Dead Ringer (22 page)

November
25

Sasha

Sasha spent the entire day after her
failed meeting in the park searching online for CO. She paid Syke and some of
his guys everything she’d earned from babysitting at the Hunters so they could
help, but nothing turned up beyond a now-dormant VidBit account with no user
profile. CO was like a ghost.

Sasha wondered if he or she was just jumping on the Sarah Castro-Tanner
bandwagon to try and get as much information as they could. Maybe it was a
journalist or a detective with the EPD? Technically CO hadn’t done anything
illegal.

Either way, Sasha decided that she didn’t need CO to finish
her job. It felt too risky to let some stranger in on all the work she’d done up
to this point. As far as Sasha was concerned, she had a checkmate against
Charlie and Amanda; she had innocently overheard them talking about their involvement
in Sarah’s death, and not so innocently recorded it on her cellphone, plus she
had the trump card to top them all: the baby secret.

All Lexi needed to do was walk that three seconds of audio
into the Englewood Police Department and their lives would be wrecked forever.
Sasha could save the truth about Amanda and Charlie’s child for any problems
that might arise if they ever found her out. The fact that she was Sarah Castro-Tanner’s
sister wouldn’t matter. She would say that she had no idea Amanda was involved
in her sister’s suicide until she started working for the Hunters, a random job
she took because she missed living in Englewood. Once inside the house she
became suspicious about some of the conversations she heard between Charlie,
Amanda, Kit, and Sean. That’s why she followed Charlie up to Amanda’s bedroom
when he rushed into the house one afternoon, clearly upset. She was worried for
Amanda after everything she’d witnessed prior. But when she heard them start to
talk about Sarah, she decided to record the conversation. In legal speak, that
was plenty of probable cause to record without consent. Sasha looked it up to
be 100 percent sure.

So then why hadn’t she gone to the police yet? It was a
question Sasha asked herself every time she replayed the Charlie-and-Amanda
recording. Maybe Sasha didn’t make a move because she
wasn’t ready to know the entire truth?

There were days when Sasha wondered whether her sister was
truly sick or whether she became this way because of how they both grew up.
Sometimes it was impossible not to blame her parents as much as she blamed
Charlie and his crew. They pushed Sarah to see doctor after doctor about her
closed-off personality, poor social skills, and struggles to make a single
friend in school. But Sasha couldn’t destroy her parents. They were literally
all she had left in the world. So now she had the piece of the puzzle she
needed to ruin Charlie and his crew; why was she waiting?

It wasn’t until Sasha arrived home to find her parents
sitting at the kitchen table with a tall, handsome man in khakis and a blue
button-down that she realized waiting had been the right instinct.

“Hi,” he said. “You must be Alexandra Castro-Tanner?”

 “Who are you and what are you doing here?” she
replied.

“Easy, Lexi,” her mother said. “This is Detective Pierson
with the EPD. We’re just signing some paperwork.”

“About what?” she asked, but Lexi already knew the answer
from the look on both her parents’ faces.

“We’re closing the investigation now that Sarah’s note was
found,” her father said.

“No!” Lexi yelled, “You can’t!”

“Sweetheart. Please. We all need this to be over,” her
mother said.

“Now that we know what really happened, there’s no need to
continue investigating people,” the detective added.

“But what if someone made Sarah do this? They need to pay! I
want them to go to jail for the rest of their lives!”

Lexi thought about rushing up to her room and grabbing the
tape of Charlie and Amanda. Now was the moment to confess everything. The
police would have to keep the case open, and the people involved would finally
be brought to justice.

 “I understand,” the detective said, “But even if some
extreme bullying was the reason Sarah took her own life, it’s hard to lock
someone up for that. Your family would need to press charges, which they do not
want. And unless there was a premeditated plan, it’s impossible to get a murder
conviction. Do you understand what all of that means?”

Sasha nodded. Detective Pierson wasn’t saying anything
definitive, but all she could hear was,
Charlie and his friends will get
away with whatever they did
. Releasing her information would likely result
in nothing. He must have registered that disappointment in her face.

“I’m sorry to tell you this,” he said, “but you seem like a
very smart girl, and I want you to know all the facts so that you’re prepared.
A legal battle will probably not result in a conviction, and it could take
years and tens of thousands of dollars to complete.”

“We don’t want that, Lex,” her dad said. “We need to close
this chapter of our lives. It’s what Sarah would want us to do.”

Sasha understood what her parents needed, but she didn’t
feel the same way and she was pretty sure that Sarah would take her side.
Regardless of what the suicide note said, Sasha knew that years and years of
being an outcast contributed to all her sister’s feelings. She could not let
Charlie and his friends win. Sasha would have to find a way to make them pay
without police involvement.

