She Lied She Died by Carissa Lynch (books to read for teens TXT) 📗

furniture left behind, only a scattering of trash in the corner—probably from teenagers who had snuck in previously—and knotted old carpet painted with a thick layer of grime. And the smell … it reminded me of an old hamster cage; the acrid smell of urine and waste causing my eyes to water.

“Let’s go explore,” Pierre told Amanda, leaning his face into her neck, purring something inaudible in her ear. Only friends, huh? Another lie, I presume.

Pierre pulled her by the hand, and I watched them disappear through a moldy kitchen then a cavernous hallway.

I’d been in enough trailers to know the general layout—a living room, kitchen, and bedrooms on either side of it. I followed a narrow hallway to my right, stopping to shine the torch light of my cell phone over the crude graffiti splashed all along the walls.

I KILLED THE BITCH. I stared at those loopy letters, painted deep dark red like congealed blood, then kept moving. I stopped when I reached a door on my left—a tiny bathroom. Out of habit, I groped for a switch in the dark before remembering, ridiculously, that the trailer had no electricity. Even with the sunlight, the place felt like a tomb.

I held my cell phone light out in front of me, praying my battery would last a little bit longer, and puckered up my face at the disgusting remnants of Chrissy’s old bathroom. It smelled like wet towels and urine, and it became obvious that vandals had been using the commode. The sinks were rusty from nonuse; the grout in the tiles was once probably gray or white, but it was smudged a slimy black color now.

At the end of the hallway were two narrow doors, in what I could only presume used to be Chrissy and her brothers’ rooms. The door on the left opened into a small bedroom, no furniture left behind.

There’s nothing here to see, I realized.

The walls were painted goose gray, the dingy old carpet fraying and curling at the corners. The floor felt wet with mold beneath my sneakers.

I peeked my head in the last room before entering. It was certainly Chrissy’s old room. Floral wallpaper was peeling in the corners but most of the walls were covered in crude drawings and words.

ROT IN HELL CHRISSY.

YOU SHOULD KILL YOURSELF CHRISSY.

FUCK THE CORNWALLS.

FUCK YOU CHRISSY.

Shivering, I listened to the metallic popping of rain as it struck the metal roof of the trailer. I hadn’t expected another storm so soon, but somehow, standing here now, it seemed fitting that one should arrive.

There was one window in Chrissy’s bedroom, high and tiny. The walls were narrow, and a sad, oppressive aura washed over me.

There was a closet with pocket doors on the far side of the room, but the doors had been yanked off track. I stuck my head in the closet, almost expecting to see her muddy shoes on the floor, as they had been all those years ago in the police photos. She said she was barefoot in the field that day … if that’s true, then how did her muddy shoes end up here, the prints matching those beside the body…? Did my brother try to frame her? But, if so, then why would he go visit her years later in prison?

The room had been wiped out, either by Chrissy’s family when they ditched it, or by people breaking into the property.

Do you feel Jenny there? I imagined Katie’s words the other day.

I couldn’t “feel” her here either. Whatever that meant.

According to the late Officer Winslow’s reports, they never found evidence of blood or any sort of crime scene in the Cornwalls’ trailer.

This is not where she died.

But it was the place where Chrissy laid her head at night … were thoughts of murder swirling through her mind? Or was she truly focused on my brother … and did she really allow herself to go to prison to protect him?

Back in the day, they weren’t using DNA evidence as they were now. Technically, Chrissy could have cleaned up the blood, and no one would be the wiser…

I stared inside the closet, the only remnants of Chrissy’s childhood a few wire hangers pushed to the back. As I looked at them, feeling foolish for following these teens inside, I caught a glimpse of something from the corner of my eye.

There in the back of the closet … a child’s handwriting on the wall. I moved the hangers and squatted down, holding up my torch to read the words.

But they weren’t words, only tiny letters: C.C. + J.B. = 4evr

Chrissy Cornwall and John Bishop, forever.

Or…

Chrissy and Jack Breyas, I realized.

Moments later, I was passing through the living room and kitchen, following the opposite hallway in the dark. A large master bedroom lay at the end of the hallway. As I peered inside the room, I shrank back as I saw what Amanda and Pierre were doing.

They were still clothed, but her back was against the wall, legs wrapped tightly around his waist as he pressed his body to hers.

“I’m going,” I said, weakly.

Amanda’s eyes popped open and she smiled at me over Pierre’s shoulder, baring all her teeth.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Great Aunt Lane lived 90 miles north of Austin, in a town that looked eerily similar to Austin itself.

After a while, it’s like all small towns are the same—boring yet full of secrets.

As I navigated the narrow lanes of Muncie passing by churches and cemeteries that looked just like the ones back home, I tried to remember how long it had been since I’d seen her.

Lane had to be nearing ninety by now, one of the few members of the Breyas family to make it beyond the ripe old age of seventy. She was rabbit-toothed and cadaverous, with a rosy, wrinkled face covered in tattooed makeup. At least that’s how I always remembered her.

My father had always been so quiet; it was mind-boggling when people met his aunt. She was gabby and blunt, and whipper-snap thin to