s school. She left a Chinese takeout menu on the kitchen island.

Ethan McCready was expelled for making a hit list that would have had Juliana’s and Susan’s names on it. A couple of weeks later, they were murdered.

There’s no way Tom wouldn’t have made the connection between Ethan McCready and the girls. Principal Heinz would have gotten the police involved if one of his students had made a hit list.

The case against Jack Canning was convincing, but it wasn’t airtight. I need to know if Ethan was ever a potential suspect; the problem is that the person who can tell me for sure is probably the last person who wants to talk about the possibility that someone other than Jack was the killer.

Tom’s office door is closed. He usually keeps it open while he works. I ignore the paranoia needling me and knock.

“Come in.”

I open the door and find Tom hunched over his computer. He’s clicking through photos of a Honda Civic with a smashed-in bumper. He minimizes the window and swivels his chair around. “Hey, kid. Wanna call in dinner? I’m getting hungry.”

“Sure.” I nod to his computer. “What were you looking at?”

Tom rubs his eyes. “A hit-and-run from last month. Been bugging me.”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to take your work home with you.”

“When you do what I do, the work is never done.” Tom studies me. “You all right? Mom says you haven’t been yourself.”

“I don’t know,” I say, combing over my words carefully before they leave my mouth. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

Tom’s eyebrows lift. Whatever he expected me to say, it wasn’t that. “Sure. What’s on your mind?”

“Do you know a kid named Ethan McCready?”

“Ethan McCready?”

“He was in Jen’s grade. He got expelled that fall for threatening to kill cheerleaders.”

“You mean the hit list kid? I sent people to his house. He didn’t even own a gun.” Tom frowns. “I didn’t know you knew about that. Your mom and I didn’t talk about it around you or your brother because we didn’t want to upset you.”

“Did you know Ethan wrote Jen a creepy stalkerish poem?” I ask.

Tom stops bouncing the leg crossed over his knee at the ankle. “Did Jen tell you that?”

I hesitate. “I found it in her stuff.”

Tom holds up a hand. “You went through Jen’s things? When?”

“What does that matter?” Anger flares in me at the tone of his voice—like he’s suggesting I dug up my sister’s grave to get that poem.