Page 36

Dangerous – Michael Jackson

The bathroom was so full of steam I couldn’t see myself in the mirror, and when I wiped off a neat square with the edge of my towel, it misted over again quickly. It didn’t matter. I could put my pajamas on and brush my teeth without seeing my face.

I was still riding the stomach-clenching high from performing, even though a couple of hours had passed.

It didn’t really seem possible, or even plausible that I’d actually done it.

For years, I’d hidden at the back of our school choir so no one could see me on the stage, and I’d sung for a bar full of people? Mouse could never.

When I went back into the bedroom, Brooke had switched on the TV and was sitting on the couch watching Fox News. Which wasn’t like her.

‘Sorry, the bathroom’s all foggy,’ I said, rubbing my hair with a clean towel. ‘Give it five minutes and it should clear up.’

Brooke didn’t say anything.

‘Brooke?’

She was still wearing her black jeans and my top, staring at the TV, gripping the remote so hard her knuckles had turned white. A muscle was twitching in her jaw.

‘Brooke?’ I asked again, louder.

She turned up the volume on the TV.

‘Police in Seattle, Washington, have today confirmed they believe there to be a connection between missing schoolgirl Jessie Swift and the murder of Mitchell Covier in the Greenwood area of the city almost two weeks ago. Swift, who is seventeen, hasn’t been seen since the day Covier’s body was discovered, and police are concerned for her welfare.

Detective O’Sullivan spoke to reporters earlier. ’

‘We have significant evidence to suggest that Jessie is alive and traveling across the country with person or persons currently unknown. Her mother is distraught and desperate for Jessie to be returned safely. Anyone with any information about Jessie or her whereabouts can contact their local police department.’

‘Was Jessie kidnapped?’

‘No comment.’

‘Is Jessie being treated as a suspect in the murder of Mitchell Covier?’

‘No comment.’

I reached over and took the remote out of Brooke’s hand, and clicked off the TV.

The silence that enveloped the room was somehow worse.

‘What,’ she said, ‘the actual fuck, Jessie?’

I sat down on the bed so I could face her. My hands were suddenly ice-cold, and I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t hide this from her anymore. I couldn’t protect her anymore, either.

‘You said.’ My voice came out quieter than I wanted. Mouse-like. ‘You said you wouldn’t ask me, and I wouldn’t ask you.’

‘I didn’t realize you had killed someone when we made that deal!’ she shrieked.

I held my hands out, hoping to calm her down before things escalated.

‘I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t kill him, Brooke. I swear to God.’

She collapsed back against the ugly orange couch, and it took me a moment to notice that her hands were trembling. She was scared.

Of me.

‘This is ridiculous,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You’re running from the cops? You’ve been running from them this whole time?’

‘What else was I supposed to do?’

‘Literally anything else?’ she said incredulously. She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe you kept this from me.’

‘I had to,’ I said, my voice cracking. ‘I couldn’t tell you or you would’ve dumped me in the middle of nowhere.’

‘I would never have done that to you.’

‘I didn’t know that at the time!’

Everything was starting to crumble, and I had no idea what to do next.

I didn’t know how to fix things with Brooke, how to apologize, how to keep running when it was clear the cops were hot on our trail.

I didn’t know how to keep going forward, and I knew, for absolutely certain, that I couldn’t go back.

‘I didn’t kill him,’ I said again, more forcefully this time.

‘But someone killed him?’

I nodded. ‘Someone did, yeah.’

Her big, brown eyes grew hard, and I hated that I was the one who had put that expression in them. ‘How do you know that?’

The spiky fingers of fear clawed at my throat, and I shook my head, not knowing what would come out if I opened my mouth.

‘For fuck’s sake, Mouse.’

‘Don’t call me that,’ I snapped.

Brooke flinched.

I pressed the heels of my hands over my closed eyes and dropped my elbows to rest on my knees.

‘What the hell happened, Jessie?’ she asked, trying again, and I wanted so badly not to break. I’d been doing so well, keeping it all pressed down, locked up tight so I didn’t have to think about it.

‘Jessie?’ she asked again, and the fear in her voice pried open the box inside me I’d been keeping so carefully closed.

Choir rehearsal had been canceled.

I’d only joined the choir because it kept me out of the house until late on a Monday, and I did anything I could to be out of the house on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays when my mom worked until eleven, or later.

