We missed Penn’s party.
And the next day during lunch, Penn had found out where we’d been when Brock oh-so casually mentioned it as he passed our table. To this day, I’ll never forget how pale he’d become or how he kept saying it was okay when Jensen and I repeatedly apologized.
Penn had seemed okay, though, and about two weeks had passed. I’d all but forgotten it, and then after school, I did what I always did. I slipped on my sneakers went running. I was planning on meeting the boys at the tree house, so that’s where I headed to, but I’d been early. We were supposed to meet at 4:30pm, and it was 4:14pm when I checked my watch as the tree house came into view.
I remembered slowing down, shaking the burn out of my legs, and it had been like time had crawled as I had dragged in deep gulps of the crisp autumn air. I’d started to climb the steps when something on the ground, on the other side had caught my attention, and I remember letting go of the wooden planks, of walking around the tree.
I’d found Penn lying on the ground.
Penn had been laying face up, his body sprawled, one leg under the other. His neck hadn’t looked right. I’d never seen a dead person before that, but I knew he was dead. I knew that immediately.
At first, the authorities had called it a tragic accident. That Penn had gone into the tree house and had accidentally fallen. The thing was, Penn would never go into that tree house by himself, and I couldn’t fathom why that day would be different.
But then, like a nightmare unfolding, his parents found Penn’s suicide note two days after Penn had died, in his bedroom. Supposedly only one sentence had been written.
I can’t take it anymore.
An entire life summed up and ended in one sentence.
Penn had climbed that tree house and then jumped off it. A lot people had talked afterward. Why hadn’t anyone known the Penn had been bullied so badly? Why hadn’t anyone seen the signs of depression? Why was there a tree house tall enough that if someone fell out of it, they could break their necks?
None of those questions really mattered then, because I knew what had done it to him, what had pushed him over the edge.
We hadn’t killed Penn with our own hands, but we had aided and abetted. We’d known that he’d been having problems—his parents fighting a lot, the kids at school picking on him. We’d been the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, and there wasn’t a day that had gone by that I didn’t wish we’d made a better decision.
That we’d chosen Penn.
#
Jensen joined Heidi and I at lunch, and by then, most of my pisstastic attitude had faded into weariness. All morning everyone talked about Gavin. About Vee. And about Monica. In the eyes of our classmates, Gavin was a serial killer.
“I wish there was something we could do,” I said, staring down at my lasagna.
“About?” Jensen asked, and I realized that I assumed everyone knew what I was thinking.
“About Gavin.” I put my fork down, sighing. “Everyone is talking about him.”
“They are.” Heidi frowned. “And no one really talks to me, so if I’ve heard about it, that really does mean everyone is talking about it.”
I dared a quick look at Jensen. Chin tilted down, he was pulling his lasagna apart layer by layer, as if he were searching for something hidden in it. “We need to prove that Gavin didn’t do anything.”
Jensen looked up, his eyebrows raised. “And how would we do that?”
“That’s a good question,” Heidi added, twisting the long strands of red hair into a braid.
“I haven’t gotten that far in my thought process,” I grumbled.
“Well, considering that you’re not Nancy Drew, and I’m not one of the Hardy Boys, I’m not sure exactly what we can do.” One side of his lips tipped up when I glared at him. “Look, I’m not being a smartass.”
“You’re not?”
“Okay. Maybe a little, but let’s look at this seriously. What can we really do? The cops are investigating it, and it’s not like we can launch our own investigation. None of us know what to look for.”
“Another good point,” Heidi chimed in, and I was beginning to wonder if she was going to be any help. “You can’t go and check out the farmhouse. That’s a crime scene and the police would’ve pulled anything that would’ve been considered evidence.”
“And we can’t get to that evidence.” He poked at his lasagna. “Unless you know how to break into a police station, which if you did, that would be kind of hot.”
I rolled my eyes.
“This is real life.” Jensen’s gaze found mine. “Not a book or a TV show where teenagers suddenly turn into seasoned investigators. We’re not private detectives, and the last thing I want you to do is to put yourself in danger.”
There was very little I could say to that. Jensen and Heidi were right. None of us would even know where to start. Hell, I’d forgotten to call Trooper Ritter about the damn bird this morning, so I already made a lousy detective.
Heidi reached across the table, squeezing my hand. “The police will find something that proves Gavin had nothing to do with what happened to Vee or any of that. They probably already have, and when they find the person behind this, Gavin won’t have anything to worry about.”
“Okay.” I forced a smile I didn’t feel. “You’re right.”
