“CASEY, LOOK,” ZOE SAYS, CLUTCHING MY HAND. It’s lunchtime, and we’re out in front of Hollywood High in the blazing April sunshine, waiting for her mom to drop off Starbucks.
“What?” I ask, confused. “Is your mom here?”
She points at two people sitting on the steps, riveted by something on an iPhone. “They’re watching one of our videos.”
“No way.” What are the odds?
“Look,” she insists, pulling me toward them so we can peek over their shoulders. On the screen, glowing eyes blink twice and vanish into pitch blackness. The camera moves closer, searching for the eyes again. The creature is revealed: a monkey, high in the branches of a tree. A zoo enclosure.
A smooth narrator voice says, “These are capuchins. They’re from Brazil, and they’re endangered.” The camera pans across the exhibit, and more monkeys appear, curled up on branches, clearly having been awakened from a sound sleep.
“Aww, look at the baby monkeys,” coos the girl holding the phone.
I meet Zoe’s eyes. Hers are full of contained glee, and I’m sure mine look the same. It’s the first time we’ve seen people watching our videos in public.
The couple switches to a different clip, the one at an abandoned, burned-down clothing factory in Downtown LA. That was a cool episode; we’d found all the old sewing machines, some of them untouched by fire, collecting dust.
“What’s the name of this channel?” the guy asks.
“We’ll Never Tell,” his girlfriend replies. “I can’t believe they don’t get caught.”
“I bet it’s not that hard to sneak into these places. Come on. The zoo? Some old factory?”
“I’m sure there’s security,” the girl argues. “If it were easy, there wouldn’t be a whole channel about it. Besides, that’s not the point. You and I aren’t going to go break into the zoo in the middle of the night. So they show you. It’s about satisfying people’s curiosity. Seeing something off-limits. You know?”
I meet Zoe’s eyes. She’s wearing hot-pink eyeliner, and when she purses her lips and gives me a mischievous smile, her hazel eyes glow like a cat’s.
A horn honks twice. It’s Zoe’s mom, at the curb in her white Expedition, and we hurry down the steps to meet her. The passenger’s side window opens smoothly, and Zoe reaches in for the drinks. I accept the one offered to me and call, “Thank you, Maria!”
She blows me a kiss, as always looking too beautiful and petite to be driving this behemoth. She was a pageant contestant back in the Philippines, even competing in Miss Universe, until she met Zoe’s dad. “Love you guys,” Maria calls in her always-cheerful singsong voice. “Have a good day! Be safe at work, Casey!”
I smile and wave as she pulls away. “Your mom is seriously the best,” I tell Zoe.
“I know.” She flicks her eyes left and right. “Have you seen Liam?”
The guy she likes. “No,” I reply, sipping my caramel macchiato. “Want me to go find him and tell him you want to have his babies?”
“I’ll kill you in your sleep.”
I grin at her for a minute, feeling a sudden rush of nostalgia for her many crushes over the years and all the times I’ve tormented her about them. Two more months and we’ll be done with high school. Another two months after that, she’ll be gone, off to MIT, as far geographically as a person can be while still in the continental US.
“What?” she asks, noticing my expression. “Tell me.”
I feel suddenly stiff and awkward. “Just thinking about how you’re going to freeze to death in Massachusetts. Do you even own a single coat?”
Her eyes go wide. “That’s a great point, actually. Major fashion opportunities await in the coat department. It’s completely unexplored.”
I bite my tongue. That isn’t what I mean.
She wraps an arm around my neck, and we wander along the sidewalk, killing time until the bell rings. “You excited about the murder house?” she asks.
I brighten, thinking about our next—and last—episode. “I am.”
“A million subscribers. Did you ever imagine we’d get here?”
I make a face. “No.” She knows how I feel about internet fame. Some of our douchiest classmates will talk your face off about their follower counts.
She laughs. “Whatever. We’re legends. People will be watching our channel for years to come.”
“We can never tell anyone,” I remind her.
She rolls her eyes. “Please. I don’t want to lose my spot at MIT because I’m out here doing time. Orange is not the new black.”
I try to imagine what the other programming students at MIT are going to be like. I wish I could see their faces when they meet her. She’s the most vibrant person I know, from her halo of curly, blue-streaked hair to her bright outfits and the eyeshadow that changes daily.
