Look What You Made Me Do Page 2

  Becca paused, holding a dead girl’s feet, and stared me down. Tried to, anyway. When I didn’t relent, she huffed. “She said she saw me taking money from the till, and she misunderstood. Then she misunderstood how fast I was driving and stepped in front of my car.”

  “You—” I’d once hit a parked car, not hard enough to leave a mark, and was shaken for days.

  “Accidentally,” she added, as an afterthought. Or a reminder. “Now let’s go.”

  When I still didn’t move, she scuffed her foot in the dirt and released Shanna’s ankles. They dropped against the edge of the car with an empty thud.

  “Carrie,” Becca said, fingers curling into her palms, “please.” I could see her chewing on her cheek again, the inside of her bottom lip stained crimson, like she’d eaten a cherry Popsicle. She drew in a breath through her nose, nostrils flaring, and blinked rapidly, tears clinging to the ends of her lashes. “She was so horrible to me. She lied to our co-workers about me, to our boss. She knows how much I love this job, and she wanted—she wanted to destroy me.” A single fat tear rolled down her cheek, glinting in the sunlight like a diamond. “And if anyone finds out about this, they’ll think I did it on purpose, and I’ll—I’ll—” She gulped dramatically. “I could go to jail.”

  Becca worked at the jewelry store at the mall, fancy enough that not everybody could afford to shop there but not so fancy that they had guards. She got minimum wage and earned commission and regularly bitched about neither being enough, though her looks helped her sell far more earrings and necklaces than the next-best salesperson. She didn’t love her job, but it paid the bills. Becca’s dream was to marry rich and spend the rest of her life sunbathing and bossing around the help. And while she’d dated plenty of wealthy men in her twenty years, none had been reckless enough to pop the question.

  “Carrie?” she said softly. “Please? Let’s go, okay?” She picked up Shanna’s ankles and nodded at her battered head.

  But I balked. “I’m not touching her head,” I said. I looked away from the pulpy, mottled skin, down over Shanna’s chest, covered in the white button-up shirt they wore at the store, the collar smudged with dried blood, a smear of dirt on one side. Her pants were torn at the knee on the same side but were otherwise intact. Somehow her face had sustained the brunt of the impact, managing to hit a bumper no taller than knee-high.

  Becca sighed. “God. You’re so dramatic. You take her feet then, you baby.”

  She shouldered me out of the way as she stuck her hands under Shanna and into her armpits, heaving her torso out of the trunk. Shanna’s neck stayed askew, her ruined face tilted sharply to the side, like she was sleeping uncomfortably.

  Becca was barely perturbed. In fact, she was more irritated by my reluctance than Shanna’s dead-ness. She gave me the imperious look she’d given me a million times in my life, and even though my throat tightened and my gag reflex was on high alert, I felt my fingers wrapping around Shanna’s shins, careful to touch only the fabric, not her skin, and lift.

  She was stiff. Her limbs remained bent and twisted, but she didn’t droop or sag, and even through the fabric, I could feel how cold she was. How not-recently-dead she was.

  “When did this happen?” I asked, already breathing hard as we trudged toward the mouth of the trail. What we were going to do if we happened upon a stray hiker, I didn’t know.

  “When I called you,” Becca said. I watched her face, but it remained neutral. If anything, she looked merely determined, and we shifted so we walked on opposite sides of the overgrown path, shuffling our feet in time.

  “Half an hour ago?”

  “About that.”

  “Where—”

  “Jesus, Carrie. I don’t want to relive it.” She said it as though she were the one having the worst afternoon of her life.

  “Well, aren’t people going to wonder—” I began, stopping when she gave me a warning look. There wasn’t a soul in town who didn’t know that look. I’m pretty sure birds have fallen out of the sky after that look.

  “Of course they’re going to wonder,” she said, like she was speaking to a toddler. “And they’ll just have to wonder because they’re never going to find her, are they?”

  “I don’t—” I stumbled over an exposed root, its gnarled fingers looking too much like a hand crawling out of the dirt. “I don’t know. Where are we going?”

  “Not far. You didn’t bring your phone, did you?”

  “No. Did you?”

