Two Can Keep a Secret(27)
My locker was cleaned and repainted by lunchtime on Friday, like nothing ever happened. But I’ve felt exposed ever since, the back of my neck prickling when I think about the fact that someone, somewhere went to a lot of trouble to add my name to that court. I told Viv that I didn’t think the vandal and Lacey’s murderer are the same person, and objectively, that still makes sense. Subjectively, though, the whole thing makes me sick.
Ezra looks dubious. “How does somebody rig votes?”
“By hacking the app. It wouldn’t be hard.”
He cocks his head, considering. “That seems extreme.”
“Oh, and bloody Barbie dolls are restrained?”
“Touché.” Ezra drums his fingers on the table. “So what, then? You think Lacey and Sarah are connected, too?”
“I don’t know. It seems unlikely, doesn’t it? They happened almost twenty years apart. But somebody’s threading all these things together, and there has to be a reason why.”
Ezra doesn’t say anything else, but takes Sadie’s yearbook from the bottom of the pile and opens it. I pull Lacey’s closer to me and flip through the junior class pictures until I reach the K’s. They’re all there, the names I’ve been hearing since I got to Echo Ridge: Declan Kelly, Lacey Kilduff, and Daisy Kwon.
I’ve seen Lacey before in news stories, but not Daisy. She shares a few features with Mia, but she’s much more conventionally pretty. Preppy, even, with a headband holding back her shiny, pin-straight hair. Declan Kelly reminds me of Malcolm on steroids; he’s almost aggressively handsome, with piercing, dark-fringed eyes and a cleft in his chin. All three of them look like the kind of teenagers you’d find on a CW show—too beautiful to be real.
The R section is a lot less glam. Officer Ryan Rodriguez’s high-school-junior self is an unfortunate combination of prominent Adam’s apple, acne, and bad haircut. He’s improved in six years, though, so good for him. I turn the yearbook around to show Ezra. “Here’s our neighbor.”
Ezra glances at Officer Rodriguez’s photo without much interest. “Nana mentioned him this morning. She’s got some cardboard boxes she wants us to bring over. She says he sold the house? Or he’s going to sell the house. Anyway, he’s packing stuff up.”
I straighten in my chair. “He’s leaving town?”
He shrugs. “She didn’t say that. Just that the house was too big for one person, now that his dad’s dead. Maybe he’s getting an apartment nearby or something.”
I turn the yearbook back toward me and flip the page. The club and candid photo section comes after class pictures. Lacey was part of almost everything—soccer, tennis, student council, and choir, to name just a few. Declan mostly played football, it looks like, and was a good-enough quarterback that the team won a state championship that year. The last photo in the junior section is of the entire class, posing in front of Echo Ridge Lake during their year-end picnic.
I pick Lacey out right away—she’s dead center, laughing, her hair blowing in the wind. Declan’s behind her with his arms wrapped around her waist, his head tucked into her shoulder. Daisy stands beside them looking startled, as though she wasn’t ready for the shot. And on the far edge of the group is gangly Ryan Rodriguez, standing stiffly apart from everyone else. It’s not his awkward pose that catches my eye, though. The camera caught him staring straight at Lacey—with an expression of such intense longing that he almost looks angry.
He probably had a crush, Sadie said. Lacey was a beauty.
I study the three faces: Declan, Daisy, and Ryan. One who never left—until now, maybe—and two who returned. Malcolm doesn’t know where Declan is staying, but Mia’s mentioned more than once that her sister is back in her old room. What had Mia said about Daisy during Thursday’s assembly, again? Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.
Ezra spins the yearbook he’s been studying around so that it’s facing me, and slides it across the table. “Is this what you wanted to see?”
A girl with a cloud of curly dark hair is at the top of the page, her smile so bright it’s almost blinding. My mother, twenty-three years ago. Except the name under the picture reads Sarah Corcoran. I blink at it a couple of times; in my mind, Sarah’s always been the serious, almost somber twin. I don’t recognize this version. I flip to the previous page and see Sadie’s picture at the bottom. It’s identical, right down to the head tilt and the smile. The only difference is the color of their sweaters.
The pictures were taken their senior year, probably in September. A few weeks later, shortly after Sadie was crowned homecoming queen, Sarah was gone.
I close the book as a wave of exhaustion hits me. “I don’t know,” I admit, stretching and turning toward a row of tiny windows on the far wall that sends squares of sunlight across the hardwood floor. “When do we have to be at work, again?”
Ezra glances at his phone. “In about an hour.”
“Should we stop by Mia’s and see if she’s working today?”
“She’s not,” Ezra says.
“Should we stop by Mia’s and see if she’s working today?” I repeat.
Ezra blinks in confusion, then shakes his head like he’s just waking up. “Oh, sorry. Are you suggesting a reconnaissance mission?”