No, not the house … toward Mom and Dad. For the first time, I spotted them, huddled at the edge of the property. My dad, William, and my mother, Sophie. They looked too soft and young to be farmers. And, in reality, they weren’t. Just two young people trying to have a place to call their own, to carry on a family tradition…
For the first time, they looked their age, faces grim and tight with worry.
Dad’s hairy arm was draped over Mom’s tiny, narrow shoulders. She was … shaking.
As the mysterious policeman crossed the field, trotting toward them, I was mesmerized by him … with his thick black hair and chiseled body, he looked scruffy and world-weary, but in a good way—like that actor in Hollywood Detective.
He stopped in front of Mom and Dad, hands resting on his waistband, fingers itching his gun like an outlaw from the Wild West.
Suddenly, he pointed across the field, gesturing wildly. Even behind a sheet of glass, I thought I heard Mom’s sorrowful wail, “Oh noooo.”
There was a gap in the circle now, I realized, pulling my eyes away from the cop and my parents. I zoomed in as far as the binoculars allowed, and for the first time, I could see inside the secret circle.
I could see what the fuss was about.
Knuckles white, I willed my hands not to shake. Willed myself not to look away…
There was a girl in the center of the circle. Fragile and small, she lay curled up on the ground, like one of those pill bugs we called “rollie pollies”.
It wasn’t natural, the way she was bent … arms and legs sharply curved and folded in, like a clay sculpture you could shape and mold, bend at will…
Could it be an alien … or better yet … a mannequin posed for a prank?
Sitting back on my haunches, I took a few deep breaths, then poked my head up again.
This time, the crowd had thinned out more, and as I zoomed in again … I saw her completely. For the first time, the lenses were crystal clear.
She was real—human. White skin, pale hair to match. Thin, white strands of hair blew around her face like corn silk. Her fingers were curled up by her mouth, nails painted matte black like the night sky.
Eyelids open, one gray eye bulged out at me like a grape being squeezed between my thumb and forefinger …
The rolling in my stomach was less of a roll and more of a lurch. I was barely on my feet when the vomit came. It sprang from my mouth and nose, and although I tried, pathetically, to catch it in my hands, there was just too much of it.
I puked on my brother’s favorite Star Wars blanket and CD tower, then I curled up on the floor like that thing in the field, trying to erase the image burned on the back of my eyelids.
It's not real. It’s not real. Please tell me it’s not real.
Chapter Two
Three truths.
One lie.
I’ve lived in the same shitty town for most of my life.
A girl named Jenny Juliott was murdered in my own “backyard”.
I’m an aspiring writer who moonlights as a Kmart cashier.
Jenny Juliott’s killer was never caught.
That original image of Jenny’s face—moon-white and ominous in the early morning light—those bulgy eyeballs and dead gray irises … that image had evolved over the years. Replaced by one replica after another … there is her face, the way I think I saw it that day … and then there are the memories, and later, the flashes of crime scene photos I pored over in my free time.
I didn’t know her—of course I didn’t; she was fourteen and I was nine. We may have lived in the same shitty town of Austin, Indiana, but we didn’t know each other at all. Despite what they say about small towns, we do not all know each other.
But, over the years, I came to know everything about the girl with the white-blonde hair and the haunting gray eyes who smoked skinny cigarettes called Virginia Slims and who would never age a day over fourteen in the hearts and minds of Austin’s residents.
Jenny Juliott had a mother, a father, and an older brother around Jack’s age.
It was weeks before the crime scene was cleared from our property, reflective yellow caution tape stirring in the wind like a warning flag. Little bits of it floating around the property like confetti…
Years later, after the crime was solved and her killer was locked away in prison, I was digging around, looking for dandelions—not the yellow ones, but the ones you wish on—and I found what looked like a strip of gold in the dirt.
But it wasn’t gold; far from it. It was that stupid old crime scene tape, bits of it still rotting around the edges of our property, still strung up in the branches of trees where it had gotten blown around that summer. A reminder that it wasn’t all a bad dream, as much as we wanted it to be…
After Jenny was murdered, my parents pretended nothing happened … this was their way. That had always been their way. Perhaps they saw it as protecting me, but I saw it as treating me like an imbecile.
The lies we sometimes tell ourselves—or, in their case, lies were simply omissions.
“Nothing for you to worry about, dear.”
“She was a wild girl, must have got caught up in some trouble.”
“This is the safest town in three counties.”
Lies.
Lies.
Lies.
Because the first thing my parents did was replace the locks on the front, back, and sides of the house. Days of riding my bike to my best friend Adrianna’s were over. So were the days of slumber parties, playing outside alone, and walking to school or down to the park with friends.
Most of my friends, and their parents too, were too afraid to come to the farm. As though my family might be involved in her death, or that