“Casey, Zoe!” We turn toward school. It’s Jacob and Eddie, trotting down the steps. From far away it’s not always easy to tell them apart; both are medium height, slim, with dark hair. As they get closer, their differences are more visible: Jacob is fair-skinned, with shaggy, messy brown hair, freckles, and sharp, pretty features, while Eddie has a tan from hours of playing basketball, shiny black hair cut short, strong, straight brows, and a square jaw. Eddie is hanging back behind Jacob, scowling like they’ve just finished arguing.
Zoe greets them cheerfully. “Hey, losers.”
Jacob grabs the Starbucks cup from my hand and takes a long sip. “Rude,” I say.
Making unwavering eye contact, he licks the lid daintily with the tip of his tongue. He’s such a brat.
His eyes wander down to my clothes. “I’m liking this look,” he tells me, stepping back. “What is this, a vintage bowling shirt?”
I point to the name patch on the left breast pocket. “Look, I’m Marjie.” We share a love of thrifting and have delved into some truly esoteric parts of town looking for deals. In Hollywood and the surrounding areas, thrift stores are as expensive as regular ones, which completely defeats the purpose.
I notice a yellow paper folded in Eddie’s hand. “Is that a tardy slip?” I gasp, stealing it. Sure enough, it says Eddie Yu, 8:55 a.m.
He shoots Jacob a glare. “Not my fault.”
“Ho-ly crap,” Zoe whispers dramatically. “Mark this freaking day. Eddie was late for something.”
Jacob shakes his head, lips pressed together. “Ix-nay, ladies.” Eddie clearly doesn’t think this is funny.
Zoe shoots Jacob a wink and changes the subject.
“We just saw people playing one of our videos. We were standing out here waiting for my mom, and the couple next to us was totally watching that one we did at the zoo.”
Eddie’s scowl has relaxed. “Did you stay cool, or did you give us away?”
Zoe makes a pouty face. “After three years of total secrecy, why does everyone still think I have a big mouth?”
All three of us chorus, “Because you do.”
With her non-Starbucks hand, she starts slapping at us in turn, hitting our arms. There’s a minute where we engage in a four-way play fight, and then Jacob calls a truce so he can finish my coffee in peace.
I take a moment to look at them, really look. Eddie and Jacob, friends since elementary school, have such different personalities, it’s sometimes hard to believe they’re as close as they are. Zoe and me, same thing—no one would match us up on the street, but here we are, best friends since freshman year. We’re definitely not popular, but I like to think we’re a unique little band of misfits: Zoe is a programmer by day, lock picker by night, brilliant and stylish; Eddie is the strong silent type, like someone out of a Calvin Klein ad; Jacob is a hundred percent punk rock, teleported straight from early eighties New York; and I’m… I don’t know. A brunette with bangs and glasses whose entire wardrobe is secondhand. “If your eccentric grandma were young and cute,” Jacob had said in the group chat once, which… thanks?
“This last episode needs to be perfect,” I tell them.
Jacob lifts his stolen drink in a toast. “All good things must come to an end. We’ll Never Tell, you’ve had a sweet ride. Time to go out with a bang.”
Zoe and I make little hooting noises, but Eddie furrows his brow and doesn’t respond. Zoe looks at me quizzically, noticing it, too. Eddie is always quieter than Jacob, whose energy is so unpredictable, he’ll give you whiplash. But Eddie’s quiet is usually calm, not gloomy like this. Can he really be this out of sorts just because Jacob made him late for school?
Jacob forges ahead. “You guys want to have a planning session tomorrow? If we’re doing the murder house this weekend, we need to be tighter than ever.” He grins, his excitement palpable. I think he’s happy we took his suggestion for our last episode. I had wanted to do a different location—the oil rigs in San Pedro, which are terrifying at night—but I’d been unanimously overruled when Jacob had suggested the Valentini murder mansion.
We all agree to meet at Zoe’s. The bell rings, and the guys hurry back toward school. As they walk away, Zoe asks, “Are they in a fight?”
“I don’t know,” I reply, analyzing the back of Eddie’s stiff shoulders. “Something’s definitely off, though.”
The evening bus hosts the usual assortment of people: normies getting off work, homeless folks sleeping, an older woman with a dog in a stroller, and of course the guy selling incense, who you absolutely do not make eye contact with under any circumstances. I have a personal hygiene policy of never sitting down, and I keep my balance with practiced ease, tucked into the little vestibule by the door. I’m tired, having gone straight from school to work at Sunset FroYo, and I reek of sour, melted frozen yogurt from cleaning the machines.
