CHAPTER ONE – THE THIRD MURDER

Ten years later …

 

Cassie Alexander slammed the snooze button on her alarm clock for the third time that morning. It was the middle of October and a Monday. Why can’t it be the weekend and summer? An hour or five more in bed would be so good! She thought groggily. It was more than just teenage sluggishness that made her yearn for her bed. Her body ached and she knew when she was fully awake the cycle of inexplicable surges of heat and migraine pain would start again like it had every day for the past week. Sleep was the only time when she didn’t feel sick. Cassie tried to slip back into unconsciousness, but Mew, her black cat, head-bumped her awake.

 

“Let me guess, time to eat?” Cassie asked as she rubbed Mew behind her soft ears.

 

The cat’s back arched and she purred low in her throat. Cassie’s bleary-eyed glance at the clock showed that it was 6:00 a.m. Definitely too early for any civilized person to be up, but she had no choice. High school beckoned; her senior year at Delamere Prep rose up in front of her like some slate gray wall.

 

“You’re hungry, right, Mew? What am I saying? You’re always hungry. Mom not up yet?”

 

Mew slipped off the bed without responding, but Cassie already knew the answer. Her mother, Rachel, drank every night until she was weaving unsteadily up the stairs to her bed to sleep it off. But last night had been extreme even for her. Rachel had double her usual allotment of chardonnay and had slumped unconscious in front of the television. She hadn’t even attempted to eat dinner. That meant it was unlikely she would be going to work today, let alone getting up early to feed Mew. Something had upset her after her trip to town, but she didn’t tell Cassie what happened. And after Rachel took that first drink, Cassie knew better than to ask.

 

Cassie’s toes curled up protectively as her socked feet hit the cold wood floor. Money was tight so they kept the heat down; the temperature in the house was just high enough so that the pipes didn’t freeze.

 

“Must be nice to have a fur coat in this place, huh, Mew?” she asked the cat, but Mew’s sleek black body was already slipping through her half-opened bedroom door.

 

Cassie wrapped her arms around herself as the first swell of sickness hit her. It began as a wave of prickly heat that swam through her veins. Sweat broke out on her lower lip and forehead. At least it makes me warmer, she thought, but then the headache began to throb behind her eyes and any benefits from the warmth were forgotten. She steeled herself against the sickness and forced herself to start her day.

 

The floor creaked as she crossed from her room to the stairs. Her eyes darted towards her mother’s half-open bedroom door. The shades were drawn and it was quiet inside. Looks like she had made it upstairs last night. Not wanting to face her mother’s hangover, Cassie crept down the stairs into the kitchen as silently as she could. Mew was already sitting in front of her empty food bowl expectantly. Cassie fished out an open can of wet cat food from the fridge. She held her breath as she dished it out. The stuff smelt like death, but Mew was crazy about it. Her black head was diving into the bowl before Cassie had withdrawn the spoon.

 

Cassie gave Mew one last stroke before standing up. But as she did the pain from the headache moved like liquid inside her skull, sloshing around and spilling over.  The agony trailed its way down her neck then shoulders then chest. Her stomach knotted up with nausea as the pain splashed through her. The world began to spin. Cassie white-knuckled the kitchen counter to steady herself.

 

You need to go to the doctor! Part of her howled but another part answered, You know we can’t afford it. And it’ll just freak Mom out. Not worth it. Really not worth it. This feeling will stop. It HAS to stop.

 

She shut her eyes tight and counted to ten. The sensation of spinning slowly ceased and she took a deep breath as the agony quieted. Then the anger came as it always did. That things were so bad that a doctor’s visit really was out of the question. That her mother’s drinking made her all but unemployable and her paychecks impossibly small as she missed more and more work from hangovers. That with her parents’ divorce had come a world of financial hurt.

 

But Dad’s not hurting, now is he? No, his life is peachy, while yours and Mom’s sucks, the angry part of her said, but she tried to bat it away. It just hurt her heart and made the flashes of heat stronger when she gave into it. She repeated her mantra: I’m happy he’s happy. I want his life to be good. He’s my dad. I love him. And he loves me … even if he doesn’t show it very often.

 

Her father, James, was long gone to a new family halfway across the country and his child support checks were slow in coming, if they came at all. Cassie tried not to ¸imagine what that money was now being spent on: his new babies. Beautiful, bright twin boys who were nothing like her. They were the product of James’ new marriage to Carolyn Spencer Trist now Carolyn Spencer Trist-Alexander.

 

Carolyn was blonde, athletic and all of twenty-five years old. Cassie thought she looked like a model on the cover of a high-end magazine touting the benefits of healthy, wealthy living. Which Carolyn, James and their two bouncing baby boys did out in Seattle while Rachel and Cassie froze to death in a house that was falling apart in Sanctuary, a small northern suburb of Chicago.

