The Prom Queen

  “Let’s keep going,” Mr. Perry said, stone faced.

  After everyone had said where they had been the night before, Officer Barnett turned back to Justin.

  “Did Simone have any enemies that you know of?” she asked. “Anyone who would want to cause her harm?”

  “No,” he said.

  “And the last time you saw her was—”

  “At lunch, yesterday.”

  “And she was—”

  “Upset,” said Justin. “Very upset, thanks to—” He glared at Robbie, who said, “Oh, please!”

  Finally, after an hour of questioning, the policewoman snapped her notebook shut. “Thank you, all of you. If you think of anything you want to add, call us at the Shadyside police station. If we’re not there, leave a message and we’ll get right back to you.”

  Officer Jackson nodded to Mr. Perry as he and Officer Barnett headed for the door. Everyone in the room was standing up, ready to go. No one wanted to hang out a minute longer than they had to.

  When I got outside, I was startled that the sun was still shining brightly. The Perrys’ front lawn was green and cheerful. It seemed so strange after what we’d just been discussing. Everything looked fine.

  I put my hands above my eyes to shield them from the glare. I watched Rachel head for her car. She was walking arm in arm with Gideon. Elana passed by me on my right.

  “Horrible, huh?” I said. It was all I could think to say.

  Elana barely looked at me before walking on.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, hurrying to catch up with her.

  There was a long line of cars in front of the Perrys’ house. Elana was parked near the end, and I was right behind her. I didn’t say anything till we got near my car. “I just wish there was something we could do,” I said. “I mean, we were—are—some of her best friends and—”

  “Listen,” Elana said brusquely, “I’ve had it up to here with this, okay? I can’t talk about it anymore.”

  She opened her door, got in, and slammed it shut.

  Wow, I thought. Talk about not sticking together in a crisis. I stared after her as she pulled out. She was staring straight ahead and didn’t even wave goodbye. Her face was frozen.

  Then it hit me. She was frozen with fear. Just like the rest of us. And Elana’s way of controlling fear was to pretend that bad things didn’t happen.

  I pulled out my rabbit’s-foot key ring and fumbled putting the key in the lock.

  Then I heard footsteps behind me—footsteps pounding along the pavement, running toward me.

  And then I heard a voice shouting.

  “I killed her! I killed her!”

  Chapter

  6

  I whirled around. Racing toward me was a stocky guy in a tan windbreaker that flapped behind him as he ran. His face was contorted in agony. His arms were outstretched, as if asking forgiveness.

  “Very funny, Lucas,” I said.

  Lucas Brown was one of the weirdest kids I’d ever known. Even his last name, which is about as normal as you can get, was weird if you thought about it. Lucas Brown had short brown hair and brown eyes to match. And he usually wore—you guessed it—brown.

  His eyes were set a little close together, so he seemed a little cross-eyed. That wasn’t the half of it. Lucas once told me that he kept a diary of gruesome deaths he heard about on TV. “Falling Crane Chops Woman in Half”—that kind of thing. He thought stories like those were funny. He said they cheered him up.

  Cheering up was something he usually needed—in a big way. He was almost always in a black depression. And why not? The guy had zero friends. None that I knew of, anyway.

  Right then he was laughing so hard I thought he was going to fall over. “Gotcha!” he yelled.

  What an unbelievable creep.

  I turned back to my car door.

  “Hey!” he went on. “I can’t believe it. You really believed me!”

  I spun around and faced him again. “You have a twisted sense of humor, you know that?”

  “Oh, come on, Lizzy. It was a joke!”

  “A joke? Simone has probably been murdered.”

  “I know,” he said, his face darkening. I thought he was upset about Simone, but then he said, “Doesn’t mean you have to give me a hard time if I make a stupid joke.”

  I had trouble not screaming. “I don’t believe you,” I said. “Can’t you stop thinking about yourself? I mean, don’t you feel even a little bit bad? You used to go out with her!”

  Lucas raised his eyes to the treetops. “Yeah, I did,” he said bitterly. “Thanks for reminding me.”

