“After you killed her.” I’m going to vomit if my sister’s name crosses his lips again.
He grins like the crazy person he is. Noelle knew it.
“That night I went to her dorm room to do some, uh, research if you will, while her roommate was away.” He lifts one hand to run his finger along my jaw and down my neck. “I went through her stuff, I read her diary, and I found out a little more about what happened to you, Carrot.”
“You’re sick, Hayden.” His grip on my arms tightens.
“It’s the girls like you that are the most interesting. You can’t see that, can you? The girls who are hiding something. Secrets, their true selves, anything they want to keep from the world. So much fun finding out what’s underneath, what they are hiding. You’re so much like your sister in that way, Kara. You don’t even see it. I mean sisters usually are alike in some ways. But then you two are so different . . .”
I shake my head.
“Kellen was tough, but underneath everything she was showing the rest of the world, there was so much good there. She wasn’t just what she wanted the world to see. I saw her. I saw. She wasn’t the partying loser she showed to everyone else. What she showed me was so different. Do you know the hard classes she was taking? She lied about them to her friends. She diminished them, said she was only in college to party and get away from her parents. Such a lie. Did you know what she planned on doing with herself?”
“No,” I whisper.
“She tried to hide things from me, and she tried to hide her good side from me. Especially when she talked about you. But then one day I’m not sure what happened. She zipped back up into that fake self, her I-don’t-give-a-fuck-about-life self. I couldn’t see her anymore. I couldn’t even reach her anymore. And then she met him.”
He takes an arm off the wall to run his hands through his hair. But he catches himself and I’m caged again.
“I didn’t plan on killing her. Sometimes things happen.”
“Hayden—”
“Shh,” he interrupts. “Don’t you see that you were always so much more than Kellen?
“You want the world to think you’re just a pot-smoking shadow, waiting for a ride out of your miserable life. You don’t see that your hope, your passion comes out in everything and you couldn’t hide it even if you wanted to. You can’t hide all that from me. Your real self. And you knew it, you couldn’t hide it from me, and here we are.”
My eyes dart around the café, frantic for any kind of escape. “Please stop. You’re sick.”
“San Francisco was fun. But now it seems I need to finish this.” He moves his mouth over to my ear, his breath hot on the side of my face. “But no need to rush this. I know you’ve always wanted me. You were gasping for it.”
I’m going to throw up. I look away, up to the ceiling, as he presses his body into mine, his hands wrapping around my back, strangling my middle. Hayden kisses my neck and my chest and then he pulls away. When his hands slide down to my hips, I see my chance; his eyes are fixed on where he’s touching me. I push my hands hard against his chest and he stumbles back into the counter.
I look at the front door but there are so many locks and I hear Hayden behind me, so I bolt for the apartment. I can call the cops when I get up there. Thank God I left the downstairs door open. I hear the thudding on the stairs behind me and don’t even want to look, but I do. His eyes are wild and angry.
“You belong to me, Kara. You read the notes. There’s nowhere for you to run where I can’t get you. I can find you anywhere.”
His words are muffled behind the thumping pulse in my ears as I run into my room, slamming the door and locking it. Kellen’s pocketknife still sits on the nightstand and I grab it, clenching my fingers around the handle.
Hayden kicks the door and it swings open. He rushes at me and his face is crazy. There’s no hint of the Hayden I crushed on, only a psycho, crawling on top of me. The pocketknife is under my back, and Hayden’s pinning my wrists together above my head with one hand while the other works at the top of my jeans.
He’s straddling me, almost sitting on me. I want my mom. I’ve never wanted or needed my mom more than I do right now.
He’s going to kill me and I feel a strange calm about all of it. He killed my sister. And how many others?
I see Kellen. She’s right behind Hayden and for a second I think she might actually do something to help but she can’t.
Four-Year-Old Carrot
I’m four, standing on the edge of the pool. Mommy squints against the sun and holds her arms out to catch me because the water’s way over my head. I jump and water, cold and burning, splashes my eyes but I see Mommy’s smile. She cheers for me and kisses my cheek and tells me I am a good girl and she’s so proud. Kellen squints at me, smiling at me from behind Mom as she clings to her shoulder. She leans over to kiss my cheek, too.
33.
Press until it springs back.
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I can’t breathe. Hayden’s on top of me. His fingers rip away the last button of my jeans. The shame, the helplessness, the sickness in my middle is back, making me feel that night again because Hayden’s lost in kissing me and I lay there like bones and meat. He’s gnawing, chewing away at the carcass of my thirteen-year-old self. Because I’m disappearing. I’m gone, far away.
I’m in my bakery, rolling out dough on my big work counter all dusted in flour. Sugar cookies bake in my giant oven. The kitchen smells of warm, buttery sugar and yeast. The sun shines in through the back door I’ve left open. Charlie’s out front ringing up customers, chatting with them, making sure they plan to come back tomorrow and buy my cookies and cakes and pies and breads.
My lower back is killing me but I don’t care because I love the work. Charlie comes into the kitchen, smiling at me as he holds delivery bags. He comes around the counter to kiss me and ends up with flour all over his shirt.
“Hey there, Sprinkles. I’m off to make a delivery. Watch the front for a bit?” He kisses me again. “There’s nothing I won’t do for you.”
34. Add sprinkles if you wish.
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Now the pocketknife burns into my back.
“Hayden, stop, free my hands so I can touch you, too, okay?”
He stares down at me, considering the offer. “You’ll make it worse if you try anything.”
I nod. The pocketknife is molten under my skin. “We have time, right?”
