They Just Don't Know You

Chapter 2

Jade's POV

Saturday, August 31

The sun wakes me up, burning through blinds that clearly weren't purchased for their room-darkening properties. But I stay immobile under the covers, a thin crocheted bedspread and petal-soft sheets, until a low knock sounds on the door.

"Yeah?" I sit up, futilely trying to push hair out of my eyes, as Karl enters. The silver-plated clock on the nightstand reads 9:50, but since I'm in a different time zone, I don't feel as though I've slept nearly enough.

"Hey," Karl says. "Nana said to wake you up. A police officer is on his way over. He wants to talk to us about last night."

Last night. We stayed with the man in the road, crouching next to him between dark pools of blood, until an ambulance came. I couldn't bring myself to look at his face at first, but once I did I couldn't look away. He was so young. No older than 30, dressed in athletic clothes and trainers. Holly, who's a nurse, performed CPR until the paramedics arrived, but more like she was praying for a miracle than because she thought it would do any good. She told us when we got back into Nana's car that he was dead before we arrived.

"Chris Hughes," she'd said in a shaking voice. "He's- he was, one of the science teachers at Echo Ridge High. Helped out with marching band, too. Really popular with the kids. You would have...you should have...met him next week."

Karl, who's fully dressed, hair damp from a recent shower, tosses a small plastic pack on to the bed, bringing me back to the present. "Also, she said to give you these."

The unopened package has the Hanes logo on the front, along with a picture of a smiling blonde woman wearing a sports bra and underpants that come halfway up her waist. "Oh no."

"Oh yes. Those are literally granny pants. Nana says she bought a couple sizes too small by mistake and forgot to return them. Now they're yours."

"Fantastic," I mutter, swinging my legs out of bed. I'm wearing the t-shirt I had layered under my hoodie yesterday, plus a rolled up pair of Karl's joggers. When I learned I'd be moving to Echo Ridge, I went through my entire wardrobe and ruthlessly donated anything I hadn't worn in the past few months. I pared my wardrobe down so much that everything, except for a few coats and shoes that I shipped last week, fit into a single suitcase. At the time, it felt like I was bringing order and control to at least one small part of my life.

Now, of course, all it means is that I have nothing to wear.

I pick my phone up from the nightstand, checking for a luggage-related text or voicemail. But there's nothing. "Why you up so early?" I ask Karl.

He shrugs. "It's not that early. I've been walking around the neighbourhood. It's pretty. Very leafy. I posted a couple of Insta stories. And made a playlist."

I fold my arms. "Not another Theo playlist."

"No," Karl says defensively. "It's a musical tribute to the North East. You'd be surprised how many songs have Newcastle related places in the title."

"Mm-hmm." Karl's boyfriend, Theo, broke up with him preemptively the week before we left, because he said, "long distance relationships don't ever work." Karl tries to act like he doesn't care, but he's created some seriously emo playlists since it happened.

"Don't judge." Karl's eyes drift towards the bookcase, where In Cold Blood is lined up neatly next to my Ann Rule collection, Fatal Vision, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and the rest of my true crime books. They're the only things I unpacked last night from the boxes stacked in one corner of the room. "We all have our coping mechanisms."