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

“How weird? What do you mean?” Hayley asked.

“She was so, I don’t know… it seems embarrassing to admit it, but she seemed so jealous of me.”

Like that was some kind of admission she didn’t want to make. Starla reveled in the jealousy that swirled around her. She didn’t always live in What-About-Me-City, but she’d done a good job finding a spot on the town’s main drag.

Taylor picked up on the meat of what Starla had said. “Weirder, how?”

“I don’t even think the boyfriend she wanted to meet was real.”

“No?” Hayley asked, interested in that repeated disclosure.

Starla continued talking as she walked down the hallway, down the stairs. Teagan was hovering by the entrance to the kitchen.

“It is so sad,” she said. “But I think Katie just kind of lost it after she didn’t make cheer again this year. I wanted her to… I did everything I could. And when she didn’t make it, I had to distance myself from her a little—for obvious reasons.”

Obvious reasons? Like the fact that if you were a bigger biatch you’d have to sleep in a kennel at night? That kind of obvious reason? thought Hayley.

Before Starla opened the front door to shove the twins back out into the cold air, Hayley reached into her pocket and pulled out the WATCHING YOU note.

“I don’t think she made up her boyfriend,” she said.

Starla took the note and warily eyed Hayley, then Taylor.

“What’s this?” she said, taking the message.

“What do you think it is?” Taylor said in a voice unable to mask her anger. “Your best friend—or rather, the girl who considered you her best friend—had someone in her life.”

Starla looked up from the paper and twisted the doorknob.

“I don’t know anything about this,” she said as the winter air blasted inside. “I’m sorry that we have to cut our visit so short. I have some chores to do before Mom and Jake come home.”

Taylor scoffed but said nothing.

Chores? When did Starla go all Little House? Or when did she do anything but worship her face in the mirror?

After dinner, Taylor put up a second LOST DOG posting on Craigslist, this time with a photo of Hedda taken by their mother on Christmas Day. The dog was curled up like a kielbasa in front of the crackling fireplace, looking cozy and reasonably alert—at least for Hedda. Hayley created a LOST DOG flyer using the same photo and, by the end of the day, Beth, Colton and the girls had plastered it all over Port Gamble.

None of their friends thought that Hedda was a particularly good-looking or smart dog, because, to be completely fair, she wasn’t. Beth, in particular, had been merciless in teasing Taylor and Hayley about the dog over the years.

“I saw a dog just like yours that used a skateboard to get around because it had no legs,” she said one time.

“She has legs, Beth,” Taylor said a little defensively.

Another time…

“The Ugliest Dog in America is ramping up again. It’s time that disgusting Chinese Crested with the overbite is given the boot. I was thinking that Hedda has a shot at the title.”

“She’s not ugly, Beth.”

“I’m just saying,” Beth said.

As they stapled flyers to the kiosk by the General Store, Beth admitted something that surprised the others.

“I hope we find her. I really, really like that little dog.”

“I thought you hated her,” Colton said.

“Tells you how much you know about me, Colt. I’m more than what I say,” she said, before waving goodbye from the corner and heading home.

Taylor walked a few steps ahead of her sister and Colton, who always found a moment to linger alone together. She looked up at Katelyn’s bedroom as they passed the Berkley house. She wondered if Mr. Berkley was watching from the darkened room. She nodded in the direction of Jake, next door, who, despite the weather and the season, was barbecuing something that actually smelled pretty good.

For meat, anyway.

She wondered if they’d ever learn what really happened to Katelyn on that awful night.

Talk to us, Katie, she said to herself.

As the three of them walked to their side-by-side houses, no one called out to Hedda. There was no point in it. Hedda was half-deaf. There was a more disquieting reason too. The air was so cold that if the missing dog had been outside, she’d have frozen to death by then. The wind blew hard across the water. It was harsh and decisive. Port Gamble on a cold winter’s night was no place for a short-legged dog, ugly or not.

Later that night, as Taylor burrowed under her blankets and drifted off to sleep, Katelyn remained on her mind.

And so did someone else. Someone she could not see as her eyes fluttered behind her shut eyelids.

Fingertips moved slowly across the keyboard, stopping and starting as if each keystroke were a separate word followed by a period. Stop. Start. In a way, it was almost like Morse code. Rat. Tat. Tat. It was as though whoever was writing the message used the depression of each key to shoot anger at a target far away in cyberspace.

Katelyn stared at the computer screen, her heart beating faster. She knew she was moving closer and closer to something a little dangerous. But danger was needed. Her life had become pathetic on every front. Her mom was drinking more often. Her dad was growing more distant. Starla, her best friend, could no longer see fit to even smile in her direction.

Not that she deserved a smile, but even so, one would have been welcomed.

A flurry of messages zipped across the screen in the chat window:

Cullant: meet me @sSattle ctr. By that ugly ass fountain. U know the 1.

Katiebug: i climbed in it last may @folk life when it wz really hot.

Cullant: that’s lame

Katiebug: i know. My parents lyk that crap. Flutes. Latvian dancing. Whatever.

Finally, this came across her computer screen:

Cullant: only a renaiss fair wud b wrse. Meet me. Let’s