  He was standing really close to me. He grabbed my arm and started to pull on me.

  “Let’s go get a Coke,” he said. Lucas’s magical touch with girls: Don’t ask—give orders. “I need to talk to you.”

  “No way,” I told him.

  He blinked. I could tell he was hurt. He said, “Okay, you’re right. Now’s not the time. Let’s just go to my house and make out.”

  I pulled away from him angrily. My upper arm was aching where he had squeezed it. It felt as if I had just been given a triple booster shot. I stared at him as icily as I could. Then I got into my car and slammed the door.

  He tapped on the window. He was smiling at me. It was a wicked smile, as if he knew something I didn’t. I pushed the window button, and the window rolled down an inch.

  Lucas bent over so his dark eyes were in a line with the crack. “Was that a yes or a no?”

  He cackled.

  “You really crack yourself up, don’t you?” I said.

  “I’m just so funny, I can’t help it.”

  “About as funny as a rubber crutch.”

  It was the only insult I could come up with. I think I heard it when I was in the third grade. Someday I’d like to gather a whole bunch of really great insults. I’d use them all on Lucas Brown.

  Lucas jammed his hand in through the open window crack and wiggled his fingers near my head. I pressed the remote-control button and shot the window back up.

  With an angry cry Lucas quickly yanked his hand back. Then I peeled out.

  As I drove away, I could see him, still standing there, still staring after me.

  What a sicko! He’s so crazy. I couldn’t imagine what Simone had ever seen in him.

  Then I remembered that Lucas was on the Shadyside High baseball team. He was one of the pitchers, and he sometimes played first base.

  When Simone dumped him, Lucas was pretty bummed. He went around saying Simone had used him to get to Justin.

  Lucas wasn’t the only one who said it. Most kids agreed that she had.

  It was easy to see why. When Simone started dating Lucas, no one could believe that she really was interested in him.

  She did show up at every baseball practice—supposedly to be with Lucas.

  Meanwhile, her visits gave Justin a chance to check her out. Simone wasn’t subtle. She always wore her sexiest outfits to every game.

  The minute Justin asked her out, Simone dropped Lucas like that.

  I used to defend Simone when people said this stuff behind her back. But considering how messed up Lucas was, it made sense that she only went out with him to get to Justin.

  I turned on the radio and searched for a soft, soothing song. Instead I heard “No break yet in the case, but the Shadyside police insist there is no reason to link the disappearance of seventeen-year-old Simone Perry with the recent deaths of Stacy Alsop and Tina Wales.”

  No reason? Sure. Except for the fact that it was obviously the work of the same psycho. I snapped the radio off.

  Something was bothering me. Something stuck in my mind. Something I had begun to remember, but then forgot.

  Lucas . . . Justin . . . Simone going to baseball practice.

  Baseball! The team!

  Yes.

  The dark blur.

  The running figure, carrying the gray sack.

  The picture suddenly came a little clearer.

/>   I pulled the car to the curb and tried to catch my breath.

  I had just remembered something very important about the man I saw running away through Simone’s backyard.

  And what I remembered scared me to death.

  Chapter

  7

  “Guess who called me last night and asked me to the prom?” I said. “Lucas Brown!”

  “No!” shrieked Dawn and Rachel.

  We were in my green Toyota Tercel, heading for the Division Street Mall. It was a quarter to five on Wednesday night. Two long weeks had passed since Simone had disappeared. Two weeks with no call from any kidnapper. Two weeks that must have seemed like ten years to Mr. and Mrs. Perry.

  I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her for a minute. No matter what I talked about now, she was there, like a dark shadow, following me everywhere.

  “Tell me what he said, word for word,” insisted Dawn.

  “He said, ‘Guess who you’re going to the prom with? Me!’ ”

  Dawn and Rachel both laughed at my imitation of his voice and abrupt manner. I wasn’t laughing, though. The phone call had given me a chill.

  “What did you say to him?” Rachel asked.

