Wish You Were Dead

“Why?” Jen asked. “I mean, her father’s a vet. It’s not like she needs the money.”

“She once told me that as soon as high school’s over she’s moving to San Francisco,” Tabitha said. “I guess she wants to save up.”

“That’s perfect,” Cassy chimed in. “I mean, what would you expect? She and her girlfriend. It’s so gross.”

I’d had enough of their cattiness and gossip. There’d been gossip when Lucy was the queen of this table, but it had never been this nasty. I started to get up.

“Where are you going?” Jen demanded.

I stared straight back to let her know that I didn’t appreciate this treatment. “The girls’ room. Do I need a pass?”

Inside the girls’ room the scent of stale smoke hung in the air; someone had probably sneaked a cigarette a period or two earlier. I looked at myself in the mirror. The rings under my eyes were showing. But it was hard to imagine that anyone at school was sleeping well these days.

A toilet in a stall behind me flushed. The door opened and Sharon stepped out. She hesitated for a second when she saw me in the mirror, then stepped forward and washed her hands.

I hated situations like this, where two people who knew each other were suddenly thrown together with nothing to say.

“So how are you?” I finally asked. “I mean, you know, given everything that’s been going on.”

“You really want to know?” she replied, and, of course, the moment those words left her lips, I realized I probably didn’t want to know. But it was too late. “For a while I thought it was great. I thought that whoever was doing it, singling out people like your friends, was doing the world a favor.”

I stared at her in the mirror, surprised.

“Not what you expected, right?” Sharon said.

She seemed to be letting her guard down. Something I’d never seen her do before. “Can I ask what changed?”

She sighed. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Maybe deep down you realized that once you get past the cliquishness, they’re human beings just like everyone else? That they’re not evil and they never did anything to intentionally hurt anyone?”

The lines between her eyes deepened. “Lucy never intentionally hurt you? She didn’t steal your boyfriend?”

That was the oldest piece of gossip in the world. Or, at least, in my world. “Adam was never my boyfriend. He was … is my friend. That’s all we ever were. I don’t know where that rumor started, but it’s not true now and never was.”

Sharon gazed steadily at me in the mirror.

“I heard a rumor that you’re planning to move to San Francisco after graduation,” I said.

She stared down at the sink, shook her head, and blinked hard. I’d never seen her so vulnerable, as if all her defenses had been stripped away. “I was, but … forget it.”

“Hey, listen,” I said. “There’s something I need to ask you. I know this is the totally wrong time, but it’s important.”

She looked at me in the mirror again. “What?”

“Do you know what halothane is?” I asked.

Her expression changed. “It’s an anesthetic.”

“I heard that the police have been asking people about it. And since your father’s a vet?”

She nodded. “They asked him. A detective came to our house.”

“Did he say why?”

“I wasn’t there,” she said. “My dad told me later.… Listen, Madison, I know I’ve been a real bitch, but you don’t know what it’s like, okay? Anyway, you want to know the truth? I really do hope they’re okay.” She went past me and out the bathroom door.

I stared at the door, feeling amazed. What in the world could have brought that on?

A moment later I left the girls’ room. Lunch wasn’t over yet, but I didn’t feel like going back to the cafeteria. I stood in the hall for a moment, not sure where to go. The Safe Rides office, I thought, to see if I’d left my red cashmere scarf there on Saturday night.

I pushed open the door, expecting the lights to be off, and was surprised that they were on. A drawer banged shut. Tyler was sitting at the desk, trying not to look rattled.

“Hi,” I said uncertainly, not knowing what to think. My emotions were a jumble of conflicting impulses. Should I ask him what he’d been doing? Should I ask why he walked away from me in the hall that morning? Or should I place my hand on his and move close, hoping he’d kiss me the way he had at my house?

“Hi,” he replied. We stared at each other. He had to know that I knew he’d been up to something. I waited. When Tyler looked away, I knew he wasn’t going to tell me. Suddenly my feelings focused into anger. He had no right to keep secrets at a time like this. I reached past him and opened the desk drawer. Inside was the Safe Rides log.

“That’s what you were looking at,” I said, more as a statement than a question.

“Madison, I told you—”

“No!” I cut him short. “People’s lives are at stake. If you really know what’s going on, you have to tell the police.”

He didn’t answer. I took out the ring binder and opened it on the desk. “You’re thinking that all three of them had something to do with Safe Rides. Lucy disappeared after we gave her that ride home. Adam vanished after he called for a ride. And Courtney was part of Safe Rides.”

Tyler eased out of the chair and stood up.

“Why won’t you tell the police what you know?” I asked. “Or at least, if you won’t tell them, tell me and I’ll go tell them.”

“I better go.” He started for the door, but I blocked his path. He looked startled.

“I want you to tell me why you were looking in the log.”

We locked eyes. For that one moment I wasn’t thinking about how attractive and alluring he was. I just wanted to know what was going on.

“I was looking for a pattern. Something the killer’s been following.”

I felt a chill. “Who said there was a killer? Who said anyone’s been killed?”

Tyler stared at the open log. If there was a killer, and if there was some connection to Safe Rides, it might just be that the killer took his ideas for victims from that log. The log I’d just found Tyler looking at. The same Tyler who, along with me, was the only person in the world who knew that Lucy had not gone inside the night we dropped her off. The same Tyler who’d suddenly said he was going away the weekend Adam disappeared. Only he wasn’t away because I’d seen him. The same Tyler who had an unusual interest in serial killers.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked, crashing through my thoughts.

You know nothing about him, I thought. Not where he came from, or why he suddenly showed up a month after school started, or what he was doing in this office. Do you even want to be in here alone with him?

I started toward the door.

“You know what it means if they’re all dead, don’t you?” he asked behind me. “It means that the person who killed them isn’t just a killer. He’s a serial killer.”

On the nights when the public library was open late, Maura used their computers. Her mother had a computer at home, but it had an old-fashioned dial-up modem and you could grow old waiting for it to do the simplest things.

The library was where she had written and posted her blog. And even though she’d stopped doing that, she would still go to a chat room and talk to strangers. And it was there that IaMnEmEsIs found her.

IaMnEmEsIs: Do you really think you can just stop?

The air left Maura’s lungs. She stared at the screen, then instinctively looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching. No one was. She began to feel anxious and tingly, as if a mild electric current was running