In four short weeks, it would be the two-year anniversary of
the night her sister died. That felt like plenty of time to prepare a final
surprise for the people responsible—something to leave them with a memory
they’d never be able to erase. She’d come this far. Now was not the time to
give up on Sarah.

Laura

Laura wondered if she should have
used Thanksgiving break as a long weekend to recharge instead of planning what
she suspected would be the most epic party in Englewood history. It always took
a lot of energy out of her to play the character she’d created for hours and
hours on end, but it was too late to cancel now. Laura Rivers could not
disappoint. Besides, she had to admit that the lines between Sarah and Laura
were getting blurrier by the day, which made it easier to maintain. Laura began
as a character that Sarah invented to accomplish her goals of coming back to
Englewood and ruining Charlie, but any good actress could explain that when she’s
fully immersed in the part, she becomes the character—she has to in order
to be completely convincing.
I’m technically an actress, too,
Laura thought,
only my job is full time
.

As that realization hit, Laura was transported back to her
summer at Camp Mackinack in the Berkshires, when she first became the version
of Sarah capable of all that she’d done to become this new girl. The nostalgia
inspired her to go grab the camp yearbook out of the giant, plastic memory bin
she kept in the far corner of her closet. Then she hopped onto her bed and began
to leaf through the pages. Of course she couldn’t stop herself from opening up
the book to one very specific section: the picture of her sitting on the
shoulders of Andrew Craig as they chicken-fought another counselor and camper
in the lake. Andrew marked the start of everything that led her to this very
day, in more ways than one. It felt appropriate to take a trip down memory lane
with him in honor of what was about to happen.

 That summer at Mackinack was when Sarah Castro-Tanner
learned the power of playing a part, and she had cranky old Dr. Joyce—the
fifth, or sixth, or maybe tenth shrink her parents insisted she see because of
her "antisocial tendencies"—to thank.

Just before she left for camp that summer, Dr. Joyce
suggested something that finally made sense. “What if you spend your experience
at this new camp being a different version of yourself? You can take the old ‘fake
it ‘til you make it’ approach and pretend that you are a friendly, gregarious
girl who loves to smile and chat and never meets anyone she doesn’t like. Do
you think that might make you feel better, or help you have a better time?”

To the first question Sarah’s answer was a resounding
no
.
She didn’t feel bad being quiet and closed off. That’s who she was and how she
felt natural. Why was everyone so obsessed with being friendly? Couldn’t
someone just prefer to be a quiet thinker without being considered sick in the
head? But regarding the question of whether or not she might have a better
time, ultimately, the answer was probably
yes
. Sarah was well aware of the fact
that if she was kind and inviting, people would return the treatment, which
would be a welcome change from the way they typically treated her: like a weird,
loner freak. She had never thought about pretending just for the sake of social
ease, but the idea sounded like an interesting change from the previous summers
she’d spent alone in her bunk at other camps, and she figured she really had
nothing to lose now that she was starting over at Mackinack.

Sarah spent the three weeks before camp watching every
single movie about a smart, friendly, loveable, or kick-ass girl she could get
her hands on—classics like
Funny Girl
and
Gentlemen Prefer
Blondes,
and more recent ones like
The Notebook, Mean Girls
, and
The
Hunger Games
. There were a thousand different types of characters she could
play, but the girl she loved the most was the lead in the remake of a classic:
Sabrina.

The gorgeous British actress Julia Ormond plays Sabrina, a
shy, misunderstood girl who has been overlooked her entire life—a life
she mostly spent pining after David, a boy who barely looked her way. But after
a few months living in France, she picks up a sexy, new haircut, brand-new
wardrobe, and far more confident attitude, and becomes the object of David’s
affection. He has no idea that she’s the girl he’s known since they were both
very young. Playing Sabrina would be perfect because Sarah also had a boy of
her dreams who had ignored her since the first grade: Charlie Sanders. If Sarah
could hone her skills over the summer at camp, she thought, come September she
would be ready to have her own
Sabrina
moment with Charlie.

As it turned out, Sarah was a better actress than she could
have ever imagined. She arrived at camp as Sass Castro-Tanner—a nickname
she said her friends back home had given her because of her snarky personality—and
the very first person she connected with was Andrew Craig, the hottest
counselor that summer, if not in all of Camp Mackinack history. Andrew was only
eighteen—the youngest you could be as a full counselor —but he already
had the scruffy, five o’clock shadow of a man and the arm muscles to match.
Those were obvious perks, but it was his crazy blue-and-green eyes that caught
Sarah’s attention first. One was literally the clearest-day-in-the-sky blue and
the other was green like the most perfect part of the Caribbean ocean. Those
eyes were the inspiration for the eyes Sarah gave herself as Laura Rivers—a
little homage to everything that Andrew had given her.

