Dead Ringer (20 page)

“
My
baby,” Amanda said, making the moment even more
painful. She was right, of course. Charlie had only claimed that the baby was
his to protect Amanda. The truth would have destroyed her family far more than
a secret pregnancy between two young, stupid teenagers. But Charlie had to push
that nightmare down just as deep; his future also depended on the real father
remaining a secret.

“Right,” Charlie said. Now he wanted to get off this topic
as fast as possible. “We made it through that, but now most days I just want to
run away.”

“We may as well. We don’t belong here anymore. Did you know
that your ex is having a giant ‘Friendsgiving’ bash next week at her house
because her parents are out of town? Literally everyone is invited, except for
us, of course, because we are now people that everyone wants to pretend they
don’t know.”

Charlie didn’t know anything about what was going on in
Laura’s life—or anyone else’s, for that matter. He was completely cut off
from the social scene at Englewood.

“We’re just like Sarah now,” Charlie said without even
thinking.

“Yeah,” Amanda said. “Wouldn’t she be thrilled?”

Sasha

Sasha couldn’t stay and finish her
shift with the Hunter girls after what she heard through the door of Amanda’s
bedroom. She called up to Amanda that she was feeling sick, put the girls in
front of the TV, and ran out of the house. She had been days away from quitting
the job because Amanda and the crew had completely stopped communicating about
the Sarah story, but now, thanks to her patience, Sasha had hit the jackpot,
and she’d been smart enough to pull out her cellphone out and record everything.

Three things were confirmed from Amanda and Charlie’s
conversation. One, they were in the presence of Sarah when she died. Two, some
game they played was the cause of her death. And three, CO knew. But then there
was item number four—the piece of information that Sasha didn’t expect to
learn:
the baby
. But right now that shock was still secondary to the
only thing clouding Sasha’s mind: it was some
game
they played that lead
to Sarah’s death.

Did it mean that Sarah didn’t actually kill herself? Or did
she do it because of whatever game they played with her? What did Amanda mean
about them inviting her out for the night? Did that happen on the night she
died, or another night?

The more Sasha wondered, the angrier she became. The details
didn’t matter more than the bottom line of the whole situation: Charlie,
Amanda, Kit and Sean knew how and why Sarah Castro-Tanner died, and they never
told anyone. It made Sasha’s face heat up and her skin crawl. She wanted to
storm into Amanda’s room, shove her to the ground, and pull every last strand
of her hair out of her head. Then she would grab her off the floor, march her
straight to the Englewood Police Department, and make her confess. Amanda
deserved to feel every second of the pain she made Sarah feel. They all did.

Sasha tried to calm down as she took the bus from Englewood
back home. She only had a few hours to review all the material she had gathered
before she needed to get back on another bus to the park in Franklin Lakes, and
she needed to be incredibly focused. She was going to meet CO.

Sasha didn’t know whether she was terrified or thrilled
about this upcoming rendezvous. The idea of getting real answers about the
story she’d followed for over two years now was incredibly exciting. But she
still had no idea who might be delivering the information or how they found
her, and the fact that this person wanted to meet in a remote park in a
different town after sundown was not entirely comforting. Sasha had used every
channel possible to reverse CO’s email address into some information about his
or her identity, but nothing worked. There was zero trace of this person
online.

 
The note came just one day prior, via that
same, strange HelloSasha email account. Sasha knew she was letting her
curiosity get the best of her by meeting a stranger with dangerous information
inside a dark park, but at this point she didn’t care what happened to her; the
truth was more important.

At seven o’clock, Sasha grabbed the small can of pepper
spray that her mom had stashed inside an old purse and headed out to the bus
stop. The bus arrived at seven fifteen on the dot, and it was a thirty-minute
ride out to the Turkey Swamp Park stop, just as planned. That gave her fifteen minutes
to find the swings and wait for CO to arrive at 8:00 p.m.

But at eight thirty, Sasha was still waiting.

The spot was harder than she thought it would be to find.
Maybe
CO is having similar issues
, Sasha thought as she swung back and forth on
the old rubber-seated swing inside the giant sandbox. She would wait another
fifteen minutes and then maybe walk around the park a little to see if there
was another swing set and CO had gotten confused.

