CULLANT: Y WN’T U MEET ME?

She took a second before answering. Being too quick would signal desperation.

KATIEBUG: CAUSE I DN’T KNOW WHO U R.

His typing was slow as he hunted and pecked his way across the keyboard, stopping, correcting.

CULLANT: THAT’S THE PT IN MeTING SOME1.

Katelyn was almost sixteen. She was nobody’s fool. But she was undeniably lonely.

KATIEBUT: THX 4 THE NICE THINGS U’VE SAID. BUT 4 ALL I KNOW, UR SOME OLD MAN IN PORT ORCH & U GET UR ROCKS OFF BY GNG AFTER TEEN GRLS.

CULLANT: LOL. THAT’S GOOD. LYK I’VE EVER BEEN 2 PORT ORCH.

KATIEBUG: K. DAT WZ A LOW BLOW.

CULLANT: A PERV IS FINE, BUT PORT ORCH? UR HITTING BELOW THE BELT.

Katelyn laughed; it wasn’t an LOL, but an actual genuine laugh. She liked this guy. Whoever he was. She needed someone to like. She’d felt so abandoned, so lost. Nothing had been going right. Her grades had slipped precipitously from the year before. It was as if she’d been freefalling and there was nothing to land on. And as lame as it was, she felt her only hope was the guy on the other side of her computer screen.

KATIEBUG: WHEN RU SENDING A PIC?

CULLANT: WOT KIND OF PIC DO U WNT?

KATIEBUG: NOW U REALLY R BNG A PERV. U KNOW, THE KIND U MIGHT GVE UR MOTHER.

A short pause was followed with some more typing.

CULLANT: K. JUST SO HAPPENS I TK A NEW 1 2DAY. HERE IT COMES.

She waited for the image to upload in the window of her instant messenger. One pixel at a time. The wait was excruciating, and she wondered how much longer her parents would make her live without broadband.

They had it at the Timberline, of course.

Like they ever needed it there.

Katelyn’s eyes lingered over the photo as it came into crisp view. It was a casual shot, not of the quality pulled from some male model site on the net. The boy had dark hair, blue eyes. Hot.

KATIEBUG: DAT’S U?

CULLANT: YUP. DAT’S ME. U LIKE?

KATIEBUG: IF DAT’S REALLY U, I DO.

CULLANT: IT’S ME.

Katelyn knew there were other stupid girls out there who’d fall for some Internet guy, but she wasn’t that type of a girl. Even if she was, even if she allowed herself a little fantasy, it was something that she needed right then. She wanted the attention of someone special, because she no longer felt special herself.

KATIEBUG: LET’S TALK 2MORW.

CULLANT: K.

KATIEBUG: BYE.

CULLANT: TTFN.

Katelyn clicked the icon to close the IM window. She went into her bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror in a way a stranger might: critically, with an eye to pick her apart in the meanest way possible. She wasn’t really fat. She had good skin. Her hair was cute. Cute-ish, anyway. When she really processed what she saw in her reflection she knew that she should feel better about herself. But she just couldn’t get there. She could blame it on any number of things—her parents and their stupid restaurant, living in Port Gamble, and probably the worst of it, not making the cheerleading squad.

When it came right down to it, it was all Starla’s fault. She was to blame for everything wrong in Katelyn’s world. She never could have imagined a betrayal from someone who had been a part of her life for nearly as long as she could remember. Yet it had happened. It came swiftly and irrevocably. It was like Starla’s cold indifference to her had literally frozen her out of the life she’d imagined.

Katelyn pulled her clothes off, one item at a time, until she was naked, except for her bra and panties. She sat on the edge of the clawfoot tub and reached for the razor that had been calling to her all day. The cold metal blade’s handle felt molded to fit her fingers and hers alone. Although it had become increasingly difficult to find the right place—a place that could not be seen by anyone but her—she managed to find a fresh spot on her upper right thigh. She drew a deep breath, like the kind she’d done when she’d tried to smoke cigarettes with Starla when they were kids.

When they were still so very, very close.

With a steady hand and a practiced technique, Katelyn Berkley cut. It was slow, deliberate. Even strokes. One. Two. Three.

She watched the blood ooze and closed her eyes to savor the feeling that came with the cut. The release was better than she imagined sex might be. She wondered when she would have sex.

And if it would be with the boy she’d met online.

IT CAME TO HAYLEY RYAN IN A DREAM, the way a lot of things did. She was in the middle of the food court of the Kitsap Mall in Silverdale. All around her were the people of Port Gamble. Her family. Her neighbors. Mill hands whose names she didn’t know because they lived in Little Boston or on the other side of the Hood Canal Bridge, but whose faces were very familiar. Beth. Colton. Starla. Even Segway Guy. No one seemed to be talking to each other, though the noise of their voices fought with the sound of dueling blenders at the Orange Julius counter. She watched herself wait for Taylor’s smoothie—raspberry and banana. All around her. The noise. The people she knew. The girl behind the counter made change and handed it to her. She didn’t recall ordering anything and was going to hand the money back to her sister, who was sliding a straw through the “X” cut through the plastic lid.

When she held out her hand, she noticed something peculiar about the dollar bill crumpled in her palm.

Hayley looked down, closer. Written over George Washington’s unattractive green face:

THE CAUSE OF HER DEATH

IS AMONG YOU

For a second, all sound stopped. It was instantaneous. Hayley looked up from the money and then quickly scanned the crowd in the food court.

Everyone from Port Gamble was there. For a moment, she even thought she saw Starla’s dad, Adam Larsen, who’d been gone a couple of years. He waved at her, and then he vanished. All of them did. Gone, like the smoke from a birthday candle.

The next morning, while the twins put on makeup in the bathroom mirror, Hayley told Taylor about the dream.

“Weird. I hate bananas, and you know it,” Taylor said, running brown mascara over her fair eyelashes.

Hayley knew her sister was playing with her. “I thought it was strange, too.”

“Seriously,” Taylor said, “I had a dream sort of like that last night too. Not exactly, though. Mine wasn’t set in the mall. It was in Katelyn’s room. Same idea. The feeling that the person responsible for Katelyn’s death is right here, among us.”

Hayley thought a moment, checking herself in the mirror.

“I know you’re not going to tell anyone about our dreams, or whatever they are. But if you ever feel tempted, please leave out the part that I was in the food court in my dream. It sounds so lame.”

Taylor put her makeup into a small pink and black makeup bag.

“Are you kidding?” she asked, heading down the hall. “If people think you’re a dork, then that’ll transfer to me. Half the people around here think we’re the same person. As far as I’m concerned, the mall dream never happened.”

But it did.

chapter 22

IT WAS THE MORNING OF HER FORMER best friend’s funeral. Starla Larsen stood in front of the mirror in her Kingston High cheer outfit. The dress was red, trimmed in gold with a narrow white edging. It was a color combination left over from the days when cheerleaders were wholesome and when it didn’t matter what color their pom-poms were—as long as they shook them with enough persuasive vigor when the team put some numbers on the scoreboard.

It was clear that no one back then took into consideration what a girl like Starla Larsen could bring to the uniform.