Chapter 11

Some things just didn't quite add up. When I'd met Mallory, she'd been carrying a notebook, but not planning to write anything down. She'd had a recorder on her. Why had she brought the book, then? Didn't she know it'd only make me wonder and more certain that she wasn't simply trying to reconnect with an old friend?

And Ashley, too. When I'd had my final phone call with Tobias, she had gotten upset by his cheating on me while on the phone with me, yet she'd tried taking him from me, too.

What was really going on was that it was five-fifty-eight A.M. and I had been asleep, but suddenly I couldn't stop thinking. I wasn't even aware how I'd woken up.

Five days had passed since my phone call to my mother, and that meant Dahlia had been free for a while. Not a single day passed that I didn't think of her. Not a sound was heard that didn't make me flinch. And yet, nothing had happened. No notes, no gunshots, no knocks on the door, no phone calls. The reporters kept calling, and we'd changed our number-and yet they still got through. So we were mostly leaving the phone unplugged. Although the apartment was deathly silent-no music, because we couldn't hear if something was wrong, and no talking, because Ashley still refused to leave her room because she was convinced that each time she did, something bad happened-I was lying there, awake. For once, it was a nice, cool night. It was very dark, and the streetlights far below illuminated the falling rain in a pale glow on the ceiling.

After all that had happened, and how far we'd come in trying to heal-and I wasn't just talking about the distance between Stoneybrook and Chicago-it all felt like it was for nothing. Dahlia was going to be free, and here I was, in the same city as a woman who, as a girl, had tried to kill me. She had tortured and killed and done horrible things, and there was no doubt in the minds of anyone that she would remember me. She'd remember Bobbi, too, but were the familial bonds strong enough to keep whatever insane part of Dahlia's mentality from going after her twin? I hoped so, especially since Bobbi had children of her own.

I could practically feel Dahlia thinking about me.

"That's just paranoia," Kristy Thomas would have said, but she would have been worried. And in her typical foolish adolescent bravado, she would have gone after Dahlia herself with her baby-sitting club army at her heels for me. She would have played hero until the end, when trapped and tortured like the rest of us, she would be spewing superhero lines as if from a comic book while Dahlia stood over her laughing as Kristy suffered like a villain from a movie. And yet, Dahlia would see the cheesiness in her villainous laugh and Kristy's defiance and roll her eyes and torture and kill all the worse so nobody would think the situation was as laced with corny cheesiness as it was. Kristy would have done just that, too; she'd always ended up getting the BSC into danger (potential danger, usually, because usually we faced silly things that we had gotten freaked about and were sure it was far worse) and as a group, we got out of it without the help of the police, even though they often should have been involved from the start.

How stupid she would have had to be to think a group of young baby-sitters could go up against a criminal and actually win, to play hero and come out as heroes, unscarred and brave and untouched. I didn't doubt the jail sentence had only made Dahlia worse; increased her insanity and heightened her fixation on terror.

And yet, I knew without a doubt that if the BSC was still around, it would be Kristy in the lead, with her supposed-to-be-big-and-great ideas and her fantasy of standing at the top of a hill with a backdrop of dark clouds and lightning behind her while the wind blew her hair back and she gazed slightly upwards with an expression of toughness and bravery. Meek little Mary Anne would be right behind her, with the same fantasy, and looking concerned. The odd thing was, I doubted the former BSC girls (with the exception of Kristy) were the way they had been. Mary Anne, shockingly, had ended up a porn star; which I'd found out by accident when researching Stoneybrook hours before my latest sleepless night. Stacey was dead, so she was the same, though she probably didn't look as beautiful as she once did. Mallory, I knew, had become a reporter. I'd researched her name and come across articles she'd written for a newspaper. So that confirmed what I'd feared; that she'd only been after me for juicy news-worthy things to tell the world, no matter the cost to me. I supposed nobody knew where Jessi was, though I'd oddly enough seen a woman who looked so much like her a few days before that I was certain it was her, but she didn't move gracefully like a ballerina and I'd lost her in a crowd of doughnut-munching coffee-drinking early-morning office workers. Nobody knew about Shannon, Logan, or Abby; I'd researched their names on social sites and had come up empty on all three. Dawn was also MIA, though I'd heard from Bobbi who had started researching my old friends as well that Dawn was seeing a therapist to stabilize her general mental state after years of drugs and recovering from anorexia.

All in all, I wasn't exactly eager to find or keep those friends. Everything was so messed up. Anorexia, drug abuse, porn films, nosy reporters, and idealistic daydreamers with too much confidence.

My family was a mess. My older sister's birthday was in two days, and I had no idea how that would go. Janine had always been a bit of a mystery to me. And my parents would be there, too, of course. My mother-I didn't want to see her at all. She'd implied over the phone that my father had wanted me there.

"I'm just calling because your father wanted to know if you would like to join us for Janine's birthday party."

Those had been her words. My father had wanted to know if I'd want to come. It wasn't exactly an invitation, but he'd thought of me, and maybe that had bothered my mother, prompting her to call me. Maybe that one phone call to her that I'd made had made her want more. But why? It had been unsatisfactory and she'd been brief and almost uncaring. Had she felt bad for the way she'd sounded, or had my father urged her to make peace?

