Chapter 17
HAYDEN O’HARA’S HOUSE
When Sophie and I arrive at Hayden’s house, the O’Haras have just finished their family dinner and are documenting the cleanup process.
By “documenting” I mean there’s a full film shoot happening in the kitchen, with lighting equipment and cameras on tripods and an actual boom mic Mr. O’Hara keeps angling into the shot by accident.
Hayden is at the sink washing dishes, with her ten-year-old sister Lexi drying and thirteen-year-old Bria holding and distracting two-year-old Topher.
The O’Haras are professional influencers.
Well, Mrs. O’Hara is, but it’s become a family business.
Mr. O’Hara also works in real estate, but it’s the YouTube channel and the Instagram and the mommy blog that paid for their big buttercream-colored McMansion with its pool and jacuzzi, and for Hayden’s Jeep, and for all Hayden’s clothes and makeup.
Mrs. O’Hara—who, unlike the other mothers I know, has never once asked me to call her by her first name—has been documenting life with her kids since Hayden was a baby.
“All right let’s do one more take. Put Topher on the floor, maybe he’ll do something cute,” says Mrs. O. Then she catches sight of me and Sophie. “Oh, hello, girls, we’re almost done here. Just getting a little B-roll.”
The instant Bria puts Topher down he starts to fuss.
He tries to grab a mixing bowl out of Lexi’s hands, and when she holds it up over his head, he starts to scream.
Mrs. O ducks down to get his tantrum on camera.
When he sees her he tries toddling over to her with his arms outstretched, but she just keeps filming.
“Oh, no, Topher, what’s wrong? Why are you so upset? ”
Hayden turns to watch with an expression of mild disgust. “Don’t, Mom.”
“Oh, come on, he’s fine.” Mrs. O keeps filming as the baby’s face turns red with rage. “Come on, Topher, talk to Mommy. Did you want that bowl? Did Lexi take that bowl away?”
Hayden throws the washcloth she has been using into the sink and turns away. “Cool, I’m sure the subscribers will love seeing you taunt your own child.”
“He’s fine, Hayden. It’s not going to hurt him to fuss a little.” Mrs. O switches off the camera and turns on Hayden. “And before you disparage our subscribers, let me remind you that they—”
“Pay for all this. I know.” Hayden takes off her apron and slings it over the back of a chair. “Can I go? We’ve been at it for almost an hour and the girls are here.”
Mrs. O’s eyes narrow. I brace myself, wondering if we’re about to witness an “opportunity for correction,” as she likes to refer to her attempts to discipline her kids. But before she can do anything, Mr. O holds up his hand.
Even though she’s the one who runs their social media, he’s supposed to be the big authority in the household.
The O’Haras buy into the whole “biblical patriarchy” thing, where at the end of the day the woman is supposed to be subservient to her husband.
In general I agree with Sophie on this one—it’s pretty gross.
But at least this time he’s ruling in our favor.
“Let them go, Kaye. It’s almost Topher’s bedtime anyway,” he says.
She brightens up at that. “We can get some footage of the toothbrush routine,” she says. “Ooh, won’t that be fun, Tophie?”
Topher, still red-faced and reaching for her, does not look convinced. But Hayden’s already ushering us toward the back patio.
“We’ll be in the pool, enjoying the fruits of my labor,” she says. Neither of her parents respond.
Outside the pool glows blue on the pink sandstone tile. The sun is little more than an orange line across the horizon, and some of the early evening stars are out piercing through the sky. Hayden kicks her flip-flops off and one flies into a potted plant.
“I hate this place,” she says. “I hate her.”
“It’s so weird,” Sophie says. “Why does she want to film a video that makes her look bad?”
“Oh, don’t worry, she’ll edit it down and set it to her own voice-over and add some Bible verses that make it look how she wants it to look,” Hayden says.
“It’s all just content, don’t you know? Crying, disobedient children, disrespectful teenagers, all being whipped into shape by the wonders of Christian parenting.
” She whips her T-shirt off over her head to reveal the swimsuit beneath. “I can’t wait to be out of here.”
“Two more months,” Sophie says. Hayden’s birthday is in December; she’ll be the first of us to hit eighteen.
But Hayden just shrugs. “I’ll still have to live here until I have another option. She’s already started threatening to make me live at home and commute to UT next year. But the jokes’s on her, because there’s no way I’m getting into UT.”
“You don’t know that!” Sophie says. “Your test scores are good. Your grades…”
“… are not,” Hayden says shortly. She turns to look at me, arms over her chest. “Anyway. What did Ramos say? What’s going on? You haven’t answered any of my texts all afternoon, I’ve been kind of freaking out.”
