Are You in the House Alone? Read online

  “You’ve got him all tried and convicted, haven’t you—on circumstantial evidence. From what I see on TV you don’t get far with that.”

  “I don’t imagine Phil standing trial, not even if I fantasize like crazy. And I don’t care much about his tortured soul. But where does it end, Alison? Let’s just say that everything you hope for happens. You wave your magic wand, and I disappear from town. Sonia dies. And that leaves you. You and Phil and a town full of girls foolish enough to open doors too quick or walk down lonely roads at night.”

  “I don’t want Sonia to die,” she whispered. “How dare you say that? I . . . I don’t even want you to leave town. I just want things to be—the way they were before.”

  “That’ll take more than a magic wand, Alison.” I gave up on her and walked away. Everyone seemed to be walking away from everyone else that day.

  “Gail?” I thought I heard her voice through the clatter of gym lockers and the pounding of the pipes. Why bother turning back? But I did. She stood there, motioning for me to come back, looking from side to side. She looked wretched in a gym suit. Who doesn’t?

  I came near enough to hear in case she wanted to whisper. Just like the old days, all the way back to middle school. “Listen to me, Gail. I have to say it all at once, or I can’t say it at all.

  “That night . . . that night Phil came to Mrs. Montgomery’s house when you were baby-sitting. Afterward, after he left . . . you there, he came to my house. It was late, but Mother never cares since it’s Phil. He . . . there was something wrong with him. He looked terrible. There was something terrible in his eyes. And he was kind of crying. Not really, but almost. It was awful, and he just stood there on the front steps and asked me to forgive him. That’s what he said— Forgive me, Alison,’ over and over like a chant. I didn’t know what to do. I kept asking him why, what was wrong. But he ran off.

  “I thought he was drunk. No, that’s not true. I wanted to think he was drunk, or high on something. But I knew he wasn’t. I only knew something had happened that I didn’t ever want to know about. And then when I heard about you, in the hospital, I still didn’t want to know.”

  “But you did,” I said. “You just couldn’t let anything spoil all your plans for the future.”

  “Wait,” she said. “Just wait. There’s more. On Saturday night Phil and I planned to see those old Malevich movies. It was something to do. But he didn’t show up. I sat there all evening, wondering where he was.” The tears ran down her face. “I know he’s sick. Maybe I knew it before anybody, in little ways, but what was I supposed to do? Maybe you think I’m sick too because a little bit of me blames you and Sonia.”

  “And do you blame the next victim?”

  “Oh no,” Alison whispered. “There can’t be any more.” She shook her head, trying to convince us. We stood there together, like two scared kids. No, that’s not it. We stood there like two frightened women.

  “What’ll I do, Gail? Tell me.”

  * * *

  I couldn’t. She’d been so sure nothing terrible could touch her. And I’d been so sure when I’d opted out of trying to get Phil arrested. Maybe, working with a lawyer and a lot of luck we could have got him in jail just for one night. Even that might have made the difference.

  I don’t know if Alison ever went to see the Lawvers. I don’t know what she did, or if she did nothing. Whenever we spoke after that, we were both careful never to say anything that mattered.

  But there was plenty of talk anyway, and most of the rumors canceled each other out. Some people had it on good authority that a police car had been seen in the Lawvers’ drive. Or maybe it was an ambulance. Some people said the chief’s deputy traced Phil’s car to that spot on the Woodbury Road and then got fired for his efficiency. Some people said the Lawvers had let Edna go, and the cleaning woman too, and were living like hermits. It was the first Thanksgiving people could recall that the Lawvers didn’t have their reception.

  And all the rumors circled closer around Phil until people nodded wisely and remembered the suspicions they’d had all along. But Phil never heard them. There was talk that he’d had a nervous breakdown and was resting in a hospital in Hartford. The last rumor had it that he was captain of the squash team in a boarding school in Vermont. That was the rumor I could believe.

