Dangerous Girls (31 page)

I take my microphone off and let the makeup woman dab at my face as they dismantle the lights and rigging from around Elise’s grave. The headstone is fresh, gleaming marble, and there’s a flickering tea light set on top.

“Here.” A production assistant hands me a bunch of flowers to set on the grave. “Peonies, right?”

I nod. They’re out of season, but they were always her favorite. Something about this should be real, at the very least.

“Good work,” Clara chats, checking her cell phone. “We’ll start running the previews tonight. Have you finalized your book deal yet?”

“We’re still talking to people,” I answer coolly. “I haven’t picked a publisher yet.”

“Well, let me know when it’s coming out. I’d love to have you back.”

Of course she would.
“Sure,” I reply, with a fake smile. “I’ll have my agent set it up.”

They finally clear the area, then walk me through the staging of the final scene. It’s a long-distance shot, wide-angle from across the graveyard. They want me standing at her graveside, then kneeling to place the flowers down, preferably with a single teardrop sliding down my well-powdered cheek. I follow their directions obediently, take after take, as they struggle against the wind and confetti of fall leaves. I don’t mind it so much. After everything, I know how important a single shot can be, the story that can replace facts and hard evidence with just a single, perfect frame.

“One more time?” The producer calls. I nod, and walk slowly back to the grave.

Elise Judith Warren.

Loving daughter, beloved friend.

Always in our hearts.

I lean down, and gently place the flowers on the damp grass. I trace the letters of the headstone, tears stinging the corners of my eyes. I still miss her, every day. When they call it a tragedy, they’re right. We could have still been together, if only she’d been true to me. If she’d only known what she was bringing on herself, maybe she would have thought twice.

Instead, she had to go and break my heart.

“And, cut!”

They tell me it’s a wrap, and slowly the crew dismantles, packing up the vans and heading out. But I stay, right by her grave, until the last car winds its way out toward the main gates, and I’m finally alone. The skies are gray and overcast, the graveyard, totally empty.

I reach into my coat pocket and pull it out: the necklace. The chipped metal of the pentagram pendant, the chain broken, still stained with her blood.

I close my fist around it and lean in close to whisper.

“I win.”

“Babe, can you pass me
that soda?”

There’s no reply.

“Tate?”

I reluctantly sit up, squinting through the dark glass of my shades. The gentle curve of the beach stretches in front of me: sparkling white sand leading down to the crystal-blue waters lapping gently against the shore. The sun is hot in a cloudless sky, warming my bare skin. It’s perfection.

I look over at Tate. He’s sitting up with his bare back to me, bent over his cell phone, so I toss my magazine at him.

He looks around. “What? Oh, sorry.” He passes a soda can from the cooler, glancing again at his phone.

“Are they having fun?” I ask.

“Oh, yeah. They’re out on the boat,” he adds. “AK’s taking tons of photos—you know he won’t shut up about that new camera of his.”

I laugh. “Let me guess, we’re going to get fifty-seven million shots of some fish underwater?”

“Pretty much.” Tate grins.

I lie back, letting the sun melt through my bones, taking with it all my tension and stress. Right now, Boston feels like a thousand miles away; college application drama and all my dad’s business worries like something from another life. I let my mind go blank, soothed by the sounds of the waves, and the occasional burst of chatting and laughter from the other beachgoers set up around us on the sand.

Time slips past. Tate’s phone sounds with another text, and then a moment later, I hear his voice. “Shit, I left my sunglasses back at the house.”

“Here, take mine.” I hold them out to him, resting my other elbow over my face to block the sun.

“No, it’s cool. I need to go charge my phone anyway.” Tate gets to his feet and grabs his wallet from the blanket. “I won’t be long.”

“You remember the security code?”

“Yeah, but Elise is still back there, right?”

“She could still be sleeping.” I check my phone, but there
are no new messages. “Check on her for me, okay?” I tell him. “She’s still not replying to my texts.”

“Sure. She’s probably just hungover, though.”

I make a face. “She’s not the only one.”

Tate slips his feet into his flip-flops and makes to leave, but I reach up toward him. He pauses, leaning down to quickly kiss my lips. “Tell her to get her ass down here.” I yawn, “She can lie around in bed any day back home. This is vacation she’s missing here!”

Tate smiles, then sets off back across the sand.

I find the bottle of lotion, and start to reapply. My skin is pale and always burns easily, but the only alternative is this thick, white goop, sticky and smelling like coconut. I cover myself as best I can, but there’s a wide swathe across my back I can’t reach, so I set the bottle aside and turn back to my magazine, waiting for Tate to return.