At nine o’clock, Sasha made her way back to the original
meeting spot. Still no CO. She had walked around the entire perimeter of the
park. There was not another swing set, and aside from a park worker picking up
trash, there was not another person. Either something had prevented CO from
meeting her, or Sasha had been tricked. She couldn’t come up with a reason why
this mystery person would make the effort to set up a very specific meeting and
then not show, but she was not dealing with a typical person. CO was obviously
calculating. This must have been part of the plan for some reason. That, or CO
chickened out.

By the time Sasha got home, it was ten thirty. She wanted to
crawl into bed and shut out the world for at least the next day, if not the
rest of her life, but she was greeted by a very unfamiliar sight in the living
room: both of her parents. The last time they were seated together in those
exact same spots was the night Sarah went missing. Sasha had to take a deep
breath to stop herself from vomiting.

“What’s going on?” she said.

“Sit down, sweetheart,” her mom replied. “We need to talk to
you about something.”

“No. I’m fine standing. Just tell me.” Sasha watched her
mother glance over at her father, giving him the go-ahead.

“As you know, we authorized the police to search our old
house because of the new investigation around your sister’s…” Her dad stopped.
It was still so hard for anyone in the family to believe what happened to
Sarah. “Death,” he finished. The word hit Sasha hard. There was something
definitive about the way Dad was speaking.

“What did they find?”

“Don’t you want to sit down?” her mom said.

“No! What did they find?!”

“A suicide note. Sarah’s suicide note. It was in Sarah’s
closet, hidden in a crack in the floorboard that we didn’t even know was there.
Apparently they searched more thoroughly this time around because of everything
going on.”

“Are they sure it’s real?” Sasha asked, growing angrier by
the second.

“Yes,” her mother said. “They did a handwriting analysis.”

“I think we should see this as the closure we all need,” her
dad chimed in.

“I don’t want closure! I want answers!” Sasha yelled.

“We have them now, sweetheart. Sarah didn’t want to live.”

“No,” Sasha said. “There’s more. There has to be more…” She
had to be careful about revealing what more she knew to her parents before the
time was right. “Are they going to continue the investigation?” Sasha asked.

“We’re not sure yet, but we don’t want to focus on that
right now,” her dad said.

 “We actually thought it would be nice to get away for
a bit over the Christmas holiday. We booked a trip to Florida so we can relax
as a family,” her mother said. “Doesn’t that sound nice?”

 Sasha ran from the living room to her bedroom and
slammed the door. She didn’t want closure and she didn’t want a vacation; she
wanted answers. Right now she didn’t care about CO or Charlie or Amanda or
anything else. If this note was real, then at the end of the day, regardless of
their influence, Sarah made the choice to die and not live. This finally
confirmed what Sasha had questioned since the day she heard that Sarah was
gone: Sarah was not murdered. And if that was the case, then Sasha’s greatest
fears were being realized: she could have stopped it from happening. She could
have helped Sarah make those dark and scary thoughts go away. If only she had known
how bad it was, she could have saved her sister’s life.

Laura

Laura held her finger on the button
of the pepper spray tucked inside her pocket as she approached the swing set
where she and Sasha were supposed to meet. She’d scoped out the spot before so
she could arrive behind Sasha and wait behind a cluster of trees about twenty yards
from the swing set instead of walking directly toward the girl…or guy. Laura
still wasn’t entirely sure, and the hackers she’d paid to uncover Sasha’s email
address didn’t know either. Some men were named Sasha. Maybe that was part of
the mystery. Laura would be able to see his or her face before deciding if it
was safe to approach.

As Laura got closer, she saw the outline of a small, frail
body sitting on the center swing. It was definitely a girl, and from her body
shape and long hair alone, Laura could tell that she was not Becca, who was
much stockier and had short hair, or Amanda or Kit. They were both much taller
and had lighter hair than this girl, who wore her long, black waves in a low,
messy ponytail. She was also wearing a ragged, hooded sweatshirt. Neither
Amanda nor Kit would be caught dead in something that looked like it belonged
to their grandpa. Just a few steps more and Laura was safely behind the trees,
waiting for Sasha’s body to shift in the swing enough so that she could get a
good look at her face. After what felt like an eternity, Sasha finally stood up
from the rubber seat and spun around, clearly looking for someone.