  Sonia recovered. But we never saw her again. No more moments of drama in the corridor to break the early-morning school gloom. The Slaneks left their barn and the rusting sculpture behind. Nobody knew where they went. But I think they went back to New York’s mean streets where they’d feel safe. It’s odd. I miss Sonia as if we’d been friends, even now that I’ve almost forgotten that Alison and I ever were.

  Later, in the winter, Mother said, “It could all have been worse.” I guess that was meant to sum everything up, file it neatly away. She’d made her first real-estate sale. It was the Slaneks’ barn. A semiartistic family bought it. Mother had her first commission, and so she was looking ahead.

  It could all have been worse. I guess she meant that Sonia hadn’t died and that her case had shifted attention away from mine. I guess she meant that at least Phil was out of the way. Wherever he was, he didn’t come home for Christmas. Maybe she even linked what had happened to the end of that unsuitable, worrisome affair Steve and I had.

  “It could have been worse, Mother, but not much.” She was sitting at her desk in a little pool of light, composing a real-estate ad for the newspaper. “Not much worse. We were all trying to protect ourselves as individuals and families instead of organizing to make everybody safe. There are more Phils out there, you know.”

  “Don’t talk that way,” she said.

  “Well, there are. We should have done something else. We still should.”

  “But what?” Mother said. “What could we do?” And then she turned back to her work.

  Turn the page for a sneak peek

  of Richard Peck’s ghoulish thriller

  THREE

  QUARTERS

  DEAD

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Queen of Now

  YOU WAIT FOREVER to get to high school. Then you’re scared to death. I was. Pondfield regularly makes Newsweek magazine’s list of America’s Top Ten Public High Schools. Even so, my best friend, Abby Davis, went off to boarding school instead. Her parents sent her.

  Ninth grade had been in a separate building. It was to keep us from being a bad influence on the middle school people. And to keep the high school people from being a bad influence on us. Whatever.

  The point is that I’d washed up at this top school for the top people. Kerry Williamson, a face in the sophomore crowd. Not even. I was so invisible that I was surprised to see myself in the girls’ room mirror. And of course I’d turned up in shoes for some other school and a totally wrong T-shirt. I was in everything but Hello Kitty barrettes.

  It’s funny about time. I can just barely remember those first weeks. September was a blur of phones and backpacks and people who already knew each other. It was everybody in flip-flops that said it was still summer and that school didn’t particularly matter, even in AP.

  September was all those deafening hallways leading nowhere, and orientation meetings about clubs you didn’t want to join.

  There was an optional breakout session on Peer Pressure, but I didn’t go to that. And they had an assembly on risky behaviors. Little one-act playlets, so I suppose Alyssa Stark might have been in one of them. She was one of the drama people, that semester. Maybe I saw her then.

  But she wasn’t the kind of senior I noticed. She wasn’t strolling in from the parking lot in time for second period. Seniors snapping open their phones to conference, getting a jump on the day, and the teachers. The top seniors in the top school, moving in their separate space. Seniors, still tanned from the beach and backlit by autumn colors. Too cool for school, but running it.

  I was two years from senior year, two light-years. I mainly moved in a fog of feeling my way, day by day. Then one day I wasn
’t alone anymore. Just like that.

  I can’t put my finger on the exact moment. It was more casual than that, cooler. Now I wish I could remember. Now I rack my brain. But I’d definitely have been having lunch alone. I’d text Abby Davis at her boarding school sometimes just to have somebody to lunch with. But Abby was getting harder to reach. I pictured her in a plaid wool uniform and knee socks, having lunch on a backless bench in a dining hall like a cathedral—Hermione at Hogwarts School. Abby was beginning to fade. People are always gone before you expect it.

  Then there at the far end of the lunch table in the food court were Tanya Spangler and Natalie Davenport. Tanya and Natalie, the Ground Zero of senior year, if that’s the term. Senior Year Central. There they were, unscrewing the lids off bottles of designer water. And Makenzie Kemp was with them, a junior. In fact she could have ruled junior year if she’d felt like it or had the time.

