Chapter 21
VARDA HIGH
After I put my books in Max’s locker, he gives me a quick hug.
“Don’t panic,” he says. “Just … stay vigilant. Keep your eyes peeled. We’ll get through this. I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Yeah. Thanks, Max. For everything.” I squeeze his arm one last time and then make my way down the hall to choir.
But then I turn the corner and come up short.
Deputy Holden Mays is standing there in uniform.
His expression doesn’t change when he sees me. He just holds my gaze with his flat blue eyes. He’s not very tall, but he is stocky and barrel-chested in his khaki uniform.
“What’re you doing here?” I say.
His face is motionless, but somehow his lips manage to hint at a smirk without even moving. “I think you meant ‘Good afternoon, Deputy Mays, how can I help you?’”
I swallow hard. Mom wants me to keep my head down, and I know that’s probably the best thing, but I can’t quite bring myself to kiss Holden Mays’s ass.
“Are you … Do I have to go back in to the station?” I ask.
The seconds drag out before he answers.
“Nah, not yet. Sheriff sent me over here just to keep an eye on things. You know, because there’s been some vandalism, some bullying. Some bad behavior.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “So Sheriff thought the principal could use a little help.”
“Oh.” It’s all I can think to say. My eyes drift to his belt. His cuffs. His gun. There’s a sick feeling low in my stomach.
It feels obvious he’s not here to help me.
The final bell rings, and I realize I’m the only one still in the hallway. “Oh, I … I lost track of time. I have to…” I trail off, staggering a few steps away from him before I turn and jog away.
My class is in the other direction, but I can’t stop now.
I want to get out of Mays’s sight as quickly as I can.
I wheel blindly down the hall, looking for a place to go, to hide.
Then I see the door to the art studio. There won’t be a class there—Mr. Dinello, the art teacher, only works in the mornings.
I lunge for the door and it opens easily in my hand.
Inside, the overhead lights are off, but sunlight blazes through the windows.
It’s a large crowded space, packed with supplies.
The walls are covered with student art—paintings and drawings and etchings of half-familiar faces, crooked trees, beloved pets, a few abstract smears of color.
In one corner there’s a still life display set up—a vase of fake flowers, a plastic skull, and an incongruous-looking teapot on a small table.
I step inside. In the dusty quiet, with its smells of paint thinner and wood, I lean back against the door. It takes me a moment to realize I’m not alone.
Kendra Koenig is there.
She’s stretching canvas, staple gun in hand.
Her hair’s burgundy now—it’s been dyed so recently I can see purple marks along her scalp.
Something about that detail—the glimpse I see beneath her thick, bristling locks and the pale, raw look of her skin—makes me feel suddenly sad for her. It looks vulnerable. It looks bare.
Before I can even register her presence, she looks up at me and gives a hard laugh.
“Looking for a hiding place, huh?” She staples a corner of the canvas to the wooden frame. “This is a good one. Pretty sure we aren’t supposed to be in here, but Dinello never remembers to lock his door.”
“Yeah. I, uh, just needed a minute. I’m sorry to interrupt.”
She shrugs. “You’re not.” Staple. Staple. Staple.
I watch her, thinking about the time I used to spend at Rocky’s house.
At her house. She and Rocky had actually gotten along, most of the time.
It was always weird to me, because I couldn’t even remember a time when Noelle and I were that close.
And if Noelle and I have an embattled relationship, you’d think the Football Hero Brother and the Gay Art Sister would be at each other’s throats.
But they weren’t. They liked each other. They sat on the couch in the immense Koenig game room, playing Super Smash Bros. or watching old comedies. They had inside jokes.
Sometimes I was jealous of their connection.
Even before Rocky died she was a little prickly, a little more punk than the standard Varda girl, but I’d always liked her.
Of course I haven’t really talked to her since April.
I mean, what was I going to say to her? Sorry your brother turned out to be a secret monster?
Sorry the entire town hates you and your family now?
It was easier to avoid her gaze in the hallway.
“Kendra, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but the thing on Sekrit is totally made up,” I blurt out. “I didn’t … I…”
I trail off. She keeps stapling, letting the silence stretch out between us.
