Second Nature by Ae Watson Page B

it?”
    “I did, but I thought she
was just trying to rile up Ash.”
    “No.” That made me
chuckle, but I pointed at the single dresser in the room. “That's where she
kept her love letters and other things.”
    “Love letters?”
    “Of course.” I rolled my
eyes and walked there, pulling the drawers open. I lifted out a bound book with
a lock on it, holding it together.
    “Where’s the key?” I
rifled through the pages. “She always kept it in here, assuming people would
think the key was somewhere cryptic.”
    “Just pry it open. She
isn’t going to know now.”
    I looked down at the
bound book I had seen her open so many times and remembered perfectly how her
eyes would light up with mischief from the knowledge she knew something we
didn't. I swallowed hard and passed him the book. “You do it.”
    He snapped the lock with
almost no effort, tearing the binding and carrying it into the other room where
he could turn on the flashlight again.
    I rifled through the
objects she had collected, remembering each one she had showed me. A lock of
hair from the first time she and Ashton kissed. She had cut some of his and
some of hers and braided them together.
    A rubber band that had
been wrapped around a bouquet of flowers Ashton had sent to her when we were in
New York shopping with our mothers.
    Each thing had been
flaunted, rubbed in my face a little even. At first I imagined she didn't know,
but after a while I noticed she only did it to me. The fact she knew about my
memory made it all worse, knowing she didn't care that I would relive a memory
from each item over and over. She knew I would suffer, and now I saw that she
wanted that for me.
    And yet, the image of her
broke body broke my heart, even after all the cruelty I had endured.
    She was
so mean to Lindsey , it was cruel . She always said
Lindsey would be the last to get laid in our grad class. But that was going to
be me.
    I was always second on
the list. She would be mean to me and then crazy nice .
High and low, give and take. It was horrible.
    I was the one who would
disappoint my entire family. She told me that when she was angry—that I
was the punishment my mother received for being such a bitch.
    I didn't miss Rachel.
    Not even a little.
    But I would solve her
murder and protect my real friends from the wake of hate she had created.
    Closing the drawer, I got
up and walked to where Vincent was on the bed, ensuring I closed the bookcase
so the light wouldn't give us away.
    Before I even got to the
bed, he lifted up a ransom note. It was one exactly like the ones he had
received, a ransom note printed in a kidnapper font and not cut-up letters.
“She had them too.”
    “What does it say?”
    My heart was beating so
fast I had to sit on the bed next to him as he read it aloud.
    “Wine and dine and
sixty-nine. But not your boyfriend, instead take mine?” He flipped the paper
over and scowled. “What the hell does that mean?”
    “Clearly the first part
is obvious, and the second part means someone else went on the date with Rach,
maybe being forced. Someone who wasn't single.”
    He lowered the paper and
continued to rifle the book. “There’s another. It says, ‘7:00 at the docks and
don't forget my cash.’”
    “She met someone at the
docks, someone who was taking her on a date.” The pieces didn't add up in my
head. “So maybe the girl in Sierra’s dress, the blonde who tried to drug us, is
the one who sent these.”
    He paused his page
flipping and flashed the book at me. I winced at the photos of Rachel in her
bathing suit. She had on bright thick makeup, enough that I hardly recognized
her. And heels so high and cheap she wouldn’t have been able to walk. She was
posing in obscene ways, making me uncomfortable to be seeing them in the dark
with Vincent. Or at all.
    The skimpy bathing suit
barely covered her; especially the one photo where she was looking up at the
camera and the red lipstick was smeared across her cheek. The look