Two Can Keep a Secret(26)
It’s one of those days when she’s pretending I don’t exist.
I take my time entering the building and as soon as I get to the hallway, I know something’s off. There’s a weird buzzing energy, and the snippets of conversation I catch don’t sound like the usual gossip and insults.
“Must have broken in—”
“Somebody hates them—”
“Maybe it’s not a joke after all—”
“It’s not like anybody did that to Lacey, though—”
Everyone’s grouped in clusters, heads bent together. The biggest crowd of people is around Katrin’s locker. There’s a smaller knot around Brooke’s. My stomach starts to twist, and I spot Ezra and Ellery standing next to hers. Ellery’s back is to me, but Ezra is turned my way, and his face stops me in my tracks. His laid-back, California-guy vibe is gone, and he looks like he wants to stab somebody.
When I get closer, I see why.
Ellery’s dingy gray locker is splashed with bright-red paint. A red-spattered, twisted doll dangles from the handle, just like the ones in the cemetery. I crane my neck to look down the hallway, and see enough to know Katrin’s and Brooke’s lockers got the same treatment. Thick black letters are scrawled across the red on Ellery’s:
REMEMBER MURDERLAND, PRINCESS?
I DO
Ezra catches my eye. “This is messed up,” he seethes, Ellery turns. Her face is composed but pale, a humorless smile at the corners of her mouth.
“So much for welcoming me to town,” she says.
CHAPTER TEN
Ellery
Saturday, September 21
“What are we looking for?” Ezra asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit, placing a stack of yearbooks on the desk in front of him. We’re at the Echo Ridge library on Saturday morning, armed with jumbo cups of take-out coffee from Bartley’s diner. I wasn’t sure we’d get them past the librarian, but she’s well into her eighties and asleep in her chair. “Anything weird, I guess.”
Ezra snorts. “El, we’ve been here three weeks. So far we’ve reported a dead body, gotten jobs at a murder site, and been targeted by a homecoming stalker. Although that last one was all you.” He takes a sip of coffee. “You’re gonna have to be more specific.”
I drop into a seat across from him and slide a book from the middle of the pile. It has Echo Ridge Eagles on its spine, date-stamped from six years ago. Lacey’s junior year, one year before she died. “I want to check out Lacey’s class. It’s strange, isn’t it, how these people who were part of her inner circle when she died are suddenly back in town? Right when all this other stuff starts happening?”
“What, you think Malcolm’s brother had something to do with that? Or Mia’s sister?” Ezra raises a brow. “Maybe we should’ve invited them along for coffee and crime solving.”
“You know what you always say, Ezra,” I say, opening the yearbook. “Nobody wants to hear my murder theories. Especially when it involves their siblings. That’s the kind of thing you need to ease into.”
We’re snarking, because that’s what we do. A lifetime of living with Sadie provided a master class in pretending everything’s fine. But I’ve barely eaten since yesterday and even Ezra—who usually inhales Nana’s cooking like he’s trying to make up for seventeen years of frozen dinners—refused breakfast before we left.
Now, he runs his eyes over the remaining yearbooks. “What should I do? Look at their senior year?” He sucks in his cheeks. “It’s probably pretty grim. In memoriam for Lacey, that kind of thing.”
“Sure. That or …” My eyes drop to the bottom of the pile. “Sadie’s yearbook is in there, too. If you’re curious.”
Ezra stills. “About what?”
“What she was like in high school. What they were like. Her and Sarah.”
His jaw ticks. “What does that have to do with anything?”
I lean forward and glance around the small room. Besides the sleeping librarian, there’s no one here except a mother reading quietly to her toddler. “Haven’t you ever wondered why we’ve never been to Echo Ridge before? Like, ever? Or why Sadie never talks about her sister? I mean, if you suddenly … disappeared”—I swallow hard against the bile in my throat—“I wouldn’t move across the country and act like you’d never existed.”
“You don’t know what you’d do,” Ezra objects. “You don’t know what Sadie’s really thinking.”
“No, I don’t. And neither do you. That’s my point.” The little boy’s mother turns our way, and I lower my voice. I reach up and squeeze the dagger on my necklace. “We never have. We just got jerked from one town to the next while Sadie ran away from her problems. Except she finally landed in trouble she can’t make disappear, and here we are. Back where it all started.”
Ezra regards me steadily, his dark eyes somber. “We can’t fix her, El.”
I flush and look down at the pages in front of me—rows and rows of kids our age, all smiling for the camera. Ezra and I don’t have any yearbooks; we’ve never felt connected enough to any of our schools to bother with a keepsake. “I’m not trying to fix her. I just want to understand. Plus, Sarah’s part of this, somehow. She has to be.” I rest my chin in my hands and say what I’ve been thinking since yesterday. “Ezra, nobody in that school voted me onto homecoming court. You know they didn’t. Someone rigged the votes, I’m sure of it. Because I’m connected to Sarah.”