Frayed (11 page)

I had to start over a few times—I’d missed notes here and there—but the melody sounded as smooth and haunting as I remembered it had for Kesley.

But then something sounded off as soon as I touched one of the keys. The pressure I had to apply was wrong, and the note sounded suppressed, as if something was trapped underneath.

The melody halted as I turned my attention to the key. My nails were long enough to reach under the key and pull it up slightly. Something white and flat caught the rays of dying light that streamed through the window.

I tugged it out.

It was a small, flat piece of cardboard, nothing more.

Red ink—at least, I hoped it was only ink—was splattered across the cardboard in a pattern that closely resembled blood. My stomach churned, but I forced myself to read the words written in large block writing in black pen.

HELP ME.

There were only two words, but they couldn’t have had a more potent effect. My breathing seemed to shut off, and a ribbon of fear wrapped itself around my chest. I already knew Kesley’s death was tangled up in something deeper, darker than I understood, but seeing this somehow made it much more real. Frighteningly so. It wasn’t just the words she’d written, but the emotion that lurked just behind the ink. The fear, the panic, the hope all tied to two small words seen much too late. I swallowed down bile and tightened my already suffocating grip on the cardboard until it creased under the pressure. I couldn’t be sure this note had anything to do with Kesley’s killer. Maybe she’d just been depressed. Suicidal. Something other than what my mind had concluded.

And if this was indeed a plea for help, then why would she have hidden it away? What I couldn’t grasp was why she hadn’t told anybody about her fear. What was so terrible that she couldn’t speak of it?

Everything felt wrong, like a puzzle that wasn’t fitting together.

A rush of light-headedness washed over me. All of a sudden, it was too much,
all
too much. That, combined with the alcohol…

I think I passed out. I don’t remember losing consciousness, but the next thing I knew, I was lying in a bed, and for one terrifying moment, I didn’t know where I was. My eyes felt glued shut, and it took me a moment to peel them open. My head throbbed. Something cool was touching my forehead, and I jerked upright, the cloth on my forehead sliding off.

I rose to my feet and opened the door, and my mother, spotting me standing there, herded me back into my room.

“Lie down, sweetie,” she said, pushing me gently by the shoulders until I fell back on the mattress. “You’ve been ill.” I caught a glimpse of my pale-blue curtains and knew I was back in my room.

“What happened?” I whispered, my voice dry and scratchy.

“You passed out.” My mother offered me a cup of water, which I took while watching her. She looked as though she had just come home from work, though the sky outside my window was dark. How much time had passed since I fainted? My mother touched my arm softly. “Were you playing the piano?”

I said, “What makes you think that?”

A knowing smile tugged at her mouth. “Apart from you being slumped across the keys, you mean?”

I grimaced. “Yeah, I was.”

The realization of what had happened just before I passed out sank in slowly, and I bolted upright. I dug my hands into my pockets, searching for the cardboard I knew had to be there and ignoring the surprised look that crossed my mother’s face. Explanations be damned at this point. I needed to find that note. But there was nothing in my pockets except wads of tissue and old gum wrappers.

“Ava?”

“Did you see a piece of cardboard? On the floor beside me? On the piano?”

“No… Is it something I should keep an eye out for?”

I blinked. “No, no, it’s fine. Just some school notes. I can copy it from Lia tomorrow anyway. No big deal.” But the words sounded flat even to my ears, and I wasn’t sure my mother bought it. There was no way I wanted her to see what I had just found—not when
I
wasn’t even sure what it was.

When my mother seemed satisfied I wasn’t about to faint again, she left me to my own thoughts. After I was sure she was out of sight, I slipped from my bed and found myself standing before the piano once more. My gaze swept the floor. Nothing. Then the keys. Again, nothing. I ran my fingers through every nook and cranny of the piano. Not a single shred of the note remained.

Sighing, I turned and headed back up the stairs.

Part of me had always wondered what it felt like to be bad. To do terrible things. To lie or steal or break someone’s heart. It must have felt good, Kesley, if you did it so often. Was it a matter of power? Were you tired of being that golden girl, the girl everyone wanted to be? Maybe popularity wasn’t enough for you. Maybe being beautiful still wasn’t enough. Maybe having people around you who loved and adored you grew tiresome and boring. Maybe being that girl—neat, tidy blond hair, fashionable clothes, commendable grades—weighed you down like stones in your pocket.

