The Dead Girls Club Read online

  I was equal parts confused and amused, and even after a dozen hints, although he said I would only get three—“What’s the point if it isn’t hard?”—I gave in. It was Primal Fear. I argued his initial clue wasn’t fair. He cited Agatha Christie, said I had to read between the words.

  He usually wins. He has an uncanny ability to remember nearly everything from a movie the first time he sees it: side characters, subplots, lines of dialogue. Even if we’ve watched the flick more than once, I can barely recall a main character’s full name.

  The rules are easy: three hints (one of which, if I’m lucky, will be a quote I recognize); no searching online or the movie collection in the family room; no asking anyone else for help. The only rule I’ve ever set: no horror movies. A boyfriend once tried to trick me into watching one, even after I told him I hated them. He thought it would be funny. Five minutes in, a killer was chasing a woman through the woods and I was breaking up with the boyfriend.

  Now, I tick movies off in my head, knowing there’s a better-than-average chance I’m searching in the wrong direction. Aliens? Only one child. Same with The Terminator. The volcano movie with Pierce Brosnan, the title of which I can’t remember, is a potential choice because it has two kids, but I don’t remember any faulty wires. Jurassic Park? Two kids, yes, but Sam Neill’s Dr. Grant saved the kids, and does technical sabotage count as faulty wiring?

  “Yes, I already need a hint.” I say. But he’s asleep. I wiggle free from his grasp, turn off the bedside light, and stare at the ceiling. My guess is it’s an old movie. He stumps me with those, having watched legions of them with his paternal grandmother. Such a silly thing, the game. Silly, yet monumental. Part of the scaffolding of a marriage, along with the knowledge you collect over the years: the way your partner takes their coffee, their shirt size, whether they prefer onions in their salad or not. But no matter how well you know a person, there’s always something they hold back, something they never tell anyone. I try not to wonder what secret he keeps, but I know it’s nothing like mine.

  He doesn’t know a thing about Becca, not even her existence in my life, and he never will. “Honey, when I was twelve, I killed my best friend” isn’t scaffolding. It’s a sledgehammer.

  I hold up my hands, turning them from palms to backs. Short, neatly trimmed and unpainted nails. Long, slim fingers. Piano fingers, Nana called them. No marks or scars. Not that a murderer’s extremities should look a particular way.

  In stories, blood smells of old coins. An apt description. What those stories fail to mention is that the smell lingers, not on your skin, but in your memory. You can’t ever wash it away.

  The shadows in our room are too big and I’m drowning. Drowning in the darkness, in the quiet, in the after-love haze, in the fear that the necklace’s appearance signals the beginning of the end of everything.

  I skim the hollow between my collarbones, remembering how the heart nestled there once upon a time. I bite the side of my thumb to keep from laughing or crying or both and slip from the bed. In the hall bathroom, I squirt soap into my palm and work up a thick layer of lather. Rinse, then soap again.

  “Out, damned spot,” I say, the water masking my voice.

  I don’t view my reflection in my mirror. And I don’t cry.

  * * *

  While I’m in the bathroom putting on the day’s makeup, Ryan gives me a quick kiss. “Love you. I’m getting ready to head out.”

  “Can I get a movie hint?” I say.

  “Going up?” he says, and mimes pushing a button.

  “That’s not much. That’s not even a real hint.”

  “Oh, it definitely is, and it’s all you’re getting,” he tosses back.

  I rub my lower lip while he walks away. Scorch. Plunge. Panic. Faulty wires. And an elevator? “Die Hard?” I call out.

  His feet pause on the stairs. “Guess again,” he says. “And choose wisely. You only have two left.”

  When the door to the garage closes, I rest my hands on the counter beside the sink and stare at the drain, a knot behind my rib cage.

  I will not lose my husband over this. I will not lose anything at all.

  * * *

  “But Cinderella’s stepfather locked her in her room because he said she was bad and she couldn’t come out until she was a good girl,” Cassidy, my first patient of the day, says. “And Cinderella really wanted her mommy, but he said no.”

