KATIEBUG: LET’S TALK 2MORW.
CULLANT: K.
KATIEBUG: BYE.
CULLANT: TTFN.
Katelyn clicked the icon to close the IM window. She went into her bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror in a way a stranger might: critically, with an eye to pick her apart in the meanest way possible. She wasn’t really fat. She had good skin. Her hair was cute. Cute-ish, anyway. When she really processed what she saw in her reflection she knew that she should feel better about herself. But she just couldn’t get there. She could blame it on any number of things—her parents and their stupid restaurant, living in Port Gamble, and probably the worst of it, not making the cheerleading squad.
When it came right down to it, it was all Starla’s fault. She was to blame for everything wrong in Katelyn’s world. She never could have imagined a betrayal from someone who had been a part of her life for nearly as long as she could remember. Yet it had happened. It came swiftly and irrevocably. It was like Starla’s cold indifference to her had literally frozen her out of the life she’d imagined.
Katelyn pulled her clothes off, one item at a time, until she was naked, except for her bra and panties. She sat on the edge of the clawfoot tub and reached for the razor that had been calling to her all day. The cold metal blade’s handle felt molded to fit her fingers and hers alone. Although it had become increasingly difficult to find the right place—a place that could not be seen by anyone but her—she managed to find a fresh spot on her upper right thigh. She drew a deep breath, like the kind she’d done when she’d tried to smoke cigarettes with Starla when they were kids.
When they were still so very, very close.
With a steady hand and a practiced technique, Katelyn Berkley cut. It was slow, deliberate. Even strokes. One. Two. Three.
She watched the blood ooze and closed her eyes to savor the feeling that came with the cut. The release was better than she imagined sex might be. She wondered when she would have sex.
And if it would be with the boy she’d met online.
IT CAME TO HAYLEY RYAN IN A DREAM, the way a lot of things did. She was in the middle of the food court of the Kitsap Mall in Silverdale. All around her were the people of Port Gamble. Her family. Her neighbors. Mill hands whose names she didn’t know because they lived in Little Boston or on the other side of the Hood Canal Bridge, but whose faces were very familiar. Beth. Colton. Starla. Even Segway Guy. No one seemed to be talking to each other, though the noise of their voices fought with the sound of dueling blenders at the Orange Julius counter. She watched herself wait for Taylor’s smoothie—raspberry and banana. All around her. The noise. The people she knew. The girl behind the counter made change and handed it to her. She didn’t recall ordering anything and was going to hand the money back to her sister, who was sliding a straw through the “X” cut through the plastic lid.
When she held out her hand, she noticed something peculiar about the dollar bill crumpled in her palm.
Hayley looked down, closer. Written over George Washington’s unattractive green face:
THE CAUSE OF HER DEATH
IS AMONG YOU
For a second, all sound stopped. It was instantaneous. Hayley looked up from the money and then quickly scanned the crowd in the food court.
Everyone from Port Gamble was there. For a moment, she even thought she saw Starla’s dad, Adam Larsen, who’d been gone a couple of years. He waved at her, and then he vanished. All of them did. Gone, like the smoke from a birthday candle.
The next morning, while the twins put on makeup in the bathroom mirror, Hayley told Taylor about the dream.
“Weird. I hate bananas, and you know it,” Taylor said, running brown mascara over her fair eyelashes.
Hayley knew her sister was playing with her. “I thought it was strange, too.”
“Seriously,” Taylor said, “I had a dream sort of like that last night too. Not exactly, though. Mine wasn’t set in the mall. It was in Katelyn’s room. Same idea. The feeling that the person responsible for Katelyn’s death is right here, among us.”
Hayley thought a moment, checking herself in the mirror.
“I know you’re not going to tell anyone about our dreams, or whatever they are. But if you ever feel tempted, please leave out the part that I was in the food court in my dream. It sounds so lame.”
Taylor put her makeup into a small pink and black makeup bag.
“Are you kidding?” she asked, heading down the hall. “If people think you’re a dork, then that’ll transfer to me. Half the people around here think we’re the same person. As far as I’m concerned, the mall dream never happened.”
But it did.
chapter 22
IT WAS THE MORNING OF HER FORMER best friend’s funeral. Starla Larsen stood in front of the mirror in her Kingston High cheer outfit. The dress was red, trimmed in gold with a narrow white edging. It was a color combination left over from the days when cheerleaders were wholesome and when it didn’t matter what color their pom-poms were—as long as they shook them with enough persuasive vigor when the team put some numbers on the scoreboard.
It was clear that no one back then took into consideration what a girl like Starla Larsen could bring to the uniform.
Starla knew.
White and black would be better, she thought as she turned in the mirror. White and black don’t compete; they enhance.
She had a point. Starla usually did. She was that kind of a girl.
Because of her looks and somewhat overly seductive personality, Starla was an easy target for the B-word. If gossip ever got back to her, Starla merely looked blankly at her informant.
“Really? Wow, I never even noticed her. Wonder why she feels that way?”
It wasn’t easy for most girls to look as hot as she did, and Starla almost felt sorry for them. It was true that she was blessed with her mother’s and father’s good looks, but it took more than genetics to change things in the physical world.
She was good at embarrassing girls, teasing boys, and making things worse. Those, along with her undeniable in-your-face beauty, were her gifts.
Starla’s teeth were white, her eyes glacial blue, and her hair spun gold. Those things were easy to alter. Sure, teeth could be whitened, and she routinely did that. Her eyes, thankfully, were the right hue of blue. Not blueish. Not gray. Intense icy, icy blue. Certainly, her hairstylist mom helped her with her hair. That was more out of convenience than the fact that Starla thought her mom really knew what she was doing. Starla read enough fashion magazines and watched enough Style TV to understand that the cut was more important than the color.
Her mom almost never cut her hair.
Starla had it all, and she was only a sophomore. That, she was certain, had to be some kind of a freaking record.
The only downside in Starla’s world, besides her anxious little brother, Teagan, and her omnipresent stage mother-wannabe, was her mom’s boyfriend, Jake Damon. Even at almost thirty, Jake was eye candy, to be sure. He had a decent chest—pecs, not boobs—and arms that looked muscled but not overly gross when he purposely flexed around the house doing some chore that Starla’s father would have done without making such a show of it.
Yeah, she thought, Jake is the perfect guy for Mom. She still thinks she’s in her twenties, and Jake is stupid enough to go along with it.
Starla’s mother came into her room and planted her four-inch pumps into the floorboards like she was nailing something down for posterity. Mindee was a sight as always. Her hair was gooped up with so much product, Starla wondered how her mother’s pencil neck could support it. Mindee wore a simple black dress, her asymmetrical hair clipped with a questionable matching black bow, but Starla didn’t say a word about it.