Dead Girls Don't Lie (30 page)

He shrinks farther into the corner of the room, like a spider looking for cover.

“Don’t you care about anything besides your stupid jock status? You threatened me, destroyed my room, you covered up a
murder
, all so you could play football?”

“That wasn’t it … it wasn’t all about protecting the team, it was—” He stops himself. He won’t look at me anymore. Everything he has is working to hide one last secret.

“What then? What were you trying to protect? What would
make you—” Something horrible and dark fills my chest. I lean forward, trying to read his expression, afraid of what might be written there. “
Who
are you trying to protect?” It comes out as a whisper. I’m not sure I want to know the answer.

Evan just shakes his head. “You need to stop what you’re doing, Jaycee. Trust me, you just need to stop.”

I have to ask the question. “Who was with Manny in the room? Who killed him?”

“Jaycee, don’t.” His head is down.

“Who?” I put my hand on his arm, gripping the scar on his shoulder, 18 carved into his flesh, like in the picture from the negative I just saw.

He starts shaking his head. “He shouldn’t have been there.”

But the negative was upside down.

“I should have vouched for him.” I stare at his scar, 18, like the number I saw in the curtains. It was Evan. It had to be Evan.

“I should have made sure he had a spot on the team.”

There’s a mirror in the old house.

I stop listening to him, pick up a marker that’s lying on the counter, and draw the number 18 on my arm, trying to imagine it reversed. I look across the room at the picture of Skyler in a football uniform, 81.

“No!” I push him away. “You’re lying to me. It was you, it was Peyton, it was Mitch, it was Eric—” I swallow hard. “It wasn’t—” But Evan’s face tells me what I don’t want to know. “Skyler,” I finish. Everything inside me goes numb.

I want him to tell me I’m wrong, but he closes his eyes. “You can’t tell anyone what you know.”

“I can’t … I have to …” I’m not sure I’m still the girl who always does the right thing, but how can I keep this secret? Even if I love him.

“It destroyed him, Jaycee. He pretended to be okay, was calm that night, even told us what to do to make the scene look legit—” He swallows. “He stayed on the football team, went to school, held it all in. Then one night he lost it. I found him on the floor in his room, bleeding. He had cut the number out of his arm and slashed his wrists. I think he was trying to kill himself. We wrapped up his arm and drove him to the hospital. Dad told them it was an accident, a stupid freak accident. He didn’t want anyone to think Skyler was crazy. He didn’t want anyone to think he was like his mom. And I couldn’t tell Dad why Skyler had done what he had done.

“But they didn’t buy it. They kept him in the hospital and gave him some medicine that worked really well. He came back, normal again.”

“Rachel?” The hole in my chest gets so big it chokes me. “Did he—”

“No!” He almost yells it, but his voice wavers. “You know he didn’t kill her. You were with him that night. You were at the party together. I saw you leave in his truck. You were together all night.”

I’m nodding, covering my doubt. Skyler took me back to Claire’s house at least an hour before Rachel was killed. No one knows that but me. But he wouldn’t have killed Rachel. He couldn’t have. Manny was just an accident. “Who then?”

“I don’t know,” Evan says, but he won’t look at me.

“One of the other guys? Someone who was still trying to keep what happened that night a secret, and Rachel got too close?”

He shakes his head. “No.”

“What about everything else? The playground, the notes, my bedroom?”

“Peyton and Mitch and,” he hesitates, “and me. We’ve been following you, trying to find out what you knew, trying to scare you into giving up. We were protecting Skyler, and all of us.”

“Did you do the same thing to Rachel? Were you following her too?”

He hesitates, licks his lips. “Yes.”

“The drugs in her locker—you planted those to get her in trouble, so no one would listen to her.”

He nods.

“And when she kept looking, you killed her.”

“It wasn’t supposed to go that far, she wasn’t supposed to get hurt—” He stops, realizing he said too much.

“Except that she did,” I finish for him.

“It was an accident,” he whispers.

“Another accident?” I explode at him. “She was shot through her bedroom window. How is that an accident?”

“She wasn’t supposed to be home. She was supposed to be here.” He takes a breath. “I invited her to the party. We had a tracker on her phone. It said she was here. Me and Mitch tagged her house, shot up her bedroom window to make it look like a drive-by. Something for her to come home to, so she’d be scared. Scared enough to quit looking.”