At the start of the school year, I had looked over the extracurricular activities that were being offered and signed up to whatever sounded the least painful, and choir had seemed like a good option. I could sing with a group – I’d been doing that at church since I was little.

But today choir rehearsal was canceled, and it was Monday, and I didn’t want to go home.

I stared at the hastily scrawled note on the choir room door, then turned and went back up the stairs that led to the main lobby of St. Catherine’s.

I delayed going home by studying in the library until I got kicked out.

The city bus took forever to get back to my neighborhood, now that all the school buses had stopped running.

I used to wear headphones and listen to music on the journey, but I’d stopped that a while back, and now just wore headphones so people wouldn’t try to talk to me.

I preferred being aware of my surroundings when I was alone. That way, no one could sneak up on me.

The bus dropped me off two streets away from home, and I shrugged off my school blazer as I walked. It was getting warmer in the afternoons now.

I headed around the side of the house to let myself in through the kitchen door. We never used the front door at this house. It was for company or the police. Even our Amazon Prime driver knew to drop off parcels on the back deck.

The door was open, just a crack, and I didn’t notice at first. My eyes skimmed over the mess, the disaster, as it took my brain a moment to catch up.

For those few seconds, I literally could not process what I was looking at.

And then it hit me.

Oh, God.

Oh, Jesus.

My breath wheezed out of my lungs, and I gripped the edge of the counter as my knees buckled.

There was blood splattered everywhere.

Over the floor.

Shards of bone scattered around, shiny white covered in sticky black.

Dripping down the walls.

Covering the ceiling.

On the kitchen cabinets.

Clinging to the pretty curtains I’d bought last year. Yellow fabric with daisies on it that matched the color of the cabinets.

The Creep was sprawled on the floor between the kitchen and the living room.

Well, parts of him were.

Other parts were … not where they should have been.

A high, pained noise escaped my throat.

The smell of him was thick in the air. Like rotting meat. Which was exactly what he was.

I gagged and stumbled outside, backing away from the sticky, slick gore coating the kitchen, and sank to my knees. The deck was warm from the afternoon sun, and the grooves of the wood pressed into the palms of my hands, leaving red tracks. Time slowed to a trickle, to a drip.

It dawned on me then, way too late, that maybe whoever had done this was still in the house. That maybe they were waiting for me, I was next, and all my senses went on high alert at the same time.

For long seconds, I breathed silently through my mouth, listening as hard as I could for any noise, any hint that there was someone hiding around the corner. But there was nothing. Just a car passing by on the road, a few hundred yards away.

The Creep was dead.

Really, really dead.

Really violently dead.

And though I knew the right thing to do would be to call the police – honestly? Fuck the police. The Creep didn’t deserve the police.

A calm settled over me like a baptism of cool water. Like blessed relief.

The Creep was dead.

And I had to get out of here. Right now.

The kitchen door was still ajar, and I got to my feet, then nudged it open farther with the toe of my shoe.

I edged along the hallway of our single-story house, past his mangled body, to my bedroom, relieved when nothing looked different from how I had left it that morning.

My bed was still unmade, my clothes still piled on the floor, the makeup I used to cover up bruises and scars still scattered in front of the mirror.

My duffel bag was at the bottom of my closet, and it didn’t take long for me to pack it. Underwear. Socks. A handful of random T-shirts. A couple pairs of jeans. Sneakers. Makeup bag.

What my mom and the Creep didn’t know was that I’d been squirreling away money for years now. Since the first time the Creep had squeezed my arm too tight, kicked the back of my knee to make me stumble, backhanded me across the face. He’d left bruises all over my skin.

I stole money from him: ten bucks from his wallet, more if he came home drunk and didn’t know how much he’d spent at the bar anyway.

It all added up. A little here, a little there.

Babysitting money. Working at a coffee shop over the holidays.

I kept all the cash locked away in a box in the bottom drawer of my desk, hidden under piles and piles of schoolwork.

I knew they would never think to look for it.

The cash was the first thing I put into the duffel bag, hidden inside a pencil case.

I dumped my school stuff out of my backpack to give me space for more underwear, toiletries and a hairbrush. Then I took off my school blazer and hung it in the closet, put on a denim jacket and grabbed my sunglasses.