The minutes pass. I finish the magazine and dig in the beach tote for my lip balm, bored. I’m getting hungry now, so I grab my beach bag and quickly slip into my shorts and sandals, then head up the beach.

The backdoors of the beach house are open when I reach it: the glass slid aside. I climb up the stairs from the beach, and step inside. “Hello?”

The house is quiet, nobody in sight. Then I hear laughter coming from deeper inside. Elise’s voice. And Tate. I can’t
hear what they’re saying, only the tone of their voices.

Teasing. Affectionate.

I freeze.

And suddenly, I remember the necklace: the one Tate had in his pocket, the one Elise claimed as her own.

I had put all of that aside. After all, there were a dozen ways for us to have mixed them up: I probably took it by mistake, long before the trip. We sat here on the beach together, just the night before. Elise said it was the two of us. Always.

Their laughter comes again, echoing in the expanse of white and tile and bright sunshine. My heartbeat quickens. I feel a faint wave of nausea spread through me. I think of the way she was teasing him the first day, when we arrived. There was something pointed about it, taunting. And Tate, being so protective about Niklas . . .

I take a long, shaky breath. Part of me wants to turn back around—go lie out in the sun until Tate gets back, and spend the rest of the afternoon playing in the water—but now that the idea is in my head, I know I can’t stop, not until I can prove to myself I’m wrong. I take a slow step, deeper into the house, toward their voices.

“Hey, hands!” Elise’s voice exclaims. She giggles flirtatiously. “I’m trying to give you a show here.”

“Aww, come on . . .” Tate groans.

“What do you think? I got it right before we left.”

“I think you look fucking sexy.”

“And . . . ?”

“And what?”

Elise’s voice drops, seductive. “What are you going to do about it?”

There’s no more talking.

I’m at the end of the hallway now, beside Elise’s empty room. They’re in our room, I realize. Our bed.

Bile rises in my throat, but I force myself to keep walking. It could be a game, I tell myself. Just, messing around. Something, some other explanation. It has to be.

I see them a split-second before I hear Elise moan, like lightning, flashing sharp ahead of the slow rumble of thunder. They’re framed through the open door of the bedroom, tangled up in each other on the bed. Naked. Tate rolls her underneath him, groaning as he thrusts; Elise’s legs are wrapped around him, pale against the golden tan of his back as she whimpers and arches up against him.

I can’t look away.

They tumble over again, and this time, Elise is on top. She sinks deeply against him, her eyes closed, her arms drifting above her head. She looks the way she always does when she’s dancing, lost in something bigger than herself. Swept up. Blissful.

Then her eyes open, and she looks directly at me.

I don’t move. Our gaze is caught across Tate’s oblivious body, and for a moment, it’s like I’m there beneath her; her skin against mine. Then her face begins to change—she’s caught up, too far gone to stop. I watch the orgasm rush through her; I feel it in my bones. Like an awakening. Like a death. And all the while, our eyes stay locked on each other’s.

How much do you love me?

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SIMON PULSE

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

First Simon Pulse hardcover edition July 2013

Copyright © 2013 by Abigail McDonald

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Designed by Mike Rosamilia

Jacket designed by Jessica Handelman

Jacket photograph of handcuff and sand copyright © 2013 by Getty Images

Jacket photo-illustration copyright © 2013 by David Field

Jacket title treatment based on lettering by Tamaye Perry

Author photo by Dylan Borgman

The text of this book was set in Adobe Caslon Pro.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Haas, Abigail.

Dangerous girls / by Abigail Haas. — First Simon Pulse hardcover edition.

p. cm.

Summary: While on spring break in Aruba, a young girl is accused of her best friend’s death and must stand trial for murder in a foreign country.

ISBN 978-1-4424-8659-1 (hc)

[1. Murder—Fiction. 2. Best friends—Fiction. 3. Friendship—Fiction. 4. Trials (Murder)—Fiction. 5. Aruba—Fiction. 6. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.

PZ7.H111327Dan 2013

[Fic]—dc23

2013008216

ISBN 978-1-4424-8661-4 (eBook)

Acknowledgments

Epigraph

Aruba Emergency Services 911 Transcript—8:45 P.M.

The Boston Globe

Before

The Hearing

The Beginning

Now

Custody

Trial

Before

Now

The Night

The Trial

Now