Wish You Were Dead Read online

  I nodded.

  “I’ve got a question for you,” he said. “You ever figure out who PBleeker was?”

  I nodded again. “I’ve promised not to tell.”

  It was Dave. He’d told me at Adam’s funeral and apologized. I’d recalled that day in the library when I’d asked him if he was PBleeker, and how convincing his denial had been. Maybe I just wasn’t that good at reading people.

  “Did I hear you’ve applied to Tufts early decision?” Tyler asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Your parents okay with that? I mean, after everything that’s happened?”

  “They wanted me to stay closer, but I have to get away … from the memories.”

  A gull rose in the air and dropped another clam.

  “Don’t they ever miss?” Tyler asked.

  “Sometimes. When it’s windy … What do you think you’ll do back in Kansas City?”

  “Spend some time with my parents. I heard that the police searched Skelling’s house and found some information about what she did with Megan. I don’t think my parents ever gave up hope that she was still alive, so I have to go back and be with them now.”

  The air was still and the water glassy. The Sound was like a giant pond. I gazed out across it. A tugboat was pulling a barge, leaving an ever-widening wake. I wanted to tell Tyler that I wished he wouldn’t go, but I couldn’t. He had to go back and comfort his parents.

  “Madison?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ll probably have to stay out in KC for a few months, but it won’t be forever. Frank says that any time I want to come back to the garage in the spring, there’ll be a job for me. So I was just wondering … if that was something you thought you might approve of?”

  I felt a smile on my lips and slid my hand into his. “Yes, Tyler, I think I would.”

  Turn the page for a sneak peek at the second book in Todd Strasser’s “thrill”-ogy

  Out in hardcover and eBook now!

  chapter 1

  Saturday 11:45 P.M.

  IN THE DARK woods behind the baseball dugout, I’m kneeling next to Katherine’s body, my heart racing, my breaths shallow and fast, my emotions reeling crazily at the sight on the ground before me. Katherine is lying on her side, curled up, as if she was cowering from whoever attacked her. Her body is still warm, but there’s no pulse. I know because I just pressed my index and middle fingers against her sticky wet neck and then to her wrist to feel her carotid and radial arteries, the ones the EMTs told me they checked. And that means she’s dead. Dead! It can’t be possible. Katherine … who I’ve gone to school with, been friends—and enemies—with. My stomach hiccups spasmodically and I taste bile burning the back of my throat. I can’t believe that this is happening, that I’ve just touched a dead person, someone I know, someone my own age.

  Someone … who’s just been murdered.

  The hot bile surges up into my throat again and I manage to swallow it back. Despite the cool autumn air, perspiration breaks out on my forehead and I feel its dampness on my skin. The slightest wisps of moonlight trickle down through the branches overhead, which cast shadows on Katherine’s blood-mottled face. The light illuminates the horrible deep red slashes in her soft pale skin. Her eyes are open, blank, unseeing. I can’t look at them.

  Something, barely a glint in the dark, is lying on the ground beside her. I reach for it. A knife. The handle is wet, but this wetness has a different feel than water. Thicker, and both slipperier and stickier at the same time. I look down at the blade, blotched with blood, and can just make out near the handle a brand logo of two white stick-figure men against a square red background. Unwanted thoughts invade my brain—the horrible image of the blade slicing into Katherine’s soft flesh. I feel my stomach churn again, the bile threatening to rise. I swallow hard, forcing it back.

  Through the trees, footsteps approach, rustling the brush and branches. People are coming. I feel their shadows looming over me, and I look up at their dark silhouettes.

  “You killed her!” That sounds like Dakota’s voice.

  What! The words startle like an unexpected punch. “No! What are you talking about? That’s not what happened!”

  “Why’d you do it?” another voice demands. In the shadows behind the dugout, there’s a small crowd now. Their dark faces are a blur.

  “You know why,” Dakota answers before I can even think of what to say.

  There’s a burst of light. Someone’s taken a picture with a cell phone. I look down at the bloody knife in my hand. Oh no! Fear floods through me and I drop it. I didn’t do anything! Just moments ago at the kegger, Dakota told me Katherine had disappeared, and said I should go look for her by the baseball dugout.

  There’s another flash. I spring to my feet, wiping my bloody hands on my jeans. How could they think I’d do such a thing? How could anyone do this to anyone?

  “Call the cops,” Dakota says.

  “No!” I cry. “I mean, yes! You have to call them. But not because of me! I just found her here. I swear!”

  People mutter. There’s another flash. I take a step back. They can’t be serious. They can’t really believe I’d—

  “Don’t let her go,” Dakota cautions.

  “But I didn’t do it!” I blurt.

  “God, look who’s talking,” someone says.

  “Do you believe it?” says Dakota. “Of all the people?”

  The words pierce. Everyone knows why she’s saying that. Because it’s happened before. This is the second time in my life I’ve been this close to a bloodied, battered body. The second time I’ve seen the carnage one person can do to another. Suddenly it’s obvious they’re never going to believe me. Not in a million years.

  “Don’t let her go!” Dakota says with more urgency as I back farther from the body.

