It was worth sharing, trust me. I’d battled the mold monster and won by the skin of my teeth.
When I got bored with anger, I started feeling sorry for myself, which wasn’t really any better.
Eventually I decided that being lonely at the mall was better than being lonely at home. Maybe I could even do some intel myself before the girls got there. It would give me enough time to find a suitable replacement for the tiny backpacks Julianne was going on about—a replacement that could, at the very least, contain a chemistry textbook.
The mall was already busy when I got there. It wasn’t surprising. The Saturday before school starts is almost as busy as the week before Christmas at Starline Mall—mostly because it’s the only mall in town, but also because the August sun is brutal in Texas and the mall has the best air conditioners in town. Good enough to make it feel like you’ve stepped from a summery outside right into the winter.
I walked past crowds of vaguely familiar faces and tried not to meet anybody’s eyes. Everybody looks familiar after a while if the town is small enough and I wasn’t in a ‘hello’ kind of mood. That’s not to say I could completely ignore the chattering going on.
I listened to friends, young and old, squeal in happy recognition as they saw each other from across the hall. I listened to mothers scold their daughters about too-short of skirts and implausible hair colors, and ached for battles I would never have the chance to lose.
Maybe showing up early was a bad idea. Drowning my sorrows in Cinnabon didn’t even seem to help.
I strolled past Spencer’s and fought against that stupid twinge of guilt, the one made stronger by the massive gaping melancholy in my core. It was Julianne’s fault, I decided with a scowl. She was the one who decided that the Seymore boys were guilty of everything and anything, she was the one who brought the stupid Ouija board to seal the charges against them in the court of—well, us, I guess.
“You should have seen their faces.”
If I hadn’t been thinking about her, I don’t know if I would have been able to pick out Julianne’s voice through the general noise and chatter.
I froze, then moved closer.
Thomas—who had forced me to kiss him last year and earned a slap for it, the same Thomas who was now dating Julianne—laughed in response.
They were sitting in the food court, right at the edge. I sidled over casually, careful to stay out of their direct line of sight.
Their table faced a potted palm which stuck proudly up out of the little half-wall surrounding the food court. Benches lined the wall, and I chose the one nearest their table, hiding myself behind the palm.
Thomas would have been looking in my direction, if he hadn’t been restlessly scanning the room, making sure that he was drawing enough attention to himself.
I didn’t have to see him to know he was doing it. The man was a peacock, through and through. He and Julianne, they kinda deserved each other. Two peas in a pod, needing attention just as much as they needed air.
“You still haven’t told me what you did,” he said, sounding bored and more than just a little impatient.
“I’m getting to it,” Julianne said airily. I didn’t see it, but I was sure there was an eye-roll to accompany her words. “Okay,” she continued, “so you know how Joan and Kennedy always need a reason to go after people who deserve it, right?”
“I guess,” he said, not any more interested than he was a moment before.
“It was easy when Kitty May was around. That bitch was so soft and pure that it didn’t take much to rile up Kennedy’s protective instincts. Joan was a little harder. To be honest, I don’t think she liked Kitty all that much. Competing redheads, you know how it is.”
“Mm.”
“Ugh, pay attention, Thomas. Seriously! This gets good.”
“Say something interesting then,” he shot back.
I could almost feel her glare, but I got where he was coming from.
Julianne had a way of dragging out a story, filling it in with details from years and years and years ago until she finally got to the point.
“Well,” she said and batted her eyelashes at him, once again, pausing for dramatic effect. I felt it in my own bones, the anticipation of what she was going to say rising me on a wave of intrigue. “I made them think the Seymores killed Kitty May and her family.”
Thomas choked.
I did too, but at least I didn’t have anything in my mouth.
It sounded to me like he shot his soda all over the table. I hoped it came out his nose and drenched Julianne in sweet, sticky, snot.
“You what?”
She giggled, clearly delighted that she had his full attention now. And, of course, one hundred-percent pleased by his reaction.
“I bought this ancient-looking Ouija board at the flea market and convinced them that it was Grandmother Bird’s, super magical, super creep board. Ugh, you should have seen their faces. They were terrified to even touch the thing. But, you know me. I made them play with it for a while until they were convinced—it was super easy. God, they’re so stupid sometimes. And Stew,” she laughed, “you should have seen him. He was already freaked out before we even started.”
Only because Joan was practically riding his nuts, I thought ungraciously.
“Then I was all, Spirits!” She dissolved into giggles as she reenacted the ominous voice she’d used during the fake séance. “Did the Seymores have anything to do with Kitty May’s disappearance? Then I pushed the pointer to ‘yes’ and screamed and slammed the box shut. Oh, god, I deserve an award for that performance.”
“And they bought that?” Thomas snorted, trying to get the last of the soda out of his nose, I hoped.
“Hook, line, and sinker, baby,” she crowed. “It was so fucking funny. You should have been there.”
“Summer camp’s for kids,” he said with a sneer in his voice.
“It’s better than Pretend to be a Ranger camp,” she sneered right back.
Their conversation was going to dissolve into bickering. It always did.
I didn’t have the patience to sit around and listen to it, and anyway, I’d heard enough.
If I was going to keep the shopping date—and I really should, if I wanted this school year to be anything short of hell—I would need to calm down before I met her face to face.
She’d made it up.
All of it.
When she told us all at the beginning of summer that Kitty May had disappeared under mysterious circumstances, we’d mostly believed her.
I always took what she said with a grain of salt—but when we went to Kitty May’s house and found it empty, with windows broken in front and a weird stain in the driveway, I’d been ready to believe her.
She’d kept pushing the narrative all summer, too—lots of “I heard” and “they don’t know” without ever saying who she heard what from or who “they” were. Classic misdirection, and I hadn’t even questioned it.
I’ve never liked feeling foolish—it was one of the primary reasons I never made much of an effort to make friends—and now I felt like a complete fucking idiot.
It took the better part of two hours of walking around for me to get my temper locked away where she wouldn’t see it. It didn’t help that the girls were already talking about the Ouija board when I finally joined them for lunch.