Beneath Her Skin, Gregg Olsen [ereader with android .txt] 📗

of the Internet was anyway. It didn’t seem like there was an Internet police either. Every day her email inbox was stacked with ads for Viagra (gross), breast enhancers (not!) and offers from Nigerians to share their fortune (tempting, but no thanks).

Hayley was irritated by the digression, though she completely agreed with Katelyn’s thoughts. She hoped and refocused on more of what she was after, and what she was seeking came forth.

Instead of telling someone or giving the boy on the other side of the computer screen the big kiss-off, Katelyn, who’d never felt lonelier in her life, answered him.

Katiebug: thx, i guess. But i don’t know anything bout u. Ur not like that phantom of the opera guy. Ru?

Cullant: don’t like opera. Boring.

Katelyn shook her head and typed.

Katiebug: lol. Meant the broadway musical. Freak w/a burned up face falls 4 a woman & doesn’t want her see his butt-ugly face.

Cullant: i’m tld i have a nice butt.

Katelyn smiled. The guy hitting on her was actually kind of funny. Maybe a little clueless, but amusing, nevertheless. The boys at Kingston were in one of two camps—either a slacker or a jock who measured his muscles in the reflection of the school’s crowded trophy case. None seemed to understand for a single nanosecond that talking to a girl was hotter than a Dirty Girl Scout drink, a blanket and a quickie down at the beach.

Far, far, hotter.

Cullant: i want 2 meet u.

Katiebug: dn’t know if i’m rdy. 2b w/u in person might be more thn i cn handle.

More than she can handle? She could handle plenty. That is, if someone gave her something to sink her teeth into… er… hold. Whatever!

Katelyn started to type just as her mother entered the room. Sandra Berkley had been drinking since five that afternoon and she was clearly feeling the effects of the alcohol. She’d switched to vodka earlier in the year because she was under the erroneous assumption that it didn’t have an odor. Of course, it didn’t have the sweet smell that wafted out of a whiskey drinker’s mouth, but it did carry the hard-edge scent that reminded Katelyn of Listerine. Minus the minty freshness, of course.

“What do you want?” Katelyn asked, sending a perceptible glare in the direction of her nosy, drunk and all-too-predictable mom.

“That’s no way to talk to your mother, Katelyn.”

“You haven’t acted like my mother since I was seven,” Katelyn said from behind her laptop. She’d swiveled on the edge of the bed so that her mother could see only the back of her computer.

Sandra brushed her dark, limp hair from her forehead in a display of dramatic effect that was meant to show impatience and tolerance at the same time.

“Must we always go there?” she asked, slumping on the foot of the bed.

Katelyn closed the chat app on her laptop, just in case her mother’s vision was less blurry than she expected it to be.

“I guess so,” she said. “I guess we must. Where’s Dad? Shouldn’t you be downstairs fighting with him?”

Sandra wrapped her arms around her shoulders, trying to convey that she was freezing or maybe a little vulnerable.

In reality, Katelyn was sure that her mother was merely trying to steady herself. She’d overdone it, like she always did.

“What are you doing online?” her mom asked. Sandra put her hand on the laptop, but Katelyn flicked it away.

“Homework. What do you think?”

“Don’t get lippy with me,” she said.

Katelyn let out a sigh. It was exaggerated, but with her mom drinking too much, emotions sometimes had to be painted with very, very broad strokes. It was the only way to ensure that something, anything, got through her mother’s alcohol-induced haze.

“I’m not lippy,” Katelyn said. “I’m just tired, Mom. Tired of you not trusting me.”

The images faded and Hayley fought hard to hold on to what she was “seeing.”

Suddenly Sandra reappeared. This time she was wearing jeans and a sweater, and her hair was clipped back from her face. She was angry and she stood to leave. “I won’t ever trust you after what you did last fall.”

She spun on her heel, shot her own glare in the direction of her daughter and left the bedroom.

Katelyn sat there seething.

Last fall. There would always be that to throw in her face.

* * *

Taylor came into the kitchen to get a post-hanging-out-with-Beth snack. A slice of cold leftover Hawaiian pizza sounded good just then. And since she was the only one in the house who’d eat it, there were always leftovers for her. She glanced over at her sister and the empty water glass.

“Hopeful and focused?” she asked, a little more quietly than needed. They were, after all, home alone. “Anything?”

Hayley looked up and nodded. “Yeah, although I’m not sure what it means or if it really has anything to do with Katelyn’s death.”

Taylor took her pizza from the refrigerator, grabbed a too-long streamer of paper towels, and slid into a chair facing Hayley.

“What did you get?”

Hayley drew a deep breath and exhaled. She was wiped out from the experience of seeing the conversation play out over Katelyn’s laptop.

“She had an online hookup,” Hayley said. “Did you know that?”

Taylor picked at an errant piece of pineapple and shook her head. “Who?”

“I have no idea,” Hayley said. “It felt kind of deep, kind of personal.”

“Personal how?”

“Katelyn seemed really interested in him. She was really happy. It was like that boy was the only thing that lifted her heart. I didn’t get all the information. Her mom interrupted them.”

Taylor nodded. “Her mother is the worst.”

“Her mother’s mother is, that’s for sure,” Hayley said, remembering the visit with the family after Katelyn died.

Hayley closed her eyes and tried to replay the last part of what she’d felt.

Taylor was impatient, something she was pretty good at being. “Well?”

“Give me a second, okay?” Hayley said.

Though Hayley kept her eyes shut, Taylor could see them move back and forth under their clamped lids. She finished her pizza and wondered when Hayley had started to wear