Chapter 16
THE SUNNYSIDE UP
Outside I hike my backpack up my spine and look around. The street, thank God, is empty. School is about to let out but I don’t want to face anyone there.
Instead I walk the three blocks to the Sunnyside Up.
It’s not a perfect place to hide—everyone in Varda eats there—but it’s close, and honestly, I’m hungry.
Inside the air smells like coffee and bacon.
The only customers this time of day are a few old men parked on the stools at the counter.
A sign says PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF so I do, in a booth sticky with syrup.
The screen of my phone is crowded with alerts. I flip it face down on the table in front of me, not ready to look.
“What do you need, hon?” Laurie, the waitress, has appeared next to the table, pencil poised over the order pad.
I wonder if she recognizes me. She’s worked here since my parents were in high school, but that means she doesn’t bother learning any of our names.
We’re all “hon” to her. Maybe I’m just another hon and she’s not sizing me up, replaying everything she’s ever learned about me, trying to decide if I’m a cold-blooded killer.
“Um, coffee with cream, please,” I say. My stomach lurches; I haven’t had enough to eat today to balance out the caffeine. “And can I get just, like, a side of toast?”
“Sure thing, hon,” Laurie says. She barely even looks at me as she scrawls it on the paper. I can’t believe how relieved I feel to be invisible.
When she leaves I finally turn my phone back over. I’ve got twenty-two messages. Obviously Hayden and Sophie want to know what’s going on, but I see other names—Bella Zseleczky, Lacy Smith, people wanting to know if I’m okay, oh my God, I saw your locker, I missed you in choir, are you okay?
But when I open Sekrit, I see that not everyone is worried. Someone named Chaotic_Rain has posted a blurry picture of me in the back of the cop car. It’s been upvoted ninety-seven times already, and the comments section is giddy.
sugarspice: FINALLY
Pickle_rick_69: hope Mays has a flak jacket lol, that chick is dangerous
coffeecutie: do you think they have cheer squads in prison
I shouldn’t be surprised. Someone’s always watching.
I glance around the diner and see security cameras, one up near the door, one angled down from the counter.
The three men at the counter are familiar, the way everyone’s familiar in this town, but I don’t know them.
One is reading a folded-up newspaper. Two are watching bowling on the TV behind the counter.
Not a smartphone in sight. Maybe I should just move to my grandparents’ retirement community in Phoenix.
No one’s going to be googling my name there.
I open the group chat I share with Hayden and Sophie.
ME
Can you cover for me with Gloria? I’m not going to make practice.
I’m ok but need to catch my breath
SOPHIE
WHAT IS GOING ON
HAYDEN
yes, we’ll cover (w/gloria and everyone else). come over to my house tonight, we have to talk
My food comes and I spread butter thickly across the toast. The coffee is bitter and grounding. I close my eyes and try to stay in the moment, just to catch my breath.
The noise in my head has been nonstop all weekend, a thousand different accusations and suppositions and hypotheticals. Now Sheriff Ramos’s voice is there too. Who would start a rumor like that? Why? Good question.
But there’s a bigger question—one that’s been flitting at the edges of my mind for six months now, that I’ve been too afraid to think about.
Did Rocky really do it?
Or did someone else get away with murder?
In the days after the murder, there were a lot of people that’d wanted the sheriff to call in investigators from a bigger city.
Varda was so small we didn’t have a forensics department to speak of.
But the official verdict was that it was cut and dried.
That the scene told a clear story: a vulnerable girl, a boy that had always gotten away with anything he wanted.
A gun that belonged to that boy, still in his hand when the bodies were discovered.
But Ramos seemed on edge in his office today. That makes me wonder how certain he is that the crime was solved. Have the rumors reignited some doubt at the back of his mind? Have they made him reexamine the evidence?
And if so—what does the evidence point to?
I would never admit it to Sophie—would never admit it to anyone, honestly—but if I’m honest, some tiny part of me has always had a hard time believing that Rocky could do something so violent.
It’s not because Rocky was some kind of angel.
He wasn’t. For one thing he was obviously a cheater.
And for another, yeah, he had a temper. He once broke his hand punching his locker after a loss to Westlake.
He tailgated people in his glossy black F-250, laying on his horn if they cut him off or slowed him down.
And there was that one fistfight with Frankie Herrera the night Frankie got too drunk and said out loud that Rocky’s sister was going to burn in hell for being a lesbian.
Frankie ended up with stitches across his cheek.
But most people—even people that maybe privately agreed with Frankie, that Kendra was hellbound—said Rocky’d been in the right to protect his little sister.
None of that had ever set off alarm bells for me. He’d never felt dangerous or violent, as a rule. I know, I know, I can’t just dismiss those details. But it seems like a long walk from “a fistfight with a homophobic jerk” to actual abuse and murder.
My reverie’s interrupted by the door, the bell on the handle tinkling lightly as someone else arrives.
It’s Katy. Max’s girlfriend. I watch as she walks briskly behind the counter, taking an apron off a hook and looping it over her head. Laurie says something to her, and Katy nods in response, picking up the coffee carafe.
Then she looks out into the diner, and her eyes meet mine.
I groan inwardly. I came here to avoid people I know, and she’s not exactly at the top of the list of people I’d want to talk to anyway. But she puts on a tight little smile and comes out to where I’m sitting.
