Dead Ringer (29 page)

Laura

Laura sat on the old, plaid couch
eating a slice of pepperoni pizza straight out of the box. She had called ahead
to order it before she even left the restaurant. It wasn’t just that she didn’t
have much of an appetite while she and Charlie were dining at The Roundhouse.
She’d promised Charlie a pizza party for dessert way back when they planned the
trip, and if he decided to make his way back to the cabin, she didn’t want to
disappoint. Laura put the current odds of a return at 75 percent.

Charlie didn’t have a car—Laura had insisted upon
driving them to The Roundhouse because she knew the way. He didn’t have a cellphone—she’d
finagled it out of his hands when they got to the restaurant with the claim of
it being a special, romantic date. He could have caught a train, but they stopped
running at nine o’clock and it was already nine thirty. He could maybe find the
bus, but it only picked up two towns over, twelve miles away, and if there was
a cab that happened to be driving around, he certainly didn’t have enough cash
to make it all the way to New Jersey. The fact that it was now pouring rain
would probably also help inspire him to return; Laura was thrilled by the
little bit of extra help from Mother Nature. Right now she envisioned him wandering
around the dark, unknown town in the pouring rain, trying to figure out how he
had fallen for her game for the second time in his life. Laura suspected he
would have some questions, and it turned out she was right. Just as she reached
for her second slice of pizza, the knob on the front door turned. Laura held
her breath as it slowly opened.

“Are you going to kill me?” she heard a small, shaky voice
say from the other side of the thick, wooden barrier. It was Charlie.

“No,” Laura replied.

“How can I be sure?” he said.

“Because if you’re dead, you can’t help me with the very
last part of my plan.”

Charlie

Charlie didn’t feel comfortable
sitting anywhere near Laura, even though it felt just as uncomfortable to stand
and pace in front of the fireplace while she talked. Now that he knew what he
knew, he could barely look at her face. When he did, he couldn’t stop seeing
everything that he hadn’t seen for months and months. Laura had Sarah’s same
eyes, even though they were now, somehow, different colors. Laura’s cheeks were
the same as Sarah’s had been: high and round. Laura’s hairline met in the same
peak at the high point of her forehead, just like Sarah’s. Every time he found
another striking similarity, Charlie had to correct himself in his mind:
Laura
is Sarah, you idiot!

“Ask me anything,” she said once he finally mustered up the
courage to walk through the front door.

“I don’t know where to start,” he said.

“Well, we have plenty of time.”

Charlie wasn’t sure there was enough time in his life to
make it through the list of questions running through his mind.
How did you
do it? When did you do it? Did it hurt? Who else knows? What was it like to lie
to me? What do you want now? Are you certifiably insane?
Right now, it felt
safer to let her do the talking. From the look on her face she was obviously
well prepared for this conversation. But then, she had almost two years to prep
herself for this moment. Charlie had two hours.

“Why don’t I just tell you what happens next,” Laura said.

“To me?” Charlie asked. He was still not fully convinced
that she wasn’t going to kill him in this cabin. Why else would she have done
everything that she did if not to scare him and then end him? If this was a
payback plan, then that would technically match what he had done to her, or so
he thought.

“Yes,” Laura said, “I have a deal to propose.”

“Okay,” Charlie said.

 
“Let’s talk about the near future first. You
and I will go on exactly as we are right now. You’ll be my boyfriend. We’ll be
incredibly happy. I’ll help restore your popularity, and then we’ll bring in Amanda,
Kit, and Miller again, because what is Englewood High without its original
royal court back on top? Except this time,
I’ll
be the queen. You’ll
make sure that happens by keeping Amanda in check, but I’ll help. I obviously
know a thing or two about manipulating people. Bottom line, everything will go
on like this weekend never happened. You won’t reveal who I really am.”

“Okay, but—”

“Oh, I’m not anywhere near done yet,” Laura said. “By the
end of our senior year, you will confess one of three things to the authorities.
Option one, that you killed Sarah Castro-Tanner. You can use all the details of
what happened that night, but no one else is involved. Just you. You take the
blame for everything and your friends get off the hook.”

