He probably had a crush, Sadie said. Lacey was a beauty.
I study the three faces: Declan, Daisy, and Ryan. One who never left—until now, maybe—and two who returned. Malcolm doesn’t know where Declan is staying, but Mia’s mentioned more than once that her sister is back in her old room. What had Mia said about Daisy during Thursday’s assembly, again? Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.
Ezra spins the yearbook he’s been studying around so that it’s facing me, and slides it across the table. “Is this what you wanted to see?”
A girl with a cloud of curly dark hair is at the top of the page, her smile so bright it’s almost blinding. My mother, twenty-three years ago. Except the name under the picture reads Sarah Corcoran. I blink at it a couple of times; in my mind, Sarah’s always been the serious, almost somber twin. I don’t recognize this version. I flip to the previous page and see Sadie’s picture at the bottom. It’s identical, right down to the head tilt and the smile. The only difference is the color of their sweaters.
The pictures were taken their senior year, probably in September. A few weeks later, shortly after Sadie was crowned homecoming queen, Sarah was gone.
I close the book as a wave of exhaustion hits me. “I don’t know,” I admit, stretching and turning toward a row of tiny windows on the far wall that sends squares of sunlight across the hardwood floor. “When do we have to be at work, again?”
Ezra glances at his phone. “In about an hour.”
“Should we stop by Mia’s and see if she’s working today?”
“She’s not,” Ezra says.
“Should we stop by Mia’s and see if she’s working today?” I repeat.
Ezra blinks in confusion, then shakes his head like he’s just waking up. “Oh, sorry. Are you suggesting a reconnaissance mission?”
“I wouldn’t mind meeting the mysterious Daisy,” I tell him.
“Roger that,” Ezra says. He gestures to the stack of yearbooks between us. “Are you gonna check any of these out?”
“No, I’m just— Hang on.” I pull out my phone and snap a few photos of the yearbook pictures we’ve just been looking at. Ezra watches me with a bemused expression.
“What are you going to do with those?” he asks.
“Documenting our research,” I say. I don’t know if this morning will turn out to be worth anything, but at least it feels productive.
When I finish, we each take an armful of yearbooks and return them to the Reference section. I throw our empty coffee cups into a recycling bin, which makes a much louder noise than I expected. The sleeping librarian startles and blinks at us with watery, unfocused eyes as we pass her desk.
“Can I help you?” she yawns, feeling around for the glasses looped on a chain around her neck.
“No thanks, all set,” I say, nudging Ezra to walk faster so we can exit before she recognizes us and we have to spend fifteen minutes making polite conversation about California. We push through the library’s front door into bright sunshine, and descend wide steps to the sidewalk.
Ezra and I walked home from school with Mia a couple of days ago, and she’s only a block from the library. The Kwons’ house is unusual for Echo Ridge: a modern, boxy construction set on a large expanse of lawn. A stone path crosses from the sidewalk to the front stairs, and we’re halfway across it when a gray Nissan pulls into the driveway.
The driver’s side window is half-down, framing a girl with long dark hair who’s gripping the steering wheel like it’s a life preserver. Oversized sunglasses cover half her face, but I can see enough to tell that it’s Daisy. Ezra raises his hand, about to call a greeting, then lowers it as Daisy lifts a phone to her ear.
“I don’t think she sees us,” I say, glancing between the car and the front door. “Maybe we should just ring the bell.”
Before we can move, Daisy drops her phone, crosses her arms over the steering wheel, and lowers her head onto them. Her shoulders start to shake, and Ezra and I exchange uneasy glances. We stand there for what feels like ten minutes, although it’s probably less than one, before Ezra take a tentative step forward. “Do you think we should, um …”
He trails off as Daisy suddenly raises her head with a strangled little scream and slams her hands, hard, on either side of the steering wheel. She whips off her sunglasses and runs her hands over her eyes like she’s trying to erase any trace of tears, then shoves the glasses back on. She throws the car into reverse and starts to back up, stopping when she looks out the window and catches sight of us.
Ezra offers the sheepish half wave of someone who knows he has just accidentally observed a private moment. Daisy’s only indication that she sees him is to roll up her window before she backs out of the driveway and leaves in the direction she came from.
“Well, you wanted to meet the mysterious Daisy,” Ezra says, watching her taillights disappear around a bend. “There she goes.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Malcolm
Thursday, September 26
When I poke my head into Mia’s room, she’s wedged in against a small mountain of pillows on her bed, her MacBook propped on her lap. She has her earbuds in, nodding along to whatever’s playing, and I have to rap on the door twice before she hears me. “Hey,” she says too loudly before unplugging. “Practice over already?”
“It’s past four.” My one and only activity at Echo Ridge High—which is one more than Mia’s ever signed up for—is band. Mr. Bowman got me into it in ninth grade when he suggested I take drum lessons, and I’ve been doing it ever since.
It’s not the same without him. The woman who took over isn’t half as funny as he was, and she’s got us doing the same old crap from last year. I’m not sure I’ll stick it out. But tomorrow night we’re playing at a pep rally, and I have a solo that nobody else knows.
Mia stretches her arms over her head. “I didn’t notice. I was just about to text you, though.” She shuts her laptop and puts it aside, swinging her legs off the bed and onto the floor. “Freaking Viv’s most cherished dream has come true. The Burlington Free Press picked up her story about the vandalism, and now they’re covering it along with a five-year anniversary piece on Lacey. A reporter called a little while ago, trying to get hold of Daisy.”
My stomach flops like a dying fish. “Shit.”
I shouldn’t be surprised. The Homecoming Stalker—so named by the Echo Ridge Eagle student newspaper—has been busy. He, or she, left a bloody mess of raw meat on the hood of Brooke’s car Monday, which made her gag when she saw it. Ellery got off comparatively easy a day later, with a spray paint job on the side of Armstrong’s Auto Repair that reads CORCORANS MAKE KILLER QUEENS.