Page 37 of Juniper Bean Resorts to Murder

“But wouldn’t the sheriff call us for more information if someone had reported her missing?” I say anxiously. “He would, wouldn’t he?” I check my phone; no missed calls. Sheriff Garrity doesn’t have my number anyway.

“Probably?” Aiden says. “I haven’t heard from him, though.” Then he speaks again. “Why didn’t you tell your brother about what we saw?” he says. There’s nothing accusatory about it; he just sounds mildly curious.

“What, the body? That would freak them out to no end,” I say when Aiden nods. “They’d get here so fast your head would spin, and then they’d move in and start living on your couch.” I stare vaguely out the window, my eyes losing focus as my mind churns.

My mother. Her friends. The dead girl in the woods.

“You know what’s interesting,” I say slowly. There’s a bird outside the window, perching on one of the white fence posts. He’s completely black except for two spots of color, sunshine yellow and brilliant red. “We get so disturbed by excessive gore in movies and all that, but when it comes down to it…” I pull my eyes away from the bird, looking down at my hand. I hold it up to the light, flexing it, stretching my fingers, closing my fist. “When it comes down to it, we’re all just bags of blood and bone.” I turn my eyes to Aiden, letting my hand drop back into my lap. “The world is populated by people full of blood and plasma and all sorts of fluids. That’s all the human body is. A sack of squishy parts and bony parts, all self-governed by an organ that just makes things up as it goes along. Isn’t that strange?”

For a second he simply looks at me, his face impassive. Then, slowly, he nods. “Yes,” he says. “I guess it is.”

Something about his expression—or lack thereof—has me backpedaling. “Sorry,” I say, forcing a laugh. “Guess that got pretty dark, huh?” Ugh. This always happens. I always open my mouth, something weird pops out, and whoever’s nearby gets scared away.

To my immense surprise, though, Aiden just shrugs. “Not really,” he says. “Even so…” He gets to his feet, yearbook in hand, and heads in the direction of his bedroom. But as he passes me, he looks down. Then, in a voice so matter-of-fact it can only be the truth, he says one thing: “I’m not afraid of the dark.”

* * *

I spendthe evening holed up in my loft bedroom, writing. Now that I know how my murderer would carry the body, I can move forward in this opening scene. Every now and then I hear the bass from the TV downstairs bleeding up through the floorboards, vibrating through the room. You’d think that on a Sunday evening Aiden would be watching some cool action movie, especially with sound effects like that, but he’s not; I know because I stuck my head down about an hour ago to find him immersed in a documentary about the French Revolution.

I smile, my fingers pausing in the middle of typing. Aiden is a strange one. But I bet he wouldn’t run away from me even when he saw how my main characters kept killing each other. It’s like he said—he’s not afraid of the dark.

And there’s a little bit of darkness in all of us. I’m convinced that’s true. We couldn’t shine so brightly as human beings if we never knew the shadows. As a child I never realized that my home life wasn’t normal; I never realized that my mother was only minimally functional. It wasn’t until I got older that those things occurred to me. But just because I didn’t know, just because it seemed perfectly fine to me, doesn’t mean I wasn’t deeply affected by the way I was raised. My upbringing helped shape who I am—dark, light, and everything in between.

Theclack-clack-clackof my typing resumes for a moment, but then it stops again. No matter how much I try to focus, my mind keeps wandering away to other things. Or, rather, one other thing.

The Elites.

I sigh, leaning back in my desk chair and staring at the sloped ceiling. I’ve never heard of a group of friends naming themselves something as ridiculous asElitesin real life. That’s the kind of thing that happens in high school rom coms from the nineties. The clique of popular girls with the impossibly thin eyebrows and butterfly clips in their hair might have a name like that.

But a group of kids in Autumn Grove, Idaho?

Of course, whatever else my mom was, she was beautiful. There’s no denying that. She had this beautiful, naturally blonde hair, for one. It was the kind of hair people pay a lot of money to replicate. But she also had blue eyes, delicate features, and a slim figure. She would never talk about her high school days, but I have no doubt she was popular. She probably had the whole world at her feet.

Until I came along, the plus-one she never meant to bring.

But I’m here. I’m alive. And I’m going to do great things in this life of mine. I don’t need to leave a huge legacy; I don’t need to change the world. But I’m going to make my little corner of life a really excellent corner.

I stand up suddenly, almost without realizing it, banging my head on the ceiling in the process. My desk is tucked into one corner of the small loft bedroom, and while I can sit and stand easily enough, I do have to be careful to duck.

“Ouch,” I mutter, rubbing the top of my head. I glare at the sloped ceiling. “Rude.” I glance down at my outfit to double check that I’m okay to be seen by Aiden; everything looks fine. I even turned my shirt right side out earlier. Then I spin on my heel and make my way downstairs, my feet thudding heavily on the steps. There’s a strange sense of urgency carrying me, pulling me forward, and I almost trip in my haste. When I reach the living room—where Aiden is now sprawled on the couch, reading a book—I’m out of breath, dragging in the oxygen like I’m drowning.

“Hey,” I say, panting.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Aiden moves his book away from his face and tilts his head toward me.

And look—I’m only going to say this once. No man has a right to lookthatgood in sweatpants and a t-shirt, okay? When I lounge on the couch, I look like a sloppy starfish. Spread eagle, inelegant, unladylike bordering on indecent. Ibecomepart of that couch.

But Aiden just looks like he’s modeling for any number of companies. The sweatpants industry could use him for sure, as could the publishing industry, and the furniture industry may as well just hire him now and then keep him on retainer.

Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

“Can I help you?” he says, cocking one eyebrow at me. He looks faintly amused, like maybe he’s noticed me checking him out.

Whatever. I will not be ashamed.

“Yes,” I say. I hurry over, my sock-clad feet slipping across the wood floor, and sit on the couch next to where he’s lying.

“Make yourself comfortable,” he mutters, scooting further into the couch so that I have more room.

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