The truth settles on me like a lead weight. “But she
was
home.”

He grips my arms hard. “I’ll tell them to leave you alone. They’ll listen to me, but you can’t tell anyone what I just told you. Promise me you won’t tell anyone what you know.”

The pieces slide together in my brain: the state championship hat, the faked coroner’s report, the ride in the sheriff’s car. “Does Eric know too? Has he been covering for all of you at the police station?”

“He knows enough.” His hands get tighter around my wrists.

“Why are you telling me all this? How do you know I won’t …” But I’m afraid of the answer to that question.

“You’re everything to Skyler. He’s okay again because of you. It was an accident. Nothing you do now will bring Manny or Rachel back. I know you don’t care about Mitch or Peyton or me, but Skyler will get dragged into this too. Is it worth destroying all of us?”

I pull away, and Evan lets go of my wrists. “I need to think. I can’t—” I hang my head. The fact that I’m even considering what Evan said makes it impossible to look him in the eye. “I don’t know what to do.”

Evan puts his hand under my chin and makes me look at him. “He’s in love with you. That has to count for something.” I look into Evan’s eyes, so much like Skyler’s that it hurts to look at him. He nods and backs away. “We’ll give you time to think. I’m going to find him now. Dad got after him pretty bad today, and Skyler gets really down on himself. I’m afraid
of what he might do.” He stops in the doorway, picks up my phone, and hands it back to me. “I know you’ll do the right thing.”

“And if I don’t?”

He looks at me, but he doesn’t answer.

I think I already know.

Chapter 34

Evan leaves the darkroom, and I hear his motorcycle start up and fade into the night. I slide down onto the floor to think. Think about what I know. Think about who I need to protect. Think about Skyler, and Manny, and Rachel.

Then I remember Agent Herrera. His phone number is somewhere in Dad’s office, but I don’t think I have time to find it. I turn my phone back on, not sure how to even search for his number or what I would say to him.

Or if I want to say anything to him.

I have a string of missed calls, all from Skyler. He must be worried about me, wondering what happened to me, but I can’t bring myself to call him back. How can I ever talk to him again?

I wish I could ask Rachel what to do. I wish she had left me more than a stupid picture and cryptic videos. I think about the file that Agent Herrera said she sent to my phone. She tried to give me more, but someone deleted it.

I look around me, completely overwhelmed. I have to do something, but I’m not sure what. I brace my hands behind me to stand up and something sharp digs into my palm. I pick it up. It’s a piece of broken black plastic.

My phone buzzes. Skyler again, but I can’t make myself answer it. I sit there, staring at his number on the screen, twisting the piece of plastic between my fingers, until the phone stops buzzing.

I stand up, almost on autopilot and go to the garbage to throw the piece of plastic away. I stop when I see letters on it, LOG and then the rest is broken off. I look at it closer. The letters look familiar. I look at my phone; it says LOGIC in the same type. I think the piece of plastic was broken off a phone like mine.

Rachel’s phone?

Agent Herrera said that whoever killed Rachel might have destroyed her phone. Evan said she was here the night she died. Did she smash it herself? On the concrete floor in this room? I stand up and look around me. If Rachel was here, if she broke her phone, would she have kept it, thrown it away, or what? Did she have a chip inside it then? Could it still be here?

Frantic now, I push the drape aside and open the cupboard, ready to tear it apart, but it’s completely empty. Somebody cleared everything out, all the pictures, all the negatives, all the evidence. I turn around and stare at the pictures covering the wall, thinking about where she hid the other chips. I start pulling them down, tearing the frames apart, looking for another chip, Rachel’s phone, anything. In a few seconds the
floor is covered with broken glass and frames and Skyler’s mom’s pictures. I stop. There are too many pictures, and I don’t know how much time I have. I force myself to think. I look at the pictures again. They’re hung at artistic angles instead of straight up and down. There’s one, and only one, that’s hung completely straight, conspicuously straight, if you knew what to look for. If Rachel touched any of them, that’s the one. Ironically, or maybe purposefully, it’s the picture of Skyler in his football uniform from eighth grade.

I take the picture down slowly and start to take off the frame, but I don’t have to. Behind where it was hung, someone has gouged a hole in the drywall. Something black is inside. Rachel’s phone.