Whatever. I wasn't going to chicken out. I'd fought with Janine many times, but those things were all in the past. We were both women now, and she'd kept in touch-sort of-so I felt okay about going. I knew I'd feel bad if I didn't, anyway, so even though I didn't want to go simply because of the parents I'd have to face, I knew I'd go.

What was Jessi doing in town, anyway? Had she come with Mallory? Did she know Mallory had been here? Had Mallory kept in touch with Jessi after all, and lied about that, too?

I didn't know. But I was pretty curious. So curious that I once again got up, did a look around the apartment, settled down at the computer, and did an Internet search for Jessi's name. I checked several sites before I remembered to check Facebook.

And it was so stupid. She was the only Jessi Ramsey listed. And the very first person in her list of friends was Mallory Pike.

It figured. Why had I not thought to check the most obvious place in the world? That was typical of the dumbest Kishi.

Age: 22. Single. Female. Status: visiting Chicago!

I sighed. So Jessi was here. And so was Mallory. That couldn't possibly be a coincidence. If Jessi didn't know what Mallory had done, but Mallory had told her what I'd done, she'd hate me. Or did she know what Mallory was planning and hadn't stopped her or warned me?

It was a mess. Nobody knew how to react. Maybe Jessi thought I'd hate her after all this time because I wasn't keeping in touch, though if she knew what'd happened, maybe she'd understand and was giving me space. Maybe Mallory had been trying to screw with us, telling me she didn't know where Jessi was, but meanwhile bringing her to my city and not bringing Jessi when she met me. Maybe Mal was even thinking that if I got mad at her I wouldn't want anything to do with Jessi. But was she trying to protect Jessi, or me? Was she trying to keep us apart?

I felt a little like maybe I should find Jessi and talk to her, figure things out for myself. If Jessi was helping Mallory, it was true I wouldn't want much to do with her. If Jessi was innocent, it would have been great if we could still be friends.

I logged on, sent her a quick message, and decided to get ready for work. But I still felt pretty listless-with my luck, Jessi had been the one to hatch the plan in the first place. And anyway, what good was living when you had to live in fear and feel that all your life's struggles would be pointless?

I could hardly wait to get home and check my messages all day. I think I actually started to log into Facebook while at work, but there seemed to be three times the normal number of customers, so I was busy the whole time. By the time I actually got home, all I wanted was to take a hot bath, eat food someone else had cooked, and go to bed without worrying about the dishes. It was my last shift before the weekend, which meant Rachel would run the store and I would have to go to my sister's party.

After I'd had a hot, soothing bath and grabbed a package of cookies for supper (hey, when you're in your mid-twenties you can do whatever you want for food) I headed for the computer. To my surprise, Ashley had come out of her room and was asleep in the armchair, a book in her lap and a glass with a melting ice-cream float about to overflow on the table beside her. I drank it for her and sat down at the computer.

I logged onto the Internet and found my message center. There was one unread.

Claudia? Oh my gosh! It's been ages? How are you? Yes, Mallory's in Chicago too; I tagged along with her. Did you know she ended up as a reporter? It figures, seeing how nosy she always was, and loved to write, too. Wow, so you're in Chicago too! I didn't know that! I saw your profile on here but I couldn't message you because I wasn't on your friend list and your profile's set to private...I couldn't even try adding you...I hoped you'd find me on here! I sure have missed you...maybe we can all get together sometime?

I hesitated. It sure sounded like Jessi wasn't aware of Mallory's...well, what she'd tried doing. She did know that Mal was a reporter, though, and she didn't even mention my past. Jessi wasn't stupid; she'd put two and two together and realize that I was a big story because of Dahlia's release, see that Mal was a reporter, and know what was going on. How would she react?

Of course, there was the possibility that Jessi was lying, too. Maybe she knew what Mallory had tried doing, and maybe she'd known about it before. Though, there was the possibility that Jessi had tried warning me. I did keep my profiles private, and I didn't trust usernames. And I had kept the phone disconnected, too, so if Jessi had found a number to call, she might've heard that it was out of service or something.

Even so, I felt a little excited. Reconnecting with someone, even though my experience with Mallory should have warned me off of that type of interaction, was a thrill. How different would Jessi be? Was she still nice and not nosy and innocent? Would she have suggested we "all get together" if she knew about Mallory's attempt to use our former friendship to get a story?

I didn't know, but as the messages continued, I felt I was about to find out.

Author's Note: I'M BACK! For now, anyway...my life has in the last year consisted of a lot of the things I could only imagine about as I wrote this; heartbreak and grief and terror. Long story. Anyway, I hope to be back to this story and able to be motivated and find inspiration and get hooked on writing it to completion. I hope this chapter doesn't vary in length and style compared for former chapters, but I only have WordPad and therefore, no word count that I can find, and it's been over a year since I posted Chapter 10, so...I had to reread it all myself before I could write again, and ... I talk a lot ... I hope the long huge delay in updates hasn't lost me all my reviewers and/or that this wasn't totally boring as the first in a long time of updates...well, if you're still interested in this at all, please review! :)