He lets go of my arms and stares at me, testing me maybe. I reach up and pull him down to me and when we start kissing I stick one hand into his hair. The other hand moves slowly, under my thigh and up until I feel the handle of the knife.
I have a firm grip on it when I reach around to his back and massage there with my clenched fist, not letting the knife touch him. While I figure out how to open the knife without him hearing it, I’m afraid that he’ll realize I’m disgusted by his tongue in my mouth.
I cry out at the same time I click open the knife. Hayden pulls up and off me and I know I’m caught. But he’s smiling at me with one eyebrow raised; maybe he thinks he’s given me some kind of pleasure. Bile rises in my throat but I manage to smile back. I pull him down for another kiss at the same time as I swing the knife out in front of me. He smothers me with his body while I thrust the knife toward his belly.
Kellen’s twirling next to me, like we used to when we’d wear dresses or skirts. She’s smiling. Smiling and twirling. Her hair is free and flowing and outlined in gold.
Hayden’s blood runs warm and sticky over me.
Noelle and Mason walk in the door with Mom right behind them.
That’s the last thing I remember.
35. Make a fresh batch.
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Two weeks ago I almost killed Hayden.
That’s what Noelle told me, anyway. With some pride, I might add. But Mom says she and Noelle and Mason pulled Hayden off me before I could seriously hurt him with the pocketknife. We were both in the hospital—me hooked to monitors I didn’t need because I wasn’t physically hurt, and Hayden cuffed to the bed, due to wind up with a scar on his belly he’ll never forget. Noelle faked being his sister and visited him. She snapped a picture with her cell.
Now he’s in jail for attacking me, and Noah identified him as the person who beat him up in the school parking lot. The police are gathering evidence, including my notes, to try and charge him with murdering my sister.
I want to forget it all, but I know that won’t happen. Instead, every day I go back to my old house because usually it makes me feel better.
I keep hoping to see my sister.
Sometimes when I leave the house I go to Charlie’s church. I’m not sure what I believe about the life after this one but I know that sitting in the quiet, empty church, next to the candles I light, also makes me feel better. Mom found this out and has tried to get me to go to Bible study with her. No way.
But today my old house feels different. I look at the trampoline, surrounded by tall, dead winter grass because the new family doesn’t have time for yard work, I guess. I can picture the pink balloons tied all around it and the bow that Mom stuck right in the middle of it for my eighth birthday. I can taste the cherry frosting from the cupcake I dropped onto it an hour later.
When I look one last time down the side of the house, I see Kellen jumping on the trampoline. Her hair is loose, free from the ponytail she usually has. She smiles. My sister’s black hair bounces and flies all around her face, and the hood of her jacket flaps behind her head. With one hand she pushes black hair out of her eyes. Her other arm stretches out toward me, and her palm is up, her fingers waggling back and forth.
My sister wants me to jump with her.
I step forward and she’s gone.
When I look up at her window, I see her.
My sister Kellen is forever seventeen. I’m sixteen, on my way to a lifetime of possibilities.
Birthdays, experiences, and new memories waiting to happen, and not a single one of them will ever include my sister.
The rest of my life. Forever.
Without my big sister.
I see Kellen behind a big heart drawn on her foggy window.
She peeks behind her and then at me, and presses a hand to the window.
And then she’s gone.
I know that’s it.
I’ve lost her.
I can’t remember my sister’s voice.
I don’t belong here anymore.
“You okay?”
I turn around to see Charlie. He leans against the tree, his arms folded, and he’s smiling at me.
I walk into his arms and bury my face in his chest. He’s quiet, just holding my head against him.
After a while we walk back to the café. Mom twirls around with utter giddiness at seeing us, hand in hand.
“Hmm, now there’s the power of pea soup,” she whispers in my ear as I walk Charlie to the door of the kitchen.
I only smile because she’s crazy. But I’d rather have her happy and crazy than no mom at all. And her new family, her café family, loves her, too, no matter what.
“Why don’t you bake me cookies?” Charlie suggests as he ties on his apron. As he walks toward me, I step backward to the wall. He pulls me to him. “That would give you an excuse to hang out back here with me.” He kisses me. “What do you think?”
“That you might be fired if that happened. But call me later when you’re off?” I give him a last peck before I duck under his arms.
I’m yanked back by his hand. “Hey!” Charlie hugs me tightly before he kisses the top of my head and turns to the sink.
I walk back out to the dining area and sit down with Noelle.
Noah Bender is there. His face tells me he didn’t plan on Noelle being here.
Noelle’s eyes flit from me to Noah and back again. Noah scratches under the cast on his left arm, and I can see Noelle revving up to start something. I see a lot of my sister in her, so I’m happy that she’s my friend. Even after Hayden attacked me, I only got one week off from her snark.
I’m actually meeting my old friend Jen Creighton for coffee tomorrow. She came by the shop and left a note for me when I missed the week of school after what happened with Hayden.
Kara—
That last summer, after 8th grade. Did Gaby and I do something to hurt you? You left the pool that day and never talked to us again. Whatever we did, whatever I did, I’m sorry and I miss you. I hope it’s not too late. I don’t know why you’re not at school now and I hope it’s not something bad. Please call me. If you want to. I miss you.
—Jen
No one at school knows what happened with Hayden except Noelle and Mason. Noah didn’t offer any info because I guess he’s embarrassed. He’s been to the café a lot lately, just to stop by and say hi, working off his guilt. He has to testify against Hayden when he goes on trial for my sister’s murder.
Jessica pops over to our table and ignores everyone except Noah. There are other customers in the place who were here before us and I see the annoyance on their faces. But then all of them are older: no one Jessica can drool over.