April Henry - The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die

I answer Ty’s question with a question. “You know I didn’t kill him, right?”

He blows air through pursed lips. “Awfully convenient, a camera that panned away at just the right moment.”

“What do you mean?” My mind whirls. “Do you think they planned the whole thing in advance?”

“I don’t see how they could do that.” His brow furrows as he turns it over. “They couldn’t have known which way you would drive after you left the cabin. But they had—what?—at least a couple of hours before Dillow’s body was found. They must have altered the footage. Taken out the part that showed you running away.”

“Why didn’t they just add the sound of the gunshot when I was pointing the gun at him?”

“Because it would have needed to be more than just the sound. The gun would have kicked, there would have been a puff of smoke.”

I realize Ty is saying these things because he knows. He sees the way I’m looking at him and shrugs. “My mom’s boyfriend used to take me out in the forest to shoot handguns. He made fun of me because they scared me.”

I’m starting to get an idea about why Ty ended up living on the street.

I look at the article again. “I’ve spent the last day thinking my name’s Katie when it’s really”—I lower my voice further—“Cady. Cadence.”

“Cadence,” Ty repeats softly. “I like it. It’s different. I wonder why your parents chose it. Was it because they liked music or poetry or…”

Right now, I wouldn’t care if they had named me after their favorite brand of paper towels. Just as long as I could find them. “And where are they anyway?” I interrupt him. “This article is hinting I did something to them.”

“‘Signs of a struggle’ covers a lot of ground.”

“None of it any good.” My stomach churns.

“If something really bad happened to your family, it seems like they would have found them by now.” He pats my hand. “The fact that they weren’t there is a good sign.”

“Yeah, but if they’re not at our house, and they weren’t in the cabin, where are they? They’re probably dead.”

“Don’t go there,” he says. “Not when you don’t have to.” His eyes are kind. Kind and sad. He sits back and thinks for a moment. “At least Cady isn’t as common as Katie. Let’s see if you have a Facebook page.” He types in my name. Cadence Scott. There are a half dozen results, but only one with a picture of me.

He clicks.

“I’m female,” I joke, looking at the screen. “That’s a relief.” The profile picture Facebook has is the same one the TV station used. Maybe that’s where they got it.

Then Ty scrolls down to look at my timeline. He sucks in his breath. I lean forward to look at my status updates for the past few weeks—my messages to the world.

TUESDAY

Please don’t hate me. It was all a mistake. I didn’t mean to.

OCTOBER 11

I’ve made so many mistakes in my excuse for a life that I’m not sure I can make up for them.

OCTOBER 8

I feel buried alive.

OCTOBER 4

Would anybody care if I died?

SEPTEMBER 30

I’m sick of trying.

SEPTEMBER 17

I can’t ever make anyone happy!! What’s the point of even trying anymore??

SEPTEMBER 2

Nothing to gain, hollow and alone, and the fault is my own.

AUGUST 20

I feel like I’m stuck in a hole and can’t dig out.

My stomach rises and presses against the bottom of my throat as I reread the time on the most recent entry. It was posted less than an hour after Officer Dillow was shot.

I must really have done it.

Even if I don’t remember doing it.

My nose burns. The inside of my head fills with liquid, tears ready to fall at a single blink. But crying won’t help me.

“I did it,” I whisper. “I really did it.”

Ty’s eyes go wide. “You remember doing it?”

“No. But look at the time I wrote that. That’s right after he was shot.” I start hitting the top of my head with open hands. “My memory must be all full of holes. Or making up things that aren’t true.”

He grabs my wrists. “Stop that,” he hisses, then lets go when he sees an old woman with hair as brown and fake as a doll’s looking at us. “Anything that happens with me you know is true because I was there, too. I was there when the men came to McDonald’s last night. I was there when the men came to my apartment this morning. For some reason, people are looking for you. And they were looking for you before that security guard’s body was even found.”

“What about all those things I put up on Facebook?” I look at my posts again, each one more crazy than the one before. “I sound like I belong in Sagebrush. I sound like the kind of girl who would do something as messed up as pulling out her own fingernails.”

But Ty isn’t really listening. Instead he’s clicking back and forth on my profile. His eyes narrow. “Why do you have so much visible?”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at anybody else’s profile. Like, let’s find a Katie Scott like I thought your name was.” With a few quick clicks, we’re on the main page for some girl with pink hair and black plugs in her earlobes. Where my page is filled with stuff, hers just says, “Katie only shares some information publicly. If you know Katie, send her a friend request.”

“See,” Ty says. “With most people, you have to be friends with them to get access to more than a few things.” He clicks the back button to get to my page. “Everything here”—he sweeps his hand past the screen—“anyone can see. There are zero privacy settings.”

“Maybe I wanted the world to see.” A guy with a bushy black beard looks over at me, and I lower my voice. Right now, the last thing I need to do is attract attention. “Maybe it was like a cry for help.”

“Or maybe someone else wanted to make sure it got seen.” Ty clicks around. “You don’t have any photo albums. Your profile picture is the same one all those men were using. All the music you like, the TV shows you watch—they’re the most popular. The most common.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m average.” I sniff back my tears. “Maybe it’s because I’m like everyone else.”

Ty rolls his eyes. “I may not know you very well, but I’ll tell you one thing: You aren’t like anyone else.”

For a minute, he is quiet, just clicking on my posts, one after another. There are dozens of comments under each one, plus a lot of “like”s. It’s hard to imagine that anyone would “like” these sad little sentence fragments that sound nearly suicidal.

It turns out he’s not looking at the words in the comments, just the times they were posted. He taps on the screen. “It’s the same for all of these. See, this one you supposedly wrote two months ago. But the comments—the comments are all from today. From when your name started being out in the news.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying someone went to the trouble to make you look crazy. I’ll bet you have a real, normal Facebook page, but someone deleted it or altered it. Then they put up fake posts that make people think you’ve been having trouble for months. But I think that no matter what date they have on them, they haven’t been there long. They might have been able to manipulate the contents of your page, but not the dates on other people’s comments.” His mouth tightens. “Somebody’s trying to frame you.”

“Whatever we do, we need wheels,” Ty says. “Once we leave we can’t count on being able to outrun the cops and the bad guys on skateboards.”