I pull it out and look at it. It’s identical to mine except the front glass has been shattered and parts of it are missing. I turn it over, looking for another SD chip, but there isn’t one in the slot. I push the power button, thinking the file she sent me might still be on the phone, but it doesn’t turn on.

Another dead end. I want to cry. Then I remember I packed my phone charger in my backpack. Maybe after being in the wall for two months the battery is dead. If Rachel’s phone is the same as mine, maybe I can make it work.

I plug it in and then wait. The seconds tick by with nothing, then it finally glows to life. Even with most of the screen missing, it still works. I go to Rachel’s messages. There are three outgoing texts.

The first message was sent to a number I recognize, Eduardo’s. It’s another video file. I pull it up and watch the video.
Rachel is in her bedroom. Her face looks shattered, fragmented by the glass that was broken out. “Eduardo, I’m so sorry for everything. I was so obsessed with finding out what happened to Manny that I forgot about everything else. I hurt you and Jaycee and Mom and everyone else who ever loved me. Please forgive me, but I have to finish this. Someone has to pay for what happened to him.

“I’m destroying this phone as soon as I finish tonight. I’m so stupid. They’ve been using it to track me. Everything is done now. I’ve hidden the important stuff so even if they get to me, they won’t be able to find it. If something happens to me, give Jaycee the note. She’ll know where to look for the rest. She’s smart and good. Work with her. Don’t be a pain in the ass.” She rolls her eyes and almost smiles before she gets serious again. “I know I don’t have the right to ask for anything else from you, but I have to ask one more favor,
cuidala mucho
.” She touches her lips. “Please keep her safe.”

Eduardo said he had made a promise that kept him here, and now I know what it was.

The second message is the one that was sent to my phone: another video message, the one I never saw. It never got through or someone deleted it. I close my eyes, remembering how my phone was missing at the party, how Skyler found it for me, how he took me home; how he rescued me. At least that’s what I thought he was doing.

“I finally know who killed Manny, and I finally know why.” She’s standing in the darkroom. She turns the camera on a pile of pictures on the counter. They’re all of her, more than
a hundred of them. She shuffles through the pile and I see pictures of her from soccer, pictures from school, there are even pictures that look like they were taken through her bedroom window. She picks up the one from the collage, her in a white dress after the baptism. “This is the only one I’ve seen before. The one he gave me. He’s been following me, taking my picture …” She swallows hard. “Since, like, eighth grade.”

She picks up one of her and Manny kissing. “He knew about Manny. He knew about us.” The video shakes and then goes black, like she had to put the phone down. Her voice is barely audible, and I can hear the pain in it. “I shouldn’t have told Manny about the pictures or about him following me. He was just trying to protect me.”

Then the video gets garbled, Rachel’s voice cuts in and out. I catch a word here and there. “Agent Herrera … Spokane … he can help.” I swallow the bitter irony. The night she died Rachel finally decided she could trust Agent Herrera, but I never got that message.

The phone dies again, so I shake it. Rachel’s voice comes back. “He planned it that way. He wanted it to look like an accident.” The video goes out completely and all that’s left is her voice. I hear pure terror in it when she says, “And now he’s watching Jaycee.”

I step back, almost dropping the phone. Prickles of fear go up my spine, and I turn around to make sure I’m alone. I shake the phone, hoping to get the video back. What did Rachel see? Who was watching me?

Then her phone starts to vibrate. With shaking hands I check the incoming number.

It’s Skyler.

JC?

He still has the tracker on Rachel’s phone, and he probably has one on mine. He knew I had it as soon as I turned it on.

He knows I know everything.

Evan is lying to you.

Give me a chance to explain.

I stare at the phone, gripping it in my hand. I’m not sure how to answer him. I’m not sure if I should answer him.

Please, I love you.

My heart crumbles. This is Skyler, the guy I love. Even with everything I know, I still love him. My brain can’t reconcile the two Skylers; the one who didn’t want me to do anything dangerous without him and the one who killed Manny. Maybe there’s something I missed. Maybe there’s something Rachel missed. Maybe Evan is lying. The phone and the pictures could have been hidden in the darkroom by anyone at Skyler’s house, his brothers or his dad, or someone else. Rachel never said his name. If I go to him now, he could explain everything and it will be okay. Everything will go back to normal.