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“Have you seen anyone else here yet?” Delta asked, taking a few steps away from Bailey.
“Zora.”
“Ah, I see her,” Delta murmured, though she really didn’t. She thought the person by the back windows might be Zora, though, and she headed in that direction with relief.
Bailey watched her go, completely aware that Delta was ditching her, also completely aware of why she’d done it. She, Bailey, had become rigid and unforgiving. At least that’s what Delta thought, and probably everyone else at this event. Was that the real her? Maybe. These past ten years had taken their toll, for sure.
She wandered toward the punch bowl, wondering idly if any of the class miscreants had seen fit to spike the fruity, red liquid. Unlikely, when you could order whatever you wanted at the open bar.
She poured herself a cupful and then turned around and surveyed the room. Delta was with Zora, though they both looked tense. Onetime roommates. No longer friends.
The punch was not spiked. But it was full of sugar. After a couple of sips, Bailey looked for a way to get rid of the scarlet concoction. As she was holding the glass, Rhonda Clanton whisked up to her and declared, “What do you think of the punch? It’s got coconut water in it, and it’s yummy! I had it at a baby shower and thought it was divine.”
“It’s . . . punch-y,” Bailey told the do-gooder.
“Yes! Exactly!” Rhonda beamed at Bailey and then moved on. She wore a pink skirt and matching twinset. She’d always seemed a little out of another era, and she looked like she hadn’t aged a day since high school. Maybe it was magic punch.
Bailey surreptitiously set her glass down at the end of the table and walked toward the back wall. She’d made a life for herself at the West Knoll Police Department after several years of college, insisted upon by her father, and several more training at the police academy. It had taken a while to get hired on at West Knoll. There wasn’t a ton of serious crime, and it was considered a plum position, but she finally made it. Now she worked with her father, who seemed to have had a change of heart; he was busting-his-buttons proud of her. The department was small enough that they mostly didn’t have set divisions. She worked B&E and Homicide and everything else, even had a rotation as a traffic cop, and was hoping and planning to work her way up to detective. She liked the job, though she recognized it didn’t feed her soul or fuel her sense of justice like she’d expected it would. After Carmen’s death, she’d just wanted to go nuts on everyone. Someone was responsible for Carmen’s death. She drove her father crazy, and anyone else who crossed her path, with her theories and questions and fury. She had even twisted the truth in her mind, coming up with conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory, even if said theories belied what everyone knew to be the truth. Carmen had been lured into the water. Someone had pushed her. Someone had fed her something that caused a cramp. She’d seen something—something she shouldn’t, and that person had killed her over it. When Justin Penske casually asked, “Have you considered suicide over a broken heart?” she’d almost launched herself at him like a wildcat.
Her obsession nearly cost her her job, as it came up when she applied to the academy. Because she had to, she’d forced herself to tamp down her near-consuming surety that someone, or something, was responsible for Carmen’s death. She had to pretend to let it go.
“I wanted answers when there were no answers,” she explained in an interview. “I was grieving, and I wanted there to be a reason she was taken.”
“And now?” the middle-aged woman with the skeptical look on her face had asked.
“Sometimes there is no reason.”
But she’d lied. She’d believed then, as she did now, that other factors had been at play when Carmen stepped into the river after Tanner. Suicide? Never. But maybe . . . just maybe . . . needing to prove something? Like that she was strong. Better than the other girls that chased after him? The ones that were too afraid to go in the water.
Bailey hated that possible answer. Over the years, she’d kept a journal of all the memories of high school and especially those last weeks of their senior year. She’d written her theories down, all her theories and bits of information. She wrote the names down. She put the facts in order and made a time line. She pored over her own work, looking for a key. There were unanswered questions that may or may not have any bearing on the events of that day, but she felt if she just tried hard enough, she would figure it out.
In the center of her chart was Tanner Stahd. She’d blamed him once, fully, but now she kept those thoughts to herself. Spokes radiated outward from him toward all their friends, the coach, the staff, his parents, everything and everyone connected with West Knoll High and its community.
&nb
sp; Though Bailey had told the academy interviewer she understood that her friend’s death was an accident, inside she believed something else.
Tanner and his friends had killed Carmen, and she wanted them to pay.