I will probably never fully understand the things you did or why you did them. Or if, even for a heartbeat, you regretted it all. Was there a tipping point, a moment, where you’d just had enough? When being the perfect daughter made you want to scream and tear yourself from the inside out, where the scales finally tipped from good to bad?

Was I part of that moment? Could I have stopped that moment?

Sometimes, I felt cocooned by being good, by being the sort of person people expected me to be, not the sort of person I wanted to be.

What had that felt like, letting go?

What had that felt like, knowing that what you did and the things you said could break another human being? Look at what you’ve done to me. Are you proud, Kesley?

Sometimes, I hated you.

But other times, as much as I never wanted to admit it to myself, I wanted to be like you. Not the polished Kesley, not the sweet Kesley. The cruel one. The bad one. The one etched with shadow and hate, the one only a handful of people in Circling Pines had seen. Because sometimes, it was just so damn hard to be good. Being good could break a person from the inside out, even if everyone around them couldn’t see.

And besides, Kesley, after everything, didn’t I deserve to be a little bad…

A few days later, a knock on my bedroom door tore me away from studying.

Studying was a nice distraction. It made me think of other things for once and pushed away some of the lingering sadness. Math, at least, made sense. There was a problem and a solution and nothing in between.

The door opened, and my mother appeared around the corner. I could tell she’d just come from work; her brown hair was twisted into the standard bun, though now wisps of hair framed her thin face. It was gaunter than a month ago, and the lines around her mouth and eyes were more pronounced. She wasn’t old, but for the first time since the funeral, I could see the weight of everything resting on her shoulders.

“What’s up?” I asked, rolling some of the stress from my shoulders.

“There’s someone here to see you,” she said.

I grimaced. Only one person could elicit that sort of reaction from my mother. “Rafe?”

“
Yes
, Ava. What did I tell you about him?”

I tilted my chin up, defiant. “I know what you said, but he’s a good guy.
Really
,” I insisted when she raised her eyebrows. “Give him a chance.”

Her eyes softened then. “Boys like that will bring you nothing but heartache.” Maybe, but boys like Jackson hadn’t brought me anything better.

So I said nothing to that, instead making my way downstairs after my mother and wondering what she’d think if she knew the full extent of what I felt.

I decided I probably didn’t want to know.

Rafe sat at the table, dark hair unusually neat. I felt a rush of heat when I saw him there, so I looked quickly at my feet. I think he noticed though, because when I glanced back up at him, he was grinning.

Half a minute passed in uncomfortable silence while I fiddled with the blue ribbon weaving the hair away from my scarred cheek. Then, unable to take the ever-growing tension for a moment longer, I said, “I’m sixteen. I don’t need parental supervision anymore. Rafe and I will be outside, okay?” My mother grudgingly agreed to let us go, so I grabbed Rafe by the upper arm and dragged him to the door.

“What were you thinking? Coming here?” I asked once we were outside.

A cold breeze whisked the reddish-brown leaves into a frenzy as we walked along the sidewalk, and my cheeks were freezing. From the corner of my eye, I saw Rafe shrug. He didn’t answer my question but instead said, “What have you told your mother about Kesley?” Deflecting the question as usual.

“I haven’t told her anything,” I said. “Just because our ideas of Kesley have been shattered doesn’t mean hers have to be.” My voice was a little more than bitter, but what I said was essentially true. I had never considered Diana to be a strong woman emotionally, so how was I supposed to tell her that her daughter wasn’t the person she thought she was?

Rafe cast me a sidelong look. “You don’t think she deserves to know?”

Despite the icy weather, my blood heated. “Deserves to know
what
, Rafe? That her daughter lied and manipulated and stole? How am I supposed to tell her that? Sometimes, even
I
wish I didn’t know.”

He didn’t say anything. He just shoved his hands into his pockets and said, “But you told her about Kesley and Jackson, yes?”

“Yes,” I muttered, “but I’m not telling her about you-know-what. Kesley and Diana—my mother, I mean—weren’t very close. Since Kesley was older than me when our real mother died, she has…
had
…never really gotten used to Diana. To her, Diana fostering us felt like an invasion, not an act of kindness. She doesn’t need to know about KARMA.”

“Fine,” he said, his blue eyes intense, “but secrets have a way of coming to the surface eventually.”

“Like bodies?” The words fell from my mouth before I could stop them. Rafe looked as though I’d slapped him. He didn’t say anything, just stared at me. I was sure that shame was curling off me in visible waves; tears were pricking my eyes like needles. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. It was…”

“Cruel? Harsh? Uncalled for?”

