bone to get to the bloody heart of things.”
“Enough,” Daphne said. “The night doesn’t last forever, ladies. Why don’t you get started, Anne?”
Though grammatically a question, it didn’t sound like a request, but an order. Anne just nodded and looked down at the bones, studying them, absorbing something from them. Her brow, for the first time, knitted, and the previously catty girl fell deep into thought.
Seeing Anne quieted seemed to delight Shirley, who grinned, though she tried to hide it. After a while, head still down, gnawed fingernail still near her mouth, she said, “Have you got it?”
“Yeah,” Anne said, raising an eyebrow as she settled back on her haunches.
The others shifted briefly, trying to find the most comfortable position.
Then Anne began the story, and it went something like this….
1
No one at Lake Crest High was surprised when Nicolette Bennington didn’t show up for classes that Wednesday morning. Nicki, or Naughty Nic as she was called in whispers behind her back, skipped classes all the time. If she wasn’t in trouble at school, then she found trouble at home or in the world at large. It was all very fascinating and/or amusing to her peers because Naughty Nic was fun. She didn’t pull lame pranks that hurt people’s feelings, but she had a knack for shaking things up. Once, she pretended to be blind and walked her dad’s Great Dane, Hamlet, through the mall and into the food court, where he promptly peed on the condiment stand. At Lady Foot Locker, Hamlet found himself with a taste for a Reebok running shoe, which he grabbed off a plastic stand and proceeded to gnaw with much glee. When a salesclerk ran up and snatched the wet leather wad from Hamlet’s lips, Naughty Nic handed him a credit card and said, “I’m sorry, but he’s kind of doing you a favor. Nobody’s wearing those anymore.”
Cathy Lynn Baker was there, trying on a pair of sneakers she needed for tennis. She swore that’s exactly what happened. Mandy was there, too. She was in the mall outside the shop with her friends, struck motionless by the sight of Naughty Nic in sunglasses acting like Ray Charles while Hamlet licked his lips and chomped his jaws, spraying spit all over the fat salesman in the referee shirt. Mandy did not, however, hear Nicki’s clever response to the angry ref, though she told everyone at school she had. It just made a better story that way.
Sometimes, Naughty Nic showed up in the middle of a class, telling some wicked stupid story about why she was late, and other times she raised her hand to interrupt a teacher, announced “gyno appointment,” and excused herself for the afternoon. She dismissed most boys as puppies: cute and amusing but messy and untrained. Word around Lake Crest was that she dated only college boys.
Mandy had three classes with Nicki, and one of them was first period gym on Wednesdays. That morning, Mandy showed up bleary eyed. She hadn’t gotten much sleep and was without caffeine. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays she sacrificed her morning latte because, earlier that semester, she almost blew one all over the gymnasium floor while doing laps. So with no critical bean in her veins, Mandy trudged, shoe soles squeaking, across the shiny, waxed floor and took her place beside Laurel Wheeler, where she sighed and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Someone’s looking tragic,” Laurel whispered.
“Bite my soft parts, L.”
“Ooo, and in such a good mood,” her friend said with a laugh. “Did Dale keep you up late?”
“Incorrect, but thank you for playing.”
Dale wasn’t likely to be keeping her up late at all. Not anymore. Not after last night.
She was just being romantic. Impulsive. Mandy stopped by his house to surprise Dale, and while waiting in his room, found an open instant message window on his monitor, in which Dale—King Looz of Low Life—was asking some girl to come over and “watch movies.” He had acted like it was no big thing, infuriating Mandy, who proceeded to dump his ass. She’d spent most of the night running angry conversations through her head and devising creative tortures. So, in a way, he had kept her up late. Something else he was not to be forgiven for.
Then, that morning, while Mandy was crossing the school parking lot, he had the nerve to just walk up and start talking to her like nothing happened. What an ass.
“I’ve deleted him from my buddy list.”
Laurel’s eyes lit up, and she bent close. “You’re breaking up? No way! Why didn’t you call me?”
Because she’d been IMing with their other friend, Drew, for three hours chatting about what a jerk Dale was, and by the time she’d signed off her mom was standing in the doorway obnoxiously tapping her watch. Besides, she had wanted to be sure she was deleting Dale totally before telling Laurel anything. Laurel was the goddess of text messaging, and pretty soon every cell phone at Lake Crest would be buzzing. In fact, Mandy could already see Laurel fidgeting, wanting to get to her locker, her purse, her Nokia.
Just to make things more interesting, Mandy said, “Please don’t tell anyone.”
Laurel twitched like she had something in her eye; then her face grew serious and concerned. She wrapped a skinny arm over Mandy’s shoulder and pulled her into a hug. “This is just between us, girl.”
Yeah, right.
“So what happened?” Laurel asked.
The door of the boys’ locker room creaked open, and Mr. Lombard waddled in, wearing a white polo shirt and baggy blue sweatpants. Their gym teacher was a pudgy little man who looked like Santa Claus without a beard. His shiny bald head had a fringe of white hair that hung too long in the back, and his cheeks always had a red tinge, which Laurel assured Mandy was from chugging too much gin and juice. Despite his alleged alcoholism, Lombard wasn’t bad. He didn’t bark at them like Crawford had during sophomore year and he kept up with fitness trends, so classes were sometimes interesting. Before Christmas break, they’d actually done yoga. More often than not, he smiled a lot and coached the girls, urging them on rather than making them feel crappy for not being able to climb a rope or throw a ball.
Today, though, Mandy thought Lombard looked pissed off as he stomped across the floor. She knew the feeling well enough. Dale had seen to that.
Lombard stopped ten feet from the outer edge of the two dozen kids gathered on the far end of the gym and put his hands on his hips. He kept his eyes on the floor as if disgusted with the bunch of them.
But when the P. E. teacher looked up, his eyes were wet and his cheeks were redder than Mandy had ever seen them. A cold stone dropped in Mandy’s stomach, and she felt a stream of ice run down her back. Whatever Lombard was about to say was bad. Very bad.
Laurel nudged her, and Mandy made a small shrug.
Lombard sniffed. He looked back at the floor. “No class today,” he said, his voice cracking on the last word, making it sound like
“Oh, now, this cannot be good,” Laurel said.
Mandy nodded and looked around at the other kids. They’d been dismissed, but no one moved. They stood just where they were standing when Lombard appeared, only now they looked confused, anxious, and disturbed. The P. E. teacher’s distress had seeped into them, and her classmates did nothing to hide the fact. She continued searching each and every face.
It never occurred to her that one of them was missing.
Lake Crest was a small school, with fewer than three hundred students total. This year’s graduating class would be just shy of one hundred. As a result, there were few strangers. Mandy had led or followed kids from Hoskins Elementary and Tyler Middle. She’d grown up in Elmwood, and whether she considered a kid her friend or not, they were all kind of close.
So when Mr. Thompkins cleared his throat and said, “I’m very sorry to have to announce the death of our friend Nicolette Marie Bennington,” Mandy felt a deep sickness harden in her stomach. The nausea had been with her since Mr. Lombard had excused them. It had grown when she’d emerged from the girls’ locker room to find the bleachers extended and her classmates gathering on the benches. The queasiness had been soft then, unformed and roiling like something she was trying to digest. But when their principal leaned forward at the podium, his voice
