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

a rerun of one of the various incarnations of Real Housewives.

There was a time when Hayley and Taylor Ryan might have been in the grouping closest to the Berkleys’ front door. Though they were no longer that close, the twins had grown up with Katelyn. As it often seems to be, middle school became the great divider. What had once been a deep bond shared by three girls had been shattered by jealousy and the petty gossip that predictably turns friends into enemies.

What happened among the trio was nothing that couldn’t have faded by the end of middle school. The girls could have reclaimed the friendship they’d had back in the days when they used to joke about Colton James’s stupid sports T-shirts, which he wore every single day in fifth grade.

“Only a loser would support the Mariners,” Katelyn had once said, looking over at Colton as he stood in defiance, his scrawny arms wrapped around his small chest, nodding as if he were defending his team.

But that was then. A million years ago, it seemed. Since then, Port Gamble’s kids had grown into pubescent teenagers. Taylor and Hayley, still mirror images of each other, had blonde hair, blue eyes and the occasional pimple. Colton had traded in sports T-shirts for ’80s relic rock bands’ insignias and was dating Hayley. And Katelyn was dead.

“When was the last time you actually talked to her?” Hayley asked, already trying to piece together what had happened.

Taylor brushed aside her annoying bangs and shook her head.

“Not sure.” A puff of white vapor came with Taylor’s warm breath. “Last month, I guess.”

“Do you think she was depressed? I read somewhere that suicide rates are highest at Christmas.”

Taylor shook her head. “Depressed? How would I know?”

“You have a better pulse on the social scene than I do,” Hayley said matter-of-factly. “They’re saying she killed herself because she was upset about something.”

“Was Katelyn still cutting?”

Hayley looked surprised. “You knew about that too?”

“Duh,” Taylor said, wishing that she’d brought gloves like her sister had. Taylor’s fingertips were numb. “Everyone knew. Dylan, that sophomore with a shaved head and earlobes he’s been gouging since Halloween, called her Cut-lin last week.”

Hayley looked down at the icy pavement and said quietly, “Oh… I was under the impression she had stopped.”

Taylor shook her head, then shrugged her shoulders. “I remember her telling people that she liked cutting. Liked how it made her feel in control.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Cutting made her feel in control of what?”

“She never said.”

The crowd contracted to make room for a gurney. Covered from head to toe was the figure of the dead girl. Some people could scarcely bear the sight and they turned away. It felt invasive. Sad. Wrong to even look.

The ambulance, its lights rotating red flashes over the bystanders, pulled away. There was no real urgency in its departure. No sirens. Nothing. Just the quiet slinking away like the tide.

A few moments later, the crowd surged a little as the door opened and Port Gamble Police Chief Annie Garnett’s imposing frame loomed in the doorway. She wore a dark wool skirt and jacket, with a knitted scarf around her thick neck. She had long, dark hair that was pulled back. In a voice that cracked a little, Chief Garnett told everyone they should go home.

“Tragedy here tonight,” she said, her voice unable to entirely mask her emotions. Annie was a big woman, with baseball-mitt hands, a deep resonant voice and a soft spot for troubled young girls. Katelyn’s death would be hard on her, especially if it turned out to be a suicide.

Hayley nudged her sister, who had started to cry. “We probably should go home, Tay,” she said gently.

In that instant, shock had turned to anguish. Hayley’s eyes also welled up, and she ignored a text from her boyfriend, Colton, who was out of town and missing the biggest thing to happen in Port Gamble since the devastating bus crash. The twins looked over the crowd to see the faces of their friends and neighbors.

One of the paramedics whispered to another.

“Girl was found in the tub with an espresso machine.”

Hayley jammed her hands inside her coat pockets. No Kleenex. She dried her eyes with a soggy gloved fingertip. It could not have been colder just then. The air was ice. She hugged her sister.

“I feel sick,” Taylor said.

“Me too,” Hayley agreed. Curiosity piercing through her emotions, she added, “I want to know what happened to her and why.”

“Why do you think she did it?” Taylor asked.

“Did what?” Hayley argued. “We don’t know what happened. Not really.”

Taylor indicated those in the outer ring of grief, just beyond their own.

“I mean, really, an espresso machine in the bathtub? That’s got to be a first ever.”

Taylor nodded, brushing away her tears. She could see the absurdity of it all. “Some snarky blogger is going to say this is proof that coffee isn’t good for you.”

“And write a headline like ‘Port Gamble Girl Meets Bitter End,’” Hayley added.

The spaces in the crowd began to shrink as people pushed forward. All were completely unaware that someone was watching them. All of them. Someone in their midst was enjoying the tragic scene that had enveloped Port Gamble as its residents shivered in the frigid air off the bay.

Loving the sad moment to the very last drop.

Chapter Two

Some say Port Gamble was cursed from the moment they came. The S’Klallam Tribe had made its home on the bay’s shores for hundreds of years, finding food from the sea, shelter from storms and the tranquility that eluded other isolated locations along the Pacific’s rugged coastlines.

The place, the earth, the universe were in perfect harmony.

The way it was always supposed to be.

And then the early explorers arrived at the jagged edge of Hood Canal, an offshoot of the Pacific Ocean that pokes into Washington with the force of an ice pick.

That was a century and a half ago, a very long time by West Coast standards. The sawmill, located below the bluff