Beneath Her Skin by Gregg Olsen (ebook reader for manga txt) 📗

The twins locked eyes. They both knew that that was the truth, absolute and unqualified.

Chapter Eighteen

A few days after the cheer squad results were posted, Katelyn and Starla sat out on the Larsens’ rickety old back porch glider and watched Teagan as he tried to keep their attention on a rope swing that Adam Larsen had put up the year he vanished. The swing was a replacement for one that had rotted, and as a replacement, there was no need to go through the cumbersome process of sucking up to the property management company that kept things Stepford-pretty in Port Gamble.

Starla offered Katelyn a smoke from a pack of Vogue Superslims Menthol that she’d stolen from her mom and tucked behind a cushion on the porch glider.

“I didn’t know cheerleaders were allowed,” Katelyn said.

“They’re not. But they’re also not allowed to get fat, and smoking helps. I don’t want to be bent over a toilet because I ate something I shouldn’t. It’s better not to eat at all. Smoking is very, very helpful.”

Katelyn lit her cigarette from the ashy red tip of Starla’s smoke and kept her eyes on Teagan.

“He won’t tell, will he?”

Teagan was a wiry, fearless boy who seemed to delight in the attention of the older girls. He noticed the smoke.

“Are you watching me? Katelyn?” he called over from the rope.

“No, he won’t tell,” Starla said, before calling across the yard to her annoying brother. “We’re watching you, you little brat.”

“How can we not watch him?” Katelyn said, pulling a long drag through her cigarette. She was proud that she wasn’t coughing, but, of course, she didn’t say so. “He swings around like a crazy version of Tarzan.”

“Tarzan was a dork,” Starla said. “His best friend was a monkey.”

Katelyn smiled. She stifled her desire to correct her friend by letting her know that a monkey and chimpanzee were not of the same species. Not any closer than man and monkey.

Instead, she changed the subject.

“I like your hair a lot,” she said.

Starla fussed with it with her free hand. “I hate it. My mom cut it, and she’s not much of a stylist.”

Katelyn wanted to touch Starla’s hair, so golden and pretty, but she didn’t.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think it’s hot.”

“You would. I mean,” she said, eyeing Katelyn with a cool look, “you don’t have to try as hard as I do to keep things going.”

It was a dismissive, snarky remark that on the surface seemed like a compliment, but both girls knew it really wasn’t.

“Nothing’s easy, Starla,” Katelyn said.

“I get that. Sorry,” she fake-apologized.

Katelyn reached down to pet the Larsens’ cat, Bobby, a vicious Manx, and, in doing so, the length of her arm was exposed.

“Jesus, Katie, what happened to your arm?”

Katelyn sat up ramrod straight and tucked in her arm like a chicken wing. “Nothing,” she said.

Starla bent closer. “Bullshit. Let me see.” She pulled on her friend’s wrist to wrestle her arm from her body.

Katelyn didn’t put up much of a fight. Not really. She let her arm go limp as Starla pushed up her sleeve to reveal three small parallel cuts just below the elbow. The freshly scabbed-over redness popped against the whitest part of her skin.

“I wondered why you were wearing a sweatshirt on a day like today. You haven’t started up again, have you?”

“Your cat scratched me,” Katelyn said, her tone defiant and pleading at the same time, begging Starla to notice that the bloody mess had taken over once more.

Starla shook her head, her eyes worried. “If the cat was named Katelyn, I’d say so.”

Katelyn turned away, easing her arm from her friend’s not-so-tight grip.

“You’re cutting again, aren’t you?”

Katelyn kept her focus on Teagan, performing his Tarzan spin on the rope.

“No, I’m not.”

“Don’t lie. We’re practically sisters.”

Weeks before, the comment might have resonated as being slightly genuine. But not then.

“Is it because you didn’t make cheer again?” asked Starla.

“A little, I guess,” she admitted.

Starla dropped her cigarette and crushed it with the toe of a tacky Candie’s sandal she’d borrowed from her mother’s closet. “I thought you stopped that,” she said.

“I guess I didn’t.” Katelyn faced Starla before snuffing out her own butt. “Can we not talk about it? Please.”

“It isn’t normal and you know it.”

Katelyn had let loose a deep, throaty laugh at Starla, the ethereal beauty, the one all others wanted to be like or be with.

“Normal? What could you possibly know about normal?”

“You need to go to a shrink,” Starla said.

Katelyn’s expression flatlined. “You need to butt out.”

Starla shook her head. “Seriously, you need help. Does your mom know?”

Katelyn got up off the glider, her inert expression turned to anger.

“You tell her and one way or another I’ll never speak to you again,” she said.

“Like that would ever happen.” Starla stood her ground. “We’re tight, remember?” Starla said, knowing that it wasn’t really true. She never had time for Katelyn anymore. Now, she saw her only from her bedroom window or on the rare occasion when they met on the street on their way home, like that summer afternoon they spent on the porch glider.

Katelyn had bristled at the lie. Starla was no longer a friend. She was no longer anything. She was the enemy and, as far as Katelyn could tell, she was unstoppable. If Starla had viewed Katelyn as a backup dancer in her laser-fantastic arena show, she was wrong.

Dead wrong.

Chapter Nineteen

Hayley and Taylor found their father in his tiny office, which was decorated with paperback book covers that were so hideous they really couldn’t pass for art, even though they were professionally matted and framed. Kevin Ryan was bent over his computer. Approaching middle age, Kevin was holding his own in the looks and cool department—at least on the dad scale, which every teenager knew was not so demanding. His hair was no longer styled in a foppish dad style but was cut short. He shaved off the porn-star mustache that he’d