“Holy shit Laur—I mean…Sarah…or…whatever. I can’t—”
Charlie started. He was pacing even faster now.

“Wait, wait, wait,” she said. “Don’t freak out until you’ve
heard option two. You tell the cops that your coach is the one who slept with
Amanda and is technically the father of the baby that no one even knows you
had. In option two, you tell more of the truth and take less of the blame
but
you ruin Amanda’s life
and
her family’s lives
and
your coach
and
your soccer career and probably a few more things I can’t think of right now.”

Charlie was trying to take it all in, but his mind was too
jumbled to really understand. It seemed to all boil down to one thing. “So in
option one I lie and save Amanda and my friends, but in option two I tell the
truth and save myself.”

“
Excellent!
” Laura said. “I was afraid I was going to
have to really spell it out for you, but you’ve got it.”

“Why?” Charlie asked.

“It’s tricky,” Laura said, “but the way I see it you have
two futures—do you want to be Charlie or do you want to be Amanda’s
slave? I know she put you up to all of this, whether she did it openly or
brainwashed you into believing you had to do everything you’ve done. I think
you
became
evil, Charlie, but I don’t think you are truly evil inside,
and I want to give you the chance to make all of this better and end the cycle
of violence you created. You know, I was the victim of a sexual assault when I
was almost exactly the same age as Amanda. It’s a terrible thing and it needs
to be stopped. This will help.”

“But why not make me confess both things?” he asked.

“I thought you’d never ask,” she said. “That’s option three.
Both
. Because in the first two scenarios, I’ll be sticking around your
life just to check in and see how you’re doing. Maybe we’ll date for a little
longer? I’m not sure how I’ll feel after senior year, but I’ll reserve the
option to stick around because I’ll still have the ability to blackmail you for
the rest of your life; you’ll still have a secret. But if you take the third
option, then it’s all out there. I have nothing else to hold over your head. You’ll
be free.”

“And locked up for the rest of my life.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But at least you won’t have to wonder
anymore. No more VidBits, texts, or emails. No more fear.”

 “Wait. Was that all you?!” Charlie asked.

“Mostly. I recorded everything on the night that you killed
me, but I had some unexpected help along the way. That will have to stay my secret,
though.”

Charlie couldn’t get over how crazy Laura sounded, but at
the same time it all made sense. He had a thousand more questions, but he realized
that it was all a waste of time. He was at her whim. She owned him. Now the
only words running through his mind were
you’re trapped
,
you’re
trapped, you’re trapped.
Then a realization hit.

“What if I just tell them you’re alive, and crazy?” Charlie
asked. Laura raised an eyebrow. She looked surprised by the question. “Yeah,”
he continued, gaining confidence. “I’ll tell them you slipped out of my hands.
You were suicidal—they already know that from your note—and I found
you that night and tried to help you. It’s my word against yours, and you’re a
girl who pretended to be dead, then built herself a brand-new face. There’s no
way they’ll believe you. Should we call that option four?”

Laura smiled. The brief look of shock on her face was gone,
which made the pit in Charlie’s stomach return.

“You’re smart, Charlie,” she said. “It’s such a shame. You
would have made a fantastic doctor. I figured that outing me would occur to
you, so I came up with a way to protect myself. In the far back corner of your mom’s
bedside table is a note from you. It was written on your computer and printed
at your house, with your paper. In it you confess to your mom that you killed
Sarah Castro-Tanner. And if it’s revealed that your mother had that note when
this investigation was reopened—which she did because I put it there over
one month ago—then she becomes an accessory to a crime. Reveal my secret,
and I’ll make sure she and the police find that note.”

Charlie felt his body heat up. Any fear of Laura was
replaced by complete and total rage. She could do this to him—he deserved
it—but his mother’s life was not going to be ruined in the process.

