They Just Don't Know You

Chapter 21

Jade's POV

Monday, September 30

"So," Perrie says, plugging tokens into one end of a table football. "That was interesting."

After leaving Jonnie's apartment, we stopped at the first place we came to that we were pretty sure he and Sairah wouldn't show up on a date. It happened to be a Chuck E Cheese's. I've never been to one, so I never realised how much of a sensory assault they are: flashing lights, beeping games, tinny music, and screaming children. 

The man letting people in at the door wasn't sure about us at first. "You're supposed to come with kids," he said, glancing behind us at the empty hallway.

"We are kids," Kamille pointed out, extending her hand for a stamp.

Turns out, Chuck E Cheese's is the perfect location for a clandestine debrief. Every adult in the place is too busy either chasing after or hiding from their children to pay us any attention. I feel weirdly calm after our trip to Pine Crest Estates, the dread that came over me at Kamille's house almost entirely gone. There's something satisfying about unlocking another piece of the Echo Ridge puzzle, even if I'm not yet sure where it fits. 

"So," Kamille echoes, gripping a handle on one end of the table football. Karl is next to her, and I'm beside Perrie. A ball pops out of one side, and Kamille spins a bar furiously, missing the ball completely. "Your brother and my sister. How long do you think that's been going on?"

Perrie manoeuvres one of her players carefully before smacking the ball, and would have scored if Karl hadn't blocked it. "Damned if I know. Since they both came back maybe? But that still doesn't explain what they're doing here. Couldn't they hook up in New Hampshire? Or Boston?" She passes the ball to one of her own men, then backwards to me, and I rocket a shot across the field into the open goal. Perrie gives me a surprised, disarmed grin that dissolves the tense set of her jaw. "Not bad."

I want to smile back, but I can't. There's something I've been thinking ever since we pulled away from Pine Crest Estates, and I keep weighing how, or whether, to bring it up.

"I don't think they can hook up anywhere," Kamille says. "Can you imagine if one of the reporters who've been prowling around Echo Ridge got wind of this? Caitlin Robinson's boyfriend and best friend, together 5 years later? While somebody's making a mockery of her death by writing bullshit all around town and another girl's just gone missing?" She shudders, managing to nick the ball with the edge of one of her men. "People would hate them."

"What if it's not 5 years later?" The words pop out of me, and Perrie goes still. The little football rolls unchallenged down the length of the table and settles into a corner. "I mean," I add, almost apologetically, "they might've been together for a while."

Kamille shakes her head. "Sairah's had other boyfriends. She almost got engaged to the guy she was dating at Princeton."

"Okay, so not all 5 years," I say. "But maybe...at some point in high school?"

Perrie's jaw has gone tense again. She braces her forearms on the table and fastens her blue eyes on me. Both are disconcerting at close range, if I'm being honest. "Like when?"

Like while Jonnie was still dating Caitlin. It'd be the classic deadly love triangle. I have to bite the inside of my cheeks to keep from saying it out loud. What if Jonnie and Sairah fell in love years ago and wanted to be together, but Caitlin wouldn't let him go? Or threatened Sairah in retaliation? And it infuriated Jonnie so much that he lost control one night and killed her? Then Sairah broke things off with him, obviously, and tried to forget him, but couldn't. I'm itching to expand on my theory, but one look at Perrie's frozen face tells me I shouldn't. "I don't know," I hedge, dropping my eyes. "Just throwing out ideas."

It's like I told Karl in the library: you can't spring a your-siblings-might-be-murderers theory on to people all at once. 

Kamille doesn't notice the subtext of my back-and-forth with Perrie. She's too busy savagely jerking her rod of blue players without even touching the ball. "It wouldn't be an issue if Sairah would just talk to me. Or to anyone in our family."

"Maybe you need to pull a little-sister power play," Karl suggests. 

"Such as?"

He shrugs. "She tells you what's going on, or you tell your parents what you just saw."

Kamille goggles at him. "That is straight-up evil."

"But effective, I'll bet," Karl says. He glances at Perrie. "I'd suggest the same thing to you, but I just saw your brother, so."

"Oh yeah." Perrie grimaces. "He'd kill me. Not literally," she adds hastily, with a sideways glance at me. "But also, he knows I'd never do it. Our Dad wouldn't care, but our Mom would lose it. Especially now."

Kamille's eyes gleam as she lines one of her men up for a shot. "I have no such concerns."

We play for a few minutes without speaking. My mind keeps racing along the Jonnie-Sairah theory that I didn't say, testing it for holes. There are a few, admittedly. But it's such a true-crime staple when girls go missing or are harmed: it's always the boyfriend. Or a frustrated wannabe. Because when you're 17, and beautiful, and you're found murdered in a place known for hookups, what could it possibly be except a crime of passion?

So that leaves Jonnie. The only other person I'm remotely suspicious of is the boy Caitlin never noticed: Jed Elliot. I can't forget his photo in the yearbook, or Norma's description of him breaking down at Caitlin's funeral. Still, Officer Elliott doesn't fit like Jonnie does, he makes perfect sense, especially now that we know about him and Sairah.

I don't believe for one second that they're a new thing. The only question in my mind is whether Perrie's willing to admit it. 

I steal a glance at Perrie as she twists her handles, fully concentrating on the game. Brow furrowed, blue eyes crinkling when she makes a good shot, wavy blonde hair glistening in the light. She has absolutely no idea how attractive she is, and it's kind of a problem. She's so used to living in her brother's shadow that she doesn't believe that she's the kind of person who could've caught the attention of a girl like Ellie. Anybody else can see it from a mile away. 

She looks up and meets my eyes. Busted. I feel myself go red as her mouth lefts in a half smile. Then she glances down again, pulling her phone from her pocket and unlocking the screen. Her face changes in an instant. Kamille sees it too and stops spinning her handles. "Any news?" she asks. 

"A text from my Mom. Nothing about Ellie," Perrie says, and we all relax. Because from the look on her face, it wouldn't have been good. "Except there's a search party tomorrow. During the day, so Echo Ridge students aren't supposed to go. And there's an article in the Boston Globe." She sighs heavily. "My Mom's freaking out. She gets traumatised any time the news mentions Caitlin."

"Can I see?" I ask. She hands the phone to me, and I read the section framed within the screen:

The small town was already on edge after a series of vandalism incidents beginning in early September. Buildings and signs were defaced with messages written as though they were from Caitlin Robinson's killer. The anonymous threats promised another attack on one of the girls elected to homecoming court, a short list that included Ellie Hemmings. But those who've been following the story closely don't see any real connection.

"Even if someone was unhinged enough to get away with murder and brag about it 5 years later, the MO's are completely different," says Jesy Nelson, a senior at Echo Ridge High who has covered the story for her school paper. "Strangulation is a brutal crime of passion. The threats are public, and they require planning. I don't think there's any relation at all to what happened to Caitlin, or what's going on with Ellie."

I grip the phone more tightly. That's almost exactly what I said two weeks ago at lunch. Jesy basically stole my entire spiel and used it to replace her original point of view. Before this, she'd been telling everybody that Caitlin's death and the anonymous threats had to be related.

Why did Jesy suddenly change her tune?