“Hey,” I say in greeting. “I didn’t know you were working here.”
“Just for the last few weeks,” she says. “I’ve got early release Mondays and have to start saving for next year. More coffee?”
I shake my head. “No, thanks. I was just about to ask for my check.”
“Sure, I can get it.” She stands over me for a moment, though, almost looming. “I’m surprised to see you here, honestly. I assumed you’d still be in jail.”
That startles me. “I wasn’t arrested. The sheriff just wanted to find out what was going on.”
She nods, but she looks skeptical. “Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Well. I’m glad you’re okay.”
No one has ever sounded less convincing. I smile, though, and nod. “Thanks, Katy. It’s been a long day.”
She lingers another moment, her eyes probing at my face. Then she shakes her head, like she’s shaking off a thought. “The check. I’ll be right back.”
Behind the counter, she leans in and mutters something to Laurie. For the first time since my arrival, Laurie looks directly at me. Her eyes have gone sharp and narrow.
A moment later, she leans on the counter and says something to the three old men sitting there. One of them turns in his seat to gawk openly at me.
Well. It seems the world of the Not-Very-Online has finally heard the news about me. Thanks, Katy.
I decide not to wait for the check. I leave a ten on the table—it’s way too much but what the hell, enjoy the tip—and get up. Then I push my way out into the bright light beyond, more eyes than ever following my every step.
I pick up my car from the school parking lot and start home. I’m in no mood to go back today. But halfway to my house, I pull a U-turn that’s unhinged even by my standards and head up the farm-to-market road that cuts past Koenig Ranch.
I haven’t been near it since before the night of the murder.
It’s hard to avoid—there are about three main routes through the county, and it’s smack in the middle of the most common one.
Sometimes I have to drive an hour out of my way to get where I need to go without accidentally getting a glimpse of that wrought iron gate.
But now I steer straight for it, along the wending hills and down through the gullies I know like the back of my hand.
The main entrance is decorated with horseshoes and the nautical-style stars everyone here calls “Texas stars.” It used to have a button you’d press to swing the gate open.
Now there’s an intercom and a camera out front instead.
But there are other entrances. It’s hard to secure every inch of a two-thousand-acre ranch; there are smaller gates along the road, some of them hidden behind the brush.
There are also places where the fences are easy to climb without being seen.
Could I have done that the night of the murder?
Could I have driven over here in a blackout, parked my car, squeezed through the fence, walked or run the two miles across dark and scrubby ranchland in pitch darkness, seen Rocky’s truck outside the cabin, grabbed the gun out of the back, kicked the door open, and …
Could I have done all of that—all that and more—without remembering?
I follow the road along the fence for a few miles before I pull off near a rusted old pickup.
The pickup has been there for as long as I’ve been alive and is mostly decorative, an ancient farm truck that serves as a landmark for the locals.
Behind it I walk to the ranch’s fence and lean my forearms on the top.
I’m on the far side of the ranch from the cabin, thank God—I don’t ever want to lay eyes on that again—but the land is still familiar, painted in the siennas and ochres of autumn.
There’s an earthy smell of feed and manure, and also a diesel tang—someone must’ve been nearby with the tractor in the last few hours.
I can hear cattle, lowing just out of sight.
The Koenigs had been simple ranchers once upon a time, but by the time Rocky and Kendra were born the family’d diversified their fortunes into investments and real estate and even a chain of car washes throughout the county.
Still, the ranch is operational and more than just a hobby farm.
Which meant Rocky spent his weekends digging post holes and tracking down wayward cows.
That surprises some people; they assumed that because he was rich he didn’t have to work.
But he’d had chores to do like any farm kid.
I used to go with him some afternoons. Sometimes we’d take the ATV out, but more often he’d saddle up Fidget, his chestnut gelding, and we’d ride together to some far pasture where he’d fix a fence or shovel feed.
I can still recall the feeling of the horse moving under us.
The way Rocky’s arms felt around my waist. The way his laughter would tickle my ear.
It’s been a long time since I’ve thought of Rocky as I actually knew him.
Since April it’s been like those memories are gone, replaced by a cardboard cutout, a cipher.
Maybe that’s just how I’ve protected myself against all the questions I can’t answer.
Because otherwise I can’t hold all the pieces together in my mind.
I can’t connect the boy behind me on that horse, smelling of cedar and hay, with the boy who caused so much pain.
“Iris?”
My thoughts go jagged at the sound of a girl’s voice. I step back from the fence, startled.
Kendra Koenig is on the other side.
She’s got a shovel slung over her shoulder, her hair pulled back to reveal the shaved undercut beneath. Her hair is naturally dark, but she’s been bleaching it and dying it bright colors since middle school. Right now it’s a faded, bleached-out blue. She stares at me with her hard, dark eyes.
“Oh,” I say faintly. “Hi.”
“What’re you doing here?” Kendra asks. “Feeling guilty?”
She’s seen Sekrit, then. And she believes it. My heart sinks.
“I didn’t … Kendra, I would never…”
She doesn’t move. She’s not going to give me an easy out.
I back toward the car. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come here. I didn’t mean … I’m sorry.” I barely know what’s coming out of my mouth, what I’m apologizing for. I just want to be gone, away, as quickly as I can.
She watches, unmoving, as I pull back out to the street. My hands are trembling. I step on the gas and put as much distance between us as possible.