Two Can Keep a Secret(61)

“What about you, Ellery?” Mom asks.

“I’m all set, thanks.” Ellery says, biting her lip.

“All right.” I wait an endless minute for my mother to go back upstairs, but before it’s up Ellery has scooted all the way to the other end of the couch.

“It’s probably good we were interrupted,” she says, going even redder. “I feel like maybe I should tell you my theory before … anything.”

My brain isn’t working all that well right now. “Tell me your what?”

“My criminal theory.”

“Your— Oh. Yeah, that.” I suck in a breath for composure and adjust my position on the couch. “It’s not about me, though, right?”

“Definitely not,” she says. “But it is about Katrin. And how I think that if we’re right about Mr. Bowman, maybe that was just the beginning of, um, things.” She winds a strand of hair around her finger, which I’m starting to realize is never a good sign. I still can’t wrap my brain around Katrin possibly running over Mr. Bowman; I’m not sure I’m ready for more things. But I’ve spent the past five years avoiding conversations about Lacey and Declan, and that never solved anything.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Well. If we go back to the receipt, we’re pretty sure Brooke knew about the accident, right? She was either in the car when it happened, or Katrin told her after.” Ellery releases her hair to start pulling on her necklace. “Katrin must’ve been terrified about people finding out. It’s one thing to have an accident, but to leave afterward without stopping to help … she’d be a pariah at school, plus it’d ruin her dad’s standing in town. Not to mention the criminal charges. So she decided to cover it up. And Brooke agreed to help, but I think she must have regretted that. She always looked so worried and sad. Ever since I met her, which was right after Mr. Bowman died. Unless she was always like that?”

“No,” I say, my stomach twisting as I think of Brooke’s smiling class picture on the MISSING poster. “She wasn’t.”

“And then in the Fright Farm office, she kept saying things like, I shouldn’t have, I have to tell them, it’s not okay. Which makes me think she felt guilty.”

Pressure clamps down on my skull. “She asked me if I’d ever made a really bad mistake.”

Ellery’s eyes widen. “She did? When?”

“In the office. While you were looking for Ezra. She said …” I search my memory, but the exact words won’t come. “Something about making a mistake that wasn’t, like, a regular mistake. And that she wished she had different friends.”

Ellery nods seriously. “That fits,” she says.

I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know, but I ask anyway. “With what?”

“Lots of things. Starting with the vandalism,” Ellery says. I blink at her, startled. “The messages didn’t appear until after Katrin repaired her car. She got it back on September second, and Lacey’s fund-raiser was September fourth, right?” I nod, and Ellery continues, “I kept thinking about what it must’ve been like for Katrin then, with the whole town mourning Mr. Bowman and looking for answers. She was probably walking on eggshells, terrified of getting found out or giving herself away. So I thought, what if Katrin was the one who started the vandalism?”

“Why would she do that?” I can’t keep the disbelieving edge out of my voice.

Ellery runs a fingernail along the floral pattern of the couch, refusing to look at me. “As a distraction,” she says quietly. “The whole town started focusing on the threats instead of what happened to Mr. Bowman.”

I feel a stab of nausea, because she’s not wrong. The Homecoming Stalker made Mr. Bowman’s hit-and-run fade into the background a lot faster than should have been possible for such a popular teacher. “But why pull you into it?” I ask. “And herself, and Brooke?”

“Well, Katrin and Brooke make sense because if they’re targets, nobody would think they’re involved. Me, I don’t know.” Ellery keeps tracing the pattern, her eyes trained on her hand like if she loses concentration for even a second, the entire couch will disappear. “Maybe I was just a way to … thicken the intrigue, or something. Because my family is loosely tied to tragic homecomings, too, even though Sadie was the queen and not Sarah.”

“How would Katrin even do it, though? She was in the cultural center when the sign got vandalized,” I point out. “And onstage with the rest of the cheerleaders when the screen started flashing all that stuff at Fright Farm.”

“The screen could’ve been set up beforehand. But for the rest … she’d have needed help, I guess. Brooke was already pulled in, and Viv and Theo would do anything Katrin says, wouldn’t they? Or was there a time at the cultural center when you lost sight of her?”

“I mean … yeah.” I think of Katrin slipping away as soon as all eyes turned toward my mother and me. Oh, there’s Theo. How long was she gone? I rub a hand across my temple like that’ll help me remember. It doesn’t. The more Ellery and I talk, the more agitated I feel. “Maybe. But if I’m being honest, it’s kind of a stretch, Ellery. And it still doesn’t explain what happened to Brooke.”