Her green eyes lit up. “I know.”
“Want my peaches?” Jensen slid his tray toward mine.
My gaze flicked from him to the fruit.
“You know you want it,” he coaxed.
Heidi giggled. “That sounds remarkably dirty.”
“Doesn’t it?” He tossed her a careless grin over his shoulder, the kind that left a trail of girls in its midst. “Deliciously dirty.”
Biting down on my lip, I tried to stop the grin from forming. I picked up my fork, though, and scooped up the peaches. “Thank you.”
“Uh-huh.”
I took a bite of the sugary goodness and a bit of its juice trickled out, escaping the corner of my lips. I reached for my napkin, but I never made it.
“I’ll get it.” Before I could react, Jensen dipped his head, angling it so it looked like he was kissing me, and I thought that was what he was about to do.
I tensed up. Our first real kiss was about to go down in the school cafeteria.
Except he didn’t kiss me, not really, but the quick flick of his tongue caught the juice on my lower lip. I gasped as heat zinged from my lips, roaring through my body.
Jensen pulled back, his eyes a crystal blue behind a thick fringe of lashes. “Mmm. Tasty.”
“Oh dear,” whispered Heidi, her hand pressed against her chest. “I think I just got pregnant watching that.”
My cheeks burst with heat and I was torn from climbing under the table, yelling at Jensen, and grabbing Jensen and fusing our mouths together when a shadow appeared. In sort of a daze and my lip tingling, I glanced up.
Brock stood there, staring down at Jensen. “Yo, you got a second?”
He leaned back, cocking his head to the side. “No. Not really.”
Surprise splashed across his face and then he glanced at me. The hollows of his cheeks started to turn red. “You serious?”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
Whoa. My own eyes widened. What was up with the attitude?
Brock’s expression darkened as his gaze settled on us, sending a chill right down my spine. “Whatever, man. Catch you later.”
“Wow.” Heidi’s eyes were wide, watching Brock retreat stiffly back to his table. “He was not happy with you.”
Jensen shrugged his shoulder. “I’m not worried about him.”
The thing was, when I thought about the farmhouse and how Brock had disappeared, I kind of was.
#
It was in art class when I remembered I had an appointment with Dr. Oliver after school. Jensen offered to take me, and while I argued that I could take myself, he didn’t relent until I begrudgingly allowe
d him to take me.
And wait for me.
He did promise a smoothie afterward, which made agreeing not the hardest thing to do, because I could really use a smoothie.
Dr. Oliver’s office was on Foxcroft Avenue, on the third floor of a brick building, and as I stepped off the elevator, I realized that the faint antiseptic scent still clung to every breath I took.
My sandaled feet were quiet against the worn brown carpet as I made my way down the narrow hall that was all too familiar. The glass in the door up ahead was blurred out. Dr. Oliver took privacy very seriously.
I knew not to knock. There was no receptionist in the evening. I passed the potted palm trees and stopped at the second door that was cracked open. “Hello?”
“Ella?” Dr. Oliver called. “Go ahead and come in.”
Taking a deep breath, I pushed open the door. The good doctor stood with his back to me, shaking a small can over his large aquarium. The guy was also obsessed with his fish. I took a seat in front of his desk without being told.
“How are you doing today?” he asked politely.
Knowing he was going to do his shrink thing no matter which way I answered, I decided to go with honesty. “Tired.”
“I imagine so. Your mother has said you haven’t been sleeping well?” He screwed the lid onto the bottle and set it aside. Turning toward me, he pulled off his wire frame glasses and smiled. He looked the same way as I remembered—dark trimmed beard, brown eyes, thinning hair at the scalp.
I nodded. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Because of the attack and subsequent situations, I imagine.” He dropped into his chair, slipping his glasses back on. “You know the drill, Ella.”
Swallowing a sigh, I slumped in the chair. Of course, I knew the drill. Talk about my feelings. Talk about my fear. Blah. Blah. But I wanted to get this over and done with. There was a strawberry smoothie at the end of this dark cloud. So I told him how I felt—how I was scared. I admitted that I was having nightmares, that every little sound had me jumping out of my skin.
Dr. Oliver listened quietly, like he always did, fingers steepled under his chin. When I finished, he totally jumped right into the unexpected. “So you’ve been hanging out with Jensen Carver again.”
My brows climbed up my forehead. Exactly how he went from my fear of being murdered to who I was hanging out with was beyond me. “How did you know?”
He smiled as he tapped a finger off his temple. “I’m psychic.”
I stared at him.