  At first I thought they might be mean—Mean Girls. Not to each other. They were like sisters to each other, but better. But the Mean Girls of seventh grade had sat that close, texting each other across the table, their thumbs flying. They could give you the finger with their thumbs, and all their smiles were sneers. I’d spent middle school keeping out of their way.

  But you couldn’t even picture Tanya and Natalie and Makenzie ever being in seventh grade. Ever. They were like the cast of characters from a TV show about how awesome the teen years are. Tanya, ash blond and completely coordinated—organized beyond belief or reason. Natalie, dark with those double-lashed violet eyes. And more graceful moves than Swan Lake. Makenzie with tously hair a color she called “ginger.” She was English, or possibly Scottish—whatever—and petite like a little piece of bone china smiling down from a shelf.

  They sat there in full color, in a circle of their own private jokes, gusty with laughter, picking at salads, finishing each other’s sentences. I could see how it was with them. I had eyes in the side of my head. Natalie was actually the prettiest. Breathtaking, in fact. And Makenzie was the cutest. Not quite life-size, though full of life. But the entire senior class agreed that Tanya was the best looking. Not that I knew any seniors, but she sure looked famous to me.

  You could be famous around here even for what you didn’t do. And Tanya wasn’t running for anything: senior class president, student senate. Whatever it was, she wasn’t running for it. “I don’t do politics,” she said. “I don’t compromise.”

  I didn’t even know what that meant. But I knew what Tanya meant. Natalie wasn’t political either, of course. But surely she’d been born to be Homecoming Queen her senior year. That face. That body. Those moves. Who else could you see on a throne with all her court around her, in a tiara right out of The Princess Diaries?

  Homecoming court was a little bit of a joke and somewhat down-market, even though you got your own double-page spread in the yearbook. But Homecoming Queen or not, Natalie was the most beautiful girl in school. She didn’t need a crown or a sash to prove it. She had absolutely nothing to prove.

  Still, Tanya seemed to be encouraging her. “Try out for Homecoming Queen, why don’t you, Natalie?” she’d say. “You’re a shoo-in. And you can pick Sandy Bauer as your escort. You’re a little taller than he is, and it’ll make you look more regal. Try out for it by all means, if you want to give it the time.”

  But then Natalie realized she didn’t. And as Tanya always said, “It’s important not to spread yourself too thin.”

  I didn’t know about Makenzie trying out for things. I don’t think she ever did. Maybe she’d have been on the prom committee. I don’t know. I’ll never know now.

  But as Tanya said, “Junior year is just basically waiting in the wings for senior year. It’s about getting ready. And it’s important not to peak early.”

  Being this close to the three of them at the other end of the table was like sitting at the foot of Mount Everest. I could see the top from here. And even I, two light-years away, felt Tanya’s heat warm on my ear. I was all ears, eavesdropping to learn the language, to crack the code.

  I didn’t know why they were even having lunch at school. Why didn’t they drive into town for lunch? Seniors had all these ways of not being there. And Makenzie could have ducked out. People probably forgot she wasn’t a senior already. I did sometimes.

  Not that they were at the table every day. I’d have these dark days when they weren’t there. They had committee meetings to sit in on once in a while. But they didn’t spread themselves too thin. As Tanya always said, “Don’t get overinvolved with people you won’t want to know later.” She was a real believer in that.

  Most days they were there. On my best days, October days with the world turning red and gold behind them out in the courtyard. Natalie tucking her sensational hair behind her ears. Makenzie swinging her fringed boots just above the floor. Tanya working through her calendar, point by point by point. Running a manicured finger down the page, checking something on her phone. Networking. Multitasking. She didn’t text quite as much as you’d think. She phoned, and she wanted you to be there at the other end. They were all three on their phones a lot. Who wasn’t?

  Even I was, or seemed to be. Even after Abby Davis got too far off and in her world to call me, or call me back, I’d just hold my dead phone to my ear and pretend. I didn’t know how to make it ring like somebody was calling me. So I just held it to my ear. How pathetic was that? I know. I know. I probably even moved my lips. But it’s what you do when you’re fifteen and that far out of the loop.