Finally she puts the staple gun down and looks up at me.
“Come on, Iris, I know you didn’t kill anyone,” she says, her face sour. “It’s absurd.”
“Oh.” I shift my weight. “But yesterday you said…”
She just shrugs. “You don’t have to have murdered someone to feel guilty.”
I’m not quite sure what to say to that, and she doesn’t seem to expect me to. She picks up the stapler again. The stack of canvases next to her is impossibly high. She must’ve been in here for a while.
“What are you working on?” I ask, walking toward her workstation.
She shrugs again. “I come in and paint most days, so I use a lot of canvases. But I like making them. It’s satisfying.” Staple, staple, staple. “You want to do some too? We can have a little outcast crafting circle.”
“I’ve never been much of a painter.” I sit on one of the desks, a little apart from her. “I took printmaking because I wanted something fun to do senior year. But I’m not very good.”
“Give it some time. When it’s the only thing you have left, you might feel otherwise.”
“So things are going well, then,” I say wryly.
She gives me a sidelong glance. “I’d say they’re going about as well for me as they are for you. Fun, right? You’re finally getting a little taste of what it’s been like for us.”
The hair along the back of my neck bristles. A little taste? Is that what this is?
The notion that Kendra could be behind the Sekrit posts suddenly doesn’t seem so far-fetched.
But then she sets her staple gun back down, and her expression is more weary than hostile.
“Don’t let me get to you. I’m kind of a bitch these days. My shrink says it’s a survival mechanism. Are you seeing one?”
“A … a shrink?” I ask carefully.
“Yeah. A shrink. You know, someone who helps you work through trauma?” She gives a soft little chuff of laughter. “I can’t say I’m getting the best results myself, but at least I’ve got someone to talk to.”
“That’s good,” I say. The words sound wildly inane, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
She picks up one of her canvases. “Here, help me carry these over to my cubby.”
“Okay.” I hop off the desk and walk over to where she’s working.
The canvases are heavier than they look.
I haul them to the corner where she keeps her work.
There’s a bunch of paintings propped against the wall, and an easel set up with a half-finished painting of a landscape.
The details aren’t quite filled in yet, but it looks like Hill Country.
The textures all look like they’ve been slashed onto the canvas.
She leans a pile of canvases against the wall behind her, then picks up talking like we were in the middle of a conversation that got interrupted. “Anyway, now that the sheriff is thinking about reopening Rocky’s case…”
“Wait, what?” I interrupt. “Who says that? What have you heard?”
She shrugs. “Nothing official, but why else is he hauling you in to ask more questions? He’s got to be realizing he rushed the investigation. He’s got to be wondering if there are other things he missed.”
I nod slowly. “What do you think he missed?”
Her eyes suddenly narrow again, like she’s only just remembering that she doesn’t trust me.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I guess we’ll find out.”
I don’t like the way she’s watching me—hawklike, almost eager. It feels like it’s time to be done with this conversation. I pick up my backpack. “Yeah, I guess. Anyway. I’ve got to get to class. Thanks for letting me hang out for a minute.”
I turn to go, and when I do, I bump a stack of drawings on the corner of her desk.
They go flying everywhere—sketches in charcoal and pencil and India ink, some in colored pencils, some in pastels.
There are dozens of them. I bend to start gathering them back up.
Then I freeze, my eyes locking on the one in my hand.
It’s a rough line drawing. But rough as it is, it’s clear as day.
Lynette, lying flat on a plank floor and staring lifelessly upward. And Rocky, also on his back but with his torso tilted just a little to one side. Facing the viewer. Facing me. One side of his head ragged from where the bullet hit.
My vision scatters. I look around at the other pictures on the floor, all the colors and mediums and angles and sizes, and they are all Lynette and Rocky, all dead, all torn apart by bullets.
I look up at Kendra. Her expression has crumpled. I can’t tell if it’s rage … or just agony.
“It’s all I can draw now,” she says simply.
The pictures fall out of my hands. I let them tumble like leaves all around my feet as I back up toward the door.
“It’s all I can see,” she adds. It sounds almost like a plea. But I can’t stay here. I can’t look at them anymore. I turn on my heel and leave.