  “Of course not. Have you ever seen a movie? The police trace your phone, and then you get caught.”

  “You thought about that?”

  She cocked her head, eyeing me patiently. “I thought about you,” she said, with emphasis. “That’s why I told you not to bring your phone. To help you.”

  I might have been weak enough to help Becca, but I wasn’t stupid enough to believe her. Or argue with her. “Okay.”

  She either bought the lie or decided to accept it, and we walked the next fifteen minutes in silence, our footsteps and my gasping breaths the only sounds as we made the steep climb. I was sweating profusely when we finally stopped at an indiscernible spot on the path, lined by trees on both sides.

  “That way,” Becca said, nodding toward the trees at my back.

  I glanced over my shoulder. “Where?”

  “Just go in. Maybe ten, twenty feet. Watch your step.”

  She didn’t give me a choice, just nudged me with Shanna’s stiff body, my sweaty left hand slipping in its glove and sliding up to her knee, hard as a rock beneath my palm. I gagged and recoiled, nearly dropping her corpse, muttering to myself as I regained my footing and backed warily into the woods. It was much cooler in there, and even quieter than the trail, nature absorbing our sounds, obscuring our sins.

  “Just a little farther,” Becca said. “Keep an eye out.”

  “For what?”

  I yelped as the forest abruptly ended and a sheer cliff began. There was no warning. Just a wall of trees, slightly thinner than the rest, and then blue sky and the wide, terrifying expanse of the gully below.

  “That.”

  Unceremoniously, Becca dropped Shanna, who crashed onto the pine-needle carpet, and I squawked and dropped her, too, debris scattering over my shoes. Even through the garden gloves, my hands left sweaty prints on her pants, and as I bent over and heaved for breath or mercy or anything, sweat dripped off my forehead and onto her leg.

  “How did—how did you know this was here?”

  Becca shifted, and I backed away instinctively, two steps from the cliff, one arm wrapping around a tree. Her mouth quirked, and she gazed out over the emptiness, her toes right at the edge as she peered down. From my position, I guessed it was about a hundred yards to the bottom, and it didn’t take much to assume that was where Shanna was going. It would explain her battered face far better than Becca’s hit-and-run “misunderstanding.”

  Becca shrugged. “I just do. Any last words for Shanna?”

  I faltered. “Ah, I—”

  She laughed. “Just kidding. Bye, bitch.” Then she crouched down and hoisted Shanna’s body over the edge.

  Just like that. One second alive, one second dead, one second gone.

  I knew I shouldn’t, but I dropped to my knees and watched, seeing something white bounce off the ridge of the cliff, spiraling into the green growth below, then disappearing from sight.

  Slowly, I raised my eyes to Becca’s.

  She gazed down at me, her expression open, expectant.

  “You shouldn’t have sweated all over her,” she said.

  I blinked. “What?”

  She pulled off her gardening gloves and shook them out, looking for all the world as though she’d just finished pruning a rosebush. She didn’t have a drop of sweat or dirt on her.

  “You shouldn’t have sweated so much,” she repeated. “I gave you gloves so you wouldn’t leave DNA behind, but you just sweated all over her. You’d better hope they never find her body.”
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  My jaw dropped, like a door easing open, reality easing in. “DNA—” I began, then closed my mouth. I’d been thinking about Becca and Shanna, but nowhere in the scenario had I thought about myself. “But you—your DNA—”

  Becca shrugged. “Yeah, but we worked together. I lent her my shirt. It would make sense for my DNA to be on her. But you? You didn’t even know her.”

  “They can’t—”

  “You probably got hair on her, too. You’re always shedding like a dog. And if they ask people about who had issues with her, someone’s going to remember how you practically stalked her in high school because she dated that loser you liked, then you slashed her tires.”

  I pulled myself to my feet, sparing half a second to fret over my frizzy brown curls. “I didn’t slash—”

  “Don’t worry, Carrie. I would never tell on you.”

  “You’re the one who—”

  “And even if they do find her body—if they trace it back to the day she went missing, and if somebody did suspect you, or if you did get arrested, I mean, technically you’re seventeen, right? A minor?”

