Natural Selection

  I REALLY DON’T remember the rest of the weekend. It was a blur of police talking to me, reporters stopping me whenever I stepped out of my house, and lots of fussing from Mega Mom. She followed me around the house offering blankets, tea, and snacks. She kept giving me doe-eyed looks that said she wished there was a way to ease my pain. I spent much of Sunday in a plain room at the police station. They knew from the candles that Crystal had been killed while I was grinding on the dance floor with half the boys in my school. I had no idea it took candles so long to burn. But it meant there was no way I could have had anything to do with her death, and they knew it. Detective Laurent informed me that while I might not be the perpetrator, they couldn’t ignore my connection to two victims. Especially since there was no other connection between any of them. He showed me pictures, a head and shoulders shot of a burly boy from Springfield with shaggy eyebrows and intense yellow eyes. Apparently, the boy had been murdered before Mariah, along with a girl I recognized as Carol Stanton. She graduated last year, but we’d lived in the same small town all our lives. I knew of several people, but that didn’t mean I knew them. The detective looked disappointed that I couldn’t figure it out for him, but by then I’d been sitting in a hard metal chair for too long. My mom finally had enough and started to make a fuss, so they let me go.

  Reporters were camped out on the lawn, but Mom pulled into the garage so they couldn’t get near me. The phone rang so many times Dad unplugged it. All the important people had his cell phone number anyway. They followed me to school Monday morning, but the school was anticipating them. Mrs. Soberlo had security set up to let students make it safely into the building. I noticed several students wandering over, and I sneered at the things they were probably saying about how well they knew all the victims. I don’t know why the reporters were so fascinated with me anyway. All I did was find the body. Did they hound everyone associated with the case? Maybe it was the bulk of time I had spent with the police over the last two days. Whatever it was, I just wished they’d go away.

  My siblings rarely left my side at school, walking me to classes and both of them sitting with me at lunch. One of the football players made a snide comment about me being a murderer, and Xander bloodied his nose without even slowing his step. After that, everyone was afraid to meet my eyes, and everyone shifted away from me in all of my classes. I felt like the center of attention, since everyone was pointedly not watching me. The room fell silent when I entered, and as soon as I left the whispering started. I felt like I was living in a glass bowl, and the whole world was watching.

  The one good thing about the horrible experience was it helped Evelyn and me move past the weirdness between us. She knew I wasn’t ready to talk about what happened and promised to wait until I was. In the meantime, she moved along in the silent bubble with me chattering as if everything was normal. And eventually, I began to feel it was. The reporters wandered away after only a couple of days, realizing there was no story here.

  I thought the shock to my system caused me to catch something because I was running fevers, had frequent headaches and my entire body ached. I felt ill, faint, and feverish, but I dismissed it. It’s not every day you find the body of a friend murdered in some sort of horrific witchcraft ceremony.

  I often sat out on the roof at night, which actually made me feel better. In fact, I noticed I felt better any time I was outside, so I started spending most of my time in the tree or just sitting cross legged in the grass. I’d finished Secrets and since the next book wasn’t out yet I moved on to another book, Legion of Bats by Michelle Ferguson. I can’t believe I’d ignored the genre for so long! I really was enjoying it and could definitely handle the hunky heroes. Don’t get me wrong, you won’t see me reading about sparkly vampires, but I shouldn’t have judged the entire genre by one freakish success. I’m sorry, but vampires only sparkle in the sun because they are about to ignite.

  Friday came with its typical load of homework from teachers who felt teenagers didn’t need any time for a social life or sleep—or anything silly like that. Evelyn was waiting by my locker when I got out of creative writing, her backpack on one shoulder and her duffel bag on the other. Our football team had floundered as usual, and basketball hadn’t started yet, so she was spending her first free weekend with me. I was glad she’d decided to stick it out with cheerleading, though it too seemed to be driving us apart. Why do high schoolers constantly divide themselves based on the activities? What relevance does being in the science club—not that I was in the science club, you have to like science for that—have when it comes to my ability to form a meaningful connection to another human being?

  I realized my mind had wandered off again. It was dangerous for it to be wandering on its own, but it had gotten tough to keep it from doing so. I snapped it back inside of my skull where it was safe. A mind is a terrible thing to lose. I frowned at the random A.D.D. thoughts, and wondered if I was cracking up. Maybe I really had cracked up, and all the weirdness since the beginning of school was one big delusional fantasy. But didn’t they say if you thought you were crazy then you had to be sane because the insane never worry they were crazy?