Greg, her ex-boyfriend, had discovered her journal one day when Bailey had been in a rush and hadn’t locked it away in the wall safe she’d had installed in her apartment. He’d been silent, but she could tell he was spooked. She’d tried to brush it off as part of her therapy after Carmen’s death, but he hadn’t believed her. Shortly thereafter, they’d decided to take time off from each other. That time off had stretched into six months. She had her dog, a small mutt with black-and-white fur and a bad attitude toward anyone but Bailey, which was definitely one of the reasons Greg had left, but the real reason was because he’d found out about her obsession.
Now, as Bailey looked around the room, seeing her ten-years-older classmates, she tried not to look at them all as complicit in Carmen’s death, but it was nigh impossible. There was Tanner, maybe no longer a teenager, but still a god, by the looks of things. And his acolytes—Woody, Penske, Brad Sumpter, even Trent Collingsworth, one of the do-gooders. She didn’t count McCrae, who was on the force with her, but she’d seen him and Tanner share a few words and a handshake, so yeah, that “bro bond” was still a real thing.
And then there were the other Firsts—Amanda, Delta, and Zora, and, of course, Ellie. Coach Sutton, the man behind the pig roast, was absent tonight, but a number of the other teachers were in attendance: Anne Reade, Brian Timmons, and Clarice Billings. Also, Freddie Mouton, who’d been a last-minute invite to this reunion, and Amanda’s parents, who, though they weren’t here today, had been embroiled in a lawsuit with both Tanner’s family and Carmen’s afterward, both of which had since been settled.
You’re the only one who isn’t settled.
Well, yes, that was true, but even with the passage of time, Bailey hadn’t given up her belief that someone else was responsible. She looked over at Coach Sutton, who was in his late forties now. He’d gotten himself in better shape over the years and looked fit and strong, although the hair at the sides of his temples had completely grayed out. He was talking with Clarice Billings, who had recently taken a job in administration at a junior college, and there were rumors that she might even be heading to a Pac-12 school soon. Her star had definitely risen, but Bailey still recalled how wet and scared and miserable she’d been after falling into the river trying to save Carmen. Anne Reade was standing to one side, trying to appear remote and disinterested in the goings-on of the reunion, but Bailey saw her eyes stray toward Brian Timmons a few times. She was still carrying a torch for the guy? Timmons, for his part, had put on a few pounds, but he still wore the welcoming smile she remembered all through high school, although it was maybe a little sadder. Principal Kiefer was talking to Rhonda Clanton, who’d damn near arranged the whole event by herself, to hear her tell it.
Principal Kiefer . . . Bailey had a bone to pick with him . . . she could hardly look at the man. He was the lover her mother had left her father for. It hadn’t been some other nameless guy from high school; that had just been the lie her mother told. Over the years, Bailey had come to grips with that shocking reality, but she still didn’t feel quite right about it. Now she forced herself to give him a once-over and was glad that the last ten years had thinned his hair and deepened the lines on his face. Though her mother’s affair with him had burned bright and hot for a while—ruining Kiefer’s marriage, apparently—they’d eventually ended it. When the Proffitts had moved away after Carmen’s death, her mother had lost her friend and confidante. Shortly thereafter, her relationship with Kiefer had ended as well.
Kiefer, possibly feeling the weight of her gaze, glanced her way. Bailey’s eyes slid toward the guys’ group. She didn’t want any contact with the man and also didn’t want him to misinterpret her quick look as an invitation for a confab. Hell, no.
One of her classmates separated himself from the guys’ group, which had moved from the keg to stand near the door and eye the women coming through as if they planned to pick one off, just like in high school. That lone man was Justin Penske, she realized. His cowlick was tamed tonight, and he’d lost some of the starkness of his freckles, as they seemed to have melted into his skin tone some. No more alabaster skin and brown spots. He’d been unusually attentive to her after Carmen’s death, but that had only lasted through the summer and then had seemed to fade away.
Now he met her gaze and started heading her way. “Bailey,” he said with a slight smirk. His attitude apparently hadn’t changed a whole lot.
“Penske,” she responded, as no one had called him by his first name in high school and still didn’t, as far as she knew.
