“Hang on,” she says, and I turn my head to see her grabbing her phone from the couch. “I need to look up how to do this properly.” She bites her lip, her eyes narrowed as she begins typing. I watch as she scrolls and taps for a couple minutes, an image of bizarre contradictions—her face looks so serious, but those pumpkins on her headband are still wobbling to and fro on their springs, and her shirt is still noticeably inside out.
“All right,” she says, and I start.
I’ve been staring at her, I realize, my eyes glued to the dancing pumpkins and the little crease in her forehead and the curve of her jaw. I yank my gaze away.
“Let’s get this over with,” I say.
“So I’m supposed to stand in front of you,” she says slowly, still looking at her phone. She moves until she’s standing next to my head. “And then I’m supposed to pick you up by hooking my arms under yours.”
Ah. I think things are about to get…physical.
“Okay,” I say, feeling unaccountably nervous. I’m not the type to get awkward around women, but then again…Juniper’s not like any other woman I’ve ever known. She’s unpredictable, defying logic at every turn and laughing the whole time.
“So I’ll just…” she says, trailing off. She crouches down, hooks her arms under my armpits with absolutely no warning, and then attempts to stand.
It does not go well.
My head is dangerously placed right now, for one, pressed up against parts of her that are too soft, parts of her I should not be getting familiar with. “Lift with your legs,” I say, an impatient bite to my voice as I close my eyes and focus on any number of unappealing things.
“I’m trying!” she snaps back. “You’re reallyheavy.”
She smells like citrus.
“Try harder,” I grit out. “Or just drop me.”
“I—I can’t—oh, all right,” she finally says. And then she relaxes her arms, sending me sprawling to the floor.
“No more,” I gasp. “I’m done.”
“Fine,” she says, sounding sulky. “My killer will drag the body, I guess.”
The two of us are quiet for a moment, and somehow I know that we’re both thinking the same thing: How did that girl’s body get moved? Was she carried? Dragged?
It’s a morbid train of thought, one that doesn’t at all fit with this day or this woman or the mess of festive decorations strewn around the room.
“Where do you think she went?” Juniper asks in a small voice.
I sigh, pushing one hand through my hair as I sit up. “I don’t know,” I say. “Garrity was going to search the grounds last night. He said there was only a bit of blood, and it wasn’t near where you vomited.”
“But how is that possible?” she says. She slouches over to the couch and pushes all the unused decorations off, sending them to the floor. Then she flops down in her newly cleared space. “There was alotof it.”
“There was,” I say, trying to remember. “But most of what we saw was on the front of her head and in her hair. We don’t know where she was injured, exactly. She might not have bled on the ground much.”
“And you didn’t recognize her?” Juniper says, a sad little frown on her face. “I hate that I don’t know her name. I told her I would remember her.”
“I recognized she was a student, but I don’t know her name,” I say, and I’m once again filled with the desire to run over to the school, dig out a yearbook, and memorize everyname and face. “I’m going to figure out who she was. I’ve got access to student rosters and photos and all that. I think I’ve got a yearbook or two here as well; I’m going to check there in a minute.”
“That’s good,” she says, nodding distractedly. “That’s good.” Then, in a voice so quiet I barely hear her, she says, “You think she’s the one who sent me the note, right?”
I hesitate, unsure of what to say. In truth, my answer is probably yes; no one else came, and the little heart on the exclamation point seems like something a high school girl might use. “I think it’s possible,” I finally admit.
“I can’t help but feel like she died because of whatever she wanted to tell me about my parents.”
I don’t answer that. That’s what it seems like to me too. But it also seems crazy to be having these thoughts at all; this isn’t a crime show. I’m not a detective. Things like this don’t happen in Autumn Grove, and people like me don’t solve mysteries.
And yet when I finally open my mouth to speak, what pops out is another question. “And you don’t know anything about your father?”
“Nothing,” Juniper says, still looking lost in thought. “Except…”