  Her voice rose slightly at the end of each sentence, but they weren’t questions. They weren’t things occurring to her on the spur of the moment. Just like she hadn’t called me immediately after she killed Shanna. Or replaced her bumper. Or bought the gloves. I was her fall guy. Her sister.

  “Anyway,” Becca said brightly, “we’d better get back before it gets dark out. Who knows what’s hiding in the woods?”

  I was trembling so violently I could barely walk, my teeth chattering, skin clammy. All the sweat had dried, leaving my skin crusty and itchy and somehow cold. Like the realization that my sister was a murderer wasn’t enough, but she had implicated me in it, too. For no reason other than the fact that she could. She had chosen to beckon me into her twisted web, and I had been foolish enough to come.

  She sighed sympathetically when we found the trail and reached out to tuck my hair behind my cheek. “C’mon, Carrie. Don’t be weird. It happened, and now it’s over. Mom and Dad will never know. We’re family, and we always have each other’s backs.”

  But reality was setting in too quickly, and the fact that my whole life had just changed was more than my brain was willing or able to handle. My sister was a murderer. And I was an accomplice. I could still go to the police. I could tell them everything. They could probably find the car wash and the body shop where she had the bumper fixed, maybe get video of Becca buying the garden gloves.

  But they could also ask people about my history with Shanna, the classmates who’d called me a psycho, and review the records from the interview when I’d been questioned about slashing her tires, a mystery that had gone unsolved until just now. If history tells me anything, it’s that Becca will win this war, the way she wins everything else.

  “Carrie?” Becca prompted, tipping up my chin with the side of her finger. “Don’t panic. It’ll be all right. They won’t find her. I promise.”

  “How—how do you—you know?” I stammered.

  “Because they never found Missy,” she said simply. “And Shanna was skimming from the register and probably took off for Mexico. So there’s no reason for anyone to search, is there?”

  It was a force of will to meet her eye and shake my head, the gesture leaden and complicit.

  Becca beamed at me. “You’re the best, Carrie. I knew I could trust you. And you can always trust me, too. Now let’s go get something to eat. All this fresh air has made me hungry.”

  * * *

  Kilduff Park is the largest green space in the town of Brampton, Maine, with nearly two square miles of flat, forested land. There are areas designated for visitors, parks and playgrounds, and trails and lakes, but for the most part it’s wild, sprawling forest. In the summer, it bustles with tourists and locals, everyone coming out to enjoy afternoon picnics and sunbathing. But tonight, Friday, October 27, at shortly after six, it’s pitch black and a cold wind snaps through the trees, rattling bare branches like a menace.

  I can see Becca’s car in the corner of the lot. It’s a black sedan with a rabbit’s foot hanging from the rearview mirror, and she’s had it for ten months. Because of her hobby, she trades in her cars almost yearly, always choosing something bland and generic and distinctly forgettable. I once asked where she took the cars she traded in, the ones with smashed front ends and blood and bone buried in the cracks, but Becca just gave me a look. Psychos like Becca have friends in low places. I don’t know what she does to repay them, and I imagine that’s best for everyone.

  The car looks lonely with the engine off, the windows already beginning to frost. Becca must have gotten a head start. I park a few spaces down, leaving the car idling as I zip my coat and yank on a wool hat, mustering up my nerve. It’s been ten years since we carried Shanna’s body into the woods, ten years since anybody’s seen a trace of her. And since then I have helped Becca hide eleven bodies, all of whom had a misunderstanding with the front of her car.

  Tonight is lucky thirteen.

  I shiver again, and not just from the cold. Taped to the lamppost, framed neatly by my headlights, is a handmade poster about a missing girl named Fiona McBride. I’ve seen the signs around town for the past week, an uncomfortable itch starting between my shoulder blades and quickly spreading. I’ve read the posters, memorized them. Seventeen years old, red hair, blue eyes, average height and build. Last seen wearing a pink hoodie and jeans.

  Odds are good I know whose body I’ll be burying tonight.

  With the exception of Shanna, I haven’t known any of Becca’s victims. Sometimes because they’re random strangers, sometimes because a meeting with Becca’s bumper batters their face so far beyond recognition that not even their family would be able to identify them.

