Heath Moore’s house is disappointingly normal, considering it contains a lizard-disguised-as-a-human. Maybe I was expecting it to be molting. At least a Beware the Sub-Intelligent, Over-Testosteroned Teenage Boy sign or two. But it’s just a house, just a normal street, basketball hoop in the driveway and no signs of the subspecies lurking inside.
Heath answers the door, thank God. Not surprising, given that it’s a Tuesday, his parents probably work, and he is a slug who does nothing but suction the life and goodness out of the world, but still. A good sign.
For a second he just stands there gaping at me, so I can see his fat tongue.
“I’m here to talk about Summer,” I say, which makes him shut his mouth real quick. I don’t wait for him to invite me in—I’d be waiting awhile—and push past him into the house. Weird that such a nice house could birth such a nasty little toad sprocket. In the living room, a dog that looks like an oversize fur ball is yapping in a dog bed next to a coffee table cluttered with family photos.
He watches me sullenly, keeping a good eight feet between us, hands stuffed deep in his pockets. Not so brave now that he doesn’t have the two Frankenstein twins as backup. “I don’t have anything to say to you.” He lifts his chin. “And I had an alibi, you know.”
“No, you didn’t. Jake told me you guys were just covering for each other. Relax,” I add when he starts to protest. “I don’t think you did it. Pulling off a murder requires more than one active brain cell.”
He wets his lower lip with that obese tongue. “So what do you want to talk about?”
I take a deep breath. “I want to know what she told you and Jake,” I say, and since he keeps staring at me with that dumb expression on his face, I say, “About me. About . . . liking girls.”
What I really want to know is whether she told them about what happened between us the night she came in through my window: that final, sacred thing, the way she jerked backward after we kissed, the terrible way she smiled at me. All I know is that days afterward the story that I was a massive lesbian—like you could be a miniature one—was everywhere, and some of the girls wouldn’t change near me in the locker room, and Summer was treating me like I had a contagious disease, one of the ones that makes blood come out through your pores.
Jake and Summer broke up, and now I know that afterward she started hanging out with Heath. Back then, Summer wouldn’t talk to me, wouldn’t even look at me. I remember trying to get close to her in the lunch line and she just spun around, furious, as if I’d hit her. Stop drooling, McNally. I’m not into girls, okay? The weirdest thing about it was how angry she was—practically hysterical—as if I’d hurt her. As if I’d been the one to give up her secret.
Everyone laughed. I remember how it felt like someone had taken a baseball bat and just plain knocked out my stomach, swung my insides up to the ceiling, made a path out of the cafeteria with my lungs. And yet all this time, I’ve been holding on to the idea that despite everything, Summer loved me. That she cared. That it mattered if I kept her secrets, kept her safe, kept everyone from knowing what happened that day in the woods.
Here’s the thing: Summer was the one who made me into a monster. And she’s the one who has to change me back.
When Heath thinks, smoke might as well come out of his ears. You can actually see his brain sizzling. “Seems kinda late to be worrying about your reputation. Everyone already knows you’re a dyke, McNally.”
“Sure. Just like everyone knows you’re a virgin,” I say, which makes him scowl. Shot in the dark, but looks like I was right. Good. The little scuzzbucket should just marry his right hand and be done with it. “What did she tell you?”
“She didn’t tell me anything,” he grumbles. “It wasn’t some big secret. Even the teachers knew.”
My stomach seizes. “What are you talking about?”
He shrugs. “That’s how I heard in the first place,” he said. “My teacher said she was proud of me. For being open-minded. You know . . . for hanging out so much with a girl who . . .” He trails off. For a split second, he looks embarrassed.
“A girl who what?” Now my brain is the one that feels like it’s grinding along, struggling to make sense of everything.
He rolls his eyes. “A girl who liked other girls,” he says. “And then I started thinking it was weird, how much time you guys used to spend together. And Summer got pissy when I made fun of her about it.” He crosses his arms, all wounded and defensive. As if the fact that I’m gay is a direct strike to his ego, like I’m just trying to embarrass him. “That’s why I’m saying I kind of already suspected. And when Ms. Gray pulled me aside—”
“Ms. Gray?” Suddenly I feel like I’ve been hit with a Taser. There’s a buzzy pain in my head.
“Yeah, my English teacher.” Heath gives me a weird look, probably because I practically shouted her name.
“Your . . . ?” My voice dies somewhere in the back of my throat. I shake my head. “Ms. Gray taught Life Skills.”
Heath shrugs. “Our English teacher was out on maternity leave, and Ms. Gray subbed in,” he said. “She’d taught English before.” He squints at me. “What? What is it?”
Obviously it has never occurred to him how weird it is—how completely and totally screwy—for a teacher to say that kind of thing. At Four Corners the counselors aren’t even allowed to hug you anymore, unless there are two additional witnesses there to swear you gave permission.
Besides, how did Ms. Gray even know?
I turn away, feeling sick. My mind is hopscotching through memories, GIF-style. Ms. Gray in the crowd at Summer’s memorial, a carnation pinned to her shitty black dress. Eyes raw like she’d been crying. Ms. Gray directing us back to Owen. Ms. Gray volunteering to help out with all those little kids at the parade, the band kids . . .
I used to teach music, before.
“Oh my God,” I say out loud. It’s so obvious. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.
Ms. Gray is the Shadow. All along, she’s been living here, floating along, drifting through normal life. But she did it. She took a rock to the back of Summer’s head. She dragged her across the field and arranged her in the circle of rocks. She stabbed her seven times, so the dirt was sticky with her blood and cops arriving on the scene had to be counseled afterward, said it looked like a massacre.
All along, it was her.
“Are you okay?” Heath asks me, and I realize I’ve just been standing there, frozen, freezing.
“No,” I say. I burst out of the door. I’m running without knowing where.
Mia. Somewhere in the trees the birds are screaming. I have to find Mia.