 

As Cassie got out the peanut butter and jelly to make her lunch, her chest ached a little. She felt like James wanted to forget her altogether these days. His phone calls had become even rarer than his checks. When she’d gently mentioned it, he’d sighed and explained that he was busy with work, with his boys, with Carolyn. Surely Cassie understood, didn’t she? Surely she wasn’t so selfish as to expect all of his attention? All of his attention? That’s a joke. Even when he was here, I didn’t get ALL of his attention. Cassie gripped the butter knife too tightly in her hand. She’d stopped bringing up the growing distance between them after that, because answering her father’s questions was more painful than not speaking to him at all.

 

Sometimes to ease the sting, she pretended James wasn’t her real father; that some other man was, someone who loved her more than anything and thought her irreplaceable. The fact that she looked nothing like James helped that fantasy live for her.

 

Cassie had some of her mother’s coloring: very fair, almost creamy skin, which when she blushed, took on the soft pink color of a new peach. This was one of the very few features Cassie thought nice about her physical self. The others were her hair and eyes. Her eyes were the color of topaz or deep amber depending on her mood. Her hair was long and thick, hanging down to the middle of her back, and a dark mahogany color with hints of red. Neither of her parents had hair that color. A throwback, her mother had told her once absently. Still Cassie tugged on the idea that it was yet more proof she was someone else’s child altogether. But it was silly to still be having that dream at 17-years-old. Eighteen in two weeks, Cassie reminded herself. I need to accept reality, which, at this moment, is a freezing house and a crazy cat.

 

She slapped the peanut butter onto bread just heading into the stale category with a heavy hand. The raspberry jelly smeared over it looked like lava. The heat flared again. Cassie flipped on the faucet. She ran her fingers through the stream, concentrating on how cold it felt, until the heat receded back to her belly.

 

Am I going insane? What kind of illness acts like this? Cassie wondered almost helplessly. She had no answers to either one of those questions. She just hoped somehow it would all get worked out on its own.

 

Cassie dried her hand on a towel before she put the two slices of bread together and slipped them into a sandwich baggie. That and some carrot sticks made up lunch. It wasn’t much, but her weight seemed to only want to go up and she was already considered “big” by the sylph-like standards of her high school.

 

More like huge, Cassie thought despondently. Probably should have halved the amount of peanut butter on the sandwich. If only we had turkey that is less fattening -- no! I’m not doing this. I’m not petite, nor delicate, nor slender, but so what? I’m still pretty and intelligent and fun. That’s what matters. It’s got to, because it’s all I have.

 

But though her “logical” mind told her this, she still felt ungainly, lumbering, and simply too large to fit in. The big, quiet girl in the back, yep, that’s me, she thought and tossed the dirty knife into the sink.

 

Mew, having finished the brown gelatinous glop that was the center of her universe, weaved around Cassie’s feet, nearly tripping her as she cleaned up the kitchen. Cassie tried to shove thoughts of her weight, her sickness, her absent real father and dreams of her imaginary one out of her head and start her day fresh. But she knew already that things would not go well no matter what she thought or did. Her days never did when they began like this. But her sense of melancholy was quickly replaced with surprise as she heard the back door’s knob turning.

 

That’s locked, she thought as whipped around to face the door. Cassie shoulders relaxed as she saw her best friend, Kari Mason, fly inside.

 

“Newsflash!” Kari shouted, her strawberry blonde curls bouncing around her pixyish face.

 

“Jesus, Kari, are you trying to give me a heart attack?” Cassie asked, clutching at the front of her sweatshirt, but smiling nonetheless.

 

“Sorry, sorry, I know that loud noises frighten you before nine a.m., but this news just can’t wait. Besides, it’s your fault! You left your door unlocked. If you hadn’t, I would’ve knocked,” Kari said, her lower lip sticking out as she threatened to pout.

 

“But I did lock it.” Cassie frowned as she tried to remember whether she had locked the door last night or if she was mixing up days. She thought she had flipped the deadbolt and even pulled on the door before she went to bed. Maybe her mother had unlocked it later on by accident. Or perhaps like everything else in the house, the lock, too, was falling apart.

 

“Well, it’s open now.” Kari flounced into one of the chairs at the kitchen island, throwing her book bag on top.

 

Cassie’s smile appeared again when she saw the bag. It was covered in glittery stickers and old patches that she and Kari had put there over the years. It was like the history of their friendship had been stitched and stuck onto Kari’s bag. It made Cassie feel happy just to see it. Like no matter what else changed some things remained constant and her and Kari’s friendship was one of those things.

 

“What’s so important that you’re trying to end my life prematurely?” Cassie asked.

 

Kari’s cheerful demeanor suddenly dimmed as she said, “They’ve found another body!”

 

Back

Next