  My office is the size of a spacious living room, its one window facing the parking lot, four stories below. In addition to the typical office furniture, I have beanbag chairs and a small armchair covered in cartoon cats and dogs. Framed posters for Finding Nemo, WALL-E, and Star Wars line the walls.

  Cassidy’s a bright eight-year-old who’s been coming to see me for three months. She’s perched on the cartoon chair, and I’m at my desk. I typically don’t sit here, preferring to be next to or across from my patients, but at our first session, Cassidy refused to speak. When I moved to the desk, she began responding, always with fairy tales. Her grandmother, currently waiting in the reception area, told me Cassidy watched the animated Disney movies with her mother.

  Stories are powerful, and Cassidy’s contain a wealth of information, of truth. While she continues, I fetch the half heart from my bag and turn it over and over, as if I were a magician and it a coin, as if truth could be guided from finger to thumb and hidden up a sleeve.

  Becca told stories, too, full of whimsy and imagination. Harmless. At least until the Red Lady. From the very beginning, her stories were different. I bite the side of my thumb hard enough to leave an imprint of my teeth.

  “Dr. Cole?” Cassidy asks, staring down at her lap. “I don’t want to talk anymore today. Can I color instead?”

  “Of course.”

  She scampers over to a small table in the corner and its collection of coloring books, blank paper, crayons, and colored pencils. I should sit next to her, talk to her about what she’s drawing, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Not today.

  I drop the half-heart into my desk drawer, flipping it over so the letters aren’t visible, and swirl the chain into a loose spiral. No golden ratio here. The metal, cool and slippery, reminds me of blood on my hands, of Becca’s cold skin. I shut the drawer hard enough to make Cassidy jump. One apology later, she’s back to her drawing.

  On the drive to work, I was thinking back to the house, wondering again if someone else was there that night, someone who saw but didn’t intervene. An adult would’ve stepped in as soon as it became clear where things were headed. The knife would’ve made it obvious it was no longer a game. But another child? Maybe not.

  No one else knew about the empty house and how we sneaked inside. Not our parents. Not a neighbor. Only the members of the Dead Girls Club—me, Becca, Rachel, and Gia. And no one else knew about the Red Lady. I know Rachel and Gia weren’t talking to us at that point. Hell, I wasn’t talking to any of them, not even Becca. Not until she asked me to go. Asked me to help her. And of course I went. She was my best friend. Even then.

  But what if they went back later? After? What if they saw her body? I press my lips together, shake my head slowly. Impossible. There was nothing to see. Her body was gone. Wasn’t it?

  I cross and uncross my legs. Thump my foot on the floor.

  Sometimes you cope with trauma by opening yourself up and pulling it out—my recommendation to every child passing through my office door. But sometimes you bury everything so deep you forget it’s there because it’s the only way you can make it through the day. Physician, heal thyself? Bullshit.

  I remember many things in vivid detail, but there’s also a lot I don’t remember at all. What if someone else was there and I didn’t see them? Or don’t remember seeing them? Time has taken some of the memories, but others … Dissociative amnesia can occur from severe stress or trauma, and killing your best friend definitely qualifies.

  I pinch the bridge of my nose. I can’t allow myself to fall apart. I have to view this as I would
a case. Concerned, but not overly involved. Not emotionally involved. This is what I’m trained to do. Put the puzzle together and see the picture as a whole.

  Cassidy’s focused on her crayon and paper, so I open a browser. Type in REBECCA LILLIAN THOMAS. It’s been a long time since I’ve read the official story, but I know it by heart: Lauren Thomas, Becca’s mother, killed her in a drunken rage. They didn’t find her body, but it didn’t matter. There were signs of a struggle in the house. There should’ve been a countrywide media circus—the case was ripe for tabloid frenzy—but three days after her arrest, a fourteen-year old was found murdered in the woods behind her home in northern Baltimore County. She came from a good two-parent family. Sunday dinners and after-school clubs. Her school picture revealed shiny hair, big eyes, perfect teeth. The right kind of dead girl. And you can bet her death—at the hands of a neighbor with a history of sketchy behavior—made the national news.