“You’re lying,” he shot back. Laura responded by walking
over to the couch, reaching into the purse she brought to the restaurant and
pulling out a cellphone—
his
cellphone. Charlie watched as she
tapped around. “[email protected] right?” she said. Then without waiting for a
response, she started to type. “Hey, Mom. I’m emailing you because this is too
hard to talk about in person. I put something in your room that we need to talk
about. Can you call me as soon as you get this?” Laura finished then held the
phone out so that Charlie could see the screen. Every word she typed was there,
including his mom’s email address.

“I’ll tell her it’s a lie! I’ll tell her you’re a freak!
She’ll believe me any day over you. She’s my mother!”” Charlie screamed, then
all his anger boiled up, his body took control, and he lunged directly at
Laura. Charlie didn’t know if he was trying to get the phone away from her or if
he wanted to hurt her, but it didn’t matter. Laura broke out of the quick hold
he got on her shoulders, and Charlie watched as she pressed “send.”

“Now do you think I’m lying?” Laura asked as she watched
Charlie’s body start to heave. He was slipping into another panic attack. “Don’t
look so upset,” Laura said. “The way I see it, you have the chance to serve as
an example to all the people out there thinking of making the same kind of
mistakes you made. Think of the lives you could save. I think about that all
the time. It’s the reason why I did what I did to myself.”

Charlie tried to sit down, but he didn’t have enough control
over his body. He just fell onto the floor instead. Within seconds he started
to heave, throwing up all over the living room floor. Laura grabbed a roll of
paper towels off the kitchen counter and dropped it onto the floor next to
Charlie. “Think about it. We could both be heroes,” she said before she turned and
started to walk off into the back bedroom.

“My mom,” Charlie called out as the room continued to spin.

“Relax,” Laura said, not even bothering to turn around. “I
hit unsend on the email while you were writhing around on the floor. You’re
safe, for now.”

Sasha

Sasha couldn’t let the note from
Sarah go. She wanted to respect her sister’s wishes; clearly she’d put a lot of
time and effort into hiding from the entire world for over two years. Whatever
Charlie and his friends did to her must have been pretty insane for her to
essentially erase herself from life. She did not want to make things any harder
for Sarah given everything she’d been through, but she could not help the fact
that she was angry.

Why
couldn’t Sarah say more, and what more was there to
say? Was she in danger? It didn’t seem so from the way she was deliberately stalking
Charlie as CO. Did she get hurt and have to go away for some legitimate reason?
Sasha couldn’t figure out what might qualify. Maybe she was embarrassed or
ashamed of something and trying to protect herself or her family? Again, what
would make that true? The only rationale Sasha could come up with was that
Sarah had vanished on purpose. She pretended to kill herself, and she did it to
get revenge on Charlie and his friends.

That made Sasha livid.

Didn’t Sarah think about how painful it had been for their
entire family after she pretended to die? How could she leave Sasha alone with
their parents? And what about what this had done to Charlie, Amanda, Kit, and
Sean? They were by no means innocent, but their lives were ruined because they
thought that they were murderers. Could Sarah be so vengeful that she truly did
not care?

Sasha wanted to believe that there were legitimate reasons
behind everything that Sarah did, but as long as her sister stayed hidden and
silent, there would only be guesses. And she had not spent two years, countless
dollars, and every ounce of her energy uncovering the mystery of her sister’s
death to have Sarah herself keep the answer a secret. Sasha had come to the
conclusion that she didn’t care if Sarah was unwilling to reveal the truth; she
was going to find it one way or another.

“I have a totally new project for you
,” she typed to
Syke on the anniversary of her sister’s fake death. “
It involves tracking an
old name in a different way. We need to follow the movements of Laura Rivers
for the entire year before she arrived at Englewood High.”

Syke typed back after a few seconds. “
The girl dating
that Charlie guy?”
he asked. “
Why do we care about her?”

“Can you keep a secret?”
Sasha responded.

“That’s what I do for a living
,” Syke said.

“It’s because she’s my sister.”