“No, I didn’t! Teagan, get out of my bathroom! You little creep!”
What? Teagan couldn’t quite grasp what Katelyn was saying. It was at odds with how he felt about her—and how he was sure she felt about him.
“I brought you Starla’s pregnancy test. She thought Cameron knocked her up. We can report her to the school or something.”
He held out the test wand to prove what he was saying.
But Katelyn didn’t seem to care.
“Do you want me to scream?” she asked. “Get out of my bathroom!”
Teagan became frantic. This wasn’t how he thought it would be.
“I love you, Katelyn,” he said.
She turned in the tub, sending some water to the floor.
“You are seriously f-ed up, Teagan. You need help. I get that. But get the hell out of here!”
Teagan was embarrassed, confused, ashamed. All of his emotions were in a Magic Bullet and were spinning around and around. He moved forward, closer to the tub. He’d wanted to tell her he was sorry. He wasn’t going to touch her.
“Get out!” This time she was loud. Not loud enough to wake up the neighborhood, but loud enough to get him into trouble.
He was going to be in trouble. His sister was going to make fun of him. He was going to get yelled at by his mom. Jake was going to hit him again.
And yet he stood frozen, unable to move.
“IT HAPPENED SO FAST,” TEAGAN SAID to Chief Garnett. “It was so, so fast, but at the time, it happened in slow motion. Really.”
The chief’s office was pin-drop quiet.
Annie looked over at Mindee and Starla, their grim faces easily betraying their own shame and guilt over what had occurred. A lot of what the boy said was true. In fact, all of it. But what he had to tell them next was the most important part of the story—the part that would keep him out of juvenile detention in Port Orchard … or wouldn’t.
Teagan had started to tear up some more, which Annie considered a good sign. Whatever happened in that bathroom in the house next door, it had not occurred without a heaping measure of regret and hurt. Teagan might have been a bit desperate and a pervert-in-training to climb up that trellis to Katelyn’s bedroom, but he likely wasn’t as bad as the kid who sets fire to the family dog or the one who trolled the neighborhood for an open window to get a peek at a girl undressing.
“Okay,” the boy said. “I just stood there a second, not really knowing what to do. I thought she wanted me there. I really did. She was so mad at me.”
KATELYN WAS COMPLETELY PISSED OFF. “Get out of here, Teagan!”
“But, I thought …” Teagan tried to find the words that would turn all of that moment into something better. Something he’d imagined.
“You thought wrong!”
Seeing that he wasn’t going, Katelyn fumbled for the towel on the vanity adjacent to the bathtub. Once she got a hold of it, she jerked it toward herself. In that terrible moment, the towel caught the electrical cord on the espresso machine. In a second, but again, seemingly in slow motion, the machine cartwheeled into the bathtub.
Although she saw it coming, Katelyn didn’t have time to scream.
In those hideous split seconds, the water hissed and Katelyn jerked in the bath like a fish on a line fighting that brief battle for its life. And then the lights went out.
“Katie?” Teagan called out.
No answer.
“Katie?” he tried again.
He bent down, embarrassed to get so close to the naked girl next door but needing to know what he could do to help her. Her eyes were open, staring at him in the ultimate staring game, one that he knew for sure he couldn’t win.
“SHE HAD SOAP ON HER FACE and in her eyes. I turned on the water and tried to rinse it off, thinking … I don’t know … thinking that maybe she’d be all right. But I kind of knew that she wouldn’t be.”
“Then what did you do?” Annie asked.
Teagan looked over at his mother and sister, then back at the police chief. He was shaking then, no longer a grown-up wannabe, but a kid who’d have done anything right then to turn back time for a do-over.
But with Katelyn Berkley’s death, there was no do-over.
“I heard her mother calling up the stairs, and I got out of there as fast as I could. I swear I didn’t mean for anything bad to happen. I just wanted a girlfriend.”
“I’m really proud of you, Teagan,” Annie said, meaning every word. “I know that telling me all of this was really hard to do, but you got through it. You did a good job in being truthful. That’s something that’s been in short supply around Port Gamble these days.”
She looked at Mindee and Starla. It was a long, searing look and the message was easily understood.
“Teagan’s not going to be arrested, right?” Mindee asked.
“If his story’s true, not likely,” Annie said. “He’s not, but you might be.”
Mindee’s jaw dropped. “Me? What did I do?”
“You and your game,” Annie said with obvious disdain, “lit the fuse here. You might not have meant for any of this to happen, but your online taunting of Katelyn Berkley instigated her death. Plain and simple. It’ll be up to the county prosecutor to decide what kind of blame, if any, to lay at your feet, Mindee.”
chapter 47
FOR A HALF HOUR, THE GIRLS WHISPER-ARGUED through the outlet about the Larsens, their dad’s e-mail from Savannah, and whether or not to ask Colton for help. Taylor knew that something serious was up, but she deplored the idea of calling him into the scenario. They could take care of things on their own. They’d done it before. And they could do it again.
“I never figured you’d ever go damsel-in-distress on me,” she finally said in a little dig that felt good.
“It isn’t about going to him because he’s a guy,” Hayley said.
“Your Prince Charming. Ugh! Your boyfriend. Whatever.”
Hayley tried to let it bounce off. “Look, we can argue about it, but the bottom line is that we need help. He’s got a learner’s permit, and we don’t. Plus his mom’s car is sitting right there. Do you have a better plan? Because we need it now.”
Taylor didn’t, so Hayley texted Colton.
EMERGENCY!
A breathless Colton hurried down the hall and through the kitchen to meet the girls at the back door. He was wearing a ratty Kingston High T-shirt and slightly shrunken, highwater sweat pants—pajamas that he’d just as soon not have Hayley see. His mom asleep, the house was still quiet.
Taylor had been crying.
“What’s the matter?” he asked as he let them both inside.
“We don’t really know,” Hayley said. “Something’s going on.”
He shut the door and led them to the living room, motioning them to be quiet since his mother was sleeping.
“Is it about Hedda?” he asked.
“No,” Hayley said, looking at her sister.
“Jake?” Colton’s black eyes were awash with worry. “He’s still in jail.”
“We’re not sure, but that’s not why we’re here. That reporter Moira is causing all sorts of problems. She’s working on a story about the crash … about some things related to the crash.”
“About us,” Taylor said.
It was coming too fast at Colton. “What about you?” he asked.
The girls had agreed in advance that they could trust Colton, but it still was too big, too scary to share. Long ago, they both decided it would be better if no one knew. Ever.
“Some gifts should be shared but the source never revealed,” their grandmother had once said.
“Like giving a ham or something to a poor family?” Taylor asked.
“Like that. Sort of. Shared, but never revealed.”
As the three teens conferred in the living room, Shania came down the stairs in her pretty, pale-blue bathrobe, the color of a robin’s egg.