Murder of a Sleeping Beauty

everyone disappeared to?

She looked at her watch. It was past six. Both staff and students were long gone. She pushed through the double doors and into the darkened gym. The humid odor was stronger in there, and the silence more pronounced. Goose bumps rose on her arms, and she shivered.

Without warning, her mind turned to all the scary movies and murder mysteries she had read. She jerked her hand back from the door to the girls’ locker room. What if the killer were waiting on the other side? There wouldn’t be anyone to hear her scream.

This was silly. No one could know she’d choose this day and time to come here. She had to stop reading suspense thrillers.

She took a deep breath and pushed. The door swung open without a sound. Complete darkness greeted her. She fumbled for a light switch and finally found it, flooding the room with glaring illumination. Lockers lined the walls and stood in rows that formed dark aisles. Benches were bolted to the floor, and a huge tiled shower took up a corner of the room.

The place smelled of chlorine from the adjacent pool, sweat, and stale perfume. Skye’s footsteps echoed as she made her way to the section that held the cheerleaders’ lockers. A dozen shiny aqua rectangles were set apart from the gray of the other lockers. Each held a piece of tape on which was written the girl’s name, and a padlock.

Skye stared at the padlock. Shit! How would she get that opened? Wait. She moved closer. There was a slight gap. Lorelei’s lock wasn’t fastened. She swung the door open and peered inside but couldn’t see anything. She reached in and felt nothing. The locker was empty. That was why the padlock was open. Someone, probably Lorelei’s parents, had beaten her to the punch and already cleared it out.

She sank onto the wooden bench, out of ideas. After a moment her gaze was drawn back to the bank of lockers—two metal cubes across and six down. Lorelei’s locker was in the top row, nearest the wall.

Skye squinted. The lockers were perfect squares, but the wall wasn’t straight. A vee formed between the wall and lockers. She got up and ran her hand up the gap where lockers and wall joined together. It was a tight fit down near the floor, but widened bit by bit as her fingers moved toward the top. There she could fit her hand into the fissure all the way up to her wrist. The opening was deeper than she expected. Skye stretched her fingers as far as she could, but felt nothing. She needed a long, thin probe.

She looked around, then hurried into the gym teacher’s office and returned with a hanger. After carefully unbending the wire, leaving the neck curved in semicircle, she inserted it into the cleft. After a few seconds, she felt the probe bump up against something. With a little maneuvering she was able to encircle the object with the hook and pull out her prize.

It looked like a book of poetry—slim with a flowered cover. Skye’s shoulders slumped in disappointment. All that work for nothing. Idly she flipped it open. Instead of the poems she expected, handwriting greeted her. It was Lorelei’s diary.

Skye wasn’t surprised to see the volume. In the back of her mind, she had always suspected that one might exist. Ever since she had been at the school district, the kids had been taught to keep journals, starting in kindergarten. Many adolescent girls continued the practice in private.

She was torn. What should she do with her find? It seemed such an invasion of privacy to read what the dead girl had never intended anyone else to see. On the other hand, if it led to her killer, was there any other choice? Giving the diary to Wally seemed worse somehow. She wasn’t sure that he would understand a young woman’s innermost thoughts.

No matter what she decided, she had a sudden urge to get out of the building. After tucking the book in her pocket, she put everything back the way she had found it and turned off the light. She hurried out of the gym, grabbed her tote bag from the guidance office, and headed for her car.

The five-minute ride home was excruciating. Skye could feel the diary almost pulsing in her pocket. Bingo was waiting for her as she skyrocketed through the front door of her cottage. He insisted on being fed before she did anything else.

Finally, she could sink onto her sofa and open the book.

CHAPTER 22

Shroud and Clear

Asigh escaped Skye’s lips as she closed Lorelei’s diary. Talk about looks being deceptive. On the surface, this was a girl who had everything—beauty, brains, popularity, and a prominent family name. Yet in the teen’s perception, none of it was enough. Skye clearly remembered the pain of her own adolescence and felt the agony behind each of Lorelei’s paragraphs.

January 1: I told Mother today that I was quitting everything—the pageants, cheerleading, and especially the pills. I’m tired of the competition, tired of being judged by how I look, and tired of my so-called friends who would stab me in the back for a crown or a trophy. My life is nothing but one big lie.

January 2: Mother is still furious. After she kept me up all night screaming and crying, I finally caved and agreed to finish out the cheerleading season, perform in the play, and do one last pageant—Miss Central Illinois. But I won about the pills. As of today no more diet pills.

January 16: Mrs. VanHorn has been so nice. I’m a little surprised. I never thought she liked me that much, but she’s really supported my decisions to quit competing. She says she wishes she could stop Zoe from feeling she has to be the best at everything. I love stopping by after school. Mrs. V is an excellent baker. Her chocolate chip cookies are to die for.

January 29: Zoe can’t seem to make up her mind. One day she’s cheering me on about my decision to quit all the activities and the next she’s saying that we won’t be popular if I don’t do what I’ve always done. Plus Zoe is really grossed out that I’ve gained weight and went up a dress size. She’s always after me to go back on the diet pills.

March 10: Okay, how much weight am I going to gain? None of my clothes fit, and Mother claims we don’t have the money for a new wardrobe. She actually suggested I try throwing up if I wouldn’t go back on the pills. Today they took the measurements for the Sleeping Beauty costumes and it was humiliating. I could hear the snickers when they yelled out my hip size. Thirty-seven inches, my gawd, I’m almost as big as Fat Frannie.

March 16: I can’t stand it anymore. Mother has started to leave boxes of laxatives in my room. She monitors every morsel I put in my mouth. I hated to do it, but today I started taking the diet pills again. I had to. Even Kenny has stopped saying I’m beautiful. I thought because he was older, he’d be less obsessed by my being thin, but he barely wants to have sex with me anymore. I think breaking up with Troy was a mistake.

March 30: The pills aren’t working as well as they used to, so I’ve doubled the dosage. Missed my period this month. An advantage of taking the diet pills I’d forgotten. I guess I was stupid to try and stop.

There was nothing about being pregnant, and Skye was convinced that the teen was unaware that she was going to have a baby. And if Lorelei didn’t suspect, the father surely couldn’t know, which eliminated motives for both Kent and Troy.

April 13: The pills don’t seem to be working anymore. I’m still gaining weight. I measured myself this morning. I’m now officially fat. I’m a size eight. I’ve decided to take three pills at a time.