The Naturals

question might be if they care.”

Three questions. Three honest answers. Just because he’d offered to show me his scars didn’t mean I had to tear them open. “You and Lia?” I asked, changing the subject.

“Yes,” Michael replied, catching me off guard, because I hadn’t considered it a yes-or-no question. “On again, off again. Never for very long, and it was never a good call—for either of us.”

If I didn’t want to know the answer, I shouldn’t have asked. I stood up and cannonballed back into the pool, sending a small tsunami of water Michael’s way. The moment I came back up, he flicked water at my face.

“You know, of course,” he said solemnly, “that this means war.”

One second, there was a good three feet of space between us, and the next, we were wrestling, each trying to outdunk and outsplash the other, neither of us fully aware of just how close together our bodies were.

I got a mouthful of water. I sputtered. Michael dunked me, and I came up gasping for air—and saw Dean standing on the patio. He was standing perfectly, horribly still.

Michael dunked me again before he realized I’d stopped fighting. He turned around and saw Dean.

“You got a problem, Redding?” Michael asked.

“No,” Dean replied. “No problem.”

I gave Michael a sharp look and trusted that he’d be able to read me well enough for it to be effective, even in the dark.

Michael got the message. “Care to join us?” he asked Dean, overly politely.

“No,” Dean replied, just as politely. “Thank you.” He paused, and the silence swelled around us. “You two have a good night.”

As Dean disappeared back into the house, I couldn’t help feeling that I’d taken something from him—the place he came to think, the moment we’d shared the night he’d shown me the black lights.

“Truth or dare.” Michael’s voice cut into my thoughts.

“What?”

“Your turn,” Michael told me. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth.”

Michael reached out to push my wet hair out of my face. “If Lia had dared you to kiss me, would you have done it?”

“Lia wouldn’t have dared me to kiss you.”

“But if she had?”

I could feel heat rising in my cheeks. “It was just a game, Michael.”

Michael leaned forward and brushed his lips against mine. Then he pulled back and studied my face. Whatever he saw there, he liked.

“Thank you,” he said. “That’s all I needed to know.”

* * *

I didn’t sleep much that night. I just kept thinking about Michael and Dean, the subtle barbs that passed between the two of them, the feel of each one’s lips. By the time the sun came up the next morning, I wanted to kill someone. Preferably Michael—but Lia was a close second.

“We’re out of ice cream,” I said murderously.

“True,” Lia replied. She’d swapped the silk pajamas for boxer shorts and a ratty T, and there wasn’t so much as a hint of remorse on her face.

“I blame you,” I said.

“Also true.” Lia studied my face. “And unless I’m mistaken, you’re not just blaming me for the ice cream. And that makes me terribly curious, Cassie. Care to share?”

It was impossible to keep a secret in this house—let alone two. First Dean, then Michael. I hadn’t signed up for this. If Lia hadn’t dared me to kiss Dean, Michael never would have kissed me in the pool, and I wouldn’t be in this mess, unsure what I felt, what they felt, what I was supposed to do about it.

“No,” I said out loud. I was here for one reason and one reason alone. “Forget breakfast,” I said, slamming the freezer door shut. “I have work to do.”

I turned to leave, but not before I caught sight of Lia twirling her gleaming black ponytail around her index finger, her dark eyes watching me a little too closely for comfort.

CHAPTER 19

I made my way to the library to drown my sorrows in serial killer interviews. Wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor bookshelves bulged with carefully organized titles: textbooks, memoirs, biographies, academic journals, and the oddest assortment of fiction I’d ever seen: old-fashioned dime-store mysteries, romance novels, comic books, Dickens, Tolkien, and Poe.

The third shelf from the left was full of blue binders. I picked up the first one and opened it.

FRIEDMAN, THOMAS

OCTOBER 22-28, 1993

FLORIDA STATE PRISON, STARKE, FL

Thomas Friedman. Such a normal-sounding name. Gingerly, I flipped through the transcript: a bare-bones play with a limited cast of characters, no plot, and no resolution. Supervisory Special Agent Cormack Kent was the interviewer. He asked Friedman about his childhood, his parents, his fantasies, the nine women he’d strangled with high-sheen dress hose. Reading Friedman’s words—black ink typed onto the page—would have been bad enough, but the worst part was that after a few pages, I could hear the way he would have talked about the women he’d killed: excitement, nostalgia, longing—but no remorse.

“You should sit down.”

I’d been expecting someone to join me in the library. I hadn’t expected that someone to be Lia.

“Dean’s not coming,” Lia said. “He read those interviews a long time ago.”

“Have you read them?” I asked.

“Some,” Lia replied. “Mostly, I’ve heard them. Briggs gives me the audio. I play Spot the Lie. It’s a real party.”

I realized suddenly that most people my age—most people any age—wouldn’t be able to take reading these interviews. They wouldn’t want to, and they certainly wouldn’t lose themselves in it, the way I would. The way I already had. Friedman’s interview was horrible and horrifying— but I couldn’t turn off the part of my brain that wanted to understand.

“What’s the deal with you and Dean?” I asked Lia, forcing myself to think about anything other than the fact that part of me wanted to keep reading. Michael might have told me that he and Lia had hooked up—more than once—but Dean was the one who could dial her back a notch just by saying her name.

“I’ve been in love with him since I was twelve.” Lia shrugged, like she hadn’t just bared her soul to me. And then I realized, she hadn’t.

“Oh, God,” she said, gasping for air between giggles. “You should see your face. Really, Cassie, I’m not a fan of incest, and Dean is the closest thing to a brother I have. If I tried to kiss him, he might actually hurl on me.”

That was comforting. But the fact that it was comforting just sent me right back into the tailspin from that morning: why should I care if there was anything between Lia and Dean, when Michael was the one who’d kissed me of his own free will?

“Look, as adorable as watching you angst is,” Lia said, “take a bit of friendly advice: there’s not a person in this house who isn’t really, truly, fundamentally screwed up to the depths of their dark and shadowy souls. Including you. Including Dean. Including Michael.”

That sounded more like an insult than advice.

“Dean would want me to tell you to stay away from him,” Lia said.

“And Michael?” I asked.

Lia shrugged. “I want to tell you to stay away from Michael.” She paused. “I