Cheshire Girl

Ch. 22

                "Holy shit."

                "That's what he said."  I turned Todd off.  We sat there in silence, everyone else walking around the parking lot, hanging out.  We were earlier than usual, so we were surrounded by other students, probably talking about normal things like school and homework… not ghosts and unsolved murders.

                "If they're at his house," said Charlie, "how're you going to look for them?  Are you going to bring him in on this?"

                I scoffed.  "No way.  He'll think I'm crazy.  What I could probably do is get him to invite me over, and then maybe I can snoop around.  What?"

                Charlie's eyebrows went pretty high.  "I don't know….  No one really sees his parents.  I doubt they're very welcoming."

                "That's probably when it comes to everyone else in Cheshire, but I'm not like everyone else.  Besides, Ethan and I are project partners.  Maybe if I invite him to my house, he'll invite me to his.  What?"

                Charlie was smiling a knowing smiling.  "Bella… do you like Ethan?"

                I was prepared for that.  "No, not the way you're implying.  I just need to get into his house, and B & E is definitely not the way I want to do it."

*

I went through the same routine… just a little differently.  I guessed almost dying would affect me somehow.  It was all mundane and childish… or at least the kids were in my classes.  I felt a little lifeless.  I hoped I didn't get depression or anything.  No matter what I did or what was happening, the very last thing I ever wanted to do was worry my mother. 

                With that in mind, I forced myself to get back on track.  During lunch, Charlie and I used the computers to see if we could find any newspaper articles about any murders in Cheshire… but there weren't any!  All the deaths mentioned were of natural causes, an illness, or proven accidents.  None were about a teenage girl murdered in my house.

                "This is starting to look like a cover-up," said Charlie, looking discouraged.

                "Which could only mean this goes far up," I said, "all the way to a founding family, or someone up on the social ladder.  Wasn't one of the Wyatts mayor at the time?"

                Charlie was manning the computer, so she scrolled around.  "It was… Eric Wyatt.  However, we have to assume that was when Charlotte and her mother were working for them.  If that's true, then we can assume the worst happened."  That left a sour cloud hanging over us.

                "Well," I said suddenly, "we won't know anything until we find those missing pages.  I'm meeting Ethan here after school, so I'll see what I can do."

                Charlie nodded, exiting the page we were on and opening a new tab.  "You know what I was thinking about in English today?"  I nodded for her to continue.  "First, we talked about The Scarlet Letter since we read it last year.  That made me think about Easy A—my mom rented it and I saw it last night.  It's really good, but what I thought about was what Olive said, how the books we study in class have something to do with what we're going through in real life?"

                "Is there a point to all this?"

                "When I thought that, I thought about a certain book I read… and you."