Page 115 of Trapper Road

Beau: Nothing could make me hate you, Juliette. You’re too good of a person.

Juliette: But I’m not!

Beau: Then tell me. Let me prove to you that I love you.

Juliette: You love me?

Beau: I do. I have for a while. I was waiting to tell you because I wanted to say it in person. I wanted to see your face.

Juliette: You want to meet in person?

Beau: Of course! It’s all I think about!

Juliette: I want to meet you too.

Beau: But if you don’t trust me…

Juliette: I do! I swear!

Beau: You sure? Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.

Juliette: Okay, I’ll tell you. My friends… they have a game they like to play where they ruin people’s lives.

Beau: Seriously?

Juliette: I told you it was bad.

Beau: Were you involved?

Juliette: Sometimes. Yeah.

Beau: What sorts of things did you do?

Juliette begins to explain.

I lose all track of time, the horror of what I’m reading causing my blood to run cold. Juliette lays it all out: all of the horrible things she and her friends have done to others. It was a game to them, ruining other people’s lives. There was even a trophy they passed around to mark their conquests: a golden necklace with a charm in the shape of two balancing scales.

I flip back to Juliette’s social media pages and take a closer look. Sure enough, in almost every photo of the three of them, one of the girls is wearing a gold necklace. Usually the charm is tucked beneath their shirt, but in a few it’s visible. It looks like the scales of justice, without the blind woman holding them.

Grabbing a pad of paper from the glove compartment, I start making notes, writing down the dates of each photo and the name of whoever was wearing the necklace.

One date stands out immediately: the date Josiah Parker resigned. Before that date, Willa had been wearing the necklace. Afterward, Juliette began wearing it.

My stomach twists. I shake my head in disbelief. That has to be a coincidence. They can’t be related.

But the evidence doesn’t lie.

Juliette listed all sorts of things they’d done to ruin people’s lives: lied, cheated, stole. They planted evidence in the valedictorian’s locker at school to make it look like he’d cheated on his midterms. He was found guilty of an honor code violation and kicked out of school. A glance at his social media page shows a downhill spiral ever since.

The date he was expelled, the necklace moved from Mandy to Willa.

While babysitting for a neighbor, they left lipstick stains on the collars of one of the husband’s dress shirts and tucked a pair of lacy underwear in his suit pocket. According to the wife’s Facebook page, they were divorced sixth months later. The necklace appeared around Mandy’s neck.

They spiked a popular junior guy’s drink at a party. He totaled his car later that night and was arrested for driving under the influence. The accident caused irreparable damage to his left arm, ruining any hope he had of playing baseball in college. The morning after the accident, Juliette posted a selfie wearing the necklace.

All of these horrible things happening around the three girls, but no reason to ever link them together. No one seemed aware that the baseball player laughed in Juliette’s face when she asked him to the school Sadie Hawkins dance. No one knew about the valedictorian refusing to let Willa copy his homework.

There was absolutely no reason to connect any of it. Unless you were looking. And even then, it feels unreal. I still refuse to believe these girls could be this evil.

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