“Yeah,” I said. “All that. But Rafe…I can’t tell her any more. I just
can’t.
”

But for whose sake? Somewhere deep inside me, I acknowledged that it would hurt me more to tell her what I’d learned.

I supposed that made me a selfish person.

I turned to Rafe, a thought occurring. “What do you think would have happened if Kesley had told someone she thought she was in danger?”

“I don’t know,” said Rafe, his voice raw with honesty.

I hardly heard his response. “Would it have made a difference? Would she be here today? I just don’t…” My voice broke. “I just don’t understand
why
she never told anyone anything.”

“She had her reasons, her secrets.”

“You keep
saying
that,” I said, “but I’m no closer to finding out who killed her. She might’ve had her secrets, Rafe, but I’m worried that’s what got her killed.”

Frustration unraveled inside me. Frustration at Rafe’s vague, ambiguous responses. Frustration that every time I thought I knew something, I really didn’t.

A tense, coiled silence fell between us, and neither of us was willing to break it. We passed through the streets without a word to each other, with nothing but the whispers of cars on the highway and the crunch of frost and leaves underfoot. Only minutes later, we reached the park, where the late-afternoon sun gleamed silver off the playground equipment and the grass crunched with a fine layer of frost. I stared at the park without really seeing it. Here, Jackson had told me the truth, and weeks later, I was still asking myself whether I’d made the right decision.

Surely if I had, I wouldn’t be second-guessing myself now.

I could almost feel Rafe looking at me. “You’re thinking of him, aren’t you?”

A moment of silence. I looked at the ground, where the ivy curled around a smaller, frailer plant, choking it. Ice clung tenaciously to both plants’ leaves. “Yes,” I said, breathing out a sigh, “I am.”

“Do you want to talk about what happened the other day?”

I thought about the almost-kiss. Did I
want
to talk about that? No, I didn’t.

I closed my eyes, suddenly grateful for the iciness of the wind. “Kesley?”

“Don’t play dumb, Ava,” Rafe said, his voice layered with the hint of a warning. “You know what I’m talking about—you and Jackson.”

I opened my eyes, pulling my arms around myself self-consciously. “Then no,” I said, “I don’t want to talk about it.” I tried to turn away, but a firm hand on my shoulder stopped me. I glanced up to see him staring at me. That might have been a mistake, because suddenly, I couldn’t look away. Our gazes locked so tightly that I was sure nothing could pull me away from him. He took a step closer, and his hand gently touched my cheek—the roughened, scarred left one.

The one that Jackson could barely look at, let alone touch. A shiver of suppressed delight ran through me.

“Are you with the wrong boy, Ava?” he asked quietly.

I wanted to deny that. I wanted to proclaim him insane or at least arrogant for thinking so, but how could I do that when I didn’t even know the answer to his question? A crooked smile curled across his mouth, like he knew exactly what was going on in my mind. The thought was disconcerting.

I jerked away, taking a few paces back. “You don’t know what I’m thinking,” I said fiercely. “God, you haven’t changed one bit, have you? You still think you’re irresistible. You still think you can flick a finger and girls will fall at your feet.” The words exploded from my mouth in a bitter, hateful rush, and I stood there breathing hard, like I’d just run a marathon. Rafe’s expression never changed, and for some reason, that just irritated me further.

He leaned forward, so close I could once again see the darker flecks of blue in his eyes. “On the contrary, I’ve changed a lot. You just can’t see it yet.” He glanced up at the darkening sky. “It’s getting late. You should go home.”

He turned and started to leave.

“Oh, and Ava?” He twisted around, half a smile on his face. His blue eyes glinted. “You never
did
answer my question.”

I said nothing. I just watched as Rafe’s figure faded into the distance. I stood rooted to the spot until long after he had disappeared.

I was filled with a strange sort of emptiness as I walked back through the streets, feeling emotionally numb. It wasn’t the aching emptiness of losing someone close to me but almost a detachment from reality as Rafe’s words ricocheted like bullets in my head.
Are you with the wrong boy, Ava?
I wandered aimlessly for a time, unwilling to face home or, more accurately, my mother, who I knew would be watching me carefully.

I turned left onto my street, looking at the almost identical modern houses that lined the pavement. Time never changed things here, almost as if it had stopped entirely. Our garden was messy—weeds infested the neat rows of plants, and most of the flowers had died long ago. Everything was covered in a thick coat of frost too.