  Instead of the expected Baltimore Sun archives, there’s a new link, a new story. Five months old—new enough, anyway. I skim it, landing on the important phrases: Pleaded guilty to killing her daughter in 1991. Paroled after serving—

  My vision narrows to the letters on the screen, and I clench my jaw so hard my molars grind. Lauren Thomas is out of prison. Becca’s mother is free.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THEN

  The ride to the mall took forever. Maybe because it was Friday, June seventh, the last day of seventh grade. Maybe because there was traffic. Or maybe because me and Becca were so excited we could hardly sit still; we finally had enough money saved for the necklaces.

  My mom listened to the same radio station we did, so when “Baby, Baby” came on, she turned it up loud and the three of us sang along. Lots of people said it was the best song of 1991. At that minute, it was for me, too.

  At the mall entrance, I had the door open before the car stopped all the way. When I got out, my hair caught on the seat belt and I had to yank out a bunch of strands, squinting at Becca the whole time. She’d made me take out my braid this morning because she said it looked better down. If hers had been down to her waist instead of her shoulders, she’d have understood what a pain it was.

  We were practically opposites. Becca was smallest-kid-in-the-class short and had almost white hair and eyes like the sky mixed with clouds. Last year, Jeremy Dixon hadn’t stopped calling her “ghost girl.” She said it didn’t bother her, but names always hurt. Plus, she hated that she looked like her mom. She had an aunt—her mom’s sister—who’d died when Becca was a baby, and she looked like her, too. I’d seen a picture once. But Becca was the prettiest.

  Mom called me lanky, which meant tall with long, skinny arms and legs. I’d gotten my height from my dad. Everything else—my thick hair, mud-colored eyes, and caterpillar eyebrows—came from her and Nana, who was mostly Italian.

  “Thank you for giving us a ride, Mrs. Cole,” Becca said.

  “You’re welcome. And girls? Seven o’clock on the dot.”

  “Yes, Mom,” I said, adding syllables where there weren’t any extras.

  “Mrs. Cole?” Becca said.

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Please be kind,” she sang, extending the last word.

  “And rewind.” Mom sang, too. “Have fun, be careful, love you both!”

  Normally we’d make a beeline to the food court, but normally Rachel and Gia were with us. We hadn’t invited them today because we wanted the necklaces to be ours first. They knew we were best friends and we knew they were best friends, but we didn’t want them to copy.

  Soon as we got to Claire’s, we went to a spinning jewelry display case in the back.

  Becca spun it once. “Oh, no, they’re gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone? There were a bunch.”

  “I know. They were hanging right here. I remember.” She pointed to a metal peg holding an enameled butterfly pendant.

  “Maybe they moved them. We could ask.”

  But the woman behind the counter was all scrunched forehead and squished-together eyebrows, like we were planning to steal.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Let’s not.”

  Becca scanned the lower section of the case. I took the top. We went peg by peg, and when we were down to the last few, she said, “Found it! The last one, too.”

  Becca worked the cardboard square free from the peg and inspected the hearts, chains, and clasps, her lower lip caught between her teeth. I checked, too, but if anything had been broken she would’ve spotted it.

  The clerk sighed when I pulled out my wadded-up dollar bills. But I ignored her. After Becca had the bag, she said, “Have a nice day,” all syrup-sweet.

  Outside the store, Becca unwound the necklaces and hooked the right heart around her neck while I tried to do the same with the left. My hair kept getting in the way, and Becca ended up helping me.

  “Forever,” she said, crooking her pinkie.

  I fitted mine into hers. “Forever.”

  My eyes got hot and watery for a second, which was silly, so I bit the inside of my cheek until it stopped, and said, “Bookstore?”

  “Definitely.”

  We took the steps to the second floor two at a time and split up in the bookstore. Horror was my favorite, but I read science fiction and fantasy sometimes, too. Becca read anything about mythology, true crime, and anatomy. At home, she had one book with photographs, and all the shiny wet purple-pink-red organs and yellow globs of fat made me gag.