  Panic-stricken, I turn and dive into the dark, running as fast as I can, crashing through the brush, slapping branches out of the way, stumbling on rocks, my face and arms being scratched by things I can’t see.

  “Get her!” Dakota yells, only now her voice is more distant.

  * * *

  They say I always ran. From the time I could walk. It was almost like I went straight from crawling to running. I was the kid in the hall the teachers were always telling to slow down, the one who’d run even when there was no rush. I’m little, only four foot ten and ninety-eight pounds. Coach Reynolds, who’s in charge of the cross-country team, once told me he’d seen my type before. Small girls who could run forever. I didn’t like being thought of as a “type,” but there was some truth to it. I used to see other girls like me at meets. But I’d wonder if they ran for the same reason I did. In my family, it was a matter of survival.

  chapter 2

  Saturday 11:53 P.M.

  I COME OUT of the woods, then dash across Seaver Street and into the Glen. The houses here are big old Tudors with spires, white stucco walls, and leaded windows. My heart is banging in my chest, from both running and fear. Slowing to a jog and weaving away from the bright spots under the streetlights, I know I have to find a place to stop and think. Finally, in a side yard, I see a child’s playhouse. It’s the size of a small shed, with a miniature porch, windows, and a door.

  After tiptoeing across the lawn, I gently step onto the little porch and carefully, slowly, pull open the door, hoping it won’t squeak. I’m praying that the people who own this property don’t have a dog that will start barking. It’s dark inside, but with the door open I can make out a small yellow plastic table and two red plastic child-size chairs. I let the door close and find myself in blackness. Can’t see my hands in front of my face. But it’s oddly reassuring. If I can’t see myself, then no one can see me, either. I sit on one of the chairs, press my face into my hands, and take steady breaths, trying to calm down.

  But my heart’s still drumming and I still cannot believe what just happened. Katherine murdered?

  And now what? I’ve never run away like that before. I never did anything
wrong that would have required running. Why did I run? Why didn’t I stay and try to explain? Because they’d see me beside Katherine’s body with that bloody knife in my hand and Dakota saying, Do you believe it? Of all the people?

  Of course they’d believe it. After all, two years ago my older brother, Sebastian, made national news by bludgeoning our father nearly to death with a two-by-four, leaving him brain damaged and mute and paralyzed from the neck down. What’s so hard to believe? Like brother, like sister, right?

  Into the inky stillness inside the playhouse comes the distant sound of sirens. Dread chills my veins. The police are coming. I can picture what’s happening. Based on the phone calls from kids at the kegger, a code 11-41 has been issued. The boxy red-and-white ambulance is pulling out of its bay at the new town center.

  The sirens grow louder and closer. The police will be the first to arrive, and they’ll hurry across the baseball field and into the woods with flashlights. The kids will show them Katherine’s body behind the dugout and tell them what they saw … Callie Carson kneeling beside the body with a knife in her hand …

  But the officers have a more urgent matter. One will check Katherine’s vital signs while the other scrambles back to the patrol car for the medical kit. Maybe, having seen the body, they already know it’s too late—only when a kid’s life is involved, it’s never too late. They have to try no matter what. Maybe she’s still clinging to life. Maybe they can manage a miracle.

  The officer with the medical kit returns. He and his partner make a valiant but vain attempt to revive Katherine. Moments later the ambulance crew arrives. The EMTs hurry in and take over. Now one of the officers gets on his radio to report the grim news. Looks like a code 187 (homicide).

  They will tell the kids to step back but stay close. After all, there may be a homicidal maniac on the loose. By now the detectives have arrived and surveyed the murder scene. While one looks for clues, the other takes the names and addresses of witnesses to be interviewed first thing tomorrow morning, while memories are still fresh. Based on the initial information, a BOLO will be issued before long: “Be on the lookout for Callie Carson, age seventeen, four foot ten, roughly a hundred pounds, dressed in jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt.”

  And here I am, maybe a quarter of a mile away, quivering in the dark with no idea of what to do.

  About a year ago, Katherine Remington-Day, the most popular girl in the grade, started to be nice to me, inviting me to sit at her table at lunch and do things with her and her friends after school. The Remingtons were the town’s earliest residents. Katherine’s ancestors had first come to Soundview in the early 1800s. In the town hall was a row of portraits of the mayors going back to the 1820s, and close to half a dozen had the last name Remington.

  Katherine was a dynamo, maybe three inches taller than me, with a light brown pageboy haircut and mad-crazy amounts of energy. No one else was on more committees or involved in more school activities, even though she did avoid any position that required an election. When she made it clear that she wanted to be friends, I figured I was just a charity case to her. Sometimes, in a dark moment, I even wondered if she was using me to prove just how powerful and popular she was. Powerful enough that she could have the loser Callie Carson as a friend and still be the center of the social swirl.

  But the reason didn’t matter. I was desperate for distraction, for friends in school, for a little fun. My family had been irreparably fractured. I’d quit the cross-country team just when it looked like we had a chance to win the statewide championship. My boyfriend, Slade, was working long hours, sometimes on jobs out of town, and my best friend, Jeanie, had moved back to England. And out of nowhere, there was Katherine, offering me a lifeline. I had to believe that anyone in my situation would have leaped to take it.