With Andrew, Sarah’s
Sabrina
dream came true in an
even more magical way than she could have imagined it happening with Charlie.
Andrew initially thought Sarah was a counselor, and even though he was quickly
corrected, he still treated her like she was his equal. Within a week they were
spending the kind of time together that made everyone at camp talk, but Sarah
didn’t care. Andrew was the first person who had ever been interested in her,
and he quickly became her very first kiss.

Sarah continued working wonders, acting the part of Sass—a
bold, quick-witted, and bubbly girl who somehow managed to be independent, but
still adoring. On the very last night of camp, Andrew planned a special date in
the woods for them to watch the sunrise together. They met in the clearing between
both their cabins at five o’clock in the morning, just as the sun was starting
to rise. It was riskier that way, but Andrew said he found a spot that was
hidden behind the trees, and that the sky changing from night to day would be
too incredible to miss. Sarah couldn’t believe what she was seeing when they
arrived at the wooded area Andrew picked out—cozy blankets surrounded by
pre-lit camp lanterns and a bag of snacks stolen from the cafeteria. It was the
sweetest surprise she’d ever received.

That’s why she was so confused at Andrew’s sudden anger when
she pushed his hands away from her inner thighs when he touched her.

“I thought you wanted this,” he said.

At first Sarah didn’t even know what “this” meant. She
thought they were on a romantic date, not sneaking away to sleep together. Sarah
was too young at the time to know how what to do when Andrew protested,
especially since she was still playing Sass.
Sass wouldn’t be afraid
,
she thought.
She would just go with the flow—be agreeable, be wild
.
She let Andrew go a little further, taking her shirt and pants off and kissing
her absolutely everywhere. Then she tried to stop him again. It didn’t feel
right. That’s when Andrew really put on the pressure.

“Just relax. You’re safe with me. This is how it should be.
I promise it will feel so good that you won’t regret a thing,” he said. Then he
forced his body on top of her before she could say no. In the end it wasn’t so
terrible, but the whole thing changed how Sarah felt about Andrew forever. He
had gotten away with something hurtful and wrong that summer.
He was far
from perfect
, she thought, frowning over the camp yearbook photo.

Still, being Sass had changed Sarah’s life in every way, and
her new plan was to use all those newfound acting skills to transform herself
in the eyes of Englewood—specifically in the eyes of the boy she’d been
pining after since he arrived to town: Charlie Sanders. Sarah couldn’t explain
why she loved Charlie quite so much. A crush on the single most popular boy in
school was so typical, and Charlie’s whole social scene was the opposite of
Sarah in every way. But she saw something inside the new boy from the moment he
arrived in Englewood. She knew that he didn’t really belong with Amanda Hunter.
She believed that he could be truly perfect if he gave up trying to be the
version of perfection that the whole world expected.

But for some reason Charlie did not see that in her, even
when she came back after her summer away as Sass. A haircut and wardrobe
overhaul couldn’t fool people who had known her as “Sad Sarah” since she was in
kindergarten, and it didn’t fool Charlie either. That’s why she invented
Chelsea. Chelsea
was
Sass in almost every way, and she worked just as
well on Charlie as she had on Andrew. Even though things between them ended
awkwardly, to say the least, Sarah had to thank Andrew for being an excellent
guinea pig.

But the real gift that Andrew gave Sarah wasn’t realized
until just after she “died.” Becoming Laura would require an incredible amount
of money that she did not have time to earn. She needed to steal it from
someone—or, she quickly realized—convince someone to give it to her
willingly. And who better than the eighteen-year-old who took her young,
innocent virginity essentially against her will? Sarah knew that recording
portions of their time in the woods was creepy, but she originally did it
because she wanted to have something to remember from the most important night
of her life. And after everything that happened with Charlie and his friends,
that somewhat strange decision turned out to be genius. She had proof that
Andrew slept with a minor.

Sarah rubbed her fingers along the picture of Andrew’s face
on the yearbook page. She wondered what he was doing right now in California
with his adorable fiancée, living in the apartment his super-rich father
bought. Was he thinking of her just like she was thinking of him? Sarah had a
feeling that Andrew spent most nights trying not to think about her, which was
really such a shame. Andrew Craig was making all of her dreams come true. She
never understood why he couldn’t see it that way.