  Who was I even kidding? Who even noticed whether I was on my phone, or the moon?

  Actually, somebody did seem to notice. Maybe somebody saw right through me from the other end of the table. Somebody who never missed a trick. All the way into October I never thought they could see me back, the three of them in their sacred circle. But guess what? I was wrong. Somebody spoke from the other end of the table.

  “How would you like to friend us?” this voice said. This voice I knew so well. My turned-off phone jerked away from my ear and dropped in my lap.

  “What?” I said. Because it was Tanya’s voice. Her warmest one.

  The friend thing was a joke, of course. Tanya did very little Facebook and no MySpace. I’d heard her say that “friend” is not a verb.

  “Me?” I said. Dumb. Dazed. Dry-mouthed. For the first time I looked at them without sneaking a peek. And Tanya was looking back. She had changeable eyes, and now they were sparkling. Inviting.

  “Yes, you, Kerry. Why not come sit with us?”

  She knew my name.

  She knew everything. I expect she probably knew the phone in my lap was dead as a doornail. She glanced down at it in my lap. Just a quick look. Did she feel sorry for me? I didn’t think I saw any pity in that sudden glance. No, there was no pity.

  Natalie looked up and smiled at me. Makenzie grinned my way. It was like the first glorious day of some new season. It was the first day of everything, for me.

  And from that day on until . . . when, forever? From that day on it was the four of us, two on a side, Tanya and Natalie, Makenzie and—Kerry. It was like a story that jumps straight to a happy ending.

  Somehow I was there with them, a deer in their headlights, their dazzle. I never wondered—why me? After all, I’d moved from reality to a reality show, and what could be better?

  I hung on their every word, hoping for the day I could finish one of their sentences. It took me a while. They remembered things from last year. They remembered people who were seniors when they weren’t. Mindy Cashman, who was world-famous with a trophy across from the principal’s office because she’d been a gymnast who’d gone to the Olympics. Tanya remembered her well as a sweet girl with a skin condition, but somewhat driven. I limped along behind their conversations. “Try to keep up, Kerry,” Tanya would tease me.

  “Yes, Kerry,” Natalie would say, “really try.”

  And Makenzie would only smile her private smile and look away. Maybe she remembered being me. And anyway
, if there weren’t any followers, where would the leaders be? Maybe I was their stake in the future. I’d be here when they were gone. Something like that.

  Now that I was this close, I saw why everybody said Tanya was the best looking. The blond hair definitely worked, and the perfect skin unlike Mindy Cashman’s. But it was Tanya’s eyes: that gaze. Up her eyebrows would arch—perfect arches, and then that gaze that went right through you to the next thing she wanted. Nobody could ever remember what color Tanya’s eyes were. They were changeable, but she wasn’t.

  I lived for lunch. Suddenly it was High School Musical 4, and I was in the chorus. In the back row, but working up my moves. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know why. I only knew I was there, trying to keep up.

  Only lunch mattered, and I couldn’t wait to get out of bed in the morning. As my mother said, I seemed to be settling into high school.

  Other girls sat near us, as near as they dared. Even seniors, though B-list seniors like Emma Bentley and Samantha Jennings. The cheerleaders had their own table, of course, run by Shannon Grady, who was going to be Homecoming Queen even before she knew she was going to be Homecoming Queen.

  And one thing I noticed about Tanya—she kept her lines of communication open with everybody, even when she was keeping her distance. “You never know who you’ll need,” she said.

  I SUPPOSE THE drama people ate in their own bunch, maybe backstage. I don’t remember seeing Alyssa Stark at lunch. But then I probably wouldn’t have noticed.

  Guys buzzed around our table like crazy. They were there for a glimpse from Natalie’s sensational eyes. And a word or two from Makenzie to hear her accent. Makenzie was really hanging on to the accent.

  But with guys, it was basically all Tanya all the time. Always guys trying to distract her from her phone to notice them for one measly, magic moment.