  “I was very polite. I pretended he wasn’t a creep. I said thanks, but I was still hoping Kevin would get permission to come. Which is the truth.”

  “And not only that, you think Lucas is a psycho killer,” Rachel added. “Just what any girl wants for a prom date.”

  “You don’t really think that,” Dawn said to me. “Oh, come on,” she said. “Lucas?”

  “Hey,” I said, “I just think he’s weird, that’s all. Everybody thinks so. And then, there’s the jacket.”

  That’s what I had remembered as I left Simone’s house. The guy I saw running away from the Perry house was wearing a maroon satin jacket. Same as the Shadyside High baseball jackets.

  Dawn’s legs appeared in my rearview mirror. She was lying in the backseat, doing leg lifts. “Can’t you two talk about anything else?” she said.

  “No,” I answered simply. “As a matter of fact, we can’t.”

  “Okay,” Dawn said, “so he was wearing a maroon jacket. That doesn’t mean he was on the baseball team. Psychos are allowed to wear maroon too, you know.”

  “Yeah, but don’t you see?” I removed one hand from the wheel and sawed the air with it to emphasize my point. “Lucas is on the baseball team. It’s the one thing he has to be proud of, even though he almost never plays. He almost always wears that jacket.”

  “Oh, come on,” Dawn said. “Why would Lucas Brown kill Simone?”

  “Revenge. He’s hated Simone’s guts ever since she dumped him.”

  “Get serious,” Dawn said. “People don’t go around murdering people who’ve dumped them!”

  “Lucas isn’t just anybody,” I reminded her. “He’s a first-class lunatic.”

  “And his eyes are a little crossed,” Rachel chimed in.

  Dawn snickered. “Having an eye problem doesn’t make him a murderer.”

  “Well, he’s definitely on the weird side, that’s for sure,” Rachel said. “I heard when his parents decided to put his dog to sleep, Lucas went out and hanged it from a maple tree in his backyard.”

  “Oh, puh-lease,” groaned Dawn. “Where’d you hear that garbage?”

  “Gideon,” admitted Rachel, blushing. I took my eyes off the road and glanced at her. It occurred to me that Gideon was on the baseball team as well. But why would—

  Dawn sat up and broke my train of thought. “Look, Lizzy,” she said. “You know who did it. So do I. So does everybody else in Shadyside.”

  Rachel’s eyes widened. “Who?”

  “The same madman who killed that girl from Waynesbridge and dragged her to the Fear Street woods,” answered Dawn. “And the girl over in Durham. Now, why would Lucas kill those girls? Did they dump him too?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he just wants to see himself on TV. He keeps a journal of strange deaths and murders, you know.”

  Dawn rolled her eyes. “Oh, he just thinks that makes him cool.”

  I thought about this for a moment. I guess I was overreacting. The thought of Lucas actually killing Simone did seem incredible.

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said.

  We were driving by school now. All the lights were out. The building loomed in the twilight like an ancient and evil castle.

  Great—now even our school was scaring me.

  I made a left at the light. Rachel turned to me, surprised.

  “Hey,” Dawn said from the backseat. “Division Street is thataway.”

  “I want to stop at Simone’s,” I explained. “See if there’s any news.”

  Dawn complained, but I insisted. A minute later I swung the car into the Perrys’ driveway and parked behind their big silver Lincoln. The porch light was on. I guess the Perrys were still praying that Simone would return.

  Rachel went with me as I rang the doorbell. Dawn waited in the car.

  Mr. Perry answered, more haggard than before. His white shirt and tie were rumpled, as if he had slept in his clothes, and a day’s growth of beard darkened his face.

  “No kidnapper has called,” he told us sadly. He stared out over our heads at the car.

  “It’s Dawn,” I explained.

  He nodded. “Listen,” he said, “I don’t want to scare you, but at this point the police are considering it very serious. They say they could be dealing with the same man who—”

  He stopped. He couldn’t bring himself to say the word killed. Instead, he said, “The same man they’re looking for about those other two girls.”