  I force myself out of the car, wincing at the brittle cold. Almost instantly, the tip of my nose is numb, and my eyes are watering, tears freezing at the corners. I hunch into my coat and yank my hat down farther over my ears, following the narrow footpath that leads into the trees. This isn’t one of the main trails that wind through the forest, past pretty points of interest. This lightly worn strip of grass is the route people take when they want to avoid those points of interest. The ones who venture this way are selling drugs or sex, people I’d generally steer clear of. But entering the woods and worrying I might stumble across a drug deal is like jumping into a polar bear pen at the zoo and worrying the water will be cold. I know there are worse things out here.

  And she’s waiting for me.

  I keep my head ducked as I hustle toward the tree line about twenty yards away. In the fading light from the parking lot lamps, I can see flattened strands of grass where something heavy has been dragged into the woods, like prey being pulled into the predator’s lair. I shudder, picturing the girl from the poster. Most of the time I don’t know who Becca has killed, and I don’t ask. It’s different when you can put a name to the pale, blank face.

  “It’s about time.”

  I nearly jump out of my skin when Becca speaks. She lurks just inside the deepest shadows, her black coat, jeans, and hat making her nearly invisible. All of a sudden, it feels like the modicum of safety provided by the lights from the parking lot is gone, leaving the world a nasty cocoon of Becca’s making.

  “I came as fast as I could.”

  “Well, I’m freezing. Let’s go.”

  Even now, a decade later, Becca is the same blond, beautiful psychopath she always was. She crouches in front of a rolled-up carpet and wraps her hands around the end. Since Shanna, she’s refined her body disposal methods, and this rug is her favorite choice. She keeps it in her trunk for such occasions, transferring it from vehicle to vehicle as she trades in her cars. Never before has a six-by-eight-foot piece of wool and cotton been so ominous; I can’t see the floral pattern without wanting to gag. Becca thinks it’s funny.

  Unlike my first time, I don’t dawdle. I don’t protest or ask questions. I just scoop up my end�
��the feet, always the feet, now—and straighten. Becca walks quickly, our routine well established. She leads; I follow. She kills; I don’t. She feels no remorse; I do. But Becca doesn’t care about my feelings, because she doesn’t care about anybody. She made that clear the few times I tried to protest or tell her I couldn’t move a body. All they have to do is find Shanna, she’d remind me. Or maybe they don’t have to look for Shanna after all. What if somebody else went missing? What she was really asking was, What if that somebody was Graham? She knows where he works. Where he lives. It was my boyfriend Alister before Graham, and Jackson before him. It was my occasional friend, my neighbors, anybody I dared care about. So I help move nameless strangers instead of my friends.

  The body is light, and the rug is wrapped tightly, molding easily to the slim figure inside. I can feel stiff legs beneath my hands, make out the bump of an ankle bone. The body is female. I don’t think Becca has ever killed anyone this young before, but I can’t rule it out completely. I only know about the bodies she asks me to help hide.

  Becca moves through the trees like a panther, navigating her way in the dark with ease. I follow because I have no choice, the white puffs of her breath like unwelcome smoke signals in the night. We don’t hide bodies in the same places. I’m not sure how Becca chooses her sites, and I don’t care. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to be more complicit than I am, if that’s even possible at this point.

  Right now I know the location of thirteen bodies, have the solution to thirteen families’ heartbreak. Answers to the questions that will haunt them until they die. And I say nothing. Not even a whisper. I wouldn’t dare.

  After we hid Shanna, Becca started leaving something behind with each body to tie me to the death. Maybe a tissue or a few strands of hair; once she told me she put my phone number in somebody’s pocket. I can’t implicate Becca without implicating myself, and I’m still too selfish to take those last steps.

  I wonder how she met Fiona. What Fiona did to make her angry. Sometimes she talks while we hide the bodies, telling me why she did what she did. They cut her off in traffic. Made a rude comment when passing her on the sidewalk. Talked too loudly at the movies. It’s impossible to predict what’s going to set Becca off, and it’s pointless. The only guarantee is that it’s inevitable.