The minute her face was within view Laura felt herself
running. It wasn’t a conscious reaction. It was just see, think, dash. If she
had stopped for even a millisecond to take in the person sitting, waiting for
her to arrive, Laura never would have left that spot; she would have been too
frozen in shock to move. Something inside her brain knew that. It took one
glance at the real person behind the infamous Sasha and told her body to
run
.

* * *

Once home, Laura sat down at the
antique vanity in her bedroom and reached out a shaky finger to touch the
ceramic flowers stuck to the corners of each of the three mirrors. Some of them
were losing their pink-and-blue paint, but she didn’t mind. This was the exact
thing she’d been looking for when she visited the Englishtown Flea Market the
day after moving into this house. She wanted a really pretty place to sit and
examine her face in the mirror—to put bronzer on her cheeks, a little
shimmer on her eyes, and that bold pink lipstick that she loved so much on her
mouth. It would be the special spot where she indulged in feeling totally
beautiful.

But that’s not how she felt as she stared into the mirror
right now. Laura ran her fingers over her cheekbones, feeling how high and
close to the bottom of her eyes they were. She used her pointer finger and
thumb to pinch up the length of her nose, feeling how perfectly narrow it was
from the bottom to the top. Next she pressed her first and middle fingers
against the soft skin of her lips. They were plump and pink, even without any
lipstick. Finally, Laura looked herself deeply in the eyes, noticing how the
deeper blue hue of her right eye stuck out against her golden hair.

I’m safe
, she thought to herself as she wrapped her
long hair up into a loose knot on the top of her head.
Even if she saw me,
I’m still safe.

Laura now realized that Sasha was the old Russian form of
the name Alexandra. She’d learned that from reading
Crime and Punishment
freshman year—all the characters had a million names, which is normal in
the Russian tradition. Lexi was the name Alexandra Castro-Tanner had always
gone by, but Sasha was another form of that same name.

That answered Sasha’s true identity, and it explained why she
wanted information about Sarah from Charlie and his friends—she wanted to
know what really happened to her sister.

But Laura could not wrap her brain around how “Sasha” had
attained all the information that she was using to scare Charlie and his
friends. She had to be following them, at the very least, but Lexi didn’t go to
Englewood High. She was a seventh grader when Sarah died, and her family moved
away six months after the suicide. And yet, somehow Lexi was doing as good a
job at uncovering the true story of Sarah’s death as Laura had been from right
under Charlie’s nose.

Laura was desperate to know more about Lexi’s process, but
meeting in person was not possible. It was only now that she realized how risky
the idea of a meetup with anyone had been in the first place, and Laura was
furious with herself for being so careless. There was no room for error in her
plan, and this could have been a big one. If she hadn’t seen Lexi from afar
before approaching the swing set, she would have been screwed. Lexi did not
know Laura, but she would most definitely want to know why she was masquerading
around as CO, and right now “CO” could not provide an answer.

Laura left the vanity and grabbed her laptop off the bed. It
felt like a mistake to keep Lexi guessing about why she was stood up in the
park, especially given her obvious abilities to collect information. She needed
to apologize for not showing and provide an excuse. The suicide note might
throw Lexi off course—maybe she’d think she was wrong about Charlie and
his friends—but that didn’t seem likely based on what she knew about that
night. Besides, Laura doubted that Lexi would give up. Laura needed to keep her
interested without revealing what she knew.

Laura hoped that Lexi wouldn’t harp on the one part of that email
that was a complete and utter lie: they could never meet in person.

So far, everyone at Englewood had reacted to Laura just as
she intended: she reminded them of Sarah just enough to make them talk. That
talking lead to Charlie talking, and Charlie’s confessions were the key to
uncovering everything. But Lexi Castro-Tanner talking was not any part of the
plan.

Laura didn’t know if Lexi had seen pictures of her, but if
they saw each other in person, she would know the truth. She would be close
enough to look into Laura’s eyes, smell her skin, and hear the tones in her
voice that she’d worked so hard to cover up. Laura would not be able to lie to
Lexi like she had to the rest of the world for almost exactly two years. Lexi
would see that Laura Rivers was actually her sister Sarah—alive, well,
and totally transformed.