When I opened our door, the clang of pots and pans told me my mother was cooking. I slipped quietly past the kitchen and up the stairs to Kesley’s bedroom. I hadn’t been inside since she died, but everything looked frighteningly
normal
.

After her murder, the police had taken her phone and laptop, but that had since been returned. The room still smelled faintly of jasmine perfume, a cloying scent that sent shards of sorrow straight into my chest. I brushed the tears from my eyes with the pads of my fingertips. Unable to stitch together enough courage to take a step inside, I turned away.

• • •

Saturday, I waited for my mother to leave the house before I went downstairs, knowing that if I didn’t, she’d want to talk. Still, when I came down, I found a collection of emergency contact numbers scrawled on a scrap of paper. A note lying beside it read,
Please stay at home today. Love you. Off to run some errands.

I didn’t stay at home.

There were too many memories, too many reminders, things that were just too hard to face alone in the empty house. So I tied my hair into a tight bun, brushed on a little makeup, and threw on the first set of clean clothes I could find. I headed out the door and into the crimson-and-gold-layered street. I had to check the door behind me twice to see if it was locked.

Diana would be back before nightfall, and I wasn’t going to waste the precious little freedom I had by sitting at home, so I texted Jackson to say I was coming over. The day was cool and crisp, sharp with cold. I rounded the bend to his street, where the houses were larger, grander, with gardens that sprawled out graciously. His family’s garden was neatly trimmed, nothing like the tangled mess that was our backyard. Neither my mother nor I had a talent for gardening, but the neat rows of hedges that lined the fence in front of me told a different story about the Palmers. A curved path cut through the garden and led to the front door.

The door was already cracked open when I got there. I pushed it wider and peeked into the house. A floorboard creaked somewhere. “Jackson?” I called to the empty space. There was no reply, so I steeled myself and headed up the staircase, walking past the family pictures and down the corridor to Jackson’s room. His door was just slightly ajar, but that was enough.

A sliver of light fell across Jackson’s bare chest, muscles rippling as he stepped forward, wrapping his arms around someone I couldn’t see. I shifted my feet and saw the figure of a tall girl pressed up against the wall. I wouldn’t have recognized her from the lacy undergarments she wore if she hadn’t moved her head a particular way, her glossy, black hair falling like a sheet of black glass to expose her face.

Lia.
Lia, Lia, Lia.
He deserves so much better than you.
Her words echoed in my head, a threat, a warning, a foreshadowing of
something
I should have seen coming a long time ago. But seeing them still hurt. It hurt so badly that I wanted to be sick. I felt a surge of emotion, fierce and hot, burning me from the inside out until my thoughts were disjointed. What I was seeing took a whole minute to reach my brain, and when it did, the burning, stinging sensation blazed into a roaring inferno. My head spun. The floors and walls were fading out, and I could focus on nothing but the images before me. My breathing became shallower, and every breath I took felt like it was filled with tiny needles puncturing my lungs. Maybe I had been sucked into a vacuum filled with nothing but the sound of my own shattering heart.

Thoughts blazed through my head, one after the other, entwining and changing so rapidly that it was hard to keep track of them. There was so much I wanted to do, so much I wanted to
say
, and the emotions raged through me like a hurricane. I could have stormed in there and wrenched them apart. I could have shoved her against the wall and punched her like I did Amanda. I could have done
something
—anything—that would extinguish the emotions burning into me.

I must have made some noise—a gasp or a yelp—because the two figures beyond the doorway halted. The soft sighs and moans were replaced with a deafening silence that grew and grew until I could barely stand it anymore.

I turned and bolted down the stairs.

I had just reached the door, the glorious sunlight at my fingertips, when Jackson called out from behind me. I heard his footsteps as he followed me downstairs.

“Wait, Ava, please…”

I spun around. “
Wait
? Wait for what? For you to spit more lies in my face?”

Jackson reached forward and touched my shoulder, but I jerked away so he couldn’t touch me again. “Don’t touch me,” I whispered, my voice clogged with emotion.

I turned. Took a step outside. Said, “You two make a cute couple.”

And then I left.

I hardly noticed my way home. The streets flew by in a blur of tears and colors. The red blazing behind my eyes was either the color of the fall leaves or my anger. I couldn’t tell. Didn’t care either.

Maybe there was no difference. Everything was intertwined so intensely that I was surprised I found my house.