The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle by Jennifer McMahon

double life, the friendship no one knew about.
    “Whaddaya mean, you guess so? Goddamn, hippies are worse than people say. You got a girl named after a she-deer who maybe is and maybe isn’t married to the guy who maybe is and maybe isn’t her baby’s father, and a guy named after a droopy moose who makes jewelry out of sticks and stones. My best friend’s living in a goddamned for-real Indian tepee, and people are baking bread inside a mound of dirt. What the hell, Kate? What the hell kinda place is that?” Del’s eyes were wide with wonder and I felt truly elated. I saw for the first time that I was interesting to her—that it wasn’t just the other way around. And she’d called me her best friend. After only a few weeks of really knowing each other, I had become best friends with the Potato Girl.
    School would be letting out in another month or so, and already I was imagining a summer spent in the fields, root cellar, and leaning cabin. Del might let me ride her pony. Maybe I’d meet the person who gave her the tattoo. I’d keep her entertained by telling wild stories about New Hope. I’d take her spying. Maybe show her Doe breast-feeding Raven right on the porch of the big barn. Bring her pieces of Lazy Elk’s jewelry and sing Zack’s songs about revolution. She’d call me Desert Rose and teach me to blow smoke rings. I’d perfect my aim with Nicky’s BB gun and learn to throw the knife with the plastic bone handle into the dart board on the wall. And maybe, just maybe, Nicky would ask me to be his girlfriend and tell me what his big secret was, and once I’d heard it, it wouldn’t be so bad. It would just make me like him more.
    “Race you to the pigs,” Del called out, pulling me out of my daydreams. She’d already started running. “Catch me if you can!”
    And I took off running, but as always, she got there first. I never could catch her.

6
November 10–13, 2002
    M AGPIE DISAPPEARED MY THIRD DAY BACK . The cat had been the one constant in my mother’s life—she never forgot Magpie’s name and never failed to be soothed by her mere presence, even at her most agitated.
    We looked all through the house, then walked around New Hope calling her name in high, pleading voices. We searched the big barn, where Gabriel joined us, pushing aside old furniture thick with dust and cobwebs.
    “How’s Opal doing?” I asked him.
    “Holding her own I guess. Raven says she’s not sleeping well. Nightmares. She’s made an appointment with a child psychiatrist.”
    I nodded. “That sounds like the best thing. She went through a hell of shock.”
    “Maybe you should talk to her,” Gabriel said. “You went through a similar thing with the Griswold girl, didn’t you?”
    I shook my head. “It wasn’t the same. We weren’t very close.”
    He looked at me like he knew I was lying. Good old Gabriel still had the ability to see right into your soul.

    W HAT I NEGLECTED TO TELL Gabriel was that I’d already tried to talk to Opal, the morning after the murder. I went over to the big barn with my mother after our pancakes and heard all the gory details about the murder from Raven. Opal staggered out of her room and joined us at the table.
    “You should sleep, sweetie,” Raven said.
    “I can’t,” Opal said. Then she turned to me and asked, without missing a beat, “Do you believe in the Potato Girl?”
    Raven drew in a breath. My mother let out a soft chuckle.
    “I don’t believe in ghosts,” I told her. “Del Griswold was a girl made of flesh and blood, the same as you and I.”
    “So you don’t believe people can come back? Once they’re dead, I mean.”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “What if I told you I’ve seen her?” Opal’s eyes were desperate.
    “Sweetie, I thought we were through with this,” Raven said.
    Opal ignored her and kept staring at me, waiting for an answer.
    “If you told me you’d seen her, I’d take you seriously,” I said, answering as carefully as I could.
    Opal