  His eyes met mine. It was as if the life had gone out of them. He didn’t even manage a slight smile. “Get home safe,” he told us and closed the door.

  Back in the car Dawn read our faces. She didn’t need to ask if there was any news.

  As we drove on to the mall, Rachel said, “She was the best actress, you know? Really gifted.”

  “She was one of the funniest people I’ve ever met,” I agreed.

  “I can’t believe the whole thing,” Rachel went on. “That she’s gone, you know? There’s like this big, gaping hole in my life where a friend used to be.”

  I bit my lip. “It’s true what they say. You end up wishing you had said all these things to her, before.”

  “Like ‘I love you,’ ” Rachel agreed.

  “Oh, barf!” was Dawn’s response.

  “What?” I took my eyes off the road to glare at her in the rearview mirror.

  “You heard me. I’m throwing up back here.”

  I could feel the anger rising in my throat. “How can you be so insensitive?”

  “Look,” Dawn said. “What happened to Simone is a tragedy. I’m as sorry as you guys are. But let’s not exaggerate. Simone was never my best friend. And if you guys are honest with yourselves, you’ll admit she wasn’t your best friend, either. She was incredibly self-centered. I mean, can you name one single thing she ever did for either of you?”

  “Just shut up, will you?” I stepped on the gas. I could feel the back of my neck getting hot.

  I was driving about twenty miles an hour over the speed limit. We rode in silence for several miles.

  “Look—” Dawn started up again—“hate me if you like, but all I’m saying is that we should try to get this off our minds for a few hours.”

  “How?” I asked miserably.

  “By going ahead with our plan. We’re going to the mall, right? We’re going to check out sexy prom dresses that will have all the guys drooling. And then we’re going to catch a movie. And we’re going to have a great time. Agreed?”

  Rachel and I exchanged glances. I shrugged. “Agreed,” Rachel and I both said in unison. But neither of us believed it.

  Then Dawn clapped her hands together. “Hey,” she said. “The prom is only two and a half weeks away!”

  “Great,” said Rachel gloomily.

  Daw
n said, “I’ve got to decide who I’m going with pretty soon.”

  True to her prediction, Dawn had already been asked to the prom by three boys.

  “I wouldn’t mind being asked by three guys,” Rachel grumbled.

  “Everyone knows you’re going with Gideon,” I told her, “so no one would ask you.”

  “Right,” said Rachel.

  “It’s true. If you want offers, break up with Gideon. You’ll get plenty of guys asking you to the prom.”

  “Great idea,” Rachel said, rolling her eyes.

  “What about you?” Dawn asked me. “What are you going to do if Kevin can’t come?”

  “Go by myself, I guess,” I said weakly.

  “Wouldn’t you feel really sorry for yourself?” Dawn asked.

  “No.” I shook my head, feeling totally sorry for myself.

  Dawn said, “I talked to Lisa Blume today. She says they’ve hired a great rock band, the Razors, to play at the dance.”

  I nodded without enthusiasm. I was picturing myself dancing all alone.

  A few minutes later I was posing in front of a three-sided mirror in a tight pink prom dress. We were in Ferrara’s at the Division Street Mall. The prices in this store were outrageous, but my mom had told me not to worry about money when I was picking out my dress. I turned to the left, the right.

  “It’s not flattering, if you know what I mean,” Dawn sniped, trying to hide her amused expression.

  I felt my face grow hot.

  “Just being helpful,” Dawn said. “Which I don’t have to be, considering we’re competing against each other.”

  I went back to flipping through dresses on the rack. Farther down the row I could see Rachel, holding up an ugly red sheath dress. She pointed at it and looked at me questioningly. I shook my head but smiled kindly. I wasn’t going to be like Dawn!

  “What do you want me to say?” Dawn continued. “That it looks great when it doesn’t?”

  I shrugged.

  “Admit it,” Dawn said, poking me in the ribs, “you know I’m going to win, so why don’t you just stop worrying? It doesn’t matter what you wear.”

  “Right.”

  “But it’s true. I always win everything, and you know it!”