  Someone bumped into my shoulder, and I realized I’d stopped in the middle of the hall. I tucked my hair behind my ear and made a beeline for my locker where Evelyn stood staring at me like she was also worrying about my sanity. I choked back a nearly maniacal laugh and quickly gathered my things for the weekend. I managed to grumble about the fact that the only book in my locker as I closed it was my Spanish book, because I always had time to do the simple assignments in the time before class started. Evelyn let my odd behavior slide, but I knew I’d hear about it later.

  Xander had plans with Nate, so we rode home with Sariah. We kept the conversation light, and by the time we got to the house I had forgotten about my morbid musings and was in a fairly decent mood for the first time that week. As soon as we got in the door, we tossed our stuff on the landing and headed for the kitchen. I fixed us each a peanut butter and banana sandwich, one of our favorite snacks, and we sat at the counter laughing and talking like we always had. I loved that all the tension was gone between us. I couldn’t remember why I was keeping secrets from her, and I wasn’t going to let them come between us anymore. I decided it was time to confess everything.

  We finished our snack and headed up to my room, grabbing our bags in passing. She tossed her duffel on my bed, and we sat cross-legged in the middle of my floor working on the algebra problems Mr. Olson had assigned. We weren’t in the class at the same time, but we were in the same class so we often did our homework together. Evelyn is good at math, like adding three digit numbers in her head and getting the right answer every time good at math. And she was pretty good with science. So she helped me with those, and I helped her with English and History, my best subjects and her worst.

  Come to think of it, Evelyn and I were opposites in a lot of ways. I was the quiet one, always hanging on the outskirts and praying no one noticed me. Evelyn was more social, preferring to be in the spotlight and the center of attention. But she was never conceited or cocky. She liked cheering and had been dancing since she could walk. Her voice was beautiful, and she wasn’t ashamed to belt out her favorite song in the middle of the grocery store. Did you know there really are no good displays for hiding at a grocery store? Now at the mall, I could climb into a clothes rack and pretend I didn’t know her, but at the grocery store I just had to stand there, turning various shades of red while staring at the bland floor tiles. Not that it ever actually happened or anything.

  Evelyn gathered her hair and pulled it over her shoulder as she sat up to grab another book. Why did doing algebra with her go so fast when it took me forever if I did it by myself? We quickly got through the history, since we could skip the reading. Thankfully we were studying the period of exploration of the New World, a subject I’d always loved. I dreamed of being an explorer, discovering places, and meeting people who seemed so different from me. Slowly the
pile of books grew smaller and smaller, I tossed my Creative Writing exercise on top of the mound of finished assignments with a grin. Evelyn was sitting at my vanity painting her nails with slow, sure strokes. I silently watched her for a long moment, fascinated for no particular reason.

  “What?” she asked, when she noticed my scrutiny. She screwed the lid back on the bottle and held her nails out to admire them.

  “Just trying to figure out how you do that. Every time I try, I wind up painting my cuticles, my knuckles and a couple of other random spots too.”

  Evelyn laughed and shook her head, coming back to sit on the floor by me. She grabbed my hand and began painting my nails a beautiful shade of blue my mom had bought for me at her organic makeup store.

  I decided this was the best chance I was going to get to broach the subject, so I dove in headfirst. “I don’t like having secrets, Evey.” I looked down, picking at my jeans with my free hand. “It’s killing me. Nothing can be so big it can come between us, right?” I asked hopefully, raising my eyes to look at her. Her mouth was twisted up into a grin, but it didn’t touch her eyes. She switched hands without meeting my eyes. Refusing to let myself stop, I plowed on. “I tried to tell you the other day, but I let myself get deterred. I found something out, and it’s big. I need to share it with my best friend.” Tears filled my eyes as I raised my head and willed her to look me in the eye. When she finished my other hand and finally looked at me, the expression on her face was so conflicted. Mostly what I saw could only be described as self-loathing.

  “Trust me, Lia, when I tell you not to tell me. It’s better for us both if you don’t."

  I was hurt, and I couldn’t keep it off my face. Without saying a word, I stood up and walked out of the room, but she chased after me. She stopped me at the head of the stairs and spun me around to face her.

  “I swear I’m protecting you, Lia. The more I know, the harder it is to keep them from seeing.” She clapped her hands to her mouth, and the horror in her eyes made my breath catch. She spun around and ran to my room, gathering her books and shoving them into her backpack in a whirlwind of flying paper. She grabbed her duffel bag off the bed, pounded down the stairs and out the door. I ran behind her through it all—hurt, confused and afraid for my friend. The stark reality felt like a slap in the face. Evelyn knew more than what she was saying, and whatever she knew scared her. For the first time, I considered there might be more to this than I thought. I stared at the empty doorway and contemplated how I could help her—if I even could.