  The new Stephen King book wasn’t coming out until August, so I flipped through a bunch of others. Nothing seemed very interesting, but I didn’t have enough money left anyway. My mom hated most of what I read but said she’d rather have me read morbid books than not read at all. My dad, on the other hand, swiped them when I was done or read them first and passed them to me.

  When I found her, Becca was sitting cross-legged in an aisle, back to the shelves, a book open on her lap.

  “Whatcha reading?”

  “Look,” she said, holding up a page showing a big pair of metal pincers that reminded me of tongs my dad used on the grill. “They used these to rip boobs off women they thought were witches. They did it super slow, so it would really hurt.”

  “That’s gross,” I said, hunching forward.

  “Right? And …” She turned to another page, holding up a picture of a spike with a big metal pyramid on top. “They made people sit on this.”

  “La-la-la, I can’t hear you,” I said, but I sat down next to her anyway.

  She read to me about people strapped to wheels, how their arms and legs were hit until they broke, about people boiled alive, about people with sticks shoved under their nails. I kept making little yip sounds, trying to keep them muffled so no one would come and kick us out for making noise.

  When she closed the book, she said, “Why are you so grossed out? Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy were way worse.”

  “Yeah, but …”

  “We talk about stuff like this all the time,” she said.

  She was right. We’d been talking about serial killers for years. Then she’d come up with the idea for the Dead Girls Club last summer, after she saw one of my books about a bunch of kids with a club in a secret hideaway. We didn’t have a treehouse or anything. Nowhere special—yet.

  The name came from all the true crime books Becca read. Her basement was full of them, and they were always about dead girls. This year, a woman named Aileen Wuornos had been arrested for killing six men, but most of the time, it was men who killed and girls who got killed.

  Some of the books had pictures, too. Sheet-covered bodies and bloodstained floors. Knives, baseball bats, and handcuffs. Big metal barrels and crawl spaces underneath houses. Photos of killers before and after they were caught. The worst one was Ted Bundy because he looked normal, but he did gross things to the women’s bodies after he killed them.

  There were so many killers, I didn’t think we’d ever learn about them all. Sometimes Becca read us their stori
es; sometimes she told us about stuff from the news. Sometimes she told scary stories. I never liked them as much, though, because real people were always scarier.

  “They’re different,” I said.

  “They still killed people. Remember about Ted Bundy and the bottle and the other stuff? What he did? And the two guys with the van and the tools?”

  “Yeah, but they did stuff like that because they were messed up in the head. The people doing the torture thought they were right.”

  “Maybe they were. We weren’t there, so how do we know? Maybe they were saving everyone by doing what they did.”

  “Doesn’t make it right.”

  She got to her feet and slid the book back on the shelf. “Doesn’t make it wrong, either.”

  I pulled a face. “Come on, my mom’ll be here soon and we still have to get your stuff. Maybe we can get her to order pizza.”

  * * *

  My mom waited outside while Becca packed up for spending the night. Her mom wasn’t home, so her house was super quiet. She lived in the same kind of row house I did, only on a different street. We had the same middle bedroom, too, but Becca had a twin bed, not a double.

  While she got her underwear and pajamas, I plopped on her bed, knocking off one of her sketchbooks. A waterfall of loose pages dislodged, all pen-and-ink drawings: people in old-fashioned clothes, a little girl with ribbons in her hair, an older girl with her hands on her cheeks like the kid in Home Alone, a woman on her side, hair covering her face.

  I bent to pick them up, but Becca said, “No, I got it,” as she rushed over to sweep everything up into her arms.

  One slipped free from the others, and I caught a glimpse of someone with long hair like mine, but Becca snatched it away, turning it over.

  “Just wanted to help,” I said.

  “I know, but I want to keep them in order.”

  She patted the edges until they were in a neat pile and put the stack on her desk underneath a Lisa Frank notebook, one with a rainbow kitten cover.

  “How come I can’t see them? You always show me.”