Dr. Oliver sighed. “The window faces the front parking lot.” He gestured behind him. “I saw you get out of his truck.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway,” he drew the word out, and I cracked a grin. “When did you guys start talking? After the night of the attack?” When I nodded, his fingers went back to his chin. “And how is your relationship.”
I could feel the heat creeping across my cheeks. “It’s okay.”
“Uh-huh.” There was a pause. “Becoming close with Jensen again, has that been stirring up anything?”
My lips pursed.
An eyebrow rose.
I sighed again. “A little bit, I guess. I mean, it’s kind of hard not to think of… of him, but we don’t talk about him.”
“Maybe you two should.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. Considering that we had talked about Penn this morning, it wasn’t something that I wanted to repeat immediately.
“I’ve always said that the way Jensen views what happened with Penn would be of value to you.” Dr. Oliver lowered his hands. “He doesn’t feel the same way you do.”
It wasn’t that Jensen didn’t feel any remorse. I knew he did, but he was, as Dr. Oliver put it, pragmatic about things. Jensen believed that no matter what we had done or didn’t do, Penn would’ve eventually taken his own life either way.
Penn obviously had issues. I accepted that part of it, and it had taken me a long time to realize that our one singular act hadn’t driven Penn to take his life, but we had been the tipping point.
“Do you still feel responsible for Penn’s death?”
The breath I exhaled was shaky as I met Dr. Oliver’s stare. Part of me wanted to lie, because I knew if I said yes, this appointment was going to continue far longer than I wanted it to. But I guess honesty time was over. “Sometimes I… I forget about it. I mean, not really completely forget, but I don’t think about it.”
“That’s normal, Ella.”
I winced. “It doesn’t seem right though.” I didn’t want to continue, but Dr. Oliver was giving me that look that said he’d sit there and stare at me until I did. “I don’t want to forget him—forget Penn. He was… he was my best friend. I grew up with him.” My voice turned hoarse. “It’s not right to just forget about him.”
“No one is saying you need to forget him, Ella, but life does go on. It always has and will. Letting that happen is no disrespect to Penn’s memory,” he said patiently and then sat back, hooking one leg over the other. “You have to learn to let this guilt go.”
Pressing my lips together, I folded my arms across my chest.
His gaze turned shrewd. “You did not kill that boy. Neither did Jensen. Choosing to go to one party over another does not make you responsible. It sucks,” he said, raising his hands to the sides before pressing them together under his chin. “It’s a series of unfortunate events, but nothing you two did equals ownership of blame.”
I wanted to believe that so much. “What about Monica? Vee?”
“What about them?”
“They picked on him relentlessly. Are they to blame?”
Dr. Oliver didn’t answer for a long moment. “When you bully someone, picking at them day after day, stripping away their self-worth and confidence, their very will to live, then you do have ownership of the blame. And what they did to him is very different than what you and Jensen did. You know that.”
I nodded.
“I’m going to be up front with you,” he said, and I schooled my expression blank. “What you’re feeling—the anxiety and fear, even the nightmares, after a violent attack is normal. You’re probably going to experience that for some time, maybe even until they apprehend the person responsible, but it’s not affecting your daily life. So that’s good. And I also think it’s great that you’re reconnecting with Jensen. In a way, getting to know him again is the right step for you to be taking.”
“It is?”
He nodded, pulling a thick pad out of his desk. “It’s all about finally letting your past go, and it’s about time that you do that.”
I hadn’t really thought of it that way.
“But I am going to write you a script for something to help you sleep.” He scribbled across the pad and then ripped the slip of paper off. “Sleep is important.”
I took the paper. “So I’m okay?”
“As okay as any of us are.” A quick smile flashed across his face.
My gaze dropped to his barely legible handwriting. “Can I ask you a question?”
He leaned back in his chair, hooking one leg over the other. “Have at it.”
“You’re a shrink, right.”
His eyebrow arched again. “On some days.”
I smiled at that. “What I mean is, you’re a head doctor and with… what has been happening around here, why…. why do you think someone is doing this?”
“Ah… well, I don’t think there’s a simple answer to that question,” he said. “There are people who kill for the thrill of it—thrill killers. There’s no rhyme or reason to why. Their victims are usually random, and they tend to move about, not staying in one city or location.”
“And you don’t think that’s the case here?”
“I don’t think there’s enough evidence to say either way, but I’d be surprised if that’s what the police have on their hands. People kill for different motives—greed, love, hate.” He paused, his gaze meeting mine. “Revenge. So on. And if the police can find a motive
linking the murder to the disappearance and the attack,