“Did she miss it?” Joan was asking as I approached the table.
Julianne had moved out of the corner, taking over the table right in the center of the food court instead. The better table to see and be seen—and heard from, for that matter.
“Grandmother Bird didn’t even know her Ouija board was missing,” Julianne answered a little louder than was strictly necessary.
It had the desired effect. Glances followed by whispers radiated out across the food court, poisonous ripples across the social pond. Julianne hid her triumphant smile behind her soda.
“I still can’t believe how fast it whipped to ‘yes’ after you asked that question,” Macy said.
“You mean when I asked it if the Seymores were the ones responsible for Kitty May’s disappearance?” Julianne asked.
Of course that was what she meant, but Julianne’s question whipped the ripple into a frothy wave of speculation. God, people around here were starving for a good story.
She looked up at me with a big smile as I approached.
“Kennedy! I almost thought you were going to ditch us,” she said. “We were just talking about how Grandmother Bird’s Ouija board accused the Seymore brothers of making Kitty May and her family disappear.”
Effective and subtle as a club to the face.
I smiled back at her the way I’d smile at a snake under my boot. If I knew where and how to apply pressure, I might have crushed her—as it was, calling her out on her bullshit in public was as good as a suicide note.
“Yeah, that was pretty insane,” I said evenly. “I already ate. You guys ready to shop yet?”
Julianne pouted at me, clearing wanting me to pump up the enthusiasm. There was that threatening glint in her eye that couldn’t be missed.
Even then, I chose to pay it no mind.
I wasn’t in the mood to play pretend.
Not after what I’d heard.
Framing them for murder was one thing. Like Renard had clearly pointed out, no cop was even going to listen to what a damn Ouija board had to say.
The thing that really irked me, was how happy go lucky she was bragging to Thomas about how readily we bought her bullshit. Like throwing your friends on the stupid train was somehow funny.
“Are you serious? We were all supposed to have lunch together,” she said in pink-frosted tones, heavy on the sprinkles.
I shrugged. “Big breakfast.”
It wasn’t really a lie. The cinnamon bun had been massive. The fact that I’d only eaten a quarter of it before losing my appetite was irrelevant.
“Okay,” she said doubtfully. She assessed me with quick, intelligent eyes, then changed the subject. “So there’s these little Ouija board necklaces,” she said. “I think it would be fun for us to all get matching ones, you know, like a callback to our last ever night at summer camp.”
And a subliminal message to everybody who saw us, subtly reminding them of the rumor you’re spreading right now - I thought the words, but didn’t dare say them.
I didn’t know whether to be more impressed or appalled. I settled for a little of both and made a mental note to keep a sharper eye on her. Her manipulations were masterful. Even lying at the top of her lungs sounded convincing, because her volume naturally went up and down depending on her excitement.
Or did it? A sick thought made my stomach twist. She’d pulled me into a lot of drama over the last couple of years.
How much did I have any proof of?
How many people had I tormented on her word?
How many of those people had been innocent?
I didn’t want to think about it, so I thought about anything else instead.
“I saw some of those tiny backpacks on my way in,” I said. “They come in four colors.” I winced as I said it. I still couldn’t think of a good use for a tiny backpack.
Chapter Five
I didn’t even bother taking my bags out of the car when I got home. I’d been getting angrier and angrier the whole time we shopped, which had been hours. Julianne can run a mall marathon like an Olympian gold medalist.
Fortunately my parents had topped up my spending account in anticipation of the school year, or I’d have been twelve hundred dollars over budget for the month.
I didn’t even like half the stuff I bought, which irritated me like it had never irritated me before.
Shopping trips with Julianne always went this way. We’d buy the whole mall, usually in matching styles and different colors, and I’d spend all of my money at once.
Then, the next day or the next week, I’d return most of it and get my money back before my parents got the bank statement.
They wouldn’t care if I spent all of the money—I know, because I tried to get them to come home one month by blowing through five thousand dollars in a day.
There were no fits thrown.
Not many shits given, either.
They had topped up my account before I’d even gotten a phone call asking me what the hell sent my spending through the roof. But at least there was that small reminder for me to be more careful with my spending.
Even with parents who didn’t give a hoot, I didn’t like spending a bunch of money on crap I didn’t want. It only gave my parents ammunition; well, we have to work this hard and be gone this much, how else are we going to provide for you?
Though they never came right out and said it, I could make the connections. The more I spent, the harder they worked. The harder they worked, the longer they were gone. The longer they were gone, the more important dates they missed.
Sometimes I would spend time with my purchases in front of the mirror to truly decide what I liked and what I didn’t.
Today, I had something else on my mind.
Kitty May. Now that I knew, or at least suspected, that she hadn’t really disappeared after all, I needed to backtrack through all of the “proof” Julianne had presented.
The first of which was that Kitty May hadn’t posted on her Instagram since the last day of school, and hadn’t popped up on any other social media either. I started there; Kitty May and I were friends on Instagram, and it was true that she hadn’t posted in a while.
Her old posts were still there, so I started scrolling through them until I found a picture of her mom that she had tagged. Her mom’s account was private, but I had her name now. April Leison.
I opened a new tab and pulled up Facebook, then searched the name.
There were five April Leisons and I clicked on each of them, one after the other.
The first four were definitely not Kitty May’s mom—they were way too young. The last one said she lived in Alaska, so I wasn’t hopeful, but I clicked on it anyway.
And there, in the background picture behind the rose that was April Leison’s profile picture, sat Kitty May. Bundled up in a thick coat and knitted cap, roasting marshmallows around a campfire under a purple twilit sky, grinning up at the camera.
I wasn’t satisfied.
There was a chance it was an old picture even if it looked pretty recent. I scrolled down April’s page, just to see.
The most recent post was from that morning. It showed a picture of Kitty May standing at one end of a boat with a fishing pole in her hand. She looked happy—and very, very much alive.
There was a light in her eyes I couldn’t remember seeing before, as if her worries had all gone away. Her dad sat behind her in the boat, wearing a matching grin.