I smile. "You might have."
The courtyard is a pristine blanket of grass. Practically no one in the school eats inside, despite the heat. Jorie and I stretch out on the bench so no one gets the idea that they can join us. The earring settles on my mind, and it's hard to erase … or keep to myself.
"We found an earring in the woods. Right after we spotted the hooded stranger there."
Surprise colors her face. "A dead girl's earring?"
"That's what I thought at first, too, but the police said they don't have a match. As far as they know, it doesn't belong to one of the victims, and there aren't any new bodies."
I shudder at the thought of the possibility of a new fatality, another gone girl.
"We found its match," I say. "In Charlotte's jewelry box."
Jorie stops eating. She stares at me like she's waiting for the catch. There isn't one.
"You don't think Charlotte … ?"
"I don't know what to think. Should I suspect her? Do you think it's crazy of me to?"
Jorie looks around the courtyard as though speaking of Charlotte will somehow conjure her up on the spot.
"I think the girl is strange, and I wouldn't rule her out," she replies.
Charlotte is nowhere in the crowd.
"Just be careful," Jorie warns. "I've seen the way she is. Mean. Stubborn. She doesn't have friends. Don't you think that's strange?"
"Yes," I admit.
"She's smart, as far as I know," Jorie continues. "I sit behind her in biology and she's always getting As on her papers and tests. She most definitely shouldn't be confused with dumb. There's a difference between book smart and street smart, of course, but she's both. There must be a reason she keeps to herself."
I remain quiet.
"She's not in any extracurricular groups. She doesn't play sports. She's hardly seen in town. No one knows a thing about her, except maybe that brother and grandpa of hers."
"Doesn't make a person a killer, to want to be alone," I say.
"No, but finding an earring match in her house sure does seem odd."
I'll give her that.
"Where are her parents?" Jorie asks.
I offer a noncommittal shrug.
"No parents. No friends. No social life. Suspicious."
Beau seems to think his sister is innocent.
Jorie cups her hands around her mouth like a megaphone and shouts, "Find something to do, won't you?"
I realize she's talking to a group of people who have made it their mission to stop and stare at me, passing quiet words among one another.
The girls scatter.
"They wouldn't quit staring," Jorie says.
Hell, they've been staring since Beau kissed me in the hall a few days ago. Different groups of them take turns watching me.
"Apparently Beau doesn't normally show affection?" I ask.
Jorie laughs. "Affection? Not even. More like claiming."
She adjusts the waist on her white skirt and pulls the hem of her shirt down to cover her slightly showing stomach. My skirt is long, black, and covering my sandaled feet. I fan my tight-fitting shirt in an attempt to stanch the sweat that threatens to drown me.
"He claimed you, girl, and you know it," Jorie says. "And no, he's never done that before. Why do you think all these damn people are staring now? They need to know why. Why you? Why the girl who is every bit as ordinary as them? No offense."
"None taken," I say.
She's right. I'm not model beautiful like Charlotte. I have absolutely nothing particularly astonishing about me. I could be the girl walking past us. Or the one laughing with her friends. Or the one reading, spread out on her back under the sun. I'm no different than Jorie or the next girl.
"They want to know why," Jorie says. "But there is no ‘why,' and that confuses them more than anything. They're sheep. One whispers, and so the next one does, too. They begin their rumors as a herd. Then they add fuel until eventually it burns out and they get bored."
I hope that happens to be soon.
"Except none of them, bless their hearts, ever seems to get bored of Beau."
"Some of them must have moved on," I say.
"Of course they have. I'm just speaking for the majority of his exes here. I think it must have something to do with the way he ends things so abruptly. Maybe they feel they never get closure? All of them swear he's just fine one day and the next he's gone. You'd think they'd learn."
She looks apologetically at me as she realizes her slip-up. I'm the one with Beau now, and all I've realized is that he makes a good friend. And that I love his lips on mine.
"They expect him to be rid of you soon. They've placed their bets on when and where and how. They'd probably love to see it play out at school, sorry to say."
He pretends not to care for a very good reason. I can't tell Jorie why I sympathize with him, so she isn't necessarily wrong in her observations, but she doesn't understand him on the inside.
"Let's not forget that he's involved in a murder investigation, either," she continues. "There's reason to worry."
"Do you think things are different for me?" I ask. "I mean, I know he's been with other girls and that he doesn't stay with them for long. But we were friends first, which he doesn't normally do. And I don't believe he killed the girls. His alibis are airtight."
"Are you sure you're friends?" Jorie asks. "Because maybe he's using you for a purpose. No offense, but he's Beau. This is what he does."
"I'm sure."
For the first time, I know Jorie is wrong. Beau is more than he appears to be.
28
Beau
The news of another dead girl isn't what shocks me the most. It's the fact that they didn't find her body for two days. She was too deep in the swamp, too far in the thick mangroves. Her body was bloated with water and infested with decay brought forth by the relentless Georgia sun. Word around is that her eyes were crawling with worms and her body was heavy with mosquito bites, looking like chicken pox. Luckily, a gator didn't get her. They tried, though. They colonized in the water like a leathery, scaly tarp, waiting for a good rain to wash her into the deeper waters where they could feed.
This time it was Jackie Wales, another girl from our high school who I'd known. We'd dated. A few times together, quickly over.
They say she was murdered late in the evening two nights ago. A shiver crawls up my spine.
"What's bothering you?" Grandpa asks.
He's on the couch, remote in hand, TV on, but watching me instead. Black circles rim his eyes.
"Nothing," I say as I take a seat at the window chair.
I stare at Willow's house.
"Don't lie to me," he says.
My lies are harder to tell when they're told to him. But I want to lie. I don't need him thinking I'm in deep with Willow. Already, he and Charlotte suspect I like her, as opposed to her filling a use for the time being. But unlike Charlotte, Grandpa doesn't mind my dating the next-door neighbor.
"Okay," I say, biting the bullet. "The murders aren't stopping. They obviously have something to do with me. Do you think Willow's safe?"
"I knew you cared too much," Charlotte says, coming into the room.
The earring still bothers me. I still haven't questioned her about it. Mostly because I don't believe Charlotte is the killer. Or maybe I don't want to believe it. Either way, I haven't had time with her until now.
"I don't want her to die, Charlotte. Why is that so hard to understand?"
"Because you've never cared enough to let your thoughts wander this far."
"There's never been a murderer until now," I say, exasperated.
She grabs pots from the shelves and cooking utensils from nails in the wall, then lays them on the counter along with a cutting board and knife. She goes to the fridge for meat and butter. From a wicker basket on our counter, she removes fresh vegetables. I join her in the kitchen to help prepare dinner.
Grandpa pulls himself off the couch and takes a seat on a barstool at the kitchen island, which is nothing more than a wooden table with storage underneath that I made myself, wheels on the bottom to roll it out of the way when we need more room.
I slide past Charlotte and begin chopping vegetables.
"I think you'd better keep an eye on her just in case," Grandpa says.
Sometimes, it hurts to look at Grandpa. He and Dad are far too similar. They have the same eyes, same slant of their cheekbones, equally strong jaws.
"Do you think the killer will target her next?" I ask.
He scratches the scruff on his face, thinking over my question, long and deep as is his way with things.
"I think these girls all have something in common. You, to be exact. Did you have messy breakups with each of them?"
"No." Matter of fact, I can't find a common thread. "For as many rumors as people spread about me, I didn't actually break all their hearts. Sometimes the girls wanted to split from me. Or we both decided it was time."