The Cheerleaders(26)

“It would matter to your mother,” Tom says. “Monica, this month is going to be hard enough for her as it is.”

“You think it’s not hard for me? For the rest of us?”

“Don’t raise your voice. And that’s not fair—you know I didn’t mean this isn’t hard for you too.” Tom looks at his lap, pinching the bridge of his nose. When he picks his head up, he looks exhausted. “I don’t see what your end goal is here. I don’t know what you want from me.”

I bite back the urge to scream: I want you to stop acting like you’re hiding something. I want to ask him why he had Jen’s phone and whether he knows Ethan McCready was the last person to talk to her.

“Don’t you get it?” I ask. “Ethan wanted all the cheerleaders dead, and then Juliana and Susan were just randomly murdered?”

“Monica,” Tom says. “Ethan McCready weighed a hundred ten pounds soaking wet.”

“So?”

Tom leans back in his chair, the leather upholstery farting under his weight. He watches me for a moment before saying, “Susan and Juliana were strangled.”

“I know that.”

“They were very fit girls. Between them, they had about twenty pounds of muscle on Ethan. Do you know how much strength it takes to strangle someone?”

My stomach puckers as I fight off the instinct to picture a pair of hands wrapping around Susan Berry’s neck. “No.”

“Ethan had limbs like toothpicks. Susan could have broken his arms with her eyes closed,” Tom says. “The girls were overpowered. Their killer was much bigger than them.”

“You mean the killer was Jack Canning’s size.”

Tom’s eyes flash with a warning. “This isn’t a conversation I want to have anymore.”

“Well, I do. Ethan was in love with Jen.” My throat goes tight. “What if he decided that if he couldn’t have her, he’d go after her friends? What if he knew she was supposed to be at Susan’s that night, and he went there and—”

“Monica!” The force of Tom’s voice almost blows me back. My stepfather has yelled at me maybe once in the past ten years.

I know he realizes it, too, because he winces. “The person who killed Susan and Juliana is dead. He’s not going to hurt anyone ever again. If someone is telling you otherwise, send them to me and I’ll set them straight.”

My stepfather isn’t a stubborn man. It’s why it’s scary how sure he is that he had a reason to shoot Jack Canning.

“Monica. Look at me.”

I do. Tom forces a smile. “Okay?”

The pit in my stomach widens. “Okay.”

On my way out the door, he tells me to order him some General Tso’s chicken. His voice is measured, cheery. Letting me know that he’s willing to forget this conversation, as long as I never say the names Ethan McCready or Jack Canning to him again.





FIVE YEARS AGO


SEPTEMBER




Juliana had big plans for sophomore year. They had shed the label of annoying freshmen; last year’s seniors who wouldn’t even look their way were gone, replaced with upperclassman boys who stole glances at them even while their arms were around their girlfriends’ waists.

Jules didn’t seem to notice the looks from the older guys. Not like Susan, who would suck in her stomach and tuck her hair behind her ears when the football and soccer players came to hang out in the gym where the cheerleaders were practicing. Juliana was thinking bigger; the calendar in her room was color-coded: cheer practice, Spirit Night, homecoming. She didn’t seem to realize how popular they already were. Jen and Jules had both been voted to the homecoming court last year, and Susan was the class secretary.

Jen realized it, though. The people she grew up with suddenly seemed nervous around her. It was lonely at the top, with people keeping their distance, as if the other sophomores weren’t sure if Jen thought them worthy enough to share her presence.

It didn’t help that Jules had a different lunch period than Jen did, and Susan cut lunch out of her schedule completely so she could take an extra elective. Jen had to sit with Bethany and Colleen and their junior friends in the cafeteria.

It was a life other girls envied. It was a life she didn’t know if she wanted.

Juliana had dropped advanced math and science, deciding the workload would be too much for her to balance with cheerleading and her job at Alden’s, the grocery store her parents owned. So the only class Jen and Jules had together was English with Mr. Ward. When Jules got out of gym the period before, she’d meet Jen at her locker and they’d walk to class together.

Today, Jules was late. Jen lingered by her locker, wondering if she should just head for class on her own. She watched another minute tick by on her phone before looking up and seeing her at the end of the hall: Juliana, her forehead glistening with sweat, a bright pink headband pushing her hair from her face.

Next to her, Carly Amato was laughing at something. Jules spotted Jen; she broke away from Carly, waving at her.

“You didn’t tell me Carly was in your gym class,” Jen said, once Juliana had made her way to her.

“Was I supposed to?” Juliana fanned her face with her English notebook. “What’s your problem with her, anyway?”