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Lindsay Jones was going to kill someone. She didn’t care that it was prom night. What she cared about was that some skank on the junior varsity cheerleading squad had just posted an Instagram live story gushing about how Lindsay’s boyfriend, Brody Ford, had promised to meet up with her at a hotel after prom. Except that one of the girl’s followers on Insta had told Lindsay’s best friend about the whole thing.
Now Lindsay stood in the girls’ restroom just outside of Denton East High School’s auditorium waiting for her best friend, who had promised to get a copy of the video. She checked her make-up in the mirror, leaning over the sink and using one of her long nails to scoop out a glob of mascara that was lodged in the corner of her eye. She patted down her long blonde hair, which her mother had spent over a hundred dollars to have blown out that day, and studied her dress. It was all slits and deep cuts in an elegant black that accentuated both her bony parts and her curves. Why Brody wasn’t satisfied with this, Lindsay would never understand.
She had noticed him flirting with other girls from time to time: in the halls at school before homeroom and sometimes at football games, but he’d sworn to her that he hadn’t done anything with any other girls. They were going to graduate from high school in less than two months. Then they were supposed to spend the summer traveling together before they went to separate colleges.
Lindsay wasn’t about to let some thirsty junior ruin her senior year.
The door to the bathroom banged open, letting in a blast of music and flickering colored lights. The auditorium was crammed with people dancing in the semi-darkness. Wearing a short, strapless blue dress covered in sequins, Lindsay’s best friend, Deborah Hart, strode over and handed Lindsay a phone. A sheen of sweat covered her round face and her chest heaved. “That’s Mary Jo Chachakis’s phone. She screen-recorded the Insta live video. We should be able to watch it.”
Lindsay beckoned Deborah closer and the two watched the video twice. It was exactly as bad as Lindsay expected. Tears stung the backs of her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. Deborah stared at her with a sympathy so saccharine it made Lindsay’s stomach turn. Lindsay thrust the screen into Deborah’s face. “Where is she?”
Deborah blinked and stared at Lindsay.
Lindsay rolled her eyes. Sighing, she said, “What?”
“Don’t you think that Brody is the one you should be confronting? I mean, like, you can go off on this junior, but that’s not going to stop him from trying to get with other girls.”
Lindsay hated admitting that Deborah was right. That was not the dynamic of their friendship. Lindsay was the alpha and Deborah followed. But Deborah had a point. “Fine,” Lindsay sighed. “First we find Brody, then we find this girl.”
It took fifteen minutes of weaving through packed bodies on the dance floor and shouted conversations with a dozen people to find out that Brody had gone outside to smoke. As Lindsay left the auditorium and stomped down the hallway toward the front of the building, Deborah hurried to catch up. Her heels clacked against the tile. “Where are you going?” she called.
“To the alcove,” Lindsay said over her shoulder.
“How do you know he’s out there?”
Lindsay stopped walking and turned on Deborah. “Where else would he go to smoke? God!”
A few minutes later, after convincing the faculty stationed at the front entrance that they needed something from Lindsay’s car, they rounded the back of the building. They walked through a grassy area on the east side of the school and through the parking lot used by the custodial staff. Four dumpsters lined the wall to their left. Lindsay stalked past them with Deborah in tow. The alcove was a small outdoor space between two parts of the building that jutted outward. It was a windowless recess that wasn’t quite large enough for a full parking lot. Long before Lindsay was even born, the school had attempted to make it into some kind of outdoor theater with fifteen curved steps that cascaded down toward a basement entrance to the school. At the bottom, next to the basement door, was a small, curved concrete stage. What they hadn’t counted on was that rain, snow, autumn leaves, and trash would gather there far too consistently for it ever to be kept completely clean, much less used.
Not many kids went down into the theater. It was dirty and creepy, and mostly unlit. They usually sat along the wall that separated the theater from the rest of the alcove to engage in activities the school didn’t allow. Only one dim light hung over the entire area. Lindsay’s skin prickled as she and Deborah stepped into the shadows. She felt some of her resolve weaken. She’d been out here plenty of times with Brody during school hours while he smoked. She usually had her vape pen. On occasion, she and Deborah had smoked pot out here. But they’d never been in the alcove at night.
Deborah’s fingers wrapped around Lindsay’s upper arm, pulling her back. “I don’t think he’s out here.”
Lindsay’s eyes searched the darkness ahead. A small orange circle flared in the distance. Lindsay shook Deborah’s hand away and tromped toward it. “He’s here,” she said. “I can see his cigarette.”
As they drew closer, Lindsay’s eyes adjusted. Along the wall sat Brody, cigarette in hand, just as she’d told Deborah. Beside him was his best friend, Mark Severns. Lindsay recognized the profile of his spiky hair even before she heard him laugh and say, “Busted.”
The orange circle flared again, illuminating Brody’s face. “I’m coming back in, babe,” he told her. “I just needed a smoke.”
“Where is she, Brody?” Lindsay demanded.
A light sparked beside Brody. Mark had turned on his phone’s flashlight app. No, Lindsay realized, not the app. He was recording them.
Deborah said, “Turn it off.”
Mark laughed. “No way. Your girl is about to go off, and I’m going to get every second of it.”
Lindsay swallowed and faced Brody, launching into the tirade she’d been preparing in her head since they left the bathroom, not even caring if Mark got it all on camera. Let him record it, she thought. Maybe it was better for every girl at school and on social media to know what a slimeball he was for trying to cheat on her.
She hadn’t even gotten halfway through her rant when Deborah lunged for Mark’s phone. He held onto it, but the tussle knocked him off balance. As he fell backward over the wall, one of his hands grabbed at Brody’s jacket.
“Bruh—” Brody started to say before he, too, tumbled off the wall and into the blackness of the theater below.
“Oh my God,” Lindsay shrieked. She ran along the wall until she found the opening to the theater steps. “Deborah, come on! They could be seriously hurt! Oh my God.”
She fumbled inside her purse for her own phone. Her fingers trembled as she pressed the power button to bring the screen to life. Somewhere behind her, Deborah said, “I can’t see anything!”
Lindsay found the flashlight app and tapped it. She used the beam to pan the area, searching for the boys. But instead, the shaft of light caught something else. Not something, she realized as she carefully made her way down two of the steps toward the stage. Someone. A girl. Sprawled across the stage on her side, one pale cheek resting on her folded arms.
“Lindsay?” Deborah called.
“Damn, man,” Brody said from nearby. “That hurt like hell. Mark, you okay?”
“I’m fine. I just—”
He fell silent as Lindsay took two more steps down toward the stage, her flashlight illuminating the girl more sharply. Her brown hair had been carefully styled into a chunky braid updo with a thin, sparkling headband across the front of her head. Her make-up was perfect. It looked as though she had simply laid down and fallen asleep. Lindsay left the flashlight beam on her face for a long moment. Pressed between her cheek and wrist were the wilted red roses of a corsage. Lindsay felt Brody limp over to her side. “You know her?”
Lindsay shook her head.
Deborah’s voice came from behind them, closer this time. “Who is that?”
Then Mark, drawing up on Lindsay’s other side. “I don’t recognize her.”
“What do we do?” asked Deborah.
Lindsay took one more step, scanning the rest of the girl’s body with the light. A strapless dress clung to her frame. Lindsay recognized the color: champagne. She’d wanted to get a dress that color, but her mom told her she’d look washed out. This girl, with her pale skin and dark hair, wore it perfectly. The bodice was beaded and embroidered with a floral pattern and the skirt was tulle with an unexpected splash of red along the base.
Lindsay realized that the red wasn’t part of the fabric about a second before Deborah started screaming.
