But I really didn’t want her in my house or in my space. Not right now, at least. She had a way of clouding my head—maybe it was the authority she carried or the fact that she was always so pretty and put together, or maybe it was just because I didn’t know what to do with attention, but I’d wanted some time to myself when I wouldn’t feel compelled to make excuses for her. Some time to analyze her without the magnetism of her interference.
She was already pulling plastic wrap over the bowl before I could think of an excuse that could separate the two of us for the rest of the day. “This needs to rise anyway,” she said.
“I don’t think cookie dough needs to rise,” I said doubtfully. Scratch that, I knew damn well that cookie dough didn’t need to rise, but I’d learned not to take too strong a stance against her unless I was dying to feel foolish.
“And that’s why I do the thinking,” she said with a sweet smile. “Come on, you need to see this anyway, it’ll be good for you.”
I shrugged and washed my hands before reaching over to turn the oven off. Before I could push the button to kill the heat, Julianne made a negating noise and nudged my hand away. “We won’t be gone that long, just leave it on.”
She grabbed her bag and started for the door. Like hell was I going to leave the oven on. As soon as her back was turned, I switched it right off. She might not be pleased that I ignored her, but I knew for sure that my parents would be a whole lot less pleased to come home to a burnt-out shell of a million dollar house. I paused to lock the door behind me, and she rolled her eyes.
“Seriously, we are literally going to be gone for ten minutes. Who’s going to come into your house in the next ten minutes, Kennedy?”
“Nobody,” I said, twirling my keys around my finger. “Because I locked the door.”
She huffed, then laughed. “Get in, dork.”
Julianne got behind the wheel of her powder pink convertible and I got in beside her without a second thought. The second thoughts hit a few minutes later, when she was going 75 in a 35, I remembered why I tried to avoid riding places with her. She whipped us across town, past the mall and the train tracks, then over the long, low bridge. It took ten minutes just to get that far—the population was tiny, but the spaces were big. Everything’s spread out in Texas and every time I traveled these roads, it was like remembering that fact all over again. There were good parts to the distances, but bad parts to it too. In this current situation, the minimal traffic was a highlight, the speed with which Julianne traveled was not.
She took the first right after the river and followed the street to the end. It pooled into a semi-formed cul-de-sac, no curb or sidewalk, just asphalt bleeding unevenly into the earth beside it. A scrubby desert forest spread out beyond the end of the street giving just a little something to look at. Just a little further down, a solitary brave little cactus grew on the border between asphalt and dirt, crumbling the edge of the street a tad bit more.
On the right side of the cul-de-sac sat a rambling two-and-a-half story house which looked as if it had grown organically, with add-ons sprawling out from a tall, sturdy center. The “half” was a shallow attic with dormer windows, and I suspected there was a basement too. The front of the house, apart from the walkway, was obscured by all sorts of growing things. In the dark I couldn’t tell if it was a cultivated garden or just the forest taking some of its land back.
“That porch wraps all the way around,” Julianne said. “Not just the house, either. It extends like a walkway all the way out to a dock in the reservoir. The reservoir where Sabrina’s body was found.”
She gave me a meaningful look and turned the car around. The Seymores didn’t have any close neighbors—the properties over here all sat on an acre or more of tough, unyielding land. The nearest house was a quarter mile down the road, hidden by a cluster of scrubby little trees. My neighborhood was similarly spaced, though the houses themselves took up most of the lots, and money had cultivated or zero-scaped the land.
“How do you know so much about the Seymores’ house?” I asked her once we were back on the bridge, heading for home.
She gave me a look. “I’ve lived here my whole life, remember? I know everything.”
I told myself she just meant that she knew about the town, and frowned as I realized that I was excusing her again. I wished I could stop doing that. I wanted to see her for who she really was, but I couldn’t seem to work up the nerve. After all, who else would bake cookies with me after the first day of my last year of high school? Friends like Julianne had all the potential of an enemy, if you were stupid enough to allow them to become that. Enemies were not something I was trying to rack up more of. The Seymores were already more than I wanted to handle.
Chapter Ten
Nobody should have calculus and chemistry back-to-back first thing in the morning.
It’s hell.
Hellacious enough that I was able to keep my mind off of the social conflicts whispering like the beginning embers of a brush fire up until lunch, which would have been nice if it hadn’t been hell.
When I dropped down in my usual seat, I could already feel the tension mounting between our table and the one behind us.
“Yep. Three foster homes in as many months. Just couldn’t keep the little Nazi under control,” Macy was saying.
“Who is a Nazi now?” I asked as I sprinkled a generous helping of salt over my fries.
“Oh my God, not so loud!” Julianne said, though I hadn’t spoken any louder than Macy.
She and Macy both glanced over their shoulders at the table where the Seymore brothers were sitting. Three of the four of them were glaring icily in our direction.
The youngest, Gary, was hunched over his food, but I could see the blush of shame flow up the back of his neck.
The kids at the next table shot looks of angry disgust at him and he shrank lower.
Chris leaned back until his face was almost in Julianne’s hair. The tips of his ears were red, too. A different kind of red. Not from embarrassment, but from rage. “Nah,” he said, “you got it wrong, doll. Gary’s dad got put away for murdering nosy bitches who didn’t know when to keep their filthy fucking mouths shut.”
Bradley yanked Chris back up, but Chris and Gary were both chuckling.
Rudy just looked pissed.
Julianne paled slightly before a cunning smile twisted her perfect lips.
“I bet he did,” Julianne said lightly. “And I bet he taught Gary everything he knew about making girls disappear before he got locked up.” She shrugged, performing for the room. “Explains a lot.”
The guys went silent. And so did I, making sure my mouth was always too full to say a damn thing. This wasn’t any of my business. And the start of this school year was teaching me that I didn’t want to be fighting the fights Julianne was fighting.
Julianne ignored the tension between the tables and turned to me with a thoughtful look before moving her eyes to the Seymores and then back to me. “You know, with everything we were doing last night—”
My heart sank like a stone in the open ocean. I widened my eyes at her, silently pleading with her not to spill that we had essentially stalked the Seymore house the night before. She paused, then grinned.