Chapter Seventeen Adrianna
Chapter Seventeen
ADRIANNA
I don’t know how long I’ve been sat in my closet with a pile of press images, when my phone starts ringing in my lap.
‘Hello?’ I catch sight of myself in the long mirror. My deep blue eyes are bloodshot. I dab carefully at where my mascara has bled. Run a hand through the thick wave of the chestnut hair.
‘Dri?’
‘Oh. Hey, baby.’ My voice softens. It’s Mark.
‘Listen, Dri,’ his voice sounds urgent. ‘Are you with anyone else right now?’
‘No. Why?’
He hesitates. ‘Could one of your bridesmaids have had something to do with Simone’s death?’
‘What?’ I am straight up furious. ‘Why would you say that? Dad and Georgia picked the bridesmaids. Of course they aren’t involved in Simone’s death!’
‘I was just with the police. They think Simone’s body was moved from a room that only your bridesmaids could get into. Some kind of storage room.’
‘You’ve been speaking to NYPD?’ I rub my temples with my spare hand. ‘Didn’t I tell you, Mark? Didn’t I warn you? This is just what the cops do. Every time. Did it occur to you why they are hounding our bridesmaids, instead of trying to catch the actual killer?’
‘I just thought … Your bridesmaids were all at your twenty-first birthday party on Elysium, right?’
‘Mark, stop! The last time I trusted NYPD, a cop sold pictures of my underwear drawer. Can’t you see what they’re doing? One picture of me is worth more than a cop gets paid in a lifetime. You can’t trust them.’
‘Can you trust your bridesmaids? I know Ophelia is a friend, but you never see Silky anymore.’
‘My dad hired all of the bridesmaids exactly because they can be trusted. Each one of them stands to benefit in a big way from our wedding, and they all have links to the family that go way back. There is absolutely no way any of them would try to sabotage that. And in any case, my bridesmaids are all Kensington Manor School girls.’
‘Which means what, exactly?’
‘Loyalty runs deep. I wouldn’t expect you to understand it.’
There’s a pause, and I can sense his annoyance.
‘Look,’ I reposition a brunette curl. ‘Whoever killed Simone is a sick, sick person who wants to stop us getting married. We’re not going to let them win, right?’
‘Dri …’
‘Right?’
‘Right. It’s just … I’m worried about you, Dri. I think you should help the police any way you can …’
‘No. One hundred percent no, Mark. We’ve talked about this. In our family, you don’t call the cops. Ever. You call my dad.’ My voice softens. ‘Dad will find out more than the NYPD can. Just let him do his thing.’
I look down at the picture in my hand. Me, standing smiling with all my bridesmaids. We’re lined up in matching beachwear, holding giant-sized frozen margaritas with Coney Island behind us. It was cold that day, I remember. They had to edit out our goosebumps. We tipped the iced drinks on the sand.
‘I am so mad the police are wasting their time suspecting my bridesmaids,’ I say. My voice sounds strange, even to me. ‘Can you imagine, one of them holding me captive in a room for three days?’ I try to laugh but it comes out wrong. Because weirdly, when I say it aloud, I kind of can.
‘I don’t know,’ says Mark, picking up on my shaky tone. ‘Could you? The kidnapper wore a mask to cover their face and a cloak, right? They could have been female …’
‘I’d have known,’ I tell him in a very definite tone. ‘Three days in a room. If it was someone I knew, I’d have known.’
‘Dri.’ He hesitates. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to cancel the wedding?’
‘For some crazy stalker?’ My jaw hardens.
‘Mark, do you know how many death and rape threats I get every day? It just comes with the territory of being a woman in the public eye. I take a walk on a beach. Someone threatens to kill me. I look out of a window in Paris. Someone threatens to kill me. So naturally. Of course. I’m getting married and someone is threatening to kill me. ’
There’s a pause. ‘I love you,’ he says finally. ‘Keep your security high.’
We say our goodbyes and I hang up, wondering whether I should text Dad this latest evidence of police incompetence. He’ll be making his own inquiries. Always does.
I open my phone, adjust my face to contain a self-satisfied smile, and snap a picture.
Not bad. I take a breath. Add some text.
‘Look who’s about to get married to the man of her dreams.’
I open my social media and post, feeling the anxiety slip back as the picture loads. But as I scroll down my feed, my manicured finger hovers.
Just as I feared, the stories from three years ago are making a resurgence.
No ransom issued for Adrianna Kensington. Police fear worst.
My eyes track down several headlines from three years ago. Something about my wedding seems to be affecting the algorithm, giving these old features new life.
Day 3 Hunt: Police losing hope of finding 21-year-old Adrianna alive.
The terrible pictures still grab me right in the gut, even now. Me emerging from the room.
My eyes are glassy. Dead eyes. I don’t seem to have even noticed the crescendo of flash photography reflecting on my gaunt face. My dehydrated body is clad in a filthy ripped negligee, and I lean heavily on my dad’s stocky frame as he pushes aside journalists with an angry, outstretched hand.
I put a hand to my head, feeling out my long brown hair. It’s grown back now. When I got out, my famous curls had been hacked away. Cleaved to the scalp in places. Elsewhere, what little shreds remained hung in dirty rats-tails.
I stare at the broken girl in the picture. My perfectly manicured nails glide over her tear-streaked face.
Another picture shows the room I’d just left. In the three days I was there, I felt like every square inch was familiar. But now I look, the bed seems smaller. The hanks of my long hair, which I had remembered littering the entire floor, are gathered in one corner.
Taking a breath, I force my gaze back to the pile of photography in my lap. To the images of the lovely girl getting married next week.
I pause on one. My perfect face, healthy, tanned, juxtaposed with the smiling bridesmaids. We are beautiful. Perfect.
Everybody wants to be us.
Before I can stop myself, I rip the picture clean in half, and scream.