I sit on the edge of the pool and slide my legs in. “He found out about the Sekrit post,” I say.
Sophie, who’s waded in to her waist, looks up at me wide-eyed. “Nuh uh.”
“Yuh huh.” I kick lightly at the water, sending gentle waves away from me. “He had all the comments, like, printed out on paper. My grandpa doesn’t even do that, and he thinks there’s a literal tube connecting his computer to mine.”
Sophie laughs, but Hayden just sits down next to me, hard.
“What’s he want, though? Is he just looking at it as a dumb rumor, or is he actually thinking about reopening the investigation?”
She’s watching me so intently my shoulders hunch up instinctively, as if I could pull into a turtle shell and hide.
“He didn’t exactly share his thoughts. But he seemed to be … wondering if he closed the case too soon.” She draws in her breath sharply, and I grimace in acknowledgment. “Yeah. It’s messed up.”
“Did he actually say he was going to reopen it, though?” she asks.
“I don’t know. He asked a bunch of questions about Lynette. Like, why’d we stop being friends, what happened to mess that up. He kept implying there might be some motive for me to kill her,” I say.
Hayden nods thoughtfully. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
The words feel like a slap to the face, sharp and startling. My blood goes hot. “No it doesn’t. What are you talking about? No part of this makes sense.”
“No, I just mean looking at you as a suspect makes sense. He should’ve done it back in April,” she says.
“No, he shouldn’t have!” I scramble to my feet. Around us the cicadas start shrieking again, the final verse of their day. My eyes burn with a sudden sting of tears. “Why would you say that, Hayden? I thought you had my back.”
“Iris, Iris!” She’s standing now too, hands up in front of her in a placating position. “I’m not saying you did anything, okay? I just mean I get what he’s saying, about motive. He’s got to look into things.”
The tears are already escaping, though, coursing down my cheeks. My shoulders collapse into another round of sobs.
The smell of grapefruit envelops me—Hayden’s body spray, the same she’s been wearing for years. I feel her hot arms around my shoulders pulling me suddenly, savagely close.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers fiercely. “I’m a dumbass, you don’t want to hear that kind of stuff right now.”
I lean my head against her shoulder and weep. She makes a soft little tsking sound, trying to comfort me. I hear Sophie getting out of the water to join us, fitting her arms awkwardly around Hayden’s bigger frame. We’re so unbalanced then that I laugh a little through my tears.
“I just don’t know what to do,” I say, my voice muffled by Hayden’s hair. “I don’t know if there’s a way to clear my name. Is this just how it’s going to be forever?”
“Not forever,” Sophie jokes. “Just until graduation.”
I close my eyes. “I don’t know if I can make it that long.”
“Maybe everyone will lose interest soon,” Sophie says. But she sounds less certain than she did the other day. I guess between my locker and my ride to the sheriff’s office she’s starting to see that it’s real too.
“I’m just … scared,” I say. “I’m scared I’ll end up all alone. Like Lynette.”
“No way.” Hayden squeezes me again before letting go. “Lynette was a different story.”
“Hay’s right on this one,” Sophie says. “I’m not saying Lynette deserved to be an outcast, but she made choices that led to that happening. She isolated herself.”
No, says a small voice in my head. She had a problem we didn’t want to deal with. She didn’t isolate herself. We let her suffer.
But instead of saying so, I take a deep breath.
Then I jump into the pool.
I stay under for a moment, in the bright blue of the pool. The quiet is a relief. When I surface both of my friends are at the pool’s edge and dripping wet, looking stunned.
“What the hell was that?” Hayden asks.
“We were getting too serious,” I say. “Look, everything sucks right now. But can we pretend for a little bit that it doesn’t? How many more evening swims do we have ahead of us?”
Sophie’s hair is sodden from my splash. For a second I think she’s going to bitch about it. But then she sits on the edge of the pool and slides in after me.
“When you’re right, you’re right,” she says.
“Come on, Hayden. Feelings bad, swimming good,” I say.
“Don’t make us get out to push you in,” Sophie adds.
“You’re both nuts,” Hayden says. But she’s smiling. She hops off the edge into the water with us.
It doesn’t fix anything. I can still feel the tension, tight in the air: all the unanswered questions, all the worries and secrets. But for a minute, at least, I can swim with my friends and catch my breath.
For a minute, I can keep pretending that I’m different from Lynette, that the things she went through could never happen to me.