I get off at LaBrea and Franklin, turn right, and trudge uphill; we live near Runyon Canyon, at the base of the Hollywood Hills. Our street is lined with large apartment buildings and is always congested—cars circling endlessly, searching for parking spots they’ll never find.
Our building is one of the older, less-nice ones on this street, but I don’t mind. One thing I’ve learned the hard way—you have to appreciate what you’ve got because things can always get worse, and rent control is as good as it gets. I let myself in the front gate and hurry through the courtyard to our unit on the ground floor. I find Grandma stretching on the carpet in front of the TV. She looks up when I enter. “Hi, baby.” Her smile is weary, all her makeup worn off. She’s pretty, with warm brown eyes and short blond-brown hair. She always seems younger than my friends’ grandparents.
I love the way she smells coming home from the flower shop, like roses and Oasis—the spongy, wet material inside vases—along with a cool refrigerator scent. I have so many memories of helping her on holidays, sticking flowers into Oasis and learning to tie ribbons into fancy bows.
“Hi, Grandma. Tired?” I drop my backpack on the floor by the small dining table and kick my shoes off.
“I’m fine.” She’s lying. Her job has been wearing her down since she turned sixty, but she has no other skills; she’s been doing floral design for forty years.
I wash my hands in the kitchen sink and sit next to her on the carpet. It’s not a big place; the little galley kitchen, dining nook, and living area are all one space, and half the living room is partitioned off with Ikea room dividers to serve as my bedroom.
She wraps an arm around my shoulders and squeezes me affectionately, then examines me, straightening my bangs and smoothing my ponytail. “How was work? School? Friends?”
“All fine. A chill day.”
“You need dinner?” she asks. “I made some chicken soup. A big pot for the week. Oh, and I brought some chocolates home from work.”
I groan at the idea of more sugar. “I had way too much froyo.”
She twists her mouth into a playful grimace and hands me the remote. “Okay, then, I’m heading to bed. When you’re old, eight thirty is the new midnight.”
“You’re up at three to go to the flower market every day,” I point out, turning the TV off. “I’ve got homework anyway.”
She pushes up to a standing position. “I recorded Jeopardy! for you. It’s the college edition. The kid who won was so smart.”
I can’t help but smile. “You know I can just stream it.”
“It’s more fun to watch on the big TV!”
“Thanks, Grandma.” She’s right; it is more fun to rewatch it together. Only a few people know about my secret dream of being on Jeopardy!
She kisses me good night and heads for the bathroom. I can tell that her back hurts from the arch of her spine. Somehow, after high school, I need to figure out how to contribute more to the bills while going to community college. She can’t keep working this much forever.
I heave myself up from the floor, grab my backpack, and push the divider aside to enter my room. It’s just large enough for a twin bed, dresser, and bookshelf, but the way we divided the space means I get both windows. Because I don’t want to get murdered, I never sleep with them open, but I do like to air out my room before bed. I crack the windows now, letting in the cool night air and the smell of fresh weed; someone must be smoking right outside.
My homework’s done, but I still have research to do for Saturday. I pull up my Drive folders of notes and feel a twinge of sadness, scanning through the file names. Each episode we’ve done has its own folder. Our last three years lined up like this makes it all so final. I hover over the folder for the first urban exploration we ever did, titled “CityWalk.” It wasn’t even a real break-in; CityWalk is easy to get into. But we got great footage from inside the neon-lit outdoor mall, and it went viral.
Then there was the gated-off, burned-down fire station in North Hollywood, which got a similar number of views, and the next thing we knew, we were doing one every month or two, thinking bigger and more dangerous with each installment. We’ve broken or snuck into twenty-eight different off-limits places around Los Angeles, giving people behind-the-scenes access to the city in a way I like to think hasn’t been done before, not like this. And now it’s over. Almost.
I switch to an incognito window and log into my secret Notion account. It’s unbelievably organized, dozens of tiles in a perfect grid. Each is titled with the name of a woman. “Lacey Hannity,” “Kaisha Jennings,” and “Melissa Ramirez” are on top, the last few I worked on. Each tile, when clicked, opens up a board dedicated to that woman, a victim of a murder. I’ve collected links and information on each case.
I despise true crime junkies. I’m not satisfying some sick need to obsess over murderers, and I hate the idea of rubbernecking other women’s deaths. It’s just that maybe, someday, I’ll run across a case that reminds me of my mom. Maybe I’ll stumble across her killer. Maybe then we’ll finally have some answers.
My eyes lift of their own volition and land on the photo of my mom and me, hung on the wall facing my bed. We’re smiling; I’m three years old and she’s twenty-five. She has long brown hair and a wide, pretty smile. We were at Griffith Park for a picnic, and the background is emerald green. My soft little arms are wrapped around her neck and we’re cheek-to-cheek, grinning at the camera. I didn’t have glasses yet; my vision started deteriorating when I was nine, one year after she died. I always wonder if the two events were related, like when you hear about someone’s hair turning gray after a war.
I hung this photo above my dresser so she’d always be watching me while I sleep. It’s stupid, I know. But I used to have nightmares of her dead, all bloody and torn like I imagine she ended up. The picture anchors me to her whole self, a reminder that she wouldn’t want me reducing her memory to what she was at the end.
That’s the thing with being the victim of a crime. It collapses an entire life down to its violent conclusion. It’s perverse and wrong that victims are remembered for a crime committed by someone else—in my mom’s case, a complete stranger.
The murder house has a different story, though. The woman there, Rosalinda Valentini, was killed by her husband. Like my mom, she was found dead in a pool of her own blood. But Rosalinda was a celebrity—a beautiful blond actress—so her death and life will be memorialized for ages, while my mom’s will only be remembered by my grandma and me.
And whoever killed her.
EDDIE DRIVES, JACOB BROODING IN THE FRONT seat, flicking the flame on his lighter off and on, while I sit in the back, nervously observing the tension between them. Of the four of us, Zoe is the only one who lives in a house instead of an apartment, and she has a pool, so her house is often our de facto hangout spot, with Eddie playing chauffeur.
This will be our last production cycle. It’s become such a fundamental part of my life. My role in the group is researcher and voice-over script writer, and I pour hours and hours into learning everything about a place and translating that into an interesting narrative for Jacob to read in his smooth baritone after he edits the footage in Avid. What am I going to do with all this excess mental energy once I’m no longer nurturing something secret, something that’s just ours?
What am I going to do without Zoe?
Eddie looks at me in the rearview mirror. “You good, Casey?” He always senses when something’s simmering beneath the surface.
I force a smile. “Of course.”
He returns his eyes to the road. “You finalize your plans yet? Still thinking about LA City College?”
“Yep. Gonna live at home, help Grandma pay the bills. Can’t rack up a bunch of debt.”
They glance at each other. It’s Jacob who says, “You know, it’s okay if you need to, like, do your own thing.”
Eddie nods. “You have good grades; you’re super smart. It seems like a waste to go to community college.”
The words sting. I’m tired of people saying stuff like this to me. I just sat through an after-class lecture from my AP Econ teacher, who wants me to study library science at one of the UCs because of my “head for research.” But I can’t abandon my grandma. I’m all she has. When you’ve been through what we’ve been through, the rules are different.
I redirect, tapping Jacob on the shoulder. “How ’bout you? You pick a college yet? I know you’ve been debating.”
He looks back at me. “Yeah, actually. I decided I’m going to skip college and try to get a PA job, work my way up.”
I consider that. It’s not a huge shock. He ditches school more than anyone else I know, and he relies on Course Hero, Wikipedia, and the three of us, his loving enablers, for the work he does turn in. That said, this no-college plan is going to be a tough sell to his dad.
Jacob continues, “Let’s be honest. I have ADHD. I hate school. I want to do things.” He talks with his spidery, expressive hands, animating his words with a sort of desperation.
In a sharp tone, Eddie says, “A lot of people have ADHD and still go to college.” It occurs to me that this reveal isn’t news to Eddie.
Philosophically, I say, “To be fair, we’re lucky he’s had the YouTube channel to get him through high school. Imagine the trouble he’d have gotten in without it. Sixteen-hour PA shifts might be just what he needs.”
“I knew the ladies would have my back,” Jacob says merrily.
“You’re not helping,” Eddie snaps over his